[ i. ]

Even if it was illogical to assume that a robotic alien race would have dungeons and medieval torture devices, chains and guillotines, he had expected it anyway. More logically he expected experiments; painful ones where they pumped chemicals into him and cut him open to poke his insides. He just knew they would love to toy with his body and brain to figure out what the limits of his AllSpark fragment induced eccentricities were. He expected them to film a scream filled torture session and deliver it to the Autobots; he expected them to demand the Shard or the Matrix in return for his life. Even the possibility of them trying to turn him into one of their own kind wasn't out of his spectrum of fears.

He was correct about experiments; they cut him open, pumped him with chemicals; they toyed with his organs and hooked wires all through him. But Sam felt no burning bouts of pain. He ached everywhere afterward, but that was the extent of it. Even though he remained conscious, everything was numb. He was blind to the horrors being acted on his body, face often covered with a plain cloth or, for longer procedures, a television-like visor contraption with nothing too interesting on.

No, it wasn't the candy-coated torture that ate and tore out everything from his stomach to his soul; it was the polite, lighthearted, civil conversations about baseball games and the stock market while he was under the knife.

"Who do you think will win?" repeated Shockwave, while delicately cutting away some part of Sam. He couldn't feel pain, but he could certainly feel the purple menace poke and slice and pull.

"Yankees." He answered.

"Oh?"

"Yeah."

Shockwave waited for his explanation, but Sam refused to grant him one.

"The Red Sox have been doing well this year, though." The Con says finally.

"Yankees are better."

"I believe you are letting bias cloud your judgment."

"…"

"By how much do you think they'll win?"

"A point or two; maybe."

Shockwave didn't respond in a way Sam could register it, so he just continued to stare at the canvas of white in front of his eyes.

[ ii. ]

"Congratulations." Shockwave greeted as he prepped Sam for yet another procedure. Sam didn't find it necessary to respond, instead fighting the usual urge to struggle against the clasps binding him to the table.

"Your prediction was correct. The Yankees won by a single point." Shockwave's voice always surprised him. He expected all Decepticons to sound sinister and evil. Despite its constipated, robotic nature, Shockwave's voice was mellow – distantly interested in whatever he was talking about; fairly easy to listen to. Sam suspected the alien made it that way on purpose.

Sam remained silent through the surgery, instead letting Shockwave recite lengthy "fun" facts about orbital patterns or what star he expected to super-nova.

When Sam was dropped off in his cell, his dehydrated astronaut food was not there. A small container waited for him by his mattress, on top of his stack of slightly outdated NatGeo magazines. When the lid was pulled back he found a cheeseburger, hot enough to be fresh off the oven of some fast food chain restaurant. He picked it up and took it to the opposite wall, leavingit to ruin.

[ iii. ]

"You did not eat your meal."

"…I thought you might have drugged it."

Shockwave made a sound similar to a chuckle as he tightened the binds on Sam's wrists. The visor covered his eyes and he felt the familiar prick of the strange, awareness-non-impeding anesthesia the scientist used. A small controller was slipped under his right hand – Sam had used it before, typically whenever Shockwave's desired topic of conversation required Sam to have access to information. A large digit lightly massaged his scalp.

"Clever boy."

Sam didn't know how to react.

"If you'll look through the files I have prepared, I would like to hear your speculation regarding tomorrow's stock rankings…"

A sealed, poison-proof TV dinner and a small microwave awaited his return that night.

[ iv. ]

"You were correct again." Shockwave congratulated as he once again placed the visor over his face. "I believe our old routines are becoming a bit repetitive and easy for you. I have prepared a collection of questions of varying subject matter. When you are finished, we will discuss them."

Sam wasn't particularly fond of the idea of pop quiz, but Shockwave's rare silence left him with little else to be distracted by.

The next day, Shockwave didn't set him down on the table and prep him for more of the bodily invasion. Instead the mono-optic Decepticon carried him to his office, setting him down by the keyboard and pulled up the problems and Sam's answers from the day before. Shockwave sat and calmly began his lesson.

They continued in that way for a lengthy period of time Sam couldn't quite grasp. Sam would take a test (sometimes to accompany a procedure, sometimes in his spare time), then Shockwave would bring him in to review and discuss. When it came to the point where Sam consistently made prefect scores, Shockwave presented him with another Earth-prepared meal; pasta, breadsticks, a small bowl of salad, and a soda. Though wary, Sam ate them, quietly listening as his captor began discussing basic Cybertronian anatomy.

[ v. ]

"Very good." Shockwave almost croons after Sam answered the last of his questions. They were questions about various element of the Cybertronian body lately; what wires were for what, basic programming, how certain parts worked… The mech brushed his digits across Sam's back, and presented another set.

In his cell, Sam began to mull over the recent events over a bowl of soup and a rerun of the Office on his newly found portable TV. He inadvertently thought of Mojo when chewing a piece of chicken; they'd used chicken to teach the Chihuahua tricks.

The realization Sam came to a minute later kept him hanging over the crude toilet in the corner until his dry heaves left him exhausted enough for sleep.

[ vi. ]

"I'm not your pet," Sam announced defiantly as the Con bent over one of the pieces of equipment the he was hooked up to. "I'm not your pet, so you can stop giving me your treats. I'm not doing your tricks anymore."

"Be quiet for a moment, Samuel." Shockwave murmured distractedly, apparently having not noticed or simply not been bothered by his captive's outburst. "I will give you my attention in a kilk." He fiddled with a knob and for a split second Sam's world went hazy. Shockwave straightened and went about his normal preparations.

"Now, what was it you wanted to discuss?"

"…I don't remember…"

[ vii. ]

"Pay close attention to this trooper's fighting and defense styles." Shockwave had said when he presented Sam with the recordings. Sam watched carefully from his perch by the Con's keyboard, occasionally dragging his hand across the data pad to rewind or fast forward. Shockwave would point out specific details, or Sam would point out a pattern he had noticed.

[ viii. ]

After studying the recordings for days, Sam was led into an arena of sorts. Even through the armor Shockwave created for him, he could still feel the chill. It was dimly lit, the only source of bright light coming from the booth high above him, where the purple Con that brought him there waited patiently for his experiment to begin. A sound caught Sam's attention. Brown eyes met red optics as he stared into the face of the Con he'd seen in the recordings. The trooper yelled furiously and lunged.

Sam was surprised he knew what to do; even more so by the realization he knew how to and could do it. Shockwave's procedures often required some form of physical exertion, but he hadn't yet discovered how much stronger he was than he had been before; how much faster his reflexes were; how much more fun the idea of bringing down a robotic creature several times his own meager size seemed.

He didn't fully come back to his normal state of awareness until he found himself sitting on the chest of the dying Decepticon, toying with the swiftly fading spark in his hands.

Shockwave entered the arena behind him, approaching the boy as he clapped lightly. Sam twisted to look at his not-too-terrible-captor after the spark finally blinked out, the color scheme of the body beneath him turning to a muted, grayish imitation of its former self.

"Clever boy." He acknowledged calmly, but it didn't fool Sam. That single optic gleamed as a frenzied excitement and feeling of triumph practically oozed from every gap in Shockwave's frame.

Perhaps it was only the lighting, perhaps it was only the angle, but in that moment Sam found that the Con currently standing over him would not have been out of place standing over the newly breathing body of Frankenstein.

[ ix. ]

The process was repeated several times, each with less and less preparation prior to the match. It came to the point when Sam received no recording to study at all. He learned to study his opponent as the fight went on; he learned to find their weaknesses and exploit them. It didn't bother him to kill the Decepticon warriors as much as he thought it might. A small part of him offered that by destroying these fighters he was lowering the amount of Cons to available to attack the Autobots. A larger part of him simply enjoyed pleasing Shockwave.

Eventually he was taught how to let them live; how to leave them broken to the point where they might die but didn't; how to draw out the pain. He confessed to his captor-teacher that it disturbed him; he much preferred simply allowing them to die a fairly painless death. It was the first time Shockwave had deliberately injured him. (The first of several more, not that Sam could quite remember them.)

Late at night, Shockwave tended to a newly acquired injury, gently chiding him all the while. When the haze finally lifted from his mind, it felt less like discipline and more like whenever his parents would say they were "disappointed" in him.

It hurt.

[ x. ]

Shockwave gave him recordings of Autobots in battle. Sam's Autobots. He told Sam to pay very careful attention to any weaknesses he spotted, and work out theoretical strategies of how to defeat them. Part of Sam's newly implanted Spark (the last of Shockwave's procedures, and the most necessary; for his own good, of course) contracted painfully, but he did as told. He felt better when Shockwave murmured an approval after he'd gone to present his strategies.

Days later Sam's Spark curled in on itself at a new suggestion.

"Would you like to go visit your friends, Samuel?"

Sam knew. Oh, he knew.

"No." He answered, shifting his gaze away even though his teacher's back was to him.

The vaguely familiar haze (he could never quite place why it happened or what it was) brushed his mind for only a second.

"I apologize Sam, I wasn't paying attention. You were saying?"

"…I said…yeah…I'd love to go…"

[ fin. ]

: x

I have a thing for Stockholm syndrome, I think. D: It's difficult to work with though.

Anyways, all you ever see on here is "so-and-so is captured and TORTURED!111!" It irritates me. Not the torture, but the lack of motive behind it. :/ It's just…completely pointless torture. I mean c'mon. They're Decepticons; they've got better things to do than giggle over people in pain. They would need to have a reason not to do anything other than just kill and be done with it. So, in the wake of my frustration, I spawn this.

There is a high probability that I will do a recovery-based "sequel" for this; as just another chapter, of course. I just have to work out the setup.

Also; My non-humor writing seems sub-par to me, so this is more practice than anything. Hopefully everything was relatively clear in this, but some things might not be. Like Sam fighting; he's tiny, so he can reach in gaps and tears up crucial wires and stuff, as opposed to bashing them around. I didn't really describe it because he's not supposed to fully aware of what he's doing, but eh. May have made it stronger or weaker; as the author I'm slightly biased, so I can't tell. Some criticism if you please? C:

ttfn