Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Six million years ago, During the Great War

"No please!" Starscream had crawled forward onto all fours, his belly plates scrapped against the delicate basalt tiling which peppered their new-planetary home.

"You can't kick me out! I just got here!" Starscream screeched as he was pulled away, two feather-winged cybertronian guards pulled him away from the freshly installed throne, currently occupied by the elected Winglord Sunstorm.

"You misheard me again, Starscream." Sunstorm said, his tone rooted in impatience. "Let me repeat it, so perhaps it'll stick this time."

Starscream fell silent, his optics stared at the ground as the guards at his sides held his cuffed servos outward. He was much too small and short to remain standing as the guards lifted him with ease; his legs had been clasped together, so he could no longer run amuck.

Sunstorm nodded, giving Starscream a grim look.

"Starscream as my ma-ker, I care for you, I do."

"As if! You're sending me out to die!" Starscream snarled, he was looking at every inch of Sunstorm with hideous disapproval. If he'd eye-lasers installed, he would've used them. His own son, his own creation, was killing him.

"Let me finish!" Sunstorm said, snappishly. "I'm not sending you out into exile without any resources. You keep your colonization ship, and your territorial claim of the New Vosnian moon still holds, but you aren't permitted to settle onto New Vos itself."

"But why!? I sacrificed everything for this project! I was the one who found this place! I was the one who ordered the evacuation that saved you all!" Starscream squirmed against his bindings, resembling a hapless worm as Wingstorm Sunstorm leaned forward, his servos clasped together in contemplation and his metallic-wings bristled with a palatable judgement.

"Correction: dear late-sire Skyfire found this place, not you. You merely provided the coordinates."

Skyfire.

The mention of the beloved, late explorer had been monstrously uncalled for and taboo. In Vosnian culture, superstitions surrounded the names of the dead and rarely were they spoken aloud, for fear of attracting the wrathful attention of the spoken, unchambered spark.

But as Winglord, Sunstorm held certain privileges others did not. He noted with satisfaction, how the guards at Starscream's sides squirmed, just barely, imperceptibly. They were very well aware of who Skyfire had been to Starscream and to all of the Vosnian people.

The first King of Vos.

The most respected Winglord who had ever reigned.

And now it was Sunstorm's turn to rule, his only heir and son.

At the mention of "Skyfire," Starscream became inconsolable, his optics dimmed with an unfamiliar vulnerably, a primitive meekness overcame him; his anger collapsed into a pit of despair -- self-pity and confusion united into one. No longer could he upkeep his mental defenses he had grown infamous amongst his people for -- like a torrent from a white-matter hole his emotions slammed into his processor without restriction -- all the stress and death that had led up to that very moment chewed Starscream apart. He had never felt guilty about murder nor any of his wrongdoings before, but then mention of Skyfire had put everything into a horrible, grueling perspective.

'Skyfire would hate who I've become.' Starscream thought. 'This monster...without a spark.' He trembled with humiliation as he imagined Skyfire plucking his head from his shoulders, for his countless sins. He could only envision the spurt of energon gushing forth from his limbless body, swift proper judgement given -- after every terrible action Starscream had taken since Skyfire's death.

Skyfire's death had left Starscream alone -- unattended -- uncontrolled.

Never in life would Skyfire have believed Starscream to be a monster.

But now.

In death.

Skyfire surely did.

Was that who he was when no one was watching?

Was that who he was when there was no one around to stop him?

A monster, he was.

Sunstorm was right.

He didn't belong on New Vos.

He had corrupted the good name of the surviving seeker-people enough.

"Starscream." Sunstorm sounded worried now, his sleek eagle-neck stretched downwards to peer at Starscream a little more closely. Never before had he seen Starscream in such emotional turmoil -- it was as if an epiphany, some sort of enlightenment, had struck him viciously on the head.

Perhaps his creator did have a spark, somewhere buried inside that homicidal mind of his; perhaps, Starscream wasn't completely damned and hopeless to burn in The Pit. Despite it all, Sunstorm smiled to himself, relief flooded his tense wings and frame as he gave the order.

"Take him to Vox." And Starscream didn't speak nor struggle as he was lifted away.

It was a small moon, Vox, tinted green from copper corrosion leaking through the many pockets marring its surface. It was a bitter place, forcing Starscream to oversee New Vos in the worst way possible.

He saw, slowly but surely, as the planet before him lit up with city-lights and pollution. Energon mines went up into every nook and cranny; there was little land leftover for residential development, once the last factory had been established.

He had been invited, just that once, to join everyone in celebration on New Vos.

There could be parades and parties again, now that energon was flowing thick and plentiful.

But Starscream had refused the invitation, not wanting to set foot upon the planet, least he grew mad from knowing how beautiful it was becoming.

Without him.

In the end, Sunstorm had convinced him of his position.

He did not belong on Vos.

He was better off not touching Vos, despite his wanting, his longing.

He didn't want to know what he was missing.

Vox was home.

Vos did not exist.

Starscream pulled himself away from the window he had been ruminating against. He was in his colonial ship, a huge vessel which was the only cybertronian structure or make upon his pitiful green moon. When he had first arrived, the plan was to install a space port and eventually an orbital station around the moon -- at least then he wouldn't always be so alone and bored.

Maybe he would get consistent visitors.

Maybe, even a friend.

But until then, energon production took priority first and foremost. There wasn't currently anything remarkable about the moon, except Starscream himself, of course.

So it was with surprise, and a bit of dread that Starscream saw another colonial ship land not too far away from his own.

"Frag, do they think Vox is just a parking lot!?" Fury and bile began to corrode Starscream's wiring, as he screeched and sped out of his ship's exit. Whoever the visitors were, they weren't welcome -- at all -- not one bit!

'Pirates, they must be raiders, some no good scavengers!' he muttered to himself, tripping backwards onto a rock, and quickly his blind fury evaporated into panic. Suddenly he felt foolish, turning tailpipe back into his ship -- his common sense and survival instincts had returned.

He needed to defend himself!

He was just one bot, stuck on a pitiful moon, but Starscream had gotten out of worse situations before.

His ship's console lit up at his silent command, and the entrances all locked down with extra security gates blocking the halls. It was a blockade defense raiders would eventually get through, but at least it bought Starscream enough time to call-in reinforcements.

:"Comm to Sunstorm! Comm to Sunstorm! Help, I'm being attacked!":

"...."

"...."

The line crackled with static as the message was sent down to New Vos. He could only hope Sunstorm was close enough planet side to hear him.

"Ahh, Ma-ker? What a surprise, you never call me. You're being attacked, you say?"

"I need reinforcements at Vox, now! Some raider ship just landed and I don't exactly have heavy artillery up here!"

"A raider ship, hrmmm?" He sounded strangely smug, for such a serious situation... "It wouldn't happen to be that colonial ship I just sent over there a groon or so ago, wouldn't it?"

"Uhh....no?!" Starscream's face and wings flickered with embarrassment.

"Right, and I'm a grounder."

"Sunstorm! Why wasn't I informed of this!?" It wasn't as if the ship had asked permission before landing -- of course he was going to assume the worst! He was all alone on an empty, defenseless moon!

Sunstorm sighed, "I sent you three notifications to your comm before hand, six of them to the ship's computer; but you didn't keep your communication devices on! I need them on Starscream, else we might run into this situation again! I don't want you shooting at random civilians."

"What? I've never done such a thing!"

"Yes...well...let's not talk about-"

"...."

"Click!"

"....."

Starscream shut down the call, his servos gripped the ends of the ship's console desk in a heated, humiliated fury. He placed his head against his hands and silently removed the ship's lockdown order. He stood there, glaring at his absent-reflection against pristine desk-metal, until a ping against his public comm informed him someone was standing outside his ship.

'Best get this over with,' he grumbled. He wasn't in the best mood to entertain guests, nor was he ever. He'd learned to enjoy his solitude on his castaway moon, and the thought of sharing it with others gave him a helmache; he'd have to ration his energon and supplies again, a lifestyle he had hoped was over.

"W-wait! W-what?" Starscream stumbled over his own talons when he saw just who was outside. He had fallen, but he didn't feel embarrassed, nor even a tad infuriated. No, he felt something positive for the first time in forever!

"Quasar!" Starscream was in disbelief. He called down the ship's loading bay as quickly as he could. He ran, sliding as he scooped up a small, black and white baby cybertronian into his hands -- hugging the startled sparkling.

"Y-you-re alive! Alive! You're online!" Starscream could do little else as he peppered Quasar with affectionate pats and a mind-numbing shriek of joy.

"Okay." Quasar frowned, their yellow mono-optic crinkled in annoyance. "I am happy you're online too...but..." A little black hand smacked Starscream across the face, yet without excessive malice, just enough to get his attention. It wasn't as if a sparkling had the ability to hurt him.

"Put. Me. Down. NOW." Quasar hissed. For a moment it looked like Starscream had become upset, but quickly a smile peeled across his face, suspiciously so.

"Seaspray, catch!" Quasar instinctively curled into a ball, already well aware of how Starscream cherished the habit of throwing her. She didn't go far, barely a meter or two from Starscream's embrace before she barreled into Seaspray. Quasar hummed in mild annoyance, and climbed atop Seaspray's green-brassy shoulders for a better vantage point.

"Hey careful with my wings! It stings when you fling yourself over like that!" Seaspray whined, and Starscream was quick to give him a hug. He was a seeker-mechling, having reached adolescence but just barely -- standing up to Starscream's chest, just tall enough to accidentally headbutt against his chin.

Clack!

"Ahh-ck, watch it!" Seaspray looked bashful as he pulled away, watching as Starscream investigated a new crack in one of his serrated teeth. "When did you get so delicate Ma-ker?" Starscream snorted, and hammered Seaspray lightly atop the helm. "Very funny. Now how did you get so tall? Last I remember, you barely reached past my lower-wings."

"Oh that? Yah, it's exciting! Shockwave is still looking for a cure in energon mixtures, so I get to play guigneous pig before any of the others dare get a sip."

Starscream's good mood ebbed away. Shockwave was around? He had mixed feelings on the matter...

"I'm happy to hear that you are testing things, studying to be a proper scientist and all -- but please, do be careful."

Seaspray smiled, with a curt nod; he was the same copper patina as the Voxian moon -- perhaps it was destiny that he lived upon it...

Quasar was resting her head against her brother's helm as Starscream ushered them inside. "Now you two are obviously exhausted. Make yourselves comfortable, and I'll come get you later. You probably already know where everything is since I'm certain the colonial ships are the exact same make and model." He hugged Seaspray again, and patted Quasar on the head, much to her dismay. He only stopped once he felt a presence behind him, one he didn't particularly like.

Once-upon-a-time, a green-teal and red mech had been his brother: Senator Shockwave, a proud seeker-kin, with wings and talons just like his.

But now.

Shockwave was just a shell, of what Starscream considered family.

"Ahh Shockwave. So good to see you. I was certain you'd gone offline with how long I was stationed here." Starscream's speech was clipped and stilted -- his skills of charisma had waned under his long period of isolation.

Fortunately, Shockwave was a bot who wasn't easily offended, as he wasn't one for lingering conversations.

"I was certain you had perished, after impact with that Tox-En rocket," said Shockwave, with the grace of a speeding train.

"Yes, about that! Thanks for reminding me!" Starscream sneered, not hesitating to poke directly against Shockwave's optic. He stood onto the tips of his talons to stand taller than Shockwave for a few blissful, looming seconds. "How dare you leave me floating in space! I was rotting to rust from all that radiation, and you left me! LEFT ME TO DIE! I flew here, saving myself -- by stupid blind luck!"

Shockwave pushed Starscream away from his optic, with the most minimal amount of force required. Like the sparklings, he also was tired.

"Oh yes. Good idea. Let me expose an entire shipful of sparklings to Tox-En. Good idea. " Shockwave clasped his single servo against Starscream's shoulder -- he'd initiated physical contact, such a rarity; and the unexpected action instantly shut Starscream up, who stood, surprised, stupefied. "You've forgotten Starscream, that you agreed to be left behind. We couldn't clean you from the contamination. It would've spread across the entire ship -- we would've all offlined before we made it to New Vos."

Starscream was trembling as he relived the horrible memory of drifting, lost in space. He had watched as the ship that was his salvation and home sputtered away -- as if he'd never mattered at all -- to Shockwave -- to the sparklings -- each had abandoned him.

He had watched, no, felt as energon leeched away from his charred metal, peeling off his irradiated lines into glowing black-blue pearls that he'd watched spread further and further away from him...beginning their own adventures within the inky blackness of space.

His energon had been the only way he could've possibly orientated himself into the correct direction to follow. Residual vapor-trails from the warping ship had pulled the energon into the invisible path, lighting the way to go as little dots of energy. He'd transformed, painfully, as his legs and arms failed to collapse correctly from his injuries -- an arm had been crushed completely by the transformation process, mangled by it's own transmission belt strip, caught against a gear. It was the type of pain he wouldn't ever forget.

Suddenly, there was a smack against his shoulder, and Starscream was drawn out of that terrible moment. Oil-slick tears had manifested down Starscream's optics. Shockwave had been staring in detached fascination, watching how the thin metal of a face distorted when placed under emotional-pressure.

"Anyway, chat is over. I'm going to recharge now." Shockwave pulled his hand away.

"W-wait!" Starscream wiped his tears, flicking the oil away with a grumble of disgust. He leaned forward against Shockwave for balance, gripping his shoulders in a strange sudo-hug as a new panic took hold of him. "The sparklings! How many are left?!"

Shockwave again pushed Starscream away, with the most minimal amount of energy.

"All of them."

Chapter Text

Earth, Location -- Undisclosed

Starscream couldn't move his servos, his digits had been welded tight against an interrogation table by a magnetic-clasp. The entire surface was made of a purple-gold alloy he couldn't identify.

But it felt familiar -- so horribly familiar.

The fact he couldn't identify the metal in front of him bothered him -- the feeling inane but there all the same. Starscream used to be a scientist -- used to be -- he had been so cocksure he'd understood his position. He was Second In Command of The Decepticons -- he was -- wasn't he?

But across the table stood Shockwave, fiddling with a computer screen and thick wires he couldn't identify the purpose of.

"Shockwave," he tried to say, to ask a question. "What's taking so long?"

But Starscream's audio-cords had been snipped. He felt the cut flowing open as he lifted a split-chin from across his front to look behind him -- he was sure his head had been slammed once or twice against the mysterious alloy-table -- wires dangled from his broken chin like an unconventional beard -- leaking teal energon in controlled little spirts as his clotting-factors settled in.

It was hard for Starscream to see, the ceiling was obscured by an intense white-green light, dangling and squeaking as the unknown instrument swung back and forth, taunting what precious little patience Starscream ever had.

Finally, there was a click and clacker from Shockwave's side of the table and his huge yellow cycloptic-optic seemed to disfigure with some sort of amusement.

"You are free to go Starscream. Don't be late next time." Shockwave gestured towards him with his arm-cannon, causing Starscream to reflexively -- mentally scatter -- his chair tipped backwards -- and he shrieked -- static-hissed like flares -- the noise made more awful by a disgusting splatter of energon. He would've cowered against the floor, but his chair was kept upright by the magnetic restraint of the purple-gold interrogation table.

Seconds passed, and the chair slammed back against the ground. Starscream was still held in place, his wrists had been stretched painfully from the rest of his body, and he could only scrap his talons uselessly against a slippery-smooth flooring.

Starscream collected himself with a quick shaking vent, giving Shockwave his most murderous glare. He wanted to scream all manner of insults -- to mock Shockwave to his face -- but he knew as well as anyone else with a bit of self interest, that making Shockwave mad wasn't within the realm of possibility.

Another click and clacker from the table, and Starcream flung his hands free, almost falling backwards from the momentum of ripping himself from his seat. He wanted nothing more than to attack Shockwave, to blind him in his one eye, but by the time Starscream stood ready to throw his first swing -- Shockwave was nowhere to be seen -- having already retreated deeper into the laboratory facility -- places Starscream did not have clearance nor desire to explore ...much to his chagrin; he had been apart of Shockwave's project long enough! He was Decepticon Second-in-Command, was he not?

He had earned the authority to do as he pleased!

Surely...

But when it came to arguing with Shockwave ...it wasn't worth it...

He had to constantly lie, anyway.

Constantly.

To himself.

That the war on Earth mattered.

To say that the Decepticon-cause was real.

A reality.

And not some delusion of Megatron's.

Some twisted joke.

Starscream was better than most when it came to dismissing his thoughts and worries; he had to be, to fool himself -- to be the actor and commander the people of New Vos expected him to be.

Starscream left the room without the slightest bit of hesitation, already well familiar with the hallways he needed to traverse to get back outside.

But first.

A weary servo cradled his neck and chin, his optics shuttered off for one peacefully long minute.

He needed his vocal-cords replaced.

A twist and turn down the corridor took him swiftly to the medbay. He didn't have to go far; a medbay was always built around an interrogation table -- always.

Starscream hesitated in front of the medical-repair office, knowing full well who was inside.

Each time Starscream saw the bot, he felt nothing but despair, and he kept his head bowed, refusing to look upward, as he was too tired to deal with any sort of emotional outburst.

Humiliated, he was feeling, but he could only ever understand it as frustration.

The medbay doors shuddered open with a sprinkle of dust. Him and Shockwave were the only ones allowed clearance into this section of the facility.

As he jumped up onto a painfully familiar medical-berth, he tried to ignore his surroundings; but from the corner of his optics he couldn't help but spy the bot who took up his attention. He shuddered as he looked away, but with a stubborn huff he stood up and addressed the issue.

The paint was purple and black.

The metal was dented and severed beyond repair.

It was the corpse of Skywarp; and it hung from hooks on the ceiling, spread upright in display as a particularly gruesome trophy.

Skywarp's initial death had been an immense relief to Starscream. Finally then, he could think clearly when he was amongst the Decepticon-ranks.

See.

Skywarp had never been a person.

But Starscream himself.

The situation -- an experiment -- had been due to a misjudgment on his part. Starscream had made the mistake of turning his back to Shockwave during a time of vulnerability and had paid the ultimate price for it. Funny, a backstabber like Starscream had never conceived of the idea that his own brother would backstab him.

'It's not like we share the same coding, do we?' he sarcastically thought.

Never in all the millennia upon millennia that he'd known Shockwave, did he ever think his soft-spoken and warm-sparked brother was capable of hurting him.

It was unfortunate those days were over.

Trust was one thing.

Forgiveness was another.

Starscream didn't really have either.

But he had neither the resources nor mental-fortitude to afford anything else.

He'd forgotten what was considered normal.

Backstabbing had turned into an acceptable tradition -- a reminder that they weren't family.

Not really.

Not anymore.

Whatever Shockwave had been before his mutilation, the "Empurata-surgery" from the pre-war government had thoroughly destroyed him; there had simply been a delay in Starscream admitting such.

His brother died.

And he wasn't coming back.

So it had been such a joyous day when Skywarp had died, just as it had been a terrible day when Skywarp had onlined.

Shockwave had split Starscream apart, chopping his filthy servo through his spark chamber, and there he'd splintered and wedged Starscream's conscious-energy into three separate bodies: Skywarp and Thundercracker respectively, and Starscream himself, albeit as a more distorted twisted-version, full of hate and fear.

The one he was currently trapped in.

Starscream trembled, again a terrible memory, and in the quiet of the empty medbay he could dare be himself once more.

He could unite with the parts he'd lost, without worry of interruption from meddling outside forces.

What was Skywarp to him?

Skywarp was his passion, his love, his joy, his unadulterated emotions.

Skywarp was the guilt he'd feel for murder, and so much worse.

He'd tormented Autobots and Decepticons alike, eating their spark-chambers like energon-cakes, each a delightfully sweet and fluffy delicacy.

But there was no food here. Skywarp's chamber had been set aside and the wild yellow-green spark was waiting patiently in a shielded holographic-bubble. It was small enough for Starscream to hold in one servo, yet he cradled it with two against his chest, afraid to drop it.

Soon.

Soon they'd be together again.

He'd be more of himself.

He would feel.

He would heal.

He would have friends again.

Once his spark reunited with Skywarp.

But the timing wasn't right, else he would've already done it. His tumorous responsibility as Decepticon Second-In-Command didn't call for emotional-states beyond hate and fear, and Starscream couldn't afford to compromise his position.

If he absorbed Skywarp right then and there, and regained his full range of emotions, every Decepticon within the vicinity of himself would grow suspicious, and that might as well have been a death sentence. Besides, he didn't want to bet on the slim chance he would feel guilty for all the pain and suffering he continually caused others -- such a sudden infliction of a conscious would put him out for days, perhaps even months.

Beep beep beep

An internal-alarm went off in Starscream's head. He was running behind schedule and he was expected outside. Sighing, he pressed a finger against his fractured chin and he remembered why he'd detoured to the medbay.

'No one can see me like this.' He thought.

The repair was simple enough; a tiny scissor emerged from one of his clawtips, and he began trimming excess flayed wires, much like how a human delicately trimmed a beard.

But unlike a beard.

It hurt.

It burned.

Painfully he ripped the split-ends of chin apart further, so he could smooth out a dent from inside his metal using a finger and some scrap-filler.

It burned, of course it did; but it was a satisfying one, as he welded and glued the snappy-ends together.

He had ripped out the flayed wiring entirely -- it wasn't necessary to get replacements that very moment -- he would simply have no pain receptors on his face for a while. Of course, he'd have to get new wiring done eventually, as energon flow had been partially cut off from his neck to his head, and it wasn't a good, sobering feeling.

Beep beep beep

Again his annoying alarm rattled within his internal systems, and so he darted out of the room, still splattered with energon.

Quickly, Starscream rounded a corner, skating with his ped-jets to gain speed down the hallway he knew would take him outside.

Huge metal-maws slid open from down the hall, long expecting Starscream's exit. He stepped outside, onto dirt and gravel, almost stumbling, relieved to be out of that scrap-pit.

"Fragging finally." He heard a voice mutter from above and two mechlings stared down at him from both of their respective corners, each perched atop a boulder.

"Took you long enough. What happened?" mumbled the orange-white one, jumping off his rock -- his name was Jetfire.

"Shockwave wasn't happy with my report today-" Starscream would've said more, but Jetfire suspiciously eyed the energon on his chin, before enthusiastically running up to him and leaned in for a hug, which Starscream let happen -- slowly, gingerly, he returned the gesture. His wrists ached from being magnetized for too long, but somehow, a hug made him forget about all the little nicks and pains...plaguing his systems. His chin still burned, but he could only feel happy as he held Jetfire close.

His child.

One of the many-few to survive the war.

Starscream and Jetfire stood underneath a rocky overhang, simply holding each other with their optics closed. Oily acidic cybertronian-tears silently dripped down Jetfire's face -- the reunion was bittersweet -- the moments always too short and scarce.

Jetstorm, a grim navy-grey, sat atop his rock watching the two with a growing sense of disgust and impatience.

Storm didn't understand hugs, nor did he want to. His brother had a knack for acting dramatic and strange...just like their creator...dear Ma-ker Starscream.

All he wanted to do was to get himself and his brother back to the Autobot-base, before anyone began to question why the twins where out, missing. Both his brother and himself were still new recruits, technically on a probation period before they officially became stationed on Earth. Jetstorm wasn't worried about being kicked off planet; it wasn't as if the Autobots were spoiled for choice when it came to gaining new members.

But still, these outings grew increasingly risky. Storm could scarcely recall a more stressful time, than the anticipation he felt about the idea of being discovered at any moment.

The Autobots would only accept their excuse of "going on an unscheduled morning-flight exercise," so many times before Optimus himself would get suspicious -- that, or his tolerance for their random outings would waver completely. Arcee might be sent to retrieve them, and wouldn't that just be a blast to witness; how would they explain Starscream casually hanging out with them, two Autobot-mechlings, to Arcee of all bots? She "hated his guts," as the human children once said.

Either Arcee would come -- that, or perhaps Ratchet would make them clean the gutters and showers again, as punishment.

Storm angrily sniffed at the ideas, unnerved by all the horrid possibilities, and so he crossed his arms, just like in the petulant-manner he saw the human children Jack, Miko, and Raf occasionally do.

'We are going to be discovered, if you slags don't hurry it up!' he thought.

Storm stopped himself from shouting at the two to "get a move on," least they hugged even longer to spite him. Eventually, Jetfire did let go, smiling brightly up at Starscream, who curiously also smiled back, but he was tense with worry and bitterness, which he carried as he stepped forward -- hunched over with obvious exhaustion.

Jetfire scraped residue away with his claws -- his oily tears -- from the corner of his optics. He had the courtesy to look bashful as Storm glared, when he walked past.

They where surrounded on both sides by moss-covered rocks -- the entrance to the base was well-hidden with foliage as the trio climbed their way upwards and out of the mock-cliff cavern. Storm was the first to step into the sky and to transform into his alt-mode, an unassuming fighter-jet, which circled impatiently.

Jetfire sighed,"I guess that's my que."

Starscream gave him a reassuring pat on the head -- they would see each other again.

Soon.

"Um, Ma?"

'Ugh, at least he doesn't call me anymore by one of those dreaded Earth-words.' Thought Starscream. Occasionally, the twins and their siblings teased him, calling him "Mama, Mom, Mother, or Ma-Commander."

'Strange, how humans have sounds so similar to Ma-ker.'

"Yes, sweetspark?"

"Do you think this will ever stop? Will we ever be a family again?"

Starscream stiffened, looking Jetfire up and down with a grim clarity.

"I...I won't lie to you Jetfire. Our predicament...makes that unlikely."

Jetfire always asked those questions every time he saw Starscream, refusing the same answer given again and again.

The hope in his optics simply refused to dim no matter what he said -- and Starscream always reluctantly tended that fire -- least it went out.

He bent down on a knee, hugging Jetfire once again. "But I will never give up trying, I promise you that."

Chapter Text

"Our new home, New Kaon." Megatron had announced the name of the newly constructed Darkmount base on planet Earth some hours ago. Since that moment, Starscream had been unable to move from his secluded berth.

He had relocated his living quarters from the Nemesis to an undisclosed Darkmount storage unit, all the way down on basement level. It had taken forever to discreetly outfit his new recharge station, as he had to sneak in large and strangely shaped parts underneath Soundwave's ever watchful gaze. It was the main reason he had chosen to live on the basement level, instead of closer to the flight deck, as would be expected of an "Air Commander."

The basement level was the only level undergoing constant reconstruction and maintenance. Starscream, if ever questioned, held the pretense that he was helping the vehicons by overseeing their construction.

And another reason being that Starscream wanted more privacy, which was the truth. Surely, nobot could fault him for that...it was just a shame his reputation preceded him. That, and he could potentially eat as much vehicon spark-chambers as he pleased. Staying healthy as a sparkeater was hard to keep discreet.

"New Kaon he calls it?" He scoffed, drawing a greasy line of wax across the surface of where his reflection was supposed to be. The mirror hanging in front of him was a shining, clear crystal -- one of his few beautiful possessions. Starscream refused to believe that his precious mirror was now useless after becoming a sparkeater -- it was still beautiful -- it was still his oldest treasure. In contrast, the walls of his room were black and smooth as polished obsidian, but it was also distinctly ugly, devoted to a pure utilitarian-use.

He stared at his mirror, stubbornly imagining that his reflection was in front of him, showing his complete, full-spark splendor -- before Shockwave had chopped him up into three miserable bots.

Before he had to play the part of Skywarp and Thundercracker.

He'd been beautiful.

His optics has been a rich amber, denoting one old and wise.

Full of pride he'd been, but joy also.

With armor of blue-gold, orange-red, and silver, each color mingled together like a pile of treasure.

Starscream kneaded a golden residue against his claws, beginning the process of polishing his wings and innermost metal -- anything to distract from the humiliating sting of the recent loss on Cybertron...

The Omega Keys he had worked so hard to collect...

The Omega Lock too...

Each relic had been destroyed...

And Cybertron remained a rusted, corroded mess -- the doomed corpse-husk of Primus himself.

It was a disgusting thought.

In one fell swoop, everything Starscream had ever given the Decepticon-cause had been unceremoniously washed away, as if his achievements had simply never existed. Megatron certainty saw Starscream through such a lens...and he grimaced at the idea of having to continue to answer to such a slag-brained lump of leadership.

So he wouldn't.

He'd leave Megatron in the pit he'd dug himself in.

But he was flying out.

Simple as.

He smiled as his imagined-reflection showed his disgust of Megatron -- his only constant companion on the miserable dirt-ball called Earth -- himself.

Starscream continued to polish his wings, caking on the wax thicker to almost wasteful proportions.

But perhaps, he rationalized, "It might be my last proper shine, in a while." He muttered, his clawtips twitching as he applied the wax.

Starscream had made the final-decision to leave the Decepticons.

Finally.

He would be free.

Not right away -- the time wasn't right.

Of course.

It never was.

Unfortunately.

Starscream had learned from his debut as a rogue, the reality of living alone, solo on planet Earth. It had been an experience as miserable as a funeral-smelter, and one he would do anything to avoid repeating.

Even if he did have "allies," now.

The whole concept felt wrong.

Somehow.

He polished deep under a wing towards his side, and a twinge of pain caught his attention. Megatron had crushed him under a vicious stomping-boot once, and the area had never healed right. It was the type of pain too tame to ever point out to the medical staff, least his reputation suffered; yet it was too elusive to fix on his own -- it was perhaps a pinched nerve-wiring or his nano-repair system had malfunctioned in the wrong direction -- whatever it was, Starscream was still waiting for the pain to go away, even after centuries.

His cleaning mesh-rag came back predictably filthy and he couldn't help but compare the tarnished stains to Megatron's hide. How often did that brute clean? Megatron's armor used to be a glittering silver, but now he walked around with a coat of disgusting soot. Did he think no one would notice his tarnish, that he, Megatron, was caked in filth from floating in space and rolling down mine shafts?

No one would ever have the bolts to tell Megatron directly, that his fashionable decision to change from silver to black didn't suit him -- not even Starscream himself; for fear he would wipe a mesh-rag against that armor to prove his point, and it would remain black as ever -- stained -- and it would reveal Megatron to be permanently tarnished.

Just like the Decepticon-cause.

The pitiful battle on Cybertron had been the most embarrassing defeat to date.

Four millions years of war, or had it been six million?

Either way, the last battle had been their most important battle.

The one that would end the Cybertronian Civil War.

It was supposed to be the battle of battles, the grand finale to their glimmering finish!

What a joke!

Starscream scratched a nick into his freshly-waxed chassis with a careless claw. He could only stare, his work again...undone.

No.

It was the start of the same old struggle.

The same old cycle.

And Starscream wasn't foolish enough to fall in line.

Not again.

That's what he told himself.

Each time.

But now it was different ; now he had allies on Earth he could count on.

It was about time New Vos decided to support his efforts.

Too bad they had sent bots only from Vox the moon.

Fraggin' sparkeaters!

Bots he didn't want anywhere near the war!

Starscream tossed away his empty wax container with a careless clatter. But it was funny, the irony was palpable -- after so long of pining after the concept, he finally did have an army -- that he didn't want on Earth! New Vos sent him his children from Vox -- bots he couldn't just throw away, to fight a pitifully fake Civil War...

Cybertron was dead.

And it wasn't coming back.

There was nothing left to fight over.

Primus was dead.

Why couldn't anyone see that!?

Starscream clasped his servos against his face, dragging them not-so-gently down to his chin, leaving two huge, cloudy smears across his face.

He would have to restart his waxing session again.

No.

Starscream didn't have allies -- just more burdens.

Chapter Text

"Jetfire!"

"Jetstorm!"

"Come out!"

"I need to talk with you two!"

A singular voice cut through the forest, booming as each word was shouted from approximately half a mile away.

The voice sounded like Optimus Prime.

Two juvenile mechlings sat hunched over their knees -- one blue, the other a stark orange, each with black accents. They had hidden themselves within the entrance of a cave, the towering curved rock-walls the only structures generous enough to hide something as large and reflective as a cybertronian. The native wildlife on planet Earth was much too small, and the tiny pointed pine forest offered little to no shade nor cover from sight. A mechling's leg was easily twice the width of a tree's trunk.

"Jetstorm!"

"Jetfire!"

The voice shouted again, closer and louder than the first time.

And now the voice sounded more like Ratchet, the Autobot Medic.

A flock of birds panicked from trees ahead. The two mechlings looked at each other -- twins in all appearances but their visor-optics and contrasting colors.

"Ugh, why is Starscream so loud today?" whispered Jetfire, almost hissing as he spat out the words. His twin Jetstorm, typically called Storm, said not a word in turn -- until a minute had passed. "Because that's not Starscream." He sneered at his brother, insinuating that he was stupid.

'Creeesh'

'Creeesh'

The foot steps of a giant mech vibrated against forest ground.

They both froze like petrol-rabbits, having little means of defending themselves if the situation came to blows.

'Creeesh'

'Creeesh'

A dark blue mech leg, encrusted with glowing navy accents stepped out of a pocket of brush, and the mechlings remained frozen in fear -- they didn't have a battleplan simulated from their trainings regarding tackling this particular Decepticon-warrior.

And the mouth of the cave had trapped either of them from taking flight.

Not that flight would've given them much of an edge -- Soundwave's winged claw-arms dug into the cavern ceiling and his strangely-thin bladed wings flickered with deadly intent.

"O-oh, h-hi....S-Soundwave, right?" Jetfire tried to sound casual, tried to project confidence as a metal shadow blocked the cave entrance, and their only exit. Soundwave loomed over the two with an irritated electromagnetic field, a common method of communicating emotions and expressions among cybertronians --- and Soundwave was in a dire, cloudy mood if Jetfire read the stranger's EM field correctly.

"What brings you out here, to the middle of nowhere?" He sucked in every ounce of charisma he had, as if he and his brother weren't Autobots fighting for the other side -- their connection to Starscream was unknown to everyone else -- and had to stay that way. Soundwave could easily kill them and earn a win for the Decepticon-cause. Jetstorm on the other hand seemed to accept his death rather quickly, as he hugged his knees impossibly close and ducked his head against his chest -- not wanting to see the killing-blow that would turn him into a pile of scrap.

"Please don't kill us!" Jetfire stood up suddenly, his servos in the air as the universal sign of surrender. Jetfire stepped backwards, slightly closer to his trembling brother, as if he had any hope of actually shielding Storm from harm.

"Please don't," he repeated.

And Soundwave cocked his massive visor to the side, an empty black screen running any number of malicious calculations underneath.

"Query: Why are Autobot-younglings out alone?" Asked Soundwave, for once in his actual voice, the question too specific to splice together an alternative sentence from his many mimicries of other voices, considering the time-constraints.

"Um, we just like to be alone sometimes and to talk." Jetfire honestly said. "Isn't that right Storm?" he shook his head as he glared down at his cowering brother, feeling second-hand embarrassment from his behavior. "Come on, at least get up and fight if he's gonna kill us!" he hissed.

"So just the bare minimum like always?" Storm scoffed.

"Yes, exactly!" And Jetfire kicked his brother in the head, a few times, enough for him to make a point, and a glaring dent. Still, Storm looked resigned to his fate, determined more than ever to cower, rolling over onto his back to stare at Soundwave, already visualizing himself as some gutted and skinned earth-mammal; or as a crushed earth-insect, but he couldn't decide which was worse.

But as the seconds ticked by, no one moved.

No one died.

Finally, Storm found his courage.

"So, are you going to kill us or not?" snarked Storm. "Because the anticipation alone is already killing me."

"Shut up Storm!" And Jetfire moved to kick his brother again, but then Soundwave took a menacing step closer... and they both froze up.

"Jetfire: Should not hit his brother." Said Soundwave, in a strangely soft tone, mimicking a human-mother.

"What! Why? So you can rip us apart longer?" And Storm stood up and spun around in a sudden flurry of wind, a whirlwind which launched him deeper into the cavern like a slingshot, leaving Jetfire to stare at a mocking dust cloud, as if to say, "You should've ran faster."

"You would leave me to die, wouldn't you." It wasn't a question, but a statement, a mere fact. Jetfire and his brother weren't as close as they pretended to be around the Autobots. They each had many brothers to spare -- it wasn't as if one would be missed.

Soundwave was his problem now, his and his alone -- Jetfire cursed his luck.

"Jetfire: Your brother mistakes me for Shockwave." And the blank visor flickered with a human-emoticon smile. Soundwave's EM field shifted into a more curious, harmless projection.

Jetfire grimaced, preferring his enemies to be predictable and hostile, not fake-friendly in the most unnerving of ways. And the reference to Shockwave...caught him off guard. He hadn't expected for Shockwave to reintroduce himself as alive to the Decepticons quite yet...

"Look can you p-pretty please, just pretend you didn't see us? We'll do the same for you, honest." Jetfire smiled nervously with all his sharp little teeth, akin to a vampire bat's. "Do we got a deal?" Bravely, his snaked a servo forward, his arm shaking and unable to hold steady.

Surprisingly, Soundwave seemed to consider the offer, swiveling his massive visor side to side, thinking.

"Declined: Jetfire comes with me."

Or perhaps, it was simply his sense of humor.

"W-what!?" Jetfire stuttered.

It all happened so quickly.

Two long arms ensnared Jetfire on both his sides, binding his arms and legs tight against his metal frame.

"Zzzzsssssssseeeeettttrrrr!"

He would've yelled, but a bright blue electrical discharge flared, frying his vocal cords and scrambling his senses.

At first Jetfire had thought the electricity had come from his brother -- that he'd gotten over his coward's kick and returned to rescue him like out of some human-holofilm -- as the ability to shoot lightning was a secretive one-percenter quirk of Storm's -- an ability not even the Autobots knew about and had recorded in their logs; but as the arms of Soundwave reeled him in like a spider into a twisted hug he realized he'd been mistaken. Soundwave registered as two giant black cobras with fangs of thunder within Jetfire's confused image-compiler; and he was electrocuted again, and again -- Soundwave's arms convulsed like slippery electric-eels.

Jetfire cursed his brother and his coward's spark.

Jetfire wanted to kick and scream, to pound a sharp crack into Soundwave's pristinely blank face.

The image of his terrified face reflected off of Soundwave's visor-screen, a grim black-mirror foretelling his future.

And then Jetfire flopped forward, limp.

"Comm to Vehicon #543: Soundwave requesting one-way groundbridge to sent coordinates, back to the Nemesis."

The violent teleporting reality-rip of the groundbridge was bright and swift -- all Soundwave needed to do was to take a single step forward and he was already back on the Nemesis, clutching his hapless prey of Jetfire close.

"What is that!?" Megatron boomed from behind Soundwave, and Jetfire was almost dropped to the floor in surprise. Vehicon #543 had teleported Soundwave directly into Megatron's throne room...a complaint he swiftly noted into the Vehicon's newly created punishment-pending folder.

"Lord Megatron: I present the requested Autobot prisoner."

Megatron glared from atop his throne, half standing from surprise at Soundwave's abrupt entrance.

"Good work Soundwave! You are the one warrior I always trust to make up for Starscream's incompetence."

Though as Megatron looked the prisoner over, a mysterious orange-mechling; his good mood soured. He'd been hoping to get the blue one.

"Where's the other one?"

"Jetstorm: Will be retrieved. Query: Megatron only requested one prisoner? Resources are set to be spent for only one prisoner of war."

"No need, you are correct." Megatron waved a dismissed servo. "I remember how pragmatic you are Soundwave, that too is admirable." Soundwave's visor flashed a happy burst of yellow and he saluted Lord Megatron. "Plus, Jetstorm's distress over his missing brother will distract Autobot sensibilities -- a missing mechling will cause Optimus Prime to lose recharge, I guarantee it." Megatron mused with sadistic-glee. "You didn't kill the blue one did you?"

"Negative: Jetstorm remains alive. Prisoner Jetfire: Will serve as the perfect bait to capture or to terminate a random Autobot."

"Exactly Soundwave! Be sure to put him in the prison-cell closest to Knock Out's Clinic. I suspect Shockwave will begin tinkering with him immediately, and I don't want him to die from something tame like a severed energon-line."

Soundwave simply nodded in response and he walked past Megatron, out of his throne room. As the entrance doors slid closed, Soundwave stopped walking and looked at Jetfire's limp frame up and down, with a twinge of regret. A sad emoticon flashed for but a second upon his visor, before he remembered his professional veneer.

Soundwave deposited Jetfire into the selected cell, with hallway entrances leading to the clinic and to Knock Out's personal quarters.

There was also an empty supply room Shockwave had been seen recharging in earlier...Soundwave was baffled as to why he didn't recharge in his assigned quarters and instead chose an uncomfortable corner...it was becoming a problem, almost suspicious behavior enough to bring up to Megatron...but not yet...

Regardless...Soundwave speculated that the mechling wouldn't last long upon the Nemesis. Shockwave's experiments tended to be merciless in the pursuit of hypotheticals... yet , Soundwave allowed himself to cultivate some hope that the mechling would survive. Cybertronian children were incredibly rare and Megatron had stated an interest "in raising an heir" out of either Jetfire or Jetstorm for that implicit reason. Unlike many bots, Soundwave liked to think himself "optimistic" about the future of the cybertronian-people, and so reasoned, that Megatron wouldn't allow a precious child to die when their species was so close to extinction...the child would be maimed... possibly ...but not killed...right?

Soundwave closed the cell-door, and checked various security functions; everything was typical for the area -- save for the orange mechling yet to wake up.

Chapter Text

'It all happened so fast,' Storm thought. He ran a servo through the scorched dirt-patch his brother had been standing in but a minute ago. He pulled thunder-shaped lumps from the dirt -- evidence of massive electrical discharge having struck the earth.

Storm had been too deep and far away to see what Soundwave had done, but from the sounds, a struggle had echoed throughout the tunnel. Obviously it had been extremely violent, energon-ash had splattered everywhere, reaching stalactites above; and Jetfire had screamed so loud ...there was the smell of flayed wire...and pieces of broken plating.

The stench of ozone gas was everywhere -- a sour, burnt chlorine-smell.

Storm began to kick at the scorchmark, his growing emotional-turmoil apparent.

No matter what he said at times.

He never wanted his brother gone.

Not completely.

Not dead.

Storm began to seek a way to cope with the situation, his brother was gone, maybe dead; but he still felt an intense urge to do something, anything!

Quickly he came up with "something" to soothe his spiraling emotion-regulator. He came up with a "stupid-rationalization," -- the rationalization being that if he hid the disturbance from view...it would no longer exist! He kicked the energon-ash out of the cave entrance, dispersing the smell and orange paint chips out of the cavern as best he could.

He had to do "something." Anything.

But there was nothing he could think to do...to get his brother back...to make the situation better.

Except.

The cave hadn't been just any cave.

When Storm had ran, he half-expected his brother to follow -- but he should've known Jetfire was always too stubborn to back down from anything -- even a mech right about to kill him.

Stupid slag-headed Fire.

If they had both ran -- if they had both retreated -- like their training taught them to do -- they would have both made it!

Storm was sure of it!

All the training simulations should've taught Jetfire better; Storm sulked, wanting to direct all his emotions out as anger, to blame his brother's own stupidity for his capture. Storm buried his frustration and guilt through gritted teeth, just like he'd done to that ugly scorchmark.

Storm turned back into the caverns, walking the way he'd intended to lead his brother earlier -- the cave wasn't just a cave. He knocked a fist against a boulder and was reminded of how humans treated doors, and then flatly rested his servo against the surface for a few seconds -- it flashed a positive confirmation beep and the boulder flickered away, reveling it to be nothing but a hologram.

It soon flicked back to normal behind him.

A hidden path winded deeper into the cave and Storm began running, not wanting to waste anymore time. He came to a laboratory door, one of many hidden throughout Earth's mountains. He waved a servo in front of the camera of obvious cybertronian-make and tapped repeatedly the button to talk through the comms-speaker.

"You are late."

"I know, I'm sorry! Fire got captured, and Starscream never showed up!"

"Hmmm, yes how disappointing; I saw on my hidden cameras. I expected Jetfire at the very least, to run. You two could've used the holographic boulder to hide behind."

The lab door slid open with a rusty-buckle and out stepped Shockwave, his yellow-optic seemed to discolor into an ominous orange in the low-light environment of the cave. "We will discuss rescue operations this meeting. Come."

"And what about Starscream? Did something happen? Did Megatron finally kill ma-ker?" Storm gasped as he spat out all his questions at once.

That was one thing Shockwave never seemed to mind -- bots asking endless questions. Storm suspected he liked answering them, no matter how mundane. 'Perhaps it makes him feel smart.' Storm thought.

Shockwave clicked and hummed to confirm he was amused, but no EM field ever flickered outward from the bot -- he had no true emotions running throughout his processor. Shockwave simply mimicked what he thought was appropriate for a conversation. It was unnerving to most bots, but Storm was just glad to find someone who was so nonchalant about horrible situations. Shockwave was a level-headed bot who would make a plan to rescue his brother in the most efficient, safest way possible; other bots would just say that the drawn up plan would be "too dangerous" or "too time-intensive," stupid scrap excuses like that!

Storm ran into the base past Shockwave, who wasn't alarmed in the slightest; the jet-twins where more familiar with Shockwave's hideouts on Earth than even he was.

"What?! There's no time for tests Shockwave, are you crazy!? You have to save my brother!"

"Correction: There's always time for tests." Shockwave paused, to make a point. "And. I am. not. crazy."

"Soundwave got him! You saw the cameras, you have to..." Storm trailed off as Shockwave raised his arm-cannon towards the ceiling, as if raising a servo, a common gesture he used to "politely call for quiet," during the meet-ups held at every opportunity. Waving the cannon around was the only thing that shut Starscream up , on such occasions.

"Don't worry Storm, Jetfire isn't dead, just captured. Ensuring your brother's safety will be easy, as the Decepticons have already fully accepted me back into their ranks."

"Already!? That's crazy! Why would the Decepticons let you back in after like, four million years? Of absence mind you."

Shockwave stewed darkly, his servo and cannon clacked together with a strange stilted-jitter -- as if he was reviewing unpleasant memory-banks. "Please, do not mention that number again. To think of the time spent... "wasted "...causes me processor-interruptions."

"Right sooo sorry ," Storm snarked. "Now, about my brother?"

" Jetfire will be fine ; it is a close-promise, the closest I can promise when subjected to the unpredictable elements of war."

Storm vented a sigh of relief. A cold-logic bot like Shockwave promising anything meant it was as good as a guarantee.

He dropped into a chair, which was attached to the ever-familiar meeting table. It was one of the many tables scattered across the planet where Storm, Jetfire, Shockwave, and Starscream all discussed the plans of both the Autobots and the Deceptions alike.

Altogether, they technically formed a third neutral faction of cybertronian-allegiance named V.O.S, short for "Vigil of Sparks," which was founded by the surviving civilians of the fallen city-state of Vos. Several colonies of Vosnians had scattered within a solar system they had also dubbed "Vos," and the singular Dyson sphere sun within the system, which powered all the colonies, had also been dubbed "Vos."

All that "Vos" must've been funny at first... to some boltheads.

At least the moon he lived on before was named "Vox."

Storm had thought it was all so spectacularly stupid the first time he'd heard about it all.

But Vos was only a faction on Earth in name and spirit. The survivors of Cybertron weren't about to waste their precious resources on something as ridiculous as a long dead civil war that had ended six million years ago in their historical records.

And with Jetfire captured and Starscream absent, it was up to Storm and Shockwave to make their latest plans.

Shockwave had poured Storm a glass of high-grade energon, just a little, just enough to appreciate the taste and fritz-ey-electric-texture. He struggled to not drink it down in one giant gulp, as it wasn't often anyone in the Autobots drank high-grade, nevermind a low-ranking mechling like him. It was a rare, delightful pink nectar and Storm wanted to savor it.

But with the cool look Shockwave was giving him, he had second thoughts about drinking it.

"You didn't poison this did you?"

It was a valid concern as he'd just made a deal with Shockwave; show him the progress of his "powers" and he would get a cup of high-grade as a reward. It was a good deal Storm thought, even when he knew of Shockwave's infamous reputation amongst basically everyone.

Despite all reason to the contrary, he trusted Shockwave. He was the exception to the rule because Shockwave was his uncle and surrogate-father, and while Storm wouldn't call his sparklinghood perfect, Shockwave had kept him alive while others had died.

'That's enough to earn trust, right?' he asked himself.

All in all, Shockwave seemed amused by Storm's hesitation, and he swiveled his head for "No," even after Storm had already taken the tiniest sips of high-grade energon. He didn't blame Storm for being cautious -- "suspicion" was simply the most logical response to have in regards to himself. He was pleased to note into Jetstorm's file that the mechling possessed a healthy understanding of "self-preservation," unlike his brother Jetfire, who hadn't run away from Soundwave earlier.

He also noted "distinct cowardice" into Jetstorm's personal file; hopefully Storm never found it.

Shockwave hadn't considered it before, but as he reviewed the footage of Jetfire's kidnapping, he noticed how the mechling displayed a distinct lack of fear, even in the face of overwhelming peril. Jetfire had still been scared, obviously, but not in the same way Storm had pitifully flopped over to die.

He hypothesized that Jetfire would integrate into the Decepticon ranks well, despite his Autobot history.

Interesting.

But there was no need to tell his brother, of course.

His brother expected Jetfire to be rescued.

"Ahhh worry not, my most innovative experiments aren't for you nor your brother. I have plenty of other bots to pick from for test subjects...and nourishment."

"Test subjects...like who?" Storm leaned forward, not at all believing Shockwave was spoiled for choice when it came to subjects.

"I have an ample supply of spark-chambers; the Decepticons source me with any vehicons of my choosing. It is very convenient. They do not question when the subject inevitably goes missing."

Storm scoffed. He didn't believe for a moment Shockwave would be forever satisfied with only Vehicons to fest and to test upon.

But of course, both of them were long used to eating whatever low-grade trash they got their servos on.

'Maybe I should become a Decepticon and help myself to some extra sparks?' he mused, hungry more than ever.

But he knew Shockwave; the scientist would never accept eating vehicons indefinitely. It was just a matter of time before Shockwave lost his interest in his supply of test subjects and took a risk. A bloodthirsty one.

Storm predicated there would be a lapse in judgement that would kill a Decepticon officer at the soonest opportunity. Shockwave liked to believe he was a machine of pure reason, cold-logic, and purposeful-impulse, but he was also an irrational, hungry sparkeater, no matter his mental-habits.

Storm had seen what Shockwave was like when he was starving, and he'd yet to see a more merciless creature . Storm recalled memories of slaughter, which rattled around ominously within his processor, as the high-grade energon began to kick in.

"Hmmm, and what about Starscream?" asked Storm, his voice scratchy with a whisper. "Are you going to start testing on him again, now that you finally have all your labs finished on Earth?" Already the high-grade had thrown him into a drunken stupor; he was asking questions he normally wouldn't. After a moment, Storm tiredly smiled across the meeting-table, nodding towards Shockwave, as if he had already received an answer he liked. But Shockwave hadn't spoken.

Shockwave moved his optic bizarrely, the light rolling like a beaten egg-yolk. "I don't intend to harm Starscream." His honesty was cold and calculating, nor reassuring in the slightest. "But he is the only bot alive who has the ability to make Allspark fragments, and it is a skill that should be preserved for future generations, by any means necessary." He clasped his servos together, as if cartoonishly plotting. "You understand, don't you Little Shock?"

Storm sneered, the random call-back to his sparklinghood nickname had been uncalled for.

"Don't call me that!" he spat. Shockwave said not a word.

Perhaps it was the high-energon, or his emotions running wild from Jetfire's capture, but Storm felt something break inside him.

He remembered, all too well.

"Little Shock." He'd been called.

That name had turned his sparklinghood upside down into a grief-stricken mess, and it had almost killed him, down in the deep dark tunnels of Cybertron. His many siblings had grown jealous of his name "Little Shock," wrongly assuming it had meant that he'd been Shockwave's favorite sparkling.

He'd been ostracized.

Hated.

From the rest.

Back down in the deep dark tunnels of Cybertron, not even Jetfire had played or talked to him then.

Having been jealous like the rest, of "Little Shock."

They had tried to eat him.

Once.

He'd never forget.

But then Shockwave had saved him, many times, from the cannibalistic ire of his sibling-swarm...perhaps he really was Shockwave's favorite, but it still had been a ridiculous conclusion for his siblings to have made all that long ago.

Shockwave didn't play favorites; he couldn't, for it would've invited bias into his precious processor.

Storm hated Shockwave for making his sparklinghood a living slag-pit.

He always would.

Forever.

He had promised.

To himself.

Shockwave was a creepy-aft mech with not an iota of emotion twitching throughout his wires.

Storm wasn't stupid.

Shockwave was a machine of monstrous rationality.

He had to remind himself.

And Shockwave, his surrogate-father, didn't love him.

And his siblings, Storm freely hated.

Each of his brothers were untrustworthy, dimwitted, and easily forgettable -- including Jetfire.

Storm didn't like to be reminded of how "little" and helpless he used to be, as a sparkling. He used to idolized Shockwave when he had been small, and now staring into his near-empty pink energon-cube, he had a hard time remembering why.

In the end, Shockwave would always be regarded as the "tolerable but creepy-aft" uncle.

Bang bang bang bang!

Whatever direction the conversation was going to turn was swiftly forgotten.

Starscream had arrived, late as ever.

Bang bang bang bang! The comm-speaker at the entrance Storm had entered earlier had crackled to life.

"Let me in! Let me in! What the slag-scrap happened out there?!"

Bang bang bang bang!

The recording connected to the camera took over the central monitor.

Starscream looked ready to maul the camera; he flashed his sharp-dented against the camera, and already a minute crack had permeated the now half-static recording on screen. Shockwave stoically made a note to have it replaced, sending a notice to a maintenance-drone, as making small, semi-superficial repairs wasn't often priority on his "to-do" lists.

Bang bang bang bang! The noise persisted. Starscream was desperate to get inside and he did not stop his assault against the laboratory doors.

Storm for a moment, was confused as to why Starscream hadn't been let in immediately; until Shockwave gestured to his not-so-empty cube of high-grade.

Quickly, Storm drank down the rest of his contraband; he wasn't about to let Starscream know that he had gotten drunk. Yet still, even with the plan in motion to "not let Starscream know," he panicked!

Storm threw his energon-glass carelessly into a corner, under a dense and deluded hope of disposing of it swiftly.

'Crrzzk!' Evidence of pink-glass shattered everywhere.

A general air of malaise took hold of the entire room.

Storm looked surprised that his experimental tactic hadn't worked.

If Shockwave could look livid, that was what he presented himself to be. He glared from the corner of his optic at Storm and the pink-mess simultaneously; but like how Shockwave dealt with inane things, he said not a word, but his expectations remained consistent.

Eventually something clicked inside Storm's intoxicated processor and he looked mortified as he rushed to clean up the mess, and the glass swiftly disappeared into the lab's trash-compactor, and any lingering stains smeared away underneath a boot.

Bang bang bang bang!

Storm nodded nervously to Shockwave, confirming the mess was clean as if he was a startled, bashful sparkling. Shockwave hummed, annoyed -- somethings never changed about bots.

He entered in the commands to open the entrance-doors and he watched on hallway monitors as Starscream tore down the hallway like a crazed..."something"...

Shockwave didn't have time to compare Starscream to anything, as the Decepticon Air Commander burst into the room, his wings snapping dangerously behind him like twisted, smacking roots; mirroring his twitching, clamping and unclamping fists.

"You were supposed to watch them!" Starscream shrieked, the sound a strange warbling bellow.

"Why is there burnt energon everywhere!? At the entrance?" Starscream walked up to Shockwave, livid. His claws held forward, as if ready to strike him, like a spiraled snake. "What happened?! What did you do?"

"Nothing. Sit down." Shockwave gestured to a chair, his tone suggesting not a care. "I will show you what happened. My cameras recorded everything, as always."

Starscream hesitated, taking any sort of order went against his innate personality, and with Starscream's emotions running high; he wasn't exactly in his most logical state-of-mind.

As was normal.

After all, Starscream always assumed the worst.

And the current situation was no exception.

It was simply his nature.

Always, and forever.

Starscream, utilizing every ounce of his willpower, slid down into a chair. He breathed deeply, as his fans worked to established equilibrium back into his systems. His wings pinned sharply against his back, like loaded springs.

"Jetstorm why did you attack your brother?" Starscream asked suddenly. Storm looked surprised, but the high-grade energon in his system made him feel particularly pathetic. He was the type of bot to always look guilty, even when he was not.

"N-no!" Genuinely surprised, he jumped up -- almost stumbling against the table's surface from his drunkenness. Instead, Storm slammed back into his chair. He desperately tried to compose himself, but Starscream had already rushed to his side, holding Storm's head up by his chin.

"What happened to you?" Starscream muttered, and Storm knew then he'd been found.

Storm gripped the arms of his chair, grateful his servos had something to hold onto; else, he might've lost his composure in front of Starscream.

He was shivering, the metal of his frame unreasonably cold as Starscream looked him over. Did Starscream look mad? Or was he concerned? It was hard to tell.

Storm tried to desperately covey that he was sober, to still his frame and to appear perfectly fine and normal. Starscream didn't let him look away, holding him steady. Seconds ticked by of Starscream's accusatory stare and finally Storm watched as Starscream stepped away and his expression became dangerously blank.

Beneath that face smoldered a pit of fury.

"What did you do to him!?" Starscream suddenly turned around, facing Shockwave with burning thrusters. "Why is he shaking?!" He lashed out with his claws, cutting into Shockwave's purple shoulder, revealing silver lines of metal as the paint was sliced away.

Shockwave had frozen, perhaps dumbfounded, as he simply watched as Starscream decorated his surface with minute cuts and superficial dents.

"I'll scrap you! I'll slag you, you aft-fragger!"

The Earth-terms "angry-mother-bear," flashed automatically in Storm's image-compiler as appropriate comparison as he drunkenly tried to decipher Starscream's screeching. For the sake of a distraction, he began to tap on the table, nonsensically with his claws.

"Why is he playing with the table? You drugged him, for frags-sake!"

Shockwave held his servo and cannon upward in the "universal sign of peace," but Starscream held little comprehension of the concept, if ever. Starscream eventually stopped, having concluded that scratching Shockwave to death wasn't practical, and his optics flashed a keen red as he switched tactics.

He jumped backwards, ever so slightly, and pulled no quarter as he punched Shockwave hard, flinging himself into the base of Shockwave's optic. Shockwave swayed as if in pain and allowed the momentum of the hit to tip him backwards, but he stayed standing as he took in Starscream's weak, scattered and inefficient hits. Then, Starscream fixated on Shockwave's vulnerable optic, and set on punching it over and over until the bright yellow-light eventually shattered. It had been a tactic that had been successful before.

Shockwave couldn't allow that.

Such a foolish act.

Such a simple mistake.

He only had the one optic, and becoming blind would be horribly inconvenient. Neither Storm nor Starscream could be expected to repair him in a timely manner, not in their current emotional-states.

He wouldn't tolerate it.

Not again.

Shockwaves servos remained raised in the universal sign of peace, until he suddenly slammed downwards into a devastating headlock, hooking Starscream by his belly-plates against his protruding armored chest.

The more Starscream struggled to weasel free, the worse he melded against Shockwave's chassis. A fist closed around his neck, not allowing Starscream any leeway to peel away.

If Starscream slipped away now, it was unlikely Shockwave would get another chance to grab him anytime soon.

And Shockwave recognized an opportunity when he saw one.

"Starscream." Shockwave whispered, and Starscream froze at the uncharacteristic soft-spoken tone. "Remember to be reasonable when you wake up." And with a sickening slam Shockwave's hand-cannon impacted against Starscream's head, bending and denting audial-receptors flat against his helm. Starscream had no time to breath nor to scream as the heavy cannon impacted his head.

Again

And again.

And again.

And finally with a wet crack, he went limp, slack against Shockwave's grasp. For a few seconds, Shockwave looked at Starscream, hanging him outward by his neck like a gutted creature.

Unceremoniously, Shockwave dropped Starscream onto the table, serving as an uncouth berth.

Storm had watched the entire altercation in a drunken stupor. The fight had felt like an eternity and yet it had not lasted even a half a minute before Starscream had been subdued.

Storm jumped from his chair, grasping Starscream's limp body.

'He's dead, he's dead!' he mentally-screamed, not daring to make a sound. For a few agonizing seconds, he only stared at Starscream, hapless to do anything.

He wasn't crying.

He wasn't scared.

He wasn't a coward.

Storm ran his shaking servos across Starscream's chassis, afraid the bot would drain into the dark crippling-grey of the dead. He spotted a touch of teal leaking from Starscream's belly-plates and he froze as Shockwave spoke.

"Now, about those tests."

Chapter Text

It was freezing. His joints had locked up during recharge and slowly Jetfire sat up, unspooling his limbs from their clamped positions against his frame -- as if he'd been a human-mummy awakening from an ancient slumber -- and out of habit he rolled to stand, as he would if sleeping atop a berth...but instead he rolled and rolled...until he came to his senses, clinking against the metal-bars of a cage...

'Zap! Pssszap!'

That moment he reeled away in horror -- the metal hissing and spitting at him to wake up.

'The Universe's rudest alarm clock,' he thought.

Jetfire was awake!

As his nervous systems came fully online, a terrible familiar pain reignited across his servos and feet-talons -- puffs of smoke left his plating -- energon stains had decorated him in macabre splotches -- thankfully devoid of any explosive potential -- the energy had evaporated away when it dried.

Jetfire certainly didn't want to randomly combust, but he felt like it was possible as he brushed away energon-dust from his heated plating.

'That would just be embarrassing,' he thought.

To die from energon-combustion.

So embarrassing.

It was just a silly death-trope belonging in old cybertronian-sitcoms.

And wasn't at all relevant to his current situation, Jetfire assured himself.

Even if he was kidnapped. Locked in a cage.

He would die somehow.

But not by spontaneous-combustion.

His optics blinked on and images came in blurry and slow -- he needed energon -- but the smell of smoke spoiled his appetite.

He had much bigger things to worry about.

Like being locked in a cage.

'Why do I feel like a crushed soda can?' he mused to himself...but quickly the horror of his reality became post-humorously clear.

He had been captured by Decepticons -- and he was locked in a cage -- a very small one at that -- with barely any room to stand up in -- there was no berth -- no place to sit and to sulk.

No privacy either.

The cage had been plopped down in the middle of a hallway, tucked away into a dark corner.

He was a specimen on display.

For whoever walked by.

The cage was small and short like a coffin, forcing himself to curl his back if he wanted to stretch his legs. Jetfire liked to consider himself a levelheaded and adaptable bot, but he failed to spin his kidnapping into anything positive.

He was screwed.

Totally screwed!

He was so utterly -- stripped nuts -- busted bolts -- ultra-screwed!

Jetfire limply stared at his servos, the palms blackened blue from dried, burnt and spent energon. Crusty stains crumbled from all around his body as he stood up and began to shake his plating loose, reminding him of a time he had crash landed onto a sandy beach -- and to that very moment, he was still picking out grains of sand from the many crevices of his frame.

A door slid open down the hall, near his cage.

He didn't think anything of it...until...

'Crash, clatter,' the sound of something shattering.

"Ahhhaaauuuggghhh!" A shriek of horror sounded behind him. It almost sounded like his mother, but as he turned around he grimaced -- he had been mistaken.

Some mysterious red and white stranger was staring with wide-red horrified optics.

"Oh Primus!" The mech shouted, and he waved his servos about in alarm -- Jetfire noticed a shattered ceramic mug by his feet -- which looked oddly like "human-make." The mug had been full of high-grade energon if the bubbling pink splatter was enough clues to go by...

"You look just awful!"

"Oh thanks, I think that's the first compliment I've gotten this century," said Jetfire, with all the quality sarcasm he could muster. Already this mysterious red and white mech was grating on his nerves, as kidnapping had done little to improve his mood. He felt a processor-ache begin to manifest, from the twitching pain of his plating. He clutched his head and stayed quiet.

'Click'

His cage opened...

Jetfire stared, not moving.

He didn't trust at all that he was just going to be let out.

He wanted to get up and run, but he could hardly stand -- no doubt he had a malfunction in his nervous systems. Jetfire had to settled for small crawling steps forward out of his cage, and he stood up slowly, his nerves burning the whole way up.

"Oh, that doesn't look too good..." The mystery bot held out his servos, hovering over Jetfire's sides as he took a shaky step forward.

"Yes, you've made that clear earlier."

Jetfire looked at the shattered mug of energon. His energy levels weren't desperate, yet he still considered lapping it up from the floor. He hoped his future didn't have to come to that...

"Well, at least your vocal-cords are working perfectly. Those things are such a pain to replace."

The bot sighed, blinking his optics as he scanned over Jetfire's damage.

"Come on, let's get you checked out. I might as well start my work-cycle early."

The bot pushed him forward, through a door that had been right next to his cage. Jetfire felt his anxiety churn like a black hole as he took in this information. Who was this weird red and white bot? The Autobot battle-simulations had never mentioned him!

Was he an interrogator?

Was he going to be ripped apart limb from limb?

Jetfire considered those all very valid questions as his servos clasped the sides of the door entrance. He didn't remember what bot had told him so long ago, but he just knew if he "went through that door," he "wouldn't be coming out."

"Oh, you're gonna be one of those patients. Goodie, and just when I thought starting my day early was a good idea."

He wanted to scream and shout. He wanted to kick out and run down the hallway.

He wanted to be free.

And what was stopping him?

'I'm out of my cage. This is my only chance, now or never,' he thought. He didn't have time to formulate a pep-talk as he turned around to face the mystery bot. An uneasy smile was plastered upon his glossa and he watched in satisfaction as the red and white bot backed up a step, apparently put off by his many sharp teeth. Taking advantage of the distraction, Jetfire rammed his helm into the bot's chassis -- and leaped as high as he could, quickly somersaulting over the bot. A thruster on his ped ignited, and scorched the bot beneath him.

"My finish! My face!" The bot squealed.

Jetfire ignited his hover-thrusters and barreled down the hallway. His only chance of escape was by speed, and with a deep intake his fans whirred to give him that extra second of push.

Instinctively, he wanted to transform but a twinge in his side reminded him it would be a bad idea. To his despair, the hallway was long and curved in every which way and direction, thwarting his hope of escape. He didn't see sign of a runway nor open sky anywhere.

No windows dotted the halls of the Nemesis.

He didn't have enough energon to keep his thrusters burning, fleeing down to nowhere forever.

Remembering his training simulations from the Autobots, he changed tactics. With a clack of his heels, his thrusters retreated deeper into his peds. He remembered a close-corridor fight he had once with Bulkhead -- and he had been absolutely pulverized. Yet while his frame was frail, thin, and spindly, he learned he needed to channel every ounce of strength, speed, and flexibility he had to survive.

His flat, buttery-curved talons grew larger from padded springs inserted between and against his toes, giving him a jumpy kick he needed to be careful about using. His upgrade, had been a gift from Shockwave -- in fact all his battle-augments had been courtesy of Shockwave -- which no one had to know about -- until now -- not even the Autobots knew all of his quirks.

He swung his leg upward and like magic his ped magnetized to the ceiling. Normally, a ship's coat of alloys and specialized paint prevented magnetization of any kind -- but Shockwave's genius saved the day again.

Instead of using his thrusters to move, his magnetized peds clicked on and off in a swift rhythm, and required almost no energon to use. He galloped, almost swam as he cut through the air. Finally, he found what he was looking for -- an air duct.

Without the barest hint of comprehension nor hesitation, he ripped the cover away, not caring where it fell in a dusty clatter.

He didn't know what it connected to nor where it would lead, but it was safer to travel in than an open hallway -- plus, cameras, heat and movement sensors, where harder to maintain in air ducts -- a fact he knew too well. Most of his sparklinghood consisted of repairing all manner of tight, absurd places Shockwave and his drones had been too big to reach.

His magnetized peds were rendered useless in a duct, but it was a comfort to know they where there. He just needed to find a runway or open air in which to jump off of.

Minutes passed of his wiggling and bending throughout the passageways like some burrowing hell-creature. With every minute his frustration grew greater, as well as the burning across his plating, and a new sharp pain had blossomed across his abdomen.

Whatever was wrong, he had no energy to spare thinking about it. His pain-receptors had shut off from overstimulation, and with the lose of sensation, came the rushing invigoration of clarity.

He would survive.

He would flee.

Such simple but determined thoughts put Jetfire into a good mood -- he wasn't quite himself.

The pain and adrenaline had become too much.

Now he took a backseat.

To some malicious programming.

All his processor could do was fixate on the gruesome teachings Shockwave had taught him during sparklinghood.

He had turned feral.

Something terrible.

Back then.

Now the same gruesome teachings had to be understood again. Jetfire's feral alt-form push towards the surface of his metal and mind, him being hapless to stop the transformation, but also not wanting to.

It was "do or die," he told himself.

Jetfire and his brother Storm has been too old to undergo Shockwave's surgery to turn them both into triple-changers; unlike all the other sparklings.

Unlike all the others.

He missed them.

He could only hope he saw his brethren again.

With a wet squelch and a buckle of pain, Jetfire transformed.

Changed.

Into a feral horror.

The itching tingle of his elongated saber-fangs was the first sensation. He opened his mouth, now dripping a black energon, his maw turned elongated, unhinged like a snake's. His plating grew spikes outward, some at misaligned angles due to his injured plating.

He caught his reflection in the metal of the duct, but he had no time to look as he coughed up a splatter of energon. He was covered in his own lifeblood, and he couldn't help but understand that he had made a grave mistake.

There was so much energon.

Too much.

He imagined it seeping, dripping down the thin-welds of the ducts into the innerworkings of the ship -- where his body would bleed and rust.

No one would find him.

Such horrible imagery -- his failure -- flared inside him panic.

What little remained of Jetfire's senses dissolved under a cacophony of instinct. He and Jetstorm served as prototypes -- examples on what "not to do" when changing a sparkling into a triple-changer.

Shockwave made mistakes.

Jetfire made mistakes.

Shockwave had taught Jetfire to fight in tight corridors, what all grounder-younglings typically learned. But in truth of spark, Jetfire was a Seeker -- meant to fly, and in feral-form or not, an irrational claustrophobia overtook his senses and became the forefront of his processor.

'No one will find me.' The thought rang loud in his stupid, feral head. It was hard to say if he was still Jetfire. The sweet-spark of the Autobots.

Get out!

Get out!

He tumbled faster throughout the air ducts -- suddenly desperate to find his way out, scratching like a rat lost in a maze. Jetfire found that his servos had grown claws, shiny and unused, which he could retract and reattract anytime into his fingernubs. He stabbed the walls to climb either upward or downward, depending on the demands of the path ahead.

Eventually, he'd found the end.

He was about to drop down from the duct entrance, before a thick swallow of energon down his throat made him second-guess the wisdom of it.

'Am I bleeding...inside?' he thought.

He took stock of what was below him. He could see vehicons -- lots of them. The duct-grate blocked most of his view, but the extended senses of his feral-form allowed him to "see" without optics. An angry EM field flared out just below him, as if ready to catch him in some deadly trap.

He had been raised by Starscream; and by some extension, Shockwave too. He wasn't a stupid, naïve bot by any means.

He wasn't what the Autobots believed him or his brother to be...

Never.

Against all his other wishes, he backpedaled from the entrance. Something was waiting to snatch him up from the other end.

He just knew it!

He couldn't confirm it by smell. He was covered in too much black energon to get a read on anything else.

But, the Decepticons setting up an ambush made sense.

And the more Jetfire thought about it, the more he could cry from what he was concluding.

He was so stupid!

He was an idiot!

He had trapped himself inside a tunnel without meaning to.

He'd just discovered something terrible.

The whole time he'd been running down a path to his slaughter like a cramped scraplet.

Was he doomed?

Perhaps.

After all, he wasn't delusional enough to think he could tackle whatever surprise a Decepticon ship had in store for him.

The air-duct he'd ran through had only two entrances and exits -- there was nowhere for him to go, except out through one of the two vents.

Jetfire gulped, tasting weak-bitter energon burning down his throat.

He turned around the way he'd come, accepting defeat and any miracle that'd come his way. There was no other option. It was the "most logical choice," as Shockwave would say.

Still, he allowed himself some hope.

Maybe the Decepticons hadn't laid another ambush at the entrance, turned exit.

'Fat chance of that,' he thought. 'It'd be like expecting a scraplet to not want to eat fresh protoform flesh.'

He traversed the air-duct much faster the second time. He crawled up slowly towards the exit, already sensing something was wrong.

The air-duct had been recovered by its grate.

He hadn't done that.

Still, adrenaline got the better of him.

It had turned him into an imbecile.

His sparkeater-coding.

Before he could think better of it, he touched it...

The pain!

The pain!

Jetfire's world erupted into fire!

He fell from the duct with a crunchy, wet-thud. His neck twisted upward, his spinal-struts no doubt severed in multiple places. He saw the grate hovering just outside of his view, pulled from underneath his feet.

The smoke from his own burning energon distorted his view.

There was a shadow...

No...a mirror?

Whatever it was, Jetfire saw his reflection...

He was horrifying.

And Soundwave was there to kill him.

Chapter Text

"Well, I said it once. I'll say it again."

There was a click and clatter, sounding from his left and right.

"You look awful."

Jetfire stirred, but did not open his eyes. His head was ringing from pain and his systems could not take any more stimulation.

"Just awful."

He wanted to go back into recharge, to forget his situation.

"Mind telling me just what you are? Besides 'awful' that is."

Jetfire's optics involuntarily onlined. A scrape of something sharp against his forehead had snapped them open.

"How do you like it, getting your paint all scratched up? Now you know how I feel."

Vision came in sharp and crisp, and so fast that Jetfire's processor got whiplash. He tried to close his eyes, to turn to shield his view -- but he found his head magnetized and strapped to a table, and he couldn't move -- not even to turn to look sideways.

Whatever urgency Jetfire had felt before flared to life; his fans began to whirl, with the hope of escaping, but there was no way to run now.

"You can call me Knockout by the way, your medical practitioner for the evening. And according to your med files, your name is Jetfire -- hrmmm, sounds Iacon-ish."

'I'm on a vivisection table...,' he balefully thought. 'Fitting I guess, to die to a bot called "Knockout." I always killed my food that way.'

The red and white mech from earlier looked like slag. A dark scorch mark had marred his neck and frame -- the paint had distinctly distorted and melted to look like raw orange ore.

'Did I do that,' he thought. But despite his looming death, he was more concerned with going into recharge again -- he just felt so drained...that his systems refused to prioritize anything else...

Perhaps he would sleep forever.

What did the Decepticons do to him?

He must've been drugged. He had the worst helm-ache he could recall ever happening to him.

He didn't remember how he'd been captured.

Just like the first time.

He didn't remember.

As if Knockout could read his mind, he got an answer.

"Look what your little stunt did to my paint-job! I swear, I signed up to be a doctor, but it was about time I updated my job contract to include interrogation expertise anyway."

Jetfire was unimpressed by what he heard. A doctor turned interrogator? What next, a janitor-bot cleaning up messes?

He felt like a mess. He wouldn't mind being a janitor.

But when he squirmed and snapped his denta, he was surprised to find any taste of energon completely gone.

That absence alone commanded his attention. He was forced to look up, with optics open, but he hadn't planned on listening.

'What does red, white, and sooty want?' he thought.

For good measure, he activated the "anti-interrogation software" Shockwave had gifted him once-upon-a-time. It was the first time he'd ever activated the software since its initial installation, and immediately he gritted his teeth in frustration as the software began to impair his thinking.

Oh boy.

He felt drugged.

Or wasted on high-grade.

Some combination of the two.

Knockout must've noticed his change in demeanor, as he suddenly stopped talking and ran over somewhere, outside of his field of view.

Jetfire's vision blurred and any readings easily accessible from his internal UI visor froze, lighting up with corrupted notifications. To save himself the helm-ache he offlined his optics and disabled the software. He prayed to Primus or to whatever higher power that would listen, for either Shockwave or Starscream to come to his rescue.

But minutes flickered by, painfully slowly as the "anti-interrogation software" had overclocked his processor, and the mere act of looking at what was in front of him was draining and overwhelming. For an astrosecond, he'd made the mistake of onlining his optics and he caught sight of a clawed medic's servo poking and prodding at his open chassis, with various types of instruments sprouting from Knockout's fingertips.

He was neither afraid nor sickened.

But his overclocked processor became infatuated with the idea of identifying the purposes of each and every instrument. Jetfire had never downloaded an information packet about medical instruments before, so he could only hypothesize about their intended uses.

Yet, his overclocked processor could only identify torture tools. Frustration manifested from his spark-chamber. He knew a medic's servo wasn't designed for torture, but for some reason his processor wouldn't let the ridiculous notion go.

He knew it was stupid.

He knew what torture tools looked like.

But he couldn't let the idea go.

He couldn't let go.

Wires plugged into his systems began to shift and moved their positions into different sockets, but he couldn't see what Knockout was doing. There was a sudden burning sensation and Jetfire felt himself go under, his systems halted into involuntary stasis-lock.

"How is he?"

Megatron's viscous mug of a faceplate was far from the first thing Jetfire had expected to see. He was online yet on the ground, back in his cage.

Having already been acquainted with the cage before, Jetfire wasn't in a cooperative mood. His helm-ache from earlier had exploded into a confusing fever, and he opened his mouth to pant like a feral dog, his fans whirling loudly from his internals.

"What a vicious little thing you are." Megatron mocked condescendingly. "Soundwave, have you identified what creature he is yet?"

Jetfire noticed Soundwave in the room when the mech moved, and he snarled, a strange throaty-gurgle as Soundwave leaned down to inspect him closer inside his cage.

"He is Cybertronian, just changed, infected with a disease." Soundwave spoke with many pauses and skips, as his sentences became a patchwork of voices. "But my medical databases have not returned any answers to his symptoms except for a slight case of rust-rot, a harmless strain common among mechs stationed long-term on asteroid mining operations."

Megatron snorted, clearly unconvinced. "Rust-rot, huh? From mining?" He waved a dismissive servo. "Has Shockwave arrived yet? I'm eager for him to split this creature open. No doubt a new bioweapon can be created against the Autobots." Megatron paused, glancing at a vial he carried. "His energon sample is black. I've lived nine million years and I've never seen such a thing."

"And that leads to my next question for you." He pointed at Jetfire, leaning close with a rancid oil-breath. "Why would the Autobots accept you into their ranks. They're not exactly known for their tolerance of off-schematic frames, nor wild experiments."

Jetfire matched Megatron's red piercing eyes. He was used to bots looking at him sourly and he gave Megatron his best disarming smile. Its not like Megatron could be scarier than Shockwave.

Deciding to take Megatron's question seriously, he itched the bottom of his chin, thinking. "Because I did the jobs Autobots weren't comfortable doing." He paused, giving himself more time to pick his words carefully in his favor. "I worked on mainly scavenging Cybertronian structures and decommissioned ships from various alien lifeforms. I'm not surprised I picked up some crazy illness from what I've discovered out there in the vastness of space."

It was a story that was partially true, enough to make himself look useful to the Decepticon-cause. He didn't want to die in a cage.

"As for my illness it's simply superficial. My saber-fangs and talons are from some alien skeleton I scanned and added to my transformation-schematics. It's just cosmetic." He touched his saber-fangs for emphasis. "I just thought they looked cool."

Megatron seemed to consider what he was saying with a flat expression. He didn't look displeased, nor angry. "I suppose you are a mechling. You would think plastering fangs to your face would somehow be useful." It got quiet as Megatron held up a servo. "I'll let Shockwave decide what to do with you." Megatron decided if anything went wrong, he could always pick the other twin, Jetstorm, as his heir. Things didn't tend to come out of Shockwave's lab alive anymore.

When Megatron left the room, muttering about a "late Shockwave," Soundwave didn't follow him out as Jetfire had hoped.

"Soundwave: Keep an eye on the mechling." Repeated Soundwave, in Megatron's voice. "You've handled him good so far."

Jetfire sighed, and absentmindedly placed his hands on the metal bars of his cage, surprised to find they weren't electrified like before. It seemed like the Decepticons where underestimating him.

Good.

He wasn't complaining.

Jetfire decided to lean into his innocent mechling façade -- easily done, as the Autobots had already provided him with plenty of practice. He shrugged off the weird, condescending EMP Soundwave was sending his way, implying he was but a sparkling in time-out.

"Hey Soundwave, can you really read minds like the Autobots say?" he asked, trying his best to sound harmless and curious -- like a real mechling.

"Jetfire: That's a total pile of slag." It was said in Cliffjumper's voice. Creepy.

"Ahh, that's a no then?"

Soundwave nodded, his EMP field flared with amusement. Jetfire didn't expect Soundwave to tell him the truth, especially if the rumor was true; but the potential lie helped him relax regardless. He didn't want the stress of guarding his thoughts -- they tended to be hungry and violent, so Jetfire let his morbid ideas run wild, to get a possible rise out of Soundwave. If Soundwave started tiptoeing around him, then he'd have confirmation that the bot could really read thoughts; but until then...

"Anyway Soundwave, I know Megatron gave you orders, but I still have a patient to look over." Knockout had watched from the corner of the room, unimpressed with a dour look. The melted orange mark across his face held a new intimidation factor. "Soundwave if you would, please play guard duty off to the side, it would be appreciated."

Soundwave nodded again, and Knockout took that as his que to peel off from the wall he'd been leaning against.

"Let's get this over with. Watch my back when he gets out."

'Click'

The cage opened again, and Knockout's EMP field was firm and stiff. It reminded Jetfire of Ratchet, and it felt oddly reassuring.

'Figures I'd feel at home from *someone being mad at me.' He mused.

This time, he exited the cage and had no intentions of starting trouble. His earlier damages from Soundwave caught up to him and he slumped a bit too eagerly onto the black energon-stained berth he'd been on before.

"Alright, nice and easy now." Knockout seemed to lose whatever malice he'd been trying to convey, hovering at Jetfire's side as if he'd collapse at any moment.

"First, I'm going to run a preliminary scan. It might burn a little, so don't freak out."

A green line of light began peeling back and forth across Jetfire's body. It was tempting to fall back into recharge, but the sting provided by the scan-lights were enough to keep him watchful.

"You have some nerve-twitch damage alright, but nothing that's not easily replaced." Knockout held out a pair of cuffs. "Soundwave, if you will? I need him sitting up." Soundwave cuffed Jetfire's wrists together, and nodded in approval when Jetfire didn't put up a fight. Jetfire gave him a bitter look, silently vowing to attack Soundwave when he got the chance.

He was the sort that held grudges.

As petty as he knew them to be.

'Stupid bot is the reason I hurt all over.' Jetfire thought.

Knockout had pried back the armor of his shoulder blades, and began unpinning the back-clasps across his spine, which connected his armor to his spinal-structs. "Okay kid, I'd normally give you a sedative, but since this is nerve damage I need you awake for the procedure; and the typical numbing agent is also off the table." Knockout gave him an apologetic look. "Sorry kid, this is going to hurt. I'll give you some painkillers after."

It was more kinder than he'd expected the Decepticons to be.

"Just get it over with!" snapped Jetfire. 'He's calling me kid? Ugh.' While having other bots think he was a child had benefits, it also never stopped being weird and annoying. He was several million stellar cycles old, as old as the Great War and older than Bumblebee of the Autobots; not like anyone would believe him if he told them otherwise.

Sometimes being undead sucked.

He hadn't been allowed to grow up.

The pain across his spinal-struts broke him out of his thoughts. Instinctively, he pulled back, but restraining clamps against his sides prevented any movement. He tried to struggle free and his internal UI reported movement-commands to his limbs had shut down. Jetfire could only stare ahead as Knockout fiddled with his backside, weaving fresh nerve-wiring along his spine and limb-ties.

It burned.

There was so much energon, the puddle dripping an impossible vantablack.

Soundwave stared back at Jetfire, looking oddly apologetic as he clasped his servos together. Jetfire stared into Soundwave's visor, catching corrupted glimpses of his reflection.

He was technically only half-undead.

His reflection still showed up on surfaces.

But never the full picture.

Jetfire hissed.

He saw Soundwave take a step backwards, and he felt Knockout pull away. Both their EM fields flashed with surprise and hesitation. Jetfire could only bow his head, clenching his denta in pain. A few seconds later Knockout resumed his work, touching Jetfire more gingerly.

He was compelled to hiss again, but he held the noise inside the second time.

He wasn't trying to cause a scene.

Flashing colors captured his attention; Soundwave was showing him scrolling messages in Cybertronian runes across his visor screen, not-so-helpful things like "Good job! Keep it up! Only a little longer! Knockout is almost done!" Jetfire would've thought Soundwave was mocking his predicament, if his EM field wasn't smothering him in concern and strange good vibes.

Soundwave really thought he was a child.

It was insulting. Soundwave had hurt him.

He wouldn't forgive.

Not yet -- maybe never.

'You tried to kill me, you aft!' he bitterly thought. 'Did you forget?'

'No matter your intentions, this light show is pissing me off Soundwave.'

Soundwave didn't stop.

'I guess you can't read minds after all...' He looked carefully at Soundwave for a reaction, some sort of tipoff that Soundwave could in fact hear him . But Jetfire's intense gaze had only served to encourage Soundwave's light show to repeat, encore after encore.

Eventually Jetfire felt his back-clasps slip into place, his armor seams burned against the connections of his soft protoform, but it was a satisfying burn, the sort that told him he was healing.

Knockout tried to inject him with something green and mysterious, and he was delighted to find his limb-control had come back online. He slapped the syringe out of Knockout's hand and he watched in satisfaction as it shattered against the ground.

Knockout made a strained noise. "That was your painkillers. We don't exactly have a surplus in stock."

Jetfire wordlessly stood up from the berth. Soundwave stepped forward with servos extended, as if he was going to fall over any moment.

'Come on guys, I'm not a sparkling.'

He waved a servo dismissively.

"Right, well, sorry about the waste, but I'll manage without."

Knockout had went back to a counter, seemingly prepping another green syringe of painkiller.

"Medic, sir, I don't want it. Pain makes me feel alive anyhow." He didn't think much about his comment, until Knockout gave him a stricken expression and silently shared a look with Soundwave.

'These guys are such soft-sparks,' he mused. 'Starscream told me all Decepticons were bloodthirsty psychos.'

And it was true, what he said. Pain made him feel alive. His undead, invisible spark smoldered and flared in a rare smattering of light and color when his systems experienced pain fluctuations. When he was perfectly healthy, his spark-chamber was empty.

Hopefully he never needed a spark-chamber examination. It would be impossible to explain away as a cosmetic feature like his fangs or his suspiciously large talons.

"Thanks for not killing me, I guess." Jetfire ducked down and crawled into his short and bothersome cage. He curled around himself, much like how a cat or dog would. His belly-plates burned against the cold flooring, feeling like a cracked and abused crucible full of molten slag.

"I'm going into recharge. Don't wake me unless its to turn me into Shockwave's igneous pig."

His back wound was still fresh and burned as it pressed against the bars of his cage, but the pain might as well have been the jolt of life keeping him going. His wings firmly clasped against his back, so tightly that it felt like the delicate ends would snap like delicate ceramic ornaments.

"Whoa, you're gonna undo all my work, recharging that way!" Knockout shouted. "Soundwave get him out of there! He belongs on a berth."

Soundwave loomed over his cage, EM field flared with expectation of obedience, but Jetfire hissed.

"As if! I don't trust whatever berth you could give me! Besides, I'll be on a vivisection table soon enough if Shockwave is still coming by." He didn't believe Shockwave would kill him, but he also knew Shockwave wasn't above pushing some sort of experiment onto him, if only as punishment for getting captured.

Jetfire's EM field was projecting out nothing but frustration, his serrated denta clicked together in a strange feral display. He would control as much as he could about his horrible situation. 'I'm a fully grown mech. I'll get out of this place, alive! ' he declared to himself, but the words felt as flimsy as the bars of his cage. He looked into the corner of his optics, spying Knockout's red paint job, resembling a fresh crisp rust-apple. If Soundwave hadn't been in the room, he was sure he could've ripped out the medic's spark-chamber right then and there...

'I'm not a fraggin' sparkling, you weird condescending dross-cans." He internally cursed, his pain lingered like an itch.

"The welds aren't going to heal right if you lay down like that." Tisked Knockout.

Briefly, Soundwave seemed to consider pulling him from his cage, but Jetfire had shrunk back against the bars as far as he could go, so Soundwave dragging him out was liable to reopen his surgical-site -- everyone in the room seemed well aware of the fact.

Knockout crossed his arms.

"Fine, have it your way."

Chapter Text

Shockwave later placed Starscream onto an actual berth and hadn't left him to fester atop the meeting-room table like a sparkless savage, but Storm's feelings still remained remarkedly mixed on the matter.

He didn't love his mother, but he didn't want to see Starscream die from a brutal beat down either; especially by the bot whom Storm considered to be his surrogate-father.

Of course, he didn't love Shockwave either.

And now that he thought about it, he really didn't have a person or thing that he did love.

He didn't know what is was -- the feeling.

He loved his brother, Jetfire.

Logically, he would. It made sense.

And all of his other siblings too, he loved them.

Well...

Most of them...

Some of them...

But what was the feeling?

Was it just not wanting to see a bot die?

Was it just caring if someone was in pain?

Storm hadn't once left Starscream's side, when Shockwave had dropped him limply onto the berth.

"Starscream?" he whispered, when he noticed slight movement.

"Storm, that you sweetspark?" Starscream onlined his optics, but the lights guttered out as soon as he tried. "My optics, aren't working quite right..."

"Yeah, don't worry about it. Deadend should be here any joor with supplies from Vos, and he'll fix you up, right as rain."

"Right as rain, huh? Pfft, you and your silly-sparked human expressions. I won't bother to understand it."

Storm rolled his eyes in response, but then he remembered that Starscream couldn't see his glowering frown.

"Oh, and you say Deadend will be the one fixing me up? That's new. Did Shockwave get a cold servo?" Starscream sarcastically asked.

"Something like that. He was going to, but then Megatron summoned him to the Nemesis."

"Ugh, yuck, please don't mention that bucketheaded imbecile! Its the last thing my mind's eye ought to think about when my helm is caved in like a tin can."

"Yeah, it doesn't look good. You'll have to get that fixed before you go back on the Nemesis, else it'll look suspicious."

"Suspicious how? I'll just tell the truth for once, that Shockwave beat me up!"

Storm laughed, and Starscream turned away, hunched over as he rubbered the dented crater atop his helm. He had a strangled vacant expression, one dissociating from his current situation.

"You know, I don't think I've ever heard you laugh before?" Starscream causally said. He looked across the room, as if remembering different times.

"Well..." Storm paused, not sure what to make of such a strange observation. "I've never had much reason to. I don't plot and scheme like you do Starscream." He truthfully said.

"And being a schemer is a requirement to laugh? As if!"

"Literally, every time you laugh its in the middle of a recharge cycle! I always wake up from you laughing as you piece together some contrived plan!"

Starscream scoffed. He hadn't woken up Storm since he'd landed on the planet Earth and joined the Autobots -- he was being dramatic.

Still, Storm was upset, his tone angry as he stood next to the berth. Starscream hadn't realized his "laughter" bothered Jetstorm of all things -- it was a little absurd. His own child hated his laughter. He wondered if any of the others felt the same way...Starscream liked laughing...but if no one else liked it...

"Alright, I admit it. I find much joy in scheming. Perhaps you should join me in making my next set of plans. Maybe you'll laugh too; we share the same coding for that I'm sure."

Storm looked angry. His servos had become fists at his sides, but Starscream looked blissfully unware atop the berth. Storm wanted nothing to do with Starscream, but he couldn't find the words to say it outright. Starscream smiled nervously in his direction, with dull optics.

"Wait, don't leave." Starscream said lamely, grasping thin air when he realized Storm left his side.

He heard Storm stomp out of the room, and he didn't know what to make of the sudden feeling of loss. He wanted to say anything to get Storm to stay, but he didn't know his child like the others. He hadn't earned the right.

He hadn't gotten to know Storm in comparison to his other sparklings and Jetfire, but he hadn't realized the damage done to their relationship until that very moment.

Suddenly, he had a feeling that he wouldn't be laughing for a while.

"Alright, that should be the last of it." Deadend was strangely cheerful that day. Typically he was a melancholic mess as he fulfilled his work errands, but there was something about holding a crate full of spark-chambers ready-for-consumption, that put him in a good mood...

Perhaps, he'd help himself to one...

It wouldn't be missed.

The metal crate lid lifted easily enough from a prying servo. A thing he'd never get used to were his claws, which he couldn't retract back into his fingertips like the sparkling sparkeaters could.

The sparklings could walk around looking cute and harmless, despite being undead-abominations.

Unlike himself.

Deadend looked undead twenty-four seven.

He was slightly envious of that fact.

He wanted to look normal and unassuming again.

But he'd gotten used to the fearful glances other bots brazenly sent his way, as if he was some exotic animal that had gotten loose.

That's what Deadend told himself anyway.

He'd asked Shockwave for an explanation once as to why he couldn't retract his claws into fingertips, but he had simply been dismissed with the wave of an impatient servo; Shockwave had implied he was stupid. "Figure it out yourself." He'd rudely said.

Deadend was still sour over the entire matter. Starscream hadn't figured it out either -- how to retract his claws back into unassuming fingers, so it wasn't like asking Shockwave for help was uncalled for...

He could only conclude Shockwave didn't like him...and the feeling was mutual. That guy was a freak even amongst sparkeaters.

Deadend was a sparkeater, but he still remembered how it felt to be alive and normal.

Shockwave didn't.

And he grasped those precious happy memories so tightly, so fiercely that he'd vowed to never let them go!

Even the six million year old sparklings, permanently stuck in their growth stages from the consequences of a sparkeater's curse, had never lost their vigor for life; despite having lived so little in the first place.

As he gripped a spark-chamber, he was reminded why sparkeaters had claws. He pried open the spark-chamber, revealing a laser-core vibrating with a trembling spark underneath the shell. He grasped the core with his clawtips, avoiding a defensive-electrifying-shock that would've jolted his systems if he'd grasped it within the palm of his servo.

To a sparkeater, a laser-core was an entire meal that could sustain a bot for months, without the need for a single drop of energon if he kept movement to a minimum; but ideally, he'd be eating one everyday.

Sparks were just that tasty.

This particular laser-core was a delicious lime-green, and Deadend sunk his fangs into the energizing center, stripping the metal of all life within seconds. It had a sweet-bitter copper flavor, with a zesty zinc sauce.

'At least I can retract my fangs.' He sarcastically thought. 'I can't walk around looking too hideous.'

"Deadend! Is that your ration, or are you stealing from the shipment again!?" Starscream had rounded a corner, looking as Starscream as ever.

"Guilty as charged." Deadend relaxed comfortably atop the various containers he'd brought in, looking mighty pleased with himself.

Starscream grumbled but he waved a servo away as if to say, "Forget about it."

"If only all bots were as honest as you, Deadend. Perhaps my life wouldn't be such a mess all the time." He sarcastically said.

Deadend rolled his optics, still sucking the laser-core dry in case Starscream decided he should share. Each time they saw each other, Starscream made him out to be a shoulder to cry on. Deadend didn't really mind, as when he had been apart of the Stunticons, his brothers had also ranted and raved their feelings away -- Starscream was a twisted sense of home.

"Hey, how's Knockout doing since Breakdown died?" Breakdown had been his brother, a fellow Stunticon. "I heard you guys ended up cutting into his body after some organic-monkey hijacked it?"

"Ah yes," Starscream clasped a hand to his still-dented helm. "Such a delight that was. Knockout actually took the entire situation oddly well. He was bloodthirsty and out for revenge! He peeled the parasitic organic from Breakdown's spark-chamber and broke every little bone in its squealing body, before crushing it into a red pulp. I've never seen such a crazy look in his optics before as he was cutting it up; I swore for a moment that he was a sparkeater!"

Deadend chucked the now empty laser-core away, and he gave Starscream a dour look. "Knockout, a sparkeater? Unlikely, unless you bit him...and, you didn't right? Remember, Breakdown made me promise to look after him. I take that seriously."

"Please, don't accuse me of such dumb-aft-antics. I already have Megatron to accuse me of such nonsense." Argued Starscream.

"Though I forgot to add -- Knockout is one of the nicest bots I know -- a little naïve even." Deadend said, sarcastically.

It was that total glitchiness which made Breakdown take Knockout as his Conjex Endura in the first place...are you sure he wasn't upset?"

"Well alright, maybe he cried after the event for all I know. But him and I keep things strictly professional. I don't know what he gets up to in his free time."

Deadend crossed his arms. "A shame. I hope to convince him to leave the Decepticons before it kills him. Same goes for you, also." Starscream snorted, "Oh how gentlemech of you Deadend. Is that why your here with this shipment? Are you going to stay for once?"

"Yeah, unfortunately. I can't stand one more recharge cycle stuck on Vox. That place is so cramped now that tourists are daring to run around."

"Is it really that popular, Seaspray's Radio Show?" asked Starscream.

"Don't they send you pictures? You could reason a guess. It's not the only attraction on Vox." Stated Deadend.

"Yes, well, I don't look at every single one...it's hard for me to believe that none of the tourists go missing."

"Nah, nothing like that, not before I left anyway." Deadend waved the issue away, but his expression was grim.

"The Voxians take maintaining their newfound freedom seriously." Deadend continued. "And Winglord Sunstorm threatened to blow up half of Vox if any visitors got turned into sparkeaters.

"Really?" Starscream sounded unconvinced.

"Seriously, some of the guests we get are freaks begging us to bite them and crazy scrap like that. It makes it a lot easier not to do it."

Starscream made a distressed grumble. "I almost wish you didn't tell me all that. At least then I could exist blissfully unaware before it turned into a problem I'd have to deal with."

"Yah, nah. Starscream your life is cursed to be a mess, deal with it." Deadend had meant to speak in a playful manner, but his voice was so monotone that Starscream was hard pressed to put up any pleasant delusions, like imagining Deadend actually liked to hear him speak...

"Yes, I suppose I will." Despite the lack of comradery or any real sort of warmth between the two, Starscream still treasured his conversations with Deadend. Gingerly he stepped closer, sensing his way around the shipments without the use of his optics.

An awkward silence manifested into the room, as Starscream sat onto a container of spark-chambers next to Deadend and said not a word more.

"So...are the Voxians...are YOU...still maintaining your mining operations near the neutral colonies?" Starscream eventually broke the silence.

"Yep." Deadend said plainly with a grimace. His servos lightly twitched against his lap, and he wished he was holding some high-grade.

It wasn't a pleasant conversation.

"The spark-chambers you're sitting on all came from there."

Starscream said not a word.

"But we still have our allies. Remember we are buddy-buddy with a few of the colonies. We aren't sucking everyone dry out there, just the bandit-types."

"Pfft, 'just the bandit-types,' easily translates into anyone slightly rebelling against your crackpot operation!" Starscream stood up onto a crate, treating it as a soapbox for an infamous sudo-speech. "Next time I go out there, I don't want to find out you've been slaughtering all the remaining holdouts. We Cybertronians are almost extinct for slag's sake! We aren't supposed to kill neutrals like the Decepticons!"

Deadend stayed quiet, not expecting such coherent empathy from a jackaft like Starscream. ''You hear me?! If I come back to a pile of bodies I'll rip your head off Deadend!" Threats flowed easily from Starscream like his overused insults, ever since he became a Decepticon, but from where Deadend came from, Velocitron, a semi-peaceful planet of neutrals, throwing out threats was never to be taken lightly.

He felt compelled to rough Starscream up, or at least to push him from his seat to "teach him some manners," but it was at that moment Deadend noticed Starscream's sorry looking state. His head was dented in like a tin can.

"Geezus, did Megatron use you to mop the Nemesis again? You look like fresh slag I stepped on. Your helmet is basically a hammered nail. Your audials are twitchy like antennas, which makes you look like an insecticon by the way."

"Oh yes Deadend, you always shower me with compliments, but please, I'm in enough pain already." Starscream waved a servo. "Don't try to change the subject." He snapped. Deadend said nothing, and forced Starscream to uncomfortably stew in his own words. "Well, come on, don't you see my point? I'm...I'm not talking crazy here."

Deadend sat quietly some more, before sighing, looking over Starscream's sorry state. "You're right Starscream. I don't like the 'mining operation' either, but it's all we have until we can start mass breeding livestock like the extinct Iacon sheep."

"That's it? You don't even have the sheep project up and running yet?!"

Deadend steepled his claws together, looking down at the ground, his face betrayed no expression. "Well, the colonies we are allied with sometimes pay us in part-ridges from their coops, but that all goes back to Vox for the tourists and the unbitten-brothers."

"What about the kremzeek farm Shockwave left behind?"

"Oh yah, that's still up and running!" Deadend's mood improved somewhat. That was one thing he was proud to report.

"Then make more faster! I'm sending you my energon rations aren't I? Megatron almost scrapped me when he found one of my mines!"

"Duly noted." Said Deadend. "But, wait until you get back and try kremzeek syrup on mica-tincakes with milk of magnesium. It'll put your fears of starvation aside."

Starscream fixed him with a weird expression, "I had forgotten real food like that existed..." He muttered, and then said no more. He looked humiliated, as he glanced anywhere but at Deadend with vacant optics.

Deadend felt bad then. Starscream was stuck fighting a war subsisting entirely on low-grade energon and greasy-flavorless Vehicons sparks. "No wonder you are such a backstabbing afthole." Deadend hadn't meant to voice a meanspirited thought out loud, and Starscream's dangerous expression made him quickly make a correction. "W-wait! What I meant is, we need to get some real food into you. Maybe then you'll come to your senses and stop being a Decepticon."

"You think it's so simple?" Starscream hummed. "Give me some real food and I'll stop being such a blasted shellcase?" It almost sounded like he was taking Deadend seriously.

"..."

"Deadend? You there?"

"Anyway, moving on..." Deadend clasped his servos together, sounding uncomfortable.

He began to move shipments again, mostly laboratory supplies donated by sympathetic New Vos citizens. No doubt the contents would mainly go to Shockwave's uses. "But seriously, Starscream, how the slag did you control those lunatics on Vox? Literally, as soon as you left, they all scattered to do whatever insane project they wanted!"

Starscream sighed. "Well, I can't exactly do anything until I get back on Vox. You're still keeping tabs of names and their corresponding crimes?"

"Yep."

"Excellent. Keep doing that. Anyone die recently?"

"Err, Airwave got caught cannibalizing Autobots and Decepticons on Cybertron, so we lost that source."

"What!?" Starscream stumbled forward in surprise, almost crashing his face into a shipment before his claws stretched outward. "Did I hear correctly? You said Airwave." Deadend nodded, though Starscream couldn't see it, but he'd made an educated guess. "But Airwave grew into his adult-frame. He's not a sparkeater!"

"Yah, but he still was a cannibal." Deadened shrugged. "Lots of the unbitten-brothers are cannibals now; something about cultivating comradery amongst their sparkeaters brethren."

"I'm think I'm going to be sick." Starscream held the sides of his helm, rubbing profusely as if banishing horrendous imagery.

"Why? We're literally cannibals."

"I welcomed the unbitten-brothers onto Vox because I thought they'd become a positive influence for their smaller sparkeater brothers! They grew up to be normal! I thought maybe, just maybe the sparklings would become civilized enough to convince Sunstorm to allow them onto New Vos -- to give them some sort of growth and future -- instead everyone is going backwards!"

That's not going to happen now.

All his sparklings, even the adult-framed unbitten...

Had been corrupted.

Just without him being there.

Starscream smashed his helm into the side of a crate, the noise rang throughout the underground hanger.

"What are you doing!?" Deadend shouted and Starscream screeched back, "Yes, what am I doing!? Obviously, they can't be trusted to care for themselves on Vox, adult-frames be damned!" His expression grew darker, more dangerous -- more sparkeater-ish.

"This is your fault! I left YOU to run the place!" Starscream charged in Deadend's direction flashing his claws dangerously, but tripped over his twitching talons, blind as ever. His chin smacked sickly against a container lid, leaking blue energon with smoldering black flecks. His old welds against his splintered chin had reopened and he could only lay in his own blood, nurturing his self-pity.

Deadend made a distressed sound, simply staring down at Starscream, his servos hung limply at his sides.

"Okay." He said plainly. "Give me a sec and I'll drag you to medbay."

"Oh, how generous. It's not like I'm in complete agony or something!" Starscream hissed, his claws clasped his dented helm uselessly. 'Help me.' He tried to say more, out loud, but his denta had pressed too firmly together, the pain unbearable, immovable.

"I just need to restack the crates you just ran over." Deadend sighed, moving slowly as he gently dragged the crates around." We can't have any of the spark-chambers exploding on us, after all."

Starscream was inclined to agree, even when crippled, dying to a high degree.

'Help me.' He repeated, to himself.

Chapter Text

"Ahh, this is a relief." Starscream blinked his new optics. the colors a startlingly fresh red. "Thank you Deadend. I can rest easy now."

"I'm glad we got that mess out of the way." Deadend raised a browridge in Starscream's direction. "Now do you wanna talk about Airwave while I'm here? I don't think you realized how upset you looked. Else I gotta-"

"-go do other things, yes yes I know." Starscream waved him away. "Airwave is dead, so what?" Starscream paused, taking a deep vent. "I've lost a lot of sparklings. So what..." The statement was supposed to make himself feel better, but Starscream could only look down at the ground, wanting more than anything to run out of the room in shame. "So what?" he repeated again, uncertain, not sure what to make of Deadend's serenely flat-expression.

But it was true. He'd lost a lot of sparklings.

"I should be used to it by now." Starscream whispered, his voice grew tighter with every spoken word.

"Used to what?"

"You know, that feeling." His own spindly arms wrapped around himself, to provide some sort of comfort, or perhaps the illusion of distance from Deadend. He didn't want to be in this room, this medbay , with a bot who barely tolerated his presence.

But that was his life.

Both sat atop their respective berths, each looked down with a dour expression.

"What's that thing you and Jetfire do? That human thing?" Deadend pretended not to know, but Starscream rolled his optics. He knew Deadend was playing stupid -- he'd caught Deadend once or twice already, watching human media called "sitcoms," that Seaspray occasionally tried to convince Deadend to smuggle into Vox.

Fortunately, he'd been there to shut down that entire operation. Winglord Sunstorm would've strangled him to death if he ended up corrupting "precious Vosian culture" with filthy xeno-imports -- even if poor Starscream had nothing to do with it -- he'd still be blamed; but that was besides the point -- sadly, such strict import laws made sense for New Vos. Cybertronians barely tolerated works of art generated by their own frame-types, nevermind the mindless-dross produced by organics. Plus, the Winglord had made it very crystal clear he didn't want his citizens to have motivations to venture beyond the solar system of New Vos, for fear of Decepticons or Autobots discovering their budding civilization, and destroying what little was left. He had even gone so far as to outlaw the use of Shanix, the old pre-war Cybertronian currency. Everyone used something called "Gangue" now.

Whatever, he didn't care what New Vos did. It's not as if he'd be allowed to set foot upon the planet anytime soon.

Starscream muttered bitterly to himself, clutching his head as a helmache began to push through. The dent in his helm had yet to be repaired, but it apparently required specialized equipment only available upon "The Nemesis," that, and his medical records, which he wasn't going to give to an unauthorized stranger like Deadend.

Though Deadend had yet to wrong him...yet...

He dreaded going back there, to the Nemesis, under Megatron's rusty boot and thumb. It was a den of misery, with not an iota of privacy -- Soundwave uprooted every miniscule secret. He could never breath easy despite being Second-In-Command for so long. Still, he couldn't leave the Decepticons and let Megatron have it all.

Megatron hadn't earned it.

His silly Decepticon Empire.

He did.

It was his.

Plus.

There was "The Nemesis."

He'd get Trypticon Station back...one day...

He was almost finished...

"Hey, yoohoo?" Deadend waved a hand in front of Starscream's face. "You there?" Starscream grimaced. His head was on the verge of an implosion.

'Oh that.'

"Oh right, he calls it a hug. " Starscream sarcastically played along. "Apparently, humans do that to show affection."

"So..." Deadend looked away for a second. "Can we hug?" Starscream looked at him as if he was crazy, filthy, covered in dirt even. "Come on, it might make that feeling go away." Deadend insisted and stepped off his berth, stretching his arms out in front of Starscream. Embarrassed beyond belief, Starscream stiffly leaned away...but he refused to move -- to run away.

'.....'

'.....'

'.....'

'.....'

Several beats of awkward silence occurred between them and yet Deadend seemed undeterred, annoyed even. "Come on, I have things to do." He sighed. "And, so do you." He added.

'Well...what's the harm?' Starscream reluctantly thought.

"You're not hiding a dagger in one of your servos are you?"

Deadend rolled his optics. But he didn't deny the accusation either.

"Let's just get this over with." He wiggled a servo in a "come hither" gesture. "You obviously need something good to happen to you this cycle."

"Why? Why even bother?" Starscream scoffed, but it quickly fell from his face when Deadend stepped into his space. "It does nothing. It's just a silly gesture!" Starscream snapped.

"Then why are you so scared of it?" smirked Deadend. The mech looked ridiculous, his expression stern with arms outstretched, resembling some sort of tall swamp earth-bird.

"B-because this is highly suspicious, unprofessional b-behavior!" Starscream stuttered, slipping off his berth before catching himself.

Deadend took a step.

Starscream took a step.

Deadend stepped... closer.

Starscream stepped... backwards.

"I'm not scared you imbecile!" Starscream hissed, his wings flared outward in an intimidating display. Deadend simply smirked harder.

"Prove it." Deadend whispered, and he sounded on the verge of laughter.

Starscream closed his eyes and tipped forward...

And let Deadend catch him.

"Is this how hugging works?" Starscream asked.

"Uh...yes?"

"Hrmmm." Starscream wasn't convinced.

"Do you feel better?"

"No."

Slam!

The medbay door opened and in walked a familiar face. "What are you guys doing?" asked Seaspray, with a datapad and lab instruments tucked against his side.

"A human thing." Said Deadend.

"Airwave died." Said Starscream, as if it explained everything.

"Right, that sitcom thing." Seaspray appeared unimpressed, waving a servo as he gestured to something unseen on his datapad.

"I heard about that -- Airwave's death. That sucks." Seaspray sauntered past into the operating theater room below the med bay. "We're gonna dissect Skybyte if you guys wanna watch." He called out, and just then a massive metal shark was rolled into the room -- obviously dead and littered with cauterized laser-wounds.

"Quasar?!" Starscream squawked in alarm. He knew it was Quasar standing in front of him, but he couldn't help but panic every time he saw "Cliffjumper," the dead Autobot running around. Not-Cliffjumper's reanimated corpse shuddered, flaking off paint chips with every mildly harsh movement, and the spark-chamber opened, revealing Quasar seated inside -- a small black and white sparkling with a yellow mono-optic. Quasar blinked up at them blurrily, looking tired as ever as she fiddled with switches and wires within Cliffjumper's hollow chassis.

"Yes, hello Ma-ker. Hello Deadend." It was said in Cliffjumper's voice, and Starscream practically snarled as he flinched away in disgust.

"Whoops." Quasar's voice disconnected from whatever mechanism was connected to Cliffjumper's vocal cords, and she spoke normally, in a saccharine-monotone. "I'm cutting up a shark now. Don't bother me." Quasar was a lot like Shockwave in many respects.

"I thought I told you to remove that filthy Autobot insignia from that corpse! It's going to get you killed if Decepticons spot you!" Starscream hissed, and Quasar rolled her optic. "What? And lose my ability to potentially larp as a resurrected Cliffjumper to Arcee? No, I want to see her devastated expression when I consume her spark."

Starscream put his hands on his hips, silently concluding that he had raised a monster.

"It's good you've got that to look forward to, kiddo." Said Deadend, awkwardly, sarcastically -- if only to keep the peace.

"Kiddo me again and I'll detach your optics."

Deadend believed her, whatever unhinged monster she was, and he stepped a few paces backwards with a tense, forced smile. Ironically, Quasar intimidated him more than Starscream ever could.

"Quasar, get your aft in here! I need you to disable the nano-repair system before it begins the decay process; else we won't be able to turn him into a submarine!"

Deadend and Starscream watched Quasar resettle into Not-Cliffjumper's body and she walked away, looking as Cliffjumper as ever -- just one who needed a paint job.

"They're making a submarine?" asked Deadend, dumbfounded.

"Yes, so we can collect energon deposits from the ocean floor. Its distinctly rich since no creature on Earth has disturbed any major sources -- everything remains completely untouched, waiting for us." He confidently stated. "And, I know for a fact neither Autobot nor Decepticon forces have the resources to consistently monitor the oceans for threats." Then, he added with a touch of glee. "Or to start underwater mining operations. All of that energon is just waiting for us to pick it up! Just us!" Starscream skipped in place. Perhaps, it was the dent in his head, or the fact his latest scheme was succeeding, but he dared to be happy.

Deadend couldn't help but to stare at Starscream, bemused that his mood could change so wildly. Just a moment ago he'd been on the verge of tears. And Deadend had adverted the crisis, all by asking Starscream about his latest scheme.

Deadend had to admit, it was strangely adorable.

Why had he been scared of Starscream again?

"Really? Couldn't vehicons just surf the ocean waves?" he asked, imagining a battalion of dude-bro vehicons with surfboard alt-modes.

Starscream snorted. "Sure, if by "surf" you mean monitoring the human interwebs -- shipping lanes and logistics -- that sort of inane thing." Starscream walked up to the observation window, watching as Seaspray and "Not-Cliffjumper" began to peel apart Skybyte's plating, replacing the scales with reinforced seals that would work well with Earth's water composition. While Skybyte was built to withstand deep underwater pressures, the chassis needed every upgrade it could contain -- least an energon explosion occurred and risked their operation being discovered.

It was paranoid, sure.

Overkill to reinforce the armor of an already competent submarine.

But Starscream and his sparklings hadn't lived so long without having to nurture some level of paranoia.

"Uh huh, but what about ocean patrols?" Deadend asked, and Starscream stood up straighter, surprised he had wanted to continue the conversation. Deadend was besides him, watching as Skybyte was cut up below.

"No...no...energon is stretched thin as is. Megatron only wants vehicons stationed in areas he knows Autobots frequent. He's surprisingly uninspired like that. You'd think he'd be more creative, proclaiming himself to be a military-genius, but no."

Deadend scoffed. He'd yet to see Megatron in person, but from how Starscream spoke of him -- it gave Deadend some measure of comfort to know Megatron really wasn't some invincible god as Decepticon propaganda often proclaimed him to be.

"Sounds like he's just some washed up, retired gladiator." Deadend said.

Starscream laughed. "Yes! Finally, someone gets it!"

"Oh yah, what about Soundwave? Doesn't he have drones?"

Starscream didn't seem worried in the slightest.

"Eurgh, the sooner Soundwave's surveillance system falls apart, the happier I'll be. I left it to Shockwave to deal with. No doubt he's taking steps to destroy the drones completely." Starscream looked delighted. "I even told him to blame it all on the Autobots."

"Oh, and how are you managing that?"

"With Kup and Blurr, of course! In fact, I need to talk to them about it the first chance I get." He paused. "Where are they by the way? I'd thought they where coming with you?"

"Blurr did." Deadend said, and he eyed the entrance to the medbay nervously. "He's around here somewhere."

"Okay...?" Starscream couldn't help but look over Deadend with a critical eye. He was hiding something, and it had to do with Blurr.

"And as for Kup, apparently the Autobots are getting more recruits on Earth soon, so Kup stayed behind in his base of operations to manage the list of volunteers or some such."

'Sssssssssrrrrrkkkkkkkkrrrrrrruuunnncccchhhhhh'

'crunch'

'crunch'

Starscream and Deadend remembered to pay attention, and they watched in detached fascination, the growing horror of the operating theater. Skybyte no longer resembled a shark. A giant drill had replaced his optics and faceplate -- his carcass had been defiled into that of a mere servitude-drone.

"Want to get a closer look?" asked Deadend. Starscream shrugged, seemingly unimpressed.

Starscream and Deadend seated themselves in the observation room of the operating theater, with a view just above the dissection table. Screens showed close up displays of Skybyte at every possible angle, but neither Deadend or Starscream seemed eager to learn about the surgery.

"The method on how they get their new frames ...well, it's disturbing, don't you think?" asked Deadend. Starscream nodded, looking at "Not-Cliffjumper" work on welding a seam. "I'm glad to know I'm not the only sane person here." Starscream turned off the gruesome visuals upon the screens dangling above him. "My apologizes Deadend. My helmache is acting up. Watching a shark get cut up is the last thing I want to see."

"Fair enough." Deadend leaned backwards, propping his legs up against a stool, as if he was about to fall into recharge. "But before you go take this." A pocket unclasped from Deadend's side and he pulled out an aluminum bag, the foil jingled with something unseen. He held it out for Starscream to take. "Here, a gift for you."

Starscream hesitated, looking at the bag as if it was liable to explode.

Deadend rolls his optics, "It's not going to bite you. Just take it." Starscream gingerly grabbed the bag, the foil crinkled uncomfortably in his servos. "What's this-" Starscream tisked. "Candy? Do you take me for a sparkling, Deadend?"

"Look, if you don't want energon goodies, I'll take em' back."

"No!" Starscream placed the bag within his cockpit's subspace, before Deadend could reconsider his kindness. "But why? Since when do we give each other gifts?"

"Since now." Deadend scowled, peering past Starscream to peer into the operating theater. Apparently, whatever was being done in there had certainly hooked his attention.

A moment passed and...

"I felt bad about earlier." Deadend admitted. "About bringing up mica-tincakes and then realizing you've been guzzling down dirt-quality energon for the past couple million years. How are you not completely crazy?"

Starscream could only look at Deadend in silent disbelief. This bot had given him a thoughtful gift, only to mildly insult him soon after.

Who did this mech think he was?!

And not to mention that weird hug earlier.

Normally, Starscream's reaction would be to fly off the rails and to demand an apology -- to demand respect from some disrespectful worm like Deadend.

But not today.

A painful wheeze caused Starscream to collapse besides Deadend. The bleeding pain within his dented helm flared to life, and for the first time in perhaps millennia, he reconsidered resorting to violence and anger.

"Thank you, Deadend, truly." Starscream got comfortable, accepting that he was stuck besides Deadend, until he found the strength to stand and to find a place to recharge.

"No problem." Deadend snapped his claws, the sound wispy. "Pass me the bag. I'm feeling peckish."

Starscream did so, but not before throwing an entire handful into his mouth. It had been so long since he'd had real food, that his taste-receptors had trouble identifying what he was eating. It was buttery smooth, and delightfully sweet.

Just what he needed.

Whatever it was, it made life worth living.

His room was a mess.

Of course it was.

'They always do this.' Storm thought.

"Damnit..." He snarled, his fists stalled at his sides, wanting more than ever to punch a hole into his wall; but unlike his brothers he had some self control.

"Fraggin' scrap-afts, I'll rip their optics out..." He muttered, as he surveilled the damage.

His brethren had picked his stuff apart like a pack of robber barons.

His laboratory tools had become nonexistent, most likely cannibalized for parts by Quasar to repair her own mishandled and neglected work tools -- it was far from the first time she would've pulled such a stunt. He'd have to pay her lab a visit later to see if he recognized any of her equipment. With a bitter huff, he tapped a reminder within his internal UI visor -- to "demand compensation from Quasar" later.

Unfortunately, he was too tired to "scream at her" that very moment. He flopped over onto his berth, his once organized room had become a shower of trinkets and specimens left carelessly broken across the floor.

Some rare.

Some irreplaceable.

Not that his siblings would care.

Not about his sentimental clutter.

He sat up from his berth, too upset by the mess to rest. His lifted one of his specimens -- a once pristine sample of black calcite had been cleaved in half, an ugly broken thing to what a beauty it had been before.

It was unlikely he'd ever find a new one; not as perfect as the broken one had been.

'Now it's useless. I can't look at it any longer.' He grimly thought. ' It's beauty. It's all gone. ' He tossed the black calcite behind him, hearing as the crystal shattered further against titanium flooring. He stood up, crunching his once prized specimens beneath his talons, as if reclaiming the emotions threatening to break forth from his thrumming black-spark. He exited his room, his rage shimmered beneath his plating as he moved. He could only stomp down the hallway, seeing no one to accuse, nor to talk to.

Eventually, he was stopped by a locked door; he'd have to enter in a code if he wanted to continue walking the direction he was going. Mindlessly he inputted the code that would typically let him through, not really caring if the room opened or not. The keypad clicked green in approval, recognizing his CNA as he stepped forward through the scanning, separating doors.

There was nothing inside.

Nothing of note.

It was either a buffer room meant to stall an invading force, or perhaps it was simply extra storage.

But there was nothing there.

At the moment.

'How much useless space is down here?' he thought. He had spent years upon years digging out tunnels throughout Earth's mountains, all for the sake of Shockwave's silly laboratories; laboratories the mech probably had only visited once and then never used.

Suddenly Storm felt taken for a fool.

Before he'd been so proud.

Of his mindless digging.

"I did all this for nothing, huh?" he muttered. He walked through the empty room to the other side, into another section of hallway. He was mildly curious as to where it would lead. While he had helped to carved out the tunnels with a mining drill once-upon-a-time, he'd nothing to do with the installation of the titanium tunnels themselves.

He continued walking, becoming stressed as he realized the walls began to shrink around him the deeper he went.

'Where am I?' he asked. And as soon as he thought the question, the path ended.

Again.

There was nothing.

A cave-in greeted him at the end, a delightfully useless collection of common Earth rocks.

He placed his servos onto the mess, considering the possibility of there being anything important behind the rockslide.

'Probably not.' He concluded. Shockwave would've sent out maintenance drones to dig out the place if it was in anyway important. He was about to turn around and to leave, before he caught sight of a long discarded mining drill, sitting in a corner, collecting dust. There was a small metal box underneath it, hidden by the bulk of the drill.

He opened the box. His vents hitched in surprise.

'Now, this is interesting.' He thought. 'Who left this here?'

A huge piece of red energon glimmered within the box, about the size of both of his servos. It was rare, valued by cybertronians more than even gold by humans.

It was quite the treasure.

'And it's all mine.' He thought. Storm had no qualms about taking it for himself. Obviously whoever found it was within the rank and file of the bots he knew, down in the tunnels.

Had Shockwave found it? No, he wouldn't have just left something so useful in an unlocked box, to sit out without a purpose.

Perhaps Starscream, had found it? That scenario was a lot more likely. Dear ol' mother loved to scheme, but would he really leave his precious loot to fester, out of his servos? Starscream was the type of person to leave red energon on his person, to wield it with the surety of a weapon.

One of his brothers must've found it, then. Only one of them would've been dumb enough to leave it in a box where anyone could find it.

'Finders keepers, losers weepers.' The old human adage came quickly to mind. "I bet they didn't know your worth." He patted the red energon, his optics alight with greed. "They threw you away like trash!" he said, a bit too loudly. He placed his prize into his cockpit, just barely, as the crystal was strange and oblong. He was careful not to shatter it, least it spontaneously combusted.

'Now, where to hide this?' he thought.

Chapter Text

Storm didn't bother to go back; his room was a mess.

Maybe if he kept it that way, his brothers wouldn't steal from him a second time.

He had intended to pass by Quasar's room, to no doubt recollect his lab equipment; but he'd must've taken a wrong turn earlier. The path he was on led outside, the metal flooring eroded into noticeably wet mud.

In front of him was the behind of a waterfall, cascading above the holographic rock which sealed the entrance. With a wave of a servo he was allowed through the hidden exit and he gingerly stepped through the waterfall, feeling a slight sense of wonder as he noticed curious algae growth along the rocks he passed through.

"I wonder what type of filth you are." He muttered to himself. Normally, he'd take a sample to study for later, but with his subspace currently occupied with a generous red energon specimen and his lab equipment "out on loan," he had to reconsider his habit.

As soon as he stepped into the sunlight, he transformed into his altmode -- and the jet hovered gracelessly above the water, splashing the already scarce riverbed into a muddy slurry as his engine's blazed by. He flew low, surrounded on all sides by pine trees, and he didn't dare to fly higher, least a human saw him and snapped his picture.

Not even a minute passed as he flew and the river matured into a pond, a pool of glistening blue water. He'd been here once before, but it looked healthier from his last visit. He transformed into root mode, tapping his optics to take a recording for later.

The water was clean and pristine, and he couldn't help but become enamored by the view. Before the water had been frozen over, the winter season had taken every cheerful bit of green.

''You scared the beavers!"

Storm panicked as he heard a twig snap behind him. From out of the bushes tumbled a human, a small boy with dark hair and the most dejected, black beady eyes he'd ever seen. Storm could only freeze in place as the boy crept closer, his head low to the ground as if the boy hadn't noticed the gigantic metal alien currently standing next to him.

Storm backed away as quietly as he could. He didn't like to be around humans, especially children, who thought it wise to run around in random directions near his legs, where he could accidentally step on them.

Not that it ever happened.

But there was a first time for everything.

"Well, aren't you going to say sorry?" asked the boy. There was a wild look in his eyes, one screaming vengeance.

Storm could only look down dumbly. The boy, perhaps ten years of age, still wasn't screaming, running away back into the bushes he'd tumbled out of.

Was that a good sign? Storm wasn't sure.

"Storm?" said the boy, and suddenly Storm was struck with the realization that the boy wasn't human after all.

'He knows my name...who-' Storm had no time to finish his thought, but now knew who the bot was.

Crrrzzzzkttt!

The shudder light of a camera snapped in his direction, the boy held a satisfied expression, looking up into Storm's optics as if all his problems had just been solved.

"Are you in there? Or are you suffering a malfunction?" The boy crept closer, persistent with his questions. "Some kinda glitch?" He mused, kicking one of Storm's talons, an action so comically small when done by an itty-bitty fleshling -- or at least, the facsimile of one.

The shudder light of the camera went off again, and this time Storm was coherent enough to snatch it away. With two claw tips, it was unceremoniously ripped away and the "human" could only reach out with his hands glumly, the camera just out of reach.

"What are you doing with this relic? I thought humans took photos with their phones now, exclusively." He recalled how Miko and Raf at the Autobots had defended their technological obsession, attached to their phones as much as Arcee to her wheels and Bulkhead to his swinging maces. 'At least Jack can be reliable without technology...sometimes...' Storm thought.

"They do!" The boy spat. "But do you really want me running around with one, its GPS signal ready to crack open this entire operation?"

Storm rolled his eyes, and against his better judgement, gave the camera back. "Fair enough." He muttered.

"So, what did you say earlier?" asked Storm.

The boy bit his lip, the action a mere expression but the slightest movement did appear ethereal -- his tiny body was enveloped in a strange, deceptive oscillating-light. "About the beavers?" he grumbled. "I know you know what they are. You downloaded the same wildlife directories I did."

Reluctantly, Storm internally rolled back his optics, perusing his database of Earth wildlife. He found "Beavers" quickly enough, the species inane, yet distinct for being one of the few organics with enough processing power to build "houses" just like the sapient humans.

He looked over the pond again, noticing a pile of sticks beavers would inhabit, called a dam.

"Snapshot." Storm sourly said, his tone serious. "That hideous mess can't be called a house."

Snapshot laughed. His body flickered like candlelight, but he appeared happy.

"But it's home to them." He shrugged nonchalantly. "Haven't you seen the inside of a human house? How cluttered with useless knickknack-decorations their nests are?"

Storm nodded "No." He'd yet to see the inside of a human's home that hadn't been from a magazine or the internet. It'd always been Arcee, Bumblebee, or Bulkhead who had minded the humans. He didn't want to bother with such nonsense. It's why he kept Snapshot around. Someone needed to keep tabs on the humans, mindless data no other cybertronian typically wanted to collect.

Suddenly, Storm felt his tanks drop, his percentage of energon lubricating his systems was less than ideal. He remembered the red energon crystal tucked away in his subspace and he mused what it would taste like if he dared to eat such a rare specimen raw.

"Say, Snapshot, 'little buddy,' could you perhaps, pretty please do a favor for me?"

"Well sure." It was said with a sarcastic-bent. "Maybe, if you promise to never ever 'little buddy' me ever again."

Storm chortled, the sound distinct and strained. He wasn't the type to be amused often, but it was safe to say that Snapshot was his favorite brother of them all.

Snapshot, like most of the sparklings, cursed-never-to-grow, was horribly sensitive about his size, but while the majority accepted mediocrity in being the size of Storm's fingertip, Snapshot had embraced his shortcomings and thrived.

"Tell you what, let's make a deal." Snapshot held a mischievous grin. His human expressions never were completely right, nor his hair which remained uncanny, like wet-hot plaster atop his skull. "Bring me an alt-mode scan of an osprey, the bird, not the plane, and I'll do whatever you wish."

Storm wanted to snarl out in frustration, but he wasn't a temperamental sparkling -- he was a mechling -- with an intelligent processor -- and Snapshot was the most reasonable of his brothers.

In fact, the request was suspiciously mundane. "Really, you just want an alt-mode scan of an obscure animal? Couldn't you just do it yourself?" After all, Snapshot's life purpose was to track down and to catalogue every organic he set his little optics upon, notably by his lonesome.

"Not this one. It's too... out of the way. It's in Florida you see, amongst the mangroves. I can't afford to travel from Nevada right now, unlike you. It's springtime for the beavers and I need to take many pictures of the new baby-ones. "

Storm sighed. It was a way out to travel, but he'd get it done eventually. "I'll do it, but I can't do it right now. I have to return to the Autobot's before they mark me off as dead."

"Really? You're leaving the tunnels so soon?" Snapshot rolled his eyes. "But they'll keep you there -- trapped. You won't get my osprey scan, then."

Storm stomped a ped down, for emphasis. "I know I'm giving up my freedom, just like it's nothing, but I'm keen to get back to the Autobots regardless. The sooner I return, the quicker I can regain their trust to let me out when 'something actually happens,' which I can't tell when will happen." Besides, Storm wasn't eager to stick around his brothers, Shockwave, and his mother; especially since the privacy of his room had been invaded. His room at the Autobot-base was the only space of his currently respected -- and he wanted to return to it -- his unsullied possessions.

Snapshot sighed in turn. "Yes, I suppose we can't all be omnipotent."

Storm waved a servo."Yah yah, you're not Sunstorm with his 'god-complex.' either. Don't try to fool me."

"Hehe, of course, but you try telling that to a few of the local humans. They think I'm some kinda fae-genie...or sometimes even 'Bigfoot.'"

Storm didn't think too hard about whatever nonsense Snapshot was admitting. He didn't have time to go down whatever rabbit hole of information Snapshot was proposing. He didn't know what a "fae, genie, or a bigfoot" was, and he didn't want to know.

"Look, while that sounds fun, could you still do my favor, early? I can't exactly bring it to the Autobots without losing it."

"Without losing it? Are you sure you haven't already?"

Storm snorted, but took out the red energon crystal. Snapshot's eyes roved over it silently, before holding up his camera and snapping a picture of it. "I can't see my reflection in it. Just like the pond." It was a dejected statement, but Snapshot filled it with such unwarranted enthusiasm.

"Could you hide this? From everybody else, including Shockwave?"

"What?! What do you even expect me to do? It's bigger than me by ten times you bolthead!"

"Please? I'll even bury it for you. I just need you to keep an optic on it."

"Right, but what if someone finds it? I can't exactly guard it, not even from the humans."

Storm huffed. "Don't discount yourself. I know you can eat a pack of humans if you wanted to."

"But do I?" Snapshot spat.

"Right, well, if somebody takes it you can tell me who and I could take it back."

"But what if Shockwave finds it?"

Both Storm and Snapshot made a noncommittal whimper. They'd let Shockwave have whatever. It's not like they could convince him otherwise, to let them keep a shiny mineral 'just for keeps.' "Or Starscream?" It was the same situation, if only more loud and messy.

"What are you even going to use this for?" Snapshot asked.

Storm shrugged his shoulders. "No idea, but I'm not about to leave it for anyone to find either. I'll think of something."

Snapshot shook his head, but amusement was plain upon his face.

"Fine. But if you don't get that scan, expect revenge."

"Right."

Storm wandered a mile or so from the pond, coming across Snapshot's log cabin. "Are you sure you want it inside? It barely fits and it's crushing your stuff." Snapshot grumbled. "Well no, but you don't give me much choice. My cabin is the only spot that is plated to block cybertronian signals. If someone, like ma-ker, scans for energon deposits it won't come up."

"How can you be sure of that? It's mainly just wood."

"I'm not, but it's all I've got."

"Right."

The red energon took up every nook and cranny of Snapshot's log cabin. It sat unassumingly against a cushioned bench, narrowly avoiding Snapshot's cooking equipment and stove.

"It's explosive, remember." Warned Storm, but it only came off as condescending to Snapshot, who looked back with hot ire.

"No matter how much I look it, I'm not a sparkling. I'm as old as you, you imbecile!" He snarled. "Now get out of here! Scurry back to your pathetic Autobots." Snapshot's holoform illusion disintegrated. A small sparkling stomped a ped or two, his paint camouflaged perfectly to melt into the woodland. A moment passed, and Storm withheld any apology. "I'll find your stupid bird, Snapshot. Just hold it together!"

"You don't know what you're asking of me, you fool!" Snapshot transformed. His form was of a small quadrupedal mammal -- a "beaver." It was made of camouflaged metal, colors of grey, brown, green, and even lichen yellow -- but then his holoform shimmered again, a golden glimmering mist, and then a beaver remained, appearing as organic and perfectly brown as any. "I have a new cabin to build -- and that means I have many trees to cut!"

"Get out of here, you fool!" Snapshot shouted, a garbled mess of beaver-tongue, incomprehensible to Storm, but amusing all the same.

Storm shot off into the sky, his jet alt-mode collapsed together, shooting away with the Autobots clicking upon his radar.

'Home sweet home, here I come.' He mused.

Storm paced around the Autobot-base nervously. The ceiling was high, curved upward like a stretched off-white eggshell against packed earth. The soft glow of yellow lights could not fool him into believing he was under sunshine. As soon as he walked into the Autobot base, he'd gotten prisoner-clamps locked onto his wings, courtesy of Bulkhead and Arcee.

They didn't want him potentially "running off" again.

His aerial-sensors would occasionally ping, to remind him he was underground; it annoyed him, but also kept him focused upon the task at hand -- his punishment. He'd known that going back to base after such a long hiatus, without his brother to boot, would cause him serious trouble.

He just didn't expect trouble to be so mundane.

When Ratchet had saw he was alive, instead of reprimanding him or shouting during his checkup, Ratchet had given him the biggest smile he'd ever seen on any mech.

Not even Optimus Prime smiled that wide, at least from what he could tell when the Boss's face wasn't obscured by a mask.

So Storm had asked for a punishment, just to make sure things felt normal again -- to feel like he deserved to be there. Ratchet had taken him down a dusty hallway, with a room that hadn't looked used for decades. Crates of supplies and racks of datapads littered every nook and cranny of the office.

"This used to be Prowl's office and workstation." Storm hadn't heard of a bot named Prowl. He wanted to ask specifics, but by Ratchet's strained tone of voice, he guessed that mech died a while ago...

So it didn't matter anymore....who he'd been...

"Prowl? I've never heard of him." said Storm.

Ratchet laughed, one obviously forced.

"He would've had a spark-attack hearing you say that. Back during the heyday of the war, he had been one of the most feared Autobots, just for the simple fact he got things done better than almost anyone." Ratchet leaned over a stack of datapads, reaching for something left atop a desk. It was a bright orange holopicture in the shape of a rhombus. The mech depicted had a professional, almost stern expression, with black and grey colors, with accents of brown and gold.

"That's Prowl, one of the most competent mechs I ever knew. He didn't take slag from anyone." said Ratchet.

"What was his job exactly?"

"He kept the prisoners inline and organized all of our covert operations. Overseeing security was more of Red Alert's thing."

Storm sighed. "And who was Red Alert?"

"Honestly, he was one of the most paranoid guys I've ever met. Sadly, all that fear never saved him from the wrong end of an ion-cannon."

"Ouch." There wasn't much else Storm could say or do to express his sympathies. Slag-happened.

"Anyway, that's enough reminiscing. I can tell you are eager to get started." Ratchet smirked, an iota of humor slipped into his tone.

"Get started on what exactly?"

"Cleaning out this room, organizing all this stuff Prowl left behind. The room has barely been touched since he died. Honestly, this job should've been done years ago, but I only trust Optimus Prime or myself to clear this out."

"Pfft, what? So why make me do it?"

"You asked for a punishment didn't you?" Ratchet crossed his arms. "Well, this is it. Unless you want to clean the shower drains."

"No, no, this is fine." Storm said, a little too quickly, and he waved a dismissive servo. "Is there anything else? Should I put aside anything specific when I find it?"

Ratchet put a servo to his chin, scanning the room. Briefly, he looked distressed, before shrugging away whatever had disturbed him.

"Unmarked datapads for sure. Prowl had them all organized by color, so any without a color stamp are empty, or at one point, held sensitive information."

"Sensitive information, huh? You sure you wanna tell me that Ratchet? I might have to take a peek at everything now, to sate my newfound curiosity."

Ratchet rolled his optics. "I guarantee if you find anything, it'll either be encrypted gibberish or outdated system updates. Optimus stored anything useful for the war effort and destroyed all the incriminating stuff. "

Storm grumbled in disappointment. At least he knew now that Prime hid potential treasures out of sight. "Right, well, I'll still be looking for anything Prime might have missed."

Ratchet snorted. "As you should." He held out the rhombus shaped holopic for Storm to take. "Here, you'll need this to unlock the lockers and cabinets. It was his ID badge."

"Oh, gotcha." Storm had been momentarily confused as to why Ratchet was handing him a dead-mech's picture; he'd never known the guy, so why would he care to look at him? Storm paid more attention then, and noticed Ratchet was a bit shaken up. Ratchet was glancing around the room, as if his processor was filling up with flashes of a thousand horrible memories -- Storm saw that very same look on a lot of old bots from New Vos.

"Alright, comm me if you need anything."

"Of course, Ratchet."

Storm vented a sigh of relief when Ratchet left the room. He certainly didn't remember the mech being so chummy and friendly before.

'Ick, he must feel bad my brother got captured, or something dumb like that.' He thought.

He started by thumbing through a filing cabinet full of datapads, which certainly didn't instill Storm with confidence that he would find anything worthwhile. Most of the datapads needed repairs to work or a new charge-crystal to activate to life. It was unlikely he'd be able to read anything significant until he cleaned everything up.

With that realization in mind, Storm decided to take the project seriously; it was unlikely the Autobots would be letting him off the base anytime soon.

"Well, I asked for this." He grumbled.

Unfortunately, his situation was a bit too familiar, and he couldn't help but recall the majority of his childhood, trapped in the repeating empty corridors of Shockwave's various interconnected hideouts. In the early days of the Great War, Cybertron beneath-its-shell, had been carved open, quickly becoming a desperate underground city, a place for neutrals to flee the endless conflict above. However, whatever unity the people had been able to cobble together had quickly withered away when energon did. Jetstorm had been fortunate enough to have been born after all the bloodshed; he only had to walk past harmless bodies, instead of strangers looking to gut him for energon.

Once-upon-a-time, a scraplet had bitten Starscream.

One that had escaped Shockwave's cage for it.

By the end of the "Underground War," his family had all been struck by the sparkeater's curse.

As far as Jetstorm knew, he'd been born as a sparkeater.

His first memory had been of Starscream's fiery-red optics, a look of endless hunger and sudden, twitchy movements.

Shockwave had been there for him then, his surrogate-father, when Starscream sought out bots to slaughter -- to feed -- to eat.

Either Storm would be perched atop Shockwave's shoulder for a view, or placed within a container full of his siblings, a container Shockwave had welded to his chassis and dragged around, a literal treasure chest full of sparklings.

He'd been so incredibly tiny then, perhaps even smaller than the size of a human like Jack Darby.

His fondest memories consisted of being bored to bits, wandering empty space over and over, wearing out his talons down to numbs as he paced restlessly back and forth; daydreaming of fantastical places he could only speculate about. Learning had been his only salvation and one of the few activities Shockwave had actively encouraged with any sort of enthusiasm. When giving a lecture Shockwave looked happy, giving uncanny yet inspired gestures. Despite being trapped underground, Shockwave had fostered a healthy appetite for learning about the outside world, filling Jetstorm's datapads with whatever obscure information he'd requested.

Back then, Storm believed Shockwave had cared about him...that Shockwave had been his friend...

But in reality, Storm was just a number to him.

Just like the rest of his brethren.

Now Storm had no one, not even his twin-brother, to lean on for support.

Just himself.

And he found he liked it that way.

A tower of supply crates reached to the ceiling in a corner of the room, and Storm hoped the Autobots forgot about him.

He had work to do.

Chapter Text

While Storm had tried his hardest to focus his processor upon the task at hand, it had never been a strong suit of his. Ultimately, something would distract him away from what precious little work he could cobble together, and Storm had to deal with the same irritating feeling when he began sorting through the orange stamped datapads.

Orange, like Jetfire.

It wasn't even the same shade of orange, but Storm couldn't help but think of his brother otherwise.

Jetfire had been one of the few constants in his life, besides datapads and the silence of isolation.

Sure, he'd often spent his time alone, even when his brother was on base.

But at least back then, he had the comfort of knowing his brother was but a comm away for a conversation.

He'd taken that for granted...

Now he only had his own processor to talk to.

He wondered if Shockwave ever "talked to himself."

Maybe. Maybe not.

It was a toss up.

Either, Shockwave was crazy enough to splice an AI companion into his own thoughts; or, he had no internal dialogue at all -- insisting speaking would just slow down his calculations and schematics -- something, something, equally as crazy...he mused.

After all.

He was under no delusions that Shockwave wasn't completely insane.

As much as he pretended not to be.

Storm made a mental-note to ask Shockwave himself, "What do you do with your thoughts?" the next time Storm was brave enough after a cube of high-grade.

That was another thing.

Another problem.

He was incredibly hungry.

And there were no spark-chambers in sight.

'I should've eaten more cores before I left.' He practically snarled as he began to twitch, his body quivering from lack of sparks.

Starvation was a dilemma Storm and Jetfire had to deal with over and over. A single spark-chamber only went so far when split between two ravenous hunters.

A sparkeater was always hungry, especially when amongst technically edible Autobots.

Typically Storm would be able to sneak away...and would be gifted a spark-chamber or two from Shockwave's stock of slaughtered vehicons, and so-called- bandit -neutrals.

But now Storm was trapped in the tiny Autobot-base for the foreseeable future. Anybot he dared to eat would be reported missing immediately; and he didn't exactly want to kill anyone -- the Autobots had treated him fairly, all things considered.

He didn't want to lose that.

Whatever it was.

"Hey Ratchet, do we have any mid-grade energon laying around I could have? The usual stuff isn't doing it for me, and I'm guessing high-grade isn't an option." Storm commed Ratchet on a whim, if only to hear another bot speak, and to remind himself ripping out an Autobot spark-chamber simply wasn't an option.

A notification-ping sounded to show that Ratchet had received his message, and Storm awaited a response for a few anxious clicks.

'It wasn't a weird question, right? It was perfectly normal to request better energon.'

Seconds passed.

And a minute.

Then a minute more.

"Sorry, I was in the middle of a weld." There was a clang and clatter from Ratchet's comm line. "Better energon you say? Sure, I'll bring you over a cube. Feeling sick or something?"

"Something like that."

"Right, I'll be there within a joor. I'll have to mix the mid-grade so gimme a sec."

"Thanks Ratchet."

"Don't thank me. I haven't brought you the cube yet." Storm huffed in amusement when Ratchet disconnected his comm. He'd often heard Jetfire banter back and forth with Ratchet, but hadn't given it much thought before.

Perhaps Ratchet was being friendly with him because he missed Jetfire's banter?

It was a bitter thought.

'Do the Autobots just see me as a spare Jetfire?' he wasn't insulted, but he wasn't flattered either. He was Jetstorm, his own bot, and the less the Autobots knew about him the better. He certainly didn't harbor regrets about isolating himself; it was simply how he was.

He got absorbed back into his work, noting what replacements each datapad needed. He took aside a hefty pile of broken charge-crystals, palming a servo though the mess mindlessly as he typed out his observations within his UI visor-optics.

"Open the door, I'm outside." Ratchet commed, and Storm was silently grateful that he'd been given some measure of privacy. When amongst his brothers, they typically broke down his door without hesitation, seeing it only as an obstacle to challenge.

Storm opened the door, hoping he was smiling correctly.

"Here we are. One mid-grade, enriched with metals to upkeep your nano-repair systems. Drink it slowly, else it might clog your tanks if it goes down all at once."

"Oooo, fancy." Storm couldn't look away from the delicious golden cube, the energon inside was thick like a syrup.

"Also, there's one other thing. I was walking down the hall and Smokescreen was asking about you. He's looking for a sparring partner; apparently, Bumblebee is out patrolling with Optimus Prime."

"Ick, that. Fighting was always more of my brother's thing."

"Yes, I figured you'd prefer to stay working here, but if you want to go hangout with Smokescreen you can always pick this up later."

Storm grimaced. "I'll think about it." And he waved a servo. "Thanks for the energon. Maybe after a refuel I'll be in more of a fighting-spirit."

"Of course." Ratchet swiveled his head around the room, nodding in approval. "Good work so far." Ratchet stepped out of the room and Storm looked over his shoulder, unsure if he'd actually been complimented. The room was a complete mess, and only a single filing cabinet of datapads had been sorted into complete order. The Autobots were strange; they showered him with compliments even when he hadn't asked for any.

He fixated his attention onto the golden cube Ratchet had placed onto his desk and he gingerly lifted off the lid, swirling the contents as if it were a fancy high-grade. He still had to alter the fuel before he could drink it. He had to trick his systems into believing he was eating a spark-chamber, so the dangerous craving could be stalled for as long as possible.

Luckily, he'd mastered the method as a child, else the fuel was liable to blow up into his face. He placed his fingertips against the cube, sliding out his claws to gently puncture into the glass surface. An electrical-charge jumped from his claws and the energon inside began to boil at a steady rate. It fizzled like sparkling cider, a drink human's celebrated with, and Storm thought it was a fitting comparison.

After a few minutes, the process was completed, and he was relieved no one had broken down his door to ask what he was doing.

The high metal content of the mid-grade was easier to manipulate than low-grade, tasted more authentic too. The top of the cube was already off, so all he had to do was to drink deeply, slowly, as a spark within a chamber never gave itself up easily.

Then it was empty.

Storm sighed, observing the now useless, punctured cube. He couldn't return it to Ratchet in such a state. It wasn't as if he could explain to Ratchet that he had claws and liked to stab his energon. Turning his servos back to normal, he knocked the cube off his desk, watching it shatter with a forlorn expression.

He would clean up the mess later.

He got up, his systems alive with energy and newfound satisfaction. He rolled his shoulders and neck experimentally, considering all the organization he was still expected to do. He clasped his servos behind his back, and walked out of the room.

For once, he was looking for a fight.

"Hey, Smokescreen, watch out!" Smokescreen had only nanoseconds to respond and to dodge the incoming fist looking to impact with his face. He had fallen backwards onto the floor, catching himself with his servos.

"Scorching-slag, Jetfire!" He started laughing. "You almost took my helm clean off!" Smokescreen stood up, coming face to face with a very angry mechling. It was shorter than him, but that didn't mean the bot couldn't be terrifying. "It's Jet STORM, you jackaft! Get it right!" Suddenly, Storm was very disappointed that his punch had missed. "Right right right, Jetstorm, sorry!" Smokescreen raised his servos in surrender, and reluctantly, Storm slowly winded down his next punch. "So, Ratchet gave you my message then? Awesome!" Smokescreen extended a servo, wanting to shake his hand. "Let's start over. I'm Smokescreen and you're-"

"Jetstorm." Storm snapped, "And don't you forget it." Smokescreen retracted his servo, forgoing the formal greeting much too Storm's irritation.

"Why are your designations so close together? I get you guys are twins and all, but so are Sideswipe and Sunstreaker back on Cybertron and they have different names."

"Does it matter? Let's not get into that. I'm called Storm for a reason."

"Right...err sorry about that! But I'm the one who got ambushed, I should be the angry one." Smokescreen made an exaggerated expression.

"Hrmmm," Storm made a noncommittal noise at Smokescreen's flat attempt at humor. He walked pass Smokescreen down the hall he knew led to the Autobot equivalent of an arena.

"Actually, looks like we might have to use the simulation room today. Bulkhead and Miko are out there doing donuts, and then Jack and Arcee are running an obstacle course, so it's too crowded."

"Doing donuts?"

"You know, that thing humans do with cars?"

"Cars can make pastries?" Storm asked slowly.

"What? No... you know, burning rubber, peeling out?"*

"What?"

"Look nevermind. They're just spinning around really fast."

"What? Why?!"

Smokescreen shrugged defensively, "Hey I've done it. It's not as weird as it sounds."

"Right..."

"Well, it's this way."

The simulation room was unremarkable, and of a smaller make and model from the other versions Storm had seen before. He could only assume it was due to Autobots conserving resources; a simulation room used up a lot of energy, no matter the size.

"Anyway, on the walk over I remembered you are a flyer. That's why you didn't know what 'doing donuts' meant." Smokescreen smugly leaned back as he sat in the simulation console chair, inputting the commands to manipulate the room.

"Yes, what's your point?"

The simulation room shimmered into life. It looked to be an unremarkable patchwork of green hills, dotted with small birch trees and the occasional boulder.

"These settings are what Jetfire and me typically work with. Sometimes we use a desert canyon but this is good for now."

Storm walked into the middle of the room, atop the highest hill, waiting. The green of the grass didn't look quite right, it was too bright. Smokescreen must've set the color saturation too high for the room, but he wasn't there to nitpick, he was just there to fight.

"You coming up here?"

Smokescreen held up a servo, still seated in his chair. "Yah, hold on. It's still loading something."

"What else are you-" Storm's words died in his throat as a hologram manifested in front of him. It took him seconds too long to process what was right in front of him -- smack!

"Oh!" Smokescreen shouted when he was struck. "That's gonna leave a mark!"

He went sliding down the too-green hill, kicking up simulated dirt as his talons tilled the ground. At first he'd thought Smokescreen had been the one to punch him, but then clawed hands reach out to grab him and he realized how wrong he'd been.

"You summoned Starscream!?"

"Yah don't worry, the guy's a pushover. Jetfire fights the Air Commander all the time."

"W-what?!"

Suddenly, Not-Starscream paused his attack, the hologram began flickering as Smokescreen continued to fiddled with the console and adjusted conditions within the simulation.

Not-Starscream leaped into the air and transformed into a fighter-jet. The jet began circling overhead bizarrely, the wings jittered side to side as if its engines were on the verge of failure.

'That thing is about to fall out of the sky.' Storm couldn't help but notice.

"Watch this!" Smokescreen jumped, twirling to maintain momentum as he launched himself at the jet. There was a surprising amount of power built into Smokescreen's legs. He couldn't fly as his alt-mode was a sport's car, but he gave the illusion of flight for a second or two while he kicked Not-Starscream out of the air. Predictably, the jet lost control and crashed into a sharp inferno.

The hologram sputtered out with a startling screech, and Storm was dumbfounded, stuck staring at the scorched spot it had destructed.

'That had almost sounded like Starscream...' Storm grimaced. Not-too-nice-memories were associated with that very sound -- his mind, threatened to spillover ugly reminders into his visual-processor.

He scowled in Smokescreen's direction, projecting outward an excessive amount of anger into his EM field, overwhelming his growing air of malaise.

Fortunately, the hologram had flown so poorly that the sting from Starscream's fist had already been forgotten. He placed a servo against the cheek he'd been hit, and realized his plating was beginning to shake.

'Starscream punched me.' And he rubbed the place he'd been hit. 'He's an aft but he'd never just punch me. He'd make up an excuse not to. ' He wondered if his optic now sported a crack. It certainly felt like it, and dark greasy tears began to pool underneath -- but when he realized what was happening, spying a droplet across a fingertip, he flinched away dramatically, as if burned.

He. Did. Not. Cry.

He wasn't the type.

It was a disgusting thing.

Fortunately, Smokescreen seemed too absorbed by his "victory" and gave Storm the time to clamp down upon any malingering upsets. He corrected his posture, considering best how to tackle the situation.

'I came in here to fight him, not to stand around playing spectator.' He thought, with a touch of pride.

"Am I supposed to be impressed? That was pathetic!" Storm spat, with real vitriol , which caught Smokescreen's attention. Storm smiled when he saw a nanosecond of fear alight within Smokescreen's optics...or perhaps it was simply what he wanted to see -- regardless, it had done wonders in boosting his confidence.

"Let me show you how a real mech fights!" he flared his arms outwards, issuing a challenge.

Smokescreen was surprised, but then he smiled.

''Good luck winning with your wings clamped together!" he teased.

'I've never needed wings to kill.' Storm dangerously thought. His fists itched to become claws, but he wasn't about to give up his secrets over some play-fight.

Smokescreen quickly took a fighting stance, his back arched to charge forward, with the intention of ramming Storm against his heavy armor.

'Big mistake, rookie.'

Storm used the hilly terrain to his advantage and ran up to the highest point he could. He launched himself at Smokescreen with talons flared, pinning him down to the ground like a clump of tin foil. Smokescreen had crumpled against the weight of his own momentum, and the match had barely begun. 'That was too easy.' Storm wanted to gloat, but he was also disappointed. 'Didn't Jetfire show this guy some moves? He should be better.'

Not much had happened so far, and Storm intended not to waste his time much longer with Smokescreen. He expected the rookie to put up a better fight. 'We are only getting started." He muttered. Smokescreen's audials twitched, perhaps straining to hear him.

Storm felt bile build into his words and he spoke louder. "Come on, you've been fighting Jetfire! Does he win every time?" Storm hissed, and stepped off of Smokescreen, who's optics looked up at him with a strangely guarded composure. Was it fear? Crushed pride? A reality check? Whatever it was had Smokescreen shaken.

"What was that?" Smokescreen asked, and he stood up slowly, his servos kept to a guarded position.

"What was what?"

"That look in your optics."

"Hrrmmm?" Storm pretended not to understand. "Whatever do you mean, Smokescreen?" Storm smiled, hoping he was doing it correctly, without flashing too many teeth.

"You know, there was that-"

A change of topic was in order.

"Come on, rookie! We fight fists only!" Storm punched the air, and whatever unease Smokescreen had been feeling melted away. "Alright, but I won't be going easy on you!"

Storm simply smiled, when Smokescreen charged forward.

Chapter Text

Jetfire had remained in an uncomfortable recharge position, curled up like a withered turbofox, for what felt like a handful of days. He could last perhaps a week unmoving in his cage, before any inklings of hunger would reach him.

But he was a creature of opportunity, and his mind sourly lingered on the topic of spark-chambers. The medbay permanently smelled of energon and his sparkeater coding kept pinging and prodding at him to "go hunting," to "get to tracking down whatever poor bleeding creature," there supposedly was.

His cage had been tucked away into a corner of Knockout's Clinic and his only entertainment was watching the occasional vehicon coming in for a surgery. Sometimes they would be missing a limb or two and Knockout would grumble and complain -- disappearing into a walk-in closet of vehicon parts. From the sounds of falling metal, it appeared Knockout had trouble navigating the storage room -- the clattering of parts smacking into the floor or ceiling had been unmistakable.

During those scarce seconds without Knockout nearby his cage, Jetfire considered an escape. There would always be an unwitting vehicon injured upon the berth, sometimes two or three sedated into stasis-lock. He could rip out their sparks -- Jetfire only needed a moment -- to reach out his hand...

The bars were unelectrified. The sparks fresh for the taking. Sparkeaters possessed telekinesis and all he had to do was to flick a servo to drag the vehicons next to his cage.

In theory.

But a blinking red and purple optic kept his hand from moving, his lips and teeth from splitting...

His sparkeater coding was left screaming, unused and ignored.

Right above his cage loomed a camera, one inconspicuous and small, but there all the same. It was an ominous black bubble glued to the ceiling, some kind of surveillance drone left by Soundwave earlier.

Jetfire could only hope Shockwave would eventually come to let him out, because he had a feeling neither Knockout or Soundwave would again consider the idea.

He hadn't exactly endeared himself to them -- some Decepticon lackies -- who he'd might be killing within a vorn or so...

With precious little else to do, he fell into recharge...purging his memory banks...

He would online his optics if a vehicon or Knockout got too close, peering into his cage as if he were some sort of malingering bolthead.

'What do you all expect from me?' he sneered, wanting more than ever to lash out with his claws.

Eventually he fell out of recharge from the sound of approach, but it was neither a vehicon or Knockout. Shockwave's unmistakable purple-peds had jostled his cage with a light kick, and Jetfire's tired optics stared up into Shockwave's sparkeater-yellow optic, the color unassuming to all but another sparkeater, who could recognize a familiar hunger.

Nobody said a word when Shockwave picked up his cage by a magnetic handle attached to the top, with one servo, as if Jetfire weighted the same as a cube of aluminum. Knockout had conveniently evacuated his facility seconds before Shockwave arrived, his EM field had flared in undisguised panic.

Shockwave's EM field in comparison was utterly silent, stomping out of the clinic unceremoniously, swinging Jetfire's cage around as if he were a mere laboratory specimen.

And perhaps he was.

'Shockwave, you better let me out.' He odiously thought.

Shockwave didn't walk down the hallway he expected, the one that would've led to Shockwave's "official laboratory" atop the Nemesis, from what little information Jetfire had gleaned during his stay. Instead, Shockwave turned suddenly, shifting his direction quicker than as was normal for a bot his size. He flicked open a hidden panel besides a wall, clicking a series of buttons Jetfire pretended not to be paying attention to.

No doubt, the passcode would be changed later, but it was still useful to know what a passcode for the Nemesis could look like.

Shockwave stepped through a revealed door -- an elevator -- and Shockwave clicked out another passcode -- and the elevator began to descend.

Neither said a word, each distinctly aware they were under observation, no matter what detour Shockwave took.

As the elevator opened, Shockwave stepped into an unremarkable room, one full of stacked mining equipment and empty energon cubes. His cage was placed onto the ground and Jetfire expected to be let out, standing up as best he could in his tiny cage, but he could only manage a miserable slouch.

"Let me out!" He hissed, his patience had apparently fled the scene. Shockwave banged the top of his cage with his arm cannon, in what must've looked like an intimidating display to an outsider, but to Jetfire, it at the very least let him know that Shockwave was listening.

Shockwave, with his one servo, took a groundbridge remote from his subspace and Jetfire eyed it keenly, wondering what plot had been cooked up. A green rip in reality swirled in front of them and Shockwave picked up his cage, stepping through.

Now they were in a laboratory, somewhere deep underground from what the pressurized-fibers within Jetfire's wings told him. But as he took a look around, his hopes of escape dimmed -- he did not recognize this lab -- and it was unlikely it was anywhere near a tunnel he could escape to -- into another one of Shockwave's numerous hideouts.

"This looks brand new?" asked Jetfire. Was this a new lab built by his brothers, just recently? He had thought he had catalogued all of the laboratory tunnels within his databanks -- and to think there would be labs he didn't know about, unnerved him.

"This is the lab in the basement level of New Kaon, the Decepticon-base stationed on Earth." Shockwave said, as if already aware of a potential misunderstanding. The cage was unceremoniously unlocked with a flick of a servo.

"Stay quiet, don't speak, follow my directions." Said Shockwave, his tone muted yet hurried.

Jetfire's first inclination when out of that cage, was to turn around and to give Shockwave a hug -- some measure of affection was considered a show of rebellion, amongst his brethren -- and predictably Shockwave battered Jetfire away, after a nanoclick or two of tolerating him awkwardly swaddling Shockwave's arm cannon.

Jetfire took the hit in stride, gingerly shifting onto the ped-metal of his talons, relieving the pressure that had built upon his spinal-struts. He stretched his wings fully and his vents hitched in relief. He eyed the cage warily and he wanted to smelt it down into a useless smoldering mess.

But now wasn't the place nor the time for that.

Or was it?

He wasn't going back into that scrap-wrap if he could help it.

And.

Shockwave was sparkless enough to throw him back inside.

It would be the most lazy and logical solution, after all.

'It's settled then.' He concluded, kicking the cage. 'I'm going to burn you.'

It had occurred to Jetfire then, that Shockwave had said nothing against using his fire-attacks; and he hadn't heard Shockwave say "Pretend NOT to be an Autobot." -- and naturally, like any sparkling raised underneath Shockwave's thumb, Jetfire had been programmed to root out any mistakes which fell into his favor. He was practically obligated to rebel against the cold-clipped, logical orders of his progenitor, no matter if it would sour Jetfire's professional veneer within Shockwave's optic.

'He should've been more specific.' Jetfire assured himself. 'I'm an Autobot in a Decepticon-base. What else am I to-do but to invite wanton destruction?' Jetfire didn't take his thoughts too seriously, but he smiled a bit too readily when he ignited a fist. His typically hidden one-percenter power was to wield an element of destruction within his servos.

It burned.

Readily.

Gloriously.

His claws twitched upwards as if molding the center cup of a propane-torch -- his claws twitched again and the well of fire within his palms extended -- again -- and again -- and then a flamethrower burst forth!

Faster than a nanoclick -- the cage had welded against the floor.

"Clean that up." snapped Shockwave, not even looking Jetfire over before he turned away.

"Later." Jetfire said. He felt distinct satisfaction as he looked down at the crisp, molten-slag pile, cooling impossibly slowly near his feet. Reluctantly, he put his palm-triggers away -- tucked ever so auspiciously within his servos -- just like his sparkeater claws.

"This is good actually. I had wanted to get a read on your powers." Shockwave gestured to the slag, to Jetfire's bemused surprise. "But don't do that again. Are we clear Autobot?" Jetfire rolled his optics. He'd have to play the part of a disgruntled Autobot-prisoner eventually. It was foolish to pretend otherwise.

Shockwave eyed a monitor he had pulled out of his subspace -- for what function it served, Jetfire couldn't recognize. He'd wanted to ask, but he grew up following Shockwave's orders and so it was second nature for him to flippantly follow whatever was expected of him loosely -- but considering he was in a "life or death situation," in enemy territory -- Jetfire reevaluated his habits.

Seconds ticked by painfully as he watched Shockwave fiddle with his device, and then he pulled a processor-brain from his subspace and Jetfire couldn't help but to roll his optics -- Shockwave, as a sparkeater, was known for hoarding every single processor-brain he could get his servo on -- gleaning whatever useful information his could from their memories and experiences. It was common for Jetfire's brothers to exchange processor-brains for lab equipment, upgrades, and other favors from Shockwave.

But Jetfire himself had never been interested in such an exchange -- and he instead randomly gifted away a brain or two to whatever brother was closest by, in the rare occasion he acquired one.

Such wanton generosity had made him popular.

Amongst his brothers.

Jetfire wanted to ask where Shockwave had gotten this particular brain. It glowed an unhealthy lime green and as Shockwave placed his monitoring device atop of it, it crackled into life as a sickly yellow.

"What...is-" He muttered a question, but Shockwave stepped besides him before shaking his head. "We only have so much time. Don't hesitate." He held out the brain to Jetfire, a large pocketed pearl of bubbling-ire. Jetfire knew what he was expected to do, but he didn't want to. "It's full of information you need, information I can't give you later." There was strangled urgency to his words. "Hurry, the window is closing. I need to relocate you, before security in the area is notified."

'Does that mean I'm being rescued?' Jetfire mused, placing a servo atop the ominously glowing brain. He took it, staring into the blighted-green processor. It was covered in a substance he didn't recognize and the surface was polished with a suspicious oily sheen.

'What is it?' he'd wanted to ask, but a single look at Shockwave told him all he needed to know. That sparkeater-yellow optic burned against his plating and Jetfire reluctantly clicked his spark-chamber open, placing the brain into the voided, blackened space.

There was a spark in there.

Somewhere.

Merely invisible.

Or so he was told.

But sometimes Jetfire doubted if he had a spark of his own; that perhaps, he'd been born a shell of a person.

Jetfire had no time to question nor to regret his decision as hot-red spades of information cut into his processor -- each digging a painful groove...peeling back his plating like skin on an organic.

Crash!

He didn't remember collapsing to his knees, only that his servos had caught himself before flailing painfully against the ground.

He didn't remember a servo dragging him backwards towards the elevator.

He awoke.

In a cage again.

Chapter Text

"Where is Blurr? I expected him to come say hello cycles ago!" Starscream looked over at Deadend, as if he knew the answer, but the tired grey-red bot merely shrugged.

"He needs to give me Kup's updated commlink." Stressed Starscream. "Without it, I can't leave for the Nemesis."

"Leaving? Already?" Seaspray huffed, his disappointment exaggerated yet raw. "But you just got here, ma-ker!" Starscream stepped against his side, smiling as he patted his helm -- in a bid to provide the mechling some modicum of comfort, no matter how shallow. "Yes, unfortunately. I have to leave rather soon -- ideally, immediately. If I'm away from the Nemesis for an unscheduled period of time, Soundwave will flag me for suspicious activity." Starscream shrugged, his servos twitched with idle fury. 'How dare Megatron not trust me, after all I've done for the Decepticons!' he wanted to scream his fury; but there was a time and place for everything -- including screaming.

"The last thing I want to do is to have to weasel myself back into the good graces of Megatron." Starscream continued, after Seaspray shot him a concerned yet prickled look. Seaspray was looking at Starscream as if he'd suffered a malfunction.

Perhaps he had.

He could be himself.

When he was safe from the Nemesis.

Starscream shuddered, dramatically stepping backwards, envisioning a horrid future, 'Not when Unicron threatens to reawaken, any deca-cycle now.' He thought, with a vapid sneer. He decided to take the opportunity to ramble, now that he had a small captive audience following him around. "I have just begun to earn back the trust and respect I held from before my debut as a rogue; yet, ever since Shockwave has reappeared, The crew has been treating me as if I'm Third-In-Command!" Starscream stomped a talon, the sound a dainty clatter -- the force a mere tremor, but briefly it made everyone stop and give him their attention. Starscream liked to think those were looks of respect and not annoyance. "I mean really? Can you all believe that?"

The bots following Starscream eventually stepped passed him like lost shaft-rats. Deadend and Seaspray didn't appear interested in instigating further conversations. As he walked ahead, Seaspray absent-mindedly amused himself by cleaning his typically pristine, white laboratory coat, flicking off congealed gel-bits of Skybyte's meaty rubber-flesh. Deadend, on the other hand, was content to daydream and he stared up with delight into the lights fixated against the ceiling.

"So you're Third-In-Command now?" Quasar politely asked, already knowing no one was about to bother to speak up.

"No. No! I'm still the best Megatron has." Starscream stated, but it was clear he himself wasn't convinced.

Quasar rolled her optics, Cliffjumper's chassis had opened -- mandatory behavior for a polite conversation and Quasar's viewing pleasure, as she perched within the corpse's peel-painted husk like a particularly shrewd vulture.

Starscream nervously smiled down at Quasar, showing his teeth. He loved her, just like all his other sparklings, but he suspected she wouldn't be around much longer if she insisted on running around in an Autobot's corpse.

'You'd make a perfect Decepticon.' He'd wanted to proudly tell her, but all he could imagine was Megatron crushing her within a single servo the very moment Starscream dared to step out of line.

No way could he afford such a glaring vulnerability.

'Megatron wouldn't see any value in a sparkling-soldier.' He mused. 'He'd just see a disgusting corpse wandering his ship.' Cliffjumper's corpse reeked of perfume and cheap polish -- but if Quasar ever neglected the hygienic-layering of her vessel, Cliffjumper would quickly stink of iron bacteria -- a horrid swampy and sulfuric smell.

Everyone had learned that lesson the hard way.

That rust and corrosion stayed.

And never really went away.

'Completely disgusting!' and Starscream was thrown back into thinking about potential Decepticon-sparklings -- the memories of rotting corpses slowly encroached upon his processor.

'Then again, Megatron had wanted to raise an army of the undead with Unicron's blood...perhaps he woul-' Before Starscream could entertain another ludicrous scheme, he'd stopped in front of a particularly unremarkable pair of doors -- but it would be a mistake to dismiss the room as unimportant.

Deadend, Seapray, and Quasar all went their separate ways, muttering excuses and goodbyes as they retired to their respective offices. Starscream watched them go impassively, but there always was a bitter-twinge within his tanks, some kind of scratch upon his spark, as he watched them leave -- as if he wasn't meant to be all alone that very moment.

But he was.

Always.

Starscream entered the room without difficulty. He had to badger Shockwave for clearance for cycles before he had been allowed inside.

It was Shockwave's personal office, kept sparse of all possessions save for an ominous glowing gestation chamber, which took up the entire room. It was large enough to host the growth of an adult predacon, but this one had been reserve for a special, peculiar use. The bulletproof glass had been covered meticulously by a metallic-mesh tarp, hiding the contents from view.

"Blurr, are you in here? You better be!"

There was a clink and clatter of a tool dropping.

Then the sounds of peds, quick and sharp against metal flooring.

"Blurr?" Starscream repeated. "I need Kup's commlink."

The room darkened. The glow of the chamber intensified.

Still Starscream stepped forward, with little choice to do otherwise.

"BOO!"

"Damnit Blurr!" Starscream fell over. His knee joints had automatically buckled in terror, dropping him to the floor. His wings had unfortunately been outstretched as he flopped over, and he rubbed the aching ends viscously -- appraising any potential damage to his flight systems with paranoid vigor.

'Why do I always get hit in the wings?' he privately lamented.

"Blurr, must you do that horrid noise every single time!" Starscream screeched, gripping his chassis, as if his spark threatened to gutter out.

But both Blurr and himself understood he was just being facetious -- releasing pent-up frustration Starscream simply couldn't let go.

"Heh! Because-it-keeps-working." A tiny teal-figure manifested within the room, just out of Starscream's sight, only visible from the corner of his optics. "It's-not-my fault-you-know." Blurr stepped closer, but Starscream could barely sense his approach -- there was no metal beneath his peds. "You're-just-too-easy-to-scare. You-ought-to-be-used-to-the-sound-by-now." Starscream shuttered his optics, feeling a supernatural manifestation of fear begin to cloud his vision -- but it was not from his emotions, a product of his spark -- no, it was from Blurr , who shifted his peds uneasily against the floor as he stepped into view.

Blurr looked so alive that it was unreal.

But then Blurr took another step forward and the illusion was broken.

His ped sunk deep, into the ground.

Blurr didn't have the patience to approach carefully.

"Why-are-you-here?" asked Blurr. His voice was meekly quiet, as if he struggled to muster the energy; yet he proceeded to talk as fast as he had in life, but his words melded together in a way Starscream struggled to understand.

"I came to check up on you." said Starscream, for once completely earnest. "Shockwave is eager to complete your develop-"

"Yes! Yes! Before-Unicron-comes! I-get-it!" Blurr shook angrily as he spoke, waving his arms around madly. "It's-all-Shockwave-talks-to-me-about! The-only-thing-the-same-thing-it's-awful-I-hate-him-I-hate-his-stupid-purple-ore-face-I-hate-his-stupid-arm-cannon-thingy-but-I-love-his-fat-legs-and-his-"

"Okay! Blurr, I get it!" Starscream wasn't exactly hard to annoy, but Blurr had always been a particular expert in the matter. "You've made your feelings clear." He walked up to the gestation tank, and in that very moment Blurr's expression changed from anger to something unplacatable. "Wait!" But Starscream had already peeled away the metallic tarp from the surface of the glass.

Both were left to watch.

To ponder.

Blurr's unfortunate situation.

"This-is-disgusting!" said Blurr, and Starscream was quick to agree. "Certainly! I expected Shockwave to take you hostage -- to turn you into a prisoner; I didn't expect him to...to murder you -- you know."

"Really?" asked Blurr.

"It hardly seemed like the logical choice -- to kill you."

"It-wasn't-logical? Not-in-the-slightest?"

"No, never, Blurr! He was your conjux endura. He shouldn't have-"

"Shut-up-Star-I-know-I-know-it's-messed-up-Shockwave-is-messed-up -why-did-he-do-it-why-did-he-not-trust-me-why-did-he-kill-me! I-keep-asking-him-why-why-but-then-he-just-leaves-he-says-nothing -he-hates-me-he-hurts-me-hurts-me-why-I-hate-him!"

A bream of silence passed between them. Blurr's manifestation paced back and forth in front of the gestation chamber, never taking his optics off of the contents.

"Yes-I-don't-like-this-I'd-never-accept-this! This-whole-dying-thing-it's-it's-makes-no-sense -so-so-what-do-I-do-after-this?"

For a bot who was known for being gregarious, Blurr was surprisingly hard to talk too. His words trampled over each other in a crescendo of madness only an undead abomination could truly conjure.

Blurr was dead, a ghost -- and it was at that very moment Starscream wondered why he'd even bothered to engage in a conversation with Blurr in the first place. It was unlikely Blurr would even remember he'd came to check up on him -- the perceptions of an apparition existed outside of time and space -- what was happening around Starscream was irrelevant, even if Blurr appeared quite upset.

"So-are-you-finished-are-you-done? Recover-it-back-the-cover-back-on-put-it-back-on -I-don't-want-to-see-can't-see-won't-see-cover-it -it's-ugly-it's-filthy-it's-evil-I-hate-it!"

Starscream sighed, taking in the sight of Blurr (2) with a datapad, checking for any errors which could impede the rebuilding process. Slowly, nanobots had been piecing together an impossible puzzle, the shape of a protoform, a skeleton of etched metal.

Within the gestation chamber was Blurr's crushed corpse -- his spark pulsed with reluctant life underneath a compacted cube of his own sky-blue metal. It was a visceral sight for any Cybertronian with a sliver of empathy -- fortunately for Starscream, he had seen much much worse during his duties as Decepticon Second-In-Command -- and any genuine compassion he'd felt in his spark was currently held hostage by Skywarp's persona.

Unfortunately, still, Starscream knew exactly how Blurr felt.

He didn't need his full range of emotions intact -- to understand -- such an obvious truth.

Shockwave had also betrayed Starscream -- destroyed Starscream's trust in his once-brother. Before his empurata, Senator Shockwave had been a brilliant and carefree creature -- more happy and kind than Starscream figured any Cybertronian had any right to be.

Not right now.

Not during the war.

Nor after.

The death of Cybertron.

Would not be easy to fix.

Regardless of the person Shockwave had been before, he'd been mutilated and sat beyond recovery.

And Shockwave had inflicted the same mutilation upon Starscream and Blurr -- albeit in different ways.

Those mutilations.

There was a word for it.

It was the one word Shockwave always spoke.

"Experimentation."

When Blurr or Starscream.

Pressed him for a reason.

Some justification.

For what happened.

Shockwave had shredded Starscream into three people: Skywarp, Thundercracker, and a lesser, humiliating version of himself.

He'd yet to apologize.

Shockwave had crushed Blurr into a convenient prism of pain and confusion -- perhaps to keep his Conjux Endura from proving to be a distraction or a reminder of the past.

Whatever the reason.

It would never make sense to Blurr.

"Oh yes, before I forget. Please give me Kup's commlink."

Blurr unceremoniously dropped a datastick onto a nearby table, produced from nowhere. Not once did Blurr take his optics off his new gestating body.

It was disturbing.

More disturbing than dying in the first place.

Chapter Text

It was gone.

His red energon.

His sweet, delicious crystal.

Blurr wasn't surprised, but he allowed himself to be disappointed.

Things always moved and shuffled around the tunnels; he knew better than anyone else the logistics of getting around.

The sparklings never stopped moving.

Never stopped their mewling.

Their screaming.

Their begging.

Their starvation-filled mouths.

But his memory wasn't what it used to be.

If what little he recalled was in fact, correct.

These weren't the same tunnels he'd been trapped in, with sparklings pawing for scraps.

There wasn't a pack of sparklings gnawing at his heels, begging for energon, begging him to run -- to find them some.

Blurr was dead, a ghost.

Starscream thought he didn't understand, that he was dead -- crushed into a cube.

But he knew, all-to-well, unfortunately.

THE PAIN.

How it felt, to be cubed!

True, Blurr hadn't understood at first.

He'd been unable to grasp the horrible reality of his injury.

He'd only remembered bits ...understood pieces ...trapped outside of space-time.

Only after.

Reading Starscream's thoughts.

Did Blurr really remember that he was dead.

Starscream's processor was rich -- loaded to the brim with thinking -- always worried -- always frustrated -- always whirring -- Starscream always projected outwards his convoluted ideas, some brand-new smattering of words -- each collection more amusing than the last -- Starscream's schemes and constant machinations.

'Starscream is certainly a bold creative-genius, in many respects.' Blurr huffed, sarcastically.

As for Blurr's mind-reading, it was an involuntary action -- a skill which took a ghost no practice -- thoughts- word-forms -ideas- there-were-simply-so-many which latched naturally onto the essence of the ethereal-plane, as easily as words upon the living wind.

"Starscream?" he asked, only to find himself completely alone, in an empty room.

His room.

Blurr was alone in it.

And that was a problem.

"Fine! IgnoreMeThen!" Blurr snarled, letting loose some untethered frustration. His emotions were surprisingly more raw and tender in his undead incorporeal-form, then any feelings he'd ever felt, swirling around within his living-processor.

'The Universe has a sense of humor.' Blurr concluded.

There wasn't much else to do as a ghost but to think, stuck in his own thoughts, his past, his floating path to nowhere.

Yet, now Blurr could see his future.

He had one.

And that was something to celebrate -- no matter how gruesome -- the method to obtain it was.

"This-is-disgusting!" he snarled, his voice echoed.

He placed a ghostly servo against the chlorine-blue glass of his gestation chamber.

Floating inside was his cubed-prism -- a compounded pinpoint of scattered proto-form had enveloped his spark -- an orange gel of nanobots were slowly rebuilding his form, peeling metal from the cube like a saltlick -- nanoclick by nanoclick -- particle by particle -- the puzzle came together.

His spark was rebuilding himself, just for him.

How morbid.

How taboo.

It wasn't a womb by any respects.

It was purely a scientific abomination he refused to dwell upon.

But Blurr wasn't known for sitting around, being useless.

He could see his future now, running around -- as if being cubed had never happened.

It was a surreal thought.

It was an intriguing vision, consuming his undead-processor quickly with an all-consuming hope of living again.

'I-can-speed-this-along-I-just-know-I-can-I-know-I-know-it-it's-SO-simple-really-just-look-look-LOOK-at-it.' Blurr placed another servo against the glass, this one quivering, charged with some sort of supernatural power which caused his false-metal to tap rapidly against the chamber.

"Come-on-grow-faster." Blurr muttered to himself. "Just-a-little-bit-quicker."

He could fix that.

Blurr plunged his servo into the chamber. Oddly, there was no noise nor feeling as he caressed his own torso, but it gave Blurr the information he'd needed. He now knew his body was suspended in an inadequate concentration of growth-liquid.

The light of his spark dimmed in and out, like a heartbeat.

It was too weak.

'It-will-take-too-long-at-this-rate-what-do-I-do?' A memory came to Blurr, but from where, he couldn't say.

"Obviously-I-need-to-speed-things-up-WITH-TIME-extra-time-and-and-time-feels-like-time-that-feels-like- speed -yes-more- speed -please." He took a deep vent, muttering to himself as his servo engulfed his protoform-laced spark.

There.

Intuitively, he knew what to do.

His supernatural power intensified -- the glow of his servo boiled green and stretched outwards, engulfing the whole chamber with a neon-slime tinted bubble. The protoform around his spark, shifted from orange to green like some unhealthy infection.

Raw.

Unfiltered.

Blurr felt amazing. He'd fed his spark his excess-energy, and he already felt as if he was running free within his own frame.

For a handful of seconds he'd felt alive again, and Blurr held onto that golden feeling so terribly, so fiercely, that when it flickered away -- he nearly panicked, letting out a mournful hiss as he retracted his servo -- energy spent.

He'd have to get more, somehow.

'Tox-En. That's-what-I- need -to-speed-this-along.' Blurr knew that Tox-En was considered a dangerous energon-variant to cybertronians, but curiously, not to organic beings; and Blurr had figured out in his wanderings that the green crystal enriched him rather well as a ghost.

Again Blurr placed a servo against his torso, caressing lower to feel his spark-energies; despite the now-sickly appearance, he felt healthy and the experience just that moment ago made Blurr realize he could recall his memories vividly, when gripping his spark.

Again he could remember.

The feeling.

He was running with neither care nor worry, nor with a destination in mind -- a rare, liberating feeling for Blurr. Before the war he'd been a courier, a messager, a sort of package delivery bot -- and during the war he'd been the very same, albeit delivering out more murders and assassinations than was typically in demand. He wondered briefly, if he would still have access to his energy-chainsaw and other bladed weapons when he received his new body, but he didn't see anything familiar lining the laboratory walls.

It was unlikely Shockwave or Starscream would permit him to keep weapons.

'I'll-ask-the-sparklings-later. If-they'd-seen-my-weapons-I-NEED-them. If-NOT-perhaps-I-can-cash-in-a-favor.' Blurr thought.

Such thoughts kept him focused for once -- the idea that he'd have to conspire against Shockwave and Starscream to get what he wanted out of life wasn't a novel-experience. During the war on Cybertron, they'd been allies, each a double-agent to their respective factions -- delivering information which would keep the other alive.

But after dying, he doubted he'd get any respect from either Shockwave or Starscream -- already they treated him like a lab-rat, some mere curiosity to decorate a corner.

He wasn't stupid enough to believe it would be different, once he was walking around in a frame again.

"AlrightBlurrFocus! No-one-else-will-do-it-for-you!" Blurr snapped at himself. He focused hard on his energies and felt his peds land onto the floor below.

He took another step.

And then another.

Each step was more focused than the last, and Blurr's peds did not carelessly sink into the floor. To allow the floor to engulf him would expose him to new thoughts and tangents, and his current goal of obtaining weapons and Tox-En was too precious towards his future to lose.

"INeedTox-En!" He reminded himself. "I-need-I-need-I-need-" Continually he muttered to himself, so direly afraid he would forget. He walked through the lab doors, proud that he'd been taking steps across the ground instead of floating as was expected of a ghost.

"Tap-tap-tap-" He muttered, finding the words ideal to keep his steps normal and perfect. The hallway extended downwards into the depths, or curved slightly upwards like a racetrack tarmac, and naturally Blurr took the path that was most familiar.

He was giddy with excitement as he walked upwards, throughout the tunnels, just happy he'd figured out how to walk again. Blurr was hoping to bump into a bot he knew in the hallway, to ask for assistance in obtaining Tox-En and weapons.

'As-long-as-I-don't-bump-into-Shockwave-or-Starscream. I-ought-to-be-okay.' Blurr had no way of knowing if he'd ever had the goals of "obtaining Tox-En and weapons" before, but he knew, that if Shockwave or Starscream found out about his ideas, they'd find a way to make him forget, and would perhaps chase him back into "his room."

He couldn't allow that.

There was also the matter of Shockwave terrifying him. A ghost's own-murderer was expected to elicit negative feelings within a ghost and Blurr was no different. If Blurr disappeared from sight, or fled into the walls from fear -- there was a chance he'd forget his goals entirely.

It's not as if he possessed a solid processor anymore, to keep his thoughts rooted and consistent.

'What-if-I-find-Starscream?' Blurr could manage Starscream. He wasn't the least bit afraid of him, but the seeker could be terribly distracting and it was the type of chatty energy he couldn't afford to entertain -- least he forget his goals.

"INeedTox-En." He muttered, for perhaps the one-hundredth time. He passed by closed office doors and respective hab-units. He could detect the sparks of a mech he knew, and sparklings he'd been familiar with.

But none stuck out to him as ones he'd been particularly close to.

His sparklings weren't sparkeaters.

No typically.

No.

Sergeant Kup had made sure any surviving sparklings of Blurr's grew up to be an Autobot, and had tutored each in the war-academies on Cybertron. If Blurr was to find any, any sparkling that would do Blurr a favor, it would have to be one-of-his.

But he doubted any came to Earth.

It's why Blurr was particularly hopeful he would find Kup within the tunnels. The mech was the only bot he could recall any sort of positive feelings towards, and that was important for a ghost, when asking for a favor.

Suddenly Blurr stopped walking, afraid he would lose focus enough to sink beneath the floor.

'Tox-En-First. I'll-find-that-on-my-own.' Blurr had an epiphany. He'd leave his goal of "asking for weapons" for later, when he could ask a bot he knew and not-just-an-untrustworthy-sparkeater, who would just tell everything to Shockwave -- ruining everything for Blurr.

"Now-who-would-have-Tox-En?" Blurr asked himself. He was in a base littered with labs, but he knew from previous explorations most rooms were kept empty of resources and specimens -- instead, anything of interest was contained on the lower-levels of the tunnels.

Blurr looked behind himself, and concluded turning around and walking back the way he'd come was a luxury his attention-span couldn't afford. He couldn't turn back and continue walking -- not if he expected to remember that he needed "Tox-En."

Blurr racked his memory for the bot most likely, stationed-on-Earth, to have his coveted Tox-En. He wanted more than ever to have his spark nearby him, so he could remember said details more readily....

Eventually.

"Jetstorm." He said, out loud. "He-collects-rocks-all-the-rocks. He'd-have-Tox-En." Blurr was delighted to make some ground in his scavenger hunt. As quickly as he could step, without falling through the floor, he came to Jetstorm's hab-unit.

He phased inside easily enough, though Blurr was startled by the mess which greeted him.

"What-by-the- one -happened-here?" Jetstorm's precious rock-collection had been smashed to smithereens and Blurr could only stare dejectedly on behalf of the bot -- his collection was thoroughly destroyed.

"He-must've-been-so-sad-Jetstorm- Storm -" Blurr corrected. "What-did-you- do -to-deserve-this?" Blurr didn't trust any bot down in the tunnels, except perhaps, Jetstorm. The mechling was always so kind and proper when speaking to Blurr, the ideal representative of any Autobot-soldier.

"Where-is-he?" Blurr asked haplessly. He picked through the broken specimens, with only a handful left intact upon their shelves. He'd held the slightest hope of obtaining an elusive sliver of Tox-En, but not even an avid collector like Storm would be careless enough to leave such a deadly specimen laying about in the open.

"I'd-have-to-ask-him." Blurr bitterly concluded. There was no sign of the mechling returning any-time-soon, but he could sense the spiritual-residue left by Storm's very-own-sparkeater's-spark. The mechling had been in the room recently enough, and so Blurr latched onto the energy trail, focusing more than ever on following the path, moving hunched over with his optics low to the ground like a turbofox after a petrorabbit.

"Oh! He's-the-one-who-took-my-red-energon." Blurr had come to an abandoned area of the tunnels, surprised to find Storm's mech-prints all over the earthy ground. Being incorporeal allowed Blurr the luxury of mining without tools or digging. All he had to do was to sink a servo into the earth and to pull out the coveted specimens of generic-blue energon.

And sometimes he found red ones, crystals he needed to survive if he was going to be running around in his living-frame, once again. Blurr, unlike most Cybertronians, demanded expensive-tastes.

He wasn't about to drink blue, low-grade energon.

Not if he could help it.

And so it was with a bit of anger, that Blurr kicked the box he'd tucked beneath a drill, now devoid of his treasure.

He was determined to find Storm more than ever now.

"Give-me-BACK-my-red-energon!" he screamed, and it was that righteous anger which kept Blurr going -- he started walking faster after Jetstorm's spark. Blurr eventually came to outside the tunnels, and so startled he was by the revelation, that Blurr almost forget his goal of obtaining "Tox-En" altogether.

"This-place-this-planet-it's-beautiful!" Blurr took in the sights and sounds of nature with the very-same-excitement typically expected of a freshly-forged newspark. "Dirt-something?" Blurr couldn't recall the name of the planet. He would ask the very first living-person he saw, though as he walked along a growth of pine trees, each shorter-than-himself, Blurr quickly forget his simple question. Besides the trees ran a stream of crystal-clear water, which nurtured their roots and neighborly, fresh grass.

Blurr was thoroughly enamored with his surroundings.

There was so much color to be found, compared to the dusty tunnels and the empty platitudes of space.

He saw a type of bobbing creature against a pond's surface, and when he waved a servo to get its attention to ask about "Tox-En," it simply flapped away from the water on strange, delicate-green wings.

"Come-on-I-just-wanted-to-talk." Complained Blurr; but he was used to the sting of being ignored. Most bots didn't give Blurr the time of day, dead or alive.

"Come-on-anyone-else-out-here?" Blurr poked uselessly against the water, sinking a servo through the surface. His curiosity called to him, and so Blurr dipped his head underwater, only seeing muddy filth fill his optics and strange-thin, useless swimming creatures.

"Blurr?" That wasn't his voice.

Blurr was startled, his steps began to sink beneath the ground, as if he'd been standing in mud. He'd been looking for attention, but perhaps he wasn't ready for it.

"Blurr?" The voice repeated. Blurr looked around for a source but he couldn't find it.

"I'm here. It's me, Blurr."

Looking down, he saw it.

"Do-I-know-you?"

A little shadow was by his ghostly blue ped-wheel.

"It's good to see you."

Blurr huffed at the ridiculously tiny creature.

"What-are-you?"

"A beaver."

Chapter Text

'I-need-I-need-to-leave-I-need-Tox-En.' Blurr was getting distracted and he was keenly aware of it. He hadn't been expecting to encounter another sapient-creature outside the Earth's surface; nor had he anticipated all the delightfully green surroundings of nature; his fleeting attention had been flayed into multiple directions, and he struggled not to panic.

"You've-been-here-too-long."

"Pardon?" asked the beaver.

"You've-been-here-too-long." Blurr was muttering to himself, looking down at the water, as if he was peering into a scrying mirror.

The beaver backed up a step, watching as Blurr's ghost waded further into the water. The ghost appeared blind to his surroundings, swinging his servos, batting at nothing within the air.

"Blurr, are you alright?"

The short question seemed to snap Blurr out of whatever ghostly dilemma he'd been experiencing.

"I-need-Tox-En." Blurr remembered his goal from before and his optics widened a fraction, amazed he'd recovered the information, from himself.

"I-remembered." Delighted, he said it again. "I-need-Tox-En."

He looked down at the tiny creature which had addressed him and felt obligated to ask the furry stranger a question.

"Can-you-help-me-find-it?"

"Find what?" The beaver cocked its head, seeming unperturbed by the behemoth-sized ghost, manifested in front of it.

Still, the beaver nervously twirled in place, finding itself bobbing along the water -- instinctively itching to get away from the ghost that had so rudely encroached upon its pond.

"I-need-Tox-En. That? Can-you-find-that?"

"What makes you think I know anything about that?"

Blurr paused, not moving, appearing to be recalibrating his own thinking.

Normally he wouldn't pay attention to a small, quadrupedal organic -- but it was talking, and it either Blurr talked to this creature, or no one at all. Blurr only had Starscream to talk to for conversations, and he wasn't exactly keen on Starscream being his only option.

Blurr couldn't help but to notice -- that the chatty-creature was only the size of one of his fingertips.

'It's-so-impossibly-small.' He thought.

He felt compelled to measure the beaver from head to tail, and he gave no warning before his ghostly servo impulsively covered its hapless form -- it froze -- terrified.

It had a spark.

It was cybertronian.

It wasn't an organic.

He knew this creature.

The simple facts flowed into his processor like air through lungs. The "beaver" feigned panicked-breathing as he pulled his ghostly servo away from its fur. It was one of the sparklings, though Blurr couldn't remember which one.

"You're-a-sparkeater." He said simply.

"I am."

"I-don't-like-talking-to-the-undead."

The beaver patted down its fur, which had puffed up after Blurr had scared it.

"But that's hypocritical?"

"It-is." Blurr said simply. Normally he wasn't so curt in his speech, but he didn't exactly have the attention-span for anything else.

"Can-you-help-me?" Blurr asked again.

The beaver hesitated for a moment, pacing back and forth as it muttered something about excitable rock collectors -- interrupting his day.

"Why do you need it? This Tox-En?" The beaver said snappishly, clacking its orange teeth.

For a moment, Blurr remained quiet, looking as dour as ever.

"I-don't-remember-but-I-need-Tox-En."

The beaver sighed, as if resigning itself to something terrible. "Fine." Its tail dragged behind it, impossibly slowly, carving grooves throughout mud as it walked.

He remembered not to float, and practiced his ped-steps again as he followed the beaver.

Blurr was grounded again and it felt amazing; the more he walked the more he was convinced he wasn't a ghost.

He became enamored with the beaver's delicate, impossibly small footprints; and Blurr became more interested in his surroundings, walking back the path he had come, up the river boarded by trees -- leading the way back to base.

"What-is-this-place?" Blurr asked. "This...green?" He tried to find a more descriptive word, but Blurr could only gesture haplessly to his surroundings -- his servos grasped at nothing as he moved to examine the closest object in front of his optics -- green needles upon a brown, carbon-based growth.

"Well for one, that's a pine tree." Guffawed the beaver. "Specifically a 'Pinus longaeva,' a Great Basin bristlecone pine."

Blurr was unable to comprehend the useless spillage of alien-terms, but he was still content to listen. Both the beaver and himself wordlessly passed behind the holographic boulder and back into the tunnels. The beaver led him through twists and turns, looking back every so often to see if Blurr was still following him. Whatever fuzzy, twisted expression a beaver could make -- appeared amused, or nervous -- some mixture of the two.

"Here we are." The beaver pawed the front of a plainly white door. "My brothers here keep track of all the energon down here. If they can't find you Tox-En, no one can."

Before Blurr could make a sound, the door slid open, revealing a speckled brown, pink, black, and white sparkling.

"Snapshot, it's been a while!" The sparkling was ecstatic as it bent forward, picking up the newly-dubbed "Snapshot" by the armpits, as if he was some kind of pet. The sparkling was twice Snapshot's size, but still much too small in comparison to Blurr.

"So you haven't comm'd me for weeks and suddenly I get a message from you." The sparkling grumbled, crossing her arms. "What's this about Tox-En?"

"Blurr needs it." The beaver blurted out, and wiggled free from the sparkling, running into the room. Then, as if noticing him for the first time, the sparkling flinched away from Blurr, obviously afraid. "O-oh, Blurr. It's been a while, also. " The sparkling backpedaled into the room, not taking her optics off Blurr. "W-welcome. I mean, welcome Blurr." There was the clattering of noise as Blurr stepped into the room, his non-incorporeal form floated partially through the entrance and his leg seeped into a chair. "Everyone welcome, Blurr!" Shouted the sparkling, with some authority.

Blurr took in the sight, concluding the room to be some sort of recreational break-room. There were energon-converters labeled with different flavors atop a counter, and appliances fashioned after human-make. There was a mesh-metal couch of cybertronian-origin tucked away into a corner, dusty and unused.

The sights of normal cybertronian-society stirred something familiar within Blurr -- he felt more lucid -- his words and memories became solid, more real -- less likely to slip from his milky servos.

Snapshot had made himself comfortable atop a massive-round kitchen table, sized to comfortably seat two or three cybertronians around the size of Starscream, and so the chairs were angled-awkwardly, shaped in anticipation of containing wings or the bulky mudguards of a fully-grown mech.

But the room was empty, save for the beaver and mystery sparkling, who plopped comedically into one of the oversized chairs.

"Guys, come on. Don't be rude."

A moment of silence passed.

Then there was the sound of an alt-mode shifting to root-mode, and atop the counter a human-make "microwave" transformed into an off-white sparkling.

"Ick, it's Blurr. I thought we agreed never to talk to the guy." It rudely said. "What's he doing here, Teakup?"

"Oh hush you! If you're going to say rude things, at least keep it to the comm-calls." said Teakup.

"Microwave, do you know which lab has Tox-En? We kinda need it." Spoke Snapshot.

The off-white sparkling, dubbed "Microwave," looked at Blurr, Snapshot, and Teakup from his countertop, entirely unconvinced. "That depends, why do you need it? You guys aren't exactly known for being interested in weapons of mass-destruction." He paused, optics trailing nervously over Blurr. "And again, what's he doing here? This Tox-En business obviously has to do with him."

Blurr approached the countertop, his servos outstretched uselessly to potentially feel the glass and metal counter underneath "I-need-Tox-En." He muttered. Microwave scowled. "I'm not getting involved in this nonsense." He turned around, kicking a retro mini-fridge besides him. "But this doofus will." A green, blue, and white sparkling collapsed out of the fridge-facsimile, unamused. "Frag you, Microwave! I told you I didn't want anything to do with Blurr!"

"Well, neither do I!" he said bluntly. "But who else is going to risk handling Tox-En? Not me! And not Teakup!"

Snapshot sighed. "What do you guys have against Blurr, anyway? Blurr's our ma-ker, we should be more respectful."

"Like Primus's twitchy-optic, we should! He ditched us, left us for dead!" Microwave shouted, jumping down from the counter, to seat himself besides Teakup, who looked not pleased at all to see him there. "Need I remind you of the terrible things Blurr has done? That Starscream gave more of a damn about us than he ever did?" Microwave whispered against Teakup's antennae, and she winced away as if struck. "No." She murmured, nervously. She peeked up at Blurr, shrinking further into her chair and said not a word.

Blurr watched the entire exchanged -- stupefied. Obviously, the little mechs knew him, but Blurr couldn't recall how or where. It was a little concerning, and he could only hope some memory or clue concerning the matter would eventually come to him.

Snapshot rolled his optics at Microwave's outburst. It was typical behavior for him, as for Teakup's meekness. "Right, well, I'd like to get back to the Earth's surface before it's pitch-black out, so lets get Blurr his Tox-En so I can leave. Please."

The green and blue sparkling jumped onto the table, giving Snapshot an affirmative "Let's Go!" gesture with his servo, his antennas whirring with private comm-messages.

"Come on, Blurr. Icescream and I will show you to the Tox-En." He slapped his little beaver tail for emphasize. "And then you don't bother those guys again. If you can help it. " He paused, looking over to see if Blurr was following.

He was.

Snapshot took the opportunity to chat with one of his brothers alone. He wasn't exactly social and his work as a photographer on the planet's surface didn't endear him to much company.

"Microwave sure is annoying with his comm-messages, huh Icescream?"

"Yah, he hasn't stopped spamming the line. I think I'll just turn it off. Teakup says sorry by the way." said Icescream.

"Sure. Whatever."

"Ugh, I miss my blender alt-mode. I move so slowly as a fridge."

"Why'd you change it?"

"Well, for one, my heavy-duty glass container always got cracked, no matter how careful I was. As a fridge I'm a lot more durable now when Microwave decides to surprise bodyslam me."

Snapshot chortled. "Why do you let him bully you guys? You can take him in a fight, right?"

"Of course..." Icescream trailed off, watching as Blurr began to step besides them. He looked more curious than afraid, but he kept his mouth shut and his optics glued to the ground.

"Okay, this is the coordinates Microwave sent." said Snapshot. "Icescream, your fridge-mode is actually a compact-freezer, right? Because we are going to need that ice to shield all that Tox-En radiation."

"Oh yah, I've got the ice. Believe me this isn't the first time I'm handling something sketchy."

Blurr watched silently as the two sparklings corralled him through another door. The room was mostly empty and Blurr was delighted to find it free from painful distractions.

'I-need-Tox-En.' He reminded himself, and he hummed triumphantly as the two sparklings pulled out a specimen drawer, which unraveled into a high-clearance container -- an ominous white cube, labeled dangerously in countless labels as "Tox-En."

"Here we are. I hope you are happy Blurr." said Snapshot.

Blurr just grinned, ludicrously deeply as Icescream nervously coaxed the Tox-En cube into his alt-mode freezer with the help of Snapshot's tail. There was little space for anything else but ice, yet the Tox-En inside made Icescream feel hot, regardless. He moved nervously around in his alt-mode on threads attached to his fridge, for difficult situations such as that very moment. "Hurry, Snapshot. It's starting to burn."

"Right, the next stop is this way. Come on, Blurr!"

It took about a bream or two, for the sparklings to run across the entire tunnel-complex, looking for Blurr's respective laboratory-room. Eventually they found it, only to find they didn't have clearance to open the doors.

"Damnit, we can't get through!" Snapshot wailed, in beaver-tongue. "Ugh, Microwave would know how to crack Shockwave's dodgy passcodes. Why didn't he just come? That sensitive-bitlet..."

"I tried to comm Microwave, but he isn't replying now." Said Icescream. His tone was panicked and his twirled in-place on his threads; the Tox-En was quickly melting all of his ice and water was beginning to spill out from the edges of his frame.

"Oh Primus, this Tox-En is more burn-ey than I thought!" he screamed, and Snapshot desperately tried to guess the passcode, but he was quickly overwhelmed by second-hand panic from his brother. Snapshot wasn't a hacker nor strong enough to rip the doors apart; he could only stare stupidly at the doors, begging the Universe to will it open for him.

Blurr had watched the entire situation unfold, more annoyed than anything that they'd stopped moving. He was dispassionate as he watched Icescream dart back and forth in a panic -- the Tox-En obviously burning his insides. Blurr reached out with a servo, grabbing at the cube of Tox-En within the sparkling's chassis and phased into the room. He expected to have "cube-in-hand," but instead he had pulled through the entire sparkling, who was howling in agony, begging for the Tox-En to be removed.

Blurr grabbed hold of the Tox-En again, only this time his servo glowed green and the cube...

Exploded.

Icescream died instantly. His fridge plating had burst open like a botulism fruit can, painting the room in Tox-En and black sparkeater energon...

"Perfect." Blurr murmured. But he could barely comprehend the scene in front of him. That a death occurred, didn't register across his processor -- only the sheer magnitude of power he suddenly felt, instilled within his servos.

His entire ghostly body had enveloped itself in Tox-En, bleeding the substance dry as he sucked the energy from it. Tox-En peeled from the walls and floor as more and more drained into Blurr, including from Icescream's body.

Blurr acted on pure intuition alone. He knew from Icescream's combustion moments ago, that Tox-En was dangerous and so when he intended to place both of his servos atop the gestation chamber, he reconsidered. Wisely, Blurr placed only a single finger against the glass.

It was enough.

The glass was bullet-proof, but not "ghost-proof."

Blurr would be careful.

Too much energy and his new body would explode.

Just like Icescream had.

He recognized the dead sparkling now, scattered in front of his gestation chamber, as if it'd been an evil-intentional, ritualistic sacrifice...

He watched in morbid fascination as his protoform knitted itself together. Rubber-circuitry filled up his arms and legs. Metal-nanites peeled across his form at deranged speeds, printing plating as if from thin-air.

Blurr cackled dangerously.

The lab was experiencing a supernatural meltdown.

A beaver by the laboratory doors, had run away terrified, sometime ago...

Chapter Text

"Hello Kup," said Starscream. "The datastick said to comm you before I went back to the Nemesis, so what is it?"

"Ahh, Screamer! I just wanted to talk, really."

Starscream rolled him optics. Kup was the sort of mech who knew how to keep a commline busy with endless, frivolous nonsense.

"Kup, I don't have time to just talk. If you have something important to say, tell me so I may go. Already, Megatron must suspect something."

"Ack, fine." Kup paused, looking Starscream over as best he could across a vid-call screen. "Say, how'd you get that dent on your head Screamer? Did Megatron do that? Again? " he grumbled that last part.

Starscream sighed, but relaxed his posture as he leaned against a counter along the vid-screen monitor. Unlike with anyone else, he'd never felt threatened by Kup. Before the war they'd been "not-friends," but hadn't been enemies either. Kup and Blurr had been friends before everything collapsed, and Starscream had watched from a distance as they worked together to hold some semblance of dignity as cybertronians began ripping each other apart in the streets.

Starscream regretted not bothering to hold everything together like Kup had. The old, grumpy sergeant had been the voice of reason within the tunnels -- when so many had fled within the bones of Cybertron.

For a while it had been peaceful.

But when energon stopped coming and going.

Kup's words stopped making sense.

Blurr had been one of the first out of many to crack, unable to pause his maddening ped-steps as he slashed apart energon-lines within a screaming victim's neck.

Starscream didn't remember much from that time -- that first riot -- the early points of the war.

It had been genocide.

Plain and simple.

Down in the tunnels.

It had all dissolved so quickly, and once he'd been bitten by Shockwave's escaped sparkeater-scraplet, the rest had been history.

"How's Blurr?" Kup asked suddenly. "I know he didn't want to leave the Autobots stationed here, but his cube has to heal somehow."

Starscream chuckled at Kup's concern. The word "heal" would've been the last word to come to mind. "Really now, Kup? I'd hardly call it healing." Kup backed away from the screen somewhat, looking off into a corner, itching at the side of his helm -- as if his attention had suddenly been redirected by a commlink-call.

But Starscream knew his nervous mannerisms -- Kup didn't have the social circle he liked to pretend to have.

Kup was the sort of bot content to blend into the background. It's how the old sergeant had lived so long -- he'd been forgotten by everyone, even his enemies.

Starscream again reconsidered Kup's question, rubbing the thin-welds of his splintered chin. The touch hurt, but it was nothing like the torment Blurr was undergoing.

'Well Kup should be worried. Shockwave isn't exactly ethical when it comes to his experiments, and his conjux endura would be no different.' He coolly thought.

Starscream shrugged, allowing a smile to cover his glossa. He wasn't as afraid of offending the emotional sensibilities of Kup, unlike other bots, and he reveled in the sadistic-feeling -- he could lay down his social-masks and was free to cut-his-words crudely, like strips of stained oil-cloths.

He clacked his denta at the thought of having to return to the Nemesis, and he grumbled as he checked his chronometer. He couldn't exactly lounge around chatting for much longer, though he could see how Kup desperately needed the attention -- some reassurance that Blurr... would be okay.

"Oh that nasty little experiment -- it's going well -- you know how Shockwave treats his specimens." It was bluntly said, but Kup wasn't a bitlet who needed his energon warmed.

Kup stayed quiet, looking down at Starscream with a dour expression. He pulled a cy-gar from his subspace and flicked a lighter from a fingertip to light it. "Please Screamer, help Blurr please, when you can." He paused to puff on his cy-gar. "Blurr has no one else to lookout for him over there. You're his only hope, if you think about it." Starscream widened his optics a tad, darkly amused.

Kup was begging, using a curated-pleading tone he'd long perfected over the millennia. Starscream rolled his optics. Kup could give him a run for his shanix in the acting-department -- which was strange for a serious, no-nonsense mech like Kup.

Kup was known to all as a bitter, washed up drill sergeant; then again, as Starscream considered the skills required for such a position, perfecting one's love of theatrics wouldn't have been useless. Autobot recruits had to grow thick-frames -- what better way to go about the process then to allow Kup's acting skills to run wild with screams and insults.

Starscream chuckled briefly, at the idea of rookie Autobot-recruits withering under Kup's kindly glare, before sighing, looking at his empty servos, wishing more than ever he had some high-grade to indulge upon.

Or even a spark-chamber.

But he needed to be sober when he returned to Megatron; he wasn't stupid, but perhaps a tad suicidal.

He looked Kup over, giving him a curt smile, in the manner professionals only could.

They weren't friends, but they weren't enemies either.

The same went for Blurr.

Starscream didn't have friends.

Not real ones.

It was too much of a liability, when plotting and scheming, but Kup could, reluctantly fall into a "friend" category. Starscream had no one else to trust, save for a handful of sparklings -- and even then Starscream didn't trust his children to not betray him -- eventually, they'd get rid of him.

He taught them that much.

"Blurr has been through a lot, just like both of us. He's not a hapless sparkling."

Kup made a non-committal noise. "True, but remember, we made it out of so much slag before, just because we watched each other's backs." Kup pulled away his cy-gar. "Don't forget that, Screamer. I can't be the only one these days to remember all that turmoil."

"You're not." He said impatiently, and deactivated the call. He'd sent Kup earlier a data-packet with information he would need to hack into the drone-network of the Nemesis, on behalf of the needs of Shockwave.

Soundwave, as Security Officer of the Nemesis, was no slouch when it came to updating his security-protocols -- the bot basically lived to prevent infiltration.

Such devotion caused Starscream to have to constantly update Kup with new information. Soundwave basically added something new every cycle, and while Shockwave would've been capable of obtaining the information for Kup himself -- it would've simply been too suspicious.

Anybot would think Shockwave capable of taking down Soundwave's drone-network.

But Starscream?

A few would have doubts.

Make bets against his success.

And Starscream loved to be underestimated.

During his musings, Starscream had made his way out of the base, a desert canyon devoid of any trinkets or decorations -- just a smattering of holo-projected rocks, which he ducked behind for his takeoff.

He was a mile or so from the entrance when he got a "lab notification: critical-failure" from one of his warning-systems. He didn't have time to track what lab the notification was for -- but it was probably a false positive. A sparkling must've knocked over a cube of energon into a lab-vent and triggered an automatic warning. It had happened before.

Starscream hovered in place briefly, sending a comm-message to Seaspray and Quasar, before shooting away towards the Nemesis. They'd fix the issue -- get the job done, whatever it was.

After all, Starscream wasn't about to babysit the entire base forever.

"I'm surprised you were able to coax him to try the experimental serum so quickly." It was Megatron's voice, the tone dangerously amused. "Tell me, Shockwave, how'd you convince him? No seasoned warrior is so typically tricked -- not even Autobots." There was a pause. "You're right. He must be an inexperienced recruit. All the better. We will beat that gullibility out of him."

Jetfire onlined his optics, just in time to see Megatron's legs round a corner in front of his new cage -- no longer did he have the luxury of sneaking his servos through unelectrified bars. His range of vision had been reduced to a pinprick of boxed light. His prison had become a plated metal cube with hardly any space to move. Jetfire couldn't stand nor lay down onto his back; he was forced into an upright position, his knees tucked in underneath his chin as he was forced to curl his entire frame forward -- he felt like a statue on display.

Worse than caged like an animal.

The claustrophobia he experienced when he realized his situation was instantly overwhelming.

His systems reacted involuntarily, his plating was pressed unnaturally against the metal-walls -- causing him to panic -- he was hapless to stop the flood of data impacting his processor -- his wings snapped uselessly against binding-chains. As a stress reliever, his servos scratched irrationally against the walls, dulling his already abused claws into smooth, wedge-like fingertips.

Jetfire felt as if he had a virus.

His empty spark-chamber fluttered unnaturally with color.

Bright colors.

Green colors.

He was too distracted to look down to investigate his spark.

His internal-UI flashed nonsensical notifications within his peripheral vision, his plating itched to move as if he was being ever so slightly squished against the blackened walls.

Jetfire's wings were another painful matter entirely. Wings-clamps had been cruelly placed across the tips, pinched too tightly to cause a continuous, stinging numbness -- just the right amount of pressure to drive him wild.

His senses pelted his systems with a continuous deluge of useless information and warnings within his mind's display, scrambling what little coherency Jetfire's processor strived to cobble together.

And he couldn't turn it off.

Any sense of control of his own body.

Had been wiped clean.

'Come on, Jetfire. Focus. Keep it together. They're not ripping you apart, yet.' His positive thoughts did little to stymie the sting of his current situation.

He felt like a newspark.

Struggling to understand his surrounding stimulations.

Eventually, enough time passed for Jetfire to focus. He was able to reorganize his internal mental-display.

With relief and a touch of pride, he poked and prodded his mindscape, purging useless notifications like bubbles within bath-solvent.

A bream passed.

Jetfire had ceased panicking, flailing about his cage like an unbroken animal. He had peaked out of the small window of light he'd been given, and he could see little else but the ped-legs of both Megatron and Shockwave.

The warlord hardly paid him notice.

But he had heard the two discussing him just moments before.

It was obvious whatever plans they held for him wouldn't be good.

And Jetfire looked at the purple peds of Shockwave, musing why he'd done this to him.

His spark flared sadly, a startling green, and all feelings towards Shockwave's betrayal withered away -- to fascination.

Something had changed within his spark.

He opened his spark-chamber without hesitation.

He had one.

A spark.

But it didn't look right. Jetfire wanted to touch it with a servo, to see if it would flicker painfully -- if he tried to remove it.

His sparkeater coding stupidly instructed him to eat his own spark, and Jetfire could only roll his optics backwards as he entertained such a ludicrous notion -- but would it be possible?

Could he eat his spark?

And live?

"Shockwave, what did you do to me?" he muttered, but it hadn't been quiet enough. Apparently, the question had been loud enough for Shockwave to hear and a yellow-optic butted into his window of light, bathing his chained form in sparkeater-yellow.

"Heya, can you do me a favor and get me out of here? My wings feel like they are about to drop off." Jetfire had nothing to lose from just asking, especially from a bot who was his family.

Still, Shockwave seemed to be weighting his options, with Megatron looming right besides him. They couldn't act like they knew each other. It would dig up too many questions, and at the very least, ruin Shockwave's big boogie-mech reputation.

Too many times did Shockwave rely on fear to tip negations into his favor.

Jetfire wasn't surprised when Shockwave didn't answer him. His optic refused to remove itself from that window, as if scanning through every inch of Jetfire for flaws.

It's when Jetfire began to dread what had been done to him.

Now that he began to investigate, his plating felt heavier. His wings felt the same, but he couldn't be certain with chains pinning the tips against his back.

"Megatron, the subject is ready. We will commence the trial in a breem. Please prepare the audience."

"With pleasure, Shockwave. I look forward to seeing which one of your creations will conquer the other." Jetfire was certain he'd misheard Megatron's spoken words -- it was too absurd a concept for him to imagine -- what was Shockwave's plan?

To pit him against one of his brothers?

Megatron grew impossible to hear as he walked away, but Jetfire could make an educated guess from the sounds Megatron was making; the warlord was likely rallying a crowd with a speech and his booming howls.

Shockwave had stepped out of view, but not before tapping his cannon atop the dense prison.

'I'm listening, I'm watching.' He told Jetfire.

A breem passed, much too slowly.

Then the metal began to peel backwards and outwards. The walls collapsed together like origami and darted into the floor like wet paper mache down a drain.

Jetfire had little time to prepare as the new sights and sounds bombarded his vision. It was obvious Shockwave had upgraded his optics. The forward tilt of his face and forehead felt unnaturally heavy, as if a large lump of metal had been welded nonsensically across his neck and skull.

"Decepticons, get ready to witness history! Behold, the weapons of New Kaon Arena!"

Jetfire swiveled his head towards Megatron. The warlod stood proudly atop a podium with servos raised into fists. A crowd of vehicons and unnamed Decepticon officers followed suit, raising fists and giving their best booming howls across a packed stadium. The noise reverberated throughout the arena and Jetfire had little choice but to absorb the noise in stride -- the howls echoed, bouncing off the twisted encircling walls.

His mood grew murderous.

As if the screams of the crowd infected him somehow.

He felt the plating across his helm and chassis ignite into a noticeable heat. It was a normal reaction whenever Jetfire felt a strong emotion. His empty spark-chamber would fluctuate with color and heat for a nanoclick or two, before guttering out completely. But now his spark-chamber itched like a stitched wound, a green light pulsated between the lining of where protoform and armor melded together.

He felt trapped beneath his own plating.

And it was driving him mad.

Jetfire could only conclude his sudden change in behavior was from some unseen influence of Shockwave's, some invention of his, perhaps it was called a "mood-manipulator ray" which could've been installed atop the rafters. It was a known fact, that heatwaves beaming down onto a subject could instill sudden bursts of irrational aggression, but it was pure speculation on Jetfire's part -- pure conspiratorial, heresy. He didn't need a stupid ray-gun to make himself mad. And neither did Shockwave.

It simply made him feel better.

To think his anger was coming from Shockwave's manipulations.

Than his own spark-chamber.

There was no more time for thinking. All Jetfire could register in the corner of his optics, is that Megatron dropped down from his podium and disappeared into the roaring crowd.

Then another cubed-cage rose from the arena flooring, arching with electricity along its outwards plating. The cube collapsed much like Jetfire's had, but instead of a mech bellowed a black and orange beast -- a draconic predacon; the EM field of the beast was inscrutable and Jetfire's growing anger engulfed what little neutral projection of emotion there was.

Fire.

Death.

The atmosphere of the arena melted away.

It was pleasurable to Jetfire.

The element of murder.

"-which one of your creations will conquer the other?" A snippet of Megatron's words cut across Jetfire's processor -- as a question. Finally what Shockwave plotted made sense. He would defeat this creature -- this other creation. He would prove himself.

He wouldn't allow Shockwave to replace him with an animal.

The thoughts were juvenile -- filled with jealousy -- but Jetfire clung onto the ideas all the same.

He struck first.

Much to the surprise and awe of the crowd. The stands erupted like the spillage of an unwatched forge, and Jetfire lashed again.

The springy-magnetic ability of his leg-talons revealed themselves. He lashed out again with a kick, his talons gouged the side of the predacon, which felt like ripping soft mud from atop a mountain. Scraps of armor flaked off the beast's protoform and it reacted as any inexperienced combatant would -- it was stunned from the pain. It made no move to dodge nor to parry -- it merely accepted the hit.

A lesser creature would've collapsed, dead.

With a hole glaring deep against its side.

But the predacon was still standing, its head held proud.

When Jetfire lashed again with his talons, the predacon was ready.

It learned quickly.

Its massive paw hooked into Jetfire's leg alongside his waist, twisting its serpentine body into a bent-curvature of spines against the ground. It flipped Jetfire over, forcing him to twirl in midair. His talons automatically lashed out, again on the other leg.

The predacon dodged Jetfire's second set of talons, releasing the hold upon Jetfire's leg. It dodged, ducking its head backwards as talons narrowly missed the energon-lines within its neck.

The predacon remained on the defensive. It corrected it's body into a fluid shape of water, remaining flat against the ground, trudging backwards to pin its back against an arena wall like an armored turtle.

On some primitive level, the response amused Jetfire. The sting of claws was nonexistent upon his leg, and he lashed out again. The beast grabbed his leg a second time, but it was expected.

It pulled on Jetfire's leg in hopes of dragging Jetfire towards its biting maw -- it happened, for a nanoclick or so, he was dragged across the ground like panicked prey.

Jetfire allowed it.

To become close.

The predacon pounced, aiming to puncture Jetfire's chassis with the bulk and gravity of its own body.

This amused Jetfire.

Darkly so.

Sparkeater claws lashed out from his servos, long and cleaving, unexpected by the beast. Only one cut fuel-line was needed to end the fight.

The cut did not happen.

But the instinct was there.

The beast went scattering backwards, abandoning its hold upon Jetfire and turned tail into a corner of the arena.

Instantly, boos and jeers erupted from the audience, which had largely grown silent. The noise washed his processor clean -- blank and irritable like an animal.

He hated them.

That Decepticon crowd.

Jetfire had forgotten they'd been there, seated comfortably atop their benches, and he sneered in response.

He wanted to kill them.

But he wasn't delusional to think he'd be able to consume more than a vehicon or two, before he was blown to smithereens.

When his attention returned, he noticed the predacon was gone from its spot against the wall. At first he'd thought the creature was preparing an ambush, until he saw Soundwave step out from the shadows with a shock-prod in hand. The cage the predacon had arrived in had been resummoned and Jetfire watched stiffly as Soundwave corralled the predacon inside, shock-prod hissing against its backside.

'Now that's just plain mean.' Jetfire thought. He knew better than to have sympathy for an enemy, but something about the predacon signaled something novel and innocent -- like a newspark. Jetfire could only conclude the beast had been created recently.

He was glad he hadn't killed it.

As soon as the predacon and its cage sunk back into the ground, Soundwave stepped forward. It was obvious he was issuing a challenge, with his servos stretched outwards. Electrified-tentacles fluctuated outward from Soundwave's frame, hissing and spitting like snakes. Some primitive part of Jetfire winced -- intimidated -- the memory of his kidnapping still fresh within his processor.

Soundwave looked like a sparkeater and he took little comfort in knowing the bot was not.

"Decepticons, this next fight is guaranteed to hold your attention! Let's show this Autobot-whelp a humiliation he won't ever forget!" Megatron shouted, again at his podium. Something about his words struck the audience as amusing, and laughter cut across the crowd, the very same as their screaming howls.

'They want a show? Alright, fine, I'll give em' a show.' Jetfire had no clue if he was in a fight to the death, but it wasn't exactly uncommon within the Decepticon-ranks, if rumors spoke correctly.

He'd give em' a show.

His best.

Jetfire called upon all his training from within his memory of Autobot fight-simulations. The data flooded across his plating like a protective coating of wax, stimulating long-dead reflexes back into circulation. His muscles twitched, begging to move, to jut his claws into the closest victim.

Soundwave.

He allowed his sparkeater coding to take over completely.

It caused him to grow obscenely large -- triple his size, a bulk which could rival Megatron. All the metal and energy he kept reserved for starvation, fabricated from his sub-space.

He had no idea if it was a fight to the death.

But he'd treat it like one; he'd be a fool not to.

Whatever Shockwave had done to his spark-chamber to make it green caused a new transformation. Jetfire had already remained in his sparkeater transformation, ever since his pitiful escape attempt from The Nemesis.

Whatever Shockwave had done exaggerated his sparkeater features.

He grew larger still -- his protoform stretched into a behemoth, which cast the audience in shadow.

His saber-fangs became sharper and his teeth grew thick like trees against his jaw, stretching his chin outwards into a hideous underbite -- his faceplating had altered into the snapping maw of an insecticon, splitting like the mandibles of a mantis.

It was disgusting.

But normal, considering what a sparkeater was.

The plating atop his servos cracked outwards over his claws, as if to shield his strikes from view with the blade of a deadly piercing dagger. He discovered he could retract the blade and plating at any moment he wished, like a second skin.

The same process occurred in his legs, but he was forced to bend-over from the weight, standing hunchbacked as his springy-talons begged to pounce forward like some demonic kangeroo.

Jetfire felt the new metal atop his helm and neck stretch downwards, caking his back in serrated armor. His wings were strangely forgotten in the transformation process, tucked away safely underneath his plating, sharpened into jutting blades alongside his waist.

He looked by all accounts a monster.

And felt like one to.

Jetfire was delighted as he pounced forward, being the first to attack again and to begin the fight. Whatever Soundwave had been expecting, it hadn't been Jetfire's sudden, dramatic transformation. But Soundwave was a pro, having survived situations that had killed others -- he was a veteran of The Great War -- and his experience became apparent.

He ducked and weaved underneath the legs of the beast when Jetfire pounced, grazing between soft belly-plates with electric discharge. Pain engulfed Jetfire's protoform and he screeched in agony.

He lashed out with his claws, but he misjudged the speed required. His new dagger-claws across his servos worked against him as Soundwave ran up his servo-plating as if it were a staircase.

Soundwave again discharged electricity against his protoform, targeting the meat of his neck. Jetfire was in agony and was unable to formulate a plan -- his processor was slow -- dimwitted like an animal.

Activating the full-potential of his sparkeater coding had been a mistake.

For half a breem, Soundwave treated him as a sort of novel obstacle-course, twirling and dodging along his plating like a rock-climber at play. His tentacles served him well, biting cruelly into protoform with every touch, each a writhing leech bleeding Jetfire's energy. Every nanoclick the tentacles propelled Soundwave into the air -- again and again -- the mech resembled a particularly hardy jumping flea.

Finally there was a miscalculation on Soundwave's part -- or perhaps Jetfire had cobbled together some semblance of a plan.

Regardless, Jetfire was able to backhand his servo into Soundwave. Maximum velocity was reached as Soundwave crashed into the audience-stands.

There was some screaming.

And bellowing, as dust settled around Soundwave's form.

He was undamaged, having caught himself by the ends of his tentacles, and the vehicon he'd landed upon had absorbed the blunt of the impact -- the mech had been annihilated completely.

There was silence.

And it signaled the end of the fight.

Jetfire watched as Megatron approached his podium, and he took a que from the predacon, pinning his back against a corner -- and observed.

"And that concludes this cycle's entertainment! New Kaon Arena is open to all as of this moment!" Megatron roared. "Decepticons forever!"

"Decepticons forever!" The crowd roared back, and there was much excitement in the stands as mechs pushed each out of the way. Some left by jet-transformation -- others lingered at the borders of the arena, pointing at weld-seams, if criticizing the architecture.

Jetfire watched this all with stiff anxiety. He had yet to transform back into his smaller form, and he didn't want to -- it didn't look safe to do so. The whiplash he was experiencing from being in a fight, only for a nanoclick later for it to be declared over was too absurd for him to process.

No one was dead.

Did he lose?

Or win?

Jetfire had no idea. Soundwave was nowhere to be seen.

Shockwave emerged from the crowd, mechs scattered from his path like startled ants. He walked up to Jetfire, taking his time as his optic swiveled up and down, taking in his new form.

"The upgrades require adjustments." Shockwave placed his servo across one of the dagger blades, petting the metal as if Jetfire could feel it; but the calming gesture was appreciated all the same.

"You did well, Jetfire. Above my expectations." Shockwave said.

And at that moment, Jetfire decided he'd won.

Chapter Text

They'd taken him to the brig.

'Of course they did.' Mused Jetfire.

Megatron had decided he was Shockwave's responsibility and so he'd been thrown down to fester within the New Kaon dungeons.

He wasn't complaining. Staying under the watchful eye of Shockwave was mostly likely within his best interests; and he was happy to be away from The Nemesis -- from Soundwave and the untrustworthy likes of Knock Out.

But at the moment Jetfire was a prisoner, and would likely remain that way for megacycles.

He was filthy Autobot-scum, after all.

The absurd insults Decepticons slung his way just for wearing a red symbol upon his wing tips amused him to no end.

If he wore purple-brands, what would the Autobots call him? He'd always wondered.

Jetfire didn't mind as much as he thought he would -- being imprisoned.

His new cell was generous with its space in comparison to his other cages, with a berth designed to account for his heavy upgrades. Since his transformation in the arena, during his fighting with Soundwave and the mystery beast, Jetfire hadn't felt the need to shift back into his scrawnier mechling form. His armor wasn't an adult-frame by any means; but, something new entirely -- like some twisted compromise on Shockwave's behalf.

The Autobots would call it an abomination.

Shockwave was an avid recycler; he never let any spare material go unused in a project, if he could find a place for it -- no matter how gruesome or tame.

And such habit had never been so apparent to Jetfire, until he examined his new frame.

It meant Jetfire had an extra layer of metal randomly welded atop a fingertip.

And an extra set of empty energon-lines running across one of his legs -- to be used as an unconventional medkit in the advent of a bleed.

His armor was littered with little cracks and crevices which didn't line up -- welds ran perpendicular to each other, as if the metal had been crudely pinched together from different bodies.

Different mechs.

No doubt Jetfire's new armor was a carapace fashioned from pieces of the dead.

He recognized a vehicon backstrut sticking out from one of his shoulder-plates. He fiddled the tip with a claw, almost bending the metal clean off.

His expression was a bland mixture of disgust and intrigue.

'Good ol' Shockwave and his gifts.' Jetfire grimaced.

"Well, nothing I can do about it now." He said out loud, and it got him to thinking...

What did he want?

'To get out of here, obviously.'

He'd be happy to just get out of his cage.

He wasn't the type of mech to desire much beyond a little more leg room.

As long as he had shelter, energon, and wasn't in disrepair, Jetfire was happy.

He appreciated that he could survive.

That he could simply exist in the situation he was in.

But there was one thing missing.

One unbearable itch he couldn't get at.

He was lonely.

He wanted to see his brothers again, but that couldn't happen so long as he was locked up.

His first instinct was to plot and to scheme to get out of his cage, like any sane mech would.

But idly, he wondered what the Decepticons wanted with him.

They hadn't killed him.

'To turn me into a weapon, obviously.' It was a sound conclusion. Jetfire's recalled Megatron's words from the arena. "Behold, the weapons of New Kaon!"

What a joke.

The only other thing of interest in his dungeon cell besides his berth, was a conspicuous cube of green energon.

It looked...rancid.

"Shockwave, what is this?" he muttered, half hoping the mech would surprise him by peering into his cage again. But Jetfire was alone as he nervously sloshed the contents of the cube back and forth.

It looked like fuel.

It also didn't look edible.

Against his better judgement, he took a sip. As soon as the substance hit his taste receptors, he unceremoniously set the cube down.

"Well, I won't be doing that again." He said plainly.

The sound of his voice caught the attention of something besides the back wall of his cell.

Something large, which moved like it'd rusted.

'Oh, it's the arena beast.'

Jetfire peered through a hole in the wall, a small wedge messily cut into a square -- as if to allow prisoners the luxury of viewing and speaking with each other.

That was odd.

Not even Autobots allowed such fraternization.

Jetfire shook his head, again concluding such hacksaw work was Shockwave's doing. While Shockwave considered himself an undisputed genius, an artist he was not. He favored form over function, and the cut of the square hole was littered with jagged edges as if it had been caressed open by claws.

Jetfire watched the beast through the peephole. It had yet to notice him, seemly stretching his spines and plating as it rose from a deep recharge session.

"Hello there." The beast eyed him curiously. Did it understand his words?

"Are you getting enough to eat?" The beast cocked its head as Jetfire held the energon cube in front of him, filling the peep hole's view with the rancid fuel.

Whether it was the smell or color that attracted the beast, it darted towards the opening. Using it's bottom-jaw fangs, it punctured the cube and began to gingerly lick at the rancid nectar. It hummed in approval at the taste of rotted meat, and it knelt down on it's front servos, suckling the glass akin to a nursing kitten.

Throughout the entire exchange, Jetfire was apathetic, watching as the contents of the cube siphoned away, somewhat relieved he didn't have to drink it himself.

No doubt Shockwave had cameras slotted around the room, and would know he'd fed his ration to the predacon; but Jetfire wasn't about to drink something so fowl if he didn't have to. Shockwave would have to force the disgusting sludge down his throat...

"Well, it's all gone now." Jetfire smiled firmly, feeling his needle-teeth tease lightly against the flesh of his mouth. "Was it poisoned?" he asked, his tone just a touch sadistic and unkind.

Jetfire wasn't a cruel bot, no, but he was despairingly curious. Would the beast flop over dead, frothing at the mouth? Would it go wild with a berserker's rage, until it fell into involuntary stasis-lock?

He needed to know if the green energon was safe to drink. Obviously, the rancid taste belayed a malicious motive -- the liquid no doubt drugged in some manner.

Jetfire didn't believe drinking such energon would've been healthy for him.

It hadn't tasted like Ratchet's vitamin-mixtures, the thick golden energon Jetfire was currently craving -- that sweet honey, soft and fluffy upon the tongue.

Jetfire watched the predacon keenly, watching it for any sign of malfunction or disrepair. If Shockwave scolded him for wasting his ration, he'd demand better -- normal low-grade blue he could trust. If the predacon dropped dead, he'd use the opportunity to ask Shockwave for an explanation. Was Shockwave trying to kill him? he'd ask.

He crouched contentedly in a corner, watching the time tick by.

The predacon hadn't dropped dead.

It had simply curled around itself, after lulling itself into recharge. Jetfire could only feel disappointment, having watching for joors for poisoning, yet there had been no discernable pay off for his efforts.

He was furious; though his anger did not show. It stayed pinned beneath his plating, like the slow-simmer of a kettle.

'What a waste of time.' He thought. He was imprisoned -- the highlight of his punishment was growing unbearable.

Jetfire was a bot not meant for enclosed spaces, wanting more than ever to brush his wing tips across the warm air of an afternoon flight. He wanted to be free, busy doing a job or an activity which could hold his attention.

He was going stir-crazy, mad in his cage.

The arena fights had been a delightful reprieve, and he'd tell Shockwave as much, the first chance he got.

He wanted to fight.

He was good at fighting.

Playing the act of a Decepticon prisoner had long grown boring; even playing as an Autobot recruit had long lost its novelty, and Jetfire had to reconsider what he was doing, stationed on planet Earth.

'I think I'll just leave.' He shrugged, noncommittally. 'The first chance I get, I'll go back to Vox. It's boring here.'

He was homesick, he had to admit.

It stung a little to think his little venture on Earth, an alien planet, would amount to nothing.

'Not like I'd be missed. Not like I ever did an important job -- at the Autobot-base.' Jetfire sneered. He hated being a mechling.

Nobody ever trusted that he knew what he was doing.

At the Autobots he'd wanted to prove himself, to become a medic.

But when he'd requested training, Ratchet had looked at him as if he was crazy.

As if he was inexperienced and didn't know what he was asking.

To Ratchet, he was a mechling.

Just a mechling.

He was.

Not worthy of training.

Exhausted by his useless thoughts, Jetfire dragged himself from the berth he had grown miserable upon, musing his time away. He again looked into the peep hole, the predacon alive and fast asleep.

'Perfect.' He darkly thought.

He wanted out of his cage, off of planet earth.

He could only think of one scheme to accomplish such matters as quickly as possible.

He would eat the predacon.

It was a mad idea -- not one rooted in reason and diplomacy -- but Jetfire's sparkeater coding demanded a spark-chamber -- and the mechling, weighted down by his heavy upgrades, was in no position to shake off his temptations.

Shockwave would feed him.

Eventually.

But not soon enough.

Shockwave would bring him to the brink of starvation, before bringing him a spark-chamber.

This he knew, and Jetfire held out a servo without hesitation. Only two claws could fit through the peep hole, his upgrades made his hand huge and cumbersome.

But two claws were enough to tempt his prize closer. Using the uncanny ability of his spark-power, green energy snaked along his claws -- his sparkeater telekinesis activated, peeling off his servo with a satisfying, vibrating hum. The unsuspecting predacon was pulled closer to the hole, much too heavy to lift with only two claws.

Inch by inch.

Twitch by twitch.

Of jingling, peeling scales.

Eventually the predacon was in a spot Jetfire could reach him, just below glass and smears of green. Jetfire couldn't do much else with only two claws -- couldn't even grasp the throat of his unsuspecting victim to suckle dry. Typically, a sparkeater wrestled a victim's brain out of their skull -- then the paralyzed, traumatized husk could do little as the spark-chamber was consumed...

But Jetfire was impatient, and unwilling to try anything radical.

He wanted out of his cage.

And what better way to grab Shockwave's attention, then to harass one of his creations, if what Megatron said in the arena was true.

With little tact, Jetfire stabbed his claws into the leg thigh of the predacon, holding it for a nanoclick or two before the beast woke up, yowling in agony.

Unceremoniously, the beast peeled away into a corner and a hefty chunk of meat was left glued between claw tips, dripping delicious purple-blue. Smiling, Jetfire began to nibble his prize, chewing the meat slowly with his sparkeater mandibles, akin to a well-fed insecticon -- not ravenous enough with hunger to consume the flesh in one single gulp.

But the delectable piece was gone too quickly.

Jetfire's instincts activated automatically, and his two claws returned to the hole, twitching to will the predacon closer.

But it wasn't enough.

The humming was too weak.

He could do little when the beast was awake.

His claws gouged a widening cut into the metal.

Testing the strength of his upgraded-frame.

He was bored out of his mind.

He would carve up the predacon.

It would be a good use of his time.

Chapter Text

To say that the situation was salvageable would've been a grave overestimation.

Shockwave's personal office had been destroyed.

Countless walls in the lab had been splattered with Tox-En, the glowing mixture was steadily eating into the metal, akin to a termite across dead bark.

Who was going to report the incident to Shockwave?

Teakup had been considered the sacrifice that afternoon, having been assigned as the base's Spectacular Janitorial Officer. The job was thankless, but safe, at least that's what Teakup had been assured of, when she'd first signed up to join her sparkeater brother's on their earth mission.

"It'll be fun they said -- like a vacation away from the cafe! What a load of slag that was..." She murmured. She'd half a mind to think her brothers wanted to get rid of her, leaving her to clean up such a deadly mess by herself. Typically such a hazardous spill was handled by the Hazardous Materials Officer, Icescream, but he was nowhere to be seen since disappearing with Snapshot and the suspicious-likes of Blurr.

No doubt the Tox-En exploding everywhere had been their fault.

Black ped-steps led out just barely before the office entrance, until the path disappeared completely.

It was as if the bot responsible had suddenly disintegrated.

"When I find out who's responsible for all this, I'm gonna cut their rations down to droplets!" she hissed, directing a small militia of cleaning drones to concentrate cleaning efforts against the most afflicted side of the office.

An explosion had wrought an ashy crater into the middle of the room.

There wasn't much office or laboratory space left.

And Blurr's gestation chamber had been completely destroyed...

'I guess Blurr is deader than dead now.' She concluded, with conflicting feelings on the matter. She wanted to like Blurr, but... well ...the bot was mean...ignored her... neglected her...

But she supposed it didn't matter how she felt about Blurr now.

His ghost was nowhere to be seen.

Maybe he was gone forever.

Teakup vented a sigh of relief at the idea. 'No more Blurr. Gone forever. And ever, and ever~' She sing-songed in her head.

She gingerly stepped around pools of Tox-En wider than her entire small body. Fortunately, she was dressed in appropriate cybertronian hazmat attire, a quadruple layered mesh-suit, gilded with hardened glass-shielding.

It would keep her alive -- long enough -- supposedly -- to clean up the spill.

Teakup wasn't the sort of bot to try her luck; especially with post-war cybertronian engineering. Any product created after The Great War was known to be of shoddy craftmanship and of sketchy origin -- her hazmat suit was unfortunately included in such a category -- custom-made to suit the likes of a sparkling.

She had no interest in testing the durability of her hazmat suit, and so she stood far away, leaving the cleaning drones to finish up the bulk of the work. Leaning against a wall, she busied herself with the report she had the misfortune to deliver to Shockwave the next chance she got.

"Sorry Shockwave. Everything exploded. Best of luck next vorn." She said out-loud, rehearsing what to say. A smile almost crossed her plates, but then a drone dragged something outwards from the blackened mess...depositing it in front of her...

"Oh, Icescream...there you are..." There was no time for tears -- there never was. With shaky servos she altered her report.

Blurr was surprised. Typically his sparklings would've noticed he had disappeared.

But not today.

Not anymore.

The tunnels around him weren't home, but instead some sort of stranger's abode.

Blurr would've panicked at the unfamiliar walls and flooring, were it not for his agent-training and long lifespan.

The coloring was off, the titanium was too soft.

He did not know these tunnels.

The layout was wrong, the path too clean and unworn.

His ped-steps glided off the metal, almost swimming in midair as he propelled himself forward with a series of leg kicks.

It took little effort on his part, to move so quickly.

But he could hardly remember where he was going.

And that was a problem when he was fast running out of tunnels to navigate.

He took the only path he knew and his tires screeched in surprise when water pelted his head.

A waterfall.

He'd been here before.

But when?

He could not say.

It felt like a dream, the sights in front of him. Blurr allowed himself the luxury of slowing down, placing his servos against wet cavernous walls. He dragged his fingertips across cold refreshing stone...

He was alive.

Blurr pulled his hand away to find it covered in algae, and all manner of horrid organic matter, but to him, in that moment of revelry...

It was the most beautiful thing.

Snapshot was exiled.

Nobody had told him he was, but he assumed as much.

The incident with Blurr had been completely unacceptable.

Unprofessional.