bettsplendens:

Warning: gore, cannibalism, general nastiness. Shortfic of Soundwave deciding that other people are edible. 

A shaky, gasping gurgle was the last sound out of the other
mech’s throat, accompanied by the grinding sound of Soundwave’s teeth sinking
deeper and scraping against something more solid than energon lines. The frame
tangled around his spasmed and went limp, and the steady gush of energon against
his dentae ebbed and stopped.

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Sequel! A bit less gross, but still gross. Soundwave perfects his methods and shares with a friend. 

There was a next time. And a next, and a next.

It worked. His
immune system took up more energy than before, but he actually had the energy to spare now.

The next time, he took the entire fuel tank out, drained out
the bile, drank the good energon, and used the empty tank to collect the
energon from the large veins he plucked out.

Next, he wrapped his datacables up into the ceiling
supports, then down and around the body’s ankles, hoisting it upside-down to
drain every drop of energon he could get into the empty, cleaned tank. That was
enough energon that he could store it,
drinking nearly his fill and then fastening it to the wall on a makeshift shelf
of armor to keep it where the rats couldn’t reach.

And there were rats- coming to nibble the body and lap at
what he’d spilled. Those would also be
edible, he mused, but had too high a pathogen risk to be worth it when he was
getting relatively clean fuel. It didn’t keep too well, not in a ripped-free
organ, but it kept enough that he could digest a full tank and then drink more
later.

Through trial and error, he learned the best way to get the
most energon from a frame, how to keep the fuel tank intact and make it easier
to drink from, and what parts he could nibble on for extra material to offer
his self-repair.

He also learned how to incorporate this new habit into his developing
persona. Many of the others could see him collecting his meals, so he might as
well use it for psychological warfare in addition to fueling actual warfare.

First try: savagery. Drag the frame back, rip the plating
off its front, and tear into it, claws
popping through veins and slicing muscles and piercing any organs they
encountered. It was messily, viscerally satisfying,
it splattered energon through the entire cell, and it made calmly collecting
his meal rather difficult. It was fun, truthfully,
but not overly utilitarian, and oddly didn’t have as much of an effect as he’d
expected. Maybe everyone else was too used to savagery.

So he tried the complete opposite. Cold, calculated, almost
emotionless. Drag the body in, look it over, methodically pluck its armor away,
hang it, and sip from a major vein while watching the energon drain.

That worked.

Even worked on Megatronus, and Megatronus was a hard one to
shake.

The first time he saw Soundwave at work, he just stared, his expression somewhere between
revulsion and fascination. The thing that broke the expression was Soundwave
reaching through the bars to offer him a thick vein bulging with energon, an
offering of one of the very few things he had that might benefit his new almost-friend.

Megatronus’ response was initially almost repulsed, but he
took the vein, followed Soundwave’s example on how to open it, and drank-
making a bit of a face. He drank, though, and he thanked Soundwave in a soft,
low voice for the shared meal.

Turned out something was different in Megatronus’ frame. He
could drink a small amount of vein energon, but larger amounts made him queasy,
and enough would probably make him purge. Which meant Soundwave’s capability to
drink and eat whatever he wanted of someone’s frame was something different,
but, Pit, so was the rest of him. Maybe it came with being a symbiote host- an
emergency measure to keep him and his little ones fueled.

Whatever it was, he liked it. It was useful. Kept him
fueled, kept him healthy, kept them healthy…
and it scared the Pit out of people when he would sit, drink, and watch them,
or eye them up like he would eye up a corpse. The calm, collected, nonchalant approach to cannibalism
seemed to scare people more than any degree of brutality ever could.

Good.

He liked that.