robothell | whoops heres another one [open]

( Shockwave had been accused of having a bleeding spark more times than he can properly account by the majority of his coworkers. Something he'd long ago learned to pay little attention to, for if they'd damn him for caring about others then they could sit in smug superiority without him. Nothing of value would have been lost as far as Shockwave was concerned.

But it meant that the moment his optics landed on what could only be another Cybetronian, curled in on themselves, that he's compelled to act. The tips of his wings scrape the edges of the alley but he pays it no mind, instead crouching down a less than respectful distance away from the other (personal space was not a concept Shockwave grasped, sadly) but far enough to keep from touching him. )

Do you require assistance?

( He can help, and his voice is level and filled with only goodwill and kindness. )

[Soundwave flinches at Shockwave's noise and proximity, too loud in their oversensitized processor, but the sincere goodwill he projects acts as a stable point in the cacophony of their mind, and Soundwave latches on. It gets them to uncurl a little, but they keep their optics off and their hands up by their face.

They manage a low electronic whine; speech is still beyond them.]

( Assistance yes, and Shockwave vents softly - one hand reaching out to rest on one of Soundwave's shoulders. It takes him a moment, but he thinks he can place the other bot. Ratbat's, and the memory of the other senator sours his thoughts for a moment. He's never been able to stand his coworkers. )

Soundwave, correct? My name is Shockwave.

( He, regrettably, never paid much attention to Soundwave before - more concerned with Ratbat's doings. But he can change that now. )

[The sound of their name startles Soundwave badly; they freeze under Shockwave's hand, and their optic feed snaps on so that they can stare at him nervously through their fingers, trying to get a better read on him.

The undercurrent of safety is still there, but Soundwave can't identify the reason for that brief dark note, and it worries them. They don't move for a long time, then they reach for Shockwave's hand and tap it hesitantly. Does he speak hand?]

( He does, and carefully takes Soundwave's hand in his. It's been ages since he's tried - he once took notes in the primal vernacular to see if he could for a year straight. Hand isn't like that but he's certainly willing to give it a try. His emotional state is, as always, in flux - rage creeping in when he thinks of Ratbat, mixed with distaste about his coworkers. But the urge to help, to provide aid, is there underneath it all.

He lets Soundwave speak first, however. )

[Ordinarily, a single mind hitting a panic pitch wouldn't stand out against the psychic background noise of a city, but this city is dead, the scattered mental voices of its handful of unwilling inhabitants not enough to disguise the chaos churning in one of them. Emma feels it from blocks away, the unmistakable maelstrom of sensory overload reminding her of her own mutation awakening when she was a teenager.

She's still learning Cybertronian psyches, but this isn't delicate probing for long-suppressed memories or astral combat against another master telepath--the poor thing is almost catatonic. Emma reaches out with her own much greater control and throws her psychic shields around Soundwave's mind, shutting off the telepathic racket they haven't learned to block out on their own yet.]

There, now. I've got it.

[Her mental voice is much softer than just about anyone else on the planet would get from her. Soundwave might be older than human civilization, but they still feel like a lost teenager to Emma.]

[Unfortunately, the sudden silence and intrusion into Soundwave's mind is more immediately shocking than soothing; their mind fills with panicky, nonverbal sounds, trying to communicate who? and what? through what probably sounds like sharp television static. They try to cast around for Emma's physical presence, but with their control blown wide like this, it's clumsy and ineffective. They'd only just been starting to get the hang of it, before this, and now all of that progress is coming undone.]

[Even with the species barrier, Emma can interpret such elementary thoughts, her own years of experience overcoming the confusion that's preventing Soundwave from forming words, and she radiates a calm presence over their telepathic connection. "Warm" isn't really something she can pull off even on her best days, but she's managing "non-threatening" quite well...for values of "non-threatening" that include casual displays of immense telepathic skill.]

I'm Emma Frost. I'm a telepath, too. I'm shielding your mind.

[It's not a Cybertronian name, but friendly psychic aliens are really the least of Soundwave's problems right now.

Emma's mental shielding feels like diamond, a smooth, hard expanse of crystal, flashing with cold rainbow fire inside its facets.]

[The shielding is doing its job; after the initial surge of anxiety, and once Soundwave registers that she's genuinely trying to help, their mind quiets enought for them to get their bearings. They examine the mental walls as best they can. It's a strange experience to be fully cut off from the external mental chatter; even when they had control of their telepathy the other minds were more distant than separate.]

... Thank you.

[Something like embarrassment colors their thoughts. Ravage had taught them better than this.

Of course, Ravage not being here is half the reason it happened in the first place, and Soundwave tries (badly) to stop the rising tide of sorrow in their spark at that thought.]

You're welcome.

[Reminding herself that this is a giant space robot who might well be a war criminal--the species seems to have a lot of those--Emma manages not to append "sweetie" to that, but it's a near thing.]

There's nothing to be embarrassed about, darling. [That endearment is just a verbal tic. She calls everyone that sooner or later.] No one gets good at filtering without practice.

[As she speaks with Soundwave, Emma is making her way to where they're sitting, following the mental link as easily as if were a physical map. It'll take her a while; Cybertron is not scaled for humans.]

Edited 2015-04-15 23:04 (UTC)

[Well, they're not yet. Give it some time.]

Yeah. [In the presence of someone who's clearly mastered their abilities, Soundwave's embarrassment rounds off into a dull grumbling frustration. She's right, of course, but, still. They'd spent a good million years or so mentally floundering before any help arrived, and it's all too easy to slip back into that mindset.

Soundwave relaxes a little, but they're still mostly curled up against the wall and aren't moving anytime soon.]

[No galaxy-spanning total war until you can control your telepathy, sweetie.

Emma doesn't think Soundwave's in any condition to be left to their own devices yet, so she continues the conversation with the pleasant but firm tone of someone who's already decided how things are going to be. She's very good at that one.]

I'm on my way over, so we'll be able to meet in person soon enough. [She almost says "in the flesh," but, well.] I'm an alien, incidentally.

[There's a ripple of amusement accompanying the declaration, since as far as she's concerned, they're the alien...but it's their planet.

Sort of. All this multiverse nonsense. She doesn't approve.]

[but MOOOM]

I... yes. You feel different.

[Her mind, they mean. There's something about the shape or feel of it that Soundwave's never seen in another Cybertronian - which isn't surprising, of course, but they marvel a little at it anyway. And Soundwave would never admit it, but she's not wrong about them being alone; they don't object.]

[Soundwave's utter lack of social skills is no barrier to Emma keeping a friendly chat going as she strides briskly along, unable to cut corners in her more athletic diamond form without losing mental contact.]

Organic. I gather you don't get a lot of our kind in your neighborhood.

[She shares a mental picture of herself, a statuesque blond woman in a white, skintight superhero costume with a billowing cape. There's no sense of scale accompanying it, which isn't entirely intentional on Emma's part, but they don't have a common reference she can compare herself to.]

[One of the... dubious bonuses of Soundwave having been homeless and only vaguely coherent for most of their life so far is that they haven't really had the time or energy to pick up the xenophobia the rest of their species keeps pushing, so their response to Emma's mental image is mostly naked curiosity.]

No. How did you get here?

[She'd barely notice if they were. Most of the sentient species in Marvel are violent xenophobes...including the humans.]

Excellent question. If you find an answer to it, do let me know.

[Emma doesn't bother to hide that she would rather not be here, but none of her annoyance is directed at Soundwave.]

[It's not that Soundwave hasn't realized, objectively, that some sort of physical translocation occurred earlier, but in the midst of their earlier distress they'd tagged the information as less than urgent and had subsequently stopped thinking about it. So, Emma's sarcasm throws them off guard.]

I don't... What?

Edited 2015-04-17 07:26 (UTC)

It's not that I never go off-planet, but it generally involves a ship, not suddenly finding myself on an alien world with no explanation.

[You'd think Emma might frightened, or at least confused, but no. She's just irritated. There is not a single salon on this worthless planet.]

Oh. Uh.

[Soundwave's got no real way to respond to that. But they do start unpacking the data they got from their surroundings before descending into telepath hell, and comparing it to the city they'd been in right before that. They'd always hung around the ratty edges, but even there the buildings were, well... intact and lived in. This is different.]

Mm-hmm.

[Emma follows along with Soundwave's mental inventory, then shares the image of where she'd been right before finding herself here, a conference room that wouldn't be out of place on a populated Cybertron, but filled with other organics who look extremely homogeneous by Cybertronian standards--one of them has a visor, though! (Red optics, apparently.) The room's panoramic window shows a broad sweep of ocean with a primitive-seeming suspension bridge in the distance, silhouetted against a blue sky with white clouds.

Her feelings don't mark it as home, exactly, but it has an aura of safety about it, of a redoubt against some sort of external threat.]

Rather a large change for me.

[Not that she minds filling Soundwave in, but she's mostly killing time until she can get there physically. To do what, she's not exactly sure. Give them a hug? They seem like they could use it.

It's certainly not that she's getting lonely without her teammates around. Nothing like that.]

[Soundwave stares past the other organics out at the landscape, their metaphorical hands up against the glass of the memory.]

There's so much water. [Soundwave had heard of cities on Cybertron whose generators were cooled by artificial lakes, but they'd never seen any, and certainly hadn't imagined it could look like this.]

The Pacific Ocean. It's badly-named.

[The scene switches, and while the bridge is still visible in the same place, now they're standing on an expanse of tarmac, unprotected, as a squall sweeps across the bay, the sky a steely gray and waves crashing against the rocky shore of the island.

Since Soundwave's so interested, Emma lets them share her full memory of those few seconds after the team had left the Blackbird but before she'd switched to diamond form against the elements--the cold impact of wind-driven raindrops on her skin and the salt tang of the sea air...and an annoyed but still friendly voice and mental presence behind her as the gale tears her cape from her grip and blows it up to smack Hank McCoy in the face. Sorry, Henry.]

[The sudden sensory data is strange, especially without any corresponding activity from Soundwave's input mechanisms, but far from unpleasant. They linger on the sound of the ocean.]

It's nice.

[So nice, in fact, that they write it to their personal memory banks. It may only be a proxy memory, but it's already more engaging than anything Soundwave's experienced on Cybertron thus far.]

[Oh no, baby. Even Emma isn't mean enough to wreck the moment for Soundwave with her usual arch cynicism. From talking with Shockwave, she knows Cybertronians measure their lifespan in stretches of time that beggar human comprehension, and if Soundwave finds a few seconds of standing in a storm by the water pleasant enough to remember permanently, what does that say about their eons of life?]

I have a friend who'd be pleased you think so. He's quite fond of the ocean as well.

[Yes, Emma, Namor is your "friend" who's "fond of" the ocean. That's it exactly and not massively understating the matter on all counts.]

Cybertron doesn't have anything like this. The Rust Sea is... it is very different.

[It's more like a desert, or a sea in the lunar sense, than anything else. Soundwave's never been, and they don't want to. An Earth sea, though? Absolutely.]

[Emma picks up on the unarticulated thought.]

The salt water might not be good for your... [what do Cybertronians even have] ...mechanisms, darling.

[She'd totally take them anyway, though.]

Hmm.

[Emma has many memories of the ocean, not all of them pleasant or even neutral, but she reaches back to the more distant past, those childhood summers on the French Riviera, the warm turquoise Mediterranean so different from the stormy Pacific.

Emma is swimming upwards, towards the light that pierces the water in hazy beams and reflects from the barrier between sea and sky in brilliant flashes like diamonds scattered across the waves. It's not silent down there, but the noises are muffled and strange, carried differently by the water than the air. Her eyes sting a little from the salt and her lungs are starting to burn with the need to breathe, not enough to panic her, just to make breaking through to the welcoming air into a sharper pleasure than the mere enjoyment of being cradled in the warm water. A spray of droplets and a gasp announce her return to the breathing world, waves slapping against the hull of the yacht and gulls crying as they wheel overhead through a cloudless sky.

She's not sure why she's sharing so much, except that Soundwave seems to need it, and she has it to give. Her own life might have been a better one if someone had taken a moment to be kind to the frightened girl who couldn't shut the voices out of her mind.]

[Emma might be surprised, given how often these guys go walking around underwater without any problems. But it's not like Soundwave knows that.]

Maybe.

[Soundwave watches the memories with no small amount of awe. Cybertronians aren't exactly designed for movement through water - save for those few with aquatic altmodes - and they're becoming increasingly convinced that humans are amphibious to some degree.

The mental sharing is certainly helping Soundwave become more familiar with this ground, as it were. It had taken Soundwave a while to believe Ravage's claims that their telepathy could be useful rather than a constant hindrance; this is firsthand experience.]

We can't breathe water. We just float in it.

[Without trying to explain oxygen metabolism, Emma conveys the awareness that this "breathing" thing is in fact vital to human existence. She can imagine a circumstance where Soundwave tries to release an injured human back into their "natural habitat" and someone drowns, because that is exactly the sort of ridiculous thing that happens in her life.]

Ah, here we are.

[Emma at last rounds the corner into Soundwave's alley, looking exactly like her mental picture of herself. Except tiny. Smaller-than-minibot tiny. She's tall for a human, especially a woman, but when height differences in your species are measured in inches, that doesn't mean much by Cybertronian standards.

All of which Soundwave might or might not notice depending whether they've got their optics switched on.]

[They don't, initially, but Emma's announcement prompts them to bring their head up off their knees and actually look around. As the only other living thing in the alley, she's not hard to spot, but Soundwave's gaze does automatically scan the space where a mech of average height might be. They'd gotten used to Ravage and the birds, but they hadn't imagined organics could be that small as well.

Soundwave brings their legs down and leans forward to get a better look.]

Hello.

[She's not certain how a giant space robot pulls off "cute," but here they are managing it.]

Hello.

[Emma smiles in reply, comfortable under the scrutiny. Not that she minds being looked at for more maculate reasons--femme fatale is her chosen persona, after all--but Soundwave's curiosity has a childlike innocence to it. Besides, she's staring, too.

It's not just a size difference between them. Everything about Emma except her mental presence screams upper class, from her poise to the dramatic, spotless white of her X-Men uniform. Soundwave, though...even a human whose Cybertronian acquaintances can be counted on one hand can tell they're badly in need of a good body shop and detailing job. Or whatever it is the species does to take care of themselves.]

How are you feeling?

[She can tell, of course. She can't avoid telling, connected telepathically as they are. But asking is polite.]

Good. Better, thank you.

[Soundwave's a little awed by her presence, but it's not so much her appearance as it is all that mental power in such a small frame. As far as Soundwave knows, they're the only Cybertronian with these capabilities; meeting an alien who can do all of that and more is... a little overwhelming.]

How... How did you learn all of this?

Necessity. There are more like me where I'm from, and they're not all friendly.

[Mentioning her own past as a not-friendly telepath? NOPE. Besides, even at her absolute supervillain worst, she's always been reasonably benign to people she thinks of as her students. Soundwave has nothing to worry about.]

[Megatron's first response to seeing another Cybertronian in distress is to eject the handheld scanner he'd carried with him. Finally managing to get stable results on the thing meant he could move on from checking vitals with the electrical and touch sensors in his hands. Very frustrating. Time consuming as well. And they weren't particularly sensitive beyond average.]

[He bends to one knee in front of Soundwave's curled form. Strange. He's sure he'd met them earlier. Still, no time to dawdle. It'd be difficult to check their optic response with a visor, so he begins to scan.]

Can you hear me?

[Megatron's expression is puzzled - the scanner is reporting back regular body activity save for the brain module. There was a litany of unusual spikes and wobbles in the readings, things he certainly wasn't trained for. Maybe he should get Soundwave back to the clinic.]

[The scan prickles intrusively at Soundwave's processor, and they curl up a little tighter as Megatron speaks; it's not a positive response, but it's something.

Through the cacophony of mental noise and too-loud sensory data, they realize distantly that this one is a medic. It's been a long, long time since Soundwave has had anything approaching adequate medical care, long enough that their malnourished state and various untreated minor injuries have become baseline. Ravage had warned them about street medics, barely worth the name, and Soundwave struggles to isolate Megatron's processor from the others. It comes as a relief to find no ill intent in Megatron's mind; Soundwave may not be in any state to actively cooperate yet, but for once they'd like to try.]

Edited (ive accidentally discovered the keyboard shortcut for submitting a comment :')) 2015-04-17 16:55 (UTC)

[Megatron is tentative at Soundwave retreats further, going down on one knee and retracting the scanner to minimize any threat he might seem to pose.]

[The ex-miner's mind is steady and stubborn. First and forefront in his thoughts is the concern for Soundwave's sorry physical state. He was all too familiar with untreated wear and tear from lack of available medical care. Manual class weren't particularly well tended to.]

[Beneath it all sat the fire that motivated him. The desire to equalize their planet was still very much alive and burning. Although a little placated by the less exploitative state of things here, seeing another person suffering like he did reminds him of the unjust world he came from. He carefully puts a hand on Soundwave's shoulder.]

I'm not here to hurt you. I can take you to a clinic to look at your condition.

[Soundwave flinches slightly, on instinct, but doesn't pull away. The steady pitch of Megatron's processor is grounding in a way that Soundwave hadn't anticipated another Cybertronian's mind could be, between the strength of his conviction and his genuine concern, and they latch onto it. In their anticipation, Soundwave works up the coordination to cover Megatron's hand with their own, and taps out the chirolingual sign that prefaces speech. They're making a wide assumption, but vocal speech is still beyond them.]

Yes. Thank you.

[He feels that familiar tap, and receives Soundwave's brief, but informative message. It'd probably be too much to ask the bot to get to their feet if they could barely communicate, so Megatron's fingers gently form a reply back-]

I'm going to carry you there.

[-and moves his hands; one under Soundwave's knees, and the other to their back.]

[This is absolutely not what Soundwave was expecting; they try to relax into the hold, clinging to the impression of Megatron's mind as safe, but this kind of contact is so foreign to them that they end up going stiff instead, hands held awkwardly in front of their torso.

They're not objecting, they just... don't know what to do. Should they be doing anything?]

[Megatron rises to his feet as soon as he gets a good hold on Soundwave. It wouldn't be the first time he has found himself a de facto ambulance.]

[Soundwave seemed a little calmer, but Megatron moves forward nonetheless, girp gentle as he breaks into a quiet jog towards the clinic. As long as this didn't deteriorate into an emergency, his priority would get to finding a berth for Soundwave to lay on until Ratchet could take a proper look at their anomalous brain activity.]

[Soundwave stays perfectly still during the whole trip, optics locked awkwardly on their knees and arms curled up against their chest plate. Being carried is... strange, but the points of contact between their frame and Megatron's serve to ground them further, allowing the worst of the mental clamor to pass by the time they get to the clinic.]

[ he can hear something shake in the frequencies he receives. it's unfamiliar and yet...

soundwave tracks it down. the raw pulse of this presence is nothing short of agonizing to feel and there are few things that can make him feel that. he can imagine how it is like for the one at the epicentre of it. though he doesn't have to, he has... processed this himself in the early stages of his life. he holds on to the belief that this is not what he is expecting.

but when soundwave finds the source, he takes a step back and brace himself on a nearby wreckage. finding a younger version of yourself requires some time to diguest but there's little time for that kind of dramatics. ]

You... must focus.

[Well, that's certainly easier said than done. Soundwave pulses exasperation underneath the panic, and emits a grumbling static whine; they've been trying.

But shortly the strange familiarity of this other mech's mind starts drawing their attention, slowly cutting through the mental fog. It almost... It almost feels like Ravage, and that thought alone is enough to get Soundwave to force their head up and their optics on. The discovery that it is, in fact, not Ravage gets their processor buzzing again - not enough to bring it back up to fever pitch, but certainly enough to render them frozen and speechless while staring at what they desperately don't want to believe is an alternate version of themself through their fingers.]

[ familiar with...well, himself, though never thinking he would have to retrain himself this way, he rethinks his initial strategy.

soundwave stays in the dark to shield his younger self from further confusion. he tries to remember what ravage had told him to train on all those years ago but it comes back more like a instinct than a clear memory. so he sends out a single thought, repeatedly. it's one word - focus. ]

whoops heres another one [open]

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marvel telepathy is ridiculously op whee

good thing soundwave's too baby to tell

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