Rumble (AU)

"Destroy what's below and what's above will follow."

Rumble is your basic street punk. He compensates for his small size by always acting tough. And he is tough. Cross him and he'll punch your optic sensors out. He has a quick temper and a mean disposition. The other Decepticons try to keep their distance. Yet, this unpleasant, swaggering little hoodlum is one of Megatron's favorites. Rumble follows orders blindly and hungrily; he always waits impatiently for Megatron's next assignment. A good time for Rumble is shaking a building into a heap of rubble. "I love the sight of crumbling bricks," he says.

Rumble can roll the drum-like constructions in his body to transmit through his feet intense low-frequency groundwaves that have the effect of stimulating earthquakes. His quakes have registered as high as 5.4 on the Richter Scale. For more localized effects, his arms can form into powerful piledrivers that can knock full-sized Transformers off their feet. He is also highly trained to work with explosives.

Rumble's small size severely limits his strength; he can be easily beaten by most of the Autobots in any sort of physical struggle or artillery barrage. Given his power of causing the ground to shatter, however, the trick is to get close enough to Rumble to fight him.

Canonical/Pre-MUX/Theme History:
Rumble and Frenzy started out as "industrial equipment" built by Soundwave for Mining Outpost C-12, until the Senate shut down the site in favor of automating the work involved. Once a furious Megatron kicked off a riot, Rumble and Frenzy joined in the fighting and were soon taken prisoner, destined for Penal Facility H-3. They managed to break free aboard their prison transport, however, and took control of it with Megatron's help. The renegade miners then fled to Kaon, where they got lost in the underground fighting tournaments that ran rampant throughout that city-state.

Four million years ago, Rumble was a member of the original Decepticon raiding party that boarded the Autobots' spacecraft, which then crashed into prehistoric Earth, knocking all the Transformers aboard offline. When they were reawakened in 1984 by a volcanic eruption, Rumble was reformatted by Teletraan I into an audio cassette that fit snugly into Soundwave's chest compartment. As soon as the Decepticons had withdrawn from the crashed hulk of the Autobots' ship, Soundwave deployed Rumble to help Starscream gather materials for construction of a temporary headquarters. Casually brushing off Starscream's constant complaints about Megatron's leadership abilities, Rumble put his piledrivers to work reducing a power plant to scrap to provide the needed building materials.

With their temporary base in place and plans for a new space cruiser ready, the Decepticons began gathering energy from Earth's many available sources. They began with an attack on an offshore oil rig, during which Rumble menaced human worker Sparkplug Witwicky, and shoved the man's son, Spike, into the ocean when he tried to attack the small Decepticon. Soon after, exploiting information stolen from Teletraan I, the Decepticons had Rumble cause a tidal wave that would push the power output of the hydroelectric plant at Sherman Dam to its maximum capacity. Rumble was caught in the act by the Autobot Hound, but in spite of his diminutive size, Rumble came out on top in the underwater battle, burying Hound under a pile of rocks. Rumble and Hound had a rematch during the battle to prevent the Decepticons escaping Earth in their finished cruiser, but this time, Rumble didn't fare so well. The battle was soon called off so the Decepticons could board their ship, but Autobot spy Mirage also snuck aboard and sabotaged the craft in mid-flight. As it plummeted back to Earth, Rumble began freaking out, fearing the impact would destroy them. Luckily for the little guy, he was wrong.

When next seen, Rumble was guarding the Decepticons' space bridge with Laserbeak as they awaited the return of Megatron from Cybertron. Once Megatron had emerged from the bridge, Rumble joined him in attacked the laboratory of Doctor Alcazar and stood guard outside, warning the Autobots to keep their distance as Megatron worked to create antimatter with the lab's facilities. Although Hound and Mirage were able to sneak by Rumble using their hologram and invisibility powers, the Autobots were unable to stop Megatron completing his experiment, and Rumble took part in his leader's subsequent attack on Autobot Headquarters. Megatron's plan was foiled when the Autobots used a remote control device to take over Skywarp's body, causing him to fire the antimatter-powered Megatron at Rumble.

Rumble was helping Starscream and Reflector load energon cubes for transport through the space bridge when a team of Autobots arrived with the intention of using the bridge themselves. Rumble tried to open a crevasse beneath Bumblebee, but the Decepticons were then ordered by Megatron to let the Autobots use the bridge. While they were absent, Megatron staged an attack on Autobot Headquarters, during which Rumble rumbled with Prowl and Sunstreaker. Rumble was later instrumental in the Decepticons' plan to tap the heat energy of the Earth's core, as he smashed through the polar ice to help locate the crystal shaft they needed. In the process, he also uncovered the frozen body of Skyfire.

When the Decepticons attacked the Great Falls hydroelectric power plant, Rumble helped Megatron dispatch the counter-attacking Autobots with an unusual tactic: using the planet's equipment, Megatron channeled the seismic energy of tremors created by Rumble to boost the power of his fusion cannon, and blasted all the Autobots into the river. When the Autobots' newest members, the Dinobots, arrived to save their comrades, Rumble pitted his piledrivers against Sludge, who came out on top by creating a quake so powerful it broke Rumble's piledrivers off! Then, after helping Megatron steal steel in Peru, Rumble lent a hand making energon cubes from the energy of a mysterious meteorite.

Brashly striding through the open front door of Autobot Headquarters, Rumble set about causing tremors throughout the Autobots' base to distract the heroic robots while Laserbeak kidnapped Sparkplug Witwicky right out from under their noses. Rumble then served as something of a "lab assistant" to the Decepticons' new human ally, Doctor Arkeville, as he turned Sparkplug and many other captured humans into mind-controlled slaves with his hypno-chips. Rumble took a perverse enjoyment in watching the human slaves suffer, yanking one through an electric field and tripping one unfortunate up while he was trying to do his allotted job. Rumble monitored the tidal waves created by Cybertron's gravity for Megatron, then joined in the final battle on a tropical island, where he tried once again to open a crevasse beneath Bumblebee, but got knocked into it himself. After Cybertron was moved back out Earth's orbit, the Decepticons set about repairing the damage the planet's gravity had caused to their undersea headquarters. When Skywarp started bossing around Rumble and his brother Frenzy, the two tiny terrors double-teamed Skywarp and brought him to the ground, and would have kept on fighting if Megatron had to not arrived to knock them into line. The battle-ready Rumble then accompanied Megatron to Doctor Arkeville's laboratory, where they were forced to team up with the Autobots to save the planet from his overloading Exponential Generator.

Rumble was next spotted gathering energon cubes at a shipyard in Bali, after which he joined the other Decepticons in contributing his power chip rectifier to a machine that would transfer all their special abilities to Megatron. With these additional powers, Megatron challenged Optimus Prime to one-on-one combat, using Rumble's quake-generating abilities to open a chasm into which Prime tumbled. When the Decepticons' duplicity was revealed, they were all sent falling into a river of lava, Rumble included.

Rumble was standing by as Megatron schemed to take control of "Autobot Spike," then participated in the Decepticons invasion of New York City, where he joined Soundwave and Frenzy in attacking a team of Autobots in Central Park. Rumble and the other cassettes later staged another attack on Autobot Headquarters, in order to distract the Autobots while Megatron and Starscream snuck inside to sabotage their recharging chambers. Rumble tussled with Optimus Prime and Ratchet, sending the two Autobots falling into one of his crevasses, only to have them come bounding out and clobber him when he peered over the edge to observe their fate.

Rumble helped defend the installation the Decepticons were used to experiment with electro-cells, after which he was put in charge of controlling the stolen Autobot invention, the Immobilizer,  and was briefly glimpsed in battle in the ghost town the Decepticons were used as a staging base.

When the Decepticons allied themselves with the inhabitants of the underwater city of Sub-Atlantica, Soundwave observed the Autobot infiltrators Bumblebee, Spike and Wheeljack pursuing the Sub-Atlantican king Nergill into the city's depths. Unable to follow due to his size, Soundwave sent Rumble and Ravage after them, but once they had tracked them down, Rumble was shocked to discover that the insane Nergill was planning to blow up Sub-Atlantica and everyone on it. Rumble tried to stop Nergill by activating his piledrivers and collapsing the chamber, but the mad fish-king dug his way out of the rubble and destroyed his city.

Rumble helped in the Decepticon plan to take over a fleet of oil tankers by firing circuit linker cards at the ships that put them under the control of the super computer TORQ III. When a team of Autobots arrived to investigate, they were captured, and Rumble and Ravage served as their jailers until Spike engineered their escape by pinning the two cassettes to the wall with an electromagnet. Rumble later put his piledrivers into action to help steal the human-built robot Nightbird and helped the Decepticons defend a crevice of korlonium crystals from Autobot incursion.

Together with Soundwave and his other cassettes, Rumble attacked the testing site for the Autobots' new weapon, the Negavator. While Frenzy kept Optimus Prime busy, Rumble was able to get inside the cockpit of the Negavator itself, but before he could turn its power on Prime, Inferno blasted the machine and shorted out the controls. Their mission foiled, the Decepticons fled, but as a parting gesture, Rumble launched a missile that demolished the control bunker and injured Red Alert. The Decepticons made another play for the Negavator only a short time later, this time trying to bury the Autobots under an avalanche caused by Rumble, but enjoyed a similar lack of success.

While searching the jungles of South America for the ruins of their old starship, Rumble started bickering with Starscream, and was highly amused when the air commander was caught in the coils of a giant snake. When their quest ended in success, Rumble indulged in a bout of celebratory over-energizing with his fellow Decepticons that evening.

When the Decepticons fooled the population of Earth into believing the Autobots were villains and they were the true heroes, Rumble kept up appearances by attending a disco with Soundwave and the other cassettes, and genuinely quite enjoying himself. With the Autobots exiled to space, the Decepticons' ruse came to an end, and Rumble was made a slave-master in the work camp that the conquered Central City was turned into a slave camp. When Chip Chase tried to escape, Spike covered his flight by shoving a cart of energon cubes into Rumble, who was in turn sent crashing into a generator and was electrocuted. Although Chip was soon recaptured, it was not long before the Autobots returned to Earth to clear their names and send the Decepticons packing.



Rumble was among the Decepticons who began malfunctioning due to the deterioration of his cybertonium, causing him to uncontrollably deploy his piledrivers and start pummelling Megatron's leg. Once repaired, Rumble participated in a Decepticon mission to Great Britain, where he, Starscream, Ravage and Ramjet all found themselves cast back in time to the Middle Ages by the mysterious, magical Dragon Mound. Falling in with local ne'er-do-well Wigend du Blackthorne, the energy-deprived Decepticons took part in a local jousting tournament as Wigend's representatives, in order to win ownership of the land owned by his rival, Aetheling the Red, as the first step towards conquering the planet. Armed with a lance and shield and riding atop Ramjet, Rumble jousted with Sir Aetheling himself, but was defeated, prompting Starscream to discard chivalry and kidnap Aetheling's daughter Nimue. To repel the inevitable rescue attempt, Starscream had the Decepticons gather the ingredients necessary to make gunpowder; Rumble got the unenviable job of gathering the "potassium nitrate" he required. Eventually, the Decepticons were defeated by Hoist and Warpath, who had followed them back through time, and the wizard Beorht, and were returned to their rightful era.



Rumble was among the Decepticons who temporarily gained the power of an electrum coating, worked in the New Jersey Pine Barrens to create an army of robot car warrior  and was caught up in the menace of the Morphobots.

Accompanying Megatron to the world of the Tlalakans to quash a rebellion among the inhabitants, Rumble wound up falling into their Well of Transformation, which caused his body to warp and change. Not understanding what was happening to him, Rumble begged the native girl Alana to help him, and she informed him that he needed to think of a tree in order to survive. Rumble complied... and promptly turned into one! Stuck in this immobile form on the shores of the well, Rumble was left out of the following battle until an explosion knocked him back into its waters and he returned to normal.

Rumble was dispatched to Cybertron with Starscream and Ramjet to locate the headquarters of the Female Autobots, and used his piledrivers to collapse the base on Starscream's orders. A little later, Rumble helped Soundwave prepare the psycho-probe to scan the mind of Astoria Carlton-Ritz, but the heiress's ability to jinx machines around her just meant that the unfortunate duo wound up being electrocuted by the device. Then, when the Decepticons invaded a movie lot to recover footage that a crew had taken of Dirge carrying a secret cargo, Rumble mistook some animatronic dinosaurs for the Dinobots and blasted them to bits.

Seeking to challenge the Autobots' rule of the roads, Megatron charged Rumble with stealing an assortment of cars and trucks that he could rebuild as Decepticons. His small size worked in his favour, and Rumble invaded a Formula 1 race track, hijacked some bank robbers' getaway car and terrorized a trucker named Possum Brown to get the vehicles Megatron required. Impressed by the rebuilt cards "stunt-driving", Rumble inspired Megatron to name his new creations the Stunticons. Rumble subsequently accompanied Megatron to Cybertron to bestow life to the Stunticons using the mega-computer Vector Sigma, although Rumble found the unassuming spherical form of the computer a bit underwhelming. The Decepticons then returned to Earth, and Rumble helped set up equipment to analyze the Key to Vector Sigma's power.

Rumble travelled to Galata Valley with Megatron and Soundwave to help search for the Pearl of Bahoudin, following which he went on a significantly greater journey, voyaging to the planet Antilla with Megatron, Starscream and Astrotrain. The deserted planet creeped Rumble out, and he was happy when they left, with a new "Lightning Bug" heat ray weapon into the bargain. They also came away with the dreaded Cosmic Rust plague, and Rumble accompanied Megatron as he used the Lightning Bug to spread the disease through Autobot Headquarters. For his final recorded adventures in the 20th century, Rumble battled Starscream's Combaticons, and helped operate Megatron's new fortress, activating its flight systems and turning its weapons on Superion.

MUX History:
Rumble serves Soundwave on Earth.

In 2004 Frenzy and Rumble attacked Houston, Texas, inflicting millions of dollars of damage.

OOC Notes
Since the MUX is based on cartoon canon, Rumble's player is welcome to portray him as two-tone blue if that is the player's preference.

Players
Doomflower has dibs.