Tales of the Intermezzo - Dinosaur Tech A Transformers Universe Story copyright 2007 by Dave Van Domelen based on properties owned by Hasbro =========================================================================== "intermezzo - n. A brief entertainment between two acts of a play." - American Heritage Dictionary "It's getting cramped in here," Zauru complained. "It's *always* cramped in here," Dairu shot back. "We're in Blaster's chest, along with a half dozen other Cassettrons, what did you expect? The Iacon Hilton?" "I don't know, maybe if he'd finally upgrade to a CD player or MP3 player, we might have a different storage situation, and I wouldn't feel so hemmed in all the time." "No sirree! Have you tried being one of those skinny silver disks? You'd snap in half the first time a Decepticon tried even to look at you slantwise! I'm waiting until we can upgrade to data cubes like we were back on Cybertron. At least we don't have to do those stakeouts in the used record stores anymore. Now *that* was cramped and humid!" "And that's the truth. Anyway, if I was organic I'd be sweating like a *pig* in here!" "Tell me about it. And the noise! I had to go to private channels an hour ago, Eject wouldn't stop going on about some Daisuke guy and his ten million dollar arm. Just what I need, some human with 'Dai' in his name getting famous, people are gonna start asking me if I can pitch, I just know it." "Could be worse," Zauru replied. "Worse? What does Dairu even mean, tell me that, Mr. Smarty-legs! Now, Dairyu, I could handle, it means something like King Dragon, what a name to have. But Dairu? Someone tried calling me Dial once, like I was some sort of telephone. I mean, who even uses a dial phone anymore? It's all punchy button things." "Well, Zauru's no prize either. Was Vector Sigma pulling names out of a paper shredder or something? Kids keep asking me where the Power Rangers are. What's a Power Ranger? Still, could be worse. I mean, there's Graphy." "What's a Graphy, anyway? Poor guy," Dairu sympathized with his fellow Cassettron, a pterodactyl who was part of the other dinosaur-themed pair that worked for the Autobots. "I know what a biography is, or a discography, but just a graphy? Yeah, it could be worse." "Yeah, you could be named Slag," Dairu chuckled. "Someone must've really pissed Wheeljack off that day when he made the Dinobots, to name one that. Or Sludge! Not as foul-mouthed, but who wants to be named Sludge, I ask you?" "At least he gets to be a Brontosaur," Zauru sighed. "I had to be an Apatosaur, just because Rewind went and told Blaster there's no such thing as a Brontosaur. Pfui! Everyone knows from a Brontosaur, and I am sick up to *here* of explaining myself to people. Does anyone tell Sludge he doesn't really exist?" "Not twice!" "Not twice! It's hard to tell someone you don't exist when you've stomped them into a two-dimensional manifold! But I'm just a little Apataosaur, I get no respect." "At least Wikipedia doesn't call your family a 'wastebasket taxon,'" Dairu groused. "I barely get to hold onto the Iguanodon genus...not that anyone seems to know I am one! One of the very first dinosaurs the humans ever discovered, and does anyone even realize I'm supposed to turn into one? NO! They call me an Allosaurus, or even a 'long foot dinosaur,' like that's some sort of crack about my feet? Do they look too big to you? Because they don't look too big to me! They're just the right size for an Iguanodon. And do they not even notice the thumbspikes? Hello! I'm not some rancid meat-eater Alice-sore!" "Oh, what does Wikipedia know?" Zauru finally got a word in edgewise. "They know how to drive Rewind up the wall, is what they know." "Hah! You got me there. Did you know Blaster had to revoke Rewind's internet privs for a whole week after he got into ten simultanous whaddyacallem 'revert wars' and nearly took down Teletran's trunk line with all the traffic?" "Serves him right. Whoa, feel that?" "Looks like we're getting out of this sweatbox," Zauru said. "About time, if you ask me!" "And past time!" As the front of Blaster's chest opened, two rectangular blocks emerged and unfolded into minature robotic dinosaurs. "Dairu, Zauru, get these robo-pests off my back for a minute, willya?" Blaster asked as they landed in front of the Decepticon Cassettrons, Overkill and Slugfest. "Not these guys!" Dairu sighed. "I hate these guys." "Me not like you much either, whiny Autobots!" Slugfest snarled, rattling his back plates. "Still, such names they have," Zauru chimed in. "Overkill, now that's a name! And he's a Tyrannosaurus rex, everyone knows what that is. They even know what a Stegosaur is, even if Slugfest isn't quite so good a name." "Oh, it has something to it, a whaddyacallit pugilistic charm," Dairu replied. "I'll give you whaddyacallit!" Overkill snarled, stomping forward and knocking Dairu to the ground with a slam of his tail. "Now, see, if my feet really were that long, I'd still be standing, no?" Dairu muttered as he brought his weapons to bear on Overkill, momentarily halting the Decepticon's followup attack with a laser barrage. "Sorry, what'd you say?" Zauru chattered. "Slugfest's vibrocannons are really rattling my teeth loose here! And have you seen the cost of dental insurance these days?" "Oh, it's a crime," Dairu nodded, jumping up and evading a salvo of motion-seeking missiles from Overkill. "At least we're on the Autobot plan, but I tried to get a little elective work done last year and Wheeljack gave me a line about being too busy, so I shopped it around to some other repair places, and would you believe the prices they wanted?" "I can believe anything, they're a bunch of crooks!" "Die!" Slugfest said. "Pay attention and DIE!" "You suppose we should combine and take care of these two?" Dairu asked. "Do we have to? It always gives me such a crick in my neck afterward, the way my face gets used as one of Legout's feet. I mean, who thought up that design, a mentally retarted masochist with a foot fetish?" "WILL YOU TWO JUST SHUT UP ALREADY?" Overkill bellowed. Everything came to a standstill. "What? We're just talking," Zauru finally broke the silence. "And talking. And *talking.* And TALKING!" Overkill growled. "Sometimes I think I could rend you into component atoms, and the resulting clouds of vapor would be grousing about how the wind is too cold or your free radicals are acting up. We coulda beaten Unicron himself without the damned Autobot Matrix just by feeding you two to the Chaosbringer...he'd kill himself just to stop having to listen to you!" "I don't see the harm in a little conversation," Dairu shrugged. "And it's not like Slugfest is exactly a member of Toastmasters, no? We have to keep up our end and his." "You know what? Slag this. Slag it sideways in the audio sensor. Come on, Slugfest, we're leaving." "What? Oh, sure. I guess. Whatever." As the two Decepticon dinosaurs stomped off, Dairu looked over at Zauru. "I wonder if Soundwave's storage space is cramped too." "I know, those two are so cranky. They musta gotten up on the wrong side of the tapedeck today." "The B-side," Zauru quipped. "Ha! Such a funny 'bot. Come on, it's not a horrible day out, let's go have a sit-down while we wait for Blaster to call us back...." ============================================================================= Author's Notes: This is, I suppose, set between Scramble City and Headmasters, since Blaster hasn't been rebuilt into Twincast yet (and I'm sure the new, larger chest compartment will come as a relief to our heroes!). It was written in response to an AllSpark Fanfic Challenge, to do a story fleshing out the personalities of some of the Cassettes. I can't even find a translation of these guys' bio notes, though, so I made 'em up from scratch. My first exposure to Dairu and Zauru (also called Dial and Zaur) came from a "Transformers: the Japanese Missions" photo book I got at BotCon 94, showing all the Japanese TFs, along with a checklist. Not all of the transliterations were very good, though (i.e. Lodony the Nebulan, more properly transliterated as Rodney), but I never could figure out what Dairu and Zauru were supposed to be. The same book did use the -ryu ending properly for the Dinoforce members, so it couldn't just have been a mistransliteration, right? And then there were Gurafi and Noizu, which I've since seen transliterated as Graphy and Noise. But I thought it was really neat that they were dinosaur combiner tapes, and have always wished they'd been made available in the U.S. As to the species, while the actual toy doesn't seem to support it in any of the photos I've seen, the box art for Dairu clearly shows the thumbspikes of an Iguanodon. I've seen no actual references to Zauru as an Apatosaurus, but figured it made for a good kvetch (yes, kvetch...I tried to make the pair sound as much like stereotypical old Jewish men as possible without actually tossing in any Yiddish). Finally, the title for this story comes from an article in the Columbus Dispatch that I was interviewed for back in grad school, "Dinosaur Technology". It was about things like adding machines, typewriters and slide rules, and I got in for my slide rule collection (which can be seen at http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/slide if you're interested, not that it's relevant to the story). [Later note: I was pointed at the translated techspecs by Derik Smith, and wow, the canonical personalities couldn't be more different from what I gave 'em. :) They're so bright and cheerful!] [Another later note: A couple of people have brought this up, so I suppose I should mention it so as to avoid having to keep responding to it. Overkill is a Ceratosaur (note the nose horn), not a Tyrannosaur. It was meant to be ironic, how Dairu and Zauru are so geeky about their own taxonomy, but don't seem to get anyone else's right. ;) ]