Hardshell's Royal Christmas [Transformers fanfiction]

Chapter 5: The New Maharaja

Extract from Sunspot's diary:

Night, 18th December, 2015:

Perhaps it is the law of nature to never let anything go on without a thrill, and my vast experience of this tango with my fate yells at me, "especially so in my life." Yesterday and the day before, everything was fine. Of course Hardshell was not with us, but I mean everything except that was fine. Then one day came - today, specifically - like a wildfire into the forest known as my life - and engulfed it completely, filling it with complete darkness. But I'm getting way ahead in the story.

By now Soundwave's posters had been placed practically everywhere, as he had promised me. I do not know whether he had reported the matter or whether it was the ubiquitous and prominent nature of the posters that caught media attention. I turned on the TV to watch today's news updates. Guess what I found there - "Missing posters about a bug with measles have been pasted all around the city. Please report if you find this individual [they said, showing the close-up of a poster which was redundant in my opinion, for I can bet my life on 'every resident of this city has seen the posters'], please call..." I turned the TV off.

I picked up the newspaper. Guess the cover-page news - "Insect missing. Probably suffering from measles." This was followed by a photo of Hardshell - the sketch on the posters more specifically - and then a description of the posters in the city and then in quotes, Soundwave's poem.

What alternative did I have after that? Online news? Well - not much different. Blogrolls, Facebook and Twitter updates - all were full of discussions about this missing bug. I began to think whether the total number of posters that Soundwave printed would even be one billionth of the total number of the online posts. But what caught my attention above everything else was the fact that this stunt - to use a very light word for it - had escalated Soundwave and made him into some kind of a celebrity. His poem was liked by all and his Facebook timeline was full of posts like "Please write a poem about me," "Please help me write an obituary for my best friend in a poetic way," and so on.

As I browsed through the web, Soundwave came into my room. He did not even bother to knock!

"What are you doing this early in the morning, 'old chap'?" It was early in the morning back then and I had barely woken up. And that bloke had the guts to ridicule my style of calling him an "old chap" right in front of me. These yanks have no respect for our British vocabulary for addressing our friends. If he is actually a yank, by the way - he does claim that he is, but then he claims that he is a lot of things - many of which he cannot be simultaneously - like the police chief and a research analyst for some secret firm.

I told him what I truly felt, though on second thoughts, I should not have said because the word "yank" and the words "You're playing this dirty game with our friend Hardshell to become something of a celebrity" seemed to enrage him.

He replied in verse, clearly showing perhaps that he indeed deserved to be as famous as he had now become:

"'Tis my fate, understand - and my fate thou cannot bend.

If thou hast such sorrow for the bug, go join your friend.

I ask this not because I want thee out,

But because thy intents speak out loud.

Whether this be Primus' fury or Unicron's wrath,

I do not understand.

Why is undone at the hands of some psychopath,

The celebration of Christmas - a festival so grand?

You think of me as a knave, thou callest me villain,