robothell | whoops heres another one [open]

Who: soundwave but a baby this time. also u
Where: in the city, anywhere that looks like it could have been a seedy back alley
When: nnnnow?
What: tiny soundwave is not equipped to deal with this
Warnings: none so far

(please use they/them pronouns for this soundwave, ty!)

[ Waking up in an unfamiliar city without any warning would be bad enough for this baby, but Soundwave can tell basically immediately that Ravage, Laserbeak, and Buzzsaw are nowhere to be found, and this tips their anxiety levels right over the Initiate Shutdown threshold. It also temporarily destroys all the self-control re: their brain powers that they've been learning, and while this city is relatively underpopulated, the way that everyone's stuck here means that there are enough minds around to overwhelm them if it keeps up.

They'll be wandering around the city center, calling for Ravage & the birds and getting increasingly anxious about it. This progresses fairly quickly into sensory shutdown, at which point Soundwave will curl up against a wall and not move until it passes.

You can come in before or after this happens :) ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.]

whoops heres another one [open]

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