Just Like Family

by Nitrobot

Summary:

The war is over, Bumblebee is marrying the galaxy-famous popstar Rosanna on Earth, and he wants Starscream to come along as his best man! What could possibly go wrong for our intrepid Seeker?

...Well, try breaking a vital part of his ride (who also happens to be his do-gooder best friend Skyfire), robbing a nearby museum for a replacement, only to find out that the violently mechanophobic Black Block Consortia runs the place and that his crew are all trapped under a rock slide.
At least everyone's holoform projectors are still working. And Windblade is there to keep him sane. With the likes of everyone else he's trapped with, he'll need all the help he can get...

Notes:

This was a commission for Valong/jl1970; the plot and general dialogue are credited to her, I just brought it all together.

Chapter 1

“Skyfire research log; stellar cycle six thousand four hundred and fifty, vorn five, breem… fifteen, I think. Where to start with this one…” The mech’s holomatter sighed, slumped over in his own private corner of the high-raise they’d all taken sanctuary within. This high up the only rooms were empty offices and conference hubs, perfect for hiding people who really shouldn’t have been there. One side of the wall was all windows, strictly off-limits for anyone who didn’t want to immediately give themselves away to whoever was waiting for them outside. So Skyfire took refuge, both from the harsh daylight streaming in and from the reality of how trapped they were, under a desk as he told his story into the microphone clipped to his holomatter’s collar. At this point, it was the only physical link he had left to his real body.

“Well,” he gulped, working some energy into the speakers embedded in his holoform’s throat, “we set off for Earth about two vorns ago, since that’s where Bumblebee decided to hold his wedding. Starscream’s trine and his siblings, Windblade, Flamewar, Soundwave, Thunderblast… oh, and the Coneheads.” Though Dirge was the only one of the three that could join their most recent ill-fated excursion, with the rest of his trine left behind in the ship (AKA Skyfire’s body).

“After Cybertron’s… well, complete and total destruction, there’s not many good starships left around so everyone just piled into my alt mode. As they usually do.” He didn’t hide how much he longed to be with his alt mode again, or anywhere else, instead of sitting there talking to his databanks stranded in his broken body beyond the walls. “Sadly, my quantum core malfunctioned before we reached the halfway point. Obviously, without it we can’t do any hyperspace jumps, which will make getting anywhere in less than a thousand stellars almost impossible. Luckily, there was a planet nearby.” This planet, in fact. The very same one he’d suggested they take a look around.

“Amishena, the natives call it. Humans, like the ones on Earth. Some of them seem to have taken the interstellar tech we shared with them and just left home for somewhere else, though these ones seemed to have developed some kind of phobia to just about any technology. Anyway. They had a part in one of their museums that could work as a replacement drive until we got closer to the Cybertronian refugee zones. Good news is that our holomatter generators let us beam right into the building and we found what we needed without any issue. The bad news…” He sighed again, hissing through unfamiliar denta as he gripped his microphone.

“Well, I’ll need to give an itemised list of all that… number 1; Amishena’s organic layout suddenly betrayed us, and my alt mode is currently trapped under a rock fall outside. Which… admittedly, might have been my fault for keeping our frames hidden near a mountain. We’ve lost comms with the other Coneheads and just about everyone else’s bodies were damaged inside mine, so much so that their holo generators couldn’t switch off. But, of course, Starscream’s frame wasn’t touched at all, and of course he was threatening to beam away with Thrust and Ramjet to ‘go get help’. Though, really it was more like ‘leave us all behind’…”

Starscream was a selfish glitch at the best of times, true, but he wasn’t entirely consumed by the tunnel vision of his own ego. No-one, not even him at the very heights of his recklessness, was quite stupid enough to risk a holomatter being captured, not when it could wreak so much havoc on its patron bot. That, and Windblade asked him nicely enough to not be such an aft since there wasn’t much the Coneheads could even do to assist without working generators of their own. And, shockingly, Starscream actually listened to her. Maybe she had something to blackmail him with… it would have explained a lot about those two.

“Anyway,” Skyfire shook himself, “that’s not all. Number 2; we-“

“If you’re done talking to yourself over there, Skyfire,” Starscream’s voice cut right through the atmosphere like a scalpel through protoform, “we could use some help in making sure we all get out of this fragging place alive .”

Skyfire closed his eyes- not optics, eyes, he had to remind himself, and he wished he could have just kept them closed. But eventually they had to open, to face Starscream’s own holomatter waiting expectantly for him to finish, so that his ranting and raving would have Skyfire’s undivided attention.

“End of log.” Skyfire pocketed the microphone and prayed that his databanks weren’t too damaged along with his body, not before he had a chance to backup all his recordings. They’d survived the Great War, the fall of Cybertron, the coming of Unicron, but would they survive being around Starscream and his trine…? With the way his luck was going, Skyfire would be grateful for just having his spark able to be salvaged from his frame.

“So tell me, Starscream,” the scientist said as he approached the other mech, “how are you going to save us all this time?” It was only half sarcastic, cause Skyfire really was desperate enough for an escape to put some faith in the fellow Seeker. Cause Starscream, again, wasn’t entirely dumbed down by his own narcissism. In some cases, so long as he was left by himself, he could even be pretty damn smart.

Starscream gave a trademark sneer that somehow translated perfectly between his normal and human body- really, the two were identical when it came to expressions.

“I do hope you know that this is mostly your fault anyway,” he growled, pointing a blunt finger like it was a jagged claw at Skyfire. “If you hadn’t needed that fragging part in the first place, if you’d just run an inventory check before we left like I told you to do-“

“First of all,” Skyfire cut in, careful to keep his voice down unlike Starscream, “I have my mode inspected more often that you go and see a medic- and considering how often you get yourself hurt, that’s really saying something. Second, if you all,” he pointed past Starscream to indicate the rest of their sorry group, including those currently off looking for an escape route, “had thought to get hold of a proper starcraft instead of just expecting me to be fully functional every day of the stellar-!"

Starscream rolled his eyes and swatted at the air. "Come off it, Skyfire, you should be used to giving everyone free rides by now. What, were you expecting us to just fly all the way to Earth with our wings? We're good fliers, but we're not that good." It was rare that he ever admitted to a gap in his ego, even if it was just for the sake of an argument.

“I could be that good with enough energon,” Skywarp protested from the other side of the space.

"Well, even if I agreed with you,” Skyfire said to Starscream, “it’s not like I can just pack up a quantum core in my subspace whenever I feel like it!"

Starscream let out a rich chuckle, a sound that wouldn’t have fit inside any real human’s body. “Is that so? But you’re happy enough dragging around a whole cargo bay of desiccators and spectrographs and fume closets just in case you need them?”

Skyfire rolled his eyes, just as he would constantly be rolling his optics around a mech like this one. “I’m a scientist, Starscream,” he reminded him with the last of his patience already running on thin ice. “It’s what I was made for, and it’s what I do best.” Pit, Starscream himself should have been able to remember what it was like to hypothesise and theorise and analyse from his own scientific background. But it seemed like the Great War had managed to corrupt everyone’s databanks in some way.

“Ah, I see,” Starscream drawled, “so we just need to get you to a laboratory, and you’ll have us all rescued in a nanoklick.”

Skyfire bit his lip, before his temper made him say something they’d both regret. Primus, he knew that they were all supposed to be friends now that Unicron was gone, but Starscream had the magical ability of bringing out the worst of just about anyone he was around (except maybe Windblade, who seemed to have the reverse effect of bringing out the best in only Starscream. Very strange).

“Even if I had the greatest minds of Crystal City with me,” Skyfire sighed, “they wouldn’t be able to save any of us from your bad decisions-” Before he even finished the scold, Starscream was already putting on his special brand of theatrics.

“My bad decisions?! Excuse me, but who was it among us that pointed out this very building for us to hide within? Who was it that covered for everyone when we had to flee in the first place? Who was it that so selflessly volunteered to return to your bloated chassis so we could-?!”

“Starscream!” Windblade cut in from across the space, silencing him even though her voice was barely audible over his own. The Seeker looked across at the femme, as if surprised to find her still there with them and not away with the others trying to find a way out. Or, maybe he was just surprised to hear her at all. He looked over at her, and her eyes hardened like they were made of tempered glass (much like her optics) as she looked back at him. Something silent and indecipherable passed between them in a nanoklick, and then Starscream’s lingering threat devolved into ragged curses as he turned away to go brood with his holomatter’s arms crossed over its chest. Skyfire watched that blip in his temper with utter confusion, wondering what kind of black magic Windblade knew that could get Starscream of all mechs to stop from throwing a tantrum.

Whatever it was that those two had between them, Windblade didn’t try and chase after him. It was Thundercracker, ever the poor diplomat, who took it upon himself to go and pull Starscream back before he wandered off and got himself hurt.

"Just… simmer down, Screamer,” Thundercracker said, catching up to Starscream and holding his arms down by his side like he was a misbehaving sparkling. “Remember what Rung said in our therapy sessions. Try and see the positive side…. ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’, after all.”

Starscream grumbled as he shrugged free of Thunder’s grip. “I hate clouds. I hate it when you say that. I hate it when that fragging therapist says it. And I especially hate it when anyone says it and there’s not a single fragging ‘silver lining’ in sight!”

On the other side of the room, the side without windows exposing them to the threat lurking below outside, Skywarp’s holomatter avatar couldn’t help but giggle. Even if they were all trapped on a planet full of people who would have them melted down for scrap metal, at least he was still able to enjoy himself at Starscream’s expense.

“All I’m saying is,” Thundercracker sighed, following Starscream as he paced back and forth, “things aren’t all bad. At least we get to try out our new holomatters before we hit Earth.”

“As unoriginal as they all are,” Windblade muttered, not quite quiet enough to escape Starscream’s notice (perhaps his audios were specifically tuned to her voice, so he could hear it no matter how much it was dampened).

“And just what is that supposed to mean?” he demanded, sauntering towards Windblade and bending at the waist to look down at her shorter avatar. Whatever she’d done to make him stop from going off on Skyfire clearly didn’t extend to herself- not that she seemed very concerned. If anything, she looked quite proud of herself for getting Starscream so close to her so easily.

“Hey, yeah, what the Pit are you getting at?” Skywarp chimed in, replicating Starscream’s pose.

“What she means is…” Thundercracker trailed off, before realising that Windblade was probably insulting them. “Actually, wait, yeah, what is that supposed to mean?”

Windblade looked to each mech in turn as she rolled her eyes.

"I mean that the only differences between you three are the colors on your jackets and your hairstyles. You’re practically triplets!” She pointed to each of them as they suddenly scrutinised each other. ”Just cause you’re all Seekers doesn’t mean you can’t be a little creative with your avatars, especially when you’re supposed to be going to a friend’s wedding! Then again, I’m not really surprised. You’re all practically joined at the spark, after all.”

“Are not!” all three of them said in unison, before looking at each other with newfound scowls. Windblade didn’t even try to hide her smug smile. Skyfire recognised the tactic; she was trying to bring some levity to a hopeless situation. Better to be distracted by petty squabbles than to fall head-first into despair.

“Well, at least my avatar doesn’t look like a tacky lawn ornament!” Starscream retorted.

“At least mine’s has the best hair!” Skywarp insisted.

“At least mine’s has the nicest eyes!” Thundercracker declared.

Of course, they’d all spoken at the same time once again. And, once again. Windblade rolled her eyes at them all. Skyfire wondered if this is how the trine’s therapy sessions usually went, like trying to psychoanalyse a three-headed hydra. But then figured that he’d better step in, before Windblade started a new civil war.

“Look, Thundercracker’s right, it really isn’t as bad as it looks.” He got all their eyes off of Windblade, but then found himself at a loss. He blinked, wishing he was closer to his processing unit so there wasn’t so much lag between his thoughts. Eventually, he thought of something that could at least take the edge off the situation.

“At least we were lucky that Amishena wasn’t that far from our route,” he pointed out. “And that they had a quantum core in the first place." Even a society that had rejected technology still liked to keep some of it on display, even if it was just a warning against straying away from what was natural to them. He supposed the Cybertronian equivalent would have been shunning anything that wasn’t ore and metal.

Starscream brought a scowl to his face immediately, an old and familiar friend of his. "That may be, but it was your idea in the first place to take us through this backwater part of the galaxy. Where the only fragging planet less than a light year away is infested with earthlings who all hate technology-”

“And who live in Black Block Consortia territory!” Skywarp helpfully added, as if that wasn’t the worst part of all.

“Yes, thank you for that…” Starscream’s sarcasm was so heavy that it practically made his holoform sag from its weight. Or maybe that was just the burden of being around Skywarp. Sure, Skyfire had brought them to the planet itself (and, by consequence, to the very edge of the Consortia), but he was the one who got them all trapped here thanks to his stairway mishap...

“While you’re at it, Warp,” Thundercracker stated, all his attempts at peacekeeping now evaporating into nothing, “why don’t you tell us all about how you tripped on the outside stairs and caught the Consortia’s attention in the first place? I’m sure that’d make a great addition to Skyfire’s log.”

It would have, but Skyfire had been rudely interrupted before he could even mention it. Not that it was worth bringing that up and riling Starscream up even more- Pit, it was hard enough remembering them all piled up on those stairs, a holomatter traffic jam in front of those hundreds of humans and the Consortia troops patrolling around them. All thanks to Skywarp’s clumsiness, they had no choice but to run for their lives to any place that looked safe. The high-rise they’d found themselves in wouldn’t have been anyone’s first choice (a fact that Starscream even admitted as he made a beeline for it), but at least it was empty like the museum was.

And here they all still were, a breem later, still waiting for death by Consortia or boredom or just by them all strangling each other. Skywarp would likely be the first to go, and he knew it very well from how his holomatter started sweating.

“H-hey, how was I supposed to know it was a festival day?” he stammered. “Or that the Black Block had anything to do with it… jeesh, I wouldn’t have thought those guys even knew how to smile.”

The festival going on outside, of whatever kind of things the Amishena natives celebrated, explained why the museum was so deserted in the first place. Which Skywarp would have known all about, if he’d done his recon job properly.

“But they do know how to wipe us all off the face of the universe,” Thundercracker reminded him. “Which is precisely what they’re going to do when they find us in here.”

“They saw us running to here, didn’t they?” Windblade asked, rubbing at her painted cheeks like she just needed to keep her hands busy.

“I don’t know,” Thundercracker sighed. “None of us will know, not until they start blasting the doors down. We don’t even know if they can detect holomatter…” The Consortia shunned mechanicals so much that it was hard to tell how much they knew about their enemies, if they were usually too disgusted to even do autopsies on them. But after Cybertron’s dealings with Earth, they must have known that Cybertronians at least had the ability to make human avatars. And avatars that appeared out of nowhere, wearing clothes that didn’t match at all with the natives’, would only have one obvious explanation…

“Well, thanks to Skywarp’s efforts,” Starscream growled with another glare for his trinemate, “we still look as suspicious as we’d be while walking around with Autobot and Decepticon emblems all over ourselves."

“Reminder, Starscream; that outfit idea was rejected.”

Soundwave’s voice coming from the doorway was shocking for two reasons; one, because its robotic quality did not suit the organic shell it came from at all; and two, because no-one expected the recon team to return so soon. Behind him stood Sunstorm, Flamewar and Slipstream. Dirge and Thunderblast weren’t anywhere to be seen- but most of the mechs in the room took that latter absence as a blessing.

“Er… right, Soundwave,” Starscream said uneasily, as the stoic mech moved his holoform with a fluid gracefulness that only made his voice sound even more bizarre. “For good reason, too. Precisely so that incidents like this wouldn’t happen!” He muttered mostly to himself since Soundwave wasn’t even listening. The comm’s chief simply seated himself at a chair, like he intended to stay there for the rest of his life, while the other three avatars slinked into the room.

“Well?” Thundercracker asked Slipstream. “Any luck?”

Slipstream shook her head, tucking a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. “Other than the door we came through, this place seems completely locked down. Anyone not outside for the festival is holed up in their apartments. Or they’re one of the few left hanging around the corridors, looking about as suspect as the rest of us.”

“One way in, one way out,” Flamewar confirmed, leaning against the wall just out of sight of the nearest windowpane. “Unless we wanna try and draw more attention by making a hole in one of these walls.” She thumped her fist against the wall at her back, and the surface sounded hollow- not at all like the brick and cement most human architecture seemed to favour.

“It’d be one thing if our holoforms could fly,” Skyfire mused, wistfully imagining how easy it would be to just leap from the window ahead of him and soar over to where his alt mode lay with its broken quantum core and holo generator. A generator that would need to be fixed, or replaced… or tweaked.

“Although… would it be possible to make one fly?” He felt something in his face start glowing as he held his chin, a thousand equations and software permutations now running through his holoform’s processor and making it overheat already- even if they weren’t mechanical, they were subject to most of the same vulnerabilities of a normal Cybertronian body. Just one look at Sunstorm was proof of that- even his holoform couldn’t quite dampen the nuclear output from his frame.

Though, speaking of him, he seemed to relish the heat he radiated (in Sunstorm’s own words, it was ‘Primus’ pure light shining through him in any form he took’, but everyone knew it was because he stuck a nuclear reactor right next to his holomatter generator). In such small bodies, with such close quarters, it was much easier for him to torment Starscream with it.

“There were some windows on the ground floor,” Sunstorm suggested to his brother, leaning in so that his warmth would quickly make anyone shy away. “Perhaps you could crack them for us with your enchanting voice, Starscream.”

Starscream curled his lip and leaned back, not quite giving in to stepping back from his brother. “’Enchanting voice’…” he scoffed. “Says the one who’ll be singing at the wedding.”

Sunstorm beamed even brighter somehow, his dark skin now looking flushed alongside Starscream’s similar tone. “Well, who else would they choose for such an honor? I’m second only to the bride herself when it comes to my rendition of the Praxian Anthem.”

Skyfire felt himself bracing his audios for Sunstorm to start belting it out, like he’d done so whenever he felt like the journey to Earth was getting too quiet for him. But thankfully Starscream, acting truly selflessly for the first time since they’d been stranded, clamped his hand over his brother’s mouth before he could even think of opening it.

“Yes, yes, we’re all very well aware of that. No need to bore us another one of your fragging concerts,” Starscream said pointedly, just as Slipstream swatted across the back of his head. Sunstorm followed close behind, though he had the front of his head smacked as Slipstream walked past the two of them.

“Will you two shut up?” she hissed. “There won’t even be a wedding if we don’t get the Pit out of here!”

Starscream grumbled as he rubbed his forehead, before rolling his eyes. “I suppose you’re right… Bumblebee wouldn’t dare start the ceremony without his best man, after all.” At that, his scowl instantly became a proud grin.

‘And here we go again,’ Skyfire thought hopelessly. Whenever Starscream had an advantage, or a threat, or an offer over someone, he usually always saved it for the sweetest moment. But ever since Bumblebee had made that honourable offer of ‘best man’ to him, the Seeker had taken every opportunity he could to brag about it. Primus, it was like he took the title of ‘best’ in the most literal sense.

“What’s the matter, Skyfire?” Starscream drawled. “Jealous that Bumblebee obviously values my presence at his big day over anyone else’s?”

Skyfire snorted as he rolled his eyes. “Not as jealous as you are of him.”

Starscream’s smug grin faltered as his teeth clenched together. “And why, pray tell, would I be jealous of Bumblebee?”

“Well,” Skyfire shrugged, “cause he found a femme willing to marry him. I imagine that’s something you can only dream about.”

“You cheeky…! I’ll have you know that-!” But then Starscream silenced himself before he could let Skyfire know anything, clamping his hand tight over his own mouth just as he’d done with Sunstorm. At first Skyfire thought Windblade had flicked some sort of hidden switch again to calm him down (or maybe to shut him up before he said too much…?), but then he realised everyone else had gone silent too. And then he heard it.

 

Knock knock.

 

Someone at the door. The only door, the only way in and out of the room. One of their own wouldn’t need to knock. Which meant who was waiting on the other side was a stranger… an Amishenan? Or an entire Black Block platoon? Everyone was frozen, not knowing how to confront either of those very real possibilities.

Then the door opened, and everyone prepared to take their last breaths in their imposter bodies-

 

“Hellooooo! Look who IIIIII found after he got lost!”

-before releasing it all at once, a hush of furious relief.

 

“What the Pit, Thunderblast?!” Flamewar scolded, abandoning her place at the wall to put her hands on her hips. “Don’t fragging scare us like that!”

“And what were you doing looking for Dirge in the first place?!” Slipstream accused with a hiss.

Thunderblast, with her arms around Dirge’s neck, looked at the audience of glares with confusion, before eventually deciding that she was offended by them. “Well, jeez, excuse me for being raised with manners. Someone around here has to have some…”

“Would you just get in here already?” Starscream spat, dragging Thunderblast- and by extension Dirge- in by her wrist and then slamming the door shut behind them. “Primus, I don’t even know why you’re here in the first place…”

Thunderblast pouted as she fixed the cuff of her holoform’s shirt, giving herself a thorough wipe down with her hands as she rolled her eyes. "Well, duh, why wouldn’t I be here, Screamer? I’m one of Rosanna’s best friends, after all. Not to mention, her head bridesmaid.”

Just as Starscream was wincing from his most hated nickname, he then let out a barely-stifled snort. "She chose you as her bridesmaid? Dear Primus, every day I find more reasons to pray for that poor girl…" He abandoned Thunderblast to her own incredulous expression with a turn of his heel and a shake of his head, which was a surprisingly merciful treatment for the femme. But Skywarp had noticed his trinemate’s sudden good humour, and then caught it like it was an infection as he whirled on Thunderblast in Starscream’s place.

“No way, you? She chose YOU?” Skywarp tried to muffle his laugh by covering his mouth with his hand, but the only thing that worked was to try and compress his wild giggles into snorts. Even Thundercracker had to hide a smile.

Thunderblast was not nearly as amused.

“Stop laughing! What’s so funny about that? I’m the only one Rosie trusted with anything when she was Flip Sides- I even gave her her first secret identity, you know.”

“And what was that of, dare I ask?” Skywarp wheezed. “A waitress in Macadams? A stripper? Cause, hey, you’ve got the body for it if I do say so myself!” He was laughing too hard with Starscream to come up with any more options.

“Don’t be silly, Skywarp,” Starscream chuckled from a distance, “they’d never hire the likes of her!”

Thunderblast’s scowl could have made pure energon ore go sour. “Only because they couldn’t possibly afford me,” she spat, turning herself away from the two Seekers in disgust. “I only lend my company to those who deserve it, when they deserve it-“ She walked around them while they were still laughing at her expense, and her eyes glittered when she came behind to Starscream.

“Isn’t that right, Screamer?” Her head hovered over his shoulder, and from Skyfire’s understanding of where her hand was she seemed to pinch his butt- very hard, from how Starscream jumped away from her with a yelp. His smile was dead, replaced with a clenched frown that struggled to hold back his snarls.

“Why you-! How dare you-?! Windblade, tell her to behave herself!” He pointed at the tittering nautical femme while pleading to Windblade with his eyes.

“And just how am I supposed to do that, Starscream?” Windblade asked. Everyone knew that there was no-one, no-one in that room, maybe even no-one left in the galaxy, who could get Thunderblast to do anything she didn’t feel like doing at any given moment.

“I don’t know!” Starscream admitted, throwing his arms out in exasperation. “But you’re a femme, you know how she works! Figure something out, for Primus’ sakes…!”

Despite the danger that already existed outside the building, the inside of the room became a minefield in its own right. And Starscream had just sauntered right on top of a live bomb. Windblade’s eye twitched as the other glared like the end of a fizzling charge at him, and none of the other mechs in the room dared to say anything (even Soundwave seemed to lessen the volume of his vents).

“For your own good,” she said slowly, “and because I know you don’t really mean it, I’m going to ignore how utterly ignorant that statement was.”

“Ditto,” Slipstream growled, with Flamewar standing behind her with crossed arms.

Starscream blinked at the femmes turned on him, but wisely said nothing more for the few seconds it took for them to let him go from their gazes. He didn’t seem to realise how narrowly he’d avoided an all-out war against him as he rolled his eyes and squared his shoulders.

“Well, Screamer,” Thunderblast tutted as she appeared next to him, “if that’s your attitude towards girls, then it’s no wonder we never worked out.”

Starscream first flinched away from her, though the rest of him seemed to freeze just a nanoklick later. “Wh… what on Cybertron are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on now!” Thunderblast cooed. You know exactly what I mean, don’t you, Screamer…?”

It must have been the shock or disgust of such an implication that made Starscream take so long to realise what it even was. And when he did, he clenched his jaw just before it let loose a repulsed howl.

“I… the…! You’re nothing but a damned troublemaker, you know that? You and I both know that there was never anything to work out in the first place, you simpering-!”

“Now now,” Thundercracker said quietly, appearing at the other side of his trinemate, “didn’t Rung tell you to work on your temper, Starscream?”

“To Pit with Rung!” the Seeker shouted. “And to Pit with the lot of you!” He shoved both Thunders aside as he stamped to the door, flinging it open and storming out. His footfalls echoed behind him down the corridor, drawing everyone’s attention to his dramatic exit.

“…Was it something I said?” Thunderblast asked with a smile, like she was proud of finding his breaking point.

“This is the Battle of Tesarus Square all over again,” Slipstream mumbled bitterly, not at all shocked by the outburst.

“Should we go get him, TC?” Skywarp asked Thundercracker quietly, as if Starscream could still hear them and would come marching back for a target to take his anger out on. The blue mech curled his lip, and Skyfire could only guess that he was weighing up the consequences of bringing back an obviously unstable Starscream vs letting him cool off- or go and get himself in even more trouble. With all their therapy sessions together, they would have known the best course of action usually, but this was a novel situation for just about everyone. Eventually it was Windblade who approached to make the decision for the two mechs.

“Leave him for now. He’ll be back,” she promised- or maybe it was a threat, a warning that they all should be prepared for his return. Either way, the remaining Seekers were happy enough to defer to her as they only moved forward to close the door.

Well, that was one way to deal with Starscream, Skyfire figured- just let him burn himself out. He just hoped his mood lasted long enough for the rest of them to think of a way out of this mess without any distractions.

“Why don’t we go up to the roof?” Thundercracker suggested, valiantly ignoring how his trine was slowly falling apart all over again. “At least there we can get a look of the perimeter and see if there even is anyone outside.”

“And we could see how far away Skyfire’s body is, maybe even try to signal to Thrust and Ramjet,” Windblade added on. “If it’s visible from there, at least.” She looked to the scientist as if he could confirm it for her, but with the state his frame was in he could barely even sense his own spark from this range.

“B-but…” Dirge’s eyes swelled in fear. “We’ll be exposed! For all we know, they’ve got a hundred snipers in position just waiting for one of our heads to pop up-!”

“Dirge,” Slipstream interrupted with a hand on his shoulder, “you’re hyperventilating again.”

“Am I? Am I really?” He asked through the second-long gaps that his frantic breaths allowed him. “Oh, Primus, I’m gonna go in stasis, or whatever holoforms do-“

“You are not,” Slipstream insisted, now taking firm hold of both shoulders and pulling him around so he faced her. “Just look at me, and breathe normally.”

Dirge gulped and nodded as he looked at her, and slowly he regained control of his artificial lungs. As his breaths quietened, the sound of Skywarp snickering nearby could be heard.

“What’s so funny, Skywarp?” Slipstream accused, looking away from Dirge now that she didn’t need to be an anchor for him.

“Oh, nothing,” Skywarp dismissed with a shrug. “Just that you two seem to treat each other like Windblade and Starscream do.”

Slipstream blinked, and Windblade shook her head as if to rouse herself from a daydream at the sound of her name.

“And what d’you mean by that?” Windblade asked, planting her hands on her hips as she confronted the purple mech.

“I think you know exactly what I mean.” Skywarp grinned and wiggled his eyebrows at her, which only served to confuse the likes of Skyfire even more. Primus, just what was going on between Windblade and Starscream that no-one was talking about?! Whatever it was, whatever Skywarp was trying to get at, Windblade didn’t approve of it.

“I think you don’t know your own trine nearly as well as you think you do,” she hissed as she leaned into him. “Hence why you all ended up with Rung to try and fix that.”

Skywarp’s smug grin suddenly fell, and he opened his mouth only for mute stutters to come out at first. He eventually coaxed them into words with his muffled outrage. “Why don’t you just stay out of things that are none of your business, when you clearly don’t know what the frag you’re talking about?”

Windblade only smirked at his indignation. “Maybe it’s more of my business than you think,” she said quietly, like a whisper from her vents. “And maybe I know more about Starscream than you’d think. Then again, you think you’re already so clever that you don’t even know just how much you don’t know.”

Skywarp didn’t scowl anymore. Instead his optics gained a new light that he regarded the femme with, like he’d just learned one of those tantalising things he didn’t know before.

“Leave him, Windblade,” Slipstream sighed, steering the other femme away from Skywarp as he kept staring after her. “Being an idiot is his hobby. Dirge, you feeling any better?”

The Conehead nodded with a weary gulp. “Yeah… a little. Just regretting ever coming along in the first place.”

“Don’t say that,” Slipstream scolded. “Where else were you gonna go, huh? This is just the last hurdle before we get to Earth. Before we can finally leave the Decepticons behind. That’s why we’re here, right? Just think of getting back to your trine… okay?” She met his eyes and wouldn’t let go of them until he at least nodded.

“Okay… I will,” Dirge said. “I-I’ll try, at least.” He even managed a smile for her, and kept it up until she looked away.

First the mystery of Windblade and Starscream, now Slipstream and Dirge… just what had been going on around Cybertron, before its destruction, that Skyfire had never noticed before?

“What about you, Thundercracker?” Flamewar asked the poor blue Seeker, one of the very few in that room not completely distracted by family squabbles, as she leaned on his shoulder. “What’re you hoping for on Earth? You got put on guard duty at another ‘Con prison over there? Or are you just tagging along for Bumblebee’s bachelor party?”

Thundercracker scowled down at her, physically pulling away like his EM field was trying to repel her own. “I’m the ringbearer, actually,” he muttered, clearly as much of a fan as her as Starscream was of Thunderblast (who was still in the middle of the two Seekers’ pointless bickering).

“Huh.” Flamewar snorted. “A ladykiller like you, I’d have thought you’d be allergic to weddings.”

“Only when it has the likes of you in attendance, Flamewar. Excuse me.” He turned away from her and sulked off before she could free herself from his shoulder, but as she lost balance Skywarp swooped in to help her stay upright.

“Damn, rejected by the big blue bore…” He tutted in disapproval after his trinemate. “Well, since he’s not interested, how about I do the honor of keeping you entertained when we hit Earth?” He flashed her what he must have thought was a winning smile, but to Skyfire it just looked like he was showing them to a medic for inspection. For a second it looked like Flamewar was actually about to humor him… but her smile in return was tight and pitying.

"Sorry, Warpy, but I'm not into purple. Besides, not every woman likes a guy who puts his plug in every socket he sees.” She winked like he would know exactly what she meant, and then floated away in the opposite direction of Thundercracker, back to her place on the wall.

Skywarp hissed in a breath and dramatically clutched over where his sparkchamber would have been on his normal body.

"Ouch… just pull my spark right out of my chest, why don’t you?" Then he heard Thundercracker starting to laugh, and he tore his mockingly wistful gaze away from Flamewar to glare at the blue mech. Because of course he was laughing over Skywarp’s rejection, even as Skywarp turned it into the joke that it was all along. There was nothing else to laugh at, trapped in this high rise with the Black Block Consortia surely closing in with every passing minute.

And yet the only people who even seemed aware of that were Slipstream, Dirge, Windblade, and Skyfire himself. Starscream was ranting at his brother about his dating choices, Thunderblast was relishing the fight over her, Skywarp was about to go and start a fight with Thundercracker, and Soundwave-

Oh, Skyfire had almost completely forgotten about him. When he sat so still and silent, it was easy to overlook him even as a human. Which was what made him so valuable to the likes of Megatron a lifetime ago.

“Well, Soundwave?” he asked the seated mech. “You got any ideas for us?” Of all the bots stuck together in that room, he must have been the most qualified for saving them. He was a first officer, after all. A war legend, an immortal as far as Cybertron’s history was concerned… and yet when he turned his head to face Skyfire, he just slowly shook it.

“Current possibility of survival: 5%,” he helpfully informed them all, still in that sterile monotone that not even his holoform’s speaker could cure.

“What if Starscream wasn’t here?” Slipstream asked, rhetorical to herself but Soundwave of course took it as a serious query.

“Hypothetical possibility of survival… 8%,” he decided. So even if the source of all their squabbles wasn’t there, even if Starscream had gone ahead and just left them behind like he’d threatened to, they’d still end up likely dead.

“Well, we’re doomed,” Dirge stated, with an admirable amount of resignation. “We’re all fragging doomed.”

Slipstream rolled her optics as she surveyed the room with all its own isolated micro-dramas going on. “With a team like this, I could’ve told you that as soon as we left.”

“Not so much a team,” Skyfire observed, with his eyes on Thundercracker and Skywarp bickering over their lady problems, Flamewar and Thunderblast snickering together, Sunstorm and Soundwave both sitting as stoic and unhelpful as each other. “More like a family.”

A very loose-knit, currently very fragged family. And minus one- or, in Soundwave’s words, minus 3%- of what they should have been. With nothing else to do and no-one at each other’s throats anymore, Skyfire figured he should probably go and retrieve Starscream before he inevitably found a way to hurt himself.

Chapter 2

“Now, if I was a Seeker with an ego bigger than my processor stranded in a deserted building on a planet full of technophobes who want me dead, where would I be off sulking…?” That was the only way Skyfire could think of to try and hunt down Starscream. It was not as scientific a method as he would have liked, but he had to work with what he had (and with what Starscream was, which was better left unsaid when the Seeker was in this kind of state).

Skyfire trawled the empty corridors, keeping close to the walls, looking around every corner just in case a Consortia patrol had managed to find their way inside. He figured that Starscream wouldn’t have gone downstairs, which limited him to the current floor... or the roof. Maybe Starscream was thinking of jumping from it out of desperation to escape, knowing his holoform wouldn’t end up a splatter of blood and organic mess on the ground.

Or… maybe he’d done good on his threat to beam his holoform back to Skyfire’s alt-mode, and was now just getting ready to pilot it out of Amishena’s atmosphere, waving them all farewell from the cockpit. Even while stuck in his holoform, Skyfire was sure he’d notice if his systems were being modified, if anyone was tinkering with his autopilot… right? Surely he would. Or, better yet, surely Starscream had a shred more decency in him than to actually try something like-

“Ah, there you are.” Skyfire almost missed him completely, as he passed by the storage room door left ajar. Starscream’s holoform was curled up between shelves of cleaning supplies, his dark face lost in the shadows and hidden behind his knees.

“Go away,” he groaned into his jumpsuit.

“I will,” Skyfire promised, wishing he really could. “So long as I have you following behind.”

Starscream grunted, a muffled scoff as he turned his head so that it faced the wall beside him, his forehead resting on his knees. “I’m not going anywhere. Not with you. Certainly not with everyone else back there dreading my return…”

If it was anyone else he was dealing with, Skyfire would have just rolled his optics and left them to get over themselves. But Starscream was far from ‘anyone else’ that he knew of. No, despite all the misguided attempts at cloning and reformatting and reprogramming to try and replace him with something more manageable for the Decepticon hegemony, there would only ever be one Starscream. The likes of whom would surely outlive them all, whether he wanted to or not.

Of course, that was assuming Starscream would manage to drag himself out of this familiar pit he’d fallen back into.

“Starscream, you’re smart enough to know that you’re not doing yourself any favors staying here all by yourself,” Skyfire scolded. “And you’re not doing the rest of us much good with it, either.”

“Don’t treat me like a sparkling throwing a tantrum, Skyfire,” Starscream growled, snapping his head up like he’d just been pinched on the butt by Thunderblast again. “Like the rest of them are. I know what you all really think.”

“Really?” Skyfire sighed. “And what might that be?”

Starscream unclenched his jaw, pulling his lips back down over his teeth as he retreated into himself again.

“That I’m an arrogant, manipulative and self-absorbed ass,” he muttered. “Sometimes even worse than that. That it was my trinemate who fragged up this entire operation in the first place, so I have to take responsibility for it. And that, with everyone bickering and arguing, I’d be better off left behind.”

The foolproof way to know if Starscream was truly upset and not just putting on the usual act for sympathy; he always seemed to become alarmingly self-aware. Skyfire usually treasured such moments, rare as they were, but he didn’t have time for that and neither did everyone else. He was no therapist or expert in taming career narcissists (not like what Rung must have been if he lasted so long treating Seeker), but he had a feeling he knew how to get Starscream back to his usual undefeated self.

“Do you think Windblade shares that opinion?” Skyfire asked, hiding a smile when he saw Starscream’s head jolt up at the very mention of her name. The Seeker blinked, like it was a reflex action that he’d only just taken account of, before shaking his head so that his hair flew out in their thick black strands.

“How should I know?” he snapped. “She’s a Cityspeaker, not a Seekerspeaker.”

‘I’d say getting through to you in any way is more of a feat than talking to a Titan,’ Skyfire said to himself. But to Starscream, he just shook his head- a gentle, amused tilt of the neck, of someone who knew exactly what the other mech was trying to hide- and he knelt down to catch Starscream’s holoform optics before they could stubbornly look away.

“You know I can’t speak for everyone else,” Skyfire told him. “But I don’t want to leave anyone behind. And I know for a fact you don’t really want to, either.”

“I didn’t at first, not until Thunderblast started talking to me,” Starscream mumbled, habitual arrogance forcing his denial to try and last for as long as possible.

“If you were serious about doing that,” Skyfire said, “then you would have done it already.”

“I’m just thinking it over,” Starscream insisted, slowly uncurling his limbs and staring down at his empty gloved hand. “Weighing up the pros and cons.”

“And what are they sitting at right now?”

Starscream kept looking at his hand, tightening and untightening it into a fist, looking like he was about to slide it out of his lap and onto the floor below him before he decided to keep it upright.

“Balanced, more or less,” he decided. “Now I’m just waiting for you to give me a reason to tip the scales one way or the other.” Starscream now met Skyfire’s optics, an open and brazen challenge. Daring him to debate, to prove him wrong.

Skyfire narrowed his eyes, sitting back on his heels as the vents on his nose flared. If Starscream insisted on being so annoyingly pragmatic, then fine. Skyfire knew exactly what to say.

“Alright. Say you beamed away right now, with no warning. Went back to your body, hijacked mine’s, took off and made it all the way to Earth. Think of everything that could go wrong when it’s just you piloting everything. You were a scientist once. You know about variables. Energon, speed, gravity, mass, deceleration, one mech can’t manage all of that unless it’s only his own alt-mode he has to worry about. That’s how I can fly with so many passengers. I worry about me, and my co-pilots handle everything else. But you? How would you look after yourself and my alt-mode? Not to mention the two Coneheads. If they wake up and find that you left behind Dirge, that you left behind your own trine. Pit, if Windblade knew you were even contemplating such a thing-“

Starscream’s face had been steadily falling, losing that thick smug veneer, before it finally dissolved and he admitted defeat with a flick of his hand. “Alright, alright, you’ve made your point. Smart aft.”

Skyfire couldn’t help but smirk, at the risk of turning into something exactly like the mech before him (though, nowadays, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing).

“You see, Starscream? You won’t leave without us, cause you know the variables are all working against you. We won’t leave without you, cause we don’t want to. And even if we did, we can’t. After all... you’re the groom’s best man.”

Starscream huffed an almost-laugh, as an almost-smile twitched at his mouth. “Is... Thundercracker with you?” he asked.

“No. But I can’t promise Skywarp won’t pop in out of nowhere like he’s fond of doing.”

Starscream looked away for a moment, before stretching his legs out and slowly pulling himself up onto his feet.

“Well, then. Better get going. The best man can’t just leave everyone deprived of his wisdom and company. They’ll have surely driven each other insane by now without me.” He was talking like it was all his idea to head back to them, and that he was just waiting on Skyfire to get a move on. Typical Starscream. But Skyfire was almost glad to see it. The scientist fell in step beside the other mech as they made their way back through the building, conscious of how smug Starscream had happily made himself. No wonder, since the ‘best man’ was such a high honor for a groom to bestow upon someone else- it was right there in the name.

But Starscream being given that honor… when Bumblebee was first told about the concept of weddings from his new human friends and his Earth-based bride, the ceremony and tradition and symbolism of all the little pieces of a single day, he was apparently enamoured. More than just the novelty of such dedication to the celebration, he wanted to embrace the customs of the humans and unite them with the ones he and Rosanna were raised with.

The whole ‘wedding’ thing made more sense to humans, Skyfire supposed, since one day in their short lives would be much more worthwhile remembering. But for almost-immortal Cybertronians, life was measured in centuries if not whole millennia. Their sparkbonding parties would last for at least a human month, the two celebrating bots never leaving each other’s side as the bond took full hold of their selves (maybe Bee and Rosanna would partake in that after the wedding- the ‘honeymoon’, humans apparently called it).

The point was, it was a big deal for Bee. So why the Pit did he choose Starscream to play such a large part in it? Skyfire had wondered that since Bee had announced it on the invitations, and was always too polite to get an answer straight from the groom. Starscream must have known why he was chosen though, and had just never elected to reveal it for some reason. Maybe it wasn’t a reason he could brag about.

"Honestly,” Skyfire sighed as they reached a turn in the hallway, having endured Starscream’s proud smirk out of the corner of his optics for two whole klicks. “Of all the mechs Bee could have chosen, he went with you?”

Starscream’s eyebrows knitted together as he shrugged his shoulders. "You could say we're good buddies. He trusts me."

"Is that so...?” A Decepticon being trusted by an Autobot. A Decepticon like Starscream being trusted at all. Skyfire would have laughed if he didn’t know that Starscream was being serious. But, even then, he still felt a bubble of amusement in his throat from how truly ironic Bee’s trust in Starscream was. “I’d thought someone like Bee would have been a lot more careful on that front.”

Starscream’s pace faltered and he came to a stop, as if he really had to try and think about what Skyfire was referring to. "And just what are you trying to get at?”

So the Seeker really was going to play dumb. It never suited him. Skyfire looked back at him from a little ways further down the corridor, his hands on his hips.

"It just seems to me,” Skyfire called to him, “like Bee hasn’t been told the story of a certain young, up-and-coming scientist who was the best man to another groom, and who stole the bride right out from under him-“

"Oh. That… t-that was years ago…” Starscream’s face twitched, the recognition finally settling in as Skyfire went on.

"-an hour before their bonding was supposed to happen-"

"That was a selfless act of mercy on my part, you know,” Starscream protested, “Skyline should have been grateful that I saved her from that loser-!“

Skyfire closed the distance between himself and Starscream now, his fingers curled tight together as he listened to the Seeker’s sorry defence that hadn’t changed at all since that very day.

"Yes, I can’t imagine why my sister wouldn’t be grovelling at your peds for seducing her, breaking her spark and then dropping her like hot slag off the side of Darkmount!"

“Well, that still doesn’t mean you had to go and hammer my faceplate in over it! Do you have any idea how expensive it was for a full reconstruction of such a pristine work of art!?” Starscream was about to jab Skyfire’s chest with a pointed finger, but he stopped himself when he saw the scientist’s own hands were balled at his sides in a familiar looking fist.

“I know exactly how much it cost,” Skyfire informed him, “cause you tried to forward the repair bill to my lab!”

“If you can spend three hundred thousand credits on a new spectrograph,” Starscream said pointedly, “you can spare some to fix the damage you caused!”

With that, the two mechs stood bristling at each other as the hallway around them seemed to shrink. Claustrophobia- another human word. Fear of tight spaces with no easy escape. The building was hardly a tight place, but there didn’t seem to be any easy escape short of jumping out a window.

Starscream was the type who might go and try that even without wings to carry him away, but in this case he just crunched his nose and walked past Skyfire. It was about as mature a response as you could ever expect from the likes of him, and Skyfire was almost impressed as he turned to catch up with him.

"You deserved it anyway, you know,” Skyfire muttered after a minute of silence, enough for the performative anger to cool off. If anything, Skyfire just looked back on those many centuries ago with a smile.

A lot worse had happened during the war, after all. No-one on any side, no matter what symbol they wore on their chest, was innocent. If one was to try and give every single bot what they deserved for all they had done, there would be no-one left alive to tell the cautionary tales. Skyfire had even played his own shameful part in what was now the darkest and most regrettable chapter of Cybertron’s history, and he’d done all he could to leave it behind. Starscream was the same, he was sure. Bumblebee’s trust in him, no matter how nonsensical it was to an outsider, was proof enough that the Seeker walking beside Skyfire was not the same one who had walked beside Megatron.

Shouldn’t that proof be good enough? Not for a scientist, no. But Skyfire was not just a scientist- he was also a friend. And, for a friend, it was good enough.

When the two mechs returned to the lower floor, to where the others were taking shelter, Slipstream was the first to greet them.

“Welcome back, Starscream. Did you manage to find something worthwhile to do while you were sulki-?” Before she could set off another nuclear reaction in Starscream, Thundercracker knocked a hand against her shoulder to silence her. She scowled and stuck her tongue out at him for the flimsy attack, but it had the intended effect and she said nothing further. Windblade was also silent though, when she and Starscream saw each other, she nodded to him and he nodded back.

Seriously, just what the Pit was going on with those two?! If Skyfire didn’t get off this damn planet in the next breem, it was going to drive him crazy.

“So what did we miss?” he asked, eager to hear if anything good had come of Starscream leaving everyone to some precious klicks of peace.

“We have a plan,” Sunstorm assured. “Sort of. Better than nothing, at least.”

“Potential success rate of said plan lies at a maximum of 15%,” Soundwave added, just in case Skyfire got his hopes up too high. But that wouldn’t happen until he heard the plan for himself, which Thundercracker was just starting to do.

“There’s a stairway at the far end of that corridor.” Thundercracker pointed to the only other exit of the room they were trapped in. “Looks like maintenance access to the roof. We’ll get up there and see how far away your alt-mode is.” Now he pointed to Skyfire, who stood with his arms crossed over his chest. “We might even be able to catch Thrust and Ramjet’s attention... if they haven’t been knocked into stasis.”

That was it? They were going to go up, where anyone could see them from leagues in any direction, and just hope the Coneheads happened to be looking in the right place? It was ridiculously risky, unfathomably incompetent, utterly foolish-

“Right.” Starscream dusted his hands together as he stepped out of Skyfire’s shadow (while the scientist himself was still standing completely dumbfounded). “So who’s going up to do it?”

If anyone was surprised at Starscream’s drastic change in attitude, they were wise enough not to call attention to it. Windblade even gave him a thumbs-up as Flamewar brought herself forward.

“All of us,” she answered. “Don’t want to risk anyone being stuck inside, in case the building gets raided. It’s important that we stick together, in any case.” Thankfully she didn’t point out that Starscream himself had broken that golden rule just a few klicks beforehand, and the Seeker made no argument as he swept himself toward the door to the stairwell that would hopefully save them all.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” he demanded. “Standing still will just make them find us more quickly.”

Skyfire had opened his mouth to try and remind everyone that standing on top of the tallest building for miles around would also make the Consortia find them all very, very quickly, but logic was quickly drowned out by everyone’s eagerness to leave. Windblade, the one standing closest to Starscream, was the first to voice her approval.

“I agree. Soundwave, you take the lead.”

“Affirmative.” Soundwave, the one who had said they had an 85% chance of being annihilated by their chosen course of action, also had no qualms with taking them right towards that annihilation. The only ones who didn’t immediately follow behind him were Skyfire (whose tongue was still flailing while trying to get people to stop), Dirge and- strangely- Slipstream. Dirge had cloistered himself in a corner with his hands over his head, still mumbling his doomsday prophecies, but Slipstream seemed to coax him towards the stairwell with unheard words and gentle hands on his shoulders.

Primus; first Skyfire had seen that Windblade able to calm Starscream down from a nuclear tantrum, and now Slipstream was capable of leading the most terminally paranoid of the Coneheads right into the jaws of doom. Just put wings and a jet engine on a femme and you’d have someone who likely could have single-handedly ended the war with just a few stern words to Megatron and Optimus. Maybe if Elita One had been a Seeker…

But Skyfire swiftly abandoned his thoughts when he realised he was the only one left standing in the office room, and he ran towards the corridor now crowded with holoforms.

“Stairwell allows only single-file access,” Soundwave told them all from the front, holding open the door that would lead them onto what must have been a way for emergency roof access (and this was definitely an emergency). “Maintain adequate distance between persons to increase chances of survival.”

“Survival. Great. My favorite word…” Dirge barely stopped himself from stuttering as he held onto his own arms, watching Flamewar follow after Soundwave up the stairs towards the unseen heavens.

“Aw,” Thunderblast cooed, “so I can’t get close to Starscream to grab his butt again?”

This time, though Starscream was standing close enough to Thunderblast for her to try and grab parts of him all over again, the Seeker just growled through his gritted teeth.

“Just go ahead and try it, Thunderblast,” he dared. “See if the railing on those stairs will save you.”

Thunderblast pouted at his threat. “You’re no fun, y’know? Not like Skywarp was…”

At the sound of his name drawled out in such a sickening simper, Skywarp’s head snapped towards her (and Slipstream tried to stifle a burst of laughter). “What was that? Who said what?”

“Oh, nothing, Warpy,” Thunderblast assured with a disturbingly-huge grin. “Just reminiscing to myself…”

Sunstorm made the smart decision and followed after Flamewar, leaving the danger zone far behind while Skywarp spluttered.

(So he was desperate enough to flirt with femmes outside his league like Flamewar, yet not desperate enough to accept the same from femmes like Thunderblast. Skyfire almost wished he was a social scientist, so he could make use of that information in a study).

“Warpy!?” Skywarp looked appalled, and Starscream looked vindicated at one of his trinemates knowing the same pain that being called ‘Screamer’ caused him. “That’s not-! You can’t just-!”

“Actually,” Thunderblast interrupted with a finger on her chin, “how come you can’t just teleport upstairs and save us the climb? Seems pretty selfish, Warpy, especially when your little stair accident got us stuck here in the first place!”

“I can’t teleport with my holoform, you dumbaft! And stop calling me that!!” Skywarp rolled up his holoform’s sleeve, like he was about to try and grab Thunderblast (and not just her butt), but the giggling femme fled just as he moved towards her.

“Oh, looks like it’s my turn!” she called out as she pelted up the stairs. “See you all up there!” To add insult to mental injury, she gave Skywarp a wave of her fingers before she left his sight. He held himself back from running right after her, if only because Thundercracker was standing between himself and the door.

“How…?! She…! Of ALL the friends for Rosanna to make us drag along-!” Skywarp made a sound like he was biting down on his tongue.

“Just ignore her, Skywarp,” Thundercracker advised as he prepared to make his ascent. “She’s just a secret agent trying to get us all to kill ourselves, to save the Consortia the trouble.” His sarcasm was as thick as the stairwell railing gripped under his hand, as he climbed up and out of vision. Yet Skywarp didn’t seem to detect the joke at all.

“Really…?” He turned to Starscream with eagerness in his wide eyes. “Can I push her off the stairs then?!”

Starscream looked tempted to give permission, but then he rolled his eyes and just pushed his trinemate towards the door. “You have done more than enough damage with stairs today without adding holoform homicide to the list.” Even as he said it, Starscream seemed to stand vigil at the door just to make sure Skywarp didn’t trip and fall again.

No matter how acidic their words to each other were, the three members of a trine spoke truly with their actions. Skyfire had never had a trine, because he was not a true born Seeker, so his only experience of their dynamics was from observing Thundercracker, Skywarp and Starscream. Even after so many years around them, he still found the three of them put together unpredictable at best and downright confusing at worst.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” he muttered, recalling the saying from Earth that he’d struggled to make sense of until now, with the dust of the war finally settling and the survivors trying to make their own peace with the galaxy they’d been left with.

“But you’d be surprised just how some people can change,” Windblade told him, though she was still looking directly at Starscream as she spoke her cryptic words. “You go up next, Skyfire. I’ll come up behind to keep an optic on Starscream.”

Skyfire had assumed that the trine would want to stick together, but Starscream didn’t seem to be making any move toward the stairs. It was as if he knew that, in some situations, the three of them were better off separated. Or maybe it was something to do with Windblade (and that ‘something’ would likely weigh on Skyfire’s mind for years to come if he didn’t find out what it was).

“Good idea.” Skyfire wasn’t sure what to expect beyond the door, other than what he’d seen outside of how far the ground below was, so he didn’t give himself too much time to consider what could come before he stepped onto the steel structure- which seemed to shake under his feet- and started to climb.

Though the building wasn’t as high as Cybertron’s starscrapers, the stairwell was high enough off the ground that the temperatures were less than comfortable. Not that they bothered Skyfire’s holoform, he was just worried about the metal of the stairwell shrinking from the cold… maybe that was why it seemed to be shaking all around him. Or, more likely, it was just the others’ footsteps from higher up. Skyfire leaned over the railing to crane his neck upwards, to see where everyone was, and almost immediately regretted doing so.

The stairway followed the shape of a tight spiral that seemed never-ending as it twirled upwards. The effect was easily disorienting, and Skyfire still felt dizzy as he looked out over the horizon for any sign of his alt-mode or the rockfall that had crushed it. But all he could see were the steps in front of him, and all he could hear were the voices of Thundercracker and Skywarp drifting down on the wind.

“Hey, TC? In case we don’t get out of this alive-”

“I know what you’re going to say, Warp, and don’t you dare. We will get out of this dump, and we will get to the wedding on time, and I will throw some cake right in your face-”

“What? No, no, I’m not gonna say any mushy sentimental slag like what Rung made us say. I just wanted to ask you something.”

“Oh... Like what?”

"Well, you lived with the earthlings for a while, right? So you must have heard some of the jokes they say around there…"

"I… suppose so?"

"So… when I was with the G.I. Joes, one of them told me a joke. I didn't understand it at the time, and… well, I still don’t."

"That was years ago and it still bothers you to this day?”

"I’ve had a lot of time to remember things, okay! Anyway, you’ll want to hear this joke. It’s about Arcee. And Springer too, but mostly her.”

Skyfire’s audial receptors tuned in on the mention of Arcee- after the dust of the war had settled, it had emerged that she’d had a secret fling with a certain high-ranking Decepticon Seeker. She’d always denied it, and no mech had ever come forward about it...

"I see...” Thundercracker’s voice tried (and failed) to only be moderately interested. “And how did it go?"

"It was like this- ‘What did Springer get after looking at Arcee?’”

"…A sword through the optic?"

"Nope. An Erector!"

There was a pause, as if Skywarp was expecting laughter.

"...Yeah, I don’t get it either,” Skywarp confessed. “D’you know what it means?"

"How should I know?" Thundercracker’s scoff was almost buried by a sudden thud as Skyfire almost lost his footing on a step.

“Well, cause if anyone knows about humans, it’s you, right?” Skywarp implored, raising his voice over the elements. “Hey, you ever tell Arcee about that woman from Earth? That friend of yours?”

Thundercracker’s stutters of shock almost shook the steel of the railing under Skyfire’s hand, though Skyfire of course had no idea why he was shocked.

“I… Wh… She’s…. she’s none of Arcee’s business. And she’s none of your business, either! And neither is Arcee! If you want to talk about friends, how about you tell me what you got up to with Thunderblast all those years ago?”

“I di-I didn’t, I-I-You shouldn’t listen to her!”

And it was from then on that the two trinemates dissolved into aimless bickering back and forth, forcing Skyfire to deaden his audio receptors so he didn’t have to hear it. He had to commend Slipstream and Windblade for being able to ‘get used’ to situations like what was going on far above. Either they’d been sparked with a miraculously high tolerance to nonsense, or they’d acquired the tolerance from having to spend so much time around the trine. Either way, Skyfire didn’t envy their situations. He hoped that the two mechs would have talked themselves out by the time he reached the top of the stairs-

But then he heard another Seeker’s voice, this time from below.

“Skyfire, get down here! We have a… situation!” Starscream had to yell because of the wind and the distance, though if Skyfire’s audials had been tuned down any lower he might still not have heard him.

Considering it was a summons from Starscream, it was unlikely to be an emergency. Could Skyfire just pretend like he hadn’t heard and keep climbing…?

No, he eventually decided. He was stuck between two rocks and a hard place- no matter which way he went, he’d have argumentative Seekers to deal with. At least Thunderblast wasn’t waiting down where Starscream was. The Seeker was seen waiting for him after five landings of descent. He stood against the stair railing while tapping his foot impatiently.

“There you are! Get over here.” He grabbed Skyfire’s collar as he pulled him further down the stairs until they reached the others. Windblade stood in front of Slipstream, who was kneeling down on the metal platform trying to stop something from trembling...

It was Dirge’s holoform; pale as chalk and pressed against the wall of the building as his giant eyes watched the edge he was pressing himself far away from. He looked utterly terrified, like someone had just told him the Decepticon Justice League had just arrived (which was the kind of prank Skywarp would definitely try to pull, though he was likely already on the roof by now).

“Now that you’re here, will you please tell us what the frag is wrong with him?” Starscream pointed at Dirge, as if it wasn’t obvious that he was the subject of his plea. Dirge let out a whimper as he squeezed his eyes closed, not even registering Slipstream’s arms around him. Skyfire was more amazed at Slipstream’s familiarity with the Conehead than concerned about his condition, though he didn’t know why Starscream expected him to have all the answers that the Seeker admitted to not knowing.

“I commed Soundwave while you were gone,” Windblade said to Starscream, which seemed to make his holoform glitch as his head snapped towards her.

“What?! I specifically told you not to!”

“Well,” she shrugged, “it’s too late for that.”

“Starscream.” Soundwave’s voice came out of Starscream’s holoform, almost making him jump right over the stairwell railing. “Windblade says there is a delay.”

“Yes, yes,” Starscream begrudgingly admitted, “there is a slight issue with Dirge. He’s paralysed and refuses to move and of course we can’t leave him behind...”

“Suggestion,” Soundwave said after a computational pause, “Dirge may suffer from acute acrophobia.”

“Acro-what?”

“Definition: fear of heights.”

"Fear of heights?!" Starscream spun on his heel to face Dirge, who now seemed to be hyperventilating with the whistling wind. "Dirge, you're a jet! You fly thousands of miles above the surface of planets, you’ve done hundreds of orbital circuits in space, and have been doing so for millions of years! And you’re scared of a measly thirty-foot terrestrial drop?!” He pointed over the edge of the railing to emphasize his point, though Skyfire wanted to point out that the distance from the roof to the bottom floor was much more than a mere thirty-feet.

"I-I know… I know it’s stupid, Starscream…” Dirge gulped as his legs seemed to almost collapse from under him, “B-but the stairs… the way they spiral down… I-I feel like I’m g-gonna fall…”

Starscream’s complete lack of sympathy could be heard in his monumental sigh. “I’m not even surprised. Every time a Conehead is involved, something always has to go wrong-!”

“Will you cut it out, Starscream?!” Slipstream hissed, still holding an arm around Dirge’s quaking shoulders. “You’re not helping him get over this!”

“I-It’s a lot worse than I thought it’d be, Slipstream,” Dirge mumbled, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”

Now Starscream turned his bewildered displeasure directly onto Slipstream. “You knew he was scared of heights?!”

“Yes, Starscream,” Slipstream said with deadly deadpan. “I found out at the same time you did, just a few klicks ago when he started having a panic attack! Besides,” she growled, “how would you like it if I stood up in front of everyone and told them your worst fear?”

Starscream just scoffed at her suggestion. “You don’t even know what I’m scared of.”

“But I know someone who does know,” Slipstream warned, which made Starscream pay very close attention to her.

“N… n-no you don’t!” he insisted, and he might have started laughing in disbelief if they’d been anywhere else in the galaxy. “I don’t even know anyone like that!” But even as he made such an assertion through his skeptical scoff, he wasn’t looking at Slipstream. He was looking at Windblade, who in turn was looking at him with an almost-invisible smile- like she was the one who wanted to start laughing at whatever wasn’t being said between their gazes.
Skyfire felt the blistering need to put that femme through a Cortical Psychic Patch once they’d all escaped.

But for now he just cleared his vocaliser, not wanting to get too used to the silence as grateful as he was for it.

“Look, I can see this is an, uh… delicate situation,” Skyfire said, “but how am I supposed to help?”

“You’re the scientist here,” Starscream said, as if that alone was supposed to explain everything. “Just… tell him about laws of gravity or aerodynamics or something!”

“Fellas,” Flamewar’s voice suddenly came from Starscream’s comm unit (almost making him yelp in surprise), “I don’t want to interrupt, but we have good news and bad news.”

“As if the news isn’t bad enough already?!” Starscream muttered, until Windblade told him to shush so they could all hear what Flamewar had to say.
“The good news is that we can see Skyfire’s body. It looks in bad shape, but it’s not a total lost cause.”

Skyfire allowed himself an exhale of relief- his databanks would be the last system to fail in the event of catastrophe, so if his alt-mode was still functioning at its base then his research was safe.

“As for the bad news,” Flamewar went on with some hesitance, “...there’s a whole lot of soldiers gathering around this building. I think they saw us.”

The Black Block Consortia.

They’d found them.

They were storming the building.

Flamewar went silent, as did every holoform gathered on the stairs. Only Dirge, still shivering and shaking as he clung to the wall, dared say anything.

“Does this mean… I don’t have to climb the rest of the stairs?” he asked with a gulp.

“Yes, Dirge,” Starscream said with calmness that was more terrifying than any shriek his vocaliser could make. “Yes, it does.”

And with that, they all stumbled over each other to get back inside the building before a sniper’s bullet on the wind managed to find any of them.

Chapter 3

“It’s really not as bad as it seems,” Skywarp, the optimist, said with only a slight stutter.

“It is exactly as bad as it seems,” Thundercracker, the realist, moaned in despair.

“No,” Starscream- feeling like the only truly sane one of the lot- informed his trine, “it’s even worse than that!”

Because Starscream, of course, had enough experience with hopeless situations to recognise one when it was right in front of him. The war had quickly turned into one, though it was more like a great many hopeless moments all amalgamated into a galaxy-wide mess courtesy of everyone’s favourite self-righteous lunatic Lord Megatron.

Starscream had survived all of them, of course. And, miraculously, so had his trine. Though, when Starscream eventually reunited with them at the end of everything, he wasn’t quite sure if they still were a trine (that was why they had to spend so much time with that damned therapist, to repair the bonds that had been worn away by so long spent light years apart). There were dark moments, ones that he only ever revisited in therapy, where he wondered if he needed a trine anymore now that he had Bumblebee and Windblade…

But he was a Seeker; before he’d ever been a Decepticon or a second-in-command or a traitor, he had always been a Seeker. And a Seeker needed his trine.

But even with his trine at his side, how the Pit were they going to get out of this one in one piece?

Dirge was the only one of them all who seemed to accept his fate.

“We’re doomed,” he mumbled as he clutched his arms, “we’re all gonna die here…!”

Slipstream was trying to comfort him (at least, that was what Starscream assumed she was doing, and he didn’t like it one bit), but it was no use. The useless Conehead knew they were fragged, which was smart, but did he have to make himself into such a mess about it?

“For Primus’ sake, Dirge,” Starscream snapped, “will you pull yourself together?! You’re supposed to be a Seeker, aren’t you? You’re making us all look bad!”

“Starscream!”

“What?!” Starscream had been so absorbed in his rant that he hadn’t noticed it was Windblade calling after him until after he’d yelled at her. And he immediately wished he hadn’t.

"Dirge is worried enough without you making him feel worse,” Windblade told him firmly, forcing him to meet her eyes even when he wanted to look away. “If you can't say something nice, then don't say nothing at all."

“Isn’t that from a human movie?” Skywarp piped up. “Er, not that I’ve… seen anything like that…”

Slipstream kept glaring up at Starscream as she held Dirge’s shoulders, joining Windblade in scolding him. “Why don’t you just focus on getting us out of here, Starscream, and leave Dirge alone?”

Starscream bit his lip as he looked between Slipstream and Windblade, his sister and his… well, he hadn’t quite decided yet what Windblade was to him. More than a mere friend, at least, since he was so mortified at the prospect of disappointing her. So it was only at her insistence that he abandoned his verbal assault on the Conehead with one last mutter under his breath.

"Called yourself a ‘master of fear’ during the war… pfft. How pathetic."

Dirge at least had the decency to keep his doomsday chanting to a pitiful whisper now, so everyone else (apart from Slipstream, who was still lingering far too close to him for Starscream’s comfort...) could ignore him as they tried to make themselves useful.

Well, everyone else except from Thunderblast, who just twiddled her fingers as she stood by the door to the outside stairwell. But so long as she stayed away from Starscream, he didn’t really care what she did with herself.

“Could we try and fight our way out?” Flamewar asked, hovering near the window behind cover. According to her sightings the Black Block soldiers were still huddled outside, but they’d surely be storming the building at any moment.

“And how do you suggest we accomplish that,” Starscream pointedly asked back, “without any weapons? If any of us are captured, as soon as they beam back to their body the Consortia can then follow the transmission and-”

He cut himself off as he realised that his holoform was becoming flushed, its form even flickering slightly in the sudden waft of heat. He turned towards the direction of the heat and found Sunstorm lingering nearby, either completely oblivious to the fact that he was like a furnace or just indulging in it by subjecting his brother to his stifling heatwaves.

"Primus, Sunstorm,” Starscream groaned as he put some considerable distance between them, “how is it possible that your holoform radiates as much heat as yourself?"

Sunstorm blinked innocently, as if he really was oblivious, and then shrugged (with yet another waft of warmth surging through the air from his shoulders). “Well, what can I say? I just light up the room wherever I go.”

“More like you turn the room into a fragging sauna wherever you go,” Starscream grumbled, having to fan at his face with his hand to cool it down. Primus, they couldn’t even open any windows without potentially giving their position away.

“Well, we’re not completely helpless,” Windblade insisted- lovely lovely Windblade, so earnestly trying to hold everyone together by their spinal struts. “We have our omnitools, right?”

“You mean our sonic screwdrivers!” Skywarp amended, making both Starscream and Thundercracker groan in unison. Windblade just looked somewhat confused.

“If… that’s what you want to call them, sure,” she said.

“We are not calling them that,” Starscream hissed. But even though Skywarp insisted on calling them such a ridiculous name… it was true that their tools could be of some use. Without the heavy weaponry on their frames, their holoforms had to rely on the rather primitive omnitools they carried. They could function as anything from flashlights to wrenches, to lockpicks and drills… and yes, they could even work as a screwdriver. But there was certainly nothing ‘sonic’ about them.

“Maybe we can confuse them with our tools?” Skyfire suggested. “The locals are so under-developed, we could probably keep them occupied with nothing more than a laser scope.”

The genius scientist was beaming as if he’d really just saved them all from certain death (that he had brought them all into, but there was no use in starting up that old thread all over again). But he only made Starscream want to roll his eyes to the heavens above- this was the Autobots’ top scientist, their greatest mind second only to Vector Sigma itself, yet for all his knowledge of the galaxy and how it worked he had absolutely no idea about any of the people who lived within it.

“You think the Black Block will fall for something like that?” Thundercracker was not so amused in his disbelief. “Skyfire, these are trained machine hunters, they are dedicated to destroying technology wherever they see it. They’re not just technophobes like the natives, they’ve built empires off of organics’ fear of us.”

“For all we know,” Slipstream added, not looking up from where Dirge was huddled on the floor, “they could be the reason this planet’s scientific progress has been frozen. They could have convinced everyone that technology will bring them nothing but trouble, so they could charge them for their ‘protection services’.”

“I’m not so sure,” Thundercracker argued. “Believe it or not, some cultures on Earth willingly reject technology. Maybe the humans brought a similar culture along with them to this planet, and the Black Block just stepped in to take advantage?”

“Well, I don’t think the Black Block has a big hold over this place, anyway,” Skywarp weighed in. “I mean, why’d they keep something like this out in the open where anyone can come along can steal it?” He then pulled out the precious quantum core from his holoform’s pocket as he asked, and Starscream was immediately assaulted by visions of it falling out of a window or being crushed under someone’s wayward foot.

“Skywarp, will you put that thing back where you won’t lose it, for Primus’ sake?!”

At Starscream’s hissed insistence, Skywarp dropped the core back into his pocket with a pout.

“Well, to answer your question, Skywarp,” Windblade said, likely trying to stop another tantrum from happening, “the enemy you know is better than the one you don’t. Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s part of the spaceship that brought the humans here in the first place, so they kept it as some kind of artefact.”

“Most likely,” Skyfire declared. “Engines powered by quantum cores are still the only way for most organics to exceed the speed of light.”

Starscream couldn’t believe what he was hearing- they were trapped on a planet full of technophobes, in a building that was soon to be full of very well-armed technophobes, and instead of trying to find a way out his team had immediately regressed to debating over the history of the locals.

“Is this really an important conversation to be having right now?” he implored, too exhausted and certain of his fate to even put a well-deserved snap into his voice.

“Well, if you’ve got any bright ideas, Starscream,” Slipstream drawled, matching her brother’s biting tone almost perfectly, “we’re all listening.”

Starscream opened his mouth. Nothing came out of it. He felt like something was supposed to come out, some grand epiphany or genius realisation… but he really couldn’t think of anything.

Windblade was looking at him, as if she was expecting him to have an answer just as much as he was expecting himself. If he didn’t come up with something, they’d all be locked up in a Black Block prison camp until their frames were found and confiscated. And, even worse than that... Windblade would be disappointed in him.

“If I might make a suggestion,” Sunstorm lilted, briefly saving Starscream from his own desperation (while still exuding enough heat to rival a fragging star). “Us Seekers could just jump out of a window and get to Skyfire that way, couldn’t we?

“Sunstorm,” Starscream sighed, “you are aware that ‘us Seekers’ can’t fly in our holoforms, aren’t you?”

Sunstorm blinked, basking in his own heat, and smiled sheepishly.

“I… might have forgotten about that. But our holoforms can survive the fall, right? And the soldiers won’t expect us to escape from above.”

“Not feasible,” Soundwave droned. “Holoforms may survive the fall from this height. Quantum core will not.”

Dammit, if just one of them had managed to take the core and reach Skyfire with it then they could all have beamed back without a second thought. But of course it had to be Skywarp who carried it, and of course he had to follow everyone else’s panic-induced stampede and then get himself trapped in the high-rise with the rest of them.

“Could some of us make a distraction,” Flamewar suggested, “so someone else could escape to the ship?”

It was the only feasible idea offered so far. Only one of them actually had to reach Skyfire in their holoform, the rest could just deactivate their generators and start clearing the rockfall away (and maybe check that the other Coneheads were still online, Starscream supposed).

“Perhaps...” Starscream pondered for a moment, before he finally had the grand epiphany that he and Windblade had been waiting for.

“Thunderblast!” He pointed towards the femme, who looked up with an exaggerated fright. “You’re distracting! Go on, it’s about time you sacrificed yourself for the greater good!”

Thunderblast blinked, then shook her head as if he’d just slapped her. “What’re you trying to say, Screamer?! I am the greater good, that’s why Megatron always liked me best.”

“Did not!” Starscream protested.

“Did too.”

“Did not!”

Starscream surged forward, barely fighting the temptation to actually slap her this time… but then Skywarp’s fingers snapped together, and his voice was a triumphant simmer in the air.

“I’ve got it.”

“Got what?” Starscream asked with skepticism dripping from his tone as he turned to his trine member. “The obvious realisation that we’re all fragged?”

Skywarp faced Starscream with a proud grin, the ultimate foil to his trine leader’s signature scowl. “I’ve got the solution for how we’re gonna get out of here.”

A plaintive groan came from the corner of the room. “As scrap metal, I bet…”

“Dirge, I’ve told you once already, get a hold of yourself!” Starscream ordered, while Thundercracker spluttered through his holoform’s nose.

“What, you?” he asked Skywarp. “The infamous ‘Cadet Spanky’ himself is going to save us all, is he-?”

Thundercracker’s voice was cut off by Skywarp’s indignified yelp, as he scrambled to clamp a hand over his trinemate’s mouth. Despite the hopelessness of the situation, even Starscream had to suppress a laugh at Skywarp’s expense (the ‘Spanky incident’ had occurred back in their academy days, when Cyclonus walked in on Skywarp taking some personal time for himself… and promptly informed the rest of his platoon about his dereliction of duties).
“I told you to never, ever bring that up!” Skywarp hissed.

“Bring what up, Cadet Spanky?” Starscream asked, since he figured that Skywarp was just getting what he deserved (if he hadn’t tripped on those fragging stairs, then they’d all be on their way to Earth by now).

“Stop it!” Skywarp demanded as he whirled around to face Starscream. “This is serious! I don’t tell anyone about your little private mistakes, do I, Mr Silver Snake?”

“I-!” Starscream almost choked on his own outrage- that was the only name he hated being called even more than Screamer. “How dare you-!”

“Will you three just behave already?!” As usual, Windblade’s voice was what brought Starscream back to himself before he tried to throttle Skywarp. She stood stern with her arms over her chest, while Thunderblast and Flamewar were both inanely giggling to themselves behind her. “Starscream. What’s a silver snake?”

“Oh, Windblade,” Skywarp snorted, “you don’t know? I’d have thought you were intimately aware of Starscream’s snake-”

“Never mind,” Windblade sighed. “I don’t want to know. What I do want to know is how we’re going to get out of here. So, Skywarp. Get on with it.”

Skywarp blinked, his laughter evaporating as he faced Windblade’s austere expression. “Right… well. What I was going to say is, a s far as the Consortia knows, were just a bunch of humans from another planet trespassing here. They don't know we’re just holoforms. At first glance, we look just like any other human from around here.”

“Only much more stylish, of course,” Sunstorm added.

“Of course,” Skywarp agreed without missing a beat. “For all they know, we’re just some human travellers who got lost somewhere in the solar system. So here's what we do...”

He stood in the centre of the room, spreading his arms out as if he was trying to encompass everyone else in his grasp.

“We split up and fan out around the whole building. They're looking for a big group of people, so anyone by themselves will probably be overlooked!”

For a plan that was so blatantly suicidal, he looked very pleased with himself. Starscream wondered how he’d even managed to survive this long. But, all around him, the others were actually considering it.

“It’s... not a bad idea,” Sunstorm admitted.

“I’ve heard a lot worse from Starscream,” Slipstream said.

“Hey!” Starscream’s protest was swiftly ignored by all.

“There's just one problem, Skywarp,” Thundercracker said (though he must have had some respect for the proposition since he wasn’t calling him ‘Spanky’ anymore). “The soldiers all got a pretty good look at us when we were all lying in a heap outside the museum. They know what we look like. And even if they didn't, we don’t exactly blend in with the locals.”

Skywarp blinked for a few seconds. “Huh... you’re right. Slag.”

“So why don’t we try and find a way to blend in?” Windblade suggested- no, Windblade! Not you too! Starscream had thought that surely she would know that Skywarp’s plan was ridiculous! “We can modify our holoforms, right?”

“Not quite,” Skyfire corrected. “We’d all need to completely recast our projections, which will just take us right back to my body anyway.”

And if they all did that, they wouldn’t be bringing back the vital ship part with them. Not unless one of them volunteered to stay behind in their holoform and try to bring the part back all by themselves… Starscream had wanted to nominate Skywarp for that position, since (once again) it was all Skywarp’s fragging fault that they were even in this situation. But no, if Rung found out that Starscream was still happy to throw one of his trine to the proverbial turbohounds when he felt like they deserved it, he’d be set right back to step one of his treatment plan.

But if Starscream even managed to make it to his next appointment, he’d be grateful.

“Actually, Skyfire,” he told his friend, unable to resist an opportunity to prove that he was still as much a scientist as him, “you only need to recast the entire holoform if you want to alter the base structure, such as changing the genetic profile. But if you, say, just want them to wear different clothes or put on a disguise-”

“We can just use whatever we can find around here, right?” Windblade finished for him.

“Exactly.” Even though Starscream still thought the plan itself was laughable at best, he couldn’t help but feel glad at hearing Windblade’s voice confirming that they were on the same wavelength.

There was a whine from one of the walls, though it wasn’t Dirge this time. “But I don’t wanna dress up like a local! They’re so not fashion conscious…”

“Well, then you have a choice, Thunderblast,” Slipstream told her with mocking sincerity, looking away from Dirge to glare at the other femme. “You can be caught dead in your current holoform, or you can suck it up until we get out of here.”

Thunderblast glared at her with eyes like fizzling lightbulbs as she pouted. “ Megatron never made me have to wear ugly clothes…”

“He never made you wear clothes at all , you useless ditz!” Starscream snapped.

“And that’s why he liked me so much, teehee!”

If there was one person that Starscream really, really wished he could just leave behind and forget about, it was her.

“ Anyway, ” Thundercracker said with a sigh. “This is a pretty big building. Looks like a kind of residence from on Earth. If we can find some empty rooms, we can just... borrow anything we find in them that’ll help disguise us.”

“Yeah!” Skywarp proclaimed. “And locked doors aren’t a problem with our screwdrivers-”

“We are not calling them screwdrivers, Skywarp!” Starscream insisted.

“Whatever. The point is, we can stay in the building until we’re sure the Consortia is gone, and then make a break for it! I bet we’ll be gone before they can even report back to their bosses.”

‘ And I bet we’re all going to fragging die here,’ Starscream thought to himself, not caring how much his brain was sounding like Dirge.

Soundwave must have been absorbing all of the chatter in his silence, as he only now came to a conclusion. “Projected mission success parameters: 50%.”

“So we have a coin-flip’s chance of living or dying,” Flamewar said over her shoulder, still watching the ground below from the window. “Great.”

“Better than 0%, at least,” Thundercracker reasoned.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Skywarp was grinning, clearly deluded by everyone else’s acceptance that a terrible plan was better than no plan at all.

“It’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” Starscream muttered (and where Skywarp was concerned, stupid ideas were his speciality, so for this one to take such a title was really saying something).

“I actually thought it was quite clever,” Windblade said beside him, forcing him to completely re-evaluate his opinion on the spot.

“As in... it’s so stupid, that it’s actually brilliant!” he rushed to say. “But, I have to advise against us all going separate ways. We should at least stay in pairs to watch out for each other.”

“What, you think some of us can’t fend for ourselves?” Flamewar paused her watchtower duties to throw a glare at the Seeker.

“That is not what I’m suggesting, Flamewar, I just think we should watch out for each other-”

“Why should I have to watch out for anyone else?” she demanded. “I’ve always looked after myself, and I always will. I don’t need a fragging babysitter, and I’m not gonna be anyone’s sitter either.”

“Soundwave agrees with Flamewar. Complete separation of whole team will reduce projected success parameters to 20%. However, certain personality constructs are not compatible in any possible team dynamic. Soundwave and Flamewar will fare better alone.”

Hearing Soundwave’s stilted tone made Starscream think that, if anything was going to reduce their ‘projected success parameters’, it was his fragging voice. He’d give them all away with nothing more than a murmur.

“Er...right. If you say so. You really should work on that voice though, Soundwave,” Starscream told him, “its not very humanlike. Or, just don’t say anything at all. Anyway… if everyone else has no objections to teaming up, we should figure out who goes with who.”

“I’ll go with Dirge,” Slipstream volunteered, bringing Dirge to his feet while Starscream tried to push himself between them both.

"Oh no, you won’t!” he protested, trying to grab Slipstream’s arm. “Don't think that I haven’t noticed what’s been going on between you two! The looks, the sly touching... well, I wont have it! We already have enough weirdos in the family, we don't need another one."

"Yeah,” Slipstream scoffed as she tore herself free, “I’m looking at the weirdo right now...

“As you are my sister, Slipstream,” Starscream went on, completely ignoring her as he turned his back while expecting her to follow, “and as I am your elder brother, you are my responsibility. Dirge can find someone else to carry him out, you’ll come with me and we’ll-”

When he turned back around, she and Dirge were both gone.

“What?! Where the Pit did she go!?” Starscream faced his trinemates, who didn’t look nearly so disturbed by Slipstream’s sudden eloping.

“She and Dirge ran off while your back was turned,” Thundercracker answered.

“Fragging unbelievable... fine.” Starscream brushed himself off- if his sister really wanted to waste time with a Conehead of all people, then let her. She’d only have herself to blame in the end! “If she wants to be that way… Windblade. I’ll join you.”

That was one good thing he could get out of this whole catastrophe- if he was with Windblade, and she was with him, and they were with each other… everything would be fine. He just knew it would be. Thinking of it was all he needed to start feeling better (or at least, not like he was facing certain death anymore).

But then his trinemates had something to say.

“What, so me and Skywarp are gonna have to fend for ourselves?” Thundercracker protested. “Just as well we can’t tell Rung about this-”

“You better fragging not,” Starscream warned with a finger aimed at his trinemate, “if you don’t want to be subjected to an occupational therapist after I’m through with you!”

“Tell you what, Starscream,” Skywarp stepped in with a sickly-sweet smile, “I wont say a single thing to our favourite processor poker... if you let me borrow your sonic screwdriver.”

“THEY’RE NOT CALLED... that !” Starscream growled. “And what happened to your own?!”

“Well! Funny story! I think I lost it on the way over here! Probably when I fell down all those stairs!”

“That’s not funny at all,” Thundercracker said. And it certainly wasn’t.

"Skywarp, you idiot!" Starscream actually felt himself snort through his holoform’s nose. "You’d have lost your own aft by now if it wasn’t mounted to your frame! Its a miracle that your own stupidity hasn’t killed you by now!”

“So... is that a yes?” Skywarp asked, still bearing that hopeless grin. Starscream wanted to say ‘no’ just because of the sight of it.

"Here!” He yanked his omnitool from his pocket and shoved it into Skywarp’s hand before he was overcome with the urge to stab it through his eye. "And Primus help you if I don’t get it back!"

Skywarp was still grinning as he shoved it into his own pocket- or, tried to, until he found that the quantum core was taking up too much room for the tool to fit in as well. He took out the core and swapped his eyes between it and the tool, with his tongue sticking out of his mouth-

“Don’t even think about it,” Thundercracker snapped.

“What?” Skywarp protested. “I wasn’t doing anything!”

“You’re not eating the core to keep it safe,” Thundercracker told him, “just carry the screwdriver in your hand , for Primus’ sakes.”

“ It’s not a fragging screwdriver!” How many times did Starscream have to say it?! He shooed his trinemates away before he was completely overcome with the urge to take Sunstorm’s first suggestion and just shove them both out the window.

“If it’s alright with you, dear leader,” Skyfire said with only a thin glaze of sincerity, “I’ll go with those two. I’d like to make sure the core stays in one piece… and not in Skywarp’s mouth.”

“Fine, fine, whatever.” Starscream waved him away as well, now wanting nothing more than to just go somewhere far away with Windblade (who hadn’t protested to the idea of pairing up with him… which was surely a good sign).

“Hey!” Thunderblast piped up with a chirp that almost broke Starscream’s audio receptors. “But who’s gonna go with little ol’ me?”

No one said anything, lest it be taken as a sign that they wanted to go with her. But eventually Sunstorm bit the bullet for them with a sigh.

“I suppose I’ll volunteer if no one else will.”

“Yay!” Thunderblast clapped as she scurried after Sunstorm, somehow completely ignoring the waves of heat coming from him.

‘Sunstorm, my brother,’ Starscream thought, ‘ your sacrifice will be honoured for years to come.’

“Right. That’s most of us dealt with,” he said. “Now, Windblade, let’s get a move on before the Consortia says ‘frag it’ and just sends a cruise missile into the top floor.”

“Current mission success parameters: 60%.”

“And will you fix that fragging vocaliser of yours already, Soundwave?!” No matter what Starscream said, no matter how nicely or firmly he said it, it really seemed like absolutely no one ever listened to him.

“Very well.” Oh, but now Soundwave was going to be the exception, apparently. The mech seemed to make some kind of adjustment to his holoform’s speaker array (as evidenced by the burst of static from his unmoving mouth), and when he spoke again.

“Is this vocaliser sample more appropriate?”

It was like having Tarn himself of the DJD in the room with them all. It was much, much worse than Soundwave’s normal voice, and everyone’s stunned silence confirmed it.

“...No,” Starscream said. “Change it back immediately. Just don’t say anything.”

“Acknowledged.” Thankfully Soundwave seemed to be able to change with just the flick of a switch, and he was right back to his safe monotone.

“Aw,” Thunderblast whined from the door, “I liked that voice...”

“I thought it was quite nice, too,” Windblade admitted, which made Starscream almost have a spark attack in his frame as his holoform stuttered. Of course she had no personal experience with the likes of Tarn (at least, he hoped she didn’t) so she clearly had no idea how awful Soundwave’s choice truly was. That was what Starscream told himself, and that was what he would believe.

(As for Thunderblast, she was just an idiot).

But, thankfully, the femmes weren’t given much time to pine for the lost voice as Flamewar shot to her feet, speaking in a rush.

“We’re out of time. They’re coming in.”

They were coming in. The Black Block was storming the building. They were coming in. They were coming for them.

If he was a less experienced or more pathetic mech (like Dirge), Starscream might have started trembling, or running blindly, or living up to his screaming namesake… he didn’t do such pitiful things, of course. Didn’t even think about doing them… but it helped to feel Windblade’s hand in his own, the two holoforms almost melding together as her fingers entwined with his. He wasn’t sure why it helped… but it did.

“Let’s get the hell out of here, Starscream,” she said.

Though her holoform eyes were just hollow lights, he could almost see her optics as he stared into them. They were bright, and hopeful, as blue as he’d ever seen them be, and they flared with the fire that had just started in his spark. He nodded gratefully at her, because her idea was the smartest one he’d heard all day.

Chapter 4

Flamewar knew exactly how far away the Black Block Consortia really were. No, it was far more accurate to say she knew how close they were. They were already all over the bottom level of the building, yet she kept descending the stairs as if she could somehow see exactly where they were and then just figure something out from there.

She could do it. She didn’t need a fragging partner like Starscream did , or the rest of them. She’d survived the war all by herself, and she’d survive this too.

All by herself. No help from anybody.

She told herself that as she skidded to a stop in the middle of a wide corridor between two apartments. The way forward was blocked by two human younglings lying together on the floor, as well as a variety of toys and costumes strewn all over the hallway. The two boys, both them dressed in some sort of scaly monster outfits, must have dragged their entire playroom out from their home into the other-wise empty corridor… but why? Flamewar didn’t even have much experience with sparklings, let alone alien children, and she wouldn’t have wanted to be near either if she had any choice… but, in her current circumstances, choice was something that was very limited to her.

“Hey!” She called out to catch their attention, and they both looked up at her with small wooden blocks in their hands. “Where are your parents?”

The slightly-larger boy shrugged. “Outside.”

“Festival time,” his brother said. “Too loud for us.”

So that at least confirmed the building was mostly empty, since the residents would be out still enjoying the festival. The Consortia might question why there were adults still wandering around inside, then…

“Wanna play?” one of the boys asked while Flamewar was still racing to come up with an escape plan. “We’re being dinosaurs.”

And then, as Flamewar looked at the various costumes at her feet, her plan came to her with a grin.

“Sure…” She leaned down to pick up the first things she saw, a large pair of sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat that would easily mask her face from a distance. “How about I play the big mama dinosaur?”

“That’s not what a dinosaur looks like,” one of the boys said with a pout as she pulled up a chair next to the two of them.

“It’s how the mother ones look,” she claimed, and the boys seemed to not care very much that she was lying as they promptly returned to their play-fighting.

The timing couldn’t have been better; just as Flamewar settled back in her seat and pulled the hat firmly over her face, there was the distinctive thud of boots from the nearby stairwell. The Black Block soldiers rushed through the hallway- they almost did, at least, before they came to a sudden stop as they took in the cluttered corridor before them. Flamewar tried to regard them with nothing more than curiosity as she turned her glass-shielded eyes towards them, and the two boys also glanced at them.

The leader of the group, who was of course the largest, attempted to restart the march by ignoring the small ‘family’ camped out in front of his soldiers. He stepped forwards, almost trampling something that looked very fragile-

“Ahem.” Flamewar couldn’t help from calling out to make the leader pause, firing him a warning glare from her sunglasses. She was playing as a mother, after all, and a mother had to protect her children. And if the Consortia was really here to protect who they thought were the Amishena natives, they definitely wouldn’t want to piss any of them off…

Her ploy worked, and she struggled not to laugh as the heavily-armoured soldier sheepishly retracted his leg and tried to navigate his team through the hallway without stepping on or tripping over anything. One of the trailing soldiers even seemed to shoot an apologetic look at Flamewar as he passed by (though, since his own face was shielded, it was hard to tell).

“Was that the Consor-ta?” the smaller of the boys asked, when the soldiers finally reached the other end of the hall and ascended the stairs there.

“They’re called the Consortia, dummy,” his brother helpfully informed. “They’re probably looking around for aliens. You seen any aliens around, miss?”

Flamewar released a gulp from her holoform as she pulled the hat and glasses off, finding that the latter had started to fog up from the nervous heat she’d been putting out.

“Can’t say I have, but you never know,” she muttered as she prepared to make a run for the front door. “Thanks, kids. Stay safe, there’s all sorts of weirdos around here nowadays.”

 

 

xx

 

‘ Current mission success parameters: 70%.’

The chances went higher as soon as Soundwave had separated from everyone else. Just as he’d predicted. They weren’t 100%, which was the only success rate he would have accepted for any mission during the war. But the war was over, and he’d had to adapt since then. That was the only reason he even had a human holoform in the first place- he took great pride in his Cybertronian self, how it had survived so much, what it represented to anyone, Autobot or Decepticon, who lay optics upon it.

Soundwave may not have been a Decepticon any longer, but he still carried the weight of his rank and deeds. He still felt a duty to himself and whoever he was assigned to… even if, this time, it was someone as grating as Starscream.

But emotions like that, emotions at all, had no place in his spark at this moment. He had a task, and he would not fail it.

‘Primary objectives: Secure hiding area. Secure adequate human disguise. Evade Black Block Consortia. Secondary objective: Discreetly dispose of Thunderblast.’

That last one was mostly a joke (humour wasn’t so much an emotion to him as it was a means of keeping his sanity in check), and only a secondary objective because if he really did have ideas to leave her behind , he’d need to make it off the planet himself for any of them to work.

S oundwave had seen Flamewar descend to the building’s lowest floors, but he elected to remain in the middle. If needed he could flee up or down, but ideally he wouldn’t need to flee at all…

T his particular level seemed to be a small commercial hub. The store-fronts were empty and shuttered, though there were some windows showing off various wares within. One in particular caught his attention… and imagination.

At first he thought there were humans left frozen in the window for some reason, but a closer analysis revealed that they were simply mannequins. Likely made to show off what they were dressed in. Soundwave’s own holoform’s uniform had been simple, the ‘military default’ when it came to humans. It wouldn’t match the intricate woven clothes of these mannequins… but he could easily remedy that.

His omnitool allowed him to cut a seamless hole through the window that let him pass through into the display. Once he fit the glass back into place he confirmed for himself that the human shapes were not alive, so he felt no guilt as he took one apart and pilfered its clothes. He pulled the fabric over his holoform’s uniform, working with haste and only making sure it all fit on his avatar when he heard the sudden approach of many people. He had no more time, and he let himself freeze in place like a mech with broken gears as the Consortia streamed passed the window.

Some of them glanced at the window as they surveyed the area, but no one paused. No one noticed that there was a living being amongst the dummies. The soldiers left without incident.

It had worked.

Of course it had. Soundwave had calculated success parameters of 100% as soon as he assumed the mannequin’s pose, after all.

He felt himself smile, and allowed himself the brief flicker of emotion. It was his personal reward for managing to hide so well. But, just as he was moving to leave, he heard another approach from the other side of the window. Footsteps, one pair distinct and another pair muffled. He froze himself in place once again, and he found a human woman passing by with a leashed dog by her side. It became clear that the woman was blind from her glassy eyes, and the dog seemed to be replacing her eyes as it pulled her forwards. Knowing this, Soundwave at least allowed himself to blink his eyes . A holoform didn’t have regular human eyes, of course, but holding them open for a long time allowed in more photons than the sensors could process at once, so it was necessary to blink to reset them.

However, S oundwave saw something very curious when he opened his eyes again. He wasn’t even certain if he saw it… but he had seen something.

Indeed, he was sure that, as she was walking past, the blind lady winked at him with one of her ghostly eyes. By the time he dared to emerge from the window display, she and her dog were gone.

 

 

xx

 

 

"Oh Primus, Solus, Unicron- dammit, whoever's listening, just fragging help me already!"

"You dare pray to Unicron, Thunderblast?” Sunstorm paused his inspection of the doors along the wall to glare at her in disgust. “If the Black Block doesn't find us, I've half a mind to punish you myself for that…"

“Ooh, what’s the matter, Sunny?” Thunderblast suddenly lilted. “Have I been a bad girl? Are you gonna spank me for being naughty?”

She sounded far too giddy about the prospect, which made Sunstorm strongly suspect that she was mocking him in some way. He just… couldn’t figure out how. Especially with her grin making him feel so... uncomfortable.

“What are you getting at...?”

Thunderblast pouted- apparently his ignorance to her efforts at making a fool of him left her greatly disappointed.

“Oh, never mind, just find somewhere we can hide already!” Her squeal could have rattled windows a mile away, and Sunstorm attempted to protect himself by it by investigating a promising-looking door… only to find that it was a cleaning closet barely large enough to hold a Minicon.

“Bad enough we’re gonna be late for Rosie’s wedding,” Thunderblast continued to whine again, “the humans are probably gonna find Skyfire and confiscate the gift I got for her…!”

“If we make it out of here alive, you know you can always buy her another one-” Sunstorm turned away from the cleaning closet to find that Thunderblast had apparently vanished from sight. He had to wonder if that was Primus giving him a break.

But wherever she’d suddenly found to hide away, he was sure she’d be okay. And if she was found, well, then it would be her own fault, wouldn’t it? Primus helped people who helped themselves, and Sunstorm was always his own greatest assistant.

Now, he had to return to that vital task. There were still many doors on this level, which he assumed were the main apartments. His omnitool revealed that most of them seemed to still have one occupant within them, so he couldn’t just barge in and hide out in someone’s living room. How inconvenient…

He’d almost reached the end of the hall when he finally found another door with no life signs behind it. The wood of the door itself felt warm and somewhat damp as he pushed it open. When the hinge creaked, a waft of steam instantly assaulted him and he almost thought he’d stepped into a shower.

But no, it was some kind of public steam room, or sauna (which made Starscream’s little quip about Sunstorm’s heat output all the more ironic). The walls were damp wood, with long-leafed potted plants hanging in most corners, and there were long rows of benches for patrons to sit down on. But what caught Sunstorm’s eye most immediately was, sitting next to a cubicle holding rolled towels, the large basin of water; almost like a pool, or a bathtub. Its surface was shielded by a cover of mist and steam that roiled up from the water, but it looked deep enough to comfortably hold several regular humans without fully submerging them.

Whatever the basin was, Sunstorm knew that it would be the perfect place to keep him safe.

He relayed instructions back to his stranded body to de-render his holoform’s clothes (to make sure his disguise worked out flawlessly), then stepped into the water. With just one leg in, the liquid started to boil around him. By the time he fully immersed himself, his excess heat had turned the entire bath into a whistling kettle.

So he just had to hope the water didn’t completely evaporate before the coast was clear. He could deal with that. Primus had gifted him with patience as well as an unmatched vocaliser.

Speaking of which… thanks to all the noise on Skyfire and the constant interruptions of so many bots housed on a single spaceship, he hadn’t managed to get much singing practice for Rosanna’s wedding. He could start fixing that now.

At least the acoustics in this place were good enough… he could submerge himself in both warm water and the lilt of his own voice. Rosanna was a lovely singer, of course, that was why she was so famous for it. But Sunstorm liked to think he could have matched her… if Primus hadn’t had another fate in store for him.

Both his singing and musing w ere interrupted when the door slammed open, and the steam rushed away from the black-clad soldiers crammed into the entryway. They seemed to peer through the mist, and they noticed Sunstorm sitting in the bath with shock that was obvious even with their faces hidden.

"Um... do you mind?” Sunstorm made a good show of being offended, because he really was. He’d almost reached his favourite part of the song when they’d so rudely intruded. “Just because it's a public bath doesn't mean I can't have some privacy, does it?"

The two soldiers at the front of the group looked at each other, exchanging a hidden look, and there were apologies mumbled as they closed the door behind them. The steam whirled around as it filled the empty space left behind once more, and Sunstorm sighed with modest victory.

And then Thunderblast, still fully clothed, decided to burst out of the water, prompting Sunstorm to almost scramble over the side of the bath in fright.

"Jeesh, I thought I was gonna die down there!” She spluttered as she spat water out of her mouth (obviously she hadn’t gotten the memo that holoforms didn’t need to breathe oxygen like real organics). “You were practically boiling me alive, you afthole!"

Sunstorm tried to regain control of himself. "W-Well, I didn't know you were down there in the first place!"

The water had been so cloudy that he’d just assumed it was empty… and how hadn’t his omnitool picked up on her EM field!? Maybe the water had masked it somehow… or he’d only set his tool to pick up organic life signals.

"Really?” Thunderblast seemed to be accusing him of something as she planted her drenched hands on her hips. “Then why did you undress your holoform, huh?"

She didn’t hide her bold glance between his legs as she asked, and Sunstorm was still so shocked by her appearance that he hadn’t quite registered what she was implying. It was only when he saw her smug grin that it clicked, and he could do little more than raise his eyebrow as he tossed a towel over her head to stop her from staring.

 

 

xx

 

 

Though Windblade was pulling Starscream behind her, she let him direct where they would go. It was a way to keep him occupied, to make sure he felt like he was doing something useful. And, truthfully, Windblade herself had no idea where to turn to. The building only had one direction they could go; down. But the idea was to spread themselves out thinly, so the Consortia wouldn’t catch them all as a group. Starscream seemed to have a built-in way to avoid people, so she trusted him to steer them both away from the other holoforms taking refuge .

It wasn’t long before he pulled on her arm, making her stop outside an apartment.

“Hide in here, Windblade,” he hissed, tugging her over to his side. “It seems empty.”

Windblade stared at the door, not knowing how Starscream could tell that no one was inside, but she didn’t wonder about it long as she saw him dash past her to find his own hiding place.

“Wait, what about you?” she asked, stopping him from fleeing with a hand on his arm.

“I’ll find somewhere else,” he insisted, and his hand over hers was almost as warm as Sunstorm’s aura. “It’ll be suspicious if we’re both found together. Just look out for yourself. Okay?”

As he usually did, he stated the question as something that couldn’t be argued against. So Windblade didn’t even try to.

“Right… if you’re sure.” She released him, though she was already missing the warmth of his fingers as soon as they retreated from hers. But she needed her hand free to plunge it into her holoform’s pocket for her omnitool, so she could crack the door open and get inside. She found the tool in her back pocket, but… there was something wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be in two separate pieces…

She pulled them both out, finding the omnitool snapped clean in half.

“Oh no…”

She heard her holoform’s EM interference like a static storm all around her. There was only one thing louder than the drone of her own panic...

Footsteps. Like rolling thunder. The Consortia were coming up the stairwell that was just down the corridor. And they were about to catch her.

"Starscream!" Her call was a frantic whisper and Starscream was almost down the other side of the hall- yet he miraculously heard her, and he stopped right in his tracks.

"My omnitool..." Windblade showed him the broken halves in her hands. “I… it must have broke outside the museum… when we fell…!"

She could see his eyes swell wide, and she was sure he could hear the Consortia approaching as well as she could. The smart thing for him to do would have been to keep running, to leave her behind to sort the soldiers out herself. Starscream was usually smart.

But, sometimes, very rarely, he could also be very stupid. And so he ran back to her side.

"Fragging tools have been nothing but more trouble we don’t need,” he growled as he reached into his own pocket. “Here, take mine before-”

He cut himself off while his hand was deep in the pocket, and she could see him frantically searching for something that clearly wasn’t there. His face became pale as the realisation struck him just as it struck Windblade.

“No… Primus dammit, Skywarp! He took my tool and I… frag’s sake!” Starscream flung his hand from his pocket as if he was offended that the empty appendage was attached to him at all. But if neither of them had omnitools, then there was no way for them to get into the apartment without breaking the door down. They didn’t have time to even try that, or to start running somewhere else. It would be the two of them against… ten soldiers? Twenty? It was hard to tell from just the sound of so many footsteps so close by.

T hey were out of options. Out of time. There was nothing nearby they could hide behind, no disguise on hand-

No. Not a disguise. But... they looked like humans. They were on a planet of humans. And humans were, at their cores, the same across any solar system they inhabited. Windblade had seen enough movies from Earth (and read some of Thundercracker’s screenplays) to know some of their traditions. Their quirks.

There was one that she knew of. One that could save them both. But… at what cost?

“Starscream, I… I have an idea.” She was looking at him as she took his shoulders, preventing him from running off down the corridor and dooming them both.

“An idea?” he asked, still growling through his holoform’s gritted teeth.
“You might not like it-”

“Well, what is it? Spit it out already!”

But that was the problem. Windblade didn’t have time to just blurt it out. If she could hint at it enough, surely he could figure it out himself and spare her from the embarrassment of saying it out loud… surely.

“I just think… we need to camouflage. So what do two humans usually do, alone in a corridor, at front of the door of their apartment?"

“What?” Starscream blinked at her like she was asking him how to tame an Insecticon. “How am I supposed to know?!”

Primus, he really was stupid sometimes. But Windblade didn’t have any more time to explain. She could see black armour-plates out of the corner of her eye, a whole regiment of soldiers about to descend down upon them-

‘You’ll thank me for this later, Starscream.’

She grabbed him by his holoform’s collar, pulling him towards the apartment door as his face crashed into hers-

But, strangely, their lips fell softly upon each other. As if Starscream had been prepared for it all along. There was a muffled yelp of surprise that she felt rumble against her mouth, but that was the only complaint he made. Was it even a complaint? She could wonder about that later.

With her back pressed against the door she didn’t dare release her grip on his collar or open her eyes, lest she destroy the illusion of two lovers locked in their own intimate world. But she heard the footsteps around her suddenly stop- only for a moment before they picked up again with renewed pace. Then they faded away to nothing, leaving Windblade with nothing but the sound of her holoform’s breaths and Starscream’s lingering groans.

Even then, she still waited some more seconds before letting him go. And he waited for even longer before he pulled his lips away from hers.

Kissing was an intimate act for Cybertronians just as well as it was for humans. The implications of what they’d just done, what Windblade had just put upon him, were somewhat staggering. The Black Block had completely ignored them, just as she’d hoped. And Starscream hadn’t resisted and blown their cover… also just as she’d hoped.

B u t now, with their faces still only some inches away from each other, it was very difficult to tell what he was thinking… he wasn’t angry, at least . The only label Windblade could think of that seemed to fit was ‘perplexed’. So he clearly wasn’t going to be the first to break the sudden silence between their unoccupied mouths.

“I… well, it… it worked,” she said, the only thing she could think to say at all.

“That it did…” Starscream spoke slowly, as he seemed to drift backwards on his heels. It was like he was pulling away from her, while also wanting to stay where he was. Then she saw him shake his head, and he righted his posture immediately as he snapped his spine straight.
“But… this should not become a habit,” he firmly informed her. “For either of us.”
“Right… of course.” Windblade had to clear her throat with a cough before she could agree. But she did agree, of course. She didn’t plan on making a habit out of getting stranded on Black Block Consortia-occupied planets, anyway. “Now… like I said. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Starscream gave a brisk nod, and he stood back as if waiting for her to go in front of him and take the lead once again. She pulled herself out of the recess of the apartment door, brushing down her holoform with another cough as she set out towards the stairwell the soldiers had ascended through.

But she saw something rather strange as she passed by Starscream. Another glimpse just out the corner of her eye. The slightest stray twitch around that soft mouth. If she didn’t know him any better, she’d have thought he was smiling.

Chapter 5

Windblade never mentioned the kiss again. Not when they returned to Skyfire’s chassis, not when they were far away from the verdant and unassuming hell of Amishena, not even when they finally made it to Earth just in time for the celebrations.

So Starscream saw no reason to ever ask her about it. No need to make things any more awkward. It had gotten them out of trouble, and that was all it had been for. After all... he had been the one who insisted it shouldn’t become a habit.

Habits were bad. They could get you killed in a war, if a spy or enemy soldier knew exactly what you were going to do at a given moment, if they knew what your weakness was. And even if there wasn’t a war anymore, the habit of not keeping habits still stayed with Starscream. It was hard enough getting used to having friends again, people who were allowed to be close to him without the constant worry that they’d betray him, or assassinate him... or worse. Thundercracker and Skywarp didn’t quite count, only because a trine’s bond was supposed to be beyond mere friendship, more akin to a chosen family. But, then again, he hadn’t seen much of either of them after their bond almost shattered. So he’d had to seek out new friendships, new people he could rely on…

Like Bumblebee.

Starscream didn’t even mention the Amishena incident to him, while he helped the anxious groom with the last-minute preparations for his wedding. Apparently there were many traditions and rituals to deal with about the whole affair; while Thundercracker stood in a corner furiously scribbling notes for one of his screenplays, Starscream struggled to even understand what the point of it all was. All the pomp and circumstance was more suitable for a coronation, or an election, or the end of a war...

Then again, he supposed humans didn’t have much time to celebrate things in their short lives, so they turned anything and everything they could into a spectacle.

As for why Bumblebee wanted to copy one of their traditions… maybe being around them so much had turned him into one of them. Or maybe it was Rosanna’s idea- she was apparently very popular on Earth, and she sold out stadiums all over the planet with her shows.

In fact, it was one of these very stadiums that hosted the wedding. A few humans sat at the very front, managing cameras and microphones and other equipment that would apparently broadcast the event all over Earth. Starscream only recognised a few of them, most notably the woman Thundercracker had apparently become close with. She sat on Thunder’s shoulder, while a dog sat calmly in his hand.

Skywarp, meanwhile, had decided to put himself on Rosanna’s side of the stadium where most of the femmes were. They were all Autobots, and they all seemed very intrigued by the Decepticon among them as they threw giggling glances at him. Though, their interest was probably more because of the rumours that kept floating around regarding Seekers that gave Starscream and Skywarp’s some apparent mystique to Autobots. After all, there’d been no Seekers on their side during the war so they were left to come up with as many stories and myths as they could think of in their boredom (or spite).

Skywarp himself, the so-called ladies mech, seemed utterly bewildered by the attention. Either because they were so many Autobots staring at him, or just so many femmes in general who were whispering amongst themselves. Yet they never approached his seat, not even when he gave a nervous wave at one group of blue-shaded ladies who only chuckled at him noticing them. He seemed like he was even missing Thunderblast’s clumsy flirting, but she was too preoccupied with fawning over Rosanna as the bride walked along the centre of the stadium to meet Bumblebee at the altar.

As for Starscream… he sat in the middle of the seating rows, with Windblade on one side and Skyfire on the other. He watched Bumblebee as the plucky Autobot took his bride’s hands, and said his vows, and leaned down to place a kiss upon her mouth…

Well, Starscream had actually glanced away during that moment. He couldn’t stop himself from looking at Windblade instead, her hands clasped tightly in her lap as she grinned. The way she looked down at the happy couple made him remember how she had looked at him just a few decacycles ago, when she’d taken his hand and pulled him away to safety… and into a kiss that he didn’t dare think too much about.

“Wasn’t it just one of the most beautiful weddings you’ve ever seen?”

Her optics were glowing almost brightly now as they were in that moment, while she stood next to him in the reception hall (which was just a military hangar that Bumblebee’s human friends had let him use), and he swore he could even see coolant starting to gather in the corners of her eyes. He had no choice but to roll his own in exhaustion.

“It’s the only wedding I’ve ever seen,” he muttered, “and hopefully it’ll be the last. Spark bonds are supposed to be private, and that’s how it should be.”

On Cybertron, a bonding ceremony was usually only attended by a scant few people, less than what you could count on both hands. The whole human tradition of publicising the occasion as much as this just seemed crass and tasteless at best, nothing more than an excuse to get drunk. Usually Starscream wouldn’t be complaining about something like that, but usually he didn’t have to share his inebriation with a whole load of strangers packed in around him.

Not that Windblade seemed to even notice his disdain, as she looked over to Rosanna giggling as her new husband whirled her around in a dance.

“Rosanna’s such a beautiful bride,” she sighed. “Her new paint looks amazing! The colors have such an incredible sheen. I’ll have to ask her what brand she’s using.”

“Probably something that costs thousands of credits for a tiny can of the stuff,” Flamewar scoffed around a glass of high grade. She was the only other familiar femme who lingered nearby, since Slipstream was standing near the drinks table (with Dirge, which Starscream wasn’t happy about) and Thunderblast was standing near the wall of the hangar (which Starscream should have been happy about… but Sunstorm was near her too, for some unknown reason. And he didn’t like that, also for some unknown reason). Skywarp and Thundercracker were loading themselves up with a plate of as many drinks as the two of them could carry without spilling them everywhere (though, knowing how Thundercracker handled his drink, he would only take one glass for himself), and Soundwave seemed to be indulging in his favourite hobby- standing nearby in absolute silence, creeping the hell out of everyone around him.

“Well, anyone should be allowed to treat themselves if they can afford it,” Skyfire argued, towering like a monolith over all the other guests. “And it’s not like bonding is something you do twice. Well, not unless you’re my sister...”

“Or at all, if you’re smart,” Flamewar continued to mutter, while Skyfire glared at Starscream (Primus, how often was he going to bring up that blasted ceremony in one lifetime?! Starscream was just glad Astrotrain wasn’t anywhere in sight...).

“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to be a bride like Rosie some day, Flamewar,” Windblade teased, even going so far as to prod the proud Decepticon with her elbow. Flamewar recoiled, shielding her drink as she leaned away.
“Hell no. Thunderblast has a better chance of ever getting bonded than I do.”

“I heard that!” Even though she was standing almost on the other side of the hangar, Thunderblast seemed to have the uncanny ability to hear her name whenever and wherever it was uttered.

“You were supposed to, you idiot!” Flamewar called over.

Starscream wondered, with some anticipation, if he was about to bear witness to the first brawl of the evening. But Thunderblast only threw out an offended pout as she turned her panel-laden back to the rest of them, almost blocking Sunstorm from view.

While Flamewar, Windblade and Skyfire drifted away across the dance floor, Starscream found himself craning his neck around to try and keep his brother in view… only to have his other brother yank on his arm and completely seize his attention.

“Starscream, who’s that over there?”

Skywarp was rudely pointing right at one of the female guests standing some distance away, and Starscream shoved his digit down before the poor femme saw she was being ogled. She certainly stood out amongst the crowd, with the bright plume of flame that shot out of her helm and sent light dancing across her face. There was another purple femme next to her as well as a few unrecognisable Autobot mechs, but it was clear who Skywarp was directing his attention to because everyone else seemed to be covertly ogling her.

Well, everyone except Starscream, of course.

“How should I know?!” he protested. “If I was in charge of the guest list, then Thunderblast would have been nowhere near here…”

Skywarp seemed deaf, too enamoured with his latest crush to pay any mind to Starscream’s grumbling. “I don’t recognise her from any faction… think she’s single?”

“If she is,” Thundercracker said around his one and only glass of high-grade, “you won’t be the one to change that. She’d burn you to a crisp just with her glossa.”

“Oh, because you’re such a lady-killer, Cracker?” Skywarp snapped back, waving one of his many glasses around for emphasis (and sloshing most of it over the floor). “The only women you’ve ever had luck with is that pink Autobot you kept pining over… and the ones in your screenplays.”

“Oh yeah?” Thundercracker’s optics darted in a minor panic despite his confident tone, so secretly flustered that he seemed to completely overlook Skywarp’s jab about the infamous Autobot Arcee. “Well… Marissa likes my plays!”

Skywarp almost cackled, smothering his laughter behind his teeth. “I bet she does, Cracker, I bet she does. But, who am I to judge? We’re all friends now. No shame in preferring humans nowadays .”

“I do not-!”

"Especially when you can easily reel them in so easily by being a novelty,” Skywarp pressed on. “Before they realise you have the personality of a disposable camera."

“Hey!” There was a layered echo of protest from nearby, as a camera left on a tripod turned its viewfinder accusingly towards the trine. Ostensibly, Reflector was the wedding photographer, but he seemed more interested in spying on the dancefloor than capturing moments of the bride and groom.
“Not you, Reflector,” Skywarp insisted. “Primus, there’s three mechs in there, you’d think at least one of them could take a joke.”

“I take it you speak from experience of being a novelty, Skywarp?”

“There’s nothing wrong with being unique, Cracker. Even if being an outlier means nothing to humans, I can still impress more than a few of them by zapping them to another country in the blink of an optic.”

“Of course, cause that’s the only thing that’s impressive about you.”

“And what’s Marissa got to say about you, huh? You dedicate a play to her yet? Oh, better yet, you freaked her out by showing her your-?”

“I would never!”

“Don’t tease Thunder like that, Skywarp,” Starscream lilted, while Thundercracker went literally blue in the face as energon rushed to his cheeks. “It’s not his fault he’s been on Earth so long that he’s forgotten how to talk to normal femmes.” He joined in with Skywarp’s laughter, though it only lasted for a nanoklick before he felt a digit tap on his shoulder.

“What’s a normal femme to you, Starscream?” Windblade stood next to him with a glass of mild high-grade, and the sight of her alone was enough to make him instantly compose himself.

“I… well.” He cleared his vocaliser while he jabbed his giggling trinemate in the side with his elbow. “Someone... with a spark, obviously. A nice one. Someone whose... alt-mode is well maintained-”

“That’s your version of a pick-up line, Screamer?” Skywarp interrupted. “Dear Primus, and I thought Thundercracker was the hopeless one! ‘Your T Cog is so polished, your wheels are so clean and shiny-!’”

“They’re a lot better than the cheesy one-liners you steal from the datanet, Skywarp!” Starscream insisted. “You go on there and dig up any free smut you can find-!”

“I do not! I do no such thing!”

“And that’s why the only company you can get is your right hand, Spanky!”

Before a proper brawl could break out between the two trinemates, Thundercracker stepped in to literally push them apart. But, ultimately, it wasn’t him who managed to defuse the two Seekers.

“Seeker attempts at courtship: pitiful. Suggested methods have success rate of less than 2%.”

The trine turned to Soundwave, who had just said his very first words of the evening, yet none of them could fully process what he really said.

“...Alright then, Soundwave,” Skywarp stated after some hesitance, “since you’re apparently the expert here; how would you go about finding the love of your life?”

“More like the love of your evening, where you’re concerned,” Thundercracker muttered.

Soundwave said nothing at first, not until after he placed his drink onto a solid surface (why did he even have a drink when he insisted on keeping his battlemask on at all times?!). With both his hands now free, he counted off each step of his master plan with his digits.

“Strategy: approach target. Deliver following speech. ‘Greetings, I am Soundwave of the former Decepticons, and I could not help but notice how beautiful-slash-kind-slash-other-adjective you are. This is my comm number. I would love to take you out for a glass of energon some day.’ Compliment: given. Comm number: relayed. Interaction: complete."
Then he retrieved his drink, with no move to actually imbibe it at any point, and said nothing more. The three Seekers stared at him in a triple mixture of disbelief.

“...That’s it?” Skywarp barked. “That’s the whole trick?!”

Soundwave didn’t even nod. It was like he’d just switched himself off and became a statue (or, a mannequin according to his story of how he’d disguised himself a while ago).

“Just ignore him,” Starscream scoffed. “He’s taking the slag out of us. Not even the famous CO and former third-in-command of the Decepticons could get a woman that easily.”

He didn’t elaborate on how the second-in-command of the Decepticons would fare any better, only because he was no longer the second-in-command of a faction that no longer existed. And also because he didn’t want to dwell on the old rumours of Soundwave’s apparent admirers from back then...

“Well, some femmes enjoy a mech with some mystery,” Windblade offered, while she seemed to drift in and out of the various guest groups. “And if he tried using that other voice on them, then maybe-”

“Hearing that would just make them call the police!” Starscream said with a splutter of his drink.

“Here, Skywarp,” Thundercracker suggested with no mind to Starscream coughing up high-grade from his vents, “if you’re really so eager to seduce someone, why don’t you go try Thunderblast? She seemed quite interested in you when we got stuck on that backwater planet.”

Skywarp snorted. "Thundercracker, please. I'm single, not desperate. Besides, she and Sunstorm seem cozy enough by themselves…"

“What? Where?!” Thundercracker made a show of looking all around the hangar, until Skywarp grabbed his helm and directed his optics right towards the corner that still housed Thunderblast and Sunstorm. The femme was no longer blocking view of the Seeker, but they were still standing far too close together...

“Huh…” Thundercracker sounded more curious than disgusted. “Did something happen with those two on Amishena?”

“If it did,” Starscream groaned, “then I certainly don’t want to know about it.”

“Well, he’s your brother, Starscream,” Thundercracker chided. “Seems like you’ll have to know about it.”

“You know what you gotta do, right?” Skywarp pressed himself next to Starscream, wrapping an unwelcome servo around the other mech’s shoulders. “Beat Sunstorm at his own game! Get yourself a girl that’s even more annoying than Thunderblast!”

“Possibility of such a femme’s existence: 0.6%,” Soundwave optimistically stated. Starscream gritted his teeth as he cleared the high-grade in his glass in a single gulp. As if he would ever stoop to the level of someone like Thunderblast, whether or not it was to prove a point or even if he was truly that desperate.

“I don’t need to beat anyone,” he growled as he shoved Skywarp’s arm off of him, “because I don’t have anything to prove. And I certainly don’t need any simpering femme that just throws herself at my feet.”

Skywarp pouted as he crossed his servos over his chest. "Screamer, why do you play so hard to get when you're already so hard to want?"

“Enough of this.” Starscream shoved his empty glass into Skywarp’s hand. “Sunstorm isn’t so stupid as to get involved with someone like her, and I’ll prove it!”

He marched over to the secluded little corner, making sure both Thunderblast and Sunstorm could hear him coming before they saw him.

“Hiya, Screamer!” Thunderblast wiggled her digits at him in a mediocre wave. “You and the trine getting jealous over there?”

“There’s never anything to be jealous about, where you’re concerned,” Starscream snapped. “I’d just like to know what the hell you think you’re doing with my brother.”

Sunstorm blinked, as if his brother was the one that was clearly insane and not himself. He even let out an extra pulse of heat, as if he wanted to physically push the other Seeker away.

“We’re sharing a drink, Starscream. Is that suddenly not allowed?”

“Not with the likes of this simpering fool, it isn’t,” Starscream insisted as he grimaced against the temperature of Sunstorm’s aura. “For Primus’ sakes, brother, have some pride in yourself. And turn down your damn heater!”

“Thunderblast rather likes my warmth, actually.” Sunstorm didn’t hide a smug grin as he swilled the high-grade in his glass.

“Thunderblast also likes sucking any spike you put in front of her,” Starscream informed him. Thunderblast let out a minor gasp of offense, before she stuck her glossa out.

“At least I’m not the one fawning over an Autobot-” Her snide comment was instantly interrupted by splutters from Starscream’s vocaliser.

“Who… w-who’s ‘fawning’ over an Autobot? I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re taking about!”

It was one of the most blatant lies he’d ever told, and considering his career that really was saying something.

“Aw,” Thunderblast cooed, “the guilt is all over your face, Screamer!”

“Well, Starscream?” Sunstorm pressed, ramping up his heatwaves just to see his brother squirm even more. “Sounds like you should be more concerned about your own private life than anyone else’s.”

Starscream almost dented his digits as he pressed them into two fists, but he had no choice but to step back before his protoform started to melt under his armour. “Sunstorm, this is the last time I try and do you a favour. So go on, you two. Go swim back to Thunderblast’s house on Whore Island.”

He dismissed them with a wave of his hands, though Thunderblast was no longer grinning and giggling. Her optics narrowed to lethal slits, and her fangs became a cage as she gritted them together.

“You call me the whore, Screamer? When it was you who invited me to ‘celebrate’ with you on Nebulon?”

At first, Starscream genuinely had no idea what the hell she was talking about. And, for once in his life, he was happy to remain utterly ignorant.

But, once the meagre amounts of high-grade were hitting his systems, he remembered.

Oh how he remembered.

The battle of Nebulon. No casualties on either side. Nothing but surrender, and then conquest. Megatron had nothing to do with it, nor did Shockwave or Soundwave or any of Starscream’s trine. The victory and glory was all his to claim.

Drunk with victory, and power… and the need to share it with someone.

Thunderblast had been the only femme around. He didn’t even remember why she was there.

But she’d been there. And she’d never forgotten it like he had tried to.

He might have won the battle of the planet, but his falling to the likes of her was surely his most embarrassing defeat of all….

But just because he remembered it didn’t mean he had to admit it.

“You must have me confused with someone else, Thunderblast,” Starscream informed her, folding his hands behind his back so he could shield the fists they were making. “Primus knows you go through so many mechs, I’m surprised you can tell any of them apart.”

Thunderblast blinked, and for a moment he thought she was going to slap him. It would have been a compliment compared to the accusations she’d been making before, regardless of how true those accusations were. But Sunstorm of all people betrayed more emotion than her, as he quirked an eyeridge down at his brother as if asking him ‘seriously? You and Thunderblast?’

(As if he had any right to be judging Starscream at that moment).

“So I’m a whore and a liar?” Thunderblast muttered, fixing her face into an uncharacteristic blank slab. “Well, you’d know all about lying, wouldn’t you? You’re better at it than fragging, that’s for damn sure.” That was her last barbed remark before she took Sunstorm by the arm and walked away with him, leaving the hangar entirely.

“Good riddance!” Starscream called after them, smothering his relief at the wretched femme finally getting out of his sight (even with his brother as a willing hostage). “The two of you are as useless as a screen door on a submarine! Or, a submarine at all on Cybertron!"

“Oh, for Primus’ sakes, this is ridiculous. It’s like listening to some toddlers arguing over and over.” He heard Windblade mutter behind him, though he hadn’t even known she’d been nearby. And if she’d heard anything about him fawning over an Autobot… oh no.

Starscream turned on his heel to address her and assuage any unfortunate misunderstandings, but she just marched right past him.

“Wait, Windblade? Where are you going?” He trailed after her, though she was leading a one-woman stampede.

“Off to get some fresh air,” she muttered. “Or decent conversation, at least…”

She didn’t look back as she disappeared into the evening, leaving Starscream stranded in his own shame.

And when he turned back, he found his trinemates cackling over his misfortune. Or the scene he’d just caused with Thunderblast. Or maybe it was both.

His hands were still clenched into tight fists. One hand for each laughing face… but Skyfire’s towering reappearance stopped him right in his tracks.

“Will you three fragging behave yourselves?!” He didn’t spare any of them from his glare. “No wonder you’ve driven Windblade off, you’re making complete fools of yourselves like you always do! This is a party, Bumblebee’s and Rosanna’s special day, and you can’t pull yourselves together for just a few hours, for their sakes?”

All three Seekers were defused in an instant. Thundercracker rubbed the back of his neck

“Sorry, Skyfire…”

Skywarp rubbed at his elbow.

“Yeah, sorry...”

And Starscream rubbed his guilty hands together.

“I would think Bumblebee has more important things to focus on right now than his guest’s behaviour,” he muttered, “...but fine. I suppose you’re right.”

“I usually am.” Skyfire kept his glare on the other two Seekers until they drifted aside, leaving him to talk to Starscream with some meagre privacy. “You keep doing so well, Starscream, but then it’s like someone flips a switch and you’re right back to how you always are.”

“I’m not even going to ask what that’s supposed to mean,” Starscream said with a weary roll of his optics.

“It means that you don’t need to be Megatron’s Second-In-Command anymore. You don’t need to snap and snarl at everyone who looks at you funny. And you do not need to take responsibility for your family, or everyone else around you.”

Starscream scoffed, and he heard his trinemates mutter inanely amongst themselves.

"Is that…?”
"What's the matter now? Oh… oh no… not him ."

Whatever it was they were fretting over, unless it was Tarn himself of the DJD then Starscream didn’t care about it.

“Primus, you’re like a damned sire from how you preach,” he sighed to Skyfire. “Almost as bad as that fragging therapist, Rung. But… you’re saying I should only take responsibility for myself, is that it?”

The Decepticons were gone, after all. Megatron was gone. There was very little to fight for now… or fear. There was no excuse to try and control people, or push them away.

“Exactly.” Skyfire had the audacity to grin at him, like he was a sparkling who had just deciphered a simple math problem, completely disregarding the fact that Starscream could run intellectual circles around him in any lab (even if he wasn’t much of a scientist himself anymore). The Autobot always seemed to insist on treating Starscream like a child when he wasn’t even much older than him.

“Now enjoy yourself, for Primus’ sake,” Skyfire insisted with a nudge of Starscream’s elbow. “Bumblebee would want you to. And so would Windblade.”

“Starscream,” Thundercracker was saying, “you really should look behind you-”

Starscream, however, was preoccupied with more important things.

“But it’s too late to bring her back,” he told Skyfire, not trying to hide his guilt.

“She just needs a moment to cool off,” the Autobot assured with a hand almost completely devouring the Seeker’s shoulder. “Just like you sometimes do.”

The notion that Windblade was at all similar to him was still something completely astonishing to Starscream, even with them once sharing each other’s minds. She was so much better, after all. All the good things that ended up buried and suffocated by the war, and Megatron. Not to mention all the things that he’d never be, even without a war to ruin him.

“Starscream,” Skywarp pressed, utterly ruining his processor’s reflection, “you really need to see-”

“What?!” Starscream snapped despite himself. “What is it that’s so damn important-?!”

He saw for himself, when he followed his trine’s frantically pointing fingers. It was usually the height of rudeness to point at anyone, but etiquette was never anyone’s chief concern when it came to this person. The gold-black Seeker who was making a direct approach to Starscream. He wasn’t as tall as Skyfire, not even much taller than Starscream himself, but he carried himself as if he was a Metrotitan.
"...Black Death.” Starscream almost felt his vocaliser completely fail to an error that suddenly popped up on his HUD. He preferred looking at the warning glyph than at the other Seeker. But even as he tried to avert his gaze, he could still see the faintest grin on his face.
"Hello, Starscream.” If Soundwave’s other voice was akin to Tarn’s, this mech’s vocaliser was like pressing your audio to the very bottom of a dark chasm. Starscream gulped, though all the high-grade in his throat had long since evaporated.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, prompting the invisible grin to split into two shards of white denta.

“I was invited, of course,” Black Death informed him. “I see you’re the hired entertainment?”

Starscream felt himself flinch, and out of the corner of his optic he saw Skywarp and Thundercracker trying to skulk away with as much stealth as the two of them could muster between them.

‘Thanks for the backup. Fragging cowards.’

“The groom is actually a very good friend of mine,” Starscream forced out through his clenched jaw, “if you must know.”

Black Death laughed, a single pulse from his vocaliser that rang out through the whole hangar and sounded like a roof crashing down. “So you have friends now? Besides those two trinemates who think I can’t see them trying to sneak away? Good for you. Though, I did like that little display you put on with our youngest brother.”

“Did you, now?” Starscream’s gaze briefly darted over to Thundercracker and Skywarp, who were now frozen in crouches from Black Death acknowledging them. “So why don’t you go find him? To grace him with your presence?”

“I’m just about to. Then I’ll be off. Never been much a fan of Earth… but you feel free to make yourself at home, Starscream. I’ll visit more often if you’re here.”

He clapped a hand on Starscream’s shoulder, and the weight of it was like having Devastator balanced on his neck. Even when Black Death walked away, Starscream still felt like he had a dent in the armour and even the very protoform beneath.

“Who was that?” Skyfire asked, juggling awe and horror in his vocaliser and he craned his neck over his shoulder.

“My… eldest brother,” Starscream answered with a croak. He watched Black Death pass by the clique of Six Changers (what the hell were they doing at a wedding on Earth?! Clearly the whole universe was going mad), and each one of them nodded in respect to the Seeker. Even Quickswitch, Sixshot’s rather rebellious son, swiftly gave deference with a sharp incline of his head.

“I never knew you had one,” Skyfire muttered.

“Yes, and I prefer to keep it that way.” Starscream seized four drinks, two in each hand, to see him through the rest of the ruined evening as he stalked off towards the only other sibling he’d yet to deal with.

“Slipstream. Are you aware our brother is here?”

Slipstream’s head jolted up as if she only just noticed Starscream was next to her. Dirge was on her other side, and he somehow managed to look confident with his new paint job for the ceremony… and with Slipstream’s hand in his own. Starscream’s eye twitched.

“Well, yeah,” Slipstream said, “I saw him slink off with Thunderblast after you failed to call him out.”

“I mean our other brother.” Starscream growled the correction, still watching the Conehead’s hand covering his sister’s with utmost distaste (what was it with his siblings all having horrible taste?!).

“Oh, of course I know about him.” Slipstream answered as if it was completely obvious. “I felt his EM field as soon as I walked in.”

“And you didn’t think to warn me?”

“Of course not. It’s funny when he surprises you.”

Starscream hid his seething growl behind a long swig from his first glass.

“And here I was,” he muttered, “ready to compliment you on your brilliant holoform camouflage idea…”

He said it with sarcasm laden in his high-grade swamped vocaliser, but it really had been brilliant from how she’d described it. Apparently not even Soundwave had noticed the two holoforms walking past him, as he stood frozen in the store window. Other than the… unspoken action instated by Windblade, it was the one good thing that Starscream remembered of the whole awful incident.

"I know exactly how brilliant it was," Slipstream assured with a smile of peak smugness. “But I can’t take credit for it, you know. It was actually Dirge's idea.”

Starscream almost spat his second drink back into its glass, holding back with a guttural groan.

"...Well. I suppose a broken clock has to be right twice a stellar cycle,” he conceded with a sideways glare at the proud Conehead. “And I’m sure him as a dog was a damn sight better than how some people made themselves look...”

This time, he hadn’t let someone sneak up on him without being noticed. He knew his trine and Skyfire were hovering around him, and he now turned his persistent glare on each of them. They knew exactly what he was referring to, and they all struggled to meet his eyes.

“...Well, I think it was pretty good,” Skywarp admitted, “considering what we had to work with.”

“Yeah,” Thundercracker added, “you try thinking of something better when all you’ve got is neon fabric and sweaters!”

"So your genius idea was to dress up like a bunch of aerobics instructors?” Starscream snapped. “Really!?"

“Really?” Slipstream repeated, snorting through her free hand. “That’s how you guys got away?” Even Dirge was giggling along with her, and they both took the chance to walk off so they could share their laughter in private (since Starscream couldn’t try and pull them apart while he was scolding his trine).

“It was a sports room, Starscream!” Skyfire protested. “What else were we supposed to do?”

“And you have the cheek to call me a fool? You’re just lucky no one else around here saw any of you in that get-up. Utterly humiliating…” Starscream drowned the rest of his disappointed mumbles in his third glass, and he was getting impatient for the intoxication to finally kick in. Skyfire just rolled his optics, leaving the trine to themselves as he re-assumed his role as a towering pillar in the hangar.

“Better to be embarrassed than dead,” Thundercracker scoffed. “Or worse… tell you what though, Skywarp.” He turned to the purple mech, with a glimmer in his optics. “Rosanna is a rather petite thing, don´t you think? Even for a Minicon."

Skywarp made a face, but something seemed to click as a smile spread over his face to match Thundercracker’s. “Yeah, I really think she and Bumblebee are perfect for each other. I hope he knows how lucky he is..."

"And, above all,” Thundercracker finished, “he's lucky that Starscream prefers big femmes."

Starscream wasn’t in the middle of drinking this time, but he still felt himself almost spit.

"What is that supposed to mean?!" he demanded, though when he whirled on his trine they just gave him a duo of slag-eating grins.

"Don´t tell me you can't remember the disaster at Skyfire’s sister’s bonding party?" Skywarp asked.

"And how Skyfire practically punched your helm off?” Thundercracker added.

"And how Astrotrain finished the job, which got you a decaycle in the med-center?" Skywarp was actually trying not to laugh for once in his life, the sheer effort of which was almost making his denta carve right into his bottom lip.

Of course Starscream remembered it, despite all the damage he’d sustained. He still had cramps in his neck whenever he was forced to remember it. He still avoided Astrotrain like the rust plague, cause apparently saving a femme from the awful fate of bonding to the likes of the triple-changer was something to be punished. At this rate, he’d need to go into hiding permanently just so no one would bring it up ever again.

"Frag you both to the Pit,” Starscream growled.

“We love you too, Screamer,” each Seeker said in unison.

“Have you three finally decided to stop bickering for once?”

Starscream was starting to wonder if Windblade had the same troublesome talent that Skywarp did, from how she seemed to suddenly materialise out of nowhere. She didn’t look nearly as annoyed as she’d been before, at least. Hell, she actually smiled when she saw Starscream jump at the sound of her voice.

“Yes, Windblade,” Skywarp promised with exaggerated care, “we swear we’ll be on our best behaviour from now on.”

“Good. I don’t like seeing friends arguing. Especially not today.” Windblade gave a small smile to the other two Seekers, but most of her attention landed on Starscream. He was glad for that, just as he was glad for his trine take a hint and go off to find someone else to harass this time (they seemed to be making a beeline for Flamewar… Primus help them both).

“I’m sorry for leaving like that, Starscream,” Windblade said, hiding her hands behind her back. “It was rather rude of me.”

Starscream blinked, as he was reminded once again of how Windblade would always be the better person of the two of them.

“No, no, Windblade, I... I should be apologising,” he insisted, silently aching to close the meagre distance between them. “A wedding is no place for airing out tarnished armour. You had every right to be angry.”

Windblade turned her fresh-painted face towards him, and her mouth spread wide across her face. She really suited smiling.

“Well, Bee and Rosanna seemed to find it quite funny, at least,” she mentioned. “I’m sure they’ll both be teasing Thunderblast and Sunstorm for you for years to come.”

Starscream couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought. Maybe he could tell Bee all the stories he knew about Thunderblast, all the mechs she’d supposedly fragged just to stop herself from becoming cannon fodder.

But he had other things to address first, like what Windblade was hiding behind her back.

“What’s that you’re holding?” He chucked his chin in gesture, and she only just seemed to notice that she was holding anything at all.

“This? Oh, it’s part of the wedding tradition.” She pulled her hands out, revealing a bundle of Earth flowers that seemed pitifully small in her grasp. “The bride throws a bouquet of flowers, and whoever catches it is supposed to be the next one who gets married.”

“So… you caught it?” Starscream guessed. “And that means you’ll be next at the altar?”

“Apparently so. Assuming I meet anyone I want to be there with.” She eyed the flowers with a hint of yearning, gently stroking the petals with the very tip of her digit. Her lips were turned up in the softest smile Starscream had seen since the one he’d kissed, and he struggled not to be flustered.

“Well… whoever you choose will be a very lucky mech,” he said, with utmost sincerity.

Windblade flicked her optics up at him, and how bright they blazed… she was still holding a petal as she sighed.

“I hope he will be.”

She held the bouquet to her chest, pressing it above her spark chamber as she floated past Starscream. He turned on his heel to watch her fade into the crowd-

But he caught her lips on his face instead, the softest touch on his warmest cheek. It was fleeting, opportunistic, only a snapshot of what they’d shared on Amishena. And it still shook him to his spark chamber. So Starscream stood frozen and alone at the very edge of the hangar, silently praying that the moment had went unseen.

“...OHHHHH! I get it now! It all makes sense!”

But, of course, Primus was never that merciful.

“What the hell are you talking about, Skyfire?” Starscream shook himself back to reality, holding a hand to his cheek as if he was about to wipe it of Windblade’s precious imprint. The scientist in front of him looked like he was having a processor crash, or like he was doing the world’s worst dance as he hopped from one foot to the other.

“You and Windblade! Windblade and you! And the looks! And the words...! I have to write this down!”

Skyfire scrambled to get out of the hangar, likely rushing to update his databanks with this apparently world-changing discovery of his, but in his haste he ended up almost trampling half of the guests. That was another thing Bumblebee was sure to laugh about.

And Starscream couldn’t help but laugh too. He was told to enjoy himself, after all. With someone like Windblade in his life, in his head and spark, how could he not?

Chapter 6

Notes:

This is an extra chapter requested by Valong, which takes place during the previous chapter and covers what Thundercracker and Skywarp were off doing while Starscream was talking to Slipstream.

Thundercracker had told himself he wouldn’t be drinking that evening, no more than a single gulp of high-grade allowed for his own sake. But desperate times called for desperate measures poured into a glass. He reached for the lifeline of the drink dispenser, spooning as much of the bright liquid into his cup as he could without spilling it over his feet.

Black fragging Death. Thundercracker had been the one to spot him first, as he carved his way through the reception crowd towards Starscream and his panicking trine. The black Seeker was like Starscream’s shadow, one cast long and dark across a jagged sea of Autobot bodies. And he was here, at a wedding in peacetime, likely just to torment his younger brother. Thundercracker had to check over his shoulder, just to make sure Black Death wasn’t going to turn his attention on Starscream’s trine now that they were all separated, but the Seeker seemed to have vanished as swiftly as he appeared. And Starscream himself was now occupied with Slipstream (and Dirge, who seemed to be glued to her side), so Thundercracker had nothing to distract him from the siren call of the high-grade glass in his hand-

“Oh, excuse me.”

The voice he heard next to him almost made him break the glass in his hand. It was one he hadn’t heard in centuries, but one he’d be hard-pressed to ever forget. He was almost too scared to turn his head and confirm who had spoken, but the arm that passed in front of him to retrieve some high-grade was undoubtedly plated pink.

There could only be one bot standing next to him. One femme.

“...Arcee.”

Her arm seemed to freeze, and the liquid in the glass she gripped was shaking as she pulled it towards her. Thundercracker followed the retreat of her arm to the rest of her, because he was so reluctant to let any of her out of his sight.

“Hello, TC.”

She looked more surprised to see him than her vocaliser would let on. Perhaps she didn’t recognise him with his reformatted frame. Yet she hadn’t changed at all in the last few centuries. If not for the press of other people around them and the decorative armour on her silver protoform, he might have found himself right back at where he’d left her- their final meeting on the outskirts of Kalis, before he’d been relocated without warning on Starscream’s orders.

(That had been another mark against Screamer, once upon a time. Something that Thundercracker had to confess in therapy. He’d thought he was well over it until now.)

“I… I didn’t see you… in the stadium. During the wedding,” he said, somewhat lamely. But he couldn’t think of anything else to say- at least nothing else that wouldn’t likely scare her off.

“I was a bridesmaid,” Arcee told him, and he saw the very edge of what must have been a smile before it was masked by her glass of high-grade. “Hid myself behind a camera stand.”

“Ah.” Thundercracker nodded as he watched her mouth. “Didn’t want to be broadcast all over the planet?”

“Something like that. Not while wearing this armour Rosanna picked out, at least.” She cast a dismissive wave over herself with her hand, giving Thundercracker ample excuse to admire her whole frame. The plating was far more decorative than the regular armour designed for combat, and it certainly had never seen a day on a battlefield. Of course, with the war over there was no need for mass-produced protection any more, and blacksmiths had all the time in the galaxy to indulge in aesthetics over armament. Even so, the sheer detail in Arcee’s ceremonial armour must have taken decacyles to forge and a small fortune to afford. Rosanna clearly treated her friends well.

“You don’t like it?” Thundercracker asked as he finally freed his optics from her. But Arcee kept her own gaze bolted to the floor.

“No, I do. But I’m one of the last original Autobots. So… I have a certain reputation to uphold. Don’t want Decepticons thinking we’ve let our guards down.”

There was an unmistakable hiccup around the word that burned in Thundercracker’s audios, and he immediately feared the worst from her. But he smothered it with a gulp of the dregs of his high-grade glass.

“Right… there’s still a few of those lurking around,” he said around the new lump in his vocaliser. “I heard you and Springer have been kept busy. Or, was it Hot Rod? One of those two, I think.”

He shrugged, an attempt to mask how he knew of such things. But he’d checked every report that contained Arcee’s name, of course. He’d seen those two mechs be assigned to her more than once. And it had been a long time since… they’d left each other. She’d have found someone else, someone on her side, by now. Thundercracker could accept that… he just wanted to know who it was.

“I worked with both of them on a few missions,” Arcee admitted. “But we all parted ways afterwards. So... I’ve been by myself mostly. What about you? Still keeping with your trine? Or have they finally settled down?”

Thundercracker had to scoff. “Of course not. Skywarp is still chasing every valve he sees, and that won't change anytime soon. And Starscream... well, actually, we might be losing him to a certain Camien lady.”

He was careful not to mention Windblade by name, since the last thing he needed was both Black Death and Starscream breathing down his spinal strut.

“Starscream?” Even Arcee had to hush the name in her surprise. “Really? Never thought he had much time for things like that.”

“Usually, he wouldn’t,” Thundercracker said. “But... she’s a special one. She taught him to use his wings again.”

He smiled at the thought, but Arcee cocked her head in confusion.

“But... he’s always known how to fly.”

“Er, it’s a Seeker phrase,” Thundercracker explained, snapping out of his brief reverie. “It means to be true to the self in your spark, and not the self others have forged you into. Most have forgotten how to do that, ever since…”

He trailed off. It wouldn’t be wise to bring up the war so soon. Old wounds never really healed after so long spent flayed open.

“Well.” Thundercracker cleared his vocaliser with a burst of static. “I suppose Starscream is finding himself again, thanks to her. Most mechs can’t bare to stand up to Starscream, let alone femmes, but she’ll shout at him from across a room and he’ll come running to her. She’s done the impossible and tamed him… he just doesn’t know it yet.”
He had to laugh, and to his muted delight Arcee offered one in turn. He hadn’t realised how much he truly missed the sound.

“And what about you, TC?” she then asked, breaking through his haze of joy.

“...What about me?”

“Are you learning to use your wings, too?”

He had to think on that for a moment, though he could almost feel his hesitance being held against him.

“...The war never gave me much chance to use them,” he eventually confessed. “At least... not until I found you again.”

He smiled despite himself, a desperate attempt to try and coax the same from her. But she only shook her head as she looked down at the half-remains of her glass. Thundercracker wondered, with aching sorrow, if he’d went and ruined everything just as she spoke.

“We were so young, weren’t we?”

The regret in her voice was thick and palpable, and it weighed heavy on his head as he nodded. “Too young to realise that we didn’t have to fight.”

“Not just during the war,” she corrected with the slightest shake of her lovely head. “I mean before. Neither of us even knew our own sparks, let alone what the other’s was like.”

“I... suppose not,” he conceded, and truthfully he still did not know what his own spark was supposed to be without a war to lose it over. “Before then… it was almost another war on its own, wasn’t it? With the rest of us together. If only we’d known what was coming.”

...As if it would have made any difference. Thundercracker’s life, like that of most other surviving Cybertronians, was cleanly separated into two halves; before the war, and during the war. Yet he could not think of them as two parts of a whole, because the mech that had lived in one half was a stranger to the other. When he looked back on his life with his trine and his friends and Arcee, it was like viewing scenes of a book or film rather than recalling true memories. The worst fighting was still a fresh scar in his mind, so fresh that his spark had not yet carved out a third section for ‘after the war’.

“All the stories we made,” Arcee said, as if she was thinking out loud while agreeing with him. “All those petty arguments that never really ended. Everything we’ve seen... enough for a hundred lifetimes between us.”

First kisses, first spark aches. They danced and shared secrets in one life, while the other life forced them to try and kill each other. One day they’d be at each others’ throats, the next they’d be in each other’s arms...

“But we had some good laughs, at least,” Thundercracker added, though he wasn’t sure why he had to make that known most of all. Maybe because he was so wistful to hear that sound come from her, even if it was just one last time.

“Yeah. We did.” She nodded with the faintest smile, a far-cry from the way she used to grin in better days.

“Do you remember… the last time?” he asked. “When all of us were together? Maccadam’s, the party, Skywarp pouring a drink over us and Starscream grabbing poor Reflector…”
“Of course I remember. I never threw it away.”

There was something in her hand, the one that wasn’t held around the high-grade glass. It was a hologram projector, one for displaying figures and pictures. During the war, they’d been invaluable for visualising battle strategies and carrying coded messages and ciphers. But the one in Arcee’s hand was clearly a pre-war model meant for more innocent mementos, and it projected an image that made Thundercracker’s spark ache at the sight of it.

There were more than a few Cybertronians shown- no Autobots or Decepticons, because such groups hadn’t even existed back then. But there they were; Thundercracker and Arcee, in their final embrace with unmarked plating. And there was Skywarp, mere nanoklicks away from pouring his drink over the two of them. Starscream took up the entire bottom corner of the hologram, though only the edge of his ridiculous expression was visible.

Thundercracker wondered if Windblade would have appreciated knowing what her future-fated sparkmate looked like when he had a few drinks in his tanks. He was about to ask Arcee if he could have a copy of the hologram, but there was a deep sadness in her smile that only went away when the hologram did; back into her subspace, a priceless relic of a long-lost time.

She held her glass to her mouth, but she didn’t drink. She just kept it there, as if to hide her expression behind it.

“How long has it been, Thundercracker?” she asked. “Since we stopped shooting at each other?”

He pretended to think, though he knew exactly how long ago he’d last seen Arcee and he had the feeling she knew as well. She was only asking as some kind of test. He wanted to tell her that it didn’t feel so long ago, not at all now that she was next to him once again. It was really as if they’d never been apart at all.

Who knew what might have happened, if they’d stayed together in those distant centuries? If the wedding they were at right now would still just be someone else’s, and not their own?

“If you can’t remember,” Thundercracker eventually said to her, “then neither can I.”

He struggled to keep his own optics on her this time, but the effort was worth it to catch the guilty glint of hers finally flitting to meet his face. Thundercracker was reminded of the first night he’d spent with her during the war. Their chests had lain so close that their opposing faction emblems, still warm from the fresh welding, almost touched together, and now he only wanted to see the faintest shadow of her smile again so he could kiss it.

“This high-grade is pretty watered down, don’t you think?” she asked, though he saw the words formed by her lips before he actually heard them. The Seeker blinked, looking down at his own untouched high-grade cube. It looked somewhat appetising, until you actually tasted it (as most bulk-produced fuel seemed to be like). He’d only went for another serving because he’d been desperate to forget…

What was it that brought him over here in the first place? Well, it must not have been important.

“I only had one glass myself,” Thundercracker confessed as he poured the high-grade back into where it came from. “But… yeah, it is somewhat disappointing.”

“So maybe we can go off and find something better to drink,” Arcee suggested. “Once Rosanna and Bee are off to their honeymoon. How about it?”

Thundercracker had to study her face to tell if she was serious. If she was really even standing there at all. But she was here, and she was smiling, smiling!, and she was waiting for his response.

But wasn’t the answer obvious?

“I… Yeah. I’d love to.” He couldn’t stop himself from lingering on the ‘love’; the word alone when spoken against her was enough to intoxicate him. He was sure he looked like a fool as he grinned at her, from how a laugh burst forth from her beautiful smile, but he would have gladly humiliated himself in front of Megatron himself if it would have allowed him such a sight of her.

Abandoning her glass as she drifted off on the metal layers of her armour. Thundercracker watched her leave, but this time with no sadness or regret, only with the most tentative hope...

And then, just before she disappeared amongst the other guests, she turned around to face him one last time.

“After all,” she said, “I have to protect you from all these other Autobots.” Her thumb pointed towards a group of other staring femmes off to her left. “Can’t have them finding out about the reputation you Seekers have in bed.”

She winked at him as a last goodbye, and it took the all strength of his swollen spark to not fly after her and kiss her, or scoop her up and take her somewhere far away, to another planet where no-one could find them this time.

...But there’d be time for that later. Hopefully. For now, Thundercracker figured he should probably be making sure Skywarp wasn’t going to ruin his suddenly-perfect evening by getting himself into trouble.

(Or, at least, more trouble than usual.)

 

 

xx

 

 

Black Death. Black Death! Black fragging Death! Of all the fragging mechs, it had to be him who showed up?! At least Astrotrain appearing and running into Starscream would have been amusing. At least a surprise visit from Overlord would have cut everything short and given Skywarp an excuse to run off with a few high-grade tanks under his arms. At least the appearance of Unicron himself would have spared Skywarp from the sheer embarrassment-

“What the hell?! Watch where you’re going!”

And now, just to make his evening even worse, he’d ran right into someone who really should have been more careful. How is a mech supposed to flee for his life when people won’t get out of the way?! Not only was he knocked flat on his aft by the collision, he was also covered in high-grade that he couldn’t even drink up to soothe his pains. What idiot would even be carrying so many drinks in the first place?!

An Autobot, of course. He saw the familiar badge on the chest of the femme he’d just smacked into, as she knelt down to try and salvage the toppled glasses with a scowl.

“Autodork,” Skywarp muttered, fielding the femme’s glare with a narrow challenge in his optics.
“Decepticreep,” she fired back, most unimaginatively.

She sounded familiar.

In fact, she looked familiar too. Cause, really, how many bots in the galaxy were dumb enough to walk around in seafoam-green plating that would stick out on a battlefield like an empurata victim on a stage?

Well, a sniper wouldn’t have that issue since they weren’t supposed to be seen. But this femme must not have been a very good sniper, anyway. Skywarp had seen her, just after she clipped one of his wings during the first battle of Tyger Pax, from the muzzle-flash of her gun. He’d heard her curse at the bullet swerving off-target as he teleported over to her, but she was already in her alt-mode and driving through the city’s rubble before he could grab her.

This was the very same femme. He was sure of it. Cause who could ever forget such a charming glare of death?

“I see your aim is just as bad as it’s always been,” Skywarp scoffed down at her. “Can’t even move yourself around a crowd, let alone get a bullet on a target.”

The femme froze, and her optics narrowed to sharp points as she glared up at him. “How did you…?” Then she blinked, somewhat ruining the effect of her gaze, as some form of recognition seemed to overtake her as well.

“Ohhh, now I remember.” She stood up, abandoning her clean-up efforts to plant her hands on her hips. “You're the one who teleports and gets himself stuck in walls all the time, aren’t you?"

There was a new twist on her scowl, but that wasn’t the only thing that made Skywarp splutter. His teleportation was a gift from Primus, dammit! The Autobots should have been begging for him to join their side, not coming up with lies to piss him off!

“H-Hey, I’ll have you know that’s only happened twice!” he firmly informed her. “And only once was it actually my fault!”

That one time was actually more accurately Soundwave’s fault, since Skywarp had been trying to avoid his all-seeing optics by teleporting outside of the Nemesis. But, apparently, some kind of forcefield had been set-up around the ship’s perimeter, so Skywarp only succeeded in phasing himself half-way between the medbay and the armoury.

Not that this femme could have, or should have, known anything about that. Yet she was laughing as if she was right there, prodding his face while the Constructicons tried to carve him out of the wall in one piece-

“It’s called a tease, Decepticreep,” the Autobot told him, grinning right in front of his soaked scowl. “Thought mechs were supposed to be good at things like that.”

Skywarp’s processor skipped a circuit. She was teasing… she was laughing, expecting him to laugh too.

Was this really the same femme who apparently tried to kill him so long ago? Maybe only on the outside. Or maybe she was as drunk as Skywarp wished he was.

Either way, even though the spilled high-grade was drying to a sticky crust over his frame… he couldn’t help but chuckle with her anyway.

“Oh. Well. You got me there, I guess.”

“So what’s a mech like you doing in a nice place like this?” She was walking away, but clearly with an expectation that he would be following her. Which he was, of course.

“What’s a femme like you doing with so much high-grade?” he countered, eventually catching up to her at an empty table tucked against a far wall of the hangar.

“Running into dorks like you is thirsty work,” she claimed as she sat down with what was left of her drinks tray. “I need to keep my morale up.”

“Well, surely you can spare a few glasses for the poor frame you’ve went and sullied,” Skywarp insisted with a gesture to his soaked and sticky plating as he dragged a seat over for himself.

“I think it was ‘sullied’ long before I showed up,” she snorted. “Besides, you’re a big strong Decepticon. Go get your own.”

“Well, I would. If the idiot at the bar hadn’t put a limit on how many drinks I was allowed…”

It was actually Bumblebee who had imposed the limit solely on Skywarp, since the open bar meant that otherwise he would be drinking enough to fuel a small army and ‘apparently’ that couldn’t be accounted for in the wedding budget. Skywarp hadn’t even known he was only allowed three until he tried to go up for a fourth one, only for the tiny bartender to turn him away and threaten to use some stupid looking gun on him. Stupid looking gun for a stupid looking mech. With a stupid name, too! What the hell kind of name was ‘Swerve’ anyway?!

“And you have the nerve to say I have too much high-grade on me?” The Autobot laughed, and despite his simmering frustration Skywarp couldn’t help but admire the sound. He’d always liked femmes with a good sense of humour, AKA femmes who appreciated just how funny he really was. And this one wasn’t trying to shoot his head off this time… which was usually a good omen.

“You really wanna hear about too much high-grade?” he told her. “How ‘bout I tell you about when my trine tried to join the DJD?”

She’d been in the middle of drinking from one of her many glasses, but she almost spluttered it out over her chin. “Is it really that easy to do?”

“Well, there’s a comm frequency that anyone can just call up,” Skywarp revealed as he kicked back in his seat. He was the one who had discovered it, as some kind of grim joke about a suicide hotline, and he’d told his trine about it during one of their many ill-fated evenings with high-grade smuggled in past Megatron’s warzone barricades.

“Starscream, of course,” he went on, “did just that. Spoke to Tarn himself. Thundercracker kept trying to get him to hang up, in case Tarn killed us all over the comm. And, to this day, Starscream lives in constant fear of that guy’s voice finding him and making his spark explode.”

The femme was cackling with a hand over her chest, as if to keep her spark sealed within, and Skywarp grinned for the few klicks it took for her to compose herself.

“So he’s your trine leader?” she asked. “The illustrious Starscream himself?”

It was a mocking compliment… but still a compliment, nonetheless. Skywarp rolled his optics- even when ranks no longer existed, he was still getting shown up by Starscream… but not this time. No, this time Skywarp had an ace in the hole. Or, up his servo. However the saying went.

“Yeah, he’s kind of a big deal, I guess,” he sighed, “but he’s retired now. Me? Forget the DJD, I’m part of the GODL.”

Just as he expected, the femme looked confused but not suspicious over her glass. “The… what?”

“Galactic Organic Deterrence League,” he informed her, plucking the name right out of his processor. “I’m not surprised you’ve never heard of it, since it’s supposed to be a secret… but you seem nice, and I think people deserve to know what’s really going on around the galaxy. You know the Black Block Consortia? The organics with a real grudge against us? We are the answer to them. That’s right, we can single-handedly wipe out a whole regiment of those losers without breaking a coolant drop.”

He pulled his servos behind his head, proudly cushioning his helm as he sat back to bask in the Autobot’s awe.

“Wow, really?” She rested her face on her hand with her eyeridges high above her bright optics.

“You bet your sweet little spark.” Skywarp grinned as his quick processor went to work. “Pit, just a few cycles ago we were sent to a little place called Amishena. Population; humans in dire need of help. The whole planet was under the tyranny of the Black Block, and we were the only ones who could liberate them.”

He stood to put proper emphasis on this tale, propping one ped up on his chair. “So we sneak in with our holoforms, and of course mine is the most handsome so I’m in charge of negotiations, but in the meantime my real body is placing explosives on the Consortia starships. I keep the armoured squishies busy, making them think they’ve got us cornered and that we’ll do anything to get them to leave, and when they finally open fire they’re stunned that the bullets go right through us. They look at us and ask if we’re ghosts, and then I say ‘the only ghosts you’ll be seeing… are in hell!’ Then I hit the trigger and-!”

Then, of course, TC had to show up in his audio and ruin the story as well as the mood.

“Skywarp, where the Pit are you? The coast is clear, so get your aft over here.”

Skywarp struggled to keep his scowl under control. Of course he didn’t expect to seduce the Autobot in one night, but he was laying groundwork dammit! And she was clearly drinking enough that her standards would have been rock-bottom by the end of the evening!

But there was nothing to be done about it- Skywarp had lost hold of his theatrics, and the last thing he wanted was Thundercracker storming over to drag him away like a sparkling.

“Alas,” he sighed to his partner, “I’m now being summoned away on most vital business. You know, more saving-the-universe type stuff.”

“Aw.” The femme’s pout was only slightly exaggerated. “Sounds fun.”

“Not as much fun as you’ve turned out to be… what was your name again?”

“Moonracer. Friends call me Moony.”

“Well, Moony.” Skywarp smiled around the pleasing sound of her name. “You might have trouble finding me in the next few decacycles, since I’ll be knee-deep in the hordes of the Consortia and heroically holding them back from dismantling us all… but if you’re ever in trouble, just ping this comm frequency and I’ll be there faster than a Velocitronian on red energon.”

He thought it was a pretty good line, at least good enough to earn him a kiss. Moonracer was smiling like she was expecting one, and she was close enough over the table…

But then she pulled back, barely grazing his mouth with her high-grade stained lips, and kicked her peds up on the table.

“So how many girls do you try that line on?” she asked.

Skywarp was quickly realising how much he liked this girl.

“Only the pretty ones,” he told her.

“And how many fall for it?”

“You’d be the first. But I’m okay with that if you are.”

“That’s why you haven’t told me your name, isn’t it? So I can’t go and look you up and see how you're full of slag.”

Oh, he really liked this one.

“Tell you what.” He leaned across the table, secretly taking hold of one of her high-grade glasses. “I’ll let you figure it out my name for yourself… or I’ll tell you on our second date. But, in the meantime, I have some planets to go save.”

He winked just as his teleportation drive kicked in, and he materialised next to Starscream and TC (and Slipstream, for some reason) with his pilfered drink miraculously un-spilled.

He would have rather had some more time with Moonracer, of course. But beggars couldn’t be choosers… and he expected to hear from her again that very evening.

Assuming he’d survive whatever Starscream was glaring at him over now.

Oh. The Amishena disguise thing. Why was he angry about that?

“Well, I think it was pretty good,” Skywarp informed him, “considering what we had to work with.”

And then he went right back to thinking of Moonracer, so he didn’t really hear or care about anything else that followed.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 3 of Commissions