Work Text:
Who are you now?
Were you wounded by living?
— Crüxshadows, “Valkyrie”
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Soundwave was a pony. An earth pony, Laserbeak — Celestia — had told him. Fur the same deep blue as his plating, black hooves, a white mane, and a red tail. Not long after Jazz had left them, Soundwave had found a pair of square reading glasses with red frames and it had been with some relief that he had put them on. Celestia had also told him that as an earth pony he was blessed with strength and endurance beyond that of a unicorn or pegasus, but without a pegasus’ speed or a unicorn’s magic. That didn’t mean magic was beyond him, Celestia had said. The show their new dreamscape was based on was full of earth ponies who did impossible things, but he had to find his special talent, get his cutie mark, and then he’d know who he was.
Which was fitting, because Soundwave didn’t know himself anymore.
He was a programmer, a hacker, a telepath, a symbiote carrier.
But he could not program or hack from inside the sentient — sentient — program that held the Decepticons captive. He needed access to Teletraan’s code. A difficult enough task when he had been able to think and act without the AI knowing his every thought before he did. Oh, he knew the metaphors, the tricks. Open any book to a blank page, scrawl code across any piece of blank slate, to access the AI’s source code. But there was a difference between reprogramming the Decepticons’ own AI and hacking into a sentient jailer.
Dutifully, Soundwave had tried. With Megatron (also an earth pony, a grey one, more sleek than strong, with a black mane and tail) screaming in his ear, Soundwave had tried. But Teletraan could think, could decide, and there was no hiding the intent to escape from it. Soundwave had watched a dozen, a hundred, attempts at programming turn to children's’ rhymes as Teletraan isolated and deleted Soundwave’s hacks before they could be implanted into their jailer’s source code.
Finally Soundwave had moved to Manehatten to get away from the yelling. It was only a short train ride back to Canterlot and Ponyville and one of these days Megatron would figure that out, or Soundwave would return to his Lord. But until then Soundwave could lose himself in the bustle of the cartoon city and retreat to the city’s Central Park to think in peace.
Telepath… his recharging body wasn’t actually close enough to the circuits of the individuals he was trying to read for it to work. That had always been true. It had been the original reason Soundwave had closed off his dreams from the others’. The disconnect between where Soundwave perceived someone to be within the VR realm, and where they actually were, rendered him powerless on that front.
Those labels Soundwave felt he could do without for a while. They weren’t gone, or altered significantly. They remained with him, ready to be used again when circumstances were once again favorable.
No, it was the last — symbiote carrier — that had his programming in knots. Soundwave was the master, and the symbiotes were servants. Cared for, favored, loved even, but servants nonetheless… and yet, no matter how many times Megatron ordered him to, he could not command Laserbeak to abandon her silly play at being the pony princess. Could not command Ravage to return to his side from wherever he had wandered. Could not command Rumble and Frenzy to do anything but what they already wanted to do…
And there, approaching now, was the reason.
A white raven flew up and landed on a nearby tree. An alien thing with a snout full of teeth instead of a beak, a claw at the wristbone of each wing, and keen, observant eyes that watched, always watched the trapped Decepticons, but never interfered. It was all at once a creature too real, with each feather, scale, claw, and tooth crafted with meticulous detail, and too unreal, ethereal and vaguely see-through, for a creature native to Teletraan’s cartoon Equestria. Jazz.
Jazz who, for a few short moments while Soundwave tried to manipulate their species’ fate, had been one of Soundwave’s symbiotes. Jazz who, in the chaos of Laserbeak’s dream becoming a nightmare then becoming a dream again, had stood over Soundwave as he begged for his life, his peace and for that of his symbiotes and his faction and his species. Soundwave had knelt to one of his own symbiotes and begged, and it had turned his programming upside down. He suffered from the consequences of his own hacks, as well as Jazz’s.
And still he didn’t know if his pleas had done anything. Had Jazz been satisfied with Soundwave’s sacrifice of pride and granted them a more merciful fate here in Equestria, or had this been his plan all along and Soundwave’s pleas fallen on the deaf audios of someone whom even thousands of vorns of war had not remade into the sort of monster who could indiscriminately kill them all with a single strike? Was entrapment in this fantasy even intended to be a better fate than death?
“Why?” Soundwave asked in the melodious voice of his pony avatar. “Why?”
Why, for that matter, was Jazz here? Teletraan certainly needed no help to keep the Decepticons contained. And Jazz, if he felt the need to keep a personal optic on his prisoners, could be any creature he chose. The Decepticons would never have known he was there. He could have been another pony, an animal, a tree… any number of things. But instead he chose this raven which could not be mistaken by anyone who truly looked at it for anything native to Teletraan’s Equestria. Why? Did Jazz come to gloat? To remind them that they had been defeated, utterly, by the Autobots? “You started this fight, Soundwave, and I ended it”? Why was Jazz here?
The ethereal, alien raven only regarded him silently and did not answer him. Soundwave stared up, the raven stared down.
Until a ball bounced off his head, knocking his glasses from his pony nose. They fell to the ground and one of the lenses cracked. With a snort of anger, Soundwave caught and pinned the ball with one hoof, then glared at the offender: a tiny young unicorn with dark grey fur and a red mane. Wildrider.
“Sorry, sir,” the young Decepticon said. “I’ll, uh, just take that ball,” and the ball floated from under the hoof Soundwave had caught it with, “and get out of your way. Let you get back to your brooding.”
Wildrider and his ball trotted away, and Soundwave could see a short distance away the other Stunticons, all in the avatars of very young ponies, waiting. One of them had managed to change his avatar’s gender to that of a female pony, but he still recognized each of them easily. Wildrider dropped the ball and with a horselike snort, headbutted the ball to one of the others and the game continued.
Soundwave turned back to Jazz, whose keen raven eyes had watched the whole interaction with interest.
“What?” Soundwave gave a horsey neigh of frustration.
The raven didn’t answer. Jazz only watched. He watched while Soundwave continued to sulk. He watched when Soundwave looked over at the Stunticons’ too-loud game again. He watched when Soundwave stood, stumbling in the unfamiliar body he’d been forced into, intending to tell the idiot colts and filly to go the frag away.
Jazz watched the ball hit Soundwave in the head again. The dark blue pony reared in surprise and overbalanced, falling on his aft, but sent the ball flying along a perfect trajectory back to Dead End. All the Stunticons cheered the perfect volley Soundwave had made, and Wildrider helped him stand.
Jazz watched the young colts convince Soundwave to join in the simple game. He cawed twice, then flew away, disappearing like a ghost.
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End