Double, Double
Nov. 15th, 2025 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hat_writes_stuffTitle: Double, Double
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Mystic Tales AU
Characters: Shockwave, Blurr, Mirage, Sentinel
Word Count: 902
Rating: G
Pairing(s): Shockwave/Blurr
Warnings: A little violence, a little body horror, a little fear of being replaced
Author's Notes: Warning for-- a bit of depersonalizing language, at least, and the minor body horror of Being Replaced. Also, as usual, Keferon's magnificent Spellbound AU features suicide and the right to choose your own death as a main theme, although that is not part of the latest update. The latest update has me screaming about tippets, and other tiny clues.
I will scream in the end notes.
Summary: Keferon: *updates Spellbound*
Hat: ... How do I get a ficlet out of the hour-or-two I just spent tracking down proof of my observations...
Five wild ideas as to just who that might be, and where I suspect we might find Blurr, if we looked.
5. What Would Be Most Straightforward
"If you give yourself up to Sentinel Prime," the thing wearing Blurr's face said, "he might let the knight go. You're gonna want to hurry-- you're supposed to be a demon. When he loses his patience and kills that guy, he'll try to summon you, and then when that doesn't work, he'll come looking for me."
4. Who I Strongly Suspect It Isn't
"Oh, well played," the thing pretending to be Blurr said, smiling far too widely with Blurr's face. "Well played. You know, you may be the only person who knows Blurr well enough to spot the difference?"
"What have you done with Blurr?" Shockwave asked, still gripping the thing wearing Blurr's face by the face.
"Did you ever ask Blurr why he summoned you?" the thing said, instead. "Poor Blurr owes a terrible debt, and I suppose he forgot the due date-- or he thought other matters were more important than defaulting."
3. Who Celaeno Said That Might Be
"It wasn't my idea," the thing pretending to be Blurr said, shifting in a strange, fuzzy sort of way Shockwave had never seen before, shedding Blurr's face and voice, becoming softer, more feminine-- a deeper blue, and from the wings, some sort of Insecticon. "Sentinel has my family, the people rescuing them just need a little more time-- it turns out I can't eat my way through all my problems."
2. Who I Vaguely Suspect That Is
"Please," the thing pretending to be Blurr said, features melting into a minibot Shockwave didn't know-- truer blues, blacks, and whites, a rounder helm-- "Please. My name is Mirage, and-- Sentinel has my conjunx."
1. Who I Kind Of Hope That Is
"Frag, mech, you got me," the thing pretending to be Blurr said, still with Blurr's voice, but shifting out of his face, his shape. "He didn't want you to worry. Blurr ran into me and Prowler-- Prowl, you know him-- while he was shoppin' for a medic for you. We got a lead on where the Council is hiding the-- okay, first things first, Prowl's been tryin' to stop the demonizations since right after you got got. We know who's doin' it, and why, and how, but it turns out stopping it is a little more complicated. They're using the Matrix to do it. Blurr figured you'd want that stopped pretty damn quick.
"I told him you'd make me just as quick-- ghost mimics aren't good at being other people for too long-- but he didn't think you'd let him go stick a sword in Sentinel, no matter what holy relic was involved."
0. Where I Think Blurr Is, Unfortunately
Blurr yanked again at the chains holding him to the wall. If he could work them loose, he could get to the door, and if he could get to the door, he could start running. It didn't matter that he didn't know where he was-- it never took Blurr long to run to more familiar territory.
But he wasn't trying to work the chains loose now.
"I told you, I keep telling you-- I destroyed him. The demon is dead," and Blurr had said that hundreds of times, it felt like. "I can show you where I did it-- he left remains, even if it's just ash and dark magic."
"See, that doesn't make any sense," Sentinel said, standing well out of Blurr's reach, "because a demon is a very valuable thing. Why would you go and kill one?"
"Because it was the only thing he ever asked me for-- probably because it was the only way to get away from you." He held up his chained wrists, tugged at the collar locked around his neck. "I can't say I blame him, if that was why he wanted out. I offered to kill you, but no-- I gave him my word I'd end his existence, and Shockwave held me to it."
"The problem is," Sentinel said, examining his fingertips, front and back, "you might be lying to me. If you're lying to me? The thing to do is kill you quick, because then the position of 'hunter in command of Shockwave' is open again."
"I'm a knight," Blurr bit out, "not a hunter. I'm actually bound by my word." This was his own fault. He'd forgotten, in all the excitement, that freeing Shockwave would only fix one or two problems-- and that Sentinel had threatened Blurr right in front of Shockwave. Accidents happen even to the best summoners, he'd said, and I wouldn't want to end up like all your previous summoners. That had been a death threat, and the only lead Sentinel had on Shockwave was Blurr. And Blurr just had to go running around, looking for a medic who knew anything about wings, out in the open.
"And if that's true, if you're telling the truth, and Shockwave is dead?" Sentinel stepped closer, but not quite into Blurr's reach. "Then you haven't just taken something of mine, you've broken something of mine, and I don't think a quick death would really express how upset that makes me."
"Whatever you do to me," Blurr said, suddenly feeling very calm, and very sure, "You'll never be able to summon Shockwave again. He's free."
Does everyone get to meet Primes on the other side? he wondered. If I can't escape, I can look forward to finding out.
ORIGINAL END NOTES: Welcome to the It's Always Sunny Red String Conspiracy Board section.
Tippets Tip-Off: Blurr's tippets (the streamer thingies; they look like tippets to me) change from light to dark literally on-panel in image #16 here. They remain so until Blurr comes in from outside here, when they're light again.
I don't know if this is when the switch happened, but other people noticed it. And when Blurr drinks from Shockwave's cup, there's a color effect that might not just be 'this is what a hot drink on a cold day feels like.'
But also.
Whoever this person is, they've been doing a really good job pretending to be Blurr-- and I say this not because I was "fooled" but because I read the first three pages/images of this update going, "Damn, no wonder Keferon said I read Blurr like an open book." Whoever this is, they're someone who can read Blurr as well as I do.
Almost as well as I do, because what they got wrong-- no, let's start with what they got right.
- The physical, playful, slightly hammy nature of his relationship with Shockwave, as seen where they heckle those street performers.
- That Blurr appreciates Shockwave's physical gentleness with him, which Blurr mentions here and which Shockwave demonstrates here.
- Blurr spends money like it doesn't matter, which Shockwave notes in that same comic, and again here.
- Still on that double-date? A laundry list of insecurities specific to his relationship to/with Shockwave, boiling down to Shockwave not feeling The Same about Blurr.
- And that they'll be gathering "weird ingredients again," same page.
And here's where I'll break for a comment, I think, to natter on about the three things I think our double got wrong.
In fact, aside from Blurr being ticklish, the only thing the double here got wrong that hit me on an initial read-through? Was playing Blurr as an indifferent scholar. He had so much homework, he hated it. Sleeping through a library visit. And a headache from just looking at those spells. Which. That. That's so deliberate on Keferon's part-- not only on a meta level because Keferon has talked about Blurr as having The Neurodivergent Experience (being appreciated for what you can do, but as soon as that's not immediately useful, told to shut up) in most TF canons, but Spellbound Blurr is very intelligent-- speaks three languages well and two more 'embarassingly,' I'm 99% sure he came up with adding the touch-me-not to the death bringer potion on the fly, but he's also dismissive of his own intelligence and non-speed-based capabilities. Right in the Twenty Questions comic, Shockwave compliments his accent and Blurr brushes it off, and the sixth page/image here? You don't chant "stupid, stupid, stupid" to yourself unless you've been made to feel that way. (This isn't hard, why aren't you getting it. You're just not applying yourself. If you'd just do X for an hour a day it wouldn't be so bad. If you'd just try. If you'd just think. Why are you like this.) You'd have some mention of it somewhere official, like in your academic records. Which Blurr has. He went to a very prestigious academy, after all!
So the thing the double missed is, unlike all the things they got right, something that they couldn't have gotten... from just seeing Blurr in public, in passing.
Because in the same breath, almost, as implying he'd kill Blurr to have Shockwave under his control again? Sentinel appreciates aloud how handy it is to have "eyes everywhere." We've known, after all, from the second Monster Hunter comic (warning for subtle eye trauma) that the Council/Senate uses their own people's eyes to keep tabs on "crimes against Primus." Orion knows when to look away.
In conclusion, I believe Keferon has re-engineered Checkov's Gun to fire those fucking bricks. No good theories but good goddamn, look at how well-supported this is by everything else!
NOTES May 1 2025: Man. I half-predicted some shit, but I was way too focused on Sentinel, wasn't I?
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Mystic Tales AU
Characters: Shockwave, Blurr, Mirage, Sentinel
Word Count: 902
Rating: G
Pairing(s): Shockwave/Blurr
Warnings: A little violence, a little body horror, a little fear of being replaced
Author's Notes: Warning for-- a bit of depersonalizing language, at least, and the minor body horror of Being Replaced. Also, as usual, Keferon's magnificent Spellbound AU features suicide and the right to choose your own death as a main theme, although that is not part of the latest update. The latest update has me screaming about tippets, and other tiny clues.
I will scream in the end notes.
Summary: Keferon: *updates Spellbound*
Hat: ... How do I get a ficlet out of the hour-or-two I just spent tracking down proof of my observations...
Five wild ideas as to just who that might be, and where I suspect we might find Blurr, if we looked.
5. What Would Be Most Straightforward
"If you give yourself up to Sentinel Prime," the thing wearing Blurr's face said, "he might let the knight go. You're gonna want to hurry-- you're supposed to be a demon. When he loses his patience and kills that guy, he'll try to summon you, and then when that doesn't work, he'll come looking for me."
4. Who I Strongly Suspect It Isn't
"Oh, well played," the thing pretending to be Blurr said, smiling far too widely with Blurr's face. "Well played. You know, you may be the only person who knows Blurr well enough to spot the difference?"
"What have you done with Blurr?" Shockwave asked, still gripping the thing wearing Blurr's face by the face.
"Did you ever ask Blurr why he summoned you?" the thing said, instead. "Poor Blurr owes a terrible debt, and I suppose he forgot the due date-- or he thought other matters were more important than defaulting."
3. Who Celaeno Said That Might Be
"It wasn't my idea," the thing pretending to be Blurr said, shifting in a strange, fuzzy sort of way Shockwave had never seen before, shedding Blurr's face and voice, becoming softer, more feminine-- a deeper blue, and from the wings, some sort of Insecticon. "Sentinel has my family, the people rescuing them just need a little more time-- it turns out I can't eat my way through all my problems."
2. Who I Vaguely Suspect That Is
"Please," the thing pretending to be Blurr said, features melting into a minibot Shockwave didn't know-- truer blues, blacks, and whites, a rounder helm-- "Please. My name is Mirage, and-- Sentinel has my conjunx."
1. Who I Kind Of Hope That Is
"Frag, mech, you got me," the thing pretending to be Blurr said, still with Blurr's voice, but shifting out of his face, his shape. "He didn't want you to worry. Blurr ran into me and Prowler-- Prowl, you know him-- while he was shoppin' for a medic for you. We got a lead on where the Council is hiding the-- okay, first things first, Prowl's been tryin' to stop the demonizations since right after you got got. We know who's doin' it, and why, and how, but it turns out stopping it is a little more complicated. They're using the Matrix to do it. Blurr figured you'd want that stopped pretty damn quick.
"I told him you'd make me just as quick-- ghost mimics aren't good at being other people for too long-- but he didn't think you'd let him go stick a sword in Sentinel, no matter what holy relic was involved."
0. Where I Think Blurr Is, Unfortunately
Blurr yanked again at the chains holding him to the wall. If he could work them loose, he could get to the door, and if he could get to the door, he could start running. It didn't matter that he didn't know where he was-- it never took Blurr long to run to more familiar territory.
But he wasn't trying to work the chains loose now.
"I told you, I keep telling you-- I destroyed him. The demon is dead," and Blurr had said that hundreds of times, it felt like. "I can show you where I did it-- he left remains, even if it's just ash and dark magic."
"See, that doesn't make any sense," Sentinel said, standing well out of Blurr's reach, "because a demon is a very valuable thing. Why would you go and kill one?"
"Because it was the only thing he ever asked me for-- probably because it was the only way to get away from you." He held up his chained wrists, tugged at the collar locked around his neck. "I can't say I blame him, if that was why he wanted out. I offered to kill you, but no-- I gave him my word I'd end his existence, and Shockwave held me to it."
"The problem is," Sentinel said, examining his fingertips, front and back, "you might be lying to me. If you're lying to me? The thing to do is kill you quick, because then the position of 'hunter in command of Shockwave' is open again."
"I'm a knight," Blurr bit out, "not a hunter. I'm actually bound by my word." This was his own fault. He'd forgotten, in all the excitement, that freeing Shockwave would only fix one or two problems-- and that Sentinel had threatened Blurr right in front of Shockwave. Accidents happen even to the best summoners, he'd said, and I wouldn't want to end up like all your previous summoners. That had been a death threat, and the only lead Sentinel had on Shockwave was Blurr. And Blurr just had to go running around, looking for a medic who knew anything about wings, out in the open.
"And if that's true, if you're telling the truth, and Shockwave is dead?" Sentinel stepped closer, but not quite into Blurr's reach. "Then you haven't just taken something of mine, you've broken something of mine, and I don't think a quick death would really express how upset that makes me."
"Whatever you do to me," Blurr said, suddenly feeling very calm, and very sure, "You'll never be able to summon Shockwave again. He's free."
Does everyone get to meet Primes on the other side? he wondered. If I can't escape, I can look forward to finding out.
ORIGINAL END NOTES: Welcome to the It's Always Sunny Red String Conspiracy Board section.
Tippets Tip-Off: Blurr's tippets (the streamer thingies; they look like tippets to me) change from light to dark literally on-panel in image #16 here. They remain so until Blurr comes in from outside here, when they're light again.
I don't know if this is when the switch happened, but other people noticed it. And when Blurr drinks from Shockwave's cup, there's a color effect that might not just be 'this is what a hot drink on a cold day feels like.'
But also.
Whoever this person is, they've been doing a really good job pretending to be Blurr-- and I say this not because I was "fooled" but because I read the first three pages/images of this update going, "Damn, no wonder Keferon said I read Blurr like an open book." Whoever this is, they're someone who can read Blurr as well as I do.
Almost as well as I do, because what they got wrong-- no, let's start with what they got right.
- The physical, playful, slightly hammy nature of his relationship with Shockwave, as seen where they heckle those street performers.
- That Blurr appreciates Shockwave's physical gentleness with him, which Blurr mentions here and which Shockwave demonstrates here.
- Blurr spends money like it doesn't matter, which Shockwave notes in that same comic, and again here.
- Still on that double-date? A laundry list of insecurities specific to his relationship to/with Shockwave, boiling down to Shockwave not feeling The Same about Blurr.
- And that they'll be gathering "weird ingredients again," same page.
And here's where I'll break for a comment, I think, to natter on about the three things I think our double got wrong.
In fact, aside from Blurr being ticklish, the only thing the double here got wrong that hit me on an initial read-through? Was playing Blurr as an indifferent scholar. He had so much homework, he hated it. Sleeping through a library visit. And a headache from just looking at those spells. Which. That. That's so deliberate on Keferon's part-- not only on a meta level because Keferon has talked about Blurr as having The Neurodivergent Experience (being appreciated for what you can do, but as soon as that's not immediately useful, told to shut up) in most TF canons, but Spellbound Blurr is very intelligent-- speaks three languages well and two more 'embarassingly,' I'm 99% sure he came up with adding the touch-me-not to the death bringer potion on the fly, but he's also dismissive of his own intelligence and non-speed-based capabilities. Right in the Twenty Questions comic, Shockwave compliments his accent and Blurr brushes it off, and the sixth page/image here? You don't chant "stupid, stupid, stupid" to yourself unless you've been made to feel that way. (This isn't hard, why aren't you getting it. You're just not applying yourself. If you'd just do X for an hour a day it wouldn't be so bad. If you'd just try. If you'd just think. Why are you like this.) You'd have some mention of it somewhere official, like in your academic records. Which Blurr has. He went to a very prestigious academy, after all!
So the thing the double missed is, unlike all the things they got right, something that they couldn't have gotten... from just seeing Blurr in public, in passing.
Because in the same breath, almost, as implying he'd kill Blurr to have Shockwave under his control again? Sentinel appreciates aloud how handy it is to have "eyes everywhere." We've known, after all, from the second Monster Hunter comic (warning for subtle eye trauma) that the Council/Senate uses their own people's eyes to keep tabs on "crimes against Primus." Orion knows when to look away.
In conclusion, I believe Keferon has re-engineered Checkov's Gun to fire those fucking bricks. No good theories but good goddamn, look at how well-supported this is by everything else!
NOTES May 1 2025: Man. I half-predicted some shit, but I was way too focused on Sentinel, wasn't I?
