Title: Chapter Fifteen of For a Few Upgrades More
Warnings/content advice: Walk of Shame? More pretend slavery. Holomatter avatar make-out session.
Rating: Pg-13
Continuity: Transformers Animated
Characters: Lockdown, Slipstream, Soundwave, with supporting Laserbeak and Ratbat
Disclaimer: Transformers belongs to Hasbro et al, not to me
Prompt: #4 (December 21, 2013) "The morning after an epic party". With additional inspiration from
Rob Dougan - Matrix - Clubbed to Death [Kurayamino Mix] Soundwave felt rather...crispy, for lack of a more appropriate term. His drives seemed a mess of scattered bits; piecemeal file-parts everywhere. He'd just come out of recharge, but felt like he hadn't had any stasis in cycles. Correction: He hadn't been in recharge at all. Soundwave suspected he had mistaken the sensation of returning fully to his own body after using the holomatter so long, that it felt like waking.
CYCLES EARLIER:
The music was pounding, a steady bass track that was felt, a customized jockeying of samples, orchestration, and synth tracks. DJ might have made him fall in love. Soundwave wanted to dance with everybody in the place. The music struck him at the very kernel of his programming; he'd been made to sing and dance. Designed to be the vessel for another, but gifted with a unique set of upgrades that led to him being Soundwave, and no longer useful to his designer as originally intended. He had been owned, and played with, and self-realized as a mech who disdained organic mistresses and masters. But, that - logical or not - had not cancelled his intense interest, attraction for, and talent with music.
If they played his song, he was going to shake it on the dance floor. And the song felt like it should be his.
PRESENT:
Some of the previous cycles began to coalesce; packets transferred from temp to archive data tracks. Madame Junko. The "Mixer". Maintaining the charade of being traders in organic beings. A metal rasp drew Soundwave's attention and he extended his sense. Lockdown was beside him, parked in the cargo bay.
"Someone get the name of that truck?" Lockdown asked, "Cause my processor feels like it's been hit."
"Negative. Facsimile program is a memory hog." Overuse had its side-effects.
"Oh, Kid. 'Bout last night...."
Soundwave tried to fold himself more tightly into his alt-form, though it was not truly possible. He remembered, now.
LAST NIGHT:
Inside the go-go cage. Holomatter bodies pressed flush against each other. Still undulating in time to the dance beats. Hardlight projections merging in a fierce kiss. Soundwave wanted this. Had wanted it. With the avatar he could take what he wanted. It was as much as mask - maybe moreso - than those he wore across his faceplate. He could pretend, here, without fields interacting, without the give-away of heat and revving engine, that it was just for show, a ploy to deceive enemies. And if he could pretend, then he didn't have to admit what he wanted, and wait for acceptance, or face rejection. He didn't ever have to say, "I want to strap you down, force you into VR, and just kill time road-tripping across desert and through canyons, and kick-up dust with you, then lie under the stars."
PRESENT:
"It was for show," Soundwave toned, knowing it for a lie.
"Pretty convincing show."
Soundwave wondered if this meant Lockdown had liked it. He did not know how to respond. He questioned whether his actions had been logical at all. Soundwave extrapolated that he must be feeling like those organic oppressors who stumbled out of Dancitron, or the diners and residences nearby, on their way to the bus in the morning. Their scant, yet, elaborate attire emphasizing that they had been up dancing or hooking-up for the duration of the night. Soundwave hated how they manipulated their media devices, but still parked nearby to hear the tunes.
"I have many skills."
"That's what I'm saying, mech! Knew about the upgrade assimilation and pets, but I wasn't countin' on the avatar play or the voice."
Soundwave did not reply.
"Why do you alter it?"
"Why do you wear so many mods?"
Lockdown didn't have an easy answer for that, but Soundwave hoped his silence indicated he understood. There were remnants of Soundwave's original intended function in his build and programming, but the key had made him who he was. There were things he needed to make his own. Cover-up the past.
AFTER THE DANCING:
Soundwave, his avatar at least, sat on a banquet, scanning the room as he made yet another show: making up with his pleasure slave after punishment had been necessary. Soundwave knew very well the role irritated his Commander, but they were committed now to playing the part, because Madame Junko's network of informants was said to inform her of everyone on the Station that might fit her client list or supply needs. Especially, she claimed, if they were exotic, or possessed of special talents. There had been a suggestion that she might soon come into possession of a Eurythman, one she would see to it was brought to the mixer.
"If it doesn't turn out to be one of them, and soon, I am going to slag somebody!" Slipstream hissed.
Soundwave put a thumb to her chin, lifting it with fingers beneath. "Another cycle," Soundwave proposed.
"Easy for you! Probably your dream to oppress organics. All of this-" She waved casually to the party around them, "is entirely against my programming."
"Not easy." Complicated: Soundwave wanted to add. Command: made him feel less himself.
"Perhaps not." Her male avatar raised a brow, yet Soundwave could easily imagine Slipstream's optics gazing at him knowingly. Could she guess things about him as much as he could about her? Soundwave did not have inherited memory files, as Slipstream seemed to. But he did have excellent surveillance and data processing capability. He could put the so-called two and two together.
He softly placed a kiss upon his slave's lips.
"Don't," Slipstream whispered.
Soundwave complied, though the margin of space he put between them was very small. For show, he told himself. He watched the pretty pilot shiver and twitch his shoulders. Soundwave understood that as Slipstream struggling to control an avatar that lacked expressive wings.
"Freedom fighters, trying to reclaim our homeland?! Rejecting the control systems of the council and guilds. And we're going to slavers for help?"
"You - we do not really fight for freedom. You know that."
"But we should! We were supposed to be! You- wanting even automatons to rise up!" She put her hardlight hands to his face and looked at him.
Soundwave understood. She'd been a clone. A weapon. He'd been a vessel. A toy.
PRESENT:
"Fully present now, I see," Slipstream said, but the voice came from Lockdown. Rapidly one of his doors opened, nearly came close enough to scratch Soundwave's paint.
"The frag!?" Lockdown shouted. "How long you been in there?"
Slipstream's pilot avatar was curled against Lockdown's interior upholstery. "My body was docked all the way over there," she explained, as if it were logical. "What you so uptight about? The fact that you modded your interior hardly says 'keep out'."
"Just don't touch-!"
Soundwave could not see whether she did touch anything, but Lockdown was flustered all the same.
"Should be more tolerant. After all, this little avatar is what got me Lacrimosa's contact info."