I can’t believe I only just now thought of this, but you know who else might join Soundwave’s horrible cannibal club on a really, really bad day? Arcee. She’s really the only TFP autobot I could see doing something like that, and even then she would do it hiding in the dumpster of internalized shame and never speak of it again…unless her victim is Airachnid or maybe Starscream or a very nasty functionist. Granted, she’ll probably be puking her guts out later, but worth iiiittt!!

Or if she was starving during a scouting mission on Cybertron. Lots of corpses lying around, and when your options are chewing corpses or going hungry, you usually pick the corpses. Set on fire, first. Gotta cook your food before you eat it!

I’m not sure Cybertronians can cook their food, since energon is kinda explodey.

Probably just about every Cybertronian alive has had to drink energon taken from a corpse. It’s usually filtered and such, though, rather than being ripped straight from a corpse. Ratchet almost definitely has, old-aft practical mech that he is. Wheeljack probably knows how to make high-grade out of vein energon.

But Arcee?

Yeah, she’d probably straight-up eat someone. In a literal dumpster for shelter, most likely, she’d fit.

…now I’m picturing Soundwave somehow finding out and just blasting the lyrics to “Welcome To The Club” at full volume next time he encounters Arcee and the others. He’s a lil slag sometimes and wants to see what happens.

I don’t even wanna think about what kind of hell children Rumble and Frenzy (and their siblings, but especially Frumble and Renzy) would have been in the AU where they probably spent their formative years eating mechs or watching their dad eat mechs. When they say, “My dad could eat yours for lunch”, Sweet Solus Prime, they are not lying.

Fortunately, their appetites are curbed somewhat by the fact that they get most of their energy directly from Soundwave. Unfortunately, they still want to chew on things, they’ve decided that fuel pumps are delicious. Soundwave just sighs and bribes them with candy to not go out and start chewing on every corpse on a battlefield. At least Ravage has the sense of smell required to tell if a corpse is infected with something that makes it dangerous to eat.

You know that time Soundwave exploded a mech? The recording the Vehicons were watching cut off just before Soundwave partially retracted his mask and stuck his tongue out like a kid in a snow flurry to catch the energon raining from the sky.

There’s the mix of dorkiness, pragmatism, and horror we know and love.

Who else do you think would be willing to join Soundwave’s and Megatron’s gross cannibal club? Gravescratch? Starscream? I know Knock Out would probably like the aesthetique of it and the whole dismemberment bit, but DANG is it messy and time-consuming and horrible on his finish. Airachnid would love it, but she won’t ask to join out of spite and Soundwave won’t offer. Shockwave would probably slorp energon with a proboscis like the world’s bustiest butterfly.

Starscream is a Seeker, formerly near-nobility, and recoils from the very idea. Probably sneers and calls everyone involved “disgusting savages”.

Knock Out won’t touch drained energon or protoflesh as a meal, something about his systems being too refined for such garbage, but will take a body apart just out of general him-ness.

Gravescratch eats just about anything he kills, including people. Definitely including people. And one of the Functionalists, or so he claims. He can digest metal and protoflesh, making him the only person who’s never gone hungry during the war- there’s always scavengers to be had. To him, the entire planet is edible, and so are limited amounts of organic things.

Blackspark doesn’t tend to eat people, since germs, but hunts and eats small animals for food. He’ll chew on people if he’s hungry enough.

Shockwave is practical enough to do it, but prefers to process the energon first, deadpanning something about potential infections. He probably has a portable energon filtration system in subspace at all times for just that situation. Can’t eat the fleshy bits because he doesn’t have any teeth.

Crucible (most people haven’t met him, short-but-solid mech whose alt is his namesake) isn’t proud of it, but he’s eaten corpses. Mostly out of fear- he has very high fuel needs, especially if he’s been using his alt mode, and panics at the potential of starving. Panics enough to overcome his squeamishness at the idea and be caught chewing on someone’s fuel pump. Unlike the others on this list, he feels bad about it, despite his usual pragmatism. Different upbringing.

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.

Keep reading

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.