Tarn had never been challenged like this. He’d met mechs who could hope to tolerate his voice at first, either by virtue of unusual frametypes or sheer volume of voice or speakers to drown his Voice out. They all gave eventually, though, once he’d tuned his voice to them. 

This mech was actually standing up to him. This tiny, fragile thing that he could have crushed in one servo, this little thing leaning on a cane and looking up at him, seemed completely unaffected by his Voice. Annoyed, no less.

Shockingly calm for a mech staring down the leader of the DJD, the tiny mech shifted his weight to his other pede, flicking both wings -wings that should have been shuddering in agony- in a dismissive little gesture. “Do stop that. It’s rather annoying.” 

Annoying? 

Tarn bristled slightly and pitched his Voice a bit higher, trying to find the point that would catch those wings and send all the sensors into a cascade of sensory overload, wanting to see the minibot writhe. His ballad was flawless. He could have brought any educated music lover to their knees in admiration without ever using his Voice. How dare this little data-carrier call him annoying. For Megatron’s sake, the minibot was standing on the corpse of a mech whose spark Tarn had just sung into implosion, acting as though he were some little turbofox yapping at the moon. 

Prowling closer to his target, Tarn poured all the power of his Voice into every single note, keenly watching those flared wings for any sort of tremble. Those would be his target- wide and delicate, they would resonate easily the instant he hit the right pitch, and would resonate until they shattered. That would bring the challenger to his knees, regardless of whether the rest of his frame was affected.

And it started to work. That smug, vaguely irritated look began to fade, the proud wings lowered, and delicate servos clenched tighter around the cane for support. 

As Tarn drew closer, the minibot began to wilt, leaning harder on his cane and breaking optic contact. He tried to keep watching, tried to keep his helm up, but failed and dropped his gaze to the ground as he fought to stay on his pedes. 

Tarn drew ever closer, watching the tiny frame crumple in front of him, and pitched a soft purr into his voice as he crouched to meet those formerly defiant optics. “Look what I am doing to you,” his body language purred, “look at how you crumple in front of me,” as he lowered himself to watch- 

And the lanky, crumpled frame uncurled and sprang, letting go of the cane and launching directly at Tarn. Delicate servos curled around his throat, as if in a last, final effort at resistance- 

One that had Tarn reeling as agony lanced through his frame, as his voicebox popped and crackled and spat sparks against its housing, as all its power turned back on itself. 

Tarn staggered back, optics wide in shock and horror, mouth open behind the mask in a silent cry of pain, clawing at his throat as Voice and voice both failed him. Damage reports spiraled across his HUD, warnings of wires melted together and half-fried and shorting out- 

And Tempo laughed as he dropped to the ground, flicked his wings up in a triumphant gesture as he grabbed his cane, and shot away on agile pedes before anyone could come to see what had happened. 

That may have been Tarn, but he was Tempo. He didn’t bow to anyone’s will but his own, and, if anyone tried, he gave them a taste of their own manipulation. With his abilities, it was so, so terribly simple to send any body part into a self-destructive spiral as it tried to match up with him. Evidently it wasn’t good to have one’s vocalizer trying to match the motions and energy patterns of someone else’s servos. 

Too bad for Tarn his pride had gotten in the way of realizing how easy it would have been for him to snuff Tempo’s spark with his servos.

Too bad for Tarn he’d been too busy trying to find the right pitch to notice that Tempo was faking.

Too bad for Tarn, but not too bad for Tempo.

As he made his escape, first running and then flying, Tempo tucked the last few moments of sound-recording into his high-priority memory banks. 

The sound of Tarn’s legendary Voice, the Voice that had felled millions, crackling painfully into silence as Tempo’s hands closed around his throat.