Mostly meh

[koilungfish]

21/6/07 - Curiousity & the Cat

         Sleazeware.
         Ravage sniffed the stack of data cassettes, plug-in memory, mini-computers, finger-drives, slot-in chips, crystal clips and ware-wafers. He estimated there was easily twenty tons in the stack, perhaps thirty thousand hours of video, easily five times as much if it was just audio. Every single piece of the fifty-foot stack stank of desperation, dissatisfaction and sordid loneliness. The whole pile radiated the electronic scent of Soundwave; his magnetic fingerprints were bright on the ware-wafers, dim blotches of scent-data on the metal cases of the mini-computers. Ravage tried not to imagine his host-partner rifling through the tower in the darkened room, fingering the thin ware-wafers, handling the finger-drives and plug-in memory with tremble-handed expectation.
         [Ravage, report,] Soundwave said over the radio.
         I'm looking at your porn stash, Ravage didn't reply, and frankly? You revolt me. He looked up and up the stack, reading the tiny labels and clip-marks, the bright glitter of neon circuit-glyphs sparkling in the ware-wafers. He looked at the two forty-foot cabinets built into the walls of the room, each one oozing a muffled version of the same scent. He looked down at the litter of shredded ware-wafers and burnt-out circuits he was standing on. [Nothing to report.]
         [State location.]
         [Your quarters, as ordered.] Ravage lowered the long fangs from his upper jaw in a sneer. You colossal pervert. You colossal lazy pervert. [Unable to locate required component.]
         There was a pause Ravage interpreted as Soundwave fretting. He looked around at the scattered heaps of gutted equipment, component bins, ceiling racks hung with wiring and monitors and the dozens of speakers. You expect me to find a specific object in this tip? You expect me to find a specific circuit-board component in this mess? I can barely find my feet, and I'm standing on them!
         [Suggest searching main terminal, immediate left rack, seventh drawer. Instruction; do not open either black box.]
         [Explosive?]
         Pause. [Yes.]
         Soundwave, Ravage thought, baring his fangs in disgust, I don't care what disgusting props you have in your desk. Your inability to persuade someone to ease your capacitors is entirely your problem, and the less I know about it the better. He picked his way through the drifts of circuits and wires that covered the floor up to his ankles. Soundwave's footprints were clearly visible where he'd trodden on his own discards. Ravage bared his fangs to the full extent and tried not to ignore the smell.
         The main terminal was boxed in by a forty-foot speaker stack on the left and a combination switchboard-mixer of equal size on the right. Ravage stepped cautiously between the snake-nest of cables run between the two, slunk around the chair, and pressed a forepaw to the seventh drawer. It slid open at his touch. Inside was a continuity of the mess in the room; lengths of loose cable, plug-heads rattling amongst them, a dozen metal boxes of different sizes and colours. Three were black.
         Ravage looked up at the chair, back at the drawer, gauged the distance. This drawer was the one most easily reached by Soundwave should he be sitting in the chair.
         I do not want to know, he thought. The tower of sleazeware is bad enough. He tried to put the precise, overly informative labels from his mind. [Ravage reporting. Seventeen possible containers located.]
         [Recommend searching.]
         [Soundwave, I do not know what a one-over-ten cerium/molybdenum-alloy load-resistor looks like,] Ravage snapped, clicking the sheering edges of his jaws together. [Recommend you unplug yourself from the main transceiver and find this blasted thing yourself.]
         [Recommendation rejected. Current occupation; vital.]
         Ravage fumed. I know what you're doing, you lecher. You're sitting in the command centre eavesdropping on whoever you can find doing something you haven't got the ball-bearings to do yourself. Ravage snapped up one of the boxes in his jaws, sinking his fangs through the metal, and tossed it across the room. It crashed into a stack of speaker pieces, sending the whole lot smashing to the floor. With a low growl, Ravage seized another box, crushing it in his jaws, and flung it aside, then another. He attacked the wretched boxes with fangs and claws, rolling on the floor tearing at them, shaking them so the fragile components inside sprayed about. It felt good to destroy. He bit down on the last box, the big black one, and dropped it with a startled yelp, jumping back, fangs bared and missile launchers activated.
         The box tasted of a very familiar energy.
         Ravage snuck towards the box, leopard-creeping, body flattened against the debris-strewn floor. He sniffed the box with all his sensors; it stank of an unmistakable presence. With a cautious claw, he pulled off the lid.
         Out spilled a little white tablet-computer, a machine no bigger than Ravage's head, nested in a tangle of cables Soundwave, you wretched pervert, Ravage thought, sniffed the singular scent of power and confidence that radiated from the little computer. It was a scrubber, designed to mimic another Transformer's signature energy patterns, and it reeked of Megatron.
         Where can I put this, Ravage thought, so that it will cause Soundwave the most embarrassment?