by Starman99 » Sat Dec 03, 2022 7:25 pm
- Motto: "“The Galaxies The Limit!”"
- Weapon: Fusion Cannon
Prologue
“It’s a surprise that Shockwave still clings to his ideals of the ‘perfect warrior’, I’d eat my own servos when he finally realizes the uselessness of remolding old scrap into fighters!”
- Lugnut, Decepticon Bodyguard
“Slag!”
Scalpel cursed as he stepped in a gunge puddle, wiping off the greenish slime on a lamp pole, the minicon proceeded to move across the cobbled alleyway to his destination. It had been two weeks since the war had started, his master initially planned for better hideaways to be prepared but even then, it was difficult to make oneself disappear from public optical sensors. Lord Megatron didn’t specify on where his master should have went to do his private projects, the decepticon leader centered himself on facing their enemies foremost. And that is why we continue to suffer more losses, less focus on making better fighters is making our cause weak Scalpel clambered over a crumbled snack tin to his targeted location, a crumbled derelict electronics building. It was a decaying metal structure with the roof rusting apart, a standard beauty of all hovels in the Dead End.
Stepping up to the metal walls where graffiti and rot clung, Scalpel pressed a forelimb on a single red gunk stain with a whirring click. Camouflage is disgusting he stood back as the stain compressed inward like a button, emitting a shrill digital buzz, and unraveled the holographic stealth wall that laid over the building entrance. Warm, scents prickled his sensors as the holographic wall vanished into the grey light, making one last look from behind, the decepticon walked into the darkened door.
Illusions then reformed as he crept into the darkness, interconnecting stairs led to an underground set of rooms made for electrical core workers; the type of construction drones who preferred the dark over light any day. Igniting his infra-red vision, Scalpel descended the stairs into the bowels of his comrade’s domain, the putrid hot smell made it clear that his friend was at work. After a good ten or eleven steps, the smaller scientist found himself in a grimy basement corridor and proceeded to follow the bright pink lights shining on the sewage-encrusted floor tiles. “Better hope he’s finishing that project, cannot stand the toxicity of this place no longer” Scalpel grumbled, as he hopped over an open drain, another figure jumped him in the dark; green in his envious face.
Maybe envy was being too generous, Igor was more a jealous fool than anything.
“What are you doing here? I’m the masters servant today!” Igor said, clicking his deformed jaw.
“That you may be, but I am Shockwave’s co-scientist and that means, you answer to me” Scalpel hissed. “Besides, our great leaders require a status update from my partner, now quit breathing down my chassis and let me be!”
Igor, a deformed minicon with a misshapen frame, snarled some obscure curses as he let the tinier minicon wade down to the laboratory. Years back, Scalpel and Igor were just assistants until the spidery scientist earned a seat with the major players on Kaon for designing fighting prosthetics for wounded soldiers. It wasn’t that he hated Igor, he was another decepticon after all, it was just that his diminutive complex made it difficult to work with him. Let’s hope Shockwave hasn’t been affected by Igor’s complexes crawling through a hanging tarp, the scientist entered a large makeshift laboratory with rows of glowing metal canisters lined up on the dirtied wall. Standing over three operating tables; the head doctor was at work with a plasma torch and digital neural saw. Shockwave muttered incoherently as he finished the head of his patient, it’s head was surgically patched up for further repair.
Crawling up a trolley of different medical instruments; barbed nerve cutters, energon lifeline tubes, flickering t-cogs, and a tray of smaller butchering materials too nasty for description. Scalpel stood to his partner's knee and tapped it with a limb, not caring for formalities, “Any problems with today’s subjects, sir?” Scalpel squeaked, the tables were lined up with unconscious cybertronians. Swiveling a single purple eye and hacking an electronic buzz, Shockwave answered bluntly as he always did.
“Yes, a few minor glitches in the cranial modules that need further tune-ups; frames are primed for modified t-cogs, partner chips have been nestled and in the corner, five of my patients are ready for the cause” Shockwave said, his logical speech rolling off the speech nodes like rust fluid.
Scalpel turned his optics at the figures locked in the energon canisters; unconscious cybertronians strapped on lifelines and kept sedated in a bath of anesthetic energon, unable to wake online from their surgeries. “So does this mean that these things will?” Scalpel was cut-off as his partner waddled off to the wall canisters.
“Be ready for testing? The first batch are ready but the latest subjects are starting to fail” Shockwave gazed over a holo-projected interface on his right arm.
“Fail? But we made sure the cranial and body mods would stay in place!” Scalpel said.
Igor then waddled into the room, flanked by three cyclopic security drones, all grey and sporting saw-blade claws instead of hands. “We did! Then their puny sparks couldn’t handle the mods without committing an offline, suicide is a local custom in this wretched haven” Igor spat a glob to the grimy floor.
“Then our labors have started to wither away!?!?” Scalpel said, angrily.
Shockwave gazed up at the last list of patients that passed before swiping in two, sighing with a air of disappointment than real frustration. He rarely worried about failure, Lord Megatron usually gave him a wider berth when it came to failing as he had the knowledge and tech for their revolutionary cause. “They had not withered, just stagnated. Salvaging is easy if we just melt down the fallen and kidnap again, this waste pit is prime for derelict bots no-one will remember” Shockwave replied coldly, his single jade eye raised up to glance at a green squat drone that floated in the tank. Ritualistic scanning over the bodies with optical sensors and medical scanners were standard for the project, it wasn’t negative for rechecking your victims for anomalies. “Igor? Why are you not at your post with the minicon drones, they’d better not be running free.”
“Security drones 667 and 668 have noticed some activity outside our hideouts perimeter, they think we may have some Autobot spies lurking around” Igor said, ignorant of his masters ire.
“Then activate their cameras that I installed in them, this work won’t be interrupted” Shockwave said.
“And leave now, the adults are talking,” Scalpel added, his words dripping with venom.
Igor raised a thin, skeletal hand and opened his mouth to verbally combat the smaller doctor, but Shockwave stared down the two, both cowed and took silence; the three drones snuck back to their stations. One of the small alarm systems built into the canisters erupted a slow droning hum, the trios potential bickering lopsided as a patient was starting to rustle in the liquid sedative.
“Scalpel, push those two lifeless husks to the floor, we got a malfunction” Shockwave pressed the opening button on the canister in question, and the tiny green cybertronian was starting to stir.
“Igor pass me the stun injector, quick!” Shockwave demanded, as the glowing purple fluid was vacuumed from the canister and the occupant descended.
Digging through the contents of the numerous medical trolleys in the room, Igor pulled up a mechanical taser device with sharp needle prongs. Throwing it at his master, Scalpel called over to the roly-poly minicon to help him push down two bulkier patients, long since passed, to the floor. Shockwave caught the injector and dialed up the electrical charge needed for a full stun; before pulling open the canister glass door, letting out the soaked unconscious form. Stirring comatose, Shockwave jabbed the sparking device into the patient as it tried to mouth something, electricity surged as the sharp prongs were stabbed into the being's spark area. Its mouthing stopped, the decepticon made sure to unwind its vocal processor, and now, the patient couldn’t even squeak if it wanted to.
“Tables Clear!” both minicons said in unison.
Shockwave hoisted up the stunned subject with one arm and laid it down flat on the operating table; metal straps snared the being to the table and two head clamps held the head in place. Activating a green scanner in his eye, the head doctor and scientist of the decepticons made a clean x-ray scan of the body until he reached a scarlet node pinging. “Seems like the neural activation chip was faulty, pass me the plasma torch and digital bonesaw, stat!” Shockwave laid down his left hand and motioned to the trolley. Scalpel wheeled over to oversee the patient; it was a young bot, unarmored and covered in spots where upgrades or certain gadgets would have been connected to, the youth was bare. “So where did you find this one?” Scalpel handed over the torch and saw, his partner ignited the torch as he started to carefully cut open the cybertronians cranium to find his creation.
Shockwave nonchalantly blurted the answer as the torch smoked.
“It’s the Dead End, you can find almost anyone if you try hard enough, light if you please?” Shockwave said, his miniscule partner looked spooked before setting the overhead lamp over the stunned body.
The rest of the hour was filled with butchery and medical malpractice of the worst kind.
