I love Tempo, but boy howdy are they terrifying. And tough, for standing up to Tarn like that. Not everyone fights the leader of the DJD’s sonic attacks and lives to tell the tale.

Oh, he wants to tell the tale, wants to outright boast, but tends to hold back the urge. Never know who might be upset with him for it and make things dangerous and/or irritating for him. Never know who’s secretly a fan.

Tarn’s Voice is fairly uncomfortable for him. He doesn’t like music of most sorts because it clashes with his internal tempo, and Tarn’s is especially bad. He can stand up to it, though, it doesn’t actually harm him. It’s just uncomfortable.

He’s certainly a lot more formidable an opponent than most people realize. The cane is almost entirely for show, there’s a blade hidden inside, and he’s agile enough to put it to good use. That, combined with extensive knowledge of where the average frame’s vulnerable points are, means he can disable an opponent with a few strategic cuts.

In addition to that, the same ability that keeps him safe from Tarn’s voice can be applied to others. His frame won’t tolerate being quickly altered. Electric shock has minimal to no effect, most stasis restraints simply don’t work (if they even fit him), and he’s extremely hard to genuinely frighten or upset because the ability works on his own hormones. He can decide exactly how much adrenaline he wants.

That can be applied to someone else, in a rudimentary manner. If he puts his servos on them and focuses, he can apply his self-control to someone else’s frame. Whatever part of them he’s touching tries to mimic the motion and energy patterns of his servos, and, depending on how much of his control he uses, it ranges from relatively harmless (but painful and disabling) to agonizing and potentially maiming. He’s skilled with disabling someone else’s servos and arms, applying an instant of his control to a vulnerable spot to mess up pistons and muscle cable. It hurts them and temporarily shorts out wires, but largely doesn’t cause anything permanent, just temporary numbness and difficulty moving.

What he did to Tarn was focus as much of his ability as he could into Tarn’s voicebox. It’s not good for you to have your voicebox try to mimic the energy motions and movement of someone else’s servos- it pulls the energy out in ways it isn’t supposed to go, sends all the mobile parts seizing as they try to move, forces everything to go haywire. That may have caused permanent damage, and at the very least it’s going to be a lot of repairs.

If he could get his servos on someone’s helm, he could put his ability to use against their processor, which would be crippling and potentially lethal. I think he’s done that once or twice.

It’s impressive, but his tiny frame makes him vulnerable. Someone fast enough to hit him wouldn’t need much to disable him. Snag a wing, snap a leg strut, pull on armor enough to prevent transformation, and he’d be largely helpless. A quick enough strike with a servo would avoid his abilities, or a blade, hammer, or large stick would do the job. He’s fragile and not terribly strong. Pit, several determined humans with rope and leverage could probably capture him. Hence the need to escape- he was tempted to stay around, try to actually kill Tarn and earn himself some respect, but it wasn’t worth the risk of an adrenaline-and-rage-fueled counterattack.

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.

platovevo:

my favorite cat behavior is when they think you’re not giving them enough attention so they literally just climb all over you because like imagine if humans did that. i’m getting overshadowed at this board meeting so i guess it’s time to turn my boss into my jungle gym

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.)

bisexualpiratequeen:

I’m trying hard to live by Cat Principles.

1- I am glorious above all things
2- Eat when hungry, sleep when sleepy, play when bored
3- Affection is given and received on my terms and only mine
4- Show displeasure clearly.
5- NO
6- Demand the things you want. If they aren’t given, demand them again, but louder this time.
7- If you are touched when you don’t want to be, say so. If they continue to touch you, make them bleed.

-treat me like a pet, an ornament, how dare they- chain me up and take my voice and use me as a status symbol-

Well, hmh- no more status for them to have, any of them.

Serves them right, let them rot, let them bleed for this, for everything before this, for everything they did- rot them, burn them all, frag them- slag them into nothing–

What would have been a truly impressive tirade went unheard for two reasons. One, there was no one to hear. Two, part of Tempo’s ire was focused on the elaborate structure wrapped around his helm and neck. It looked decorative at first glance, or it had before he’d ripped quite a few gaudy bits off of it, but it had a dual purpose. It kept his voice shut off, and it kept him from hearing anything.

Infuriatingly, he couldn’t do anything about it. They’d figured out early on that any sort of electronic interference would fail thanks to his abilities, so they’d settled for something diabolically simple. A collar around his neck that kept a prong of metal locked in his throat where it interfered with his vocal wiring, fastened to something along the back of his helm, then the rest of the structure wrapped up around his helm, keeping a set of unplugged wires detached.

A familiar punishment. One piece for hearing too much, one for saying too much. Usually temporary, but he hadn’t been able to find the Pit-slagged keys, they’d probably ended up underwater somewhere, and the damned things wouldn’t come off. Mouth opening in a silenced cry of rage, Tempo clawed at the harness one last time, then went still and slumped into the pilot’s seat of his stolen ship.

He took a few moments to strongly contemplate his cane, newly stolen back, but decided against trying to use the blade to cut this off. He would… probably slice his own face off.

Maybe if he got desperate enough.

But he wasn’t at that point yet. He was free, he had a ship, and he was going back to Cybertron. In addition, the empire of his captors had fallen, and he was leaving them in ruins.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start.

fuckyeahfluiddynamics:

Hummingbirds are incredible acrobatic fliers, capable of hovering for more than 30 seconds at a time, even in windy conditions. Their feeding habits are equally impressive. Many species of hummingbirds have a forked tongue, each half of which curls over like a partial straw. As the bird extends its tongue, its beak compresses the space inside the tongue’s curls. Once in the nectar, both halves of the tongue re-expand, pulling liquid in along the full length of the tongue. For the birds, this is a much faster technique than simply sucking the nectar up like a straw. Hummingbirds can lick nectar more than ten times a second this way. For more gorgeous imagery of hummingbirds, be sure to check out National Geographic’s full feature. (Image credit: A. Varma, source; via Aarthi S.)

Source: fuckyeahfluiddynamics

bettsplendens:

Tempo!

Info from before on abilities and name:

https://bettsplendens.tumblr.com/post/160709162874/new-transformers-oc

He’s about the size of Minimus Ambus, little bitty mech.

He used to be very gaudy colors, but he got an upgrade that toned his paintjob down into something professional. What color says ‘professional’ to Cybertronians, I’m still not sure.

His alt is a small spy-drone-esque plane with swept-back wings, and there are two small propellers on his back that transform into place just behind his wings. He can use little jets to fly, or he can use the propellers for quieter, low-energy flight.

Those little whiskers on the sides of his helm act as antennae. They pick up sound, air vibrations, EM fields, and magnetic fields. He can fan them straight out to the sides, but gets compared to various types of cat if he does that.

Which, honestly, isn’t terribly inaccurate. He tends to express affection from a distance, isn’t great at showing it in ways that other people tend to recognize, and will hurt you for not respecting his personal space. He also likes to sit in high places, slow blinks at people he likes, and occupies whatever warm spots he can find without looking ridiculous. Dignity is Important.

Some NSFW info on his interfacing preferences because he gets all sputtery and flustered and it’s adorable:

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