Predatory

Terror Twins Part 1

Two high pitched maniacal laughs echoed from behind me. I swiveled around to see Frenzy and Rumble cackling in the doorway of the balcony. 

"Sirs, good morning, Sirs!" They saluted mockingly. Did they just call me... sir? I narrowed my optics.

"At ease, soldiers." Tarn said quietly without looking up from his datapad. 

"BOYS!" I heard Soundwave shout from somewhere inside the building.

"We found 'em Boss!" Rumble yelled to someone, who I assumed was Soundwave, down the hall to his right. And sure enough, a few moments later, Soundwave materialized behind them. 

 "You've been making me chase after you all afternoon, and when we're done here, I'm going to murder you two!" Soundwave hissed through his denta, swatting Rumble's helm lightly as he brushed past him. Frenzy laughed again, this time at his brother. "And don't call me Boss."

"Sure thing...  ...Sir." They sniggered.

"And not Sir either!" Soundwave barked at them, then turned back to us. "Sorry about them, they haven't exactly been behaving lately," Here he shot them a pointed look. "But they're virtually harmless." he said turning back to us. 

I heard Tarn chuckle from beside me. "Oh don't worry about it Soundwave. I went through the same thing with Kaon and Vos. Patience is definitely a virtue earned through trials.." He powered off his datapad and stood up, stretching his shoulder cables out behind him as he did so. And from this angle, one could definitely see the strength of the internal wiring in his arm and upper torso. Which was quite impressive I must say, in an admiration way. Nothing romantic. Obviously. I wasn't stupid, and I wasn't looking because I was interested, just.....appreciating the magnificent specimen in front of me. Yeah! Like, shopping for a new paint job even though I'm definitely never getting a new one. Or scanning through pictures of cute pets on the sale forums even though you can't afford one. Yeah. That was it. Definitely.  

Soundwave shook his helm. "Well, I got you a comm line Dreadflight. I just have to install it into your audio receptors. You can upload it to your internal datascreen yourself, I take it?" 

I nod, trying to remember which task bar whilst getting up to stand beside Tarn. 

Soundwave came closer and tilted my helm to the side slightly. Then he began to fiddle with a hard drive in my left-most audio processing unit. 

"What's her I.D. under?" Tarn asked, he was scrolling through his internal datascreen installed into his left forearm.  

"Should be under the DJD tag, if I programmed it right, and being me, I did." Soundwave said haughtily.

"See what I mean? No social skills, whatsoever." Tarn said, with something of amusement in his optics. 

"Don't make me change your user I.D. to something embarrassing." Soundwave muttered angrily. He was being a bit rough with my wiring, and more than once I got a sharp shock to my audials. It wasn't the most wonderful feeling, but I didn't say anything about it.

"Right, that should do you. If you want to listen in on the internal radio, now you can. I would advise staying away from channel 3.07. It's uh...Overlord's favorite  "music" channel," Soundwave mimed air quotes with his digits, then shuddered. "That speaks volumes as is. "

"You'll wanna stick with channel 1 obviously. Announcements and that sort of thing, Megatron's orders, Lockdown Drills, weather. Very important. The loop starts at around Dawn, and after that everything is just a repeat unless it's serious, then I broadcast it over every intercomm, so no need to listen in all day. The DJD's frequency is set at 2.98, so you can always be in touch, though I hear Kaon blasting obscene club music on it more often than not. But that's Tarn's problem, not mine. If you want any decent radio, my intercomm is set to 19.87. Don't invite anyone else to it, it's incriminated so Overlord and the like can't get in. It plays actually decent music, mostly from Earth, but Tarn pays me 4 shanix for every cybertronian ballad or showtune I play, so there's a lot of that too. To be honest it's mostly that. The rest of the frequencies are in the directory, Kaon should have a copy, he is after all the communications officer." Soundwave finished, casting Tarn an irritated glance.

"Thanks for the advice." I say, as I scroll through my own internal datascreen. I had it on my right forearm instead, because I was left servo-ed. I was scrolling through my databanks in it, and I couldn't believe how much old junk I had left over from my days at the opera house. Recordings of some of our shows. Mostly the ones I was in. A couple were lost to time as far as I was aware, so I made sure I put them in a folder to file away later. I finally found my intercomm and frequency transmitter settings after about a minute of searching . I synced them together and quickly began to add the DJD's and Megatron's frequency. I also added Soundwave's while I was at it.

"Oh, and Soundwave, while you're giving away incriminated frequencies, Dreadflight is going to need...that one." 

Soundwave gave Tarn a long, hard look. 

"Affirmative,....Commander. So it is.....?"

"Don't push it, Soundwave."

"Aha! So it is true!"

"I am not-no! No! NO! and no! ......And no again!" Tarn growled. "It is never happening!"

"Mhmm." Soundwave shifted his weight onto one leg, with his servos on his hips. 

"Until Megatron puts his pedde down. Then you're gonna melt like crystallized energon in a smelting pit like you always do," Rumble put in.

"And then that thing you don't want to happen is gonna happen, and you're gonna keep kicking yourself for it for the next half lifetime, and Overlord is not gonna ever let you hear the end of it!" Frenzy added

" -and then this is going to end up exactly like Endila again." Soundwave finished.

"You and I remember Endila very differently." Tarn's optics narrowed slightly from behind his mask.

"Really? Megatron telling you to do something you don't wanna do? And you saying you'll never do what he wants, so you say you're doing what you want, when really you're doing exactly what he wants under the pretense of it being you're own free will, and everyone knows better, but we don't say anything because of your voice kink and the fact that it's Megatron's orders and it's really awkward? Yup, sounds exactly like now!" Rumble smirked. Soudwave nodded in approval.

"First of all, that is not at all what happened. I just matured, and happened to see a better alternative. Second, that is not what is happening right now!" Tarn said, clearly annoyed. "And it's not a kink! It's a talent! Thank you very much!"

Sure enough they could've gone for hours talking about obscure and highly classified information nonchalantly on a balcony. But just then, Shockwave decided to intervene on the intercomm. 

"If you five are done pointlessly bantering like sparklings, I need you in the basement. I have something to bring to your attention as well as the usual pleasantries the system we call society insists upon forcing us into."

*********************************************************************************************

Hey guys.....so uh.....this is awkward. I kind of was supposed to write and publish the full chapter 3 days ago, and have another full chapter posted tomorrow. But then....I didn't have time. But on the bright side....I do have a redesign for Dreadflight in progress, as well as a new cover. I'm posting part 2 of this chapter sometime this week. I can't make any promises though...seeing as my schooling seems to think every waking moment of my life should belong to it. *eyeroll* Anyway, sorry to keep things short! but....I have so much stuff to do my head is spinning, but I do want to be consistent with my update, it's important to me. In other news......WE HIT 1K!!!!! GAHHHH! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT??!! I CERTAINLY CAN'T!!! Anyway, it's bed time soon, and I have school early. Have a great week! Keep it classy! And God bless!

~swordsandroses