Hello, it's me, Haystack, with your not-quite-annual review! This chapter made me laugh, gasp, smile, and, believe it or not, at one point almost made me cry.
First off, ILOVEQUICKSTRIKEILOVEQUICKSTRIKEILOVEQUICKSTRIKE! He is officially, as of this chapter, my favorite OV character. Scorponok, Tarantulas, Waspinator and Inferno are pretty high on my list as well.
Inferno, standing close enough to Megatron to look official but not as close as she used to, said nothing. She'd said hardly anything in the last few days, ever since she ran out of Megatron's quarters shouting that he was no longer the Queen. She still followed after Megatron out of habit. Inferno worked because she couldn't do anything else but she worked like an automaton.
Wow, I can see that clearly in my mind's eye and it sounds so sad, though that wasn't what almost made me cry.
"Personally, all I know of the species is that it is small, soft, and produced Dinobot's favourite writer.
I wonder who his favor--
never mind, I get it. I should have gotten it sooner, since Dinobot quotes him all the time.
Dinobot's already decided to play Maximal, I will not lose Inferno to them as well, no!
Hold on, Inferno might be a Predacon, but wasn't she also a Maximal protoform? *le gasp* Perhaps being around the Maximals will remind her of that!
You'd better be careful Megatron!
"Then chopperface butted in with some story about how there's this legend that the first Transformers were made like they just grew outta Cybertron, and that afterwards it was like all Transformers always carried a bit of Cybertron with them no matter where they were. And I said what's that do for us now and he said we'd lost that connection, then he walked off. I don't get him."
"Maybe he was saying he feels homesick, too," said Rhinox.
Aww.
Interesting theory too, how Transformers always have a piece of home with them, and how they lost that connection to Cybertron when they were changed into humans.
Oh yes, the whole entire scene with Quickstrike barfing had me laughing out loud. I've been there, done that and bought the t-shirt for it. It isn't fun at all.
He had already broken up one game of I Dare You To Eat This between Rattrap and Tarantulas.
"Got two pretty girls fussin' over me," said Quickstrike, lying back on the table Tigatron was sitting at, legs bent to keep them out of her way. He had draped an arm over his eyes but lifted it to look at Rattrap. His face was pale and he was sweating despite the coolness of the room but he still managed a smirk. "Can't complain. 'Cept maybe about how 'Ranty threatened me with a probe."
I repeat what I said earlier: ILOVEQUICKSTRIKE!
Rattrap grinned. He rather liked Quickstrike.
An apparently Rattrap agrees with me.
Optimus felt something break inside him. The last four days had been a daze of survival and strangeness and saying the words made him realise how hopeless it all was. He ran his hands back through his hair and shook his head. "I don't know."
Poor Optimus.
He's already had a crash-landing and a war dumped on him, and now all this. You've really got to feel for the guy.
And here we come up to the part of the chapter where I almost cried. The part where Megatron is in his old chambers.
He climbed up onto his chair but didn't stay there for more than a few seconds. It made him feel uncomfortably small.
Megatron walked over to his bath - now the size of a small pool - and tapped his rubber duck on the head, sending it bobbing. It was quite possibly the only personal item any of them had brought from Cybertron. Given the circumstances of their departure it wasn't as if they could pack for the trip. But he had brought the duck, stashed in one of his compartments. It had been a present from Scorponok who had heard somewhere that a rubber duck was the thing to have if one took baths.
There were two pictures that were Megatron's, both of himself - a painting and a photograph. The photo had been taken on this planet, a still from a cyberbee's footage.
A rack on another wall held his spare tail-weapons, now as tall as he was. He managed to lift one down but couldn't wield it. Even if it wasn't too heavy, the handle was too big to grip. Megatron spent several minutes trying to fit his hand to it, toying with the connections, stroking the scales. Even those felt alien, memory distorted by too-soft fingers.
He returned to the bath and picked up the duck, careful not to touch the liquid it floated in, cool and inviting as it looked. The chemicals evaporated within seconds and he held up the toy to inspect it. Even the duck was too big now. Making it squeak involved wrapping both arms around it and squeezing.
The reason why all of this made me really sad is because, when I first started reading
Other Vengeance 2.0, I only thought "Well, that must suck for them." It wasn't until I read these few passages that it truly hit me just how much the Transformers had lost because of the Vok's transformation. They can't go back to Cybertron, they can't do half of the stuff that they used to do, and they can't even use most of their personal possesions. It almost made me cry.
"Optimus! The Standing Stones are giving off an energy reading!"
HOLY...
Oh great, I've got to go. I'll finish my review later.
Overall, Beast Wars was fairly good about what critters were around. Things can be fudged - like, maybe Silverbolt isn't a typical gray wolf but an Ethiopian wolf? Blur those lines! But sometimes ... well, sometimes all you can do is throw up your hands and shout, "Vok like to move tigers around!"
)
( I still like that there