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Chapter Text

Another streak of brilliant light crossed the starlit sky, passing overhead as the ninja plugged in the set of cables into the thick of her inner machinery. Another spacecraft, she assumed, which would make it the third one of the night. She flicked the human-sized switch and braced herself for the jolt of energy that was about to fill her frame.

Some miles away, a sector of Japanese residencies was struck by the sudden loss of lights in their third strange power outage in the past year, the lights flickering and failing entirely for a full minute before they suddenly came back again.

Nightbird shuddered through the aftershocks of the charge, the full force of the power grid recharging her body in an instant, a refreshing but utterly circuit-scrambling endeavor. One day, she wouldn’t be surprised if this method of energy transfer fried her circuits completely, really. After 20 years of running and refueling and hiding, she was almost expecting it.

Life as she had known it had changed very little from the day she had escaped her human captors and fled to the forests, but she knew that the world around her was constantly moving. Particularly, she noted, because of her loathed captors- the robotic ones- Autobots, they called themselves. They had come around these parts a few times, mostly now to bring their otherworldly technology with them to help advance their beloved humans. Nightbird had avoided them greatly at first, but now she actually watched for their return to the area.

Because if there was one thing those over-righteous robots were good for, it was for their ability to leave the planet. It had meant nothing to her at first, but she understood now that it might be her only method of survival.

Because like it or not, her frame was starting to feel the strain of the years, on the run like the night ran from day, her joints loosening and varnish peeling, giving way to the onset of rust. And her dark, mountainous paradise in the wilderness was starting to shrink as the cities crept forth, beginning to feel more and more like the restraints that had caged her back at the lab she had been locked away in. She felt more like some kind of feral little creature than a dignified assassin. One of these days, she knew she would be caught.

But solace lay in the cradles of space, in the infinity of the night sky where she could run forever and never be caught. She had learned that the Autobots did not come from Earth- no robot but herself did. Which meant that they must’ve been manufactured on a different planet, wherever that was, and wherever such a planet existed lay the technology to fix her failing frame. There were parts of her that were already alien- her former slavers had managed that sort of augment- so she knew it must be possible. She had seen the Autobots descend from space in their shuttles. If she could find one, she could hitch a ride back to where they came from and save herself. She simply needed to wait for the next time they arrived to meddle, and sneak herself onboard. Then, it was a matter of repairing herself and then disappearing into the night for good, never to be hunted again.

The last vestiges of the spacecraft disappeared over the cityscape as she squirreled the power grid’s cables back into their designated places and staggered to her feet. If she didn’t move from this location soon, she would be found by guards, and she was in no mood to be caught today. Besides, she wanted to track that spacecraft. It had followed the trajectory of the other two she had seen earlier that night, and even if it wasn’t anywhere near, it was an almost-certain indication that something was happening. Perhaps even something big.

A loud BOOM rang out in the distance- the near distance- barely a minute after she had started to walk. Oh, it was definitely something big. But it was also something close enough for her to reach. Her pace quickened briskly, and in a matter of moments, she had started to run.

–

The sounds of gunfire rang out in the cityscape far in the distance as Nightbird cleared the treeline, keeping out of the light of the roadways as she crept closer. There was a rush of air as a convoy of jets screamed right overhead, their bright red-and-white paint sparkling in the moonlight. Autobots, Nightbird thought- and almost certainly headed to the scene of the crime. Wherever they were going, she should be going- as long as she didn’t get caught.

If there was fighting in the city, it probably meant that her former slavers were fighting the Autobots again. And given that neither of the two factions had residence in Japan and that one of the factions had a significant amount of non-flying members, she might have a chance to escape this place. In the chaos of the war zone, nobody would notice if she crept into the arena and poked around for casualties or shuttles. And even if somebody did, she had no doubt that she could handle them- even without most of her weapons and a rusting body. She was an assassin by trade- no amount of time could take that away from her.

She flanked the city outskirts, running until the sounds of carnage grew ever-closer, until she could see the barricade in the distance- and the group of Autobots huddled behind it. Further into the city, she could see the outline of another group, perhaps on the offensive, firing wildly into the rubble with little inhibition. Deciding that being on the receiving end of this gunfire was not ideal, she stopped short of the no-man’s land between the two groups and opted to flank it instead. If she could climb a building, she could gain a vantage to look for a shuttle or for other helpful things- or, she could look for an easy target and get some payback, even.

The idea of revenge was not such a bad one, now that she thought about it…

She watched the battlefield closely as she chose a stable building and started to climb, scoping out the players of the fight. She hardly recognized anyone on the battlefield, but as far as she was concerned, they could still all jump in an incinerator for all she cared. The fight had taken itself to the skies by the time she had made it halfway up the building and had begun to descend yet further into the city as mech after mech ran amok in the streets. There were humans fleeing and scurrying about in almost every direction. How very pathetic and yet so amusing…

Upon reaching the top of the building, she had a pretty good idea of what she was facing. There were Autobots in the east and their opposition all about in the midst of the city, clearly dominating the scene. They must’ve come in from right over the city and barricaded the Autobots out, seeing as there were several fronts near the edge where the two sides were clashing in complete stalemate. And if they were landing right on top of the city, they were going to have to land any possible shuttles in areas big enough to host a robot-sized spacecraft. Her optics turned from the landscape to the wide, open roads running the length of the district- if there was any place big enough to park a shuttle, it would have to be…

There! Out of the corner of her optic, the gilded fin of a spacecraft caught her eye. She’d found her ticket out, and the only thing left to do was to get to it before someone else did. But who else would be trying the same stunt as she at a time like this? She took a running start from the top of the building and launched herself to the adjacent one across the street, and then the next, her optics never leaving that golden ticket for longer than a few seconds. She missed a jump, crashing right into the side of the building instead of onto its rooftop, but it didn’t matter- as the windows shattered from her impact, she hastily climbed down, burning the position of that shuttle into her mind. And then she sprinted, down that boulevard, like her life depended on it- no, her life did depend on it.

Her hands touched down on cool, smooth metal as she reached her target, and a wave of emotion washed over her, the first genuine feeling of relief since her great escape 20 years ago. Whoever had been piloting this shuttle had neglected to lock the doors, she noted, as she pulled the hatch open and carefully clambered inside, taking it all in. How long had it been since she’d been inside a structure like this?

“Hey! Who’s this in my shuttle?”

Nightbird whipped around to see a ground unit with a purple badge, only a short distance away, staring right at her with his weapons drawn. “You aren’t getting away, you Auto-scum! I’ll rip you apart!”

Nightbird managed to slam the shuttle hatch closed right as the gunfire bore down upon her and her prize, and instantly sprang into action. She tumbled into the pilot’s seat and greeted the arrays upon arrays of incomprehensible controls and decided that it would be best to press the biggest buttons until something moved- there was not enough time for her to sit down and learn. Her attacker had now reached the shuttle, metallic fists banging on the hatch, as she pressed the big blue button right next to the steering apparatus. And suddenly the shuttle lurched to life, dragging itself across the road as she grabbed hold of the steering that was now wiggling freely in front of her. She could hear the mech outside yell something muffled and inaudible as she pulled the controls straight and towards her, and suddenly her shuttle was ascending, clearing the buildings and headed straight for the stars, which really didn’t feel so far away now.

The windshield of the shuttle was starting to heat up. As she ascended, she could see the licks of blinding heat against the thick glass, and almost feel it even sitting several feet away from the shield- the console was flashing something that she couldn’t understand, and suddenly, she was starting to actually worry. Would her spacecraft burn up in the atmosphere with her in it? She had no way of knowing if or when she would clear this heat, and worse yet, she wasn’t actually sure if she was still ascending.

With nobody in the way of her craft, she had to figure things out now- or risk frying to a crisp in her haste to escape. But the glyphs on her screen were completely unintelligible to her, and so were the dozens of random buttons and interfaces set out before her- she was going to have to find a way to decipher all of this in a matter of minutes. Thankfully, she might have one more trick up her sleeve to play before she went gently into that good night.

With one hand on the steering apparatus, she fumbled with her seldom-used panels and flipped open a latch on the side of her head. It was the one port in which the humans who had made her had intended to upload all manners of databases and information, the one port that gave her direct access to her processor and memory.

When the humans had taken her back from the hands of the Autobots, they had neglected to remove the microchips that her robotic masters had implanted into her- the same microchips that had let them beam her commands from their alien computers. Those microchips would prove crucial in the interpretation of the far-advanced languages and programming of this shuttle if everything went as planned.

The interior of the shuttle was now starting to warm. She turned to the nearest interface, one which looked like it contained shuttle information, and started looking for any ports or plugs that she could link up to. Once she had located one, she flicked the fingertip of her right hand open. Her slavers had once equipped her with a download cable, presumably to steal enemy information, which she had never gotten the chance to use- but today, she would be applying it against their own technology. She pressed a few buttons in the side of her processor, routing data transfer from her right arm to her memory banks, plugged in the cable, and set her systems to Force-Download.

The rush of information was almost instantaneous and it was almost like a fog had been lifted away from her optics as the entire shuttle’s specs, flight manuals, and language were inputted into her memory banks. It was almost disorienting how quickly she could suddenly understand everything around her- but she didn’t have the time to be disoriented. She had neglected to switch on the heat shields in her ascent- something she quickly corrected, and she had been running the shuttle off of the wrong set of thrusters, something that would kill her fuel supply if used for ascent. All of that was trivial now as her hands flew towards the controls and re-adjusted her desperate flee attempt to more normal parameters of flying. Flying. She was really flying! The idea of it had not occurred to her until now, but she was actually escaping!

The fireball around her dissipated as she broke through the atmosphere and she was treated to the view of a lifetime as her optics adjusted. Space, in every direction, draped in veils of stars- somehow, more than she had ever seen on Earth. Was the atmosphere really hiding all of this away from her? How many more stars in the sky could there be?

She supposed she had all the time in the world to go find them, once she fixed her body up. Chasing the stars. It wasn’t such a bad idea either. Now that she thought about it, there were so many things she could do, free of the burdens of human and robot captors alike- she wasn’t sure of what yet, but she could start making a list. Chasing the stars, revenge against the Autobots, more revenge…

Her train of thought was broken as the radar on her left started to buzz. But she didn’t need the radar to tell her something big was in her way. Through the viewport, she could see it drifting into view, a big dark splotch obstructing the stars almost menacingly. She tapped on the radar, and was greeted with a contact on the central console. DECEPTICON WARSHIP- REVENGE.

So that must’ve been where the attackers had come from. She routed her shuttle around the warship, but was still close enough to see its full glory as she cruised past it. So this was the ship that her slavers- the Decepticons- carried themselves around in. Perhaps it was worth it to take their technology for her own gain? After all, they had given her the gift of sentience- at least partially, and they owed her for leaving her to die. And the ship was so nicely unattended to with their battle on the earth below…

She had made up her mind before she could even object to it, her hands already on the console to turn the shuttle around. It would be a quick heist, and she would be in and then gone within the hour, exactly what she did best. The side of the Revenge filled the viewport as she flew closer and closer, engaging the tractor beams on her puny shuttle to anchor her craft to the side of the ship.

From there, it was child’s play to magnetize her feet and then jump to the surface of the warship. She walked, tracing the sleek panels of the Revenge, until she found a poorly-secured airlock and pried it open, slipping inside. She was in, just like that, standing in the ship of her slavers but on her own terms, with her own agenda.

The dim, high-ceilinged chambers of what seemed to be the warship’s shuttle bay loomed down over her as she crept across the deck, silent as a mouse. Let the games begin, she thought- she was finally awake and ready to play.

Chapter Text

As big as the Revenge looked, it really felt smaller than she had expected. The corridors were cramped and rooms were sparse, but all the easier to loot then, she figured.

It didn’t take her more than 5 minutes to find a good weapon. As expected of her violent ex-masters, she thought, who’d sent her to steal from the enemy- well, it was her turn to steal from them. And what a selection of killing tools they offered! Her optics sparkled as she opened the doors to an armory and was greeted with a wall of blasters, cannons, and rifles to select from. Perhaps it wasn’t the razor-shurikens and trick bombs she had once been fitted with, but a sleek, long-barrelled laser rifle and a new plasma sword would sure fill that void easily. She stuffed her backpack with a few other choice items including another, smaller pistol, and then trotted on eagerly.

She had little luck finding parts she could actually repair herself with, however, as she tiptoed the hallways. Then again, she was wandering the halls blindly. She did keep track of the rooms and lifts she had gone in and the halls she had crept down though, remembering her path back to the airlock and the intel she could gather from each room. Many of them were storage, some were unused barracks, and others yet were simply empty and useless.

But other rooms, just a few of them, had information, things that filled in the gaps. She came across star maps and loose incident reports that she eagerly downloaded into her databases if she could, or memorized if she could not. Cybertron was the homeworld of the Autobots and Chaar was where the Decepticons were stationed. Energon was the lifeblood needed by both sides to power their troops and was always being fought for. And Soundwave was still the chief communications officer.

She remembered Soundwave. He had been one of the Decepticons in the room with her upon her onlining. He was the one who had given her commands on behalf of their leader, and she didn’t like him at all. He, and the rest of the Decepticons that had simply used her and then betrayed her in her greatest time of need- each and every one of them who had caused her injustice would pay for what they had done.

She had not seen any of those backstabbers since they left her to rot in the hands of the Autobots, but if any of them were alive, she swore then and there that she would see to it that they weren’t for much longer.

The stars could wait for her a little longer. She had a certain debt to repay her slavers, and she would not rest until she saw it through.

–

It had taken her another round of searching rooms blindly for her to stumble across the bridge of the ship, which she recognized as the place one might steer the Revenge- it looked a lot like her shuttle cockpit, only far bigger and with more seats. Perhaps this was where she might find the warlord who had piloted his armada to Earth?

Gingerly, she took a seat in the front, right in front of all of the controls. She could steal this ship, maybe. She wasn’t sure she could strand the Decepticons, since they were able to fly, but it certainly would give her some sort of leverage over them. She tried the controls- no, immediately locked out. It seemed that this warship was slightly more secure than the shuttle she had stolen.

But that wasn’t her concern- she needed to find some kind of repair bay. Surely the Decepticons needed repairs on the go, so surely she must come across one at some point. She started poking around on the consoles around the bridge- maybe this was the place she could find some kind of ship directory? Unfortunately, the consoles here seemed to be locked down and without the proper credentials, she had no way of accessing them. She tried with almost all of them- no luck breaking in. She had managed to lock herself out of the main computer when she heard a noise from behind.

CLUNK. There was something- or someone- outside. And they’d just made contact with the ship.

Suddenly, from an airlock positioned in the side of the room, the bridge burst into life- as two mechs in purple and several others entered in an uproar. By the time the airlock had closed again, there were mechs everywhere in the room, and Nightbird was already nowhere to be seen.

The purple ones seemed to be in charge- specifically the loudest, angriest one. He had his hands wrapped around one of his subordinates- a winged mech in blue, though there were multiple mechs like this- and threw said mech to the other purple mech beside him. “Send Scourge to the brig! I will deal with him personally when we return to Chaar!”

“Yes, mighty Galvatron.” Nightbird watched in interest from her place behind the door she had come from, hidden from view. She quickly darted down the hallway, hiding in the next storage room she found as heavy footsteps grew closer and the purple one dragged his prisoner down the hall. The prisoner did not concern her- but being caught did. And now, she was in a little bit of a situation herself.

The ship suddenly lurched as she peeked back out into the hallway- they were moving, and by the sounds of it, they were headed to Chaar. She could work with that- if there was anywhere where Soundwave and the other Decepticons were, it was there, and she needed to get to them to kill them. Though it was rather strange that this new group of Decepticons was dealing with earth, and not her ex-masters…

The sound of grumbling and griping carried down the hallway as the doors to the bridge opened again, and a horde of mechs dragged themselves away, clutching various wounds as they went. It seemed like the battle had done some damage to them- so they were almost certainly headed towards a repair bay. It would be wise to follow them, albeit carefully.

Thankfully, these soldiers were not very quiet, so it would be easy to follow them from a distance- so as soon as the coast was clear, Nightbird quietly made her move, padding after them with her optics and audials tuned for any deviation. She kept a good pace away from the last of the pack- a mech that looked exactly like that Scourge figure from before. She wondered how they could tell those mechs apart.

Little by little, the group started to branch off into their own separate rooms- some disappearing into the barracks or breaking off at intersections and others just turning tail and going in the other direction altogether, spreading out across the ship and making it substantially more difficult to sneak around. That was no problem- she had her sensors trained to catch anyone who dared get close, and was perfectly fine keeping to the shadows of the dim halls as she tiptoed on.

Finally, what was left of the group finally stopped at an unmarked, nondescript door and slowly filed in. Nightbird decided to sneak in behind them- it would be good to scout the room and gather some intel- and slipped into the shade of the cramped, run-down repair bay.

There wasn’t much in the room, other than a few tools, two crates, and some sheet metal, and the Decepticons seemed to be making do with such limited resources begrudgingly as they plunked themselves onto the floor and started to gossip.

“Some bite that Sky-Lynx has. He nearly took my arm clean off!” Whined one of the Scourge clones, as another of the clones used a tool to straighten out the injured one’s plating. “What a failure of a battle.”

“Not as big of a failure as Scourge’s mistake. He’s really in for it now, and I’d bet so are we.” The other one said. “It’s been screw-up after screw-up. First the fiasco with Starscream, and now this. Maybe Galvatron really will put him out of his misery this time.”

Starscream? Nightbird perked up, a new rush of energy- and hatred- running through her circuits. So he was functioning and still making enemies out there after all- she needed to hear more. But the conversation did not delve any further into his whereabouts.

“Fine by me. That arrogant prick thinks he’s above everybody else, even Galvatron. He’s not so good of a hunter as he thinks.” One of the other, non-clone Decepticons piped up, sticking some kind of wrench into his internal cavities and wincing. “And you Sweeps aren’t much better, either.”

“You wanna say that again? We’ll show you a hunt if you so want it!”

The rest of the conversation was almost completely useless bickering to the ninja, as she sat in the shadows, waiting for them to finish their repairs or tear each other apart. But as soon as they were, she was on the move. Forget Soundwave- Starscream was the target she wanted dead first. That waste of scrap metal had been her nemesis since the day she had been onlined and for the next 20 years of hiding after that. He had shot her when she had needed support from her ex-masters- she had heard his voice from behind just before he blew her right into the arms of her captors and knocked her out cold. There was nobody else who could’ve betrayed her like that- and nobody else that she felt such animosity for. She clenched her fists, grimacing at the thought of him alive and well, while the others continued to slowly patch themselves up. By the time they were finally finished, she was riled up enough to kill.

“Well, that’s as good as repairs get.” one of the Sweeps said, dusting his hands off and tossing his tools in the corner unceremoniously. “I’m out of here.”

The rest of the gaggle slowly rose to follow, save for one of the non-Sweeps- who seemed to have more repairs to complete. “Well I’m still welding myself back together- no thanks to you tool hogs.”

“Doesn’t sound like our problem!” One of the leaving group members laughed as they pushed the doors open, walking out without noticing Nightbird at all. The Decepticon grumbled, now the only one left in the room, and turned back to his damaged frame.

Well, he might not be Starscream, but he’d do for now. The ninja stepped out of her hiding place in the shadows, drawing her new sword, as her victim perked up, swinging his open circuitry closed again.

“Eh? And who are you? Some kind of fembot spy?” The mech scrambled to his feet, a confused look on his face.

Nightbird sprang forth, plasma sword in full swing.

–

As it turned out, there really wasn’t much of use in the repair bay- not even in the crates that sat at the edge of the room, other than a ratchet to tighten her joints with. But a knocked-out Decepticon would make for plenty of spare parts. But that was the easy part- now she had to reconfigure herself without accidentally offlining herself for good.

She had opened up the mech’s chest cavity, peering into an alien world of transform-circuits and esoteric wiring that she had little idea how to navigate. The mech was leaking pink, glowing energon from the various places she had cut him, so she knew he had to have some kind of pump cycling the fluid through him. She guessed it was probably the device with the biggest tubes running into it. She figured she was correct when it came out of the mech with a hearty gush of energon.

Now the challenge was installing it in herself, amidst the very, very limited chest space she had left, and hook it up. But after years and years of trial and error and having to manually hook her batteries up to power boxes to recharge herself, she had a pretty good idea of what made her run and how she could replace it.

Nightbird was a battery-operated, rechargeable automaton- electricity ran from a high-capacity battery into a Cybertronian component that almost tripled the amperage of the energy that was then distributed through her and powered her pistons. She wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, but she did know that any level of energy was acceptable for conversion, given the varying levels of electrical shocks she had self-inflicted over the past 20 years. And she also knew that energon was a highly concentrated form of energy stored as a fluid.

Given that information, she could likely remove her battery entirely and replace it with a fuel tank. As long as she was careful to regulate the amount of energon flowing through her power-tripling component, she could safely recharge herself from hereon out, as long as she had a source of energon to dip from. But energon was plentiful in mechs, and being constantly fought over, was surely a commodity that she could fight for as well. She liked the idea a lot, actually- standing on her own two feet and fighting for herself instead of a side she had no knowledge of.

That idea alone was enough inspiration for her to take the leap as peeled away her victim’s fuel tank, and then her own human-made components- her Cybertronian parts purring as energon dabbed at the input terminal as she welded the piping into herself carefully. Now she needed an input pipe for energon. She ripped tubing from her unlucky transplant and wired a cord up her body and out of a useless port in her upper chest, where she could pour energon into her new fuel tank. It was crude, but a massive upgrade from what she had sported just a day earlier, and already, the effects of energon were starting to work on her.

Even at a trickle, it made her feel stronger, more energized- like she had gone her whole life sleepy but finally worn off the exhaustion of the morning. She rose to her pedes, energon dripping from her hands and forearms, and felt… happy. Renewed. She felt like a new mech, just onlined for the first time, even if her body carried rust and failing circuitry, even without her arsenal of ninja weapons.

She turned back to the broken body on the floor, peering in at the plethora of circuitry that she could still salvage. What else could she augment herself with? An alternate mode? Internal weapons systems? … Even a voice?

“Hey, what the hell is going on here?”

She whipped around, still soaked in energon, to find the doors to the repair bay wide open. There, two Decepticons stood, dumbstruck at the gory scene, with her right in the middle of it. She’d been caught.

Chapter Text

Oh, like hell she was going to get taken again.

“Who the hell are- HEY!” Nightbird sprang into action, drawing her sword and swinging for the first Decepticon, clipping him in the shoulder as he dodged. The other one drew his rifle immediately and began to fire wildly as she feinted into the cramped hallway and drew her own rifle to return fire, dropping her sword.

Most of her shots missed. But not as many as her opponent’s, especially when a shot knocked the gun out of his hands and the next hit him square in the chest. By now, the first one had retreated into the repair bay, his own weapon drawn to cover his partner- Nightbird couldn’t let this go.

Energon pumping from tank to booster, she dodged with a speed comparable to her first days online, and made a run for the repair bay. As the second Decepticon scrambled for his weapon she tackled him, both bots rolling to the floor as she used their momentum to toss him into the wall. Recomposing herself, she took a blast from the other almost head-on as she pounced on him, dropping her gun completely as she crashed right into him, trying to wrench the weapon from his hands. When that wasn’t successful, she let him keep it and smashed their heads together, stunning the both of them right as the alarm bells of the Revenge went off.

There was no time to spare- she shook herself back to reality, grabbing her rifle and fleeing the repair bay- she needed to get back to her shuttle and back to safety. She slung her rifle over her shoulder as she grabbed the sword she had dropped and made a run for it. The doors she had once opened to loot now parted with danger on all sides as mech after mech in high alert came sauntering out to find and eliminate the threat onboard. Now she was in some serious danger- she could handle two, maybe even three attackers, but more than that and in cramped quarters left her in serious peril. At least she hadn’t forgotten how to fight.

Gunfire whizzed over her shoulder, a few shots barrelling into her backpack as she ducked and dodged down every corridor, returning what fire she could in the routes ahead of her. This ship really was so cramped! She ran almost straight into trouble again- in the form of another Decepticon, and in her panic, slammed the side of her rifle into his shoulder, pushing him back and giving her space. Reverting back to melee, she ducked behind him, just as another round of gunfire flew right through the space she had just occupied and hit the mech instead. She gave him a firm kick in the back as thanks, leaving the problem to her attackers as he stumbled and fell forth as she left them in the dust.

She had kept track of the hallways she had taken here, but now they were all starting to blur together. She was certain she had made a wrong turn in the chaos, because suddenly she was passing doorways she wasn’t sure she recognized, all filled with undoubtedly hostile mechs who all it out for her. She could hear the pounding of footsteps behind her as she ran- voices calling out for her to stop, to die, to surrender… if only she had a smoke bomb, she could buy herself more time, but for now she’d have to make do without. Because an intersection lay at the end of the corridor, and now she had a choice to make.

The Decepticon forces right on her tail had a visual on her, but that was only as long as there were lights in the corridor. She aimed her rifle behind her as she approached the end of the hall, but not at her enemy- but at the lights overhead, and fired.

The hall went pitch black. Save for the optics of half a dozen disgruntled Decepticons, who flooded into the hall split, quickly finding headlights to turn on as they stared down both directions for any sign of the ninja. But she was nowhere in sight.

Above them, Nightbird clung to the ceiling, magnetized there by the soles of her feet. The once tight, semi-organized group was starting to loosen as they weighed her choices and she weighed out the weakest link, a mech that was standing just a little bit too close to the hallway wall. As the Decepticons started to draw away from the hall in two separate noisy groups, they didn’t notice as one fell to the floor, a gunshot straight to the back, and the assassin headed back the way she came.

She was bound to come across trouble if she doubled back. But if she was correct, she was only two halls down from the shuttle bay, where her ship was hopefully still tractored to the Revenge- well, hopefully, because the doors were starting to feel familiar. Or maybe they were all just blending together. She padded forth warily, her rifle reloaded and at the ready, peeking corners before she moved and watching the doors like a hawk- though she suspected everyone within had already come out to find her anyways. She took a turn, careful to avoid the Sweeps that had just come sauntering down the hallway. Now she was only one hall down.

She ducked into a room as footsteps pounded down her hallway. This time, there were three- and they sounded heavier and more menacing than the other Decepticons she had encountered. Plus, she hated to admit it, but she was in no condition to take anyone else on. The fast-paced chase and rush of before had finally fallen away, and she noticed that she had indeed taken damage. She hadn’t noticed the laser burns before, but those Decepticons had gotten her pretty good.

She just needed to wait until this patrol passed her, and then she could slip down the hall and back into safety. The footsteps grew closer, the ninja waiting in anticipation, until they were just outside of her room, and then they stopped. Why had they stopped?!

“Uh, I’m getting a weird signal coming from around here. Not sure what it is, but it’s stronger than it was earlier, boss.” A voice- sounded like one of the Sweeps from earlier- remarked.

“Then search the room.” Nightbird scrambled for the ceiling as the door opened, and three figures entered- two Sweeps and the less-angry purple mech. If she recalled, he was the second-in-command, and he was far more imposing when up close like this.
The Sweeps spread out into the room as their leader stood at the door, rifle in hand. He was massive- if she reached down from the ceiling, she could probably touch his horns. She needed to find a way to incapacitate this giant and his lackeys, or find a way to escape, and unfortunately, neither seemed like an easy option right now. Especially when they had somehow been able to find her hiding place. How had they known she was here?

Was it security cameras? Hidden tripwires? Where had she gone wrong?

“No good in the corners. Sensors say the subject is 5 bits away if you stand in the doorway.”

“But there’s nothing in the doorway!”

Sensors. That was where she’d gone wrong- they had tracking equipment. And if they had a lock on her, there was no way she could hide. Nightbird froze in place as the three scanned the room, trying to think of her next move but coming up short. She couldn’t take a three-on-one, especially not in this state and from the ceiling. Her only way out was blocked. And they knew she was somewhere in the room and were getting closer.

Her options ran out as three sets of red optics turned to the ceiling, their wretched gazes boring right into her frame like searing laserfire.

–

“We caught the intruder, mighty Galvatron!” Cyclonus announced, kicking open the control room’s doors.

Nightbird’s consciousness returned, her legs dragging limp as the two Sweeps hauled her by the arms back into the control room. Her processor was spinning- they must’ve hit her pretty hard as she tried to fight them off. But as her optics returned to functioning status, the magnitude of which she was screwed became apparent- Sweeps lined the control room, but in the very center stood their leader.

“She gave us a fight, too- four casualties and a hallway fixture ruined. Talk about a real thorn in our robo-hides.” One of the Sweeps to the side stated.

“SILENCE!” The room dropped dead silent in an instant. A chill went up Nightbird’s circuits as she was dropped to the floor on the spot, cowering before the fusion cannon of Galvatron himself. From her vantage point, she could see straight down the barrel of the monster he wore on his arm- a weapon so powerful that she could almost taste the energy it gobbled to annihilate those that dared face it.

“Do you think that this puny thing was strong?” The three-pronged helm dipped, and Nightbird could see his hateful optics burning through her own. “Was she so much of a threat to the likes of you?”

“Y-yes, mighty Galvatron- four casualties.” One of the Sweeps that had held her spoke up. “You heard him. And it took some force to even bring her here.”

There was an awful humming as energy grew in the center of that cannon, and Nightbird could only see death at the end of the barrel.

“Maybe she’s not strong, then.” The ball of energy was hot enough to feel as Galvatron pointed it straight at her chest, rage filling his face in the most terrifying display Nightbird had ever seen. “Maybe you’re all WEAK!”

The cannon roared with power as Nightbird clenched her hands over her head and Galvatron fired, full-force, at his hapless victim. The beam of energy shot forth, and went straight over her head- and right into the frame of the Sweep that had spoken last.

The poor mech was thrown off his pedes and into the wall, the sharp smell burning metal and of energon filling the air. The other Sweeps, understandably, scuttled back, clenching their wings around them in cowardice and terror as Galvatron waved his cannon at the lot of them. The room had buckled before this mech’s fury- even the second-in-command, who bowed his head in submission.

“A whole ship of you? My best warriors? And it takes THIS LONG to catch a puny fembot? You are all cowards and incompetent ones at that!” Galvatron stomped his foot hard enough to send shockwaves through Nightbird’s frame. “Maybe I’ll have you all executed alongside her!”

Nightbird’s hands were still wrapped around herself as she sat there, trembling in a pitiful ball on the ground before the monster of a mech waving his cannon over her in fury. She had been this close to total and utter annihilation- she had felt the heat of death itself pass over her back and take someone else.

“Mighty Galvatron, spare us! This intruder might be more useful to us than it seems! After all, she seems to have excellent espionage skills, having evaded our grasps for so long…” The horned mech pleaded from behind her. “We could interrogate her, use her against the Autobots and destroy them from the inside out!”

Like she was ever going to be used again. Nightbird brought her optics up to look at the warlord, the very face of death, and a strange feeling went through her again.

In Galvatron’s stead, she felt like she was seeing Megatron again. Those optics… they were so eerily similar, so strangely wise and weathered and furious all the same…

Galvatron stared back, contempt in his expression as he lowered his fusion cannon. “Throw her in the brig! I want every piece of information extracted from her by Soundwave when we return. And then we’ll see if our little intruder lives or dies!”
–

“Another prisoner? I’ve never seen a fembot like you on the receiving end of my laser ray.”

Nightbird glanced over between the energy bars of the cell at the blue mech chained up against the wall, identical to the ones that had cuffed her here. Only this one seemed to be the leader of the Sweeps, as they bowed and small-talked with him as they were chaining her to the cell wall.

They evidently hadn’t done a very good job at it, as the cuffs holding her wrists high above her head were already loose, evidently built for mechs twice her size.

“You sure are an unlucky one. Lord Galvatron is in quite the bad mood- but at least I won’t be getting deleted alone. Lucky me.” Scourge griped, sagging in his chains. Nightbird paid him little attention as she pulled at her own, her wrists scraping the cuffs as she desperately attempted to wriggle out of her bonds. Those stupid Sweeps hadn’t even bothered to search her back storage area- if she could free her hands, she could break out of the barred cell and be out of here in a flash, the sooner the better.

Evidently though, they wouldn’t fit through the cuffs, as loose as they were- so she’d just have to pick them open. Not a problem- she could still do this in her sleep. Even if her hands were trembling and her processor still shaky. She had to do this. She had to escape. Forget being trapped or controlled- there were worse fates than that.

“Not the talking type, are you?” Scourge continued to talk, all of which Nightbird ignored. “Fine. We’ll see how you fare staring down the face of Lord Galvatron’s fusion cannon or Cyclonus’s electro-whip. You’re not so tough for- what are you doing?”

Scourge fully turned to watch the ninja as her cuffs disabled and she dropped to the chamber floor, free of restraints. “How’d you do that?”

Nightbird didn’t- and couldn’t- respond, even if she wanted to, as she reached into her storage to see what other tools she could utilize to free herself. The bars were immaterial conduits of energy and almost certainly would be disastrous to touch, but she could see the control panel across the room where she could disable them.

“You’re trying to escape!” Scourge called out unhelpfully as she rifled through her inventory of stolen munitions. “You know, as third-in-command of the Decepticons, I know the cell codes- and I’m almost certain my Sweeps haven’t bothered to change them. They wouldn’t be much help to me stuck to this wall anyways.”

That was slightly more helpful. “Tell you what. If you can get to that control panel AND you promise to set me free, I’ll help you escape. I’m not keen on facing Galvatron’s wrath and I’m sure you aren’t, either. Deal?”

Nightbird finally looked over at him, suspicious. For all she knew, the moment she let him out, he’d just overpower her and lock her back up again. She shook her head no. He was a Decepticon, and a risk that she just wasn’t willing to take.

“Are you serious? I have access to this entire ship! You get me out of here, right now!” Scourge yelled, shaking his cuffs indignantly. Nightbird picked out a firearm from her pack, aimed at the console, and shot- it lit up in sparks, but the bars did not come down. That was one idea out the window.

“The bars don’t come down if you shoot the consoles, you know, they just turn them on and off. You’d need to damage the actual circuits controlling these things.” Came that nagging voice. “Now, if you’d please repay me for this important bit of information I’ve given you for free-”

Nightbird tried shooting the top of one of the bars. It flickered ever-so-slightly, and then flickered back into being. She shot it a few more times- nothing. Maybe the mechanism was embedded somewhere in the ceiling. She magnetized her feet, climbed to the top of the cell, and started tinkering with the ceiling paneling. Scourge watched her with intensely curious optics as she pulled one of the tiles free, revealing a thin aperture between the layers of ceiling. It was just big enough for her to be able to stick part of her head into, and see between the layers- and she could see the wires that connected to the bars that kept her in.

She whipped out her pistol and stuck it into the ceiling, carefully lining it up with the wires. That was more of a challenge than before, given that she was still shaking from the whole ordeal, but once she was sure it was almost a surefire hit, she pulled her head out of the gap and pulled the trigger, and a shot of energy streaked into the darkness of the ceiling.

Kzzart~ She could hear one of the bars faltering, and retrieving her gun, she dropped down to see that one of the bars had disappeared. The gap between the remaining bars was small, but small enough that she would be able to sneak through and flee to safety. Now all she needed was to get the door…

The room turned red. Nightbird nearly jumped in surprise as the alarms started blaring, and she leapt through the bars in panic. She’d triggered some kind of trap! Now guards were almost certainly on their way, and there went her one shot at freedom. She ran to the door and tried it- locked. She tried the panel that controlled the door, and found that it was triple-encrypted and virtually uncrackable. No way to scramble the locking mechanism either.

“That happens when cell bars fail. Now you have no choice but to trust me.” Scourge said almost smugly, his arms crossed as he watched the ninja freak out under the wailing sirens. “You know, despite your ignorance, I feel charitable today. So get to that undamaged console and free me, and I’ll get us both off this ship before the guards can catch us.”

Nightbird looked at him in disbelief, and then back at the console, and then at the door. Time was ticking, and she needed to get off this ship as soon as possible. She looked back at the console- she couldn’t believe she was doing this. But between him and Galvatron? The choice was more than obvious.

“Good choice, fembot.” Scourge huffed as she turned the console on. “Now, the code is…”

–

“A jailbreak? It hasn’t been more than thirty astro-minutes since we put that intruder away.”

“You think it’s just a false alarm?”

The guards dispatched to the scene got their answer to that question as a painted fist grabbed the closest helm and slammed the forerunner against a sturdy knee, knocking him out just as a blur of grey dove into the other guard, delivering a blow that stunned him long enough to let his weapon be wrenched out of his hands.

Ready and re-armed, Nightbird shot the guard she had just incapacitated and collected the other gun from the knocked-out guard as Scourge closed and locked the brig gate behind them.

“Give me that. You don’t need two laser rifles.” Scourge yanked a gun out of her hands, and gestured her to follow. “This way, before more guards come. Don’t get lost.”

The mech started with a brisk walk, and then he began to run, Nightbird hot on his heels. He took a winding path between the halls as the klaxons continued to blare, and called a lift at the end of the corridor.

“We’re going to get as far away from here as possible. Then I’ll figure out what I want to do with you.” He said to her as they ascended the floors. “You seem like a pretty useful little thing, being able to break out of cells like that. And bonus, you don’t talk much.”

The lift doors opened, and they ran down another series of corridors, only having to take out one other set of guards before Scourge stopped them at a bigger bay door. “Here. We’ll take a shuttle- it’ll be dangerous dropping out of a warship on alert, but I can pilot us out just fine.”

He punched in a code into a panel on the side of the gate and they slipped inside with little difficulty, hurrying right over to the furthest of the shuttles. “Quick, get in. I’ll have to force-bypass the shuttle bay gates before we can even think about escaping. And don’t even think about escaping without me!”

He ran to a panel by the edge of the runway and started working, as Nightbird started booting up the controls. This ship ran exactly the same as the one that she had stolen earlier, so she was able to route her destination without any difficulty.
Scourge ran back to the shuttle just as the bay doors started to open, and pushed her out of the pilot’s seat. “We don’t have much time. They’re gonna know we’re in this shuttle bay, so- what the hell did you do?”

Scourge gawked at the route charted out on-screen and stared at Nightbird in disbelief. “Chaar?! You want to go to Chaar?!”

Nightbird nodded, and her hand moved toward the control panels as if to start the engine. Scourge saw this, and grabbed her wrist angrily, stopping her in her tracks. “Chaar is where this ship is headed, you fool!”

The ninja wasn’t having it. Her other free hand moved towards the controls- but this time, pointed towards an auxiliary console to the side, where she’d pulled up the ship’s contacts.

“We don’t have time for this… Soundwave- Communications officer… you want to see Soundwave?” Scourge squinted. Nightbird nodded, then pointed to her laser burns next, and finally opened a panel, revealing her inner mechanisms, some of which were pretty badly damaged, even to the untrained optic.

This gave some reasoning to her irrational action. And things were finally starting to make some sense.

Scourge let go of her wrist, finally comprehending her needs. “You need repairs. And Chaar is the only place you can get them… fine, we’ll go to Chaar- I know a shortcut- but you’ll owe me after this one. Consider yourself lucky that you landed in a brig with the best tracker this universe has ever seen!”

With that, he kicked the engines into overdrive, and the shuttle took off- just as a guard of Decepticons burst into the shuttle bay. But as soon as they had started opening fire, the two prisoners had slipped out of the safety of the Revenge and into the slipstream of space.

Chapter Text

“So, why don’t you speak?”

Nightbird gave Scourge a funny look, her gaze turning from the view outside to his strange bearded face. How was she supposed to answer that question? This mech knew wormholes through space and could pinpoint exactly when and where they opened up, but he couldn’t use his processor and infer a few things?

She tapped him on his shoulder, getting his full attention, then tapped her faceplate, and shook her head. He’d just have to guess what she meant by that.

“You don’t have a mouth?” If Nightbird could sigh, she would. She shook her head no. “No vocalizer?”

Bingo. She nodded, and Scourge nodded back. “That makes more sense. I don’t know a single sane mech who would pantomime their way through such a stressful situation like that. So you have a mouth?”

Nightbird shook her head again.

“Then why’d you say you had one?”

The ninja slumped in her chair. Even with the shortcuts, this was going to be a long, long trip...

“We need a method of communication, either way.” Scourge changed the topic, changing the screen on the console closest to her to a search bar. “Can you write?”
Nightbird stared at the glyphs on her screen. Thanks to her data download, she understood the glyphs and the writing on these consoles, but putting words together might take a while… She nodded yes anyways.

“Good, I can still question you, then. Why do you need Soundwave?” Scourge dove right into the interrogation, and waited expectantly as Nightbird slowly pecked out her answer.

WORKED FOR HIM It was technically true, but only half of her reason still. But she wasn’t about to tell Scourge, another Decepticon officer, that she was there for his head.

“Worked for him? That makes you a Decepticon, then.” Scourge remarked. But Nightbird was already deleting her prompt and writing another.

WHERE IS STARSCREAM?

“Starscream? You know him too?” Scourge’s optics widened. “His ghost haunted me! He wanted his body back.”

Nightbird jabbed at her query impatiently, though Scourge’s mutual vendetta against him was very helpful. “I don’t know where he is. I left him at Unicron’s head right before it exploded. Haven’t seen him since.”

Not helpful. That exposition just left her with more questions than she’d started with, so she slowly typed up another query. Scourge looked over her again as she did.

“So, you’re a Decepticon. I’ve never seen you around base.” He said. Nightbird shook her head in dissent, still slowly typing- but she was getting the hang of it, slowly. “An Autobot spy, then? If you are, that complicates things quite a bit…”

Nightbird shook her head again. “Then, what are you? You have to be one or the other. I already know you’re some kind of spy.”

Enough with factions! Nightbird stopped typing and rose to her pedes, staring Scourge down. She was neither, and she desired to be neither! And if those badges on the chests of every mech she met mattered so much, she would simply make one of her own.

She rustled through her backpack again- she knew she had a knife or a bayonet lying around somewhere in there- and recovered the sharp implement. And with Scourge’s full attention, she took it to her chest and carved an ‘X’, right where Scourge’s badge would sit on his own chest.

“So you’re a mercenary.” Scourge said incredulously as she jabbed at the laceration. “A dirty little dog who works only for pay.”

He might’ve meant it as an insult, but Nightbird liked that. She nodded excitedly, tucking the knife into the slot on her forearm. Scourge sighed, and turned back to the viewport. “I’ve got little respect for your type. But at least you get something out of it. Must be nice.”

The ninja dropped into her seat again, watching as Scourge navigated the shuttle out of the wormhole, the stars turning from stripes across the viewport back into shimmering little dots. “Well, since I’m helping you now, you’ll have to help me- you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. I’ll get you to Soundwave and some repairs if you help me with a favor afterwards- haven’t decided on what yet, but you’re under my thumb until I do.”

She had no intent on letting that glitch tell her what to do. But she did need the repairs and Soundwave. So Nightbird nodded her affirmation, and finished with her next query.

SS ALIVE SS FINDABLE?

Scourge took a moment to ponder that. “I don’t know. I don’t care to know, frankly. Cyclonus said he might be alive…”

It wasn’t a good lead, but it was a lead nonetheless. Nightbird deleted the query, annoyed but deep in thought. She had a few more things to ask.

WHERE IS MEGATRON?

“Enough with these questions! I’m the one who’s supposed to be interrogating you.” Scourge snapped. “I don’t know no Megatron. Why do you care? Who’s he to you? Who’s Starscream to you?”

That was strange. They were part of the same movement and both high command, but somehow, Scourge had never heard of the Decepticon leader himself. What was she missing? She slowly typed out another message- NEED REVENGE.

“So you’re on a vengeance mission for the both of them. Curious.” Scourge said. “Sure explains your questions. If you weren’t such a slow typer, I’d ask you what they did to you.”

But there wasn’t enough time for another query, Nightbird noted, as the planet of Chaar had finally appeared on their viewport. Scourge also seemed to share this opinion. “But nevermind about that- we’ve arrived at Chaar; I’ll take us in for a landing, and then we’ll discuss business after you deal with yours. And trust me, we’ve got a lot to discuss.”

–

It was a very strange feeling, knowing where she was heading.

Scourge had pointed her down the hallway, warning her to make her trip quick and return to the shuttle soon. If she was level-headed enough about it, she’d manage that. But she still felt funny, like her internal wires were churning in their casing and tangling up into knots. Maybe it was just an after-effect of having encountered Galvatron. She could still feel the heat of his cannon passing just overhead, a feeling she tried to swallow down before approaching the final doorway.

This was it- the door to a mech that had molded her mind. A mech she once called a master. But it had been 20 years- surely, by now, he had no power over her any longer. Right?

She put her hand on the door as she ran over her plan again, just to calm her circuits. She would go in, incapacitate him, get her answers about the others, and dispatch him once and for all. How she would get her answers, she wasn’t entirely sure of yet- but he was still the Decepticon communications officer, so she figured she’d find a way one way or another.

Slinging her rifle into ready position, she pushed the doors open slowly, and entered into a world of screens. The far wall of the room was covered, from ceiling to consoles, with devices of surveillance, each telescreen showing a different room. She was sure that if she looked closely enough, she’d find the one leading to this room as well.

And there, in the center of it, her former slaver. Nightbird held her rifle tighter as the figure in the middle of the room turned and looked at her from behind that placid, red visor.

-Intruder: detected. Designation: Nightbird. Intruder intent: hostile.-

He remembered her. Suddenly, the idea of killing him seemed like a leviathan feat. His hand rested on the console so nonchalantly as he faced her, like he had the situation under control- like he could just send her a command without any force of resistance at all.

No. No, she couldn’t let that happen. Not again. Forget answers- he was too much of a threat.

Nightbird raised her rifle, pushing down the fear that had just returned to her frame, and fired wildly- and the room flickered in agony, bullets hitting screens and shattering them as she pumped lead into that general vicinity. She fired through the growing smoke until her gun clicked in protest, demanding a reload, and at which point she lowered it from her sights, and peered through the fog.

The red visor peered back. He was still alive!

-Frenzy, Ravage, Laserbeak, eject. Operation: Intervention.-

Suddenly, she wasn’t looking at one visor- between the haze of the room and the sound of a transformation cog, three more sets of optics peered back angrily.

-Eliminate threat and retrieve subject. Target: more useful alive.-

There was no way she was going to win this encounter. It would be more prudent to escape the confrontation and find Scourge immediately- and every circuit in her frame was telling her to run- but she knew this might be her only shot at taking out Soundwave once and for all. She reloaded, aiming her gun into the haze as her attackers rushed forth, intent on her incapacitation.

Almost immediately, a pair of claws from above was on her, and she staggered back, blowing a shot into the space where Laserbeak had divebombed her, only to immediately be sprung upon by Ravage. This time, she wasn’t lucky enough to dodge as the panther sank its teeth into her leg, tearing away yet more of her decaying metal. She returned the favor, sinking two blasts of the rifle into Ravage’s back, and the cassette yowled as it disengaged and retreated back.

She needed space and she quickly limped back, watching the distance to the nearest wall, just as gunfire was returned- Frenzy stepped out of the smoke with a pistol, aiming for her vitals as Laserbeak swooped in for a round two. But it would not benefit her to fight either of these mechs- she only had one target, and it was Soundwave that she wanted. She needed to get to him and avoid those two while she was at it. Her back hit the wall as she continued to back up, and she suddenly had an idea how.

“Oy, put the gun down, fembot, and we’ll let ya off easy. Boss wants you alive, y’know!” The visored cassette taunted from across the room, firing again at her and missing. Nightbird ducked to the side anyways, just as Laserbeak came to intercept, and this time managed to get her rifle up to bludgeon the bird as it swooped away, knocking its balance off. She could see Ravage stalking up to her in the shadows, but if she was quick about it, she wouldn’t even need to worry about that.

The moment she heard Frenzy fire, she scrambled back- and up, as she magnetized her pedes, and crawled for the ceiling. The room swayed as wall became floor, and now it was her turn to fight back. She locked her aim onto her true target, and fired another several rounds at Soundwave himself as she crossed the wall.

“Ey, no fair!” Frenzy yelled. But her return fire had already crossed the room, and barrelling towards her former slaver. Soundwave moved to react- but the spray of laserfire was just too big to dodge entirely.

One shot made a direct hit on his arm as he raised it in defense, and another just barely clipped his leg as he shielded himself, and Nightbird almost felt a moment of victorious glee as she pressed herself against the ceiling. But that moment was fleeting- Laserbeak was back, and this one was actually a threat to her, up here- not to mention, hard to hit with a gun. She might have to face this one head on.

As metallic talons came down on her position, she let her attacker approach- and braced herself for a painful melee fight. Sneaking her knife out of its sheath, she was going to take this bird’s wings clean off.

Laserbeak dove in, and she raised an arm in defense- just as she brought down her knife, shearing the cassette in the breast. Laserbeak screeched, but didn’t let up- in fact, it pulled her back, and it pulled her hard. Just as Frenzy fired on her again, and while missing most of his shots, made one crucial direct hit.

Since her damaged leg was weaker in its magnetism, she had been relying on her other foot to keep her stable on the wall. But Frenzy had aimed, for better or for worse, at her feet, and one stray shot had just happened to connect, taking the magnets offline for a single moment. One moment long enough for Laserbeak to pull her free from the wall, despite the knife in its breast, and for gravity to do its simple work of taking them both down together. And the room’s ceiling was moderately high- this fall was going to hurt, she thought, as bird and ninja hurtled towards the floor.

At the last moment, Laserbeak was able to let go and flutter away from the imminent collision. But Nightbird had no such escape. She clattered to the ground, circuits shorting and processes breaking in her frame, as a furious Ravage pounced for her again. This time, he caught her arm, and he sunk his teeth in deep- just as Laserbeak circled around to grab her by the other arm. And as if it weren’t punishment enough, she could feel a hand grabbing her by the backpack, pulling her to a sitting position on her knees.

“Finally caught’er, boss! Boy, is she a tough nut to crack.” Frenzy laughed, wiping his brow. “Whaddaya gonna do with her, boss?”

Soundwave peered down at her, curiously, still clutching his bullet wounds. He’d sustained another two in the torso area- perhaps from before, and Nightbird took quiet pride in knowing she’d dealt more than superficial damage to the mech. But slowly, he staggered forward, approaching the trembling assassin, examining her up and down, up and down, his gaze landing on the X on her chest.

- Query: You renounce the Decepticons?- Soundwave asked, a hint of intrigue peppering his monotonous voice. He reached out with one hand, a digit outstretched to touch the crude insignia.

Nightbird did not want him anywhere near her frame. With one last, leviathan wrench of her body, she ripped her arm free from Ravage and swung her other arm down at Soundwave, forcing Laserbeak to disengage as she scrambled for the door.

“Ey! Get back here!” Frenzy shouted as the cassettes leapt back into action to recapture their prey, but between the their smaller builds and Nightbird’s frame being faster and more desperate to get away, she managed to put some distance between them before she got to the door. She just needed to get to the shuttle and she would live to have her vengeance another day- another day when she was better armed, better suited, and in a far better state of mind. She’d lost- she had to accept that.

But she didn’t get the chance to open that door. Somebody else did.

“Making trouble, hm?” A painted, clawed hand pushed through as the doors swung open, and Nightbird ducked behind Scourge, as the cassettes stopped in their tracks as the tracker entered the room. “I heard a commotion in here. Figured someone was causing problems for me.”

-Frenzy, Laserbeak, Ravage, disengage. Scourge, state your intention here.- Alerted by the presence of yet another new nuisance, Soundwave called off his cassettes, which returned to his side, though Nightbird didn’t stick around long enough to find out if they returned to his chest. She slipped back into the hallway and made a beeline for the shuttle.

–

“I was looking for that little fembot I just set loose on the base. She told me she’d worked for you.” Scourge replied, watching the ninja slink into the shadowy halls and then looking over the ruined room. “Never trust a mercenary, they say…”

-Nightbird: ninja-bot formerly utilized by Megatron to terminate Autobots. Nightbird’s assessment: correct.- Soundwave said. -Nightbird: has betrayed the Decepticons. Just like you.-

“Me? Betray?” Scourge huffed incredulously. “Taking control of the Decepticons by using the Matrix hardly counts as a betrayal. I even lead an attack against the Autobots!”

-Attempted usurpation of power: act of betrayal against Decepticon leader Galvatron. And in extension, the Decepticons.- Soundwave said menacingly, his cassettes staring daggers at Scourge. -Recommended course of action: Alert Lord Galvatron immediately of your position.-

“I’m not a traitor! And even if I was, you telling Galvatron that I’m here will do nothing. I’ll be gone before the Revenge can even enter Chaar’s orbit.” Scourge scoffed. “And the next time I’m back, it’ll be to win back Galvatron’s favor. I’m going to hunt him down a real traitor to the cause.”

-Query: Who is this traitor you refer to?-

Scourge chuckled and turned back to the hallway, intent on leaving. “I’m going to bring him Starscream, and I’ll use your little plaything to catch him. So I’d recommend that you stay put and don’t follow us.”

With that, he let the doors slam behind him and followed the path back to the shuttle, favor finally in mind. He was going to bag himself a seeker.

–

The last vestiges of fight-or-flight had worn off as Nightbird made her rendezvous with the shuttle. As she climbed in, she realized how bad her damages really were- but saw that Scourge had at least followed through with his promise of repair materials. Too bad she didn’t intend on keeping hers.

She headed straight to the pilot’s seat first, intent on leaving Chaar alone. She had no desire to stay here and be caught by either Soundwave or Galvatron- it had been a failure of a mission, but she needed to leave.

It had been such a foolish decision, to go straight for a target she didn’t even think she could defeat in her current state. And she suddenly realized how small she really was beyond the confines of her home planet- a rusted, run-down human automaton going up against a warlord and a Decepticon high officer- it was a little bit absurd for her first hours off her homeworld. But she’d at least made it out alive both times. That much she considered a victory.

Seeing as Scourge wasn’t back, she powered the shuttle on and quietly piloted it up and out of the thin Chaar atmosphere- no need for heat shields on this planet, it seemed. Once she was far enough away, she would focus on the repair parts that Scourge had so kindly left her, and figure out how to rebuild herself better than she had been before. And then, after that? Maybe she’d lay low for a little while, or maybe she really would go back for Soundwave- though she’d lost her element of surprise. But she knew what to expect for the second round- this next time, she’d bring a net.

Once her shuttle was clear of Chaar’s orbit, she let herself relax a little bit. For all that it was worth, she had gotten away virtually scot-free, with nobody on her tail so far. She let the shuttle cruise past the dim dwarf star and turned to look back at her repair tools- and the dim glow of an energon cube looked right back at her. She could do with some energon, she thought- her impromptu transplant from earlier had not left her with much to work with. She’d need to find new sources of it now that she was on her own again.

She opened up her new fuel port and positioned herself on the floor, tipping the contents carefully down the tube and feeling better about herself already. She poured almost three-fourths of it into her tank before it overflowed and energon leaked out of the port, with no more space to store the liquid. She’d have to install a fuel gauge into her frame at some point, she thought- or learn how to very carefully portion her energon. As far as she was concerned, this was all she had for the foreseeable future.

Wiping the overflow onto her fingers and back into the cube, her gaze turned to the other parts left in the corner of the shuttle. Half of them, she wasn’t even sure what they did- but she did notice some sheet metal that she could use to fix up her limbs. And there was a tool for scraping rust, even. She almost felt bad for leaving Scourge back on Chaar as she sorted out the parts and picked up the rust scraper for immediate use.

knock- CLUNK.

Nightbird went into full alert- something had hit the airlock. And the sound of it was too organized to be space rock- someone was outside. She sprang for her knife, only to realize she had lost it in the commotion, and she obviously didn’t have her rifle on her- Soundwave’s cassettes had made sure of it when they brought her down. She reached back into her backpack and realized she was down to the last weapon she had pilfered- a laser pistol. That would work.

Then again, there was only one mech who knew she’d gotten to Chaar via this shuttle, and only one mech capable of chasing it at the moment…

“You little space worm! Trying to escape alone? You’re dumber than I thought you were!” The airlock burst open, but Nightbird didn’t bother to shoot at the intruder. Scourge stomped into the shuttle, closing the hatch behind him, and gave her a look that could shoot her dead on the spot. “You still owe me, remember?”

Well, the situation could be worse, she mused- far, far worse. But this was fine, too, she figured.

Chapter Text

“You can’t just back out on a deal. You agreed to help me, and I’ve found something you can help me with.” As soon as Scourge had entered the shuttle, he started trouncing around like he owned the place- and now, Nightbird was regretting not shooting him.

His first course of action was to completely change Nightbird’s flight plan and take it in almost the exact opposite direction. His second action was to take what was left of her energon and gulp the contents down unceremoniously before swiping the rust scraper out of her hands.

“Of course you drank my energon.” He huffed, as Nightbird clawed for the tool back. “And what do you think you’re doing? You’ll break my tools and what’s left of your body if you keep squirming like that- hold still so I can see the damage.”

What? Was he going to repair her? No chance in hell he was going to lay a hand on her internals. Especially not with sharp claws like those.

“What are you doing?” His optics widened in confusion as she scrambled back, grabbing a handful of scrap with her as she backed away. “I’m trying to repair you! Ya think those circuits of yours can be replaced by your own two servos?”

Nightbird nodded her head and motioned for him to hand over the tool in his hands as well. “You’re more than an idiot if you think you can fix yourself. What about your back? You’ll need help for that. I’ve patched up dozens of my Sweeps’ blast wounds, I know what I’m doing.”

She did consider her back injuries for a moment. But frankly, she’d be able to live with them- she’d rather live with them than have yet another Decepticon rummaging around in her systems. Her escape from Soundwave would’ve been for nothing, then!

“Fine, have it your way.” Scourge grumbled after another vehement glare of disapproval. He tossed the rust scraper back into her pile and headed up front to the pilot’s seat. “But know that when we face off Starscream, I won’t bother to help if your frame fails.”

Starscream? So he was alive?

Nightbird picked up a bolt and tossed it at the back of Scourge’s head to get his attention.

“Hey! I’ll take your spark out for that!” He whipped around, only to find Nightbird seated on the floor, gesturing him to continue. He threw her an exasperated look, but got the message. “Eh? Oh, Starscream? Well, you’re not the only one with a vendetta against him- I do too. And so does Galvatron, so does Cyclonus… that’s besides the point.

Galvatron intends to kill me for my treachery, but if there’s a mech he might like to blast more than me, it’s Starscream. Starscream double-crossed all of us in his stupid ghost form. But your revenge gave me an idea and now, I know he’s alive- because I searched and pinpointed his life signs in a solar system very, very far away from here.”

At that point, he paused, seeming proud of his own actions as he basked in his own bragging. “I’m just that good at finding people. Best tracker in this puny universe, I’m telling you!”

Nightbird rolled her optics, and motioned for him to go on.

“Anyways, he wasn’t hard to find. The system in which he’s inhabiting has a significant level of technology, and he seems to be broadcasting his superiority across the entire airspace. So he’s evidently well off, and probably well-armed. And that’s where you come in.

I may know his location, but until we get closer I won’t know what kind of situation he’s in- so I need you to help me locate and retrieve him, alive, so that I can bring him to Galvatron. He may be in a fortress or a space station, surrounded by others, so I need you in your best shape to fight so that you don’t fail your mission. Though, given your history, you don’t need to bring him back to me in the best shape…”

Nightbird did not like that summary at all. She was going to do the dirty work, only for him to take the credit? If he wanted Starscream alive, then he could do the heavy lifting- because she was going to kill him, whether he liked it or not. And it was far easier to kill someone than to keep them alive.

She nodded in affirmation anyways, just to keep the peace and her repair parts- it was her turn to use someone, and Scourge was about to fall right for it. He’d given her repairs and a ticket right to everywhere in the universe she needed- he was almost too easy to exploit. This was perfect. She still wasn’t sure she was going to let him actually repair her, though. That, too, seemed almost too good to be true.

“It’ll be a pretty long journey with a chance of trouble, too; so the sooner your repairs are done, the sooner you can help me fight off invaders. Do you have any weapons?” Scourge asked. Nightbird held up her solitary weapon. “A pistol. Anything else? No?! Then what am I bringing you along for?”

He came and took the pistol from her and looked it over, handing it back with a sigh. “We’ll get you some better weapons somewhere; at least I know you can fight. Given that you’re in any condition to do so.”

Scourge stared at her injuries for a little while longer, but finally turned around and sat back down and fiddled with the console. Nightbird took that as a sign to get back to her repairs.

The first leg of repairs were easy enough to do herself. She was able to replace most of her frontal plating by crudely cutting and welding the provided metal sheets to her frame, noting that this metal was denser than the lighter material she had originally been built from. It would take some getting used to, but it was already better than the worn, holey metal she had carried on her frame for too long. Fixing the electromagnets was also easy, only needing a wire replacement, though the rest of her leg would be slightly harder to replicate.

Outside, all around her, the stars streaked past, and she wondered just how far from Earth she’d gotten. She must be several hundred, maybe thousands of lightyears away from home by now- though calling it home was a stretch. It was more like the prison she’d just freed herself from.

Now, one shuttle ride away, and she’d be free of the mech that had betrayed her the most deeply. She was already pondering how she would kill him- maybe a shot to the back, like he had done to her- or slowly and methodically dismantling his frame while he pled for mercy. To her knowledge, mechs like him could feel things when their bodies were damaged- an instinctive alarm inside of them known as pain. She had no knowledge of the sensation- when her frame was damaged, all she felt in those parts was a cold numbness and a lack of mobility.

That was made quite apparent to her when she cut away her mangled leg armor and suddenly found she couldn’t move anything below her right knee. She’d cut the wires connecting her servos to the upper motors along with her plating, which meant yet more careful wire replacements.

“You look like you’re having a hard time.” Scourge noted, as she slowly dragged her frame back to the pile to find more wires. “But you don’t want my help, so I won’t.”

Another period of silence as Nightbird slowly worked on her leg. And then the tracker broke the silence again. “Soundwave told me that you used to work for Megatron as a Decepticon, before you betrayed us. Why did you forsake the Decepticons?”

Nightbird gave him a tired look and he remembered their predicament. “Right, no vocalizer. Hmm. Well, just nod your head then- is it related to your revenge?”

Nightbird nodded, still focused on her repairs, and Scourge hummed in response. “And I wonder what they did to you to cause you not only to leave them, but to also seek vengeance. And why now, when you don’t even know if your ‘Megatron’ and Starscream are alive… where have you been this whole war?”

More silence. Scourge rubbed his temples, realizing that his questions would go unanswered again.

“You know, if you’d let me fix you, I could probably give you a vocalizer.”

Nightbird tilted her head in curiosity, and Scourge quickly backpedaled. “I don’t mean right now! There’s no such parts on this ship because they’re hard to come by, but if there’s ever a fembot whose voice you’d really want, you could rip it out of her throat and I could find a way to install it in you. That way, you could actually tell me things.”

It was a weird thought to think about, she thought. Being able to tell others what was on her mind, instead of having to write or nod or gesture wildly- if she had been able to speak, maybe she would’ve been able to get closer to Soundwave and get answers from him before dispatching him successfully. But on the other hand, she really had no other inclination to speak. Some bots, like Starscream, just spoke for speaking’s sake, adding nothing but his own insecurities to the air.

And she’d proven she could get most things done without needing to speak. She’d made it this far on her revenge mission with only a few hitches, and as far as she was concerned, Scourge had gone along with what she had wanted because he couldn’t even argue with her. It was a lot of power to have- to control this Decepticon officer without so much as speaking a word- her skills and actions spoke for her better than words ever could.

Maybe she wouldn’t need a voice after all.

“I searched the Decepticon databases for your name, you know, and found no matches- yet Soundwave confirms that you worked for him.” Scourge changed the subject after another brief bout of silence, seeming uncomfortable with the periods of quiet. “And now you turn up on the Revenge, rusty and worn out like you’ve never received maintenance repairs in your life. Just what kind of bot are you, I wonder…”

Nightbird cocked her head at him, and he answered his query himself. “Maybe you’re some kind of secret weapon. You barely register on my sensors, and only as a source of energon and heat- you have no comms, no voice, and I’m not even sure you have an alt mode. Do you?”

Nightbird shook her head, and Scourge’s face furrowed in confusion. “Are you even Cybertronian?”

She let that one hang in the air instead of giving a reaction- she’d had enough of the questions, and didn’t see a reason to answer this one, turning her head down to ignore him. She’d mostly fixed her ruined leg’s internals by now, and just needed a frame for it to sit in. Making such a casing would be hard- she didn’t have any tools to shape the metal with. How much time did she have to figure out how to make a leg? She stood up- her hydraulics were working fine now, even without plating- and hobbled over to the front of the shuttle, testing how the new metal affected her balance.

“We’re nowhere close to our destination, if that’s what you’re checking.” Scourge said, as she took a seat at the console. “I told you, he’s very, very far away. It’ll be another two days before we get there, and that’s with the several warp gates I’m taking us through.”

Two days wasn’t a lot of time to wait, for better or for worse- it meant two more days to find a way to repair her circuit damage, but two more days of listening to Scourge go on and on with his questions. It could be worse, though. She could be trapped in her own body for months, unable to move, like she was in that horrible human research facility back on Earth. In the grand scheme of things, this was nothing more than a drop in the bucket.

But two days with this Decepticon? He talked too much for his own good and he meddled too much in her business, even as helpful as he was. She slunk out of her seat and back to her repair pile, leaving Scourge to his own devices in the front.

“What, desperate to leave my company so soon? Some ungrateful wretch you are.” Scourge grumbled. “Don’t forget, I saved you. You owe me, so the least you can do is be cordial and try to answer my questions. And you can’t do that already, since you don’t have a voice. Hmph.”

He fiddled around with the controls a bit and then spun out of his seat, following her to the back and sitting on the floor next to her, to her chagrin. His optics followed her hands down to her unfinished leg, to the sheet metal laying in heaps around them, to her optics. She stared back coldly, making sure that he didn’t try anything as he picked up a piece of metal and started speaking again.

“You know, as cagey as you are, you and I are quite the same. And we’re on the same team, even if you don’t like us ‘Cons and I don’t like you mercs.” Scourge said after a period of silence. “You’re trying to prove something, trying to stand on your own two feet. Aren’t you?”

His ruby optics flickered over her half-repaired frame again, settling on her own optics and staring right into her soul as the metal crumpled between his hands, like wet cardboard. “I know the look, those determined optics and defiant attitude. You’re just like me.”

Did she really look like that? She wasn’t particularly keen on seeming like the arrogant annoyance that sat before her. She shook her head, scooting backwards again until her back was against the wall, but Scourge followed, holding out the metal he had bent between his hands, which he had squished into the shape of her missing leg plating.

Nightbird stared at the molded metal, reluctant to take it from him, but it seemed innocuous enough- she slowly reached for it, only for him to flick his servo back, pulling it out of her reach.

“You know why I’m on the run? Why my entire faction hails me as a traitor worthy of a cell?” He said, rolling the frame around in his hands. “Because I committed the cardinal sin of not knowing my place. I wanted to be more, I had an opportunity, and I took it.

I disturbed the status quo, and it was the most free I ever felt. The feeling of striking down my lord, making him bow to me? Such a dangerous, yet glorious feeling- it’s a high I’ll chase for the rest of my life. And you? You’re chasing that now. Why else would you seek revenge?”

Nightbird had to concede, he had a point. And she didn’t like that he did. She’d won her freedom when she had escaped Earth- for all Megatron knew, she would never be seen again. She was sound of mind and functional of body, and she owed nothing to her former masters- and yet here she was, plotting the demises of each Decepticon who had wronged her. She had just fantasized about the subjugation of her greatest betrayer, Starscream, for the very reasons Scourge had just listed. This vendetta was personal to her.

Scourge seemed to know that she understood what he was saying, as she dipped her head in thought. Satisfied with the acknowledgement, he dropped the plating in his hands right at her feet, and crawled over to the pile of repair junk to search for other materials. Nightbird awkwardly picked the replacement plating up, and turned it over in her hands.

It was a bit too long and too large, but for something so quickly hand-molded, it was quite a good replica. She tried to flex it into a smaller form so that it would fit, but found the metal quite rigid and difficult to mold. Just what kind of strength was that Scourge hiding?

She crawled over to Scourge for assistance and got his attention by tapping it on his shoulder, to which he grumbled but realized the error. Nightbird watched as he held it up to her shins to measure, and almost effortlessly bent and ripped away the excess metal before prying it open and wrapping it around her unfinished leg.

She wondered just how strong Galvatron and their second-in-command were if Scourge was lowest on the pecking order. She also wondered if she would have any luck taking Scourge’s limbs for herself.

Scourge broke her train of thoughts as he tossed a welder her way and went back to digging through the scrap. She watched him, briefly, before looking down at the tool and her leg, finally opting to weld the thing on. She had watched him make the frame- there had been no tricks, no slight of hand traps that she’d noticed- it should be safe to affix the part to herself. Should. She really wasn’t sure about this, but then again, what other choice did she have?

“If you won’t let me fix you, you might as well let me teach you how to fix yourself.” Scourge said, finally finding the parts that he wanted and coming back over. “You’re a menace, but only if you’re functional, and I need you fully functional for the fight ahead. Don’t make me offline you and fix you up that way, eh?”

Nightbird finished the weld and squinted at him, and the assortment of things he was holding- including an assortment of circuitboards, clearly meant for her more important machinery. She still couldn’t bring herself to trust him with that. He was a Decepticon officer, after all, and to have one of them around her internals was still a thought that made her frame prickle.

But unfortunately, he was right- she couldn’t go on forever without repairs, and she wouldn’t be able to do some of them without assistance. But between Autobots, Decepticons, and this lone, escaped Decepticon traitor? He might be her best shot, though the bar was not very high…

Scourge noticed her apprehensive look and sighed frustratedly. “Look, I don’t have the patience to play nanny to some stuck-up piece of scrap like you. But I don’t intend to return to Galvatron empty-handed, so let me say this one more time. It’s in both our best interests that you cooperate and let me help you.”

He thrust a circuitboard into her hands and picked up the solder. “I don’t care about what silly preconceptions you have about me- I’m here to give you the bare minimum of repairs so you don’t fall apart mid-hunt. That’s all I can do, because I’m not a damn medic. So before I knock you out, you have one more chance to do as you’re told and open up your damn frame plating.”

The threat of being knocked offline resonated with the ninja. She wasn’t keen on experiencing the metal-wrenching strength of the mech across from her, much less so than letting him repair her while conscious. She certainly didn’t want him accessing her while unconscious either. Scourge gave her a hard, tired look- clearly impatient and counting down the seconds before he acted, and Nightbird finally relented.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” With one hand held between her frame and Scourge, she finally opened up her chest panelling, revealing the burnt-out remains of various mechanical systems. Scourge handed her the solder, gesturing for her to lower her arm, so that he could take a look inside. “Huh, that’s interesting. I- I don’t actually recognize some of these systems. Some of these are Cybertronian, but the others…”

He pushed her arm aside as he peered closer, muttering to himself quietly as he did, before noticing the open panel itself and squinting to read the tiny text. “There’s an inscription on your innards. Fu-ji-yama-Labs- that’s… that translates to Earth text. So you were manufactured on Earth!”

He was getting too close- Nightbird brought her leg up to his chest to push him away, which he did with some resistance. “So is that what you were hiding? Being a bot built by those insects? No wonder you have a chip on your shoulder- you’re inferior tech.”

Nightbird kicked him in the chest, causing him to fall back, dropping the parts he was holding. “Ow! I was only joking!”

She watched as he got to his knees, picking up the scattered pieces on the floor of the shuttle and placing them in a neat stack on the floor, grumbling about her as he went. Groveling on the floor like this, it almost felt like he didn’t have ulterior motives. Almost. It was a trap that Nightbird did not want herself falling for, no matter how pathetic he looked.

But it also didn’t seem like he wanted to cause her harm. He didn’t seem to know much about her internal mechanisms, but he was still willing to try- and even let her make the repairs herself. If it were Soundwave or Megatron or Bombshell, they wouldn’t have bothered with such bargaining- they almost certainly would’ve just taken her down from the start and rewired her without a fight. And yet she could kick Scourge around, and he was still playing by her rules. Was he some sort of scheming mastermind or genuinely this naïve to let her have her way?

She picked up a circuitboard that had tumbled near her feet, placing it on the stack before Scourge. For her sake, she was hoping that he really was the latter.

–

The next several hours were a long, confusing stumble through Nightbird’s hardware, with both participants puzzling over the technological facets of her human frame. Nightbird was aware of what was broken and the functions she was missing, but it didn’t make guessing the functions of any of the circuits any easier.

Scourge was surprisingly helpful- in the beginning, he had simply guided her through the motions of self-repair, directing her to move the solder pen up or down, but eventually gave up and convinced Nightbird to let him start cutting out the burnt circuitry himself. After all, broken components could serve no use. The ninja tentatively let him, knowing that if he intentionally tried to sabotage her, he would be sabotaging his own plans of capturing Starscream. But she still insisted on wiring her own frame back up with the replacement parts.

In the end, they opted to completely change the configuration of two of her systems altogether. Scourge had modeled it after his own architecture- really his Sweeps’ architectures, which he knew far better. These were systems that didn’t have any direct connections to her Cybertronian components, and after a few close calls, Nightbird finally let Scourge take the helm, and work on her frame directly.

During the process, communication became ever more important. Scourge had little idea what he was removing or rewiring and whether it would affect her movement, and a sort of language started to develop as he asked for cues on whether his repairs were working- Nightbird would tap the floor with her right hand at a consistent pace as he worked, indicating that he was in the clear and making progress. Tapping with the left hand indicated that he was making negative progress, but to continue, and a full stop of the tapping indicated that he was in the process of making a fatal mistake.

Nightbird did the best she could to indicate the latter quickly- usually presenting itself as a fuzziness of the processor or complete icy numbness throughout her frame, and indicating the negative progress, which she wasn’t entirely sure of herself- for all she knew, she just didn’t feel the scope of Scourge’s rewiring errors yet. But she also had her systems carefully trained to run whatever machinery he had wired into her- not only to test the functionality, but to know if any of it was something she couldn’t use or even possibly malicious- though she didn’t have much of a way to know if it was, anyway. But that was just a leap of faith she was going to have to take. And if Scourge was dumb enough to try to program her into a servant again, she might at least have a warning…

“Hm. I think that’s all I can do.” Scourge wired in the last of the circuits and pulled back, awaiting Nightbird’s signal. She nodded, giving him an ‘okay’ sign and pulling her chest plating closed again.

He hadn’t brought her back to full functionality, but this was fine- it was a great improvement from her earlier state and as close as she would get to brand new. She got to her feet, moving around and getting a feel for her fixed frame, enjoying the full range of mobility and reactions that she had lost in the fights before her. Scourge watched from afar, frowning as she turned around.

“There’s bullet holes in your back.” He pointed out. “Aren’t those painful?”

Nightbird shook her head- she still felt no pain after the whole of the operation. Scourge shrugged, but motioned her over.

“Let me fix that. It’ll be quick and hopefully helpful.” Scourge sat her down again, and this time, Nightbird let him. He’d been true to his word when fixing her internals, and done as he said he would, and she was not going to turn down more cosmetic repairs.

Scourge smoothed out the back paneling and started welding on patches of scrap metal to reinforce the holes. “My Sweeps always come to me for repairs like these- since our damn medics hardly know what they’re doing, especially with our wings. It pisses me off, but I’m afraid it’s now a habit of mine… Can’t have my troops in a shoddy state, because it makes me look bad.”

He thought of her as his troops? After all the hurdles he had gone to cater to her? Maybe it was more of the other way around, Nightbird thought amusedly. She would use him as much as he would allow, even if he thought he was in control. Maybe she could use him to track down the rest of her targets, even.

Scourge finished the welds and returned to his station at the front of the ship shortly, and Nightbird followed. She checked on the route shown on the console- they were just a few hours out from their destination, it seemed.

She also noticed something else on the console- a ping from the comms system, the ID of the broadcaster unknown to the shuttle. Curious, she opened the comm.

ALL HAIL STARSCREAM THE SKY WARRIOR, SUPREME EMPEROR OF PROSPEROUS STAROPOLIS! Blared the audio output, the grating chorus of voices over the comms chanting the words like a mantra. ALL HAIL STARSCREAM THE SKY WARRIOR, SUPREME EMPEROR OF PROSPEROUS STAROPOLIS!

“And there you have the beacon that fool left- the broadcast that will be Starscream’s ultimate downfall.” Scourge chuckled. “I can’t wait to see the look on his face when he realizes he led us all the way to him through his own narcissism.”

Nightbird nodded in agreement, almost giddy with excitement. Starscream’s day of reckoning was approaching fast, and her freedom was just a few hours away. She just couldn’t wait.

Chapter Text

The planet where Starscream was hiding- Staropolis, or whatever it had been called- was not hard to locate.

As it flickered from radar scan to the viewport before them, it took the form of a yellowish, ringed planet with hundreds of satellites- all of which, including the rings, were artificial. In fact, the rings were not conventional rocky ones at all- they seemed to be solid megastructures. Even Scourge looked a little in awe as they zipped towards the planet’s surface, but were intercepted before they could enter orbit.

Halt! This is border patrol of Staropolis! Please state your names and intentions for visiting! A stern voice over the comms demanded, as the radar pinged angrily. Three ships from the planet’s orbit had broken off and come to surround the shuttle.

“Border patrol. Bah- I should’ve expected this. That complicates my plan.” Scourge muttered, his hand resting on the ship’s throttle. “But no border patrol’s going to stop us. Hold on tight, fembot, we’re about to go for a ride!”

And with a cheeky look, he let the shuttle lurch forward as he floored it, leaving the border patrol ships in space dust. Nightbird held onto her seat tight as they soared towards the planet’s surface, Scourge’s laughter mixing with the thrumming of the engines behind them as residual scrap bounced around the room from the force of the acceleration.

Stop! We order you to stop! Their wild sprint past border patrol did not go unchased, however, as a series of ships appeared from all sides, hot in pursuit. Scourge grinned, reached a hand over to the adjacent console in front of Nightbird, and switched the screen to the weapons array.

“Man the blasters. I’ll get us out of this pinch.” He said with a wink, and Nightbird hopped on the console with delight.

These shuttles’ arrays of weaponry were meager, but Nightbird was more than happy to make do. This was her first time using a shuttle’s weapon array, and how exciting it was to use it in such a high-stakes situation! The console flashed red with multiple targets on the system already on-screen, all blinking and ready for some laser blasts. She tapped the nearest target, choosing her first victim, one hand on the firing trigger like the manual had revealed to her, and blasted three shots.

There was no indication of a hit on the console, but that did not phase her- she re-aligned the system’s camera with the next target and shot again, missing again as Scourge swerved the ship sharply to the left. “Nightbird! More ships incoming!”

Had Scourge just said her name? Had Soundwave told him that? No, no time to think about it- she steered the array back onto the next ship she saw and fired again. This time, she got a hit- and some return fire. The shuttle shook angrily as two blasts hit the stern, coming dangerously close to hitting their thrusters.

She aimed again with one hand, the other frantically signalling Scourge to fly them faster- which he noticed and nodded. If they lost power to thrusters, they would be dead in the water, and their quest for vengeance would be over before it started.

Unfortunately, both avoiding their chasers and shooting them down was proving to be a much more difficult task than Nightbird envisioned. As Scourge ramped up the shuttle’s speed yet higher, spinning them into sharp turn after turn as patrol ships struggled to keep up, Nightbird’s targets became harder and harder to hit. It wouldn’t stop her from trying, but more often than not, she managed to score a hit off of sheer luck than her own aiming skills.

But they had managed to keep the ships off their tail as they throttled through space, swooping down around the rings, feinting just out of the way as a trail of laserfire tore right through the space they had been flying in and hitting the side of the innermost ring. An explosion registered on the console, the shockwave hitting them from behind, and Nightbird hoped it was enough to keep the other shuttles off of them.

“We’re almost there!” Scourge shouted over the din of the overworked engines. “Entering the planet’s gravitational pull in-”

His sentence was cut short as an explosion catapulted both bots from their seats, and the world flickered incoherently around the ninja.

And then her optics re-aligned, the brunt of the shockwave already through them, and she collapsed onto the floor. The shuttle as she knew it had burst into sounds and sensations as she was thrown from the floor to the wall, and then back to the floor again. Her optics flew across the room frantically as she grabbed onto the console to ground herself, checking what had been lost- there was a gash in the windshield and the back of the ship was falling apart, the tools and rubble she’d used for repairs sliding to the back of the chamber and clattering through a rapidly-forming fissure in the back. Her panic subsided when she spotted the pair of wings to her side, and Scourge pulled himself to his knees, holding the pilot’s seat for support. At least he was still alive.

They must’ve been hit- the blurry remains of the left thruster through the gaping hole in the ship confirming her suspicions. But if the thruster had been shot, how were they still moving?

No, they weren’t just moving- they were falling.

The shuttle groaned and lurched angrily, hot wind howling through the crack in the windshield as Nightbird struggled to keep on her feet, Scourge now holding onto the wall in a similar predicament.

“The shuttle’s going to crash!” Scourge shouted over the chaos, holding out a hand to pull Nightbird to him, which she scrambled to take. “But we can still get out of here alive. Hold on tight!”

With Nightbird’s hand in his, he wrapped her close to him between his wings, ensuring she was secure. Then he bodied the airlock door, wrenching it free from its hinges, and the two of them fell into free-fall, the now-flaming shuttle falling away beneath them. Nightbird could feel the heat against her faceplate- a broiling heat that made her optics and processor buzz angrily- but only that. Still wrapped in Scourge’s lofty wings, she realized that his heat shielding was protecting her from the brunt of it- almost certainly saving her from burning up in the atmosphere. But would it save them from the fall?

Time seemed to slow as they hurtled towards the ground, the golden landscape rising up to embrace them.

And then the sound of a transformation cog broke the spell. Wings fell away from around Nightbird’s frame, and suddenly she found herself holding tight to the turret of a hovercraft, leveling out their descent and regaining control of their flight path. Scourge laughed- she didn’t know how that was possible while he was a hovercraft- and followed the jetstream, the kingdom of Staropolis panned out below.

What a ridiculous name that was for a planet.

“Enjoying the ride? I think we managed to shake off the guards.” Scourge asked. “I’ll take us down to the surface. My scanners show a strong lead somewhere far west…”

Nightbird pulled herself closer to the hovercraft, not wanting to fall off, as he flew down over the kingdom. As they approached the target, it became very clear just where Scourge’s scanners were pointing to- even far in the distance, she could see the peaks of a grandiose palace peeking out over a kingdom of gold. It was impressive to think such a lowly mech like Starscream could manage such a place. Then again, she didn’t think it was all his doing, anyways- more than likely he had just backstabbed the last ruler of this utopia and taken his place on the throne.

As they approached the palace, Nightbird was able to get a short look at the structure as he turned, noting the walls, a moat and a grand, spiralling turret lined with gold. Presumably, that was where Starscream might be- given his ego. Around it laid a kingdom of copper and iron, with grand sloping streets and bustling foot traffic, the denizens of the planet below running about in orderly lines, like ants. Pops of color broke up the metallic landscape from here and there- blooms of red and gold, green and blue, and more notably, a bright energon-pink. Of course this planet would have energon- Starscream probably needed it to keep his tiny processor functioning.

But the rumination upon the world below was cut short, as an annoyingly persistent problem quickly made itself apparent- with its weapon arrays.

Nightbird’s optics widened as the first volley of laserfire narrowly missed the hovercraft she was clinging to, and she pounded her fist on Scourge’s metal hide in warning as two border patrol ships swooped down into their airspace.

“I know- we’re being followed! And I thought I lost them, bah- we’ll have to land short.” Scourge whined, swooping down to avoid another volley of laserfire. “They won’t be able to follow us into a crowd without squishing their own precious citizens. We’ll touch down there!”

As pursuer and prey sped across the hazy skies, Nightbird made a mental note of where they were headed and of the palace’s layout, and also noted that one of the shuttles were no longer pursuing as they descended. It was headed straight to the palace instead, screaming off into the distance as Scourge found a place to drop. It was one of the few colorful patches in the city- a series of tents in an otherwise busy street where a ship could not land safely. Scourge took them in for a landing, square on top of one of the tents.

“Ey, watch it!” A disgruntled shopkeeper yelled as they tore through the canvas of the tent, crashing through the roof with a crash. “What’s your problem? Ya one of the Supreme Emperor’s buddies? You can’t do that!”

“Get lost! We’ve got better things to do than talk shop.” Scourge cackled, pulling Nightbird along as he pulled useless tent canvas out of his way out. The shopkeeper threw some cusses their way, following them, only stopping when Nightbird pulled her pistol out as a threat.

All eyes were on them as they exited the remains of the tent and found themselves in a greater marketplace. The people here, though, did not seem very hostile. They did not seem to be mechanical, like Nightbird or Scourge, but rather some form of organics with a sandy, chitinous armor and four big eyes of varying colors, and barely came up to the height of her chest. Many of them muttered things about law enforcement as they cleared the marketplace, but others mumbled something about the Supreme Emperor- Starscream. And even when they were able to lose the onlookers in the indifferent crowd, references to Starscream started becoming… less subtle.

“This place is massive.” Scourge murmured, following the stream of pedestrians down the main street. Imposing copper-stone statues lined the boulevard, all of which depicted the same irritatingly narcissistic bust. “And not to mention, egotistical.”

It took one to know one, Nightbird thought to herself. At least Starscream was making this easy for them. She couldn’t look anywhere without seeing some depiction of him plastered into the landscape, be it the ridiculous statues or the tacky banners, or the vendors that seemed to be selling… merchandise of Starscream? But what interested her more was the stream of energon going up the avenue- not a literal stream, but a line of workers, carrying cube after cube of energon towards a main building. Nightbird elbowed Scourge in the side, and pointed him towards it.

“Energon. Heaps of it! And I’d bet they’re going directly to where that traitor is hiding.” He said, pushing through the crowd to get closer. Nightbird followed closely behind, wondering just how much energon was being brought to that castle up ahead, and where they were even getting it. Another thought entered her processor. Once they killed Starscream, presumably the monarch of this entire planet- wouldn’t they be the ones in charge of everything here? Including the massive energon stockpile?

She didn’t get to finish that thought, as Scourge swept her close with one wing and pulled her to the side of the road, sweeping both of them behind one of the statues. She smacked him in surprise and objection at the sudden move, when he pointed to the crowd.

A squadron of heavily-armed guards swept through the path they had just been on, moving with urgency towards the castle, their eyes sweeping the masses. Scourge unwrapped his wing from around Nightbird, watching the group with a close optic. “They’re looking for us.”

Nightbird shrugged- of course there would be guards in the front. It just meant they would have to take an alternate path in sooner than expected. Thankfully, sneaking in through other paths was her specialty- it was what she had been programmed to do.

She hopped off the path silently and waited for Scourge to notice and follow along, and located a drop in the walkways down into a dried-up canal- a perfect place to walk undetected. From what she had seen from the view above, this canal lead to the castle’s moat, from which she could scale the walls and slip inside without being noticed.

Scourge didn’t say anything as they dropped down into the trough, but he gave her a nod of assent and followed without complaint. Dare she say, he trusted her judgement.

The canal continued forwards a long way, slowly getting deeper as they approached the end, before making a sharp turn to the right, which they followed. After a sufficient distance from the turn, Nightbird decided that this was far enough from the front that they wouldn’t be detected. She looked up at the top of the canal and at the towering wall that separated the commoners from royal grounds, and engaged the magnets in her feet.

Scourge didn’t seem to have such an ability, as he watched her scale the wall with ease. Instead, he waited until she was most of the way up, and then boosted himself effortlessly into the air, landing neatly on the lip between the moat and the castle wall with a haughty grin. “Antigravity thrusters. I can do your trick but better.”

Nightbird rolled her optics, and pulled herself onto the lip beside him. She glanced around, checking the surroundings for any form of guards or bystanders, and upon finding none, continued to scale the wall. This time, Scourge didn’t wait for her, swooping up to the top before peering over the edge and giving her a thumbs-up. The top of the wall must be all clear.

Upon reaching the top, the two of them peered over the wall and at the layout of the royal grounds. The shuttles from before had already landed on the landing pads inside, but it seemed like just so- not long enough for the palace to be put at high alert. There were, however, guards at the bottom of the inner wall, patrolling the perimeter. Nightbird peered up from the ground below to the castle across the grounds, and at one of the palace turrets. She set her optics on the turret windows- sparse, wide open and barely guarded, they would make for a perfect entry point. If only she had her grappling hook on her still…

“Windows, yes, I got it.” She tapped Scourge’s shoulder, gesturing to her target, and he acknowledged. “You want me to toss you over there?”

Nightbird kicked his shin and gestured him to the windows. “Yes, yes, I’ll take us both over. Seeing as I don’t have much a choice, given the circumstances…”

He transformed, letting Nightbird climb on and cling to his turret before powering up his thrusters and whirring over the gap between wall and turret. “Lucky for you, I like the action.”

Below them, the guards trod through the grounds, oblivious to the hovercraft gliding over the gap between the walls.

Scourge threw her off as he transformed, landing in the chamber, and was quick to follow as Nightbird ran for the stairs leading down. The palace’s halls were cramped, but they were large enough to walk through- just large enough to accommodate the likes of a seeker. Starscream was here for sure- now, they just had to find him and finish this.

“Head to the main atrium, and keep your eyes peeled for weapons.” He said, catching up to her as she sped down the stairs at a break-neck pace. “I don’t expect the locals to be much of a threat, but Starscream’ll have plenty of tricks and nasty traps up his cyber-sleeves. We’ll need to be ready!”

Nightbird nodded, drawing her pistol as she jumped the last few steps of the turret and looked out into the halls ahead of her, Scourge right on her tail. “And be quiet if you can! They might not know we’re-”

His warning went completely out the window when he saw the patrol, staring wide-eyed barely meters from the stairwell, guns clutched at the ready. Scourge and Nightbird gave each other a quick, knowing glance- the jig was up.

Nightbird cocked her pistol, lined the sight with the first guard, and let all hell break loose.

Chapter Text

As it turned out, chitin was no match for a pure, concentrated laser blast.

The first guard fell uselessly to the floor, its armor crackling and burnt where the blast had connected, as the other three guards ran the other way. Some useful patrol they were- Scourge whipped out his own weapon, a high-powered laser rifle, and gunned down two more before they could get any further. But the last, however, managed to escape his sights by turning the corner, barrelling down the hallway.

“We’ve gotta stop him before he warns the others! Move!” Scourge gestured to his partner, rushing down the hall. Nightbird followed, but not before stopping to loot the downed guard.

The one that had fallen was armed with some kind of gun- but it was unlike anything Nightbird had ever seen. Its barrel was slim and slotlike, rather than cylindrical, and the firing apparatus was manual. She took it regardless, hoping to be able to figure out how to use it on the fly, and followed Scourge.

The hallway led from one hall to another, and another hall to another. Scourge cussed as another of his laser volleys flew right overhead, the guard ducking and darting just out of view as he turned another corner, and this time, the hall ended at a balcony.

A balcony overlooking a royal throne room.

The two hunters catapulted into the room, Scourge finally managing a shot on the guard as the creature ran out of options to escape their grasp. The shot connected with the back of its head, the momentum throwing the guard forward- and over the railing of the balcony. Nightbird lunged forth to try and grab the creature before it fell, but it plummeted out of her reach, landing with a loud SPLAT on the floor of the royal hall.

The duo ran to the railing and peered over in horror- and found several dozen eyes peering back. And among them, one pair of familiar red optics.

“Well, well. If it isn’t my old accomplice and body-mate!” That familiar, terrible voice screeched from below. “Scourge! And… you’ve brought some old and obsolete earthling toy with you, hm?”

Nightbird’s circuits nearly burst from the rage as her old nemesis, Starscream, stood from his gilded seat in the middle of the room. He turned to face them, optics barely visible over the crown atop his head as dozens of guns immediately turned on her and Scourge- these guards in the room sported actual guns, it seemed, rather than the rudimentary one she had picked up.

“We’re not here to talk.” Scourge spat, leering down from the balcony as he clutched his own rifle closer to his chest. “We’re not here to play games. We’re here to drag you back to the faction you betrayed to have you get what you deserve.”

“Hm? And what do I deserve?” Starscream cackled. “Haven’t I suffered enough punishment at the hands of your leader? I think it’s YOU who’ll get what you deserve! Guards! Vaporize them!”

And with a dramatic gesture of the servo, the room erupted into gunfire. The duo ducked under the balcony railing, just in time for Nightbird to catch a glimpse of the cackling Starscream retreating from the room. If he left the atrium, their chance to find and catch that traitor might slip right through their fingers. And she was not going to give him a chance to run away like a coward. Not ever!

“There’s too much gunfire.” Scourge said as she fiddled with her stolen gun, figuring out how to fire it. “We’ll have to retreat and go a- what are you doing?!”

He made a feeble attempt to grab the ninja as she leapt, amidst all of the gunfire, over the railing of the balcony and into the fray, firing wildly into the crowds of guards, catching them by surprise. She landed with a roll, ducking under a volley of fire and barrelling directly into a guard before whipping around and testing her new gun as she fired off two shots into the group right behind her.

Unlike her laser pistol, this gun shunted out two spinning, bladed projectiles that flew wildly across the room and lodging directly in the chest of one of the guards, felling him. Now that was an interesting projectile- but there was no time to think about it. Because the next pull of the trigger wielded nothing, clicking uselessly and demanding that she reload. But there was not enough time for that.

A sudden impact blew her off her feet as a shot hit her in the side, knocking her off her feet and the gun out of her hands. She scrambled back, ducking behind the unconscious guard she had knocked out in her descent before returning fire, headed towards the door that Starscream had just escaped through. But with all the guards now focused not on the balcony but rather her, she had mere seconds before the next volley took her out. If she didn’t move fast enough, she would not survive this encounter.

But she didn’t have to worry about that.

A hail of laserfire rained down from above as her accomplice hurtled over the railing, transforming mid-fall and gunning down the distracted guards. Nightbird cheered silently as she finished off the rest of them in the midst of the chaos, and the hovercraft swooped down to rendezvous as she scrambled for the gun she had dropped in the fight.

“Are your logic processors broken? Why would you throw yourself into a death trap when we could’ve followed Starscream a different way?” He yelled, as Nightbird found the gun, broken in the chaos, its ammo strewn from the clip. “I can track him with my scanning equipment!”

Nightbird wasn’t listening. She picked up the projectiles from the broken gun- the five-bladed, organic, disc-like stars fit almost perfectly in her hand, bringing back old memories of the arsenal she had once been fitted with. She clutched a star between her fingers, testing the weight and the spin of the weapon between her digits, before quickly removing and shovelling the rest of the stars into her abdomen’s hidden compartment.

These were no throwing stars, but they would work just as well.

“We don’t have the time for souvenirs. You put us in this situation, so we’re following that coward the hard way. Let’s move!” Scourge grabbed a gun from one of the dead guards, tossed it into her arms, and pulled her to her pedes.

With Nightbird now right on his tail, the two disappeared into the depths of the palace, hot on the trail.

–

They could hear Starscream’s panicked footfalls ahead of them, just a room or two ahead at the best, and inaccessibly far at worst. But the strangest thing was, they didn’t seem to be headed to any kind of open space- somewhere that the jet could transform and escape through the passage of the skies. No, rather, they were headed deeper into the bowels of the compound.

“Starscream’s hiding something. He’s probably headed for a control room, or a space bridge, or something.” Scourge informed Nightbird, his sensors whirring in his head as they ran. “Hold!”

Nightbird ran right into his outstretched hand as he stopped them short of the closed door in front of them. “Guards to the sides, maybe 7, almost certainly an ambush.”

Fed up with the hold-up, Nightbird gestured him to the right- and pointed herself to the left. Scourge picked up on the gesture, weighed his options for a moment, and then nodded, finally letting Nightbird move forward.

The doors burst open as she barrelled in, and the hail of gunfire- and star-shooting- started- but not without her own return fire as Scourge followed her in, right on her heels, both of their guns blazing. She shot the first of three guards with her pistol, missing the second by a few feet as a bladed star whizzed by her head, and then another- sawing right into Scourge’s wing behind her. Nightbird tossed her pistol at the closest guard in frustration- and decided to fight fire with fire.

In a flash, faster than she or any guard could pull the trigger, she flipped two bladed stars between her fingers and flung them towards the guards, each star making their mark in the center of their heads. The bodies crumpled in an instant, and she darted forward to pilfer the ammunition off of their guns as well.

“Room’s clear! Move!” Scourge yelled, this time moving out of the room without her. Nightbird groaned, and decided she could clean out the guns while she ran, slinging one into her back storage as she opened the chambers of the other. Forget laser blasters- she had her weapon of choice now.

–

Starscream was just out of sight most of the time as his distraction bought him time- the tips of his wings disappearing just out of reach around each corner and behind every door as the duo tore through the guards that kept popping up to thwart them. Just how much security did Starscream employ in this place?

Though none of that mattered so much, as the hunters tore through their obstacles at a near break-neck pace. Scourge on his own was a force of nature, and the first target that any of the guards chose to shoot at, and by the time any of them noticed his smaller accomplice, Nightbird had buried a throwing star in their vitals with near surgical precision.

But as fast as they could fight, the guards did what they had been assigned to do as the pounding of metallic footsteps hurried into the distance into the maze of rooms that he called his home. And when presented with an intersection at the hallways, Scourge and Nightbird had to stop in their tracks and realign.

“He’s completely out of our clutches.” Scourge said. “Seems like he’s only headed deeper into the compound, but he could be anywhere within. And my proximity scanners won’t give us a map through this infernal palace, only a sense of where he is.”

Nightbird slammed a fist on the wall in anger. How dare Starscream escape from what he deserved! Scourge sighed, and gestured her to the right passageway.

“Our best bet is to keep moving, standing around will only let him get further away.” He said as they broke back into a run. “We’ll pick this place and its guards apart if we need to- he can hide, but he can’t run.”

Nightbird nodded in agreement, when the idea struck her. If there were guards being put between them and Starscream, there was a good chance they knew where he was headed. If they were worth the weapons in their hands, they would know the layout of the palace perfectly well.

And it didn’t take long for them to find their next victims.

One room turned into another and they burst into some kind of depot, a massive room with large bay doors. Scourge’s face wrinkled in interest as the doors slammed behind him.

“This whole place reeks of energon.” He said, slowing his pace back to a walk. “My sensors are overloaded with it, all over this room- this must be Starscream’s hoard.”

“Halt! Intruders, drop your weapons and prepare to die!” Their attentions were quickly turned to the mass of guards entering from the opposite side of the room, weapons drawn and at the ready. Nightbird threw a glance at Scourge, and then they rocketed across the room.

Anticipating this move, the guards offered a rallying shout and fired, a mixture of laser rays and spiraling stars tearing across the airspace as Scourge transformed and barrelled towards them. Nightbird was not as lucky, only having one form- but what she lacked in an alt mode, she could make up for with firepower of her own.

She threw them three at a time into the mass ahead of her, each star spinning and curving through the air and lodging itself cleanly into any surface unfortunate enough to be in its way, be it wall or chitin or gun. At this distance, none of the enemy fire was accurate enough to hit- but her accuracy was almost pinpoint. Two guards toppled backwards, nailed hard enough to throw them off their feet, while the other guards dodged and ducked as Scourge rained fire down from above.

Nightbird swerved and ducked around errant laser blasts as she pummelled forward, throwing stars as fast as she could identify moving targets as the guards’ attentions fluctuated between the menace in the air and the menace at ground level. Panicked, picked off, what remained of the defense clustered into a circle- all the more easy to fire into- but that quickly changed when the middlemost of the guards threw something into the air, a little ceramic vessel that Scourge immediately locked onto and shot.

Nightbird’s vision exploded into hazy nothingness. The clever things had caught her with a smoke bomb, the air clouded with thick plumes of dust that obscured the visibility from her hand to her face. And without visibility, she was stranded dead in the water- she couldn’t hit a target she couldn’t see. Which meant she was limited to melee and the element of surprise until the air cleared up.

She waved her hand in the air, eddies of dust spiraling around her arm and sticking to her frame like gunk, as she proceeded forward. She could see, in cloudy, blurry tones, laserfire whizzing past her wildly- if she didn’t have visibility, neither did her enemies.

But visibility certainly wasn’t stopping Scourge. From the sounds of yells and bodies continuing to thud against the floor, he was almost undeterred- he didn’t need to use his optics when his tracking systems were strong enough to pinpoint Starscream’s location from across thousands of lightyears of space. But determined to not be useless while the dust cloud lingered, she kept moving, lightening her footsteps until she was silent in the fog, until she all but bumped directly into a disoriented guard. Already cowering, dizzy, its gun hardly at arms, the soldier spun to meet the obstruction in its path, only to find the space vacant, swirling with dust.

Nightbird watched him wave his gun around in the dust, trying to fan away the haze that was hiding her- but she was already behind him. And without a second of hesitation, she pounced.

–

As the haze started to dissipate, Scourge fanned the area with his wings to push the last of the dust out of the air in search of Nightbird and any straggling guards, and found both, with the former’s hands wrapped around the other’s throat, lifting it clear off the ground as it struggled. He kept his rifle at the ready and walked over as the ninja shook the poor thing by the neck, and then threw him hard to the ground.

“What are you doing?” Nightbird looked at him in annoyance and gestured from the guard to the door as she slammed a pede into the guard’s abdomen, pantomiming talking for both of them to see, and Scourge caught on quickly.

“I won’t tell you anything! I pledged my life to protect our Supreme Leader!” Their captive whined, legs kicking at Nightbird’s leg pressing down hard on its chitin armor. Scourge leaned over it with a disinterested look, flipped his gun up to position, and pressed it against one of its eyes.

“I think you’ll tell us everything if you value your life at all.” he murmured, optics cold like a sharkticon’s. “You’re only delaying the inevitable, after all- and the speed at which we disassemble you.”

The guard whimpered again as Nightbird flashed her bladed stars, spinning one between her digits as chitin cracked beneath her weight. “D-down two floors in the palace- he’s going to his contingency bunker. Please l-let me live.”

Nightbird and Scourge gave each other a pleased look and the ninja released her victim, only for Scourge to scoop it right back up. “Oh, we’ll let you go. As soon as you show us the fastest way there.”

The guard whimpered, but nodded in agreement hastily, and Scourge swooped it up by the scruff of its neck, pointing it towards the door and marching on. Nightbird was right behind him- but not before picking through the carnage of dust and chitin strewn across the depot floor. She spotted one of those ceramic vials that Scourge had shot, dribbled from a guard’s appendage and rolling across the floor, and snatched it up promptly- this was something that could come in handy later.

Starscream might be long gone, tucked into the folds of the complex, but with the guidance of their hapless hostage- and Scourge’s EM sensors, gauging the closing distance, the path to their target shrank. The guards in their way started to appear less and less as they moved- a sign that Nightbird couldn’t decide was good or bad. Starscream might’ve already escaped the palace, for all she knew- but Scourge’s unwavering sensors stated otherwise. He was still inside, somewhere. There was only the question of what new traps he had lain for them.

So there was quite the surprise when the sound of pounding footsteps started to get closer again, till the sounds of frantic movement sounded like it was only a room away. Nightbird could hear the labored vents of their prey, as she urged Scourge to run faster- and he finally discarded the guard, throwing him to the side as they broke into a sprint again. The walls were closing into smaller rooms, and rooms became a hallway. And at the end of the hallway were the tips of a pair of wings, ducking into a final doorway. This was it. He was cornered!

The pair burst into the room, the motion-activated doors sliding open for them as if to allow them their destiny, weapons poised at the ready just as they saw Starscream, leaning against the threshold of a thick-wrought steel vault. Nightbird flung her throwing stars in fury, but not quick enough to notice the lever in his outreached hand- a lever he had just pulled.

Starscream cackled as the door behind him began to slam shut, allotting only enough time for Nightbird to hurl one last star between the aperture- before it closed for good.

“Stop running like a coward and face us, Starscream!” Scourge cried, throwing himself at the closed door and slamming his fists against cold steel. “One way or another, you’re trapped!”

Nightbird nearly found herself against that door too in her rage, but something about the room was off. As Scourge uselessly banged on the vault, she noticed, in the low light, the array of irises around the top of the wall- a rectangular ring of staring sensors- or were they sensors? Or were they something else?

No, they were definitely something worse. Nightbird threw herself at Scourge’s turned back, waving her arm frantically at the irises to alert him to them just as all of them began to click open, revealing the barrels of many, many turrets.

“It’s a trap!” Scourge realized, one second too late, as he turned heel and bolted for the door on the other side of the room- only for it to slam shut on his face. “Scrap, he’s got us!”

Nightbird threw herself into the corner of the room and magnetized her feet, scrambling up the wall just as dozens of red laser pointers locked onto her panicked partner in the middle of the room and the cacophony of bullets began. Scourge screeched, his wings coming up to shield his body as the first round penetrated into his frame. The lasers flickered again, locking onto him again as she watched in horror, and Nightbird realized that this might be the end. If she just sat here, motionless, her only ally in this fight was going to die.

And then she made a second realization. She was motionless. Not a single laser pointer was aiming its gaze at her. The turrets tracked motion, and right now, Scourge was moving a lot. She knew what she had to do, and hoped that Scourge would survive the second round of firing as she slipped her hand into her backpack and reached for the one thing that might save both of their hides.

Scourge screamed again as another round of metal was shot into his back, as he fell to his knees and curled into a little shell in an attempt to protect his vitals. And that gave Nightbird the perfect target to aim at with her singular smoke bomb.

As the turrets honed in for one more, possibly fatal, firing, she had but a second to lob the ceramic shell straight for her partner and then duck into the cloud before her own motion was detected and remedied. The dots of red covered Scourge’s holey wings, like sharkticons circling for the kill.

Nightbird threw the bomb.

In an instant, all pointers moved away from Scourge- and immediately targeted Nightbird, but better yet- targeted the smoke bomb that was falling through the air. The bullets flew, and as Nightbird dove from her vantage point, multiple shots hit the smoke bomb, cracking the shell, and the room went up in hazy dust in almost an instant. Nightbird hit the ground, flinching as stray bullets and shrapnel pelted her frame, but made a run for the almost-motionless figure on the floor.

Scourge was laying almost limp under his wings, energon leaking from dozens of the holes that had made it into his back, and Nightbird suppressed a wave of panic as she pushed the wings away, grabbing him by the helm and tilting his head up- and feeling instant relief as a pair of bright red optics stared back.

“I-I’m alive! Those bullets were nothing…” Scourge spluttered, trying to pull himself to his knees, but Nightbird pushed his helm down, keeping them both low as red lasers swept through the dust, confused and overwhelmed by the smokescreen. Scourge watched in awe as rounds bounced off the walls, whizzing just over their heads, no longer able to target them. “But… good work, Nightbird. You really… saved my hide there.”

Nightbird nearly froze at the tracker’s gratitude, but there was no time to contemplate it. The smoke was going to thin, and soon, they’d be back in the same situation again without an exit. But Starscream would have to come out of that room at some point- they just needed to bide their time. And maybe he needed to think that they were dead.

There was just enough visibility that the two of them could see each other. So with what pantomiming she could muster, she grasped Scourge’s helm to get him to watch as she gestured out the motion-sensing of the turrets, and the pieces seemed to click in Scourge’s head.

“If we pretend to be dead, he’ll come out of hiding.” Scourge inferred, and Nightbird nodded in excitement. “But you’re not bullet-ridden, he’ll suspect something.”

Nightbird held up a hand to have him hold the thought, and then pantomimed running up the wall.

“You think the smokescreen will last that long? He’ll see you otherwise!”

Nightbird shook her head, and gestured her hiding place above the door. And that seemed to click correctly.

“So I’m just the bait in your trap! I didn’t sign up for this!” Scourge said incredulously. Nightbird gave him an exasperated stare, before the mech sighed in concession. “Fine- it’s the best plan we’ve got. And I suppose I owe you one…”

That pacified Nightbird enough, and he held out his gun to her, only to find that it had been shot through, several times. Nightbird looked at it, and shook her head. She would not need a gun to finish the job anyways.

“I’m going to move towards the door to give you a closer shot.” Scourge said, wincing as he pulled an arm in front of him to pull himself forward. The smoke was beginning to clear- Nightbird took that cue to get into her position, ducking under the wandering lasers as she crawled to her position above the door and stared down at her downed friend.

Scourge gave her an ‘okay’ sign with one bloodied hand. “Don’t miss.”

Nightbird nodded in affirmation, before the both of them stilled between the roving lasers. And waited. And waited some more.

–

“Hah! Those fools never even saw it coming!” Starscream laughed as he slunk into the final, deepest room of his hideout. “But I should be careful. Those insects are a bit too crafty for my own liking.”

He pranced over to the far end of the room, where he kept his collection of weaponry, and selected the biggest, deadliest gun he could find. Picking out his weapon of choice, he sat at the bunker door, waiting for the scanners outside to finally detect a lack of motion as it swept the room for moving subjects and fired, round after round, into the fray. And then finally, the lasers disengaged- the room was completely devoid of life. After a minute or two of complete indicated stillness, he found it fit to disengage the turrets and crack open the bunker doors again.

The room was hazy, smoke billowing from the battered blue figure in the center of the room, lying face-down on the ground, frame ridden with holes and dripping energon from more of them than he could count. No sign of the ninja-bot, but she didn’t seem to be in the room- she must’ve snuck out, which was a pain- he’d have to call in more guards on her.

But for now, his attention was all on his former host, who was miraculously, still alive. Though Starscream knew of the tracker’s uncannily thick hide- he’d just have the luxury of finishing the job himself. Scourge’s gun was lying uselessly a few feet from him, massive bullet holes punched through it, which Starscream took the liberty of stamping beneath his feet as he came right up to the tracker.

“Oh ho ho! Well well, if it isn’t my old plaything, Scourge!” Starscream crowed triumphantly. “Not so tough are you, now?”

“S-starscream, you traitor…” Scourge groaned in agony, his servos shaking as he tried to reach out towards the useless gun he had dropped. “I-I’ll get you, I-I promise that-”

“Hah! How, may I ask?” Starscream kicked him in the jaw, sending him reeling across the floor. “With what weapons? And what backup? You have no strength to fight me, and your little earthling toy is gone!”

Scourge cried out in pain as Starscream cackled and pointed his gun straight into the tracker’s optics.

“Any last words?”

Scourge heaved, his optics offlining as his engines whirred weakly inside of his broken casing.

“No. But Nightbird’s got a word for you.”

“Huh?” Starscream didn’t even get the chance to turn and see the ninja, clinging to the top of the wall, a handful of stars aimed squarely to the middle of the back, just like where he had shot her.

And now, it was Nightbird’s turn to take the shot.

The first bladed star hit him squarely between the wings, just below the neck- and then the next three putted point-blank into various zones on his back. Starscream screamed as he pitched forth, the gun tumbling out of his hands as Scourge scrambled back to avoid getting squashed by the stumbling seeker. He batted the gun out of Starscream’s reach and then scrambled to claim it for himself, turning the tables in an instant.

Starscream cowered as the ninja slid down the wall, hopping over to where Scourge had painstakingly gotten to his feet, and stared right into the seeker’s face with a malicious look in her optics. Scourge chuckled grimly as Starscream’s face dropped, realizing the dupe, and continued.

“Or maybe I’ll just let her tell you herself.”

With that, Nightbird aimed a kick at her mortal enemy’s ghastly face, and channelling 20 years of rage and schadenfreude, sent him flying across the room. Scourge did nothing to stop her as she chased the body across the chamber, not even bothering to use her weapons on him as she landed blow after blow on the seeker’s frame, relishing the pained cries and begs of their common enemy.

“Hey, make sure to keep him alive!” He laughed, leaning against the wall as he watched his partner kick the downed mech. “I’ve got plans for him after this too!”

Nightbird took the moment to look up at him in acknowledgement, and in that split moment, Starscream took the opportunity to beg for his life.

“No, no, please stop! I was wrong, I was so clearly cruel! I take it all back!” He screeched, wrapping himself around her leg- which earned him another kick to the jaw. It was actually quite impressive that he was still functioning enough to plead for his life- she had to give it to him, he was durable, and pathetic as he rambled on. “You’re not an earthling toy! You were Megatron’s favorite! Spare me!”

It was only then that Nightbird actually stopped and cocked her head at him, prompting him to go on. Starscream took the moment to pull himself into a sitting position against the wall and spit out a mouthful of his own energon. “It’s true. I was jealous because he would’ve replaced me with the likes of you. But that doesn’t matter anymore! Because he’s dead!”

Nightbird’s optics widened in shock. Megatron was dead?

“He took too many injuries in battle, and I just couldn’t save him from Optimus Prime. He’s gone, like the rest of my brothers, and only I remain.” Starscream yelped in terror as she pressed the barrel of the gun right against his optic, and began to babble. “Isn’t this enough? I’m not even a leader anymore! I’m just some nobody on this scrapheap planet with no rank! If you’re looking for power, go suck up to Scourge’s leader and see how that fares for you!”

At this point, Nightbird had heard enough, and Scourge seemed to feel the same, as he started towards the two, having rebuilt the strength to walk. “Speaking of answering to my leader, Starscream, I think it’s about time you answered to him as well. You’ve caused enough problems for me and the Decepticons- and I’m in no mood to die a traitor, like you.”

Starscream yelped again as Scourge got between him and Nightbird, and picked him up by the neck. “Let’s see what else you can offer me while I call Galvatron here. Why don’t you give us a tour?”

Nightbird followed just behind as Scourge dragged him, laughing, back into his bunker to disengage the other locked door, and then out to the halls. She’d had half a mind to kill Starscream after he’d spilled his guts, but that murderous intent was replaced with something else- call it a feeling of satisfaction, watching him suffer and beg. If Scourge was bringing his leader here- the one that had sent genuine fear down her frame for the first time in years- that was revenge enough for her. In a way, it was perfectly fair- he had left her at the mercy of the Autobots, and now it was her turn to leave him at the mercy of the Decepticons.

And she had other things to think about, anyway. Megatron was dead. Starscream’s ‘brothers’ were, too- presumably the other two flightframes that looked like him- and now only Soundwave remained. And he would be a tough nut to crack- caged up in the dark of Decepticon base, surrounded by his minions and his screens and his missions…

Nightbird paused by the sill of the window in the hallway, the sky over the castle halls transitioning from daylight to dusk in brilliant tones of pinks and golds. The sun was setting on her grudge. Starscream had been knocked off of his throne. Megatron and the others were presumably dead. Soundwave remained, locked in the dark under the thumb of the next leader to suck up to, and she realized that after this, she didn’t really care.

She didn’t even care about the other seekers, about the rest of the Decepticons that had gawked and gandered over her newly-programmed frame. All she had cared about was making Megatron, and then Starscream pay- the one that had used her, and the one that had betrayed her. Soundwave was merely a conduit to the former, wasn’t he? He hadn’t just let her run- he hadn’t any choice but to. He could rot in his screen-filled room for all that she cared, because she was finally free.

But now, as the battle had wound down, she felt exhausted. All of that running and shooting and star-throwing and traitor-hunting had, unfortunately, taken its toll- and her rudimentary repairs were starting to wear down at this point as well. And she was almost sure she was low on fuel- she could really use some energon.

Energon! She remembered the bay doors they’d passed on the chase for Starscream- and decided that Scourge and that traitor could wait. She broke off from her partner, taking a right down the hall and retracing her steps until she came to the grand storage room with the heavyset doors. These doors could not be opened with one’s bare hands, given their berth and lack of handles, but there was a console in the corner of the room, which presumably controlled access to the energon. Nightbird hopped over to the panel, punched the buttons until something happened, and spun around to watch as the first of the bay doors rumbled open.

She almost had to avert her gaze as the thick door retracted, for before her very optics grew the brilliant light of a glowing hoard of energy. Extending from the floor to the ceiling, laying in lovely neat stacks from the very edge of the room to a depth of who-knew-how-deep, was enough energon to power a warship- no, a fleet of warships, Nightbird thought. And this was just one of ten storage rooms- Starscream had just been sitting on this entire stockpile by himself! She wasted no time in grabbing a cube and prying open her intake port to pour the whole of the contents into her. She didn’t even get through a third of the cube before the port overflowed, spilling pure, pink energy all down her front and onto the floor. But it didn’t matter if she lost a little- she had all the energon in the world to make up for it. She could bathe in it if she really wanted to. It was her right as a mech, as a hunter, as a conqueror of her own destiny. She could waste as much fuel as she wanted and it wouldn’t matter to a single other mech than her-

“What are you doing?!” The resounding cry came from across the room, and she turned to see her companion bounding across the depot floor, seeker being dragged behind him.

Nightbird indignantly dumped the rest of her energon cube on her head and threw it at him.

“Don’t go wasting energon like that! You don’t know how valuable that is!” Scourge yelped. To which, Nightbird gestured at the stockpile behind her… and then the array of bay doors lining the walls next to them. Scourge spluttered, dropping Starscream to the floor as he looked around, and kicked Nightbird’s empty energon cube to the side before diving into the hoard himself. Ninja and Seeker watched as he toppled the contents of a cube down his intake, and then another, laughing as he practically bathed himself in the fuel.

“I’m saved! We’re saved! Galvatron will have to forgive me when I offer him this trove!” He crowed, gallivanting around the depot before planting a foot on top of Starscream again, who was attempting to crawl away during the distraction. “And you stay here; you’re part of the offering!”

Nightbird froze. Scourge was not about to take the credit for her vendetta, and the spoils as well. The throwing stars were between her fingers before she could register them being there, her target set at her ally’s battered frame. After all that he had done for her, she still bowed to no one- and certainly wasn’t going to let another walk over her again.

Scourge noticed her defensive stance immediately, pivoting to see her leering expression and outstretched weapons. His expression turned from shock, to anger, to realization.

“You wouldn’t. You couldn’t.” Scourge said. “I got you out of the ship and brought you here. I repaired your damage, let you have your little revenge. What more could you possibly want?”

Nightbird gestured to the energon.

“No. You can’t take all of that. You can’t! How would you take it away- and to where?”

Nightbird shrugged, but didn’t let up her guard- it wasn’t about the logic. It was about standing her ground. Scourge’s face dropped into a scowl, an icy glare befitting only a Decepticon commander. She wasn’t certain she had the tools to kill Scourge, even in his weakened state. She’d watched him tear through sheet metal like it was nothing, and tank a thousand bullets in his back and still have the strength to carry Starscream through the corridors. No- in order to force Scourge to back down, she needed to hit him where it would hurt.

Her focus changed from the Decepticon before her, to the console in the back of the room- the only console in the room that could control the half-meter-thick steel vaults. If there was no way to open them, the energon behind each wall would become useless. And when- or if- the Revenge were to be called, Galvatron would find the doors shut tight and incur his wrath upon Scourge anyway. None of them could win in this situation.

And Scourge knew this, just as he noticed it. His optics widened in horror, but he couldn’t move to intercept- for it would mean taking his foot off Starscream, and Nightbird would simply strafe around. Nightbird stared him down, poised to throw, never breaking optic contact with her attempted backstabber.

And Scourge backed down.

“Wait! Let’s talk about this.” The hunter conceded, raising his hands into the air in surrender. “There’s plenty of spoils to go around, plenty of energon. What would you do with a war fleet’s worth of energon?”

That seemed to give him an idea. He looked at Starscream, releasing him from the crush of his foot and pulling him back to his feet. “Hmm. You’ve got a mighty fine planet, Starscream. Does it come with a shipyard?”

“Like hell I’d tell you, ugly!” Starscream spat. A murderous glare from his captor changed his demeanor entirely. “Of course I have a fleet, you numbskull. Every good dictator has one.”

Scourge looked back at Nightbird. Nightbird cocked her head, intrigued by the solution but not fully satisfied. Thankfully, Scourge went on.
“Well, you’re a mercenary. And a damn good fighter at that. Why don’t we strike a deal?” he proposed. “You’ve got no use for an entire planet, especially one inhabited by thousands of Starscream’s loyalists. Leave it for me to present to Galvatron, and save my hide. In return, I help set you up with a ship and enough energon to run that ship for a year.”

Nightbird squinted at him, processing the deal. It was still the short end of the stick, but it also presented a more feasible way of reaping her rewards. It was true that she had nothing to do with a planet and ten lifetime’s supply of energon, nor a way of defending it if Scourge did just call the Decepticons here- but she wasn’t about to roll over and give it up without a fight just because she had no use for it. She decided to push a little more.

“Hey, I’m cutting you a good deal!” Scourge gestured frantically, as she pantomimed a throw. “What else could you want? Repairs? Mods? More energon? Starscream?”

That wasn’t such a bad idea, Nightbird thought. She turned her gaze to the flier being held in place by Scourge and looked him up and down, her optics hungry like a wolf’s before it carved into its prey. Starscream had caused her enough grief, and if Scourge wanted him alive, that was fine- but she wanted something to show for her troubles.

She had made up her mind on what she wanted, and pointed to her demands- the first energon bay, the pantomiming of the ship, and-

“Oh, how sadistic! I could make that happen for you, easily!” Scourge grinned evilly. “Starscream certainly won’t be needing them after today, won’t he?”

“No. No, no, no- hurt me, lock me up- but don’t take that! Anything but that!” The seeker pleaded, twisting in Scourge’s grip helplessly.

Nightbird watched as her nemesis begged before her, thrown onto his knees, but her face remained placid and full of vengeful fire as Scourge’s talons descended on him.

It was the perfect revenge.

–

Another streak of brilliant light crossed the starlit sky, passing overhead as the ninja plugged the energon vial into her fuel intake port. It wasn’t a spacecraft- she would’ve seen it light up on the sensors on the radar next to her. She let the vial drain slowly into her frame, and then retrieved it when empty- it wasn’t fun rationing her energon, but she wanted to keep her stockpile high, at least until she’d collected her first contract.

The ship she now owned was sleek and speedy, not as well-armed as a warship like the Revenge, but small and lithe enough to run circles around it while laying down hell from its twin turrets. It suited her well, she thought- a perfect ship for a quick hit, collecting what she had come for, and zipping away before anybody could catch her in the act. The next order of business for her was to decide where she would set down a base- or at least a place she could stash any extra energon she accumulated from her contracts. The current cargo of fuel she had was just small enough that it wouldn’t hinder the speed of her new craft, but any more and she would risk slowing herself down.

Scourge had called their negotiations a ‘contract’ when he walked her (and Starscream) to the where the ships were kept. “It’s standard mercenary talk, isn’t it? An agreement to what you’ll accomplish and the pay that you’ll expect from the task completed.”

Included in her ‘contract’ of aiding Scourge in the capture of Starscream had been a year and a half’s worth of energon to fuel her ship, all of Starscream’s bunker’s weapons (the Decepticons had better tech in their arsenal, anyway, said Scourge), and some of the guards’ weapons as well. She was okay with a gun, but her hands still knew the ins and outs of her traditional weapons better- the curves of the throwing star, the smooth handle of a blade. Though if she wanted to keep up with the Sweeps, she was going to have to become proficient with both.

“If the circumstances were different, I’d invite you to formally join the Decepticons.” Scourge had said to her. “You’d answer to me as one of my huntsmen, my Sweeps. Well, I’ll simply have to settle for hiring you, instead.”

She wouldn’t have wanted to become one of them. She had no desire to ‘answer to him’ as his subordinate, and he seemed to pick that up. But Scourge wasn’t the worst mech to work with, either- he had a keen optic and seemed to value collaboration over subjugation, which she appreciated. And if he could keep supplying her with that energon that they had so graciously freed from Starscream…

By this time of cycle a month after the incident, the Decepticons were bound to have moved into their newly-conquered planet by now. Nightbird hadn’t bothered to follow up, for concern of being detected by Decepticon radar, but she had gotten a comm from Scourge that he had at least survived the next encounter with Galvatron, and even gotten back on good terms with Cyclonus. In the wake of obtaining a ripe, juicy new planet, all conflicts had been forgotten- even including her escape from the Revenge.

And she wondered how Starscream had fared after her departure, when the rest of the Decepticons had caught up with Scourge. Perhaps he had fallen victim to the might of their leader’s fusion cannon, or the bite of the commander’s electro-whip. Perhaps he was rotting in some cage, deep below the very palace he had once commanded, forced to repent for his sins for an eternity without so much a glimpse of the outside world ever again.

All she knew was that he wouldn’t be flying anywhere.

Nightbird laughed to herself internally, reclining on the captain’s chair she had customized on the first day onboard her new ship. Crowned across the backing of the comfortable seat, decorated with knives and tasteful iron-wrought chains, was a pair of red-and-grey Seeker wings.