Chapter Text
It had been precisely seven hundred dimension jumps since Soundwave first boarded the Lost Light.
Seven hundred strange realities, and even more variations of Cybertron that blurred together. In that time, much had changed—both for the ship and for him.
He had completed all twelve of his tier one chore cycles with efficiency, the tasks were rather daunting at first but once he had a routine going it was easier to perform. He had reignited his fascination with crystals, spending long joors in his garden and watching them grow bigger as time passed by.
Most unexpectedly of all, he had bound himself to Rodimus as a conjunx endura. A decision his past self would have deemed as impossible—or worse, a betrayal of everything he had once believed in.
But the truth couldn’t be more simple: the universe did not pause for one mech. Just as the Lost Light pressed ever onward, so too did he.
The ship had not remained the same either. New faces had joined their ranks with each detour, some welcomed with fanfare. A blue-and-yellow mech named Nightbeat had slipped aboard with his questions and was somewhat dissatisfied with the answer. Yet, despite that, his relief at seeing members of the Lost Light intact was unmistakable.
Another mech named Skids had arrived along with him, a presence that made Swerve noticeably brighter—and whispered to Soundwave that Skids was usually blue-and-red, not purple-and-yellow.
However, he noticed that mech's optic drifted toward Nautica more than once—quick, quiet glances shadowed with something like mourning. The expression reminded Soundwave of Trailbreaker, back when the mech used to sit by the bar, watching Swerve with the same silent ache.
The resemblance between Skids’ new paint and Nautica’s own didn’t escape Soundwave either.
He decided not to bother. It wasn’t Soundwave’s concern. Trailbreaker had recovered eventually—found new joys and new distractions. Skids likely would as well. The Lost Light had that effect on mechs.
With the increase of new mechs joining the ship, Rodimus had declared making a whole new club called “Alt Dimensioners,” since Trailbreaker, Ambulon, Mirage, Skywarp and Soundwave himself no longer qualify to be apart of the “Most Recents” Club.
Soundwave had questioned the necessity.
“Well, Skids and Nightbeat being the only Most Recents members makes them feel kind of lonely—and hey you never know! Maybe we’ll have a bunch of new mechs joining and the Alt Dimensioners would be bigger than ever.”
The intention was noble.
If you ignored the fact that communication was not restricted by club membership.
Thought, statistically, Rodimus was not incorrect. With continued dimensional jumps, the probability of additional arrives was high.
They were still missing crew members, after all.
“Alright, everyone ready? Dimension 3945—final checks!” Rodimus’ voice cut through the central control room, seated in a chair that was clearly too big for his frame.
Soundwave displayed a thumbs-up across his visor.
He is currently stationed at his assigned position, while his entire being is integrated into the ship’s systems, having confirmation from others improved success probability.
Soundwave turned slightly toward Perceptor.
“The readings are stable,” the scientist reported. “This jump should proceed without anomalies. Target location: Enceladia. Our energon reserves are critically low—I recommend we make this one count.”
Brainstorm peered over his side of the console. “Just for the record, I still say we shouldn’t be leaving this dimension until I finished testing the emotion-hacking energon—we could’ve stocked piled for several more jumps!”
“The energon caused Rewind to cry uncontrollably for three joors straight,” the microscope said flatly.
“He was watching a documentary, you know how he gets—”
“It was a traffic cam.”
“Are you judging how a mech expresses themselves Percy?”
“The energon sample destabilizes our emotional regulation subroutines—stripping away the mechanisms allowing us to properly process it safely, not to mention—”
“Can we remain on topic?“ The co-captain, Megatron says dryly.
Perceptor reset his vocalizer and returned to his console. “Yes. Of course—we have the coordinates locked.”
At that, Rodimus leaned forward in his chair, a grin spreading easily across his faceplate. “Well, what are we waiting for? Set course for Dimension 3945 and let’s go get some energon!”
The countdown began, and Soundwave stilled as the ship’s engines roared to life, the vibration coursing through the Lost Light and into him.
“Three,”
The distinction between himself and the vessel blurred further as its systems threaded seamlessly through his own, every fluctuation in power flowing through him like a second sparkbeat that did not belong to him and yet could not be separated from him either, steady and overwhelming all at once.
“Two,”
Reality itself began to fold inward, accompanied by a low, drawn-out wail that existed beyond ordinary sound, a frequency so deep and all-encompassing that it bypassed his auditory sensors entirely and settled directly into his processor.
“One.”
The ship shuddered—and Soundwave shuddered with it. The distortion rippled through every system he possessed, his processor straining under the sudden and immense weight of overlapping inputs as warnings flared and vanished in rapid succession, each one suppressed almost as soon as it appeared, overridden by the sheer volume of data flooding through him.
Then, without warning, everything fell still.
Conversation rolled around him as he attempted to regain his bearings, voices filtering back into clarity one by one as his systems recalibrate themselves.
“Jump successful,” Perceptor said. “Dimensional coordinates stable. We have arrived at the designated sector.”
Rodimus lounged sideways in the chair he was sitting on. “Everything’s fine, right? No spontaneous combustion this time, right?”
“Weeell, I wouldn’t go that far,” Brainstorm chimed in, tone bright with unhelpful enthusiasm. “Depending on how this dimension interprets gravitational curvature, we could still explode. Just... in a really interesting way.”
Rodimus groaned, dragging a hand down his faceplate. “You always know how to ruin a perfectly good jump with science.”
“Science is the only reason you survive jumps, Co-captain,” Perceptor replied sharply, optics never leaving console.
“Correction,” Megatron said from his post. “We survive because everyone else compensates for his recklessness.”
Soundwave’s conjunx only shrugged, waving a dismissive servo. “Whatever, enough about that—let’s just pray that whatever’s on this dimension isn’t fire, teeth or the like the one with the gelatin clones.”
The other co-captain began to tense up. “Do not remind me.”
Rodimus turned slightly, a grin already forming. “Right, hey Megs, didn’t one of them try to court you?”
“I said—do not remind me.”
As much as Megatron clearly preferred the memory to remain buried, Soundwave found his processor replaying the event. The dimension in question had gelatin constructs that were—while uniformly polite, were also uniformly incapable of understanding refusal in any meaningful way.
One had approached Megatron specifically, and attempted to mirror his appearance then not a moment later started expression an interest in the former Decepticon leader.
The situation had escalated and needless to say Soundwave now has several blackmail worthy material.
Rodimus suddenly clapped his servos together. “Anyways—enough about that! Since we’re now here let’s go to Enceladia! Energon doesn’t just generate itself y’know!”
Perceptor was already moving, optics narrowing slightly as streams of data shifted across his display, but then the microscope’s confidence certainty gave way to something more, uncertain. “…That is… unusual.”
Rodimus tilted his helm, the grin not quite leaving his face but faltering at the edges. “Unusual how? Like ‘minor inconvenience’ unusual or ‘we’re about to explode in a really interesting way’ unusual?”
“Neither, Enceladia is not present.”
That is… not good.
There had been instances before—several, in fact—where their jumps had led them into dimensions where Enceladia simply did not exist. Those situations were inconvenient, sometimes frustrating. But they had always possessed enough energon reserves to attempt another jump, to correct course and move on to a more suitable reality where the planet did exist.
This time, however, was different.
Their reserves were low.
Dangerously low.
Low enough that attempting another jump would be a gamble—one that carried many consequences none of them were willing to ignore.
Which means they might have to resort to…
“We might have to resort to plan B.” Perceptor winces at his own words.
…going to this dimension’s Cybertron.
Which is also not good.
It was not that Cybertron was inaccessible—far from it. In most dimensions, it remained exactly where it should be, and in most dimensions it wasn’t a dead wasteland like Soundwave’s.
The problem had always been arriving.
History, Soundwave had observed, possessed an irritating tendency to repeat itself across dimensions, not in identical detail but in the way certain variables inevitably led to the same conclusions. Their encounters with alternate Cybertrons had proven this time and time again, each visit beginning with cautious intent and ending in some variation of escalation, misinterpretation, or outright conflict.
It did not matter what approach they took.
If they concealed their origins, presenting themselves as nothing more than travelers or displaced mechs, suspicion followed soon after, inconsistencies piling up until trust fractured under the weight of unanswered questions. If they told the truth—if they admitted to being interdimensional travelers, to coming from a reality beyond the comprehension of those they addressed—the reaction was rarely better. At best, they were met with disbelief. At worst, they inspired interest of a far more dangerous kind, such as the respective dimension’s Shockwave finding out as one example.
Rodimus leaned back slightly, one servo dragging across his faceplate. “Okay. Alright. That’s… fine. Not great, but fine. We’ve dealt with worse. I mean this Cybertron surely wouldn’t be as bad like the previous jumps—and hey maybe this time we won’t accidentally start a war—”
Soundwave extended a cable and coiled it around his conjunx’s forearm.
Rodimus stilled, glancing down at the cable before looking back up, a grin now forming itself on his faceplate, “Thanks babe, knew I could count on you!”
Soundwave could detect it was only 78% genuine, but he’ll leave him alone. He needs to focus on other matters at the moment. He tried not to pay attention to the way his conjunx slumped when his cable unwrapped itself from his forearm.
“Blaster.”
The mech in question perked up immediately from his station and turned toward Soundwave, “Yeah? You got something?”
“Extending range,” Soundwave stated simply, and he began to push beyond the Lost Light’s standard operational limits, threading his awareness deeper into the ship’s communication arrays and out into the surrounding expanse.
Blaster let out a low whistle. “Oh—you’re really pushing it, huh. Alright, alright… let’s see what’s out there.”
Soundwave’s internal frequencies expanded outward, touching the edges of the solar system, the empty voids between dust and light. For a long moment, he heard nothing but static noise. Then—
There.
Soundwave locked onto it immediately.
“Hey captains we found something, want me to rout it to the main network?”
Rodimus straightened almost immediately and headed over to Blaster’s station, Megatron not far behind. “Oh—hey, that was fast.”
“Have you managed to pinpoint the origin of the signal?”
Blaster’s posture faltered a little at grey mech’s question. “Well—not really. It was… kind of hard finding anything solid to follow. There were a lot of other frequencies, but this is the only signal we’ve been able to properly lock onto so far.”
“Only one? Huh… so we’re basically fishing in the dark and hoping it bites.” Rodimus’ grin didn’t waver, but there was a subtle tightening at the edges of his faceplate. “Welp, only one way to find out.”
“Wait—Rodimus—”
CLICK
"Attention citizens of this dimension—this is Rodimus, captain of the starship Lost Light, speaking to you not as a conqueror, not as a threat, but as a traveler… and a friend. If our arrival startled you, know this: the Lost Light comes in peace. We're just passing through—though we do tend to leave things a little better than we found them. Usually. So, on behalf of the entire crew of the Lost Light… we respectfully ask for safe passage, open minds, and maybe a map. We’re still figuring out where exactly 'here' is. Rodimus out.”
As much as Soundwave has come to love this mech, he really doesn’t know what goes on his mind sometimes. He briefly considered whether mind-reading his conjunx would improve prediction accuracy.
Conclusion: Unlikely.
The transmission clicked off, and Rodimus spun around with his usual swagger. “Boom. Nailed it. That’s how you do diplomacy.”
Everyone else stared at him in silence.
Megatron raised one servo to his optics and pressed his digits briefly against the ridge of his optic ridge. “Did you even consider reviewing the first-contact transmission protocols prepared by Minimus—” he said with a dangerously calm tone, “—Is what I would ask if I didn’t already know the answer to that.”
Rodimus waved one servo dismissively.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen Megs—there’s something I have that you lack, and it's called, charisma, I have so much charisma that I bet we could charm whoever received the signal into giving us energon without a fuss—in fact I have so much charisma that I killed an entire infestation of personality ticks."
Megatron did not look impressed. “By ‘I’ you mean ‘we,’ because we both killed them.”
The other just rolled his optics. “Details.”
Rodimus slumped back against the chair like nothing in the universe concerned him. Like their energon reserves were not approaching critically low levels. Like they were not about to make contact with an unknown Cybertron in an unfamiliar dimension with a long history of escalation.
Soundwave observed the micro-adjustments in Rodimus’ posture anyway.
Pauldron Tension: elevated.
Vocal Cadence: slightly faster than baseline.
Humor Frequency: increased.
Eye Contact Duration: inconsistent.
Stress Indicators: present.
Maybe he should lend his cable again—
“Hey so—” Blaster’s voice cut through the tension in the room, “—not to make somethings awkward but we got an incoming signal. It’s encrypted and audio only, it’s… kind of suspicious in my book, but should I still put it through?”
Rodimus' optics darted to Megatron, who just sighed and gave a nod. "Unfortunately we might as well.”
Then, a smooth voice crackled to life.
"Lost Light—this is Blaster, Autobot's Head Communications officer. Your message has been received, Rodimus. Your intent has been acknowledged and appreciated. I am not alone in receiving your signal. The Decepticon’s Head Communication Officer Soundwave is also monitoring this frequency and has authorized continued contact. We are coordinating a response and will provide you with navigation data shortly. Stand by."
Rodimus turned slowly toward Blaster.
Blaster stared back at him.
Then Blaster turned toward Soundwave.
Soundwave stared back at him.
Rodimus turned to the side. “Heya, Percy? Brainstorm? Are my audials working right? Because what happened to duplicates not being allowed in the same dimension? Y’know—something that wasn’t supposed to be possible?”
“Because it shouldn’t be,” the microscope said with a tightened expression. “Across all three thousand nine hundred forty-five dimensions we have catalogued, we have only ever arrived in realities in which members of this crew either never existed in the first place or had already been deceased prior to our arrival. The pattern has remained consistent—until now, so something has changed.”
"As the ship's genius," Brainstorm piped up. "even I’m confused about this one. And that’s saying something, because normally I’m at least partially responsible most of the hiccups.”
“Partially…?”
“Hush Percy—anyway I mean, I haven’t even tried fixing this restriction ever since dimension 2020, and we all remember how that went.”
Soundwave did not, for he was not present at the time.
However, Rodimus had later described the incident to him in considerable detail. The end result had involved three concurrent versions of himself attempting to assume command authority over the same corridor junction at the same time, each one equally convinced of his legitimacy and equally unwilling to concede jurisdiction to the others.
The entire conversation sidetracked with the sports car reassuring Soundwave that he is the real Rodimus and not an imposter, forgetting the fact that Soundwave boarded the Lost Light long after the incident had already taken place and therefore possessed no reason whatsoever to suspect otherwise.
Heh.
Back onto the topic at hand.
Rodimus stood silent for a klik, with narrowed optics. "So let me get this straight—we're either in landing straight into the clone wars, or we’re actually in a dimension that has another version of me, another version of you and possibly another version of Megatron still alive?”
Perceptor opens his intake.
“Actually, don’t answer that.”
Blaster straightened suddenly. “They’re responding again—same frequency. Patchin’ it through.”
"Lost Light—this is Communications Officer Blaster. Your signal is verified and logged. We're transmitting landing coordinates now. Expect company. No hostilities. Just... a lot of questions.”
Everyone stared at one another.
Some time later, a few other mechs were gathered in the control room.
Nautica was talking to both Perceptor and Brainstorm about the discovery, both she and latter were both getting increasing more animated as the conversation continues. Perceptor occupationally joined with his own input, but was mostly content with watching them alongside with Blaster.
“So—” Chromedome started.
“What you're saying is that—” Minimus tried to interjected but was interrupted by Rewind.
“There’s a real possibility that we’re in a dimension that our duplicates are alive?!” The memory stick being the archivist he is, was practically vibrating with excitement. Soundwave could remember the time Rewind cornered him in Swerve’s after they became amicable, the small mech had a list of questions prepared in advance to ask all the deviations between their respective dimensions before Soundwave could reasonably escape the conversation.
So the chance of encountering his duplicate in person and exchange data is not an opportunity Rewind would miss.
Chromedome reached out and rested one servo lightly against Rewind’s pauldron. The smaller mech looked back at him, visor brightening noticeably in what Soundwave could recognize as embarrassment, then reset his vocalizer.
“Sorry—you were saying Minimus?”
The load-bearer sighed before turning his attention towards at Brainstorm and Perceptor.
“Rewind has already asked the first question I intended to raise.”
Rodimus, tilted his helm. “What’s the second?”
Minimus made a point to glare at him. “Why did you not run it through me before sending a transmission to unidentified communications network? What if our security systems get compromised? What if this ends up being a trap? Who knows what could happen!”
Soundwave bristled up at the implication that his systems could ever have such weak firewalls, Soundwave superior—
“And while I bring no offense to your conjunx, Rodimus, he was briefly able to take control of our security cameras and hijacked our comms. I don’t doubt a similar incident won’t happen again in the near future.”
Ah right.
Rodimus bristled up as well, as if to defend Soundwave, but deflates due to the point being made.
“…okay, when you point it like that it does sound worse.”
Minimus narrowed his optics.
“Regardless… we must now determine how we intend to approach this encounter given that our presence has already been revealed. For one, we can’t let the entire crew know about this until we better understand the situation we are entering.”
“I mean,” Rodimus starts, “not that I don’t agree with you—but the Rod Pod’s still out of commission, and if they’re expecting us to follow those landing coordinates, we’re going to have to bring the whole ship with us.”
Minimus let out a long sigh.
“Then as per protocol we must decide in advance how much of the truth we are prepared to disclose upon arrival.”
Rodimus considered that for a moment.
“Fair enough,” he finally said. “Alright, crew—”
Many optics shifted toward him.
“—we’ve got coordinates, we’ve got confirmation they know we’re here, and we’ve got at least one alive version of Blaster and one alive version of Soundwave talking to each other without starting a war.” Rodimus spreads his servos with a grin. “How about we set course for Cybertron and go say hello?”
Many mechs stared at him.
Soundwave allowed himself once more to feel the inner workings of Lost Light and adjusted course toward the provided coordinates.
This dimension was going to be very interesting.