#chronosmith

Soundwave

Rumble and the others are busy with the last of the preparations. Frenzy is double checking the speakers secured to the wall to make sure they wont shake off their mounts. Buzzsaw's tinkering with the last of the rewiring, while Laserbeak programs the systems to produce the cure. Rumble's got the job of shifting all the furniture out of the way while Ravage secures all the cubes and glasses behind the bar so they won't crash against each other and shatter. They all know just what the sound system Soundwave installed can really do when pushed, and it's not a pretty picture. It's not supposed to be. Wouldn't be part of his security measures if it was.

//This better work.//

\IT'S GONNA WORK.\

//You don't know that!// Rumble snapped, slamming down the couch he'd been toting. //Quit fraggin' around. Whirl could die!//

\YEAH, I DO - CAUSE IF IT DON'T, I'M GONNA DRILL A HOLE IN THE DOC'S HEAD.\

{{When them coming?}}

//I dunno. Soon, I hope. Can't fraggin' stand this waitin'...//

Prowl

When Prowl stepped through the bridge, he was surprised at how many of the deployers has turned out to help. He'd expected Rumble, possibly Frenzy, MAYBE Ravage to supervise any work that needed to be done. Buzzsaw was a surprise. Laserbeak was a bigger surprise.

But they were pleasant surprises, so he didn't let them slow him down. "Whirl's coming through after me. Don't panic, he looks bad, but so far he's still under his own control." Key words: so far. "How can I help set up?"

Soundwave

The only ones who didn't were the two still running the cameras and comms to watch for news of more multiversal protoform appearances - and don't think Zori didn't do his best to beg to be allowed to help. Whirl had been kind to him on many occasions. As for Buzzsaw and Laserbeak, well... Soundwave wasn't the only one who knew how to blackmail others into getting what he wanted done.

//Prowl!// Rumble ran over. Laserbeak just blew a raspberry before going back to work. //You been to the Boss' apartment, right? Seen them long fraggin' chains? I ain't had time to get any of 'em. Think ya could snag, like... three? Jus' pop 'em off. We'll fix 'em later.//

Whirl

At the tail end of Rumble’s directions, Whirl came through the bridge, drawing up behind Prowl’s holoform. He let go of his head and looked around in quick, darting little motions, taking in the scene with caution and a faint surprise. He, too, hadn’t expected to see so many deployers out in the open—not because he didn’t think they would help, but because he’d assumed they’d have gotten clear. Then again, this had all happened remarkably fast.

Each one of them was another reason to hold things together. Whirl hunched up, lowering his head again and trying to concentrate on staying present and in the moment. The four feelers were still writhing, and now the graspers at the ends were occasionally opening and closing or dragging across the floor like nails against a chalkboard.

“Still here,” he rasped, waving a claw, “where d’you need me?”

Prowl

"Bondage chains, got it." He closed the bridge behind Whirl, and said to both him and the general room, "Comm me if anything goes wrong."

His avatar shut off.

Soundwave

Rumble was in the middle of directing Whirl over to the speakers, trying not to look at or worry about the feelers poking out of his back - things like that looked fine coming off the Boss, but all kinds of wrong on Whirl - when Prowl blurted out the contents of Soundwave's apartment and made him choke on his own words. An even louder blat came from behind the DJ booth.

He dragged both hands down his face and groaned. Did he really have to give everyone those mental images?

Rumble shook his head and kept moving. //C'mon. Over here.// Primus, he wished he could offer something more comforting. A punch in the shoulder, even.

Whirl

Whirl followed, pausing only to give a soft, hissing short from his vents—a sound that might seem a little alarming at first, but it was something like a laugh. “Now I’ve gotta make it,” he said flatly. Talking helped. Talking made him focus. He had to keep talking. “Because I can’t let your Boss live that one down.”

Whirl grasped mentally for something else to say. “Headache’s... getting better,” he muttered, “hope that’s--” A good sign, he finished mentally. Outwardly, his vocalizer just cut off with a click. Whirl’s eye snapped open, and for a moment genuine fear lashed out of his tightly-wound field—but if he could feel fear, he was still him. Whirl was aware of a gradual, slowly-burgeoning rush of awareness, as if his senses were all kicking into overdrive. The myriad smells of Dancitron seemed richer, and the constant signals from his sonar felt as if they were creeping across every speck of dust and every slight scratch in the floor.

His feelers had stopped squirming. It felt a lot like that dreaded moment before one knew they were going to vomit: that horrible certainty was clenched in the back of his mind. Whirl backpedaled frantically, putting as much distance between himself and Rumble, and strangled glitchy, stuttery words from his vocalizer. “Rumble—get away. Get back!”

Soundwave

//Least I ain't the one said it this time,// he mumbled, just before everything went Wrong. That kind of emotion wasn't one he was accustomed to feeling coming off someone like Whirl, and for that reason, it wasted no time inspiring something similar in him as well. They all had Soundwave's memories of what he'd done the one time he was subjected to a similar illness. If Whirl was legitimately afraid at a time like this... //...Whirl? Are you--//

\HE'S GOIN',\ Frenzy screamed, charging his brother and scooping him up by the waist. \SCATTER!\

=Second floor! Seal the stairs!= Ravage bristled and leaped onto the bar, charging his weaponry. With Soundwave gone, he was now the first line of defense while the others escaped. =Go!=

They wasted no time doing precisely that, leaving him to snarl and hiss as he crept toward the door himself, optics never leaving Whirl for a moment. Where in the PIT was that damned cop? If he didn't answer this comm--

Prowl

That damned cop answered by immediately reappearing in the club. First pass of the room: everyone was gone but Whirl and Ravage, Ravage was in a combat position. "Sitrep! What happened?"

Second pass of the room: Prowl looked again at Whirl—and even he could tell from his body language that something was horribly wrong. "... Got it." A tiny space bridge opened at head height, and dropped a couple of chains that Prowl caught over one arm. He hadn't had time to unlatch a third.

He opened up a short-range comm to the whole club: «Somebody tell me what I need to do to blast the cure, and somebody else bridge the spark signal generator downstairs.» Prowl didn't know if this particular disease actually made the infected pursue sparks, but if it did then Prowl was the only one who wouldn't be targeted when he was the only one who could afford to be targeted. With a generator that could be adjusted to project multiple sparks, he was perfect bait.

Whirl

Whirl didn’t even look up as prowl returned. He was hunched over and trembling, once again clutching his head with both claws, but it wasn’t because of pain, this time. His thoughts were spiraling away, almost as if he were falling asleep, or passing out, but without the accompanying drowsiness. That blank absence of thought was devouring his mind, and the last, brief moment of lucidity that Whirl had left was spent in frantic horror and deep, spark-wrenching fear—

—and  then the fear was gone.

His claws snapped open and he released his head, straightening out of his hunched position. The shaking had stopped. Whirl turned, swiveling his helm about, and in the next instant his sonar kicked back in, this time so intense that it was an audible, shrill ululating noise, like a chorus of bugs singing softly. The reason for this would be clear as soon as his head swung around to face Ravage or Prowl: his optic was not visible. It didn’t seem to have burst, but somehow, there were only shadows under his helm.

Whirl’s feelers were also tap-tapping the floor questioning as he began to move. He looked directly at Ravage once, but, surprisingly, turned his head away. Not enough of a meal for a sparkeater of his size, apparently. Not worth pursuing unless he got desperate.

And, unless Prowl got that spark generator down there in a hurry, he would very quickly grow desperate.

((for reference re: the dancitron beat down, the noise whirl is making is basically this. Speed it to 2x and that's the noise!))

Soundwave

//Spark signal generator, got it. Chimera, get on it. Listen, mech, you gotta keep him here. We got 300 mechs livin' in them houses out back. He gets out 'n they're gonna be a fraggin' buffet! // Another tiny bridge popped open over the bar and deposited the generator at Ravage's paws. He batted it toward Prowl and leaped up into the bridge, clawing his way up the tunnel to safety.

There was a brief scuffle and the sound of muffled shouting behind the door of the stairwell, after which something thumped into it and screeched in fear. Of all the deployers to respond to Prowl's demands a moment later...

{{Button on Soundwave's booth,}} Laserbeak babbled, all her fake cuteness evaporated in the face of the current threat. {{It's purple. Has a 3 on it. I finished programming. You have to push it.}}

((a cybertronian version of something like this))

Prowl

«He's not going anywhere. Plan E is a dozen empty planets I can bridge him to if things go wrong.»

He scooped the projector up—conveniently putting himself between Whirl and the stairwell—gaze never wavering from Whirl. He scaled up his avatar to thirty-five feet, popped open his hood a crack, cranked up the generator up to some random number of spark signals—he didn't bother to check—dropped it into his chest, slammed the hood, and braced himself for an attack.

As he braced, his human avatar appeared behind the console in Soundwave's booth, also scaled up to twenty-five feet—he was going to have a hell of a headache after this—and searched desperately for—aha! Button! He slammed it.

Speaking of headaches—he should have turned off audio input. Both avatars slammed their hands over their audials/ears.

Whirl

The spark generator had the desired effect. Whirl’s attention snapped to the signal. He straightened. For a moment there was a dim glow, a flickering light: Whirl’s optic, but dramatically recessed, in a way that was wholly unnatural. It flickered once more and vanished again as Whirl crouched. Aside from the hum of his sonar, he was completely, utterly silent: no hissing or screeching, nothing.

In that same silence, he lunged for Prowl, tentacles whipcracking forward and grasping hungrily for the Cybertronian in front of him. He’d nearly made contact when the speakers blasted the air with sound so tremendous that it hit Whirl like a physical blow, stunning him and fouling his sonar, which faltered and died. For a moment he stumbled, stunned, but he rallied quickly, raising his head. His optic was visible again. It fixed itself on Prowl, who was still reeling with pain.

Whirl leaped again, the graspers on his tentacles latching onto the holoform’s legs and yanking him forward, knocking him flat on his back. His other two feelers arched forward and pushed against Prowl’s shoulders, holding him down while Whirl closed the final distance, landing with his legs on either side of Prowl. He didn’t immediately attack his prey, though, instead forcing his weight down through his tentacles while he arched his neck. A soft, gurgling, grinding noise rose from his throat, likely inaudible over the racket. His optic once more sank back and disappeared, and it was clear in that moment that Whirl had swallowed it.

Then his helmet shifted oddly. Four thin seams wound themselves down the length of his helm, widening, parting slowly. His head split open four different ways, peeling apart in an almost leisurely fashion, while teeth flexed from his plating like a cat’s unsheathed claws. Whirl drew back once more before he plunged forward, attempting to rip through the holoform’s chest with tearing, grasping motions of his gaping, toothy maw.

((from here))

Soundwave

After helping to cure another universe's Lost Light, Soundwave had slept for the better part of a whole day in a mysterious makeshift medbay, then fled to his apartment to continue recharging in a safer and more peaceful environment. He'd been unconscious since then - until now. Now, groggy and rested just enough to remember that he'd promised to send Prowl constant updates, he decided to honor that promise by comming Prowl while he sorted the mass of messages that'd piled up into things he probably needed to read as soon as possible and things that could wait until he'd had time to refuel and become properly alert to the world.

(txt): Status: Alive, intact.

Mostly. He wouldn't be sure until he had Frenzy scan him, but none of his diagnostic programs were returning any problems with his internals.

(txt): Lost light: cured. Soundwave apologizes; cure: concussive, Soundwave: exhausted. Accidental recharge. Intent: bridge home, compile report, resume protoform surveillance duty.

Prowl

Prowl had barely managed to turn down his audials when suddenly his feet were jerked out from under him. He crashed hard on his back, and barely managed to raise his hands in time to shield the upper half of his torso when Whirl pounced on him.

But he stopped.

He was pinning Prowl, but he wasn't moving. Prowl could see from two different angles that Whirl was just sitting on him. Had it worked? Had the cure finally cut through? Were his senses coming back to him?

And then he swallowed his own optic. Both of Prowl's jaws dropped in horror. When his head ripped apart—oh Primus, this really is going to kill Whirl—the avatar pinned under him screamed hoarsely, inaudible under the speaker roar.

Which was the exact moment Soundwave chose to comm.

Never had Prowl been so relieved and so terrified at the same time. Alive, intact—oh, thank Primus—but if he came home—

Prowl raised his arms over his chest, shielding the spark signal generator with them. Each time the gaping maw that used to be Whirl's head crunched down on the false metal, it crumpled and tore, only to immediately reform each time the sparkeater tried to adjust its bite pattern. « DON'T COME HOME!» His voice was barely audible over the roar of the unsuccessful cure. «DON'T COME HOME! STAY WHERE YOU ARE!»

Soundwave

There were two things Prowl had yet to learn about Soundwave, and they were: A) Soundwave thought turning other mechs' dead and hollowed heads into puppets was a fantastic pastime as long as Prowl was neither in the vicinity at the time nor in a position to hear about it, and, B) Soundwave could be granted eternal life and he would never, ever once look at an inbox filled with deployer messages flagged Maximum Urgency, hear chaos in the background, be ordered not to come home, and actually obey said demand.

He was opening and actually running through the bridge before Prowl finished repeating his first three words, spark lodged firmly in his throat and held tight by its inner jaws. There was a Vos on that ship, wasn't there? Did he find out? Had the DJD gone there to look for him? Was the music meant to drown out Tarn's voice? Please, Primus. He tried to keep his requests to a minimum these days, but if there was any mercy left in the world, let him not get there to find Prowl and his deployers in their filthy clutches.

What he saw on the other side could only be termed a relief in the same sense a mech who'd nearly died on a battlefield would feel upon being told he could manage to survive as a severed head  on a hoversled. Soundwave was not as brave as half of his deployers, and never would be, outside of isolated incidents centering around their immediate safety. He froze, staring at the scene, his tired brain module unable to process the sight in front of him and come up with anything more useful than the desire to rush toward Prowl - which was no good, as it also wouldn't let him move his legs to do it, suddenly deciding that now was the appropriate moment to listen to what Prowl had said.

Whirl

Whirl’s four jaws remained clamped in place on one of Prowl's arms, his teeth flexing inwards to get a better grip, and he shook his head back and forth, trying unsuccessfully to maul his way towards the generator. He tugged a few more times, frustrated, before he released Prowl and drew back. His neck arched oddly again, and Whirl’s helm sealed partially back up, just enough to extrude his optic out of his throat, casting a dim golden glow on his restlessly extending-and-contracting teeth. They scraped together like slithering, sharp fingertips as Whirl stared, puzzled, at the mech underneath him.

Then he started to dig with both claws in a motion reminiscent of a dog going after a bone: a furious, repetitive motion. Whirl could no longer think beyond the level of instinct, and he couldn’t, for the life of him, fathom why he couldn’t just crack this mech open to get to the good part. His jaws flared open again and he latched onto the holoform’s chest, twisting and scrabbling inelegantly for the spark he sensed just beyond his reach.

At around that time, a green glow alerted him that something unusual was happening out on the dance floor. Whirl raised his head, splayed jaws flexing partially closed as he extruded his optic once more. He could barely see, but he didn’t need perfect vision to register what was standing in front of him. Prey. The mech standing there was smaller, brighter inside, an easier kill, a better meal—hunger surged up through Whirl’s chest, cutting off the train of primitive thought. His tentacles released Prowl in a single, synchronous motion that flowed smoothly into a crouch, and a silent forward lunge towards Soundwave.

Prowl

This time, when Whirl paused and pulled back to look at him, Prowl was under no illusions that what looked at him was anything but a sparkeater. Prowl tried to keep his arms under its claws, but they were scraped aside and exposed his bumper. If the sparkeater chewed through him enough to get at the spark generator and destroy it, that was the end of Prowl's use as bait. He braced his hands, one against the sparkeater's chest and the other against one peeled open flap of its head, trying to hold it back just a little bit longer, and froze his avatar there so he could turn his attention to the other. Was there anything he could do with the cure? Could he turn the volume up, something??

A bridge opened. Prowl's focus snapped back into his main avatar, and he turned to face Soundwave simultaneously with the sparkeater. Oh, god no. Please no. Soundwave had just blasted a cure somewhere else, he was already exhausted— "RUN!"

When the sparkeater let go of Prowl, Prowl latched on, trying to fling his arms around its waist and jerk sideways to knock it off course. His main avatar switched to dead weight mode and his human avatar flickered off and back on in front of Soundwave, arms spread. It was a poor shield but if it bought Soundwave just a few seconds to get away—

Soundwave

Soundwave had seen and driven away all manner of Underworld monsters hunting near his home, but this? This was new. This wasn't just a hungry razor snake or a passing driller. This was a sparkeater, and he hadn't clapped optics on one since the massive hunt down below Cybertron's surface. Even the ones aboard the Lost Light had been locked away. And none of them - none of them - had looked like that. The sight of the grotesque, teeth-filled flower that had taken the place of Whirl's head latched onto Prowl's chest drove Soundwave back into the memory of Unicron's fangs lowering themselves over his own, chilling his spark as efficiently as if it'd been shoved into a cryo chamber.

Panic took the opportunity to seize him and shake him by the neck, whispering a half dozen other horrors into his audials. They went for the brightest, the strongest, the most sustaining. Soundwave's spark had been soaked in a Primal marinade, seasoned with fragments of six other mechs, and seared in the flames of battle with the Chaosbringer. If Rung was a nice steak dinner, Soundwave was a masterpiece cooked by a world-renowned chef at the peak of their skills. The thing that had been Whirl would die before it stopped coming after him. It would tear him open like paper and his last thoughts would be the feeling of its teeth scraping inside his frame and the sound of his deployers shrieking and dying in shared agony. He was doomed, they were doomed, and when it got outside and ran free--

Prowl's shout combined with barely audible frantic screaming from behind the stairwell door to break Soundwave out of his head and light his heels on fire. His own feelers shot toward the ceiling, punching into the panels and gripping tight; he jumped up to follow them, reeling himself upward, and dug his fingers in for added support. He had no idea if the sparkeater could transform, but if it could, that might give Prowl a few uninterrupted seconds to catch it. If not, he could at least remove himself from its reach.

Until his grip inevitably failed, that is. Prowl was right: Soundwave had recharged, but he was still too worn out to hold his own weight up for long.

Whirl

The sparkeater was far too focused on Soundwave to attempt to dodge, and Prowl’s desperate tackle hit home, dragging Whirl partway to a halt and nearly overbalancing him. The sparkeater shook himself, raising his head as Soundwave hauled himself out of harm's way. For a moment, he didn’t engage Prowl. He just stretched himself up, trying to track Soundwave’s progress. Prowl would feel a half-hearted burst of sonar hum briefly against his plating, but the riotous noise in the air kept it useless. If he sparkeater wanted to find Soundwave, he would need to look for him.

Whirl’s helm sealed up again, and since he was staring directly up a Soundwave, the other mech would witness the charming spectacle of Whirl regurgitating his own optic array out of his throat to try and get a visual on his prey. Once Soundwave was spotted, Whirl tilted his head and began to move, dragging Prowl’s avatar along. His body language was smooth, deliberate, wholly unlike Whirl’s usual birdlike jerkiness and rendered all the more alien and wrong by his bizarre anatomy. Whirl dragged them both a few steps forward, and swayed slightly from side to side as he crouched. He attempted to leap, but the weight on him was too much. He barely cleared the ground, tentacles snapping skyward and falling far short. Landing in a heap, the sparkeater was apparently finally annoyed enough to deal with his hanger-on directly, and he turned on Prowl with silent ferocity, latching onto his frame with all four of his tentacles and trying to pry him off and toss him away in one harsh, jerky movement.

He only succeeded in bowling them both over. The momentum sent the sparkeater tumbling in a fashion that might have been amusing in circumstances that were less abjectly horrifying, and though he remained completely silent, there was fury in Whirl’s body language when he pulled himself up again—and it evaporated when he suddenly stumbled. His legs shook in a way that suggested they might be about to give out on him, and he half-raised a claw, as if he were reaching for his head.

The leap-and-tumble has carried them further across the dance floor, and closer to the speakers.

The effect was noticeable, but transient. The sparkeater shook his head a few more times, and then the pause won by confusion was gone, and he was once again raising his half-split head to search the ceiling for Soundwave’s spark.

Prowl

Soundwave for Primussake that's NOT RUNNING. Open a bridge or something! How in the world is Prowl going to defend Soundwave and deal with Whirl at the same time? He needs to be in three places at once: at the DJ booth, in front of Soundwave, and grappling the sparkeater. He's barely handling two avatars as it is.

Still, he didn't let go of the sparkeater for a second, one arm plus chains tangled around its waist, the other arm wrapped around one of its shoulders. He was in too bad a position to wrestle it down and pin it; most of his hand-to-hand training encouraged disengaging, getting some distance, and moving back in when in a position this bad. That wasn't an option. If he did let go, it's only give the sparkeater a chance to lunge for Soundwave—and anyway, one of the chains had gotten tangled around the sparkeater's waist and leg. At least when they were tangled, the sparkeater couldn't advance. Now THINK, Prowl, new plan fast—none of the scenarios you ran calculations for accounted for having to protect Soundwave while you fought, you need something new! Maybe the situation was unsalvageable, maybe it was time to fall back to Plan E—

Despite Prowl's attempts to keep hold of the sparkeater, four coordinated tentacles and a tumble across the room was enough to shake him off, even tearing the tangled chain off his arm. He was getting to his feet before the gashes that the chain tore in his forearm had healed. Just in time to see Whirl stumble.

Prowl had seen the sparkeater stop to—whatever it was doing—recalibrate, maybe?—twice by now. This wasn't a recalibration. Something was throwing the sparkeater off. Prowl looked up at the speakers. They were vibrating so hard his HUD put a permanent trembling red outline around them. Okay. New plan. Plan H.

Prowl lunged at the sparkeater, wrapped his arms around him, and froze long enough to flicker his other avatar over and grab it from another angle. His avatars moving in jerking synchronized mirrored steps, Prowl pushed the sparkeater toward the speakers, ignoring the torn metal and bloody gashes it left in his avatar.

Even with his audials off, he could "hear" the speakers threatening to rattle apart his avatars. Cybertronian braced against the sparkeater and froze so human could take the extra chain, wrap it around one of the sparkeater's arms, and grab the chain tangled around its waist; human got behind the speaker, pulled the chains taut, and froze so Cybertronian could grab wildly at the tentacles, loop one around the sparkeater's other arm, and duck behind the speaker from the other direction to pull them taut.

Problem: he'd planned to transfers the chains and tentacles to the hands of one avatar so the other could return to the DJ booth, but he couldn't afford to let go with either. It was taking both of his avatars just to keep the chains from pulling out of his hands or the tentacles from wriggling free. Between bouncing his attention back and forth between avatars to constantly readjust his grips and the shaking of the speakers playing havoc with his HUD, he had no chance of turning on a third avatar. Okay. Plan H-2. A two-word text message to Soundwave: «DJ! VOLUME!»

Whirl

In those moments that he was free, the sparkeater had once again turned his attention upward. His initial reaction to Prowl’s avatars closing in on it was quite subdued. He shook his entire frame once, but he didn’t claw at the holoforms, or immediately turn on them. His optic remained pointed directly at Soundwave, at that spark that promised to fill the horrid raging hunger in his chest.

When they started to drag him away, though, he seemed to come to his senses somewhat. Whirl began to thrash in earnest, lashing out and focusing his wrath on the Cybertronian avatar. Rather than try and push him away, though, the sparkeater attacked, once again flaring his jaws and trying to latch onto Prowl’s chest. The sparkeater realized, too late, that it was being yanked into a trap, too focused on the sparks he could sense somewhere inside his closer prey; his unthinking, mindless hunger had given Prowl the precious few moments he’d needed to push Whirl up against the speaker.

At long last, he made a noise, though it was likely inaudible next to the all-encompassing, deafening roar that surrounded them: a high-pitched, shrieking keen of fury. He lashed out with his claws, his teeth, his tentacles, tearing into the implacable foe that was Prowl’s avatar before it locked his limbs down. The coordinated, unflinching determination effectively pinned Whirl in place against the speaker, and he arched, trying to bow his body away from the source of the sound. All attempt to attack stopped. The air itself shook violently, as if it were itself attacking the sparkeater. It felt as if it was shaking him apart, and now every ounce of the sparkeater’s ferocity was focused in getting away from it.

He was unable to immediately break Prowl’s hold, but Soundwave would have to act fast if he wanted to keep it that way.

Soundwave

Open a bridge? And let the damned creature break out to Primus-knows-where to eat Primus-knows-who!? Absolutely not! Soundwave stayed clasped to the ceiling, trying to ignore the numbness in his hands and claws as the speakers worked to shake him free.

He had no way of watching Prowl battle to push the sparkeater toward the speakers. The unpleasant feeling of pins and static had started traveling up his arms and feelers, making it difficult to tell just how tight his grip really was; he couldn't look away from them for more than a couple of seconds at a time or it started coming loose. His spines were of no use either. They'd been thoroughly overpowered by the strut-rattling vibrations shaking everything in the club and could only tell him what he already knew: much more of this and he'd pass out again, becoming an easy meal for the beast down below.

An unexpected text message popped up inside Soundwave's visor, crowded by internal alerts and building integrity alarms. He didn't waste a second, using his knowledge of his home to his advantage; both legs swung up to hook him into the nearest section of lighting truss by his ankles, freeing his arms and feelers at the cost of some height. He ripped the punctured ceiling panels loose with a sharp yank and twist, then threw them at the horrible shape over by the speakers as his world turned upside-down, hoping to batter the thing that'd stolen Whirl's body senseless and buy both Prowl and himself a few more precious seconds.

His feelers continued their arc, latching onto the DJ booth and scrabbling over the board in a desperate search for the volume controls - he never looked at the damn thing from this angle! - and upon finding it, shut his optics and twisted the dial as far as it would go - far, far beyond the recommended levels for normal use and deep into weaponization territory, just shy of becoming deadly to the average Cybertronian.

Nothing not bolted to the floor stayed upright. Even the stationary furniture rattled and shook, ripping up from the floor a millimeter at a time. Lighting structures swayed like tinfoil in a tornado and snapped, crashing to the ground. Glasses, bottles, and cubes shattered in their cabinets, as did the beautiful red front doors. Dance floor panels and lighting strips cracked. Stretched and strained wires popped and sparked, and the speakers themselves began to tear free of their braces, trembling and edging forward with Whirl still attached on the other side, threatening to tip over and crush him beneath their weight.

It would continue until it simply couldn't anymore, one speaker blowing with a majestic boom and fizzing out into static. Soundwave managed to turn the dial back down to 0 just in time to pass out, dangling upside down in mid-air from a half-collapsed truss, feelers limp on the floor.

Prowl

He was shaking so hard, the colors on his avatar weren't lining up right. Or was that his optics glitching? The noise felt like a physical roar that hurt as much as any sonic attack on his real body would have, and if Prowl hadn't been able to freeze his avatars, he would have long ago lost his ability to hold onto the sparkeater's restraints.

But even avatars had their limits. When the speaker blew out, they broke apart, dissolving into pixels.

His mind snapped back into his metal body, and he sat up with a shout. The sudden absence of pain and stimulation sucked at his senses like a vacuum; his HUD popped up an error message alerting him to the unexpected lack of error messages. He shook his head to clear it—how long had he been gone? six second? too long—and turned his Cybertronian avatar back on.

Nothing was shaking. He turned his audials back on, tripped over his dropped spark signal generator, and stumbled out from behind the speaker.

Everyone was down. "Soundwave? Whirl?" Sorry, Whirl—Prowl's aware that you're technically the patient, but his first priority is amica. He flickers to Soundwave's side and checks to make sure his chest is still in one piece.

Whirl

The same shattering crescendo of sound that tore through Dancitron tore through the sparkeater, rendering him instantly insensate. All he could do was sag in his bonds, head hanging, all struggling ceased. When the speaker gave out at last in a furious burst of shrapnel and dying sound, it sent Whirl hurtling forward away from it, crashing to the floor and coming to a stop somewhere in the rubble. He, too, had been knocked unconscious. Between Soundwave and Whirl, it was anyone’s guess who would wake first.

He didn’t respond to Prowl’s first call, but a few moments afterwards his crumpled form finally started to stir. The tentacles moved first, sliding sluggishly over one another to weakly pry off the debris that had landed directly on top of him. One of the feelers had been blasted clean off, and lay looped over the remains of some tables like a particularly ghoulish garland, dripping blood on the dance floor. Trembling with effort, Whirl began to push himself up, but his exhausted and disease-ravaged body had nothing left to give. He flopped back to the ground, as harmless and undignified as a beached fish.

He vented hard once, twice. “I’m here,” he managed to croak out. Whirl pushed again, trying to get his legs underneath him, but only managed to topple awkwardly sideways. He gave up. Whirl had landed facing Prowl and Soundwave this time, and decided that would be good enough. His optic seemed to be more or less in the right place at the moment, but it definitely looked askew in a way that suggested it wasn’t fully settled properly in his head. It didn’t, at present, seem to be in four pieces, but the internal structures under his helm were probably a shambles. “I’m me.”

It took him a moment to make sense of what he was seeing. Was Soundwave hanging upside-down? The full extent of the wreckage around him was very  slowly penetrating the fog of confusion. The last few minutes were a blur in his mind, all strange, formless memories and remembrances of sharp sensations. As he stared, he realized that Soundwave wasn’t moving. Whirl genuinely didn’t know if he’d—when he wasn’t in control of himself, had he...?

Despite how often Whirl liked to remind everyone that he cared about absolutely nothing, and despite the healthy amount of hatred he truly possessed for the world around him, the thought that he might have killed Soundwave, a mech who had been among the first handful of mecha from various dimensions to treat him decently, simply because he thought Whirl deserved it, was deeply distressing. On top of that, if Soundwave had perished, his deployers...

“Is he okay?” he rasped, optic flicking from Prowl to Soundwave.

Prowl

Prowl's gaze shot over to the stirring sparkeater, and he stared at him, unmoving, waiting to see what he'd do next. If he made even one false move, Prowl didn't have a choice—he'd have to open a bridge under him and dump him on a barren planet. He couldn't afford to do otherwise. Prowl was in no condition to keep fighting, the speakers were out, and Soundwave was unconscious. They could leave Whirl to his own devices and come back for him later, once they had a plan. It had—ha—it had worked for Kup...

Whirl spoke. Prowl's shoulders sagged with relief. "Good. You're back." Wearily, he returned his gaze to Soundwave—and then did a double-take at Whirl. "You vomited your eye back up." Well, that was a good sign, wasn't it?

He looked back down and Soundwave. "I think so. His chest is all in one piece. He was already exhausted, he probably just fainted." Probably. All the same, he sent a ping to Frenzy—come back down and be a medic.

"... How are you?" Prowl looked dead at Whirl and said, without the slightest trace of humor, "I expect you have a splitting headache."

Soundwave

The stairwell door slid partway open, jammed, and got shoved the rest of the way open by a pair of small but powerful blue hands. Frenzy wobbled off the stairwell and into the open floor, covered in dents, dings, and paint scrapes. It looked as though all the deployers shared that new appearance, and it'd only take a moment's serious thought to figure out why: they'd still been down in the stairs when the final blast of noise started and turned them all into the helpless beads inside a rattle.

Buzzsaw slid off the top of the minicon pile, tried to hover, and went straight into the ground with a sickly groan, skidding a few feet before lightly bumping his head against the base of an overturned game table.

\I'M GETTIN' TO YOU THIRD,\ Frenzy mumbled, which meant keeping his voice to the raised level of someone who was getting angry instead of his usual scream. \HOLD YOUR WINGS.\

He made it over to Soundwave with only a few more stumbles and a single whoop of surprise as his foot sank through a cracked panel in the dance floor, took his visor off, and held it in front of a vent. It fogged, and he couldn't see anything else wrong on the surface level, so he shrugged and punched Soundwave in one big, flat shoulder. \WAKE! UP!\ he hollered, blasting Soundwave's audios with such noise he might as well have been one of the speakers.

Soundwave responded by popping online with a sudden flash of biolights and instinctively snatching Frenzy up in a feeler, holding him high off the ground and squeezing.

\BOSS! BOSS, LEMME - OOF - LEMME GO! IT'S ME! NOTHIN'S WRONG!\ Frenzy shouted, flailing. \LOOK! LOOK, PROWL'S HERE, 'N WHIRL'S FINE! SEE? UGH, PRIMUS, QUIT SQUEEZIN'!\

Soundwave promptly let him go and tried to twist around to see the other two before remembering that he'd tangled himself up in the truss. It took him a moment to regain enough coordination to get himself loose and standing up right again. He then decided that sitting was much, much easier and parked himself on a broken chair that'd fallen on its side.

[[Prowl?]] Prowl was a holoform. Right. He moved to rub his optics, meaning to clear away whatever was interfering with his vision, only to realize there was a neat spiderweb of cracks and touching the glass would probably make it crumble into pieces like the contents of the bar. [[Hm. ... Whirl. Is Whirl all right?]]

Whirl

“I what my what now?” Whirl asked, blinking slowly. “I’m all right. Be up in a second.” Whirl would, in fact, do no such thing; he wasn’t going to be walking for the rest of that day, and much of the next. Aside from the general fallout that accompanied a virulent sparkeater infection, Whirl needed time to recover from the cure. Prowl was right, though. His head was hurting quite badly.

“Yeah,” he went on, slowly, unsure, “I’ve…” Whirl raised his his head and felt the interior shift in a strange and horrifying way, as if everything inside of it had become untethered. “Something’s definitely  wrong with my head,” he said flatly.

Under normal circumstances that specific situation would probably have upset Whirl significantly, but he was too physically and emotionally drained to even react. He’d passed through the point where he could be any more distressed, and instead just felt calm in a detached way. Honestly, it was a relief.

Seeing all of the minicons intact (if a little battered for the experience) was also a relief. Whirl snorted through his vents at Frenzy’s particular method of treating Soundwave's condition, as well as the accompanying aftermath when his carrier very suddenly woke up. He stirred again, trying to force himself up, pushing against the floor with one claw and his remaining tentacles while his free claw held his helm steady. Maybe he could get to a chair—the realization that he still had tentacles finally snapped through Whirl’s thoughts and he jerked, so startled that he dropped himself and flopped onto the floor again.

Whirl decided that neither the chair nor his dignity were worth it. He just shifted enough so that he could pillow the side of his head on a chunk of rubble, to rest it and watch the others at the same time. He curled one of the feelers out in front of him, examining the viciously serrated length and the grasper at the end. Snip-snip. Bizarre. Would they have to be removed…? “I’m here,” he said, straightening the feeler and waving it to Soundwave. The other mech’s aborted reach for his own visor hadn’t gone unnoticed. “I can close my eye, if you want.”

Whether or not his lack of delicacy had more to do with the fact that he was barely hanging onto coherence or more to do with Whirl just being Whirl was unclear. The statement was so out of context that Soundwave might not have even known what he was talking about. “Either way, I’m fine.”

Prowl

When Soundwave seized Frenzy, Prowl half-raised his arms and froze, no quite sure how or whether to intervene. Thankfully, the situation resolved itself before he had to decide. He followed Soundwave up when he stood, and sort of awkwardly continued standing nearby when Soundwave sat again. Sorry, Soundwave, your amica's hovering.

Prowl asked Frenzy, "Do you need help with Whirl? Or the others? I don't have much first aid training, but I can... fetch things. And take directions." As eager as he was to continue hovering around Soundwave, he knew that wasn't the most productive thing he could be doing.

And if nothing else, he could provide information that the other two probably were in no fit state to give. "Whirl's head peeled open. In four pieces. Like..." Prowl tried to pantomime the way it opened up with his hands, and completely and utterly failed to demonstrate anything close to comprehensible. "And he swallowed and spat up his optic a few times. So, you probably. Want to start there."

Soundwave

Of all the things Soundwave minds about the current situation, having his amica hovering nearby is not one of them. If anything, he's thankful for it, as evidenced by the brief curl and squeeze of a feeler around one of Prowl's ankles.

Frenzy squinted at Prowl's hands and scratched his head. Did the noise knock Prowl loopy? How could Whirl's head peel open into four pieces? It didn't have any seams to make that possible. And where would his optic go? ...Oh. Into his throat. All right, that was, uh - it sounded fake, but okay. If that was what Prowl said, that was probably what'd happened. Somehow.

\HERE,\ he said, pulling a medical scanner out of his forearm compartment and tossing it to Prowl. \GO SCAN THE OTHERS, FRONT 'N BACK. BIG GREEN BUTTON. THEN JUS' LOOK FOR BIG RED LINES 'N SPOTS 'N STUFF ON THEM PICTURES IT DOES. MEANS SCRAP AIN'T RIGHT INSIDE.\ He wasn't so worried about the outsides. That could be worked on later.

//Get outta my way!// Rumble snapped at Ravage and Chimera, pushing past them to get onto the main floor. His visor was gone, probably sitting in pieces on the stairs, and for some reason he had one red optic and one blue one. //Whirl! Where's -- Whirl?//

He got there before Frenzy, sliding the last few feet on his knees to avoid the feelers. He grabbed for one of Whirl's arms to hug it to himself. To the Pit with everyone watching; he wasn't gonna let dignity and his reputation as a tough bot get in the way of his relief. Anyway, the Boss had no room to talk, and neither did his brother.

//PRIMUS' YAWNIN' AFT SEAMS, MECH, I thought you was gonna DIE!// He clutched the arm tighter. A nervous laugh escaped his vocalizer. Bad jokes in times of stress was one of his better known coping mechanisms. //Listen - I know I ain't so good with words if I ain't writin' 'em down, so maybe you dunno I already missed ya real bad, but you ain't gotta go that far to find out.//

Frenzy pretended to gag as he crouched nearby to peer at Whirl's head.

Rumble straightened up and decked him.

Soundwave just sighed.

Whirl

Whirl watched Prowl’s hands, as well, and honestly, it left him with more questions than answers. He decided he just wasn’t going to worry about it. Let it be a problem for the doctors—that was their job, right? They could deal with any head-unfolding and optic-swallowing fallout that may or may not remain. On the heels of that thought, Rumble forced his way into the room, and was at Whirl’s side almost before Whirl could even greet him. He slowly raised his head as Rumble grabbed his arm, and listened to him with a wide, attentive optic.

Even hazy though his thoughts were, Whirl could very clearly remember the moment when he’d called Rumble up in the isolation ward, and the feeling hearing the determination in his voice had sparked. He’d known Rumble for years by that point. Objectively he knew that Rumble wouldn’t have made advances or promises if he didn’t intend to back them up, but knowing something as a fact and having that fact presented to you in reality could often be two very different things. It felt very different, there in the moment.

Before Whirl could say anything reflecting this, though, Rumble was punching his brother. Somehow, that made everything seem more normal. Whirl made a soft, staticky sound, almost like a chuckle. “We’ve had the worst damn luck with this,” he said. They hadn’t even had a chance to really be anything yet, between one disaster and another. All Rumble really had to say for this stage of their relationship was how much stress it had probably put him through, and still he’d been there. Was here. That was significant. Whirl wouldn’t be able to explain exactly how, but he knew it, all the same.

Gently, he tugged his arm free. Frenzy would have to wait to examine Whirl’s helm, because he shifted and stretched his neck to rest the side of his head against Rumble’s chest. He wasn’t coordinated enough to properly nuzzle, but the effort was there, and he was content enough to be close, for the moment. The close part was what mattered. “Thanks, Rumble. I’m not going anywhere, mech. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Which was followed, after a moment, by a quick, “Frenzy, your boss’s sound speakers just liquified basically all of me so don’t you dare give me guff about this right now.”

Prowl

Oh—they were being sappy. Sappy in front of other people. Just—out there, for everybody to see. Right, okay, time to go scan people. Scanning and not looking over at Whirl. They could at least pretend to have a little privacy.

He started on Soundwave, then Buzzsaw—Frenzy had said he was third—and then whichever minicons looked like they most needed it and/or were inclined to start insisting they needed it.

Soundwave

Sappy in front of other people? So complained the mech who'd been orbiting Soundwave like an unusually large moon for a few minutes there.

Prowl would find that Soundwave had a few plates out of alignment, but nothing much worse than that, seeing as he was actually designed to give off such noise himself. (He would also see a number of mysteries cleared up, such as how it was Soundwave could knock back all those cubes and what it looked like inside those ironing board arms of his, and get a solid look at all the mods and drives crammed tight into Soundwave's backpack. Soundwave had told the truth.)

Buzzsaw was in worse shape. Several delicate struts on the left side had been cracked or snapped and would need fixing, and one wing tip on the right had broken clean off. Laserbeak was mostly a case of heavy denting due to Rumble having her pinned to the wall with his hands when the shaking started. Zori was fine, if shaken senseless, but Ravage had a kinked tail feeler and a melted hole in one shoulder where the little scorpion's tail had accidentally poked him in the ruckus, and Chimera hadn't reactivated yet because one of their pieces had gone missing. (It'd soon be found when Ravage scratched at something irritating stuck between his hip weaponry and his flank.)

But back to the mech who'd recently suffered from a far worse malady.

Frenzy sat up with a groan and rubbed his cheek with the heel of his palm, glowering at his brother. \AFT.\ There was a patient to attend to, though, so he just turned back to Whirl instead of launching straight into a fight. \YEAH, YEAH. NO GUFF. TOTAL GUFFLESSNESS. ANTI-GUFFERY. JUS' QUIT SNUGGLIN' UP ON THE BLUE BLUNDER A SEC 'N LEMME SEE YER FRAGGIN' HEAD. HEARD SOMETHIN' RATTLIN' IN THERE. MIGHT BE YOU GOTTA LET SOMEBODY GET IN THERE 'N FIX IT.\

Rumble stared at him. Really? Gonna just talk about cracking his head open like that?

Frenzy shrugged. What? He knows, but it's the medical truth.

\...FEELERS'RE PRETTY WICKED, THOUGH. YOU OUGHTA KEEP 'EM. WORKS FOR THE BOSS.\

Whirl

“I refuse to quit snuggling,” Whirl rasped, pointing a feeler at Frenzy, “and if someone’s going to… to get in there and fix it it’s going to be after I’m knocked the hell out. So if you’ve got the sedatives for it, go on, but otherwise, I guess…” he sighed. “Better go back to the hospital.”

He hadn’t moved, true to his word, still resting the side of his head against Rumble’s chest. His optic closed tiredly. Honestly, it wouldn’t take many sedatives to knock him out, but if someone wanted to get him back to the hospital, he would need to be bridged or carried. “I mean… they’re useful. I guess.” His remaining tentacles curled, and Whirl followed the shape of them with his sonar. The claws at the end clicked. He could imagine the utility of having extra pairs of graspers would be, honestly, especially with delicate work, but… “Can’t transform with these ones, though. Write me up a report on why feelers would be useful for a helicopter and I’ll consider it, doc.”

He opened his eye again, at length. “...sorry for trashing the place. By the way. I mean obviously I didn’t blow it all up, but…” But it wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for him. Whirl genuinely liked Dancitron. He actually hoped it wasn’t destroyed for good.

Prowl

Sure, but he hadn't physically touched Soundwave or said nice things to him, and that made all the difference.

Prowl dutifully checked over each of the minicons, pinging the results to Frenzy. For lack of a better diagnosis, he described Chimera's condition as  «Mildly not alive (?)» and, after a moment with the scanner lowered and looking over Chimera with his own optics, added, «(one piece missing)».

He crouched a bit behind Frenzy, ready to take more orders as needed. "And I apologize for my part in trashing the place." A life had been saved and that was always more important, but it didn't mean he couldn't apologize for the collateral damage anyway. "I can help with repairs in the evenings. I'm—rather experienced with that, by now."

Soundwave

\OKAY, OKAY.\ Frenzy briefly considered the question of sedatives. Whirl probably wouldn't count being punched unconscious, and anyway, punching was his brother's specialty, not his. He was more of a kicking and stabbing kind of mech. \WE'LL GET YA CARRIED TO NEW PRAXUS. THERE'S ENOUGH OF US AIN'T TOO BEAT UP. OH, UH, HEY - YOU AIN'T GOT NOTHIN' AGAINST RATCHETS, RIGHT?\ He figured Whirl didn't. Autobot, and all that.

[[Do not worry about the building,]] Soundwave cut in. [[You are not the first to trash it.]] He hummed, then, thinking. [[This is the most thorough job, but that is more his and Prowl's doing than yours.]]

Frenzy pointed Prowl back to Buzzsaw while Ravage dropped the previously missing piece into Chimera's side. \GET LIFTIN', CAP'N. HE AIN'T FLYIN' INTO THE HOSPITAL BY HISSELF LIKE THAT.\

\RUMBLE, GET WHIRL'S SHOULDERS. I GOT HIS FEET. RAVAGE, QUIT BOPPIN' CHIMERA'S FACE 'N GET OVER HERE. YOU GOTTA GET THAT HOLE FIXED.\

[[He'll take the help when you can give it, Prowl. Thank you for offering.]]

Prowl

"Wouldn't it be...?" Better for Prowl to carry the mech his size, and one of the deployers to carry Buzzsaw? Oh, well. "Never mind."

He carefully picked up Buzzsaw—"tell me if I need to adjust anything"—and supported him half with his hands and half on his hood. Ready to go.

Soundwave

\Y'KNOW HOW BIG THEM WINGS ARE? NUH-UH. YOU CARRY.\

Whirl

Whirl drew back at last, attempting to push himself up from the floor in a way that would make it a little easier for the twins to carry him. Attempt was indeed the proper word, because all he ended up doing was wriggling somewhat unhelpfully at first. Eventually, he managed to roll onto his back. “Right. Well This isn’t the least dignified thing I’ve ever done,” he said dryly. He had been carried to a hospital before, after all. It was more or less how he’d gotten on the Lost Light.

At least then he’d been unconscious.

The best he’d be able to do to make the twins’ jobs easier was try and support himself with his feelers. At least they were good for something, at the moment. “Well,” he croaked, “it’s been fun.” He tipped his head back, trying to ignore the way his head was shifting on the inside as he gave the interior of Dancitron one last, long look. “But I think I’m all danced out, for tonight.”

Soundwave

There, you see? Already learning how to use the feelers for his benefit. And he wanted Frenzy to write up a whole report. Tsk.

{{No adjustments.}} Buzzsaw let his wings relax out of their usual flight hold, trying not to flinch at the sound of things grating inside. He muttered something to himself before piping up with {{A strong drink, however...}}

[[No drinks. You know that.]] Soundwave pushed himself up onto his feet to give Whirl a small - very small, lest he wobble and fall over - bow, then look for a decently clean place to open a bridge. Upon spotting one, he ripped the portal open and trudged over to it to make sure everyone got through all right. [[Yes. It is safe to say we brought the house down.]]

Prowl

"I don't even like dancing," Prowl grumbled, trudging toward the bridge.

He wondered if Soundwave's room had been rattled up. Probably, unless the second floor was structurally separated from the first and had much better earthquake protection. Possible but implausible. Which made for the second time that Prowl had destroyed Soundwave's room. Well, at least he had his apartment—

Prowl stopped just short of the bridge. "... Where were you recharging? Before you came back here. Did they let you stay on the Lost Light?"

Soundwave

Oh, yes, the second and third floors would be a wreck as well. Not quite as bad as the first, but not in a perfect state, either. Soundwave didn't want to know how many of Buzzsaw's sculptures or Zori's delicate string maps had been ruined.

But it was to help Whirl, and in the process, Rumble. No real complaints there.

[[The Lost Light mechs dragged him into an unidentifiable room. He bridged away during a brief period of wakefulness and collapsed on his apartment berth. He was there until he came online and messaged you. Why?]]

Prowl

"You were in your—? I was in your apartment. To get the— Did I not see you??"

Had Prowl looked toward the berth?

Soundwave

[[Hm. So you were what woke him up.]] He shook his helm. [[You would know if you had, wouldn't you?]]

May Prowl never question Soundwave's ability to go unnoticed when he wishes it again. You'd think all the times he stayed behind on the Lost Light during other mechs' important conversations would have taught Prowl that much.

Prowl

But he was UNCONSCIOUS. On his BERTH. Which is where you expect to find unconscious mechs.

Prowl shook his head, muttering, "This is why I'm not a field agent."

Soundwave

[[That is what you have him for,]] Soundwave replied, gently. [[Go on. Make sure everyone arrives safely and is treated well. He'll... find somewhere to sleep. Again.]]

Prowl

Huff. Was Soundwave his personal agent, now? "Head back to the apartment when you can. And I apologize for waking you."