Further data on Tempo

Tempo has data-cables, a bit like Soundwave’s. His are proportionally a lot smaller, though. He has six, three per side, and they’re really narrow and only about as long as he is tall.

They’re this soft white with bands of gold bio-lights, really bright to look at, and the rest of his paintjob used to be a lot flashier to match. They retract into protective pouches that have armor and an airtight gasket sealing the pouches shut, as it’s important that they be kept spotlessly clean. 

The tips are covered in protective silicone sheaths that can retract, and the tips split into a fairly large number of extremely thin (by Cybertronian standards) tendrils, which can be twisted together to approximate the shape of any plug he’s compatible with.

He’s a data-mech, and his cables are linked to his processor through what’s essentially an onboard computer, which stores information and memory related to whatever he’s plugged into. It’s directly hooked to his processor, but isn’t legally or medically considered part of his processor. 

Before the war, he was something termed a “data-bird”. Flashy little mech, easy to plug into with no emotional entanglement, ideal for spying and gathering information. His job was to spy on other nobles for his employer (read: owner), regularly come back and sit still for them to plug into his onboard computer and get all the data (read: blackmail), and sometimes sit on someone’s shoulder and look pretty.

During the war, he and his kind became something like messenger pigeons. The first order of business was to paint them in something more respectable- Cybertronian camo, designed to blend them into buildings and let them go unnoticed. This, Tempo liked, because he stopped looking like a decoration//pet. 

The rest of the job, he did not like as much. 

Messengers would generally have part of their onboard computer memory locked off, and encrypted data that was too high-profile to be safely transmitted would be put into this part of their memory, which would only be accessible to those with the right codes. They would then be sent off to fly to another location and take the data with them, and, as they wouldn’t even know what it was they were carrying, there was no point in worrying that they’d give away the info.

Of course, if they got caught, they were just about screwed. They’d end up with their onboard computer being hacked (less traumatic than hacking into someone’s processor, but still unpleasant and potentially damaging) for the data, and, being messengers, would probably not have anyone coming to rescue them. A lot of them defected to the non-Functionalists very early on. A startling (to the higher-ups) number defected after being captured and willingly gave over the information they’d been carrying. 

Tempo was a messenger pigeon for awhile, and managed not to get caught. 

Well. 

Caught by Cybertronians.

He ended up being trapped by some opportunistic (and non-Cybertronian) slave hunters, who were looking for small and harmless-seeming beings to sell off, and he was sold to nobles on another planet who had some idea of what his frametype had been used for. They thought they could get him to sit on a perch and look pretty, like some strange exotic bird. After all- a trapped, compliant member of such a nightmarish species was an excellent status symbol, and Tempo was small enough that he didn’t look like a threat.

Tempo did not like being kept as a pet, he did not like wearing a collar, he did not like the muzzle and audial covers that got locked onto him if he got sassy (which was often), and he did not like the utter lack of respect. He also didn’t like being dipped in far-too-strong paint remover on arrival (killed off all his paint nanites and burned most of the sensors in his wings and antennae away) and regularly re-painted with gaudy alien paint colors. 

So Tempo proceeded to spend several decades gathering any possible bit of information that he could on the (startlingly corrupt) nobles, broadcast that information when the time was ripe, and bring an entire planet’s social structure crumbling to its knees.

He then escaped among the chaos. 

Which left him heading back to a now-ruined Cybertron in an alien ship barely large enough for him, with a muzzle and audial covers latched onto his helm, his plating mostly bare after he scraped away the offending paint and gilt, and with a serious case of tiny-pissed-off-distrustful-and-severely-touch-starved-mechitis. 

Somebody come respect this boi. 

(yes, the respect can involve creative uses of the data-cables, if you’re nice enough about it)

(I do have a RP going where things are, so far, working out fine for him. He freaked out a bit on arrival, as he was greeted by Soundwave, the bane of his kind, but as of writing this he is cuddling said scary mech in Soundwave’s berth. Long story. Very touch-starved minibot who needs to be around more people with EM fields.)