Quick little Rumble one-shot that's really the prologue to my Soundwave story. I finished (the first draft of) the full story a few days ago, and now I'm going to let it sit for a few more days before making a second pass through. Depending on how much I want to change, I'm hoping to get that posted up next week.

But this Rumble scene either won't change much--or it will get junked completely because Rumble doesn't really have a whole lot to do in the rest of the fic (but it will probably stay)--so I'm posting it here as a kind of preview. I'll do the website version when the rest of the story's finished.

Basically, the last story I wrote was about Ravage being left behind on Cybertron after TF:TM. This ficlet fills in what Soundwave and the Constructicons were up to during that time. I have a serious problem with writing 'Shockwave' instead of 'Soundwave' and 'Scrapper' instead of 'Scavenger', making characters with facemasks smile, and other random errors, so please point any and all of that out.

Velvet Glove (off to curl up with somebody else's action story for a palate cleanse)

------

Dirge was going to die, and he wasn’t even going to be fun about it.

Rumble wished he would just get it done already, but the one thing Soundwave and the Constructicons could agree on was that they didn’t want to lose their only jet, so guess who was stuck checking on him every morning?

Life on Chaar sucked.

It was mostly Scrapper’s fault. Rumble had used to like Scrapper, back when he was making cool stuff for Megatron, but he’d stopped being fun since the Big Boss had started working for an even Bigger Boss. Or maybe since before that, back when the Constructicons had sided with Starscream as the new Decepticon leader over Soundwave. Dummies. Look how that had turned out for them.

At any rate, Chaar had definitely been Scrapper’s idea. One minute their shuttle had been taking off to fight Unicron; the next minute, Dirge was shoving inside, wailing about Unicron eating Decepticons alive. That was when Scrapper had announced that they would wait out the End of the World on a whole other planet.

The Constructions had *said* they had a ready-made base out here, an old hideout from Omega Supreme—except that was, like, four million years ago. These days, what was left of the place was a dump. There were *rocks* everywhere. Any self-respecting planet would be properly cyberformed—even Earth had urban zones.

Rumble’s feet found an old grate with a satisfying clang! The drains were in the best shape out of anything from the Constructicons’ old base—that was how bad Chaar was. Pettiness won out, and Rumble converted his arms to piledrivers and pounded the ground.

Frenzy’s voice rose from below. “Rumble! I’m gonna piledrive your head through your own spools!”

Everybody was dealing with the end of the Decepticon Empire in their own way. In Frenzy’s case, it meant sulking below ground in a secret lair that everybody knew about. Rumble took care to interrupt Frenzy’s ‘brooding’ from time to time, just to remind him he wasn’t that cool.

A warning shriek came from above. While Frenzy had burrowed, Laserbeak had gone to the other extreme, claiming the peak of a rocky crag and spying on everybody below. His fellow birdicon, Buzzsaw, had been killed at Autobot City, and Laserbeak had been taking jabs at everybody ever since. A defensive reaction or something, Soundwave had said. Rumble didn’t get what Laserbeak had to be scared about. Buzzsaw was the one resting in pieces—probably in even more pieces now that Decepticon HQ had been trashed.

He shuddered away from that thought and glared at Laserbeak who had his wings half-spread, ready to report to Soundwave.

“I’m goin’! I’m goin’!” he yelled. Fragging snitch.

Sulking, Rumble stomped past the small stockpile of energon cubes where the Constructicons were gathered for their morning refuel. Scrapper’s talk of geothermal energy had been more false advertising. As well as the surface going to rack and ruin, the planet’s core had cooled substantially since the Constructicons were last here. The generator they had assembled was barely producing enough to cover what they were consuming in rebuilding. Rumble wasn’t a numbers guy, but he didn’t see how they planned to run a full HQ.

Then again, the Constructicons seemed more interested in using their energon for exploitation.

Scrapper raised a cube to Rumble. “Tell Soundwave he can open negotiations anytime,” he called, before noisily draining it.

“Get slagged,” Rumble retorted.

There had been one small, jaguar-shaped problem with abandoning Cybertron: Ravage had still been on it.

When Scrapper had refused to turn the shuttle back for the missing cassette, Soundwave had attempted to mutiny. It had taken three Constructicons to knock him out... and Rumble had been *relieved*. He had thought he was used to big transformers—it wasn’t like he was scared of Devastator—but Unicron... Unicron had been something else. Unicron ate planets for breakfast, and all Rumble had wanted to do was get as far away from him as possible.

Of course, once they got to Chaar, the Constructicons remembered they needed a communications guy if they wanted to find out what was going on in the rest of the Galaxy. Shortly after, they discovered Soundwave wasn't playing ball.

Ravage had always been the boss’s favourite.

Rumble didn’t even know if Cybertron was still there. There had been some weird kind of flare as they had hightailed it out of the system, which looked like it had been from an explosion—hopefully that had taken out Unicron, but last time they saw him, he had been standing *on* Cybertron.

Soundwave kept insisting that they return to Cybertron, so maybe he had swiped an update on the planet, either from other Decepticons or the Autobots. The boss might not be sharing his information, but he had not shut down since their arrival on Chaar, constantly checking different communications bands—and probably spending ninety percent of his time going through the ones Ravage might use.

Scrapper didn’t think Ravage was worth the risk and said he wouldn’t feed anybody who wasn’t doing their job. So, the Constructicons hogged the energon, and Soundwave refused to talk. Rumble was squarely on the Boss-bot’s side for this one. Ravage was family.

Besides one of the few pleasures he had on Chaar was strutting past the Constructicons every morning, still running on a full charge.

“They *must* be getting Energon from somewhere,” Hook muttered. “There’s no way they’d still be functional otherwise.”

“It ain’t from getting past us!” Bonecrusher insisted. “We’re tallyin’ every day. We get the same number of cubes out as we put in.”

While the others scowled, a malicious smile spread across Hook’s face “I suggest we build a security and surveillance system,” he said, silkily. “An intricate network of agonising deterrents…”

Scrapper interrupted him peevishly: “We’ve got enough to do without wasting time on—"

“On *what*, Scrapper?” Hook snapped. “On regressing our skills by a few million years in rebuilding an outdated—"

Rumble left the argument behind as he continued to Dirge’s little waste of space: the rusted remains of some outpost and a feebly bubbling pool among grey lifeless rock. Dirge’s murky paintwork blended right in, as he slumped at the water’s edge.

When they left Cybertron, Dirge had sat in a corner of the shuttle moaning about how he was the last of the Decepticon jets; by the time they reached Chaar, he had checked out completely. Rumble had seen this kind of crap before. Soldiers would do just for fine for millions of years of slaughter, then something would tip them over the edge and they’d wuss out of life.

Usually, Megatron dealt with it by sticking the PTSD cases in the front line and letting nature take its course. They didn’t have that option anymore, but Hook thought Dirge might just stop rebooting himself and let his systems rot. So, every day, he got his own personal wake up call.

“Hey, Conehead! You alive?”

Dirge didn’t respond, but his optics were glowing faintly. Just to be sure, Rumble gave him a hard kick, shifting the other Decepticon’s weight. An injured look appeared on Dirge’s face, and he resettled himself with much creaking.

“You sound terrible,” Rumble remarked. “I’m gonna tell Mixmaster to pour lubricant all over you when they bring you your energon ration.” Apparently, the Constructicons were OK feeding a jet who did literally nothing. Favouritism was what it was.

Dirge tried to stare him to death, but Rumble had done his official job now, and he wasn’t sticking around. He made for the area he thought of as his pounding grounds: a cluster of ruins outside of the construction zone, and mostly out of sight of the Constructicons. Not that he was hiding—once he picked a spot, he started piledriving the ground, sending tremors all the way through their meagre base.

“Rumble, knock it off!” Bonecrusher yelled. “Before I bury you!”

Rumble kept going, ready to run just in case Bonecrusher was serious. A shadow swept over him, but it was Laserbeak rather than a Constructicon. That was Rumble’s signal and after a couple more pounds for good measure, he stopped and sauntered off, smirking at the Constructicons’ energon pile which had collapsed due to his seismic activity.

Long Haul glared back, but before he could swear at the cassette, Scavenger spoke up, his scoop arm twitching nervously behind him. “When did anybody last see Ratbat? What if he only comes out when we’re offline? Maybe he’s siphoning *our* energy and giving it to the others?”

This is short, so I don't have a whole lot to say about it. But, I like your take on Rumble. He's flippant and petulant and exactly how I would expect the little punk to behave.

I also like your take on Chaar. I'd always assumed it was some planet that the Decepticons had conquered previously... some place that would be easy for them to seize after Unicron, but the notion that it was a Constructicon hide-out is a cool idea.

My brain also likes to transpose different Transformer names for each other. For some reason I'm always saying "Slingshot" when I mean "Silverbolt" and vice versa. It's not like I have difficulty telling the characters apart, either. It's just got something to do with them beginning and ending with the same letters, I guess. It's weird.

Zob

I also really enjoyed this read, VG.

Some nice moments for the Constructicons, and some great worldbuilding for Chaar. I really enjoyed the gaps this filled in around what was going on during TF:TM, as well as in early season 3.

The best part is that it seamlessly adds to what we already know, while also fleshing out the unknown in wonderful detail.

Great work! Looking forward to more!

JB

This was great. Rumble is a little shit, isn’t he? In the best way, of course.

I was distracted by the dead — checking tfwiki to see if there were later references, or whether Buzzsaw died on screen, etc. I don’t know why Dirge would be the last of the Deceptiplanes when Thrust and Ramjet appear in FFoD and Thief In The Night. And then it finally dawned on me that the Decepticons don’t have perfect information, which is kind of the point of the story.

Maybe I’m just tired.

Anyway, it was great.

(My most recent idea for a fanfic has been suddenly sidelined by two competing thoughts: “Chip Chase, Chase And The Great Chip Chase” and “a fanfic with Hot Rod, Hot Spot and Hot Shot would be almost unreadable, but might have the title “I’ve got the Hots for you”. Also, a drawing of a trilobite.)

GustavoWombat wrote:
> I was distracted by the dead — checking tfwiki to see if there were later references, or whether Buzzsaw died on screen, etc. I don’t know why Dirge would be the last of the Deceptiplanes when Thrust and Ramjet appear in FFoD and Thief In The Night. And then it finally dawned on me that the Decepticons don’t have perfect information, which is kind of the point of the story.

Buzzsaw's death is your fault! You're the one who pointed out that he doesn't appear in the Movie and beyond, so I jumped at the opportunity. (OK, it might have made more sense to have him die *before* 2005, but giving him an off-camera death during the Movie gave me some convenient character angst.)

Reading these stories at the pace I'm writing them probably isn't helpful for keeping track of my canon, but an earlier story in this timeframe (Triple Act Tragedy) features Ramjet and shows how most of the Decepticons have just scattered across the Galaxy. I haven't got onto Thrust yet, but I know where he is--I've got at least an idea of where they all are, but they might not all get a story explaining it.

> (My most recent idea for a fanfic has been suddenly sidelined by two competing thoughts: “Chip Chase, Chase And The Great Chip Chase” and “a fanfic with Hot Rod, Hot Spot and Hot Shot would be almost unreadable, but might have the title “I’ve got the Hots for you”. Also, a drawing of a trilobite.)

Nah, you just need to write the Hot Rod/Spot/Shot fanfic from the perspective of the love interest they're competing over and have said love interest be unable to keep them straight.

Velvet Glove (It's not a bug, it's a feature!)

VelvetGlove wrote:

> GustavoWombat wrote:

> Nah, you just need to write the Hot Rod/Spot/Shot fanfic from the perspective of the love interest they're competing over and have said love interest be unable to keep them straight.

> Velvet Glove (It's not a bug, it's a feature!)

I guess that makes sense, but I was thinking more of a bounty hunter story, delivering the Hots. Possibly with a cameo by Hotlink. And Hot Zone. And Red Hot.

I used to know someone who was dating three different guys named Young at the same time (she and they were all Korean). There was Young Merrill-Lynch Young, Young The Architect Young, and Young The Other Young. She married Young The Husband Young, who may have been one of those Youngs or a new fourth Young.

GustavoWombat wrote:

> VelvetGlove wrote:

>> GustavoWombat wrote:

>> Nah, you just need to write the Hot Rod/Spot/Shot fanfic from the
perspective of the love interest they're competing over and have said love
interest be unable to keep them straight.

>> Velvet Glove (It's not a bug, it's a feature!)

> I guess that makes sense, but I was thinking more of a bounty hunter
story, delivering the Hots. Possibly with a cameo by Hotlink. And Hot Zone.
And Red Hot.

> I used to know someone who was dating three different guys named Young at
the same time (she and they were all Korean). There was Young Merrill-Lynch
Young, Young The Architect Young, and Young The Other Young. She married
Young The Husband Young, who may have been one of those Youngs or a new
fourth Young.

Is it awkward/confusing when they get old?