Another Name for Screams

by OtomeGirl4Ever

Summary:

Captured and restrained by the Autobots, Starscream seems broken—until he awakens with a new voice, a new name, and fragments of a life that none of them recognize. The Autobots dismiss it as another manipulation… until Jetfire recognizes the name.

As Ratchet’s medical scans reveal the unthinkable—evidence buried deep in Starscream’s frame that no Cybertronian should ever carry—the truth unfolds like a shattered puzzle. Starscream was never the traitor they thought, but a victim molded by Megatron’s cruelty. And the Autobots are left to question not only their enemy, but themselves.

Chapter 1

They had not captured Starscream through strategy or cunning. No, it had been sheer luck. The Second-in-Command of the Decepticons had found himself alone in the chaos of battle, wings battered, energon lines leaking, and facing opponents like Ultra Magnus and Ironhide—mechs built to grind down anything fragile, even something as sharp and quick as a Seeker.

When he finally fell, it was less a triumph of Autobot tactics and more the collapse of one lone flier overwhelmed. Still, when the Autobots dragged him into their stronghold, bound and limping, they felt it was a victory nonetheless. A rare prize.

Starscream, locked behind thick reinforced bars, became a silent specter in their base. He did not shout, did not sneer, did not spit venomous insults as they expected. He barely moved. He refused energon, refused conversation, refused everything.

Ratchet checked on him, scowling every time his scanners reported lower fuel intake and declining systems. Optimus spoke of patience, as though silence itself would eventually break. Ironhide muttered that Starscream was just biding his time, plotting some new scheme. Ultra Magnus simply reminded them all that vigilance was key.

Days passed. Days of silence. Days of those piercing crimson optics watching from shadow, unblinking, hollow.

Until one day, without warning, Starscream moved.

Ironhide was on duty outside the cell, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, optics on the dim glow of the energon lamps. The air was still. The only sound was the faint hum of the security field around the bars.

Then—movement.

Starscream rose slowly from the berth, wings dragging faintly as though they carried a weight far beyond their frame. He stepped closer, talons curling around the edge of the bars. His gaze fixed directly on Ironhide, and for the first time in cycles, his mouth opened.

“Excuse me.”

Ironhide’s helm snapped up. His spark jolted. Out of all the words he had expected—mockery, rage, some biting Decepticon sneer—politeness had never once crossed his processor.

“…What?” His voice was a low growl of suspicion.

Starscream blinked, optics uncertain, flickering as though even their hue was unstable. His voice, when he spoke again, carried none of the sharp pitch of the Decepticon commander. It was lower, calmer, almost… soft.

“Where am I?”

Ironhide stared. He searched the Seeker’s expression, waiting for the mask to drop, for the smirk to spread, for the real Starscream to rear up and laugh at him for falling for the act. But nothing came. The faceplate staring back at him was not cruel, not sly. It was bewildered. It was fragile.

“You’re in a cell,” Ironhide finally muttered, his voice harsher than he meant. He shifted uncomfortably, optics narrowing. “Don’t play games with me, Seeker.”

Starscream tilted his helm as though the word didn’t belong to him. Confusion deepened in his optics, and his claws slipped down the bars slowly.

“I don’t understand. ‘Seeker’? That’s… not me.” His voice trembled, earnest. Ironhide felt a chill run through his lines.

There was no performance in that voice. No triumph. No manipulation. It was the sound of a mech lost in his own body, searching for something that no one else could see.

And for the first time, Ironhide found himself hesitating—because this didn’t feel like Starscream at all.

“I never took that exam,” Starscream said suddenly, almost in protest, his voice carrying a fragile honesty. “The Seeker badge… I never wanted it. I had no interest.”

Ironhide’s plating prickled. He knew that tone—no, he didn’t know that tone. Starscream’s voice had always been sharp-edged, shrill with arrogance, dripping in venom. But this voice… shy, careful, soft as though afraid of being too loud. Innocent in a way that set Ironhide’s spark twisting uncomfortably in his chest.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

“Stop playin’,” Ironhide muttered, trying to steel his frame, to push away the unease. “I don’t know what game yer runnin’, but it won’t work on me.”

But then he turned, really turned to face Starscream—and froze.

One of the Seeker’s optics, once unyielding crimson, now glowed a clear, piercing shade of celestial blue. Not paint. Not reflection. It shone from deep within the lens, alive with light that had no place in a Decepticon’s gaze. The other optic flickered in confusion, caught between red and blue, a strange fractured pattern that made Ironhide’s tanks churn.

That wasn’t normal. That wasn’t natural.

Starscream’s talons flexed faintly against the bars before pulling back, his gaze sweeping the cell as though seeing it for the first time. “Why am I here?” he asked softly, optics darting back to Ironhide with naked bewilderment. “Why am I in a cell? I don’t understand. What did I do?”

The genuine panic in his voice was a blade cutting through Ironhide’s logic. This wasn’t Starscream. This couldn’t be Starscream. But Ironhide clung to suspicion because it was safer than admitting how unnerved he was.

“Yer tricks don’t fool me,” Ironhide growled, fists tightening. He shoved the feeling down, burying it under the weight of his distrust. “You want pity? Wrong mech. Yer manipulation won’t work here, Starscream. Stop tryin’.”

Inside the cell, the tricolored flier recoiled, confusion flickering across his faceplates. He looked… lost.

“Manipulation?” he repeated in a whisper. “Who… who is Starscream?”

The name hung in the air like a curse.

Ironhide’s spark stuttered. “…It’s you,” he said finally, his tone like iron, as if saying it with force would make it true. “You’re Starscream. Decepticon second-in-command. Lying, scheming, backstabbing little—”

But the Seeker’s expression shattered with shock before he could finish. His wings quivered as though the very air had betrayed him.

“No,” he murmured, shaking his helm violently, optics bright and desperate. “That’s not me. That’s not—” He stumbled back, almost tripping over the berth. “My name isn’t Starscream. My name is—” He stopped, as if digging deep into a place long buried, something clawing its way out of his memory.

“Ulchtar.”

The word came out trembling but certain, like the first light breaking through darkness.

Silence fell. Heavy, crushing silence. Ironhide stared, processor struggling to reconcile what he was hearing with everything he knew. Because no matter how hard he tried, nothing in front of him resembled the Starscream he despised.

And that scared him more than any trick ever could.

The fragile calm inside the cell shattered in an instant.

Starscream—no, the mech who had claimed another name—staggered back from the bars, hands rising to clutch at his helm. His voice broke apart, rising and falling in a desperate, erratic rhythm.

“Where—where are the others? The scientists—? They were just here, weren’t they?” His optics darted to the corners of the cell, to the cold walls as though they should have been lined with consoles, datapads, humming instruments. “The lab—where is the lab? I don’t—why is everything gone?”

His body trembled violently, talons dragging down the plating of his helm as though he could tear the confusion out of himself. His wings clattered against the cell wall, frantic, sharp movements born of fear rather than anger.

“My processor—Primus, why does it hurt so much?” he cried, voice cracking high, raw with pain. “Why—why is my body so heavy? This isn’t—this isn’t right—!”

The words spiraled into a scream. A piercing, unrestrained sound that carried no arrogance, no threat—only panic. His optics burned, one flickering between red and blue, the other glowing that unnatural celestial light, as though two lives fought inside one spark.

Ironhide’s tanks lurched. This wasn’t posturing. This wasn’t one of Starscream’s schemes. He could tell. His own instincts screamed at him to move. Without hesitation, he pushed away from the bars, comm already sparking to life as he stormed down the corridor.

“Prime!” His heavy steps thundered against the metal floor until he found Optimus and the others gathered in the main hall. His plating was still bristling with adrenaline. “Somethin’s wrong with him—Starscream. He’s losin’ it in there. Losin’ his slaggin’ judgment!”

The words hit the Autobots like thrown wrenches, but none of them moved. Not a single one.

Prowl arched a brow, his expression unreadable. “Starscream losing his mind is hardly news.”

Sideswipe smirked faintly, though it lacked any real amusement. “Sounds like just another performance to me. He’s probably waiting for one of us to open the door so he can bolt.”

Even Ratchet, arms crossed, helm tilted, looked unimpressed. “He’s starving himself, Ironhide. Processor strain, delirium—exactly what you’d expect from a flier with more pride than sense. He’ll come around, or he won’t.”

Ironhide’s jaw locked. He slammed a fist against the wall, startling a few. “I know when I’m bein’ played, and this ain’t it! He ain’t schemin’. He’s—he’s breakin’ down in there. Callin’ himself by another fraggin’ name!”

That got their attention.

The room stilled. A heavy pause fell, every optic in the hall turning toward him.

And then—movement.

A towering figure pushed his way forward, white armor gleaming faintly under the dim light, streaks of red tracing his massive frame. Wings folded tight, but every line of his body was taut, urgent.

Jetfire.

He seized Ironhide by the shoulders before the weapon specialist could so much as react. His grip was iron, his optics burning with a sudden intensity that sent a shiver down Ironhide’s frame.

“What name?” Jetfire demanded, his voice low but sharp as a blade. “What did he call himself?”

Ironhide blinked at him, thrown off by the raw force in the shuttle’s tone. “Ulchtar,” he managed.

The reaction was immediate.

Jetfire didn’t breathe, didn’t blink—just released Ironhide as though his servos had gone numb. And then, without another word, without sparing the others even a glance, the massive white bot turned on his heel and ran. Heavy footfalls echoed like thunder down the corridor, carrying him back toward the cells with a speed none of them had expected from his size.

The Autobots watched him go, a weight settling over the hall.

Ironhide exhaled harshly, helm still spinning from the sudden turn of events. “Somebody wanna tell me what in the pit just happened?”

But no one had an answer.

Optimus Prime was not a mech to take words lightly. He had heard Ironhide’s urgency, had watched Jetfire’s uncharacteristic outburst, and deep in his spark, he recognized something that told him this was not a trick to be ignored.

“Something is amiss,” he rumbled, his tone steady but edged with unease. “We will see for ourselves.”

A few Autobots followed in his wake, more out of curiosity than concern. Sideswipe whispered to Sunstreaker that this was bound to be Starscream’s greatest show yet. Prowl kept his silence, but his optics betrayed skepticism. Ratchet muttered about wasted cycles, though the healer’s stride was quick to match Optimus’s.

The corridors seemed to hum louder with each step, until they reached the detention level.

And there they stopped.

The sight that met them was one none of them expected.

The cell door lay twisted on the ground, torn off its hinges, edges crumpled like fragile metal under sheer brute strength. Inside the cell, Jetfire was on one knee, his massive arms wrapped protectively around the trembling frame of the tricolored Seeker.

Starscream—no, Ulchtar—shook as though freezing, wings quivering, hands clutching at Jetfire’s plating as though it were the only solid thing left in the world.

“Easy,” Jetfire murmured, voice uncharacteristically soft for his size, his servos running over the trembling seeker’s back. “Easy now, Ulchtar. You’re safe. I’m here.”

“Ulchtar.” The name rolled from his vocals like something long buried, spoken with the weight of memory.

The Seeker’s optics—one blue as a clear sky, the other fractured, bleeding between red and blue—searched Jetfire’s face with a desperate, frightened light.

“Where… where am I?” His voice cracked, fragile and childlike, laced with terror. “What happened to the others? Where is the lab? Why does everything hurt so much?” His hands clutched tighter, claws scraping faintly against Jetfire’s armor. “And you—why are you here? You… you left! You left for the frozen mission, the exploration—why are you here?”

The questions tumbled like broken datapads spilling across the floor, each one more fractured than the last.

The Autobots at the door watched in stunned silence. Then whispers began to crawl through the group.

“Primus… he’s really putting on a show this time,” Sunstreaker muttered under his breath. “Better than any performance he’s ever staged.”

“Look at him,” Sideswipe added, a grin tugging his lips though unease flickered in his optics. “The fragging Decepticon deserves an award.”

But not all shared the sentiment. Ironhide’s arms crossed tightly, his gaze sharp, guarded—but beneath it lingered the memory of the Seeker’s terrified eyes. Optimus’s expression was unreadable, though his optics narrowed faintly, as though absorbing every word, every detail.

And Ratchet—Ratchet had stopped moving entirely. His optics locked on Starscream, and in a single instant, every cynical remark died on his tongue.

The medic’s field shifted, all gruff dismissal stripped away in the face of what his trained optics recognized.

The Seeker was not performing. His plating trembled uncontrollably, ventilations shallow and quick, his servos jittering as though even holding himself upright was a fight. His optics—Primus, those optics—flickered not with guile but with disorientation, like a mech torn between two realities.

Without hesitation, Ratchet moved. His usual bark softened, his hands raised slowly to show calm. “Out of the way,” he ordered as he stepped forward, though the command was for the Autobots at the door, not for Jetfire. “I need to see him. Now.”

Jetfire’s gaze snapped to him, optics narrowed protectively. For a long, tense moment, the shuttle didn’t budge, his frame curling around Ulchtar like a shield.

But Ratchet’s voice carried no judgment, only clinical urgency. “He’s shaking himself apart. If you want him to survive whatever this is, you let me in.”

At last, Jetfire shifted, though he kept one arm steady against the Seeker’s back.

Ratchet crouched, his optics scanning quickly over the trembling tricolor frame. And what he saw made his spark clench.

This wasn’t delirium. This wasn’t manipulation.

This was a mech coming apart at the seams.

Starscream—no, Ulchtar—pressed himself tighter into Jetfire’s frame, wings trembling so violently that the metal rang faintly against the cell wall. He clung as though Jetfire were the only anchor left in a universe spinning out of control.

Ratchet, pausing at the sight, softened his posture instinctively. He saw the fragility in every movement—the pleading way Ulchtar’s optics sought Jetfire, the childlike desperation in the way he curled closer to protection.

“Easy,” Ratchet murmured, kneeling down so his optics were level. His voice, gruff as it often was, smoothed into something steady, clinical yet calm. “Everything’s fine. My name is Ratchet. I’m a doctor. I’m here to help you.”

Ulchtar’s optics flickered, one burning with celestial blue, the other fractured between red and blue light. His voice came out fragile, breaking on every word.

“My processor… it hurts. Everything feels… heavy. Too heavy.” His frame shook harder, vents stuttering with uneven pulls of air. “Something’s wrong with me.”

Ratchet’s spark clenched at the raw honesty in those words. “I’ll take care of you,” he promised, his hands moving with practiced precision. “Just breathe. Stay still. Let me look.”

Right there on the cold cell floor, Ratchet began his examination. He lifted a small penlight from his kit, shining it gently into Ulchtar’s optics, watching the flickering responses. He scanned the tremors through his plating, the twitch of servos, the unsteady field that radiated confusion and fear rather than malice.

“Tell me,” Ratchet said carefully, keeping his voice calm to guide the seeker through the haze, “what’s the last thing you remember before waking up here?”

Ulchtar blinked slowly, confusion tightening his features. Then his gaze drifted upward, searching the ceiling as if reaching through time. His voice came halting at first, then steadier, threaded with pain and disbelief.

“I was in my lab. In Iacon. I had… just finished it—my project.” His optics lit faintly with memory, his shaking easing for a fragile moment. “It was my secret, something I had worked on for so long. A discovery that would change Cybertron forever. I was preparing my materials… to show the Council. To prove myself.”

The Autobots at the doorway exchanged wary glances, but none spoke.

Ulchtar’s hands moved faintly, as though still shuffling invisible datapads. Then his voice faltered.

“That’s when… I heard it. Explosions. Shaking the walls. I thought—it couldn’t be, not in Iacon, not in my lab—” His optics widened, panic creeping back in. “Two came through. Not guards. The first—he had only one optic. A cyclops, wide-framed, massive. The other…” His wings twitched with a shiver. “The other was darker. Gray. Scarred. His gaze was… wrong. The way he looked at me—like I was just… material.”

Jetfire’s arms tightened protectively around him, a low growl rumbling faintly in his throat.

“I tried to run,” Ulchtar whispered. “I tried. But the gray one caught me. He held me down. He asked the cyclops if I was the one they were searching for. And the cyclops said… yes.” His voice cracked. “He said I would be… important. To their cause.”

Ratchet’s optics narrowed faintly, recording every detail.

Ulchtar shook his helm violently, servos clutching at his temple as if the memory itself burned. “The gray one pushed me into the cyclops. He said… he said to do the matching. The matching—what does that mean?!” His voice rose, desperate, raw. “What did they do to me?”

His words broke into a ragged cry. He clutched harder at his helm. “After that—nothing! Nothing! It’s just empty! Why can’t I remember? Why—why don’t I remember anything else?!”

The sound of his anguish filled the detention block, drowning out the Autobots’ unease.

And in the silence that followed, the weight of his confession pressed heavy against every spark in the room.

Ratchet’s hands froze mid-exam, the scanner still glowing faintly against Ulchtar’s trembling plating. For a long, unbearable moment, he said nothing.

Then his jaw clenched. His field spiked sharp with panic he tried—and failed—to mask. And then, in a gesture none of the Autobots had ever seen from him, Ratchet bit down hard on his own lip, so hard a trace of energon welled against the seam.

It was not common. Ratchet never lost composure. Ratchet never hurt himself.

But the medic knew. Primus help him, he knew. The symptoms, the tremors, the fractured optics, the fractured identity. They all fit. They all matched a theory he had buried years ago, a theory he had prayed was nothing more than paranoia.

“No,” he muttered under his vents, optics darting as though denial could rewrite the evidence in front of him. “It can’t be—it can’t—”

Then he was on his pedes in a single motion, urgency snapping through his every line. “Jetfire! Carry him. Now. Take him to la Medici, immediately!”

Before the shuttle could even process the command, Ratchet was already opening his comm, his voice thundering down the frequency.

“First Aid! Red Alert! Get the medical ward ready for emergency surgery—now! Prep everything! This is priority one!”

The Autobots outside the cell stiffened. Even Sideswipe’s smirk drained away, replaced by wide optics of dawning unease. Ratchet never raised his voice on comms. Never barked panic.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

“Ratchet.” Optimus’s deep voice cut through the rising confusion, calm yet shadowed with concern. “What is going on?”

But Ratchet spun on his heel, optics blazing with a fury born of desperation. “I’ll explain later, damn it! No time—move!”

The Autobots fell back at the command, unnerved. Even Optimus said nothing more, his optics following as Jetfire, cradling Ulchtar carefully in his arms, moved with urgency down the corridor, Ratchet running at his side.

The seeker’s voice trembled faintly, audible even as they disappeared around the corner: “Why is it so cold? Jetfire—don’t let them—please…”

Then they were gone.

Minutes later, the medbay doors slammed shut.

And Ratchet, the most steadfast, most dependable of them all, did something none of them had ever seen before. He threw Jetfire bodily out of the ward, servos shaking with the effort, and then he locked the door. Not just sealed it—locked it with a physical key.

The sound of the bolt sliding into place echoed like a death knell through the corridor.

The Autobots stared. Silence pressed against them, heavy and suffocating.

Ratchet never locked that door. Ever.

If he did now, it meant one thing. Something serious was happening inside—something too dangerous, too delicate, or too horrifying for anyone else to witness.

And the realization shocked them all to their cores.

Chapter 2

Minutes stretched like cables pulled taut.

And then the minutes became hours.

Every second that passed was another nail driven into the Autobots’ collective spark. The corridor outside the medbay became suffocating, lined with anxious warriors who could do nothing but wait. Even the most restless of them—Sideswipe, Bluestreak, even Jazz—kept their vocals hushed, glancing at one another in uneasy silence.

The only sound that escaped the locked door was Ratchet.

At first, it had been only the muted clatter of instruments, the faint hum of scanners, the occasional hiss of ventilation. Then came the words. Quiet at first, bitter murmurs under his vents. Then curses.

“Glitched code-breaking slag-sucking fraggers—”

The Autobots exchanged startled looks.

Ratchet never swore. Not like that.

“Primus-damned rust-licking monsters—slag-eating sons of a pie screw with a rusty hammer!”

The shout rattled against the medbay walls, making Bumblebee twitch as though he’d been struck.

Inside, Ratchet’s voice rose and fell, snapping between furious roars and harshly whispered condemnations. And over and over again, two names cut sharp like blades through the silence of the base: Megatron. Shockwave.

Optimus stood a little apart from the others, arms folded but not in calm authority—this was a defense, a brace against the storm in his own spark. His optics remained fixed on the locked medbay door as if sheer willpower could make it open.

He had seen Ratchet under the most brutal of wars, surrounded by fallen allies, drenched in energon up to his elbows. Even then, the medic had been firm, steady, calm in the chaos. But now? Now Ratchet was unraveling, and that truth was more frightening than anything Optimus could recall in centuries.

“What could they have done?” Prowl’s voice finally broke the heavy silence, his tone low, more to himself than anyone else. His fingers tapped restlessly against his datapad, a rare crack in his usual icy composure. “What could Shockwave have put in his frame that makes Ratchet—Ratchet—react like this?”

Jetfire was sitting with his back pressed to the wall, head bowed, servos tight around his own knees. He hadn’t moved since being shoved from the medbay, optics dim with helplessness. “He kept saying his name was Ulchtar,” he murmured. “He looked at me like I was the only anchor he had. And now—” His voice cracked, static humming at the edge. “Now I don’t even know if he’s still functioning in there.”

The words twisted in every spark.

No one dared answer.

Then, faintly, through the locked door, came the sound of Ratchet slamming something metal against a table and snarling, “You slagging butchers—you broke him—you fragging broke him!”

A silence followed that curse, heavy and sharp, as if the whole base held its breath.

The Autobots had seen war. They had seen cruelty. They had seen the worst the Decepticons could unleash.

But whatever had reduced Ratchet to this?

It was worse.

Much, much worse.

When the medbay door finally hissed open, the Autobots nearly leapt to their feet.

First Aid and Red Alert stepped out.

If mechs could change colors, they would have been white as bone. First Aid’s optics were wide, his gentle servos trembling, wings quivering as if a strong current of wind might shatter him. Red Alert, by contrast, vibrated with fury, vents cycling too quickly, hands twitching as though he couldn’t decide between tearing down the walls or tearing down the enemy who had caused this.

Every Autobot in the hall stared, desperate, needing answers.

Optimus stepped forward, his frame tense, but his voice even. “Report.”

First Aid opened his mouth—then closed it again. When he did speak, it was in broken fragments, his tone stumbling, like he didn’t even believe the words leaving his own vocals.

“Inside… inside Starscream’s body, his processor—” Her servos shook harder, pressing against her own chassis as if to steady himself. “—it was… full of programs. Obedience… control chips. Dozens. Layered on top of each other. And—” She choked, the words failing him. Her optics flickered, bright with horror. “Primus, I’ve never—”

Her voice broke.

She couldn’t finish.

The silence that followed was unbearable, stretching into a suffocating void.

And then Red Alert snapped.

With a snarl of static, he slammed his fist into the wall so hard the metal dented under the blow. “He was brainwashed!” The words tore from his throat like weapons. “Not once. Not twice. For vorns! His entire processor has been cut apart and butchered in the worst possible ways! Obedience programs, command loops, subroutines tied directly to Megatron’s name! His firewalls? Gutted! His defenses stripped bare so he couldn’t fight back! His chassis isn’t even his own—it’s been carved open and refitted, layer after layer of false plating forced over him until he barely knows what frame he’s wearing anymore!”

The Autobots froze.

Even the boldest among them felt their sparks drop like stone.

Red Alert’s voice cracked as fury boiled over into grief. “Do you understand what that means? He’s not just been manipulated—he’s been enslaved. His body, his mind, his very self—hijacked, rewritten, turned into something to be owned! Every thought he’s ever had could have been a command. Every act of defiance? A puppet show for our benefit. He—” His voice faltered, lowering into a rough rasp. “—he never had a choice.”

The words hit them harder than any Decepticon weapon.

Ironhide’s optics darkened with something almost like guilt, recalling the sneers, the curses, the countless times he’d accused Starscream of cowardice, of treachery, of being nothing but a conniving snake. He clenched his fists, but said nothing.

Jazz’s usual sharp wit was absent, replaced with a grim silence, visor dimmed to shadow.

Jetfire had folded forward, face in his servos, shoulders shaking silently.

Optimus alone stood steady, but only outwardly. Inside, his spark clenched painfully, and his fists tightened at his sides. He had expected many things from this war. He had expected cruelty, brutality, weapons forged from unwilling hands. But this—this deliberate, systematic dismantling of a spark’s freedom, its very identity—was something that struck at the deepest code of what Cybertron once stood for.

For the first time in many, many vorns, Optimus Prime felt a sick dread twist through his chest.

And he knew, without a doubt—

This truth was only the beginning.
Jetfire’s frame shook as he finally forced himself to speak, voice thick with static.

“I always knew,” he said, his tone brittle, optics fixed on the medbay door as if afraid to look at anyone else. “When I met him—Ulcthar—something was wrong. His chassis didn’t move the way it once did. His tone of voice… his mannerisms… all of it was different. He called himself Starscream. Starscream—my laboratory companion. The mech who shared data tables and arguments with me for deca-cycles, the mech I knew had died long ago.”

His wings sagged, heavy with grief. “I thought… I thought it was war. That Ulcthar had been caught up in it, consumed, reshaped into a soldier by circumstance. I never imagined…” His voice broke, soft static catching on the comm. “…never imagined something this deep. This monstrous.”

The silence that followed was jagged, painful. No one wanted to break it.

Then the medbay doors hissed open.

Ratchet stormed out.

His optics were burning red, jaw tight, vents heaving like he’d sprinted a battlefield. In his hands—no, thrown from his hands—clattered a pile of chips, twisted little circuits, scorched wires, tiny hooks of invasive tech that rattled across the floor like a rain of cursed objects.

The Autobots flinched. The sound was obscene.

“Look at it!” Ratchet barked, his voice ragged, furious. “Look at what they stuffed inside him!”

Ironhide bent down, then jerked back as if burned. Each fragment glowed faintly with residual coding, lines of slaver’s tech the likes of which had been outlawed long before the war.

“Obedience chips. Command nodes. Looping subroutines. Memory grafts. Half of these damned things I haven’t seen since before the Golden Age, and for good reason—they’re forbidden.” Ratchet’s voice cracked on the word, fury trembling into grief. “They don’t just control a mech. They strip him bare, overwrite him, fill him with false memories while the real ones rot behind a locked door!”

A low murmur swept through the Autobots, horrified, disbelieving.

Ratchet snarled and pressed on. “We got him in a window—Primus help us, we got him at the exact moment Shockwave was supposed to drag him back onto the table and put in another round of these damn things. That’s the only reason Ulcthar surfaced at all. The obedience loops are breaking down, the implants degrading. His real memories—his true self—are bleeding back online.”

He leaned forward, servos braced against the wall, shoulders heaving with the effort to hold himself steady.

“But listen to me,” Ratchet growled, optics sweeping the gathered faces. “This isn’t a miracle. It’s only the start of something far, far worse.”

No one moved.

Ratchet’s voice lowered, raw with reluctant honesty. “He’ll need more surgeries. Layers upon layers of fake chassis have been bolted to him, hiding what was taken, what was destroyed. But that’s not the worst of it.”

His hand curled into a tight fist, scraping against the metal wall.

“The worst is coming. Little by little, Ulcthar will start to remember. Every surgery. Every command. Every time Megatron and Shockwave cut into him, rewrote him, turned him into a weapon while his real self slept, disconnected, locked in the dark. And he’ll remember every single thing he did as Starscream—the betrayals, the killings, the war crimes—as if it were a nightmare he was forced to live, awake but helpless, a prisoner in his own mind.”

Ratchet’s voice dropped to a rasp, heavy as a death knell.

“It will be torture beyond imagination. And there’s nothing—” he shut his optics, biting the words, “—nothing I can do to spare him from it.”

The weight of the words crashed over the Autobots like a collapsing building.

Ironhide’s fists clenched. Jazz looked away. Red Alert’s vents flared sharp and fast, fighting the urge to scream.

Optimus stood unmoving, but inside his spark chamber burned with cold, searing rage. Rage at Megatron. Rage at Shockwave. Rage at the war itself for birthing such cruelty.

The silence was broken only by the faint clatter of the discarded chips still rolling across the floor, their clicking sound a grotesque echo of shackles being dropped, one by one.

But everyone in that corridor knew—

The real chains had yet to break.

The days that followed were measured not in battles or victories but in scalpels and patience.

Ratchet kept his word.

Bit by bit, in carefully controlled surgeries, he stripped away the false layers that had buried Ulcthar beneath the armor of a Decepticon warlord. The process was painstaking: an extra panel here, a redundant cluster of weaponry there, stripped out piece by piece so the seeker’s frame would not go into systemic shock.

Every war module removed was another chain falling to the floor.
Every hidden weapon excised was another lie undone.
Every obsolete obedience node silenced was a ghost exorcised from Ulcthar’s body.

The seeker—slender now, stripped of the brutal bulk that had never been his—began to look more and more like the mech Jetfire remembered. Ulcthar. Not Starscream the Second-in-Command, but Ulcthar, the scientist. The dreamer. The mech who once filled his lab with laughter, who believed data could change the future of Cybertron.

But Ratchet allowed no one to grow complacent.

Only a handful of Autobots were permitted into the medical ward: the doctors, Optimus Prime, Jetfire. No one else. They were the ones tasked with telling Ulcthar the truth, piece by piece. That he had been kidnapped. That his body had been mutilated. That his mind had been shackled, programmed, remade into a puppet named Starscream.

Ulcthar resisted. At first, he could not believe it—would not believe it. His wings trembled whenever Ratchet spoke of surgeries he had no memory of. His optics dimmed when Jetfire recounted old stories Ulcthar himself could not recall. He clung to denial like a lifeline.

But Ratchet’s warning proved inevitable.

It began in the early hours of a new cycle.

The base was quiet, dim, its corridors washed in the pale glow of recharge lighting. And then—

A sound.

Faint at first, muffled through the thick medbay doors. But it grew. It rose. It split the silence like a blade.

Cries.

Raw, anguished cries that echoed down every corridor of the Autobot base, sharp enough to stop even the most battle-hardened soldiers mid-step.

Voices stilled. Tools dropped. Conversations broke apart.

Every Autobot knew where it came from.

The medbay.

Inside, Ulcthar writhed on the berth, his servos clutching at his helm, his wings curling inward as if trying to shield himself from an invisible storm. His optics flickered between blue and red, his voice breaking as words tumbled free in fractured gasps.

“No—no, I didn’t—don’t make me—please, stop—Primus, not again—!”

Ratchet had warned them this would happen. Memory shocks. The locked doors inside Ulcthar’s processor breaking open, flooding him with recollections too heavy, too monstrous to bear.

And now, those doors had begun to crack.

Chapter 3

Inside the medbay, the walls shook with the weight of Ulcthar’s cries.

Jetfire held him tightly, arms locked around the smaller seeker as if sheer strength alone could anchor him against the storm. Ulcthar thrashed, wings clattering violently against the berth, claws scraping deep gouges into the metal. His voice was a torrent—screams, pleas, fragments of names, words that didn’t fit together, fragments of horrors that did.

“No—no, I didn’t—stop—please, I don’t want to—Megatron, don’t—don’t put it back—Shockwave—Primus, my wings—!”

Jetfire’s optics burned. He tightened his hold, pressing his helm against Ulcthar’s, whispering his name over and over. “Ulcthar. Ulcthar, it’s me. You’re not there anymore. You’re safe. Stay with me, brother, please.”

But it was like trying to stop a river with bare hands.

The memories poured out of him in waves, brutal, merciless. Ulcthar relived them all—the surgeries, the cold commands, the moments when his own voice had spoken but the words had not been his. The betrayals carried out with hands that were not his own. The violence. The killings. His entire existence as Starscream bared raw before him, not as fading images but as if it were happening again, in real time.

Hours passed. The cries did not stop. They rose, broke, fell into sobs, then rose again, jagged and sharp. Ratchet remained close, monitoring his vitals with grim precision, but even his experienced hands trembled slightly on the instruments. Optimus stayed silent at the corner of the room, the weight in his optics unbearable, while First Aid stood frozen with his hands clasped together, helpless tears spilling down his faceplates.

The storm only ended when Ulcthar’s frame, processor, and spark could endure no more. His voice cracked into silence, his optics fluttered, and his body slumped, limp. Ratchet was there in an instant, scanners sweeping across him.

“Stasis lock,” Ratchet announced, his voice low, thick with exhaustion. “His mind couldn’t take more. Primus help him, it couldn’t take more.”

For two days, the medbay lay under shadow.

Jetfire barely moved from his post, watching over the seeker on the berth as if his presence alone might ward off the nightmares. Ratchet kept his instruments close, though even his steady hands betrayed tension each time he checked Ulcthar’s spark pulse. The Autobots outside tread lightly, hushed, wary of even speaking too loudly within earshot of the medbay.

And then—

At last, optics fluttered open.

Ulcthar stirred, his vents slow, his movements cautious. His optics—both clear, both that innocent blue that did not belong to Starscream—turned upward and sought the face bent over him.

“Jetfire?” His voice was soft, almost shy, as if waking from an ordinary recharge. “Where are the others? The rest of the science team? They were supposed to meet me after my last trial run…” His expression brightened faintly with expectation, then dimmed as confusion clouded his features. “Why… why aren’t they here?”

Jetfire’s spark twisted painfully in his chest.

Something wasn’t right.

Ratchet spent half a cycle bent over consoles, processors humming as he sifted through every layer of code, every scar in Ulcthar’s memory banks. His optics grew dimmer with each discovery, his vents harsh and uneven. By the time he finally stepped into the corridor, the Autobots waiting outside braced instinctively, as though the medic’s expression alone could crush them.

Optimus was first to speak, his tone steady but grave. “Report, old friend.”

Ratchet’s face was carved from stone. His hand opened, palm up, showing a fragment of corrupted memory code, its lines glitched and eaten through by patches of sparkling new firewalls.

“It’s gone,” Ratchet said flatly. “Every single memory Starscream carried—erased. Not by me. Not by Shockwave. By himself.”

The Autobots stirred uneasily, confused murmurs running between them.

Ratchet’s voice rose, biting. “His spark and processor did it. Self-defense. A crude, desperate mechanism to keep him alive. Starscream’s memories—the wars, the slaughter, the chains—they were eating him alive. His systems reacted by wiping them clean. What’s left is only Ulcthar. The moment before Megatron and Shockwave took him—the moment he was preparing to show his discovery to the Cybertronian Council. After that? Nothing. Blank. As if the last countless vorns never happened.”

The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating.

Jazz let out a low whistle, visor flickering. “Primus. He doesn’t even know he was Starscream.”

“Correct,” Ratchet snapped, optics flashing. “He doesn’t know Decepticons exist. Doesn’t know the war. Doesn’t know anything past his lab in Iacon. As far as his processor is concerned, none of it ever happened.”

Ironhide shifted, fists curling. “That’s… that’s fragged up.”

“That’s survival,” Ratchet corrected, quieter this time, almost grimly respectful. “His mind tore itself apart just to keep the pieces that mattered. The rest—it burned.”

From deeper in the medbay, Ulcthar’s voice carried faintly, gentle and curious, calling for Jetfire as though nothing was wrong, as though he were still in that bright lab surrounded by data pads and microscopes.

Jetfire appeared in the doorway, expression carefully schooled, though his wings trembled. He met Optimus’s gaze, then Ratchet’s, before speaking.

“I’ve… taken steps,” he admitted softly. “He asked what happened. I told him the lab was attacked. That his injuries were severe, and he was placed in a stasis pod. That he remained in that pod for a very long time.”

The Autobots listened in silence, the weight of Jetfire’s words hanging like a blade.

“I told him,” Jetfire continued, “that during his long stasis, a war began. A civil war. Autobots and Decepticons. I didn’t give him details, didn’t tell him sides. Just that when he woke, the war was already far older than him.” He lowered his optics, voice nearly breaking. “I gave him something he could believe. Something safe.”

Ratchet’s lips pressed into a thin line, but he did not argue. “It’s the only chance he has,” he said at last. “For now, that will be his truth.”

The Autobots exchanged looks—conflicted, uncertain, shaken to their cores.

Ulcthar had once been Starscream, second-in-command of the Decepticons, their most infamous traitor. But now—

Now he was nothing more than a scientist caught in a civil war that had begun while he was “sleeping.” A mech whose only crime was surviving long enough to wake into a nightmare.

And this, cruelly, was the new truth he would carry.

Ulcthar accepted the narrative Jetfire had woven with a quiet, almost fragile obedience. He did not question further, did not press for details. Perhaps part of him already knew that the truth was heavier than his frame could carry. Within the medbay, he focused on recovery—learning to move his frame again, learning to feel like himself again. And Jetfire never left his side, like a shadow that refused to part from its source.

The Autobots each bore their own storm in silence. Some paced the corridors, restless and unable to reconcile the face of the most infamous Decepticon with the gentle mech lying in stasis berth. Others avoided the medbay entirely, unsettled by the contradiction.

But Ultra Magnus—Ultra Magnus was furious. His composure cracked, voice thundering down the command deck when Optimus gave his report.

“This cruelty… this calculated abomination—Megatron has crossed beyond war. Beyond ideology. To take a bot, this bot, and reshape him into something he was not—this is not conquest. It is corruption of the deepest kind.”

Optimus, calm but weary, inclined his helm. “And yet he did. Which means Megatron had a purpose. He wanted Ulcthar for a reason.”

It was Brainstorm who answered, the lab scattered with parts, his servos twitching as his processor overflowed with theories. He spoke quickly, urgently, optics burning with a strange light.

“Not just a reason. The reason.” He gestured wildly, pulling up holo-screens, ancient files, half-forgotten schematics. “Think about it. The dome. The planetary weather shields. The maps.”

“What maps?” Prowl interjected, sharp.

“The heavenly maps, Prowl! The ones still used by exploration cruisers today! You’ve been standing on Ulcthar’s work without even realizing it!”

The room froze.

Brainstorm leaned forward, grin gone, replaced by something raw. “So many of the machines that shaped Cybertron, that made her better, were his. No one knew his frame, no one knew his face, but everyone knew the name. Ulcthar.”

Wheeljack, arms folded, ventilated slowly, optics distant. “...slag. He’s right.” His voice had none of its usual quick-fire rhythm; it was lower, quieter. “I remember now. Back when I was still a student, before the war. Papers circulated through the labs. Designs nobody could believe were real until they were tested and proven flawless. Weather shields. Atmospheric converters. Even those exploration drones that went beyond the Orion Belt.” His helm tilted, realization heavy. “They were all signed with the same designation. Ulcthar.”

Perceptor nodded, optics dim but sharp. “His brilliance was unmatched. But his anonymity was deliberate. He… avoided public gatherings, and if rumors are true, refused Senate invitations more than once. A scientist so young, so radical, that exposure could have been dangerous for him.”

Wheeljack’s vents hissed as he added, voice weighted with memory: “He had one rule. One that got him in trouble with the Senate more than once. Ulcthar refused to build weapons. No matter the shanix. No matter the threats. He swore not to use his knowledge to destroy.”

The silence afterward was suffocating. Even Brainstorm’s wings twitched nervously under it.

Optimus’s optics darkened, heavy with realization. “And yet Megatron sought him. Took him. Broke him. Turned him into the very thing he refused to create.”

The thought alone sent ripples through the Autobots, anger, disgust, and grief mingling into something unnameable.

In the medbay, Ulcthar laughed at something Jetfire said, a light, genuine sound. His wings twitched gently, as though he were simply a scientist enjoying the company of an old colleague.

But beyond the door, everyone else knew the truth.
They knew the magnitude of what Megatron had stolen.

And worse—none of them knew why.

The base had barely steadied from the weight of revelations when the sound of turbine thrusters cut through the air like a blade. Windblade. She burst through the entryway in a blur of crimson and cobalt, her expression taut with urgency. There was no greeting, no pause for protocol—only the sharp, frantic demand as she approached Optimus himself.

“Where is he? Where is Starscream—no, Ulcthar?” Her optics were wide, almost fevered.

Optimus, grave as always, inclined his helm with measured calm. “He is in the medbay.”

She didn’t wait for further explanation. Her thrusters flared once, carrying her down the corridor with such speed that doors rattled in her wake. She reached the medbay and slipped inside, sealing the door shut behind her with a deliberate motion—as though she would allow no one else entry, no interruption, no intrusion upon this moment.

Inside, Ulcthar sat propped against the berth’s frame, wings half-unfurled in a languid arc. Jetfire hovered nearby, ever-watchful, optics soft with the protective worry that had become second nature to him.

Windblade didn’t speak at first. She moved. Crossing the room with a single determined stride, she threw her arms around him, pulling him close against her frame, clinging as though to something lost and miraculously found.

“Thank Primus you’re alive,” she whispered, voice breaking at the edges.

Ulcthar froze for half a moment, startled by the suddenness of it, then relaxed into her hold. His long fingers curled at her back, wings trembling faintly before settling. His voice, when it came, was gentle, tentative.

“I am… fine, Windblade. It was only a long stasis. My systems needed time to adjust. That is all.”

He leaned back just enough to meet her optics, a small, tired smile curving his lips. “But you—how are you? How goes your work as the Titans’ Herald?”

Windblade pulled back with a sharp exhale that turned into a laugh. It wasn’t bitter—it was tired, yes, but warm. “Better than you, apparently.”

He chuckled softly, shaking his helm. “A fair point.”

Across the room, Jetfire caught her optics. The flicker of shared understanding passed silently between them. Ulcthar believed the lie. Utterly, completely. He had no memory of Starscream, no memory of war, no memory of the atrocities carved into him. To him, he was still the scientist from Vos who had slipped away to Iacon to follow his dreams.

Windblade’s smile softened as she cupped Ulcthar’s face. “Since the war, I haven’t been in the temples. Not as Herald. Not as anything. But now…” Her voice hitched with something like relief. “Now I’m happy. Truly happy.”

His optics brightened at that, an innocent gleam returning to them. “That is wonderful to hear. I remember how you despised the temple. The duties, the chains it put on you.” He tilted his helm, curious. “You used to tell me that you envied my escape. That you wished you could cast it all aside the way I fled Vos to become a scientist in Iacon.”

Windblade blinked—because those were his words, not hers. He had always hated the chains of nobility. He had always hated the expectations of his birthright. She had merely carried him through it, been his anchor when he abandoned it.

She smiled anyway. “And I told you you’d make something great of yourself. And you did.”

He laughed then—truly laughed. The sound was light, warm, unguarded. His wings twitched upward in amusement, his entire frame carrying the rhythm of genuine mirth.

For a moment, for both of them, the war seemed like something imagined. For a moment, Starscream never existed. There was only Ulcthar and Windblade, two friends rediscovering each other in the ruins of a world that had tried to tear them apart.

Jetfire turned away, because the sound of that laughter twisted inside him like a knife.

The medbay had fallen quiet at last. Ulcthar—fragile, trembling but calmer now—had drifted into recharge, his frame still pressed into the berth where Jetfire kept silent vigil. Windblade remained at his side until his vents evened out, optics shuttering in exhaustion. She let her fingers linger a moment on his hand, a silent promise of presence, before she rose.

When the door shut softly behind her, the mask of composure broke. Her wings drooped low, her vents unsteady. She had abandoned everything—her post, her duties, her distance the moment the message had reached her. Starscream, captured. Starscream, enslaved. And now… Ulcthar. Alive.

Alive, but broken.

Windblade leaned against the wall in the corridor outside the medbay, one hand pressed to her chest plates as if she could hold herself steady. Autobots gathered at a distance, some pretending disinterest, others openly curious. They had all seen the way she rushed in, the way she clung to him. Questions hung unspoken, but Optimus’s presence drew them forth.

“Windblade,” Prime’s voice was calm, heavy as iron, “you seem to know him. More than as the Decepticon Starscream.”

She lowered her helm. For a moment she considered silence, the same silence she had kept all these vorns. But she could no longer keep the truth folded inside herself like a poisoned secret.

“They deserve to know,” she murmured. Her voice cracked but steadied as she continued, rising enough to meet their optics. “Ulcthar and I… we were both from noble clans of Vos. He, from the royal line. I, from a family bound to serve as emissaries and interpreters of the Titans’ voices.”

Shock rippled through the group. Even Ultra Magnus, rigid pillar of control, faltered, his optics narrowing at the revelation.

Windblade exhaled, folding her wings tightly. “We were childhood friends. Inseparable. While others obeyed the endless traditions, he dreamed of skies beyond Vos and science beyond war. He hated the ceremonies, the chains of nobility. So one day, he left. Fled. To pursue his dream of becoming a scientist in Iacon. I stayed. I… became Herald because I could hear the voices of the Titans. It was duty, not choice.”

Her words caught. For a moment, the ache of memory overtook her, softening her features. “He used to tell me that I was the anchor to his wings. That even if he left, I would always remind him of who he was. And now—”

Her voice broke entirely this time, forcing her to steady herself with both hands gripping the edge of a console. “And now he doesn’t even know he was ever Starscream. He thinks it was all a nightmare. He only remembers who he was before Megatron took him.”

The Autobots shifted uneasily. Perceptor adjusted his lenses, Wheeljack rubbed at the back of his helm as if recalling the weight of old stories. Bumblebee’s gaze darted to Optimus, uncertain.

But it was Ultra Magnus who finally spoke, his voice like thunder barely held back. “If what you say is true, then this is not merely a Decepticon prisoner. This is a victim of one of Megatron’s worst crimes. And the Senate before him allowed it.”

Windblade shut her optics, pain clear on her face. “He was never meant for war. He was never meant to be a commander, or a killer. He was… Ulcthar. A scientist. My friend. And now he’s back—but fractured, fragile. And I don’t know if we can protect him from the truth when it finally breaks through.”

A long silence fell. The Autobots absorbed her confession in differing shades—shock, pity, guilt. Optimus’s optics dimmed with sorrow as he placed one heavy hand over hers, steadying her against the console.

“You are not alone in this, Windblade,” he said quietly. “We will protect him. Whatever it takes.”

But in his voice there was a shadow, the quiet acknowledgement that no wall of lies could last forever.

Ratchet emerged from the medbay once more, his hands still faintly stained with energon, optics shadowed from long hours without recharge. The Autobots who had gathered—their leader, their soldiers, their scientists—turned to him as if his voice alone could anchor the storm.

He exhaled sharply, the sound almost a growl. “Listen carefully, all of you. Even if we showed him every record, every battle log, every damn transmission of him as Starscream—he would not believe it.”

Murmurs rose in the room, but Ratchet silenced them with a snap of his servo. His optics blazed with a fury rare even for him. “His spark did this. It erased it all. Every memory tied to that identity is gone—not suppressed, not buried, but destroyed. It’s permanent. There is no surgery, no patch, no reprogramming that can recover what was taken. The only truth he has left is the one his spark forged for survival: that he was in stasis, that he has awakened now, and that’s all.”

Windblade’s intakes hitched. Optimus Prime’s helm lowered, the weight of Ratchet’s words pressing heavy. The truth they had built—the fragile fiction—was not a temporary refuge. It was all Ulcthar had.

Ratchet rubbed at his faceplates with trembling fingers, then dropped his hands with a harsh clang. “But that’s not the only slag we’re dealing with.” He leaned forward, venting sharply. “We’ve got a much bigger problem. Megatron.”

The room went still.

Ratchet continued, voice low, dangerous. “He’s lost Starscream. Forever. He doesn’t know it yet, but once he does, Primus help us. That window Shockwave needed—the cycle for the next surgery, the next set of control implants—it’s closed. We’ve ripped out the programs, destroyed the chips, dismantled every piece of his obedience systems. There’s no going back.”

Ultra Magnus’s optics narrowed. “Then what you are telling us, Ratchet, is that the second-in-command of the Decepticons is no more.”

“Correct,” Ratchet snapped, his tone acidic. “Starscream is gone. There’s only Ulcthar now.”

The silence that followed was deafening. For all the Autobots in that chamber, the truth rang like the toll of a death knell.

Ratchet’s mouth twisted. “And I’d bet my damn servos that Shockwave has already reported the failure to Megatron. The moment the scans showed something was missing, the moment the connection broke—Megatron would know. And he will not take it lightly.”

Jetfire’s optics darkened, his hand clenching at his side. “Then he’ll come for him. He’ll come for Ulcthar. He won’t let go of what he thinks belongs to him.”

Windblade’s wings trembled with anger. “Over my dead frame he will.”

Optimus straightened, his towering frame casting shadow over all. His voice was steady, but beneath it there was a storm. “Then we prepare. For Megatron will come. And when he does, we will not allow him to claim what he has already stolen once.”

The following solar cycle, the medbay doors hissed open with a weight that seemed to echo through the base. Every optic turned toward the threshold, expectation thick as static.

And then—he stepped out.

Ulcthar.

Not the sharp-edged, war-forged silhouette of Starscream. Not the gaunt, dangerous frame of the Decepticon commander they had known. This seeker was smaller, his armor a softer palette of celestial blue, white, and red, brushed with faint streaks of silver like starlight. His wings were broader, cleaner, arching elegantly behind him, their span speaking not of intimidation but of freedom, of flight.

His hands were no longer tipped with savage talons, only delicate, precise claws—sharp enough for instruments, not for tearing plating. And his optics… Primus, his optics. They were no longer the acidic crimson of a soldier. They glowed with the clear radiance of a summer sky, thin, bright, and unclouded.

The Autobots froze. Even battle-hardened veterans like Ironhide and Ultra Magnus faltered, their frames stiffening at the sight. The difference was a shock that stole the breath from the room.

Starscream was gone. The mech before them was someone entirely new. Entirely old.

Ulcthar, fragile in his rebirth, instinctively drew back, his frame tucking smaller as he pressed into Jetfire’s towering side. The larger shuttle bent slightly, lowering one broad servo protectively across his back. The gesture was subtle, but it carried the weight of something fierce and unspoken.

Windblade’s wings twitched as she bit down on a laugh. She couldn’t help it—the image was too perfect, too achingly familiar.

She remembered. Vorns ago, sitting with him in Vos’s high courtyards, he had confessed, face burning bright, that he had a crush on someone far bigger than him. “I don’t know why,” he had said, awkward and flustered, “but when I stand near him, I feel… safe.”

Her laughter escaped now, warm and bubbling in the heavy air.

Ulcthar peeked out from behind Jetfire, optics narrowing slightly in suspicion. “What?”

Windblade smirked, her tone playful, fond. “Nothing. Just… remembering something you once told me.”

He frowned, delicate brow ridges drawing together as he tilted his helm, confusion genuine. She shook her head, still smiling.

Jetfire looked down at her, a trace of unease flickering in his optics, but Windblade’s gaze held steady. She had her confirmation now. Ulcthar’s spark had clung to truths far older than war, older than Starscream. Even if he didn’t remember the confession, his body, his instinct, knew.

He would always seek safety in the shadow of the one he admired.

And as the Autobots stood in stunned silence, the difference between Starscream and Ulcthar rang louder than any battle cry:
Starscream had been a weapon.
Ulcthar was simply a spark.

The silence stretched, heavy but not hostile, until Optimus Prime stepped forward. His great frame seemed to carry the weight of history itself, yet his movements were careful, measured—like one approaching a fragile spark. His optics softened as he knelt down slightly, closing the distance without overwhelming.

“I am Optimus Prime,” he began, his voice a deep resonance that filled the corridor yet somehow seemed directed only at Ulcthar. “Leader of the Autobots, chosen bearer of the Matrix of Leadership. The mechs behind me are my companions, my family. And from this day forward, you are under our protection. Whatever storms this war may bring, nothing will ever harm you again.”

The words struck like a shield thrown around him. Ulcthar’s wings quivered—those new, broad appendages opening just slightly before tucking tight again. He hesitated, pressing against Jetfire’s plating once more, before drawing in a shuddering vent of air.

Slowly, shyly, he began to peel himself from Jetfire’s shadow. His steps were small, careful, as though every optic on him burned hotter than a spotlight. Windblade’s voice carried faintly from the side, a whisper not meant to be heard, though Ulcthar caught fragments: “He and Jetfire… a long way ahead, it seems.”

Ulcthar paused, optics flicking toward her in confusion, then shook his helm gently, refocusing. He raised his chin, fragile confidence stitched together by necessity.

“My designation is Ulcthar,” he said, voice quiet but steady, carrying across the chamber like a note of glass. “I am—” He hesitated, glancing up at Jetfire, drawing strength from the silent nod he received. “I was a scientist. Jetfire and I were laboratory partners… back in Iacon. That was my truth.”

A ripple of surprise passed through the Autobots, though most had already been briefed. Still, hearing it from his own lips sealed the reality. Starscream was not in the room. Ulcthar was.

The Autobots, shaken but trying to make this easier, began to step forward one by one.

“I’m Bumblebee,” the yellow scout chirped with his usual enthusiasm, giving a small salute. “Scout, infiltration, recon—you name it. Fastest wings on the ground, too.”

From behind him, a red mech snorted. “Cliffjumper. Don’t listen to Bee—I’m the best scout around here. He just tags along.”

“Do not,” Ironhide rumbled, stepping in with a roll of his massive shoulders, “let these two scraplets confuse you. I’m Ironhide. Weapons specialist. If you need to blast something into the Well, I’m your mech.”

Prowl, ever composed, inclined his helm. “Prowl. Second-in-command, tactician. If the war looks like chaos, I’m the one keeping it from being worse.”

Jazz slipped forward last, all easy charm and smooth lines. He tipped an imaginary visor down in greeting. “Jazz. Communications, special ops… and yeah, probably the coolest bot you’ll ever meet. No contest.”

A ripple of light humor moved through the group, the tension easing like a joint finally oiled. Ulcthar’s shoulders, still drawn tight, lowered just slightly. His wings trembled with less sharpness, less fear.

He glanced from mech to mech, optics wide, absorbing each introduction with quiet awe. These were strangers, yes—but not hostile ones. Not hands waiting to hurt, not eyes waiting to condemn.

For the first time since stepping out of the medbay, Ulcthar’s lip plates twitched into something almost like a smile. Small. Tentative. Fragile. But real.

Little by little, the tension melted from him, replaced with the first threads of belonging.

He was Ulcthar. And here, at least for now, he was safe.

Ulcthar moved among the Autobots, small, precise steps that belied the new breadth of his wings. Each introduction had given him the barest thread of confidence, and now he began to speak, cautiously at first, then with more warmth as he found his footing.

He spoke to each in turn, careful, attentive, and somehow already measuring them—not as soldiers, not as enemies, not as tools—but as companions, as potential friends. And all the while, Ratchet and Optimus observed, silent and almost reverent.

Ratchet’s jaw clenched beneath his faceplate. “We were so wrong,” he muttered, voice low enough that only Optimus could hear. “All of it. Everything we thought we knew about him… about that mech… it was twisted by assumptions. By Megatron’s lies. We judged him as Starscream, a Decepticon, a threat… and we failed to see the spark inside. Ulcthar was there the whole time, waiting to be remembered.”

Optimus’s optics narrowed, dark pools of memory and fury burning behind them. He watched Ulcthar’s fragile movements, the way the tricolor seeker tilted his helm while listening, the quiet, unassuming curiosity that unfolded in each delicate motion.

And the hatred rose, sharp and inescapable.

For Megatron.

The arm brother he had once trusted, who had walked beside him as Orion Pax before the war and before the corruption. The bot he had called a friend, a partner, a reflection of his own ideals, now revealed as the architect of such cruel subversion. There could be no return. Megatron had sealed the rift himself. The D-16, the mech he had known, the seeker he had understood, was gone forever. Only the shell remained in memory, consumed by the deception.

Ulcthar, meanwhile, continued to move through the group, speaking with gentle curiosity, learning names, functions, and the small quirks of the Autobots. Yet even as he smiled at their stories, even as he tilted his helm in amusement at Jazz’s boasts and Ironhide’s gruff warnings, Ratchet felt a chill.

The mech they had called Starscream—that mech—had died long ago. And what remained was more dangerous than any weapon or war machine: it was a spark unbroken, untainted, reborn, and fully its own.

Optimus said nothing aloud, but inside, he vowed it: Megatron would answer for what he had done. For every stolen memory, every fractured spark, every lost identity. And now, more than ever, the Autobots would stand as shields for this fragile, brilliant life.

Ulcthar, oblivious to the storm around him, smiled softly at Jazz, asking, “And you say you’re… the coolest? How exactly do you define cool?”

And in that simple question, so innocent, Optimus felt the weight of everything stolen, everything broken—and the blazing promise of protection for the mech who was no longer Starscream.

Chapter 4

On the Decepticons’ side, nothing resembled stability anymore.

Starscream’s capture by the Autobots had torn through the warship like a curse, and Megatron’s fury was relentless. His roars carried through the Nemesis, his claws tearing through steel as if the walls themselves were guilty. Consoles lay in pieces, shattered into sparks and wires; the floor bore the dents of his footsteps and the scars of his strikes.

No Decepticon dared to approach. Even Soundwave kept his distance, silent and unreadable in the shadows, his cassettes hidden away. For the rank and file, the sight of their leader was enough to ignite fear: a gladiator unchained, more dangerous than ever without an enemy within reach.

But Shockwave had no fear, only calculation. He summoned Megatron to his lab, sealing the doors behind them, the sterile cold of the chamber amplifying the tension.

“Megatron,” the cyclops began, voice flat as stone. “The procedure window has passed. By now, the Autobots’ medic will have already intervened. It is logical to assume he dismantled the implants, erased the programs, and stripped the secondary chassis layers. The subject we designated as Starscream has likely reverted to baseline configuration… to Ulcthar.”

The name—that name—cut through the chamber like acid.

Megatron’s optics flared red, his lip curled into a snarl, and his fist came down against the nearest bulkhead, the impact rattling the entire frame. “Do not call him that!” he bellowed. “He was mine. Starscream was mine!”

Shockwave’s single optic did not waver. “Correction: the entity you named Starscream was manufactured. Fabricated. What remains is no longer what you designed.”

Megatron turned, his frame trembling with rage, and for a moment it looked as though he would strike the scientist down. But Shockwave continued, unshaken, each word more venomous in its logic.

“To rebuild him, we would need to recapture him. To restart the programming from zero. The prior conditioning is lost. It would require vorns to restore his obedience. In effect, all progress has been… erased.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. Megatron’s vents rasped like the growl of a caged predator, his rage coiled tight as a spring.

And then Shockwave spoke again, this time sharper, quieter, more dangerous.

“The greater risk is not the Autobots. It is here.”

Megatron’s helm snapped toward him, optics burning. “Explain.”

Shockwave’s talon tapped against a datapad, cold, deliberate. “Thundercracker and Skywarp. They were not chosen at random. Starscream, even under layers of false identity, retained fragments. He saw their potential, their… capacity. He bonded them into a Trine. A war-brotherhood that runs deeper than function or command. They are loyal to him, not to you.”

The words slithered into the air like poison.

Megatron’s optics narrowed, the lines of his face twisting into something monstrous. He had suspected—he had seen the way Thundercracker bristled at his orders when Starscream was punished, the way Skywarp’s optics dimmed in silent rebellion. He had ignored it, trusting the chains he had fastened. Now, Shockwave had confirmed the truth: those bonds were not forged by him, but stolen away by Starscream. By Ulcthar.

“They will ask questions,” Shockwave pressed. “They will wonder why their trine-brother has not returned. If they learn the truth of what was done to him, loyalty fractures. The risk of dissent escalates.”

Megatron’s claws scraped along the table, sparks hissing as his weight bore down. “Then they will be silenced,” he growled, voice low and lethal. “Thundercracker. Skywarp. They are nothing without him. They will serve or they will fall.”

Shockwave tilted his helm, unreadable. “And if they resist?”

Megatron’s optics flared again, a molten crimson. “Then I will break them, as I broke him. And I will rebuild him. Even if it takes eternity.”

But deep in the shadows of the Nemesis, whispers already stirred. Thundercracker’s questions. Skywarp’s doubts. The trine’s bond had not shattered with Starscream’s capture—it had only grown sharper, hungrier, aching with the absence of their missing brother.

And secrets, like fractures, spread quietly before they split the whole foundation apart.

Whispers slithered through the halls of the Nemesis.

Some were low murmurs exchanged in the shadow of corridors, others shared in the muted hum of energon lines during recharge cycles. The word was the same in all of them: Starscream.

Many Decepticons had seen it—the moment in battle when the tricolor seeker was seized by the Autobots, dragged away with wings broken and talons snapping like dying sparks. They had seen it, and yet… Megatron had not acted. No demand for a prisoner exchange. No attempt to bargain or threaten Optimus Prime. No command to storm Autobot lines and reclaim his Second-in-Command.

It was unnatural. Suspicious. Wrong.

The aerial forces suffered most. Without Starscream, they were without order, without direction. Starscream had been more than Megatron’s chosen subordinate—he had been their voice. Aerials followed him not out of fear, but out of trust. He spoke their language, fought their battles, ensured they were not cannon fodder thrown into the grinder. Starscream, for all his sharp words and ambition, had been a leader who saw them.

Now their wings felt clipped.

And the loudest unrest came from two voices that could not be ignored.

Thundercracker and Skywarp.

The bond of trine was not a loose tether—it was spark-deep, brotherhood sealed in fire and flight. Starscream had chosen them, trained them, carved their raw potential into precision. He had made them brothers, and through him, they had become more than soldiers—they had become a family.

And now he was gone.

Thundercracker’s frame shook with rage as he stalked the hangar, venting sharply, his fists clenched tight. “It’s been days, Warp. Days! And he hasn’t lifted a claw! He hasn’t said a word!” His voice cracked, too loud, echoing off the steel walls. A few seekers nearby turned their optics away, pretending not to hear.

Skywarp, usually all laughter and mischief, sat slumped on a supply crate, wings low, optics dim. His voice was quieter but no less venomous. “He doesn’t care, ‘Cracker. Not about Screamer. Not about us. We’re nothing to him. We always were.”

Thundercracker spun on him, fury and despair colliding in his optics. “Don’t say that! Starscream fought for us! He made us trine. He—he wouldn’t give up on us.”

Skywarp’s wings twitched, trembling. “I know. But Megatron already has.”

The words hung heavy, poisonous.

Around them, other seekers shifted uneasily. They had heard the whispers too. They had seen Megatron’s silence. To them, Starscream’s absence was a wound that bled morale into nothingness.

And still, Megatron did nothing.

For Thundercracker and Skywarp, the silence was unbearable. Their trine-brother was out there—in Autobot hands, maybe suffering, maybe worse—and the one who called himself warlord sat idle, raging at walls instead of tearing the sky apart to bring him home.

In their sparks, questions had already taken root, dark and dangerous.

If Megatron would not fight for Starscream… then what did that mean for the rest of them?

The warzone burned.

Blaster fire cracked like thunder, energon sprayed the ground in bright rivers, and the sky itself screamed under the wings of seekers cut down mid-flight. But there was something more dangerous than the battle itself—something no Decepticon had ever heard before.

Optimus Prime.

His voice no longer carried calm command, no tempered authority that guided soldiers with steady hands. No—his voice roared.

“Push forward!” Optimus bellowed, his frame crashing through enemy lines like a storm. “No retreat! Bring them down!”

Autobots followed without hesitation, their usual defense lines turning into merciless strikes. Ironhide crushed through seekers with a savage fury, Bumblebee darted faster and struck harder, even Prowl’s cold tactics twisted toward brutality. It was as though restraint had been erased.

And at the center of it, locked in violent orbit—Prime and Megatron.

Their clashes had always been the war’s dark heart, but now? Now Optimus fought like a mech possessed. His great blade clashed against Megatron’s fusion cannon, sparks raining like meteors.

“How dare you!” Prime’s voice thundered, loud enough to echo even over the chaos. “How dare you corrupt the innocent! To twist a spark until it screams!”

His strikes grew sharper, heavier, carrying with them a fury that none of his soldiers had ever seen.

“You turned him into a weapon! You stole his life, his name, his future!”

Megatron reeled beneath the blows, optics flashing with fury of his own. “You know nothing, Prime!” he snarled, catching the axe with a twist of steel. “He was mine to shape—mine to command! His spark belonged to the cause, as does every spark that resists its destiny!”

Optimus nearly broke him then. The violence of the strike forced Megatron to stumble back, his metal dented, energon trailing. The Autobots pressed forward, their leader’s rage igniting them.

But for the Decepticons, the effect was devastating.

From the lines, seekers stared in shock. They heard every word, saw every uncharacteristic burst of rage from the Prime they thought a self-righteous machine of order.

“What… what is he talking about?” a jet whispered to his wingmate, venting heavily.

Megatron had said nothing of Starscream’s condition, nothing of the truth buried in surgery and programming. To the Decepticons, Starscream’s capture was silence, a void where answers should be. And now Optimus himself shouted accusations of corruption, of stolen futures, of crimes Megatron never admitted aloud.

The whispers grew, spreading like rust through steel.

“What did Megatron do?''
“Why is Prime furious enough to kill him?”
“Why won’t our Lord explain?”

Each question dug deeper into their foundations.

Megatron’s fury only made it worse. His silence, his denial, his violent insistence on Starscream as his—it all confirmed suspicions the warlord could not afford.

And through the smoke and the screams of war, a terrible, unspoken thought began to spread among the ranks:

Perhaps Optimus Prime was not raging over a mere prisoner.
Perhaps he was raging over the truth.

The days bled together in war and silence.

Ulcthar found his rhythm in the Autobot base’s laboratory, wings tucked carefully behind him as he worked. He was… happy. Or, at least, as close as his fractured spark would allow. The work soothed him—the precision of calibrations, the hum of equipment, the faint comfort in the sterility of science. He was no soldier here, no Second-in-Command, no Trine leader.

No emblem marked his frame, Autobot nor Decepticon. He was simply Ulcthar.

He knew there was a war outside these walls. He knew factions tore themselves apart in endless battles of ideology and control. He knew Megatron’s name, Optimus Prime’s, Bumblebee’s. But what Ulcthar did not know—what no amount of logic could reassemble—was that once, he had been part of it.

Somewhere buried, forgotten and gutted, Starscream still existed.

And while Ulcthar bent over a datapad, slender fingers tracing equations of energy flow, the high command of the Autobots convened in sealed chambers where his name was whispered in tones of unease.

“His memory is gone,” Ratchet said flatly, arms crossed as though the posture might hold his anger together. “But that doesn’t erase the past. You all know what he was forced into.”

Prowl’s optics glimmered with cold calculation as he leaned forward. “That is precisely the problem. Starscream was reshaped into Ulcthar, yes—but before that, he created a Trine.”

The room stiffened. Even Optimus, who had been silent, his great helm bowed slightly, turned his gaze upon Prowl.

“You mean Thundercracker and Skywarp.”

Prowl inclined his head. “A Trine is not a military arrangement. It is sacred among seekers. It is bond and oath, forged through spark resonance. And theirs was built on lies—lies Megatron constructed. Starscream was not a commander by choice. He was manufactured into one. Those two seekerlings tied their loyalty to him without knowing the truth. And now, the truth is obliterated from his mind.”

Ironhide snarled low, frustration bleeding through his vents. “And what happens when those two find him here? What happens when they realize their Trine-bond still hums faintly in their cores, while he—he don’t even remember their names?”

For a long moment, silence stretched.

Optimus finally spoke, his tone carved with restrained fury. “Megatron has corrupted more than one spark. He has desecrated something sacred to Cybertron itself. That is why I fight as I do.” His fists tightened at his sides, the memory of battle still vibrating in his frame. “But Ulcthar must not suffer further for what was stolen from him. He deserves peace, not punishment.”

“Peace,” Prowl repeated, bitter, optics narrowing. “But peace is not what the Trine will bring if they seek him. They will want answers. They will want their leader. And he is not that mech anymore.”

Ratchet shifted, gaze heavy. “And yet… the resonance is still there. I’ve run the scans. His spark hums like theirs, even if he doesn’t recognize it. Trines are not undone so easily. That… worries me.”

The thought hung in the chamber like a shadow.

Because if Thundercracker and Skywarp came for him, Ulcthar would not know why the sight of them tore at his spark. He would not understand the phantom ache in his chest, or the longing for bonds he no longer remembered forging.

And the Autobots—who kept him safe in ignorance—would face the storm of seekers demanding the return of their commander.

Ratchet’s voice carried through the meeting chamber, brittle and raw.

“For the first time…” His vents hissed as if even the words cost him. “…I don’t know what could happen.”

The others stilled. Optimus’s optics softened, but Ratchet pressed forward, shaking his helm as if the denial might spare him from the inevitable.

“Yes, Starscream’s frame—Ulcthar’s frame—has been scrubbed of what Megatron and Shockwave did to him. The experiments. The brainwashing. The… perversion.” His jaw clicked harshly around the word. “All of that is gone. He remembers none of it. Not the Second-in-Command. Not the puppet Megatron molded. Not even the name Starscream.”

Ratchet’s hands flexed against the edge of the table, talons scraping metal. “But the spark—the spark is another matter. A Trine’s bond is sacred. It is deeper than memory, deeper than programming. Sparks hum with recognition even when the processor has forgotten.”

He leaned back, ex-venting sharply. “And that is what I don’t know. I don’t know if sparks can contain memories proper. I don’t know if the resonance of his Trine could pull him back toward them. I don’t know if he will feel that pull—when we’ve worked so hard to shelter him from it.”

The room thickened with silence. Prowl’s optics dimmed in unease. Ironhide clenched his fists. And Optimus—his gaze lingered on Ratchet with sorrow that seemed to hollow him from within.

Meanwhile, Ulcthar was safe. Or at least they believed he was.

In the laboratory, Ulcthar bent over his workbench, elegant frame bathed in sterile light. He looked safe—focused, wings half-tucked as he assembled delicate circuits into a lattice of intricate design. He poured himself into his project with single-minded devotion, his long fingers steady, his field calm.

To anyone watching, it was a good sign. Proof that their decision to withhold the truth had been the right one.

But they did not see the fracture beneath.

Ulcthar’s mind had begun waking him in the recharge cycle. Dreams, too vivid to dismiss, clawed their way into him. Not vague flickers, not the usual nonsense of defragmentation. No—real-tone dreams. His spark pulsed with phantom pain, as though something invisible and broken kept calling out.

He saw them—two silhouettes at his side. Sometimes smiling. Sometimes screaming. He felt their pain as his own, the ache echoing through his spark chamber until he woke with a shudder. And worse still, sometimes there were others—faces blurred, seekers and grounders alike, flickering in and out of his vision like half-remembered truths.

So Ulcthar did what he always did when faced with chaos: he turned to science.

On the surface, he was simply working. But the notes on his datapad told another story. Equations looped and twisted, more abstract than functional. Theories stacked atop theories. Graphs of spark resonance, energy transference, neural echo patterns.

He was building a map of memory without memory.

He was piecing together fragments of himself he did not yet understand.

Each formula he solved brought a sliver of clarity—and with it, dread. For intelligent as he was, it would not take long for Ulcthar to discover the truth. However painful it might be.

And when he did, not even Optimus or Ratchet could protect him from the weight of what his spark remembered.

Chapter 5

It had been nearly a month since Ulcthar had awakened into his new life. He had learned the rhythms of Autobot base, the voices, the routines, even the subtle ways trust was built with small gestures. He seemed at ease now, wandering between his lab and the common halls with the same quiet dignity that marked him in childhood.

On that day, he stepped out of the lab carrying a cube of energon, translucent and shimmering with a faint rose hue. His delicate talons curved gently around the surface as though the cube itself was precious. There was a softness in his optics, something proud, almost innocent.

The first mech he met was Elita-One.

“Elita,” he greeted, voice light, almost shy, as he held the cube toward her. “This is for you. I… I think you’ll like it.”

She paused mid-step, arching a brow. A cube? From him? Still, she took it. “Thank you, Ulcthar,” she said with polite warmth, raising it in salute before bringing it to her lips.

The first sip made her optics widen. Her vents shuddered softly, a low moan of delight escaping before she could contain it.

It was sweet. Sweet.

Not energon’s metallic tang, but something playful, sugary, like the rare cyber candies that once lined Vosian markets before the war. It was energon… transformed.

Her field flared with a sudden thrill. She drank again, greedier this time, savoring the crystalline flavor. And then the realization sank in.

Energon.
Cyber candie.

The two should never be together in the same sentence.

Her hands froze, the cube trembling between her fingers as her processor screamed warnings. Her optics flicked to Ulcthar, whose wings twitched nervously, waiting for her approval.

“Elita?” His voice was fragile. Hopeful.

The cry she gave shattered the hallway. A scream so raw with fear it echoed like battle. It ripped from her spark as though she had been ambushed, as though a blade had been driven into her plating.

Other Autobots rushed toward the sound, weapons primed, their fields bristling in panic—ready to fight, ready to kill if necessary.

But there was no enemy. Only Elita, wide-eyed and clutching the cube as though it were a live grenade, and Ulcthar, standing frozen, confusion and dread creeping into his optics as the walls of trust around him suddenly shifted.

Elita-One’s optics blazed, her hands clutching Ulcthar’s shoulders so hard that his frame shook under the force. She shook him once, twice, her voice rising in terror and anger.

“What did you give me? What the hell did you put in this cube?!”

Her panic filled the corridor like fire, sparking through the comm-lines of the Autobots rushing to the scene. Mechs crowded closer, optics sharp and suspicious. The whisper spread like a virus—poison.

“Did he poison her?” one voice hissed.
“It was too easy… he’s Starscream’s frame—”
“Maybe this was all a trap—”

The accusations pressed in like knives.

Prowl, ever the tactician, was the first to move beyond fear. He stepped forward, his hand calm as he plucked the cube from Elita’s trembling grip. The liquid glowed faintly, catching the light like a living thing. He brought it close, vents drawing in a slow pull of scent.

His optics narrowed.

“This… doesn’t smell like energon.” His tone was controlled, but the tension behind it coiled like a blade about to unsheath. “It’s… sweet. Almost too sweet.”

That broke the room into sharp fragments of sound—murmurs, gasps, the grinding hiss of weapons powering up.

Jetfire’s field exploded outward in protective fury. With a growl of turbines he shoved through, ripping Elita’s hands off Ulcthar and drawing the smaller seeker against his massive frame. “Enough!” Jetfire thundered, wings flaring as he shielded Ulcthar from their gazes. “You will not lay a servo on him!”

Ulcthar’s vents stuttered, optics wide as though the weight of suspicion pressed against his plating. His hands shook, digits curling in against themselves. For a moment, he looked like he might fold, retreat into silence, let them decide his fate for him.

But then he spoke.

“I… I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone,” he said, his voice fragile, quivering but sincere. “The Autobots need fuel. You’re all running low, rationing, stretching cubes until they’re thin.” He swallowed hard, wings twitching like nervous feathers. “So I… I created a new strain. Synthetic energon. Stable. Cleaner. I thought—”

He hesitated, searching their faces, the silence crushing down on him.

“I thought… if I could give it flavor… candy, fruit, even—” he lowered his voice, almost conspiratorial, “alcoholic tones for those who want stronger blends… maybe… maybe it would give you more than fuel. Maybe it would give you joy.”

His words hung in the air, raw and unguarded.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Then the silence cracked into disbelief.

“You—” Jazz’s voice cut through, choked with astonishment. “You just said… synthetic energon? And flavors?”

Ratchet’s hands trembled as he reached for the cube Prowl held, his optics burning like he was staring at the spark of Primus Himself. He tasted the edge of it, vents catching the trace of sweetness, and the realization thundered through his systems.

“By the Allspark…” Ratchet whispered. His optics lifted to Ulcthar, shaken, wide with awe. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

All eyes turned on him.

Ratchet’s voice cracked, rising with both fear and reverence. “You’ve just invented something every medic, every scientist, every Prime has dreamed of since the dawn of Cybertron. Synthetic energon. Stable. Reproducible. Adaptable. You…” His vents hitched. “You’ve just given us a cure. Not for fuel shortages. Not for morale. For everything. This could rival even the Rust Plague.”

The word fell heavy, dreaded. Rust: the incurable blight that ate metal alive, leaving only death.

The corridor froze.

Every Autobot looked at Ulcthar as if he had just cracked open the Matrix itself. No longer a stranger. No longer just a fragile survivor. But something else entirely.

Something dangerous.
Something miraculous.

And Ulcthar… stared back at them, utterly unaware of the storm he had unleashed.

The corridor was still tense with silence, Autobot optics locked on Ulcthar, when his voice slipped out, barely above a whisper.

“…Would now be a bad time to say that… technically, Rust already had a cure?”

It was almost casual, almost shy, the words spilling as if they weren’t the sharpest blades to ever fall in the history of Cybertron.

The air shattered.

Ratchet froze. His optics flickered, widened, then blazed as he surged forward. His servos clamped onto Ulcthar’s shoulders with a grip so fierce it bordered on desperation. The medic’s vents rattled, his entire frame shaking.

“What did you just say?” Ratchet hissed, voice low but vibrating with fury and disbelief. “Don’t—don’t you dare play with that word unless you mean it, mech. A cure? For Rust?!”

The crowd leaned in, the Autobots like statues made of fear and hope.

Ulcthar blinked, tilting his helm as if confused by their reaction. His wings trembled faintly, his expression earnest and almost too calm. “I… told the Council back then. Before the war. I submitted the theorem. They… they didn’t approve it. Said it was untested, dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Ratchet’s voice cracked, equal parts horror and awe. His grip shook Ulcthar’s smaller frame. “Do you realize how many we’ve lost to Rust because of their cowardice? How many mechs turned to dust in my medbay?”

Ulcthar flinched at the intensity, but he didn’t recoil. His optics were distant, thoughtful, his tone turning clinical as he slipped into the cadence of a scientist.

“It isn’t complicated. Rust is aggressive because it’s alive—microscopic organisms feeding on alloys. I designed a counter-pathogen, an artificial sequence that interrupts its replication. My theorem stabilizes it by using targeted nanites as carriers—smart cells, coded to recognize Rust and destroy it while leaving Cybertronian metal intact. I balanced the coding with an infusion catalyst—synth-energon, coincidentally—which prevents overcorrection and avoids stripping the plating itself. The equation works. The problem was… ethics. They feared giving nanites autonomy.”

His words flowed like cold water through circuitry, clear, logical, undeniable.

The Autobots stared, uncomprehending. They weren’t scientists. They weren’t meant to understand—only to feel the weight of what he said.

Ratchet, though—Ratchet understood. And that broke him.

His vents wheezed, his optics burned as if fire licked through his core. “You… you had this. All this time.” His servos rattled as they shook Ulcthar harder, like shaking the truth out of him. “You had the cure before the war! Do you know what you’re saying? How many thousands we’ve buried—how many sparks extinguished while you were—”

“While I was what?” Ulcthar cut in softly, optics lowering. His voice carried none of the fury, only a quiet wound. “Sleeping? In chains? Wearing a name that was not mine?”

The silence that followed was sharper than screams.

Ulcthar looked up again, calm, almost gentle. “I never meant to hide it. They ignored me. But if you want it, I can give you the theorem again. Step by step. You’ll have the cure in writing.”

His words were so matter-of-fact, so stripped of ego or grandiosity, that it unsettled the Autobots more than any boast would have.

Ratchet broke first. He whirled, voice roaring down the corridor with a force that shook walls. “Someone—anyone—get me a datapad! Now!”

The Autobots scrambled, their fields buzzing with panic and wonder. A cube clattered to the ground in the chaos, forgotten, as a datapad was shoved into Ratchet’s hands. He thrust it at Ulcthar, his servos trembling.

“Write it. Now.”

Ulcthar took it delicately, his claws tracing the smooth surface. His optics dimmed in focus as he began to write, glyphs and formulas flowing like a second language etched into his very spark. His hands moved fast, precise, each line a fragment of salvation.

And the Autobots… could only watch in silence, half afraid that Primus Himself had just placed a miracle in their hands.

Bumblebee’s voice cut through the silence, small and uncertain but carrying the weight of a seismic charge.

“…Ulcthar. What did you mean… by ‘another name’?”

The words landed like shrapnel.

Every optic turned toward the tricolor seeker, every servo paused mid-motion. Even Ratchet froze, datapad clutched in his hands like a lifeline.

Ulcthar’s stylus hovered above the glowing surface of the pad, his claw trembling. He realized instantly what he had said, what had slipped from between his lips unguarded. His vents stuttered as he looked at them—Optimus’s piercing optics, Ratchet’s grim suspicion, Bumblebee’s nervous yet unrelenting stare.

There was no way out.

Slowly, Ulcthar returned to the datapad, finishing the last lines of the theorem in silence. His servos shook with the strain of a mech writing down the cure for Rust while the weight of a truth he had never wanted to voice pressed down on his spark.

When he finally handed the datapad to Ratchet, he did not look away. His voice was low, rough around the edges, a confession pulled from him like energon from a wound.

“…I knew something was wrong,” he said. “Even if I had truly been in stasis for so long… there should not have been gaps. Not like this. A missing life I could not account for. Not memories—but fractures. Dreams. At first, I thought they were fevered delusions, the byproduct of stasis. Faces that lingered when I woke. Names I did not know. Screams that felt too real.”

His wings trembled violently as he held their gazes.

“But the fractures became patterns. And patterns… became truths.”

The Autobots shifted uneasily, field pressure tightening around them. Windblade stepped closer but did not speak, her optics glistening as if she already knew the storm was breaking.

Ulcthar vented sharply, claws curling against his thighs. “I pieced them together. Not all. Not enough. But enough to understand. I… was someone else. Another life. Another frame. Another name.” He paused, voice breaking. “…Starscream.”

The local chilled. The word was a weapon in itself, slicing the air into shards.

“I was Starscream,” Ulcthar continued, his tone more brittle with every word. “Second-in-command of the Decepticons. A more brutal frame. A voice that commanded troops. A… monster built with programs that forced obedience. That’s all I know. I don’t remember who put them in me. I don’t know why. Only that… I was not free.”

He closed his optics, vents shuddering. “And I don’t remember how it ended. I don’t know who ripped those chains apart. But I know the screams that still echo in my spark were mine. And the ones of others… that I caused.”

Ratchet’s grip on the datapad was white-knuckle tight, his entire frame vibrating. Optimus’s optics dimmed, rage burning beneath the calm mask he tried to wear. Bumblebee swallowed hard, unable to speak.

Ulcthar’s optics snapped open again, brilliant blue but glassy with fear. His voice dropped to a whisper.

“…I don’t know which is worse. That I was him. Or that I can feel… he is still inside me, somewhere. Waiting.”

The silence after was suffocating, heavy, as if the entire base itself was holding its vents.

etfire was the one to step forward. He did not rush, did not let panic touch his field. His frame radiated calm as he placed one broad servo on Ulcthar’s trembling shoulder, grounding him.

“You are not Starscream,” Jetfire said, his voice low but carrying enough weight to silence even Ratchet’s restless pacing. “You are Ulcthar. Starscream was… a shadow. A construct molded on your frame, forged from cruelty and chains. A weapon. He did not exist as he should have. He was a mask forced over your spark by those who saw you only as a resource to exploit.”

Ulcthar froze, wings trembling, his optics darting up to Jetfire as if testing whether this was comfort—or another manipulation. The warmth in Jetfire’s gaze was steady, unyielding.

“You were a victim,” Jetfire continued, thumb pressing lightly into the plating of Ulcthar’s shoulder joint. “They stole your work, your brilliance, and forced it into a war that was never yours to fight. Don’t take their sins as your own.”

Something broke inside Ulcthar at those words. A strangled noise left his vocalizer, a vent that sounded dangerously close to a sob. The tremors in his frame eased, just slightly, as if he had been drowning and someone had finally reminded him he could still vent air.

“…so it’s true then,” Ulcthar whispered. “The dreams. The fragments. They were real. But not me. Not truly me.”

The Autobots shifted uneasily. Some looked unconvinced, others simply overwhelmed by the revelation.

Ulcthar’s optics swept across them all, raw and stripped bare. “Even so… I cannot erase what was done while I was him. I cannot undo the screams. The weapons. The betrayals. But I can repair what I broke. Slowly. Gradually. If you allow me.”

He lifted a servo, claw trembling. “The cure for Rust was always mine. I only now put it into your hands. The synthetic energon—I had planned to present it to the Council of Cybertron… before I was taken.” His voice cracked. “Before I became their puppet.”

Ratchet’s optics burned into him, hungry, conflicted. He clutched the datapad tighter as Ulcthar’s words poured out.

“And now that I remember,” Ulcthar went on, field flickering unstable, “I recall everything I was made to build. Every blueprint. Every line of code. Every weapon I designed for Megatron’s war. Including…” He swallowed down static. “…including his arm cannon.”

That name, that weapon, sent a ripple of unease through the room.

“I created it specifically for his frame,” Ulcthar admitted, voice hollow. “I know its strengths. I know its weaknesses. I do not know if Megatron ever allowed me to build the other designs I drew for him—my memory fractures there—but I know the cannon. Every inch of it. I can dismantle it. I can break what I was forced to make.”

He lowered his helm, voice barely audible now. “…if you’ll let me.”

For a long, dangerous silence, no one moved. The Autobots stood at the precipice, torn between the monster’s name he had spoken and the fragile, trembling mech standing before them now.

Ratchet’s optics softened, though his vents still rattled with the tension of disbelief and awe. He leaned closer to Ulcthar, careful not to overwhelm the smaller seeker but firm enough that his presence anchored him.

“You see, mech,” Ratchet began, voice low but urgent, “your spark… it’s stronger than any frame, any wiring, any program I’ve ever encountered. It’s because of that spark that you’ve begun recovering fragments of memory, that you’ve begun piecing yourself together again.”

He handed the datapad gently to Bumblebee, who instinctively took it, clutching it as if it were a lifeline to understanding the impossible. Bumblebee’s optics flickered between Ulcthar and Ratchet, silent but entirely present.

Ratchet’s gaze returned to Ulcthar, searching his optic flares. “But there’s something you need to understand, Ulcthar. You cannot split yourself. You cannot—do not—allow your mind to fracture between the bot you are now and the one you were forced to be.”

Ulcthar’s wings twitched nervously. “I… I don’t know how—”

“Listen,” Ratchet interrupted gently, placing both hands lightly on Ulcthar’s forelimbs, his grip grounding but not suffocating. “You are both. You were Starscream. And you were Ulcthar. Both of you existed in the same spark, in the same frame, whether Megatron’s lies made it real or not. And whether you accept it or not, that past shapes you. But it doesn’t define you. Not entirely. You need balance.”

Ulcthar’s servos shook slightly, the tremor not from fear but from the weight of the truth. His optics darted to the ground, then back to Ratchet. “Balance… between them?”

“Yes,” Ratchet said, voice steady, full of a confidence that belied the chaos inside him. “You need to accept Ulcthar’s innocence, his genius, the spark that was always yours. And you need to accept Starscream’s command, his brutality, the fury and the cunning he was forced to become. Both exist in you. Both are real. Both are part of your spark. You don’t have to destroy one to survive the other. You have to be both, Ulcthar. In one frame. In one spark.”

Ulcthar closed his optics briefly, his wings folding around him like a shell. His vents rattled as he tried to absorb the magnitude of what Ratchet said. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, his frame relaxed, the tremor fading as though some invisible weight had lifted.

“You… you really mean it?” Ulcthar whispered, voice small, fragile, yet tinged with hope.

Ratchet gave a firm nod, optic flaring. “I mean it. You’re not a victim anymore. You are whole. But to stay that way, you must accept both halves. Refuse to acknowledge one, and your frame—your spark—will pay the price. You’ll fracture from within. But if you accept both…” He paused, letting the gravity of his words sink in. “…then you can be stronger than anything they ever forced you to be.”

Bumblebee’s optics glimmered as he held the datapad, silent but supportive. Jetfire’s broad servo rested lightly on Ulcthar’s back, protective, steady. Windblade watched quietly, a rare softness in her gaze, as though silently urging him to believe Ratchet.

Ulcthar exhaled slowly, a low hum vibrating through his vents. “Both… in one. I—I think I understand,” he murmured, wings folding slightly as he allowed himself to feel that fragile, tentative acceptance.

For the first time since awakening, the two bots—the genius and the puppet, the innocent and the commander—felt like one.

Windblade’s hands clapped against the plating of the local floor, the sharp crack echoing through the room like a bell of release. The tension that had hung thick over the space since Ulcthar’s confession seemed to shiver and fall away under the sound. She turned to him, optic flares bright, wings folding slightly behind her as she leaned in.

“Now that you’ve accepted both sides of yourself,” she said, voice warm, teasing, “it’s time you reclaimed a frame worthy of both of them.”

Ulcthar’s vents stuttered. He blinked at her, the meaning settling like a slow drop of energon. His mind raced, a spark stirring, memories, fragments, dreams coalescing. She knows…

“Don’t you dare—” he began, his voice sharp, but the words fell apart in the presence of her grin.

Windblade stepped closer, arm wrapping around his shoulders, pulling him slightly into her warmth, almost like a shield. Her smile was radiant, full of that old, familiar mischievousness that Ulcthar had never forgotten.

“It’s time to retrieve your original frame,” she said, soft but full of certainty. “The one we hid. The one that allowed you to flee your clan, to escape… to become a scientist in Yacon. It’s time it returned to you.”

Ulcthar’s optics widened, then narrowed, vents rattling slightly as he covered his face with one clawed hand. The whir of his breath was audible through the vents, and his voice came out as a trembling whisper:

“…and she dared…”

Windblade only laughed softly, a light, melodic sound that carried the weight of shared history and unspoken camaraderie. Her other hand rested lightly on his back, reassuring, grounding.

“Dared what, little seeker?” she teased, eyes glimmering with affection.

Ulcthar peeked between his fingers, his wings twitching nervously. “Dared… to remind me… that I’m not just Ulcthar. That there’s a past you knew… that I tried to leave behind.”

Windblade’s grin widened. “Exactly. But that past doesn’t control you. It made you clever, made you brilliant, made you you. Now it’s time to reclaim it—without fear, without lies.”

He exhaled slowly, a hum vibrating through his vents, a mixture of awe, fear, and tentative excitement. The weight of the hidden frame, the one that had sheltered him, the one that carried the courage to escape, pressed at the back of his spark.

“And… you’ll help me?” he asked softly, almost inaudibly.

“Always,” Windblade whispered, leaning closer. Her wings brushed his lightly. “You’ve already survived what they tried to force on you. Now we’ll bring you back.”

Ulcthar lowered his hand from his helm, optic flares dim but steady, a spark of determination threading through the residual fear. He allowed himself to believe, if only a fraction, that he could reclaim what had been lost—and that Windblade, always his anchor, would be there to help him do it.

The medbay was quiet, the other Autobots watching silently, recognizing the intimacy, the trust, the quiet power of a bond older than the war itself.

Ulcthar’s frame trembled slightly—not from fear this time—but from the thrill of awakening something long hidden. The journey back to himself was beginning.

The laughter, the warmth, the sense of reclaiming a hidden past—it all shattered in an instant when Ratchet’s broad servo landed firmly on Ulcthar’s shoulder. The press of his touch, measured and clinical, carried a chill that seemed to seep into the very air.

Ulcthar stiffened immediately, wings bristling, while Windblade instinctively shifted closer to him, a subtle protective barrier. Both of their optics flickered nervously under the weight of Ratchet’s gaze, as if the doctor could see right through the surface calm into the core of their intentions.

“I… I need to know,” Ratchet said slowly, voice low but icy, each word measured. “About this ‘true frame’ of yours, Ulcthar. I need… details.”

The sentence hung in the air, and the tone carried a weight neither of them had anticipated. It was not a question of medical procedure, of repairing plating or recalibrating systems. No. It was far deeper, far more dangerous. The unspoken implication was clear: this frame they speak of… it is not merely another body. It is your hidden self, your secret that may have consequences none of them are yet prepared to face.

If bots could sweat, both Ulcthar and Windblade would have been dripping pools of it by now, circuits rattling under the heat of anticipation, fear, and the unyielding intensity of Ratchet’s scrutiny. Every servo, every vent, every subtle movement betrayed their tension.

Ulcthar swallowed through his vents, optic flares darting between Ratchet and Windblade. He could almost feel the spark of a silent warning, a thread of anxiety coiling through his systems. “Doctor… it’s not… what you think,” he said carefully, each word deliberate, trying to sound casual while his servos trembled under the pressure.

Windblade’s wings twitched nervously, optic flares dimming, but her voice stayed light, playful—an attempt to counterbalance the frozen atmosphere Ratchet had created. “It’s… complicated,” she said. “And really, it’s nothing like a factory swap of spark or anything mechanical like that.”

Ratchet’s optics narrowed, unrelenting. “I don’t care what it looks like. I need the truth.”

A deep, almost imperceptible shiver ran through Ulcthar. He could feel the weight of centuries of secrecy, hidden frames, and carefully concealed truths pressing down on him, demanding recognition and action.

The silence that followed was thick and almost suffocating. Even in a medbay filled with Autobots, all the life and chatter of the base seemed to fade away. For a moment, the three of them—doctor, seeker, and Herald—were alone with the truth, with what must be revealed. Ratchet’s hand remained firm on Ulcthar’s shoulder, an icy weight reminding them both that secrets this deep could not hide forever,not on his watch.

Chapter 6

Thwe silence had shattered like glass under pressure. Ratchet’s demand was still ringing in the air when the truth finally bled out of Ulcthar and Windblade, and the fallout was immediate.

The seeker had instinctively darted behind Jetfire’s towering frame, clutching at the crimson-and-white plating as if the bigger mech were a fortress wall. His wings trembled against Jetfire’s back, optics darting nervously. Beside him, Windblade pressed herself against the other side of Jetfire, sharing the same instinctive terror of the medic’s wrath.

Ratchet’s optics blazed with fury, his vents hissing, plating flared. He looked every bit like a warrior ready to break the oath of a healer. “You did WHAT?!” His roar rattled the tools on the nearby tables. “You… transferred a spark from one chassis to another—without a surgeon, without a specialist, without even the most basic medical safeguards?!”

Jetfire’s massive frame shifted slightly, shielding them, but even his wings twitched with unease at the force of Ratchet’s rage.

Ulcthar’s voice, high and small, came muffled from behind Jetfire. “At the time, I… I had no choice.” His words stumbled, rushed. “I couldn’t stay. My clan—my life in Vos—it was suffocating me. I wanted freedom. I wanted to be more than just the heir of a noble line. I wanted… my dream.”

“You wanted—?!” Ratchet’s hands curled into fists, servos trembling with restraint. His optics snapped to Windblade. “And you—Herald of the fragging Titans—thought it was a good idea to help him? To tamper with a living spark as if it were a piece of machinery?”

Windblade bristled but didn’t leave Jetfire’s protection. Her voice was steady, though her vents shuddered with fear. “He asked me for help. He was my friend. And if I hadn’t done it, Ratchet, he would still be trapped—caged in a life he hated. He trusted me with his spark. I couldn’t say no.”

Ratchet lunged forward, but before he could close the distance, Ironhide’s thick arms wrapped around him from behind, dragging him back with brute force. “Easy, doc!” Ironhide grunted, straining as Ratchet thrashed violently in his hold.

“Let me go!” Ratchet’s bellow shook the walls, his optics never leaving the two small shapes hiding behind Jetfire’s broad frame. “Do you two have any idea what could have gone wrong? Do you even comprehend the fragging danger of what you did?! A single misalignment in transfer—just one fraction of a second too slow—and his spark could have collapsed! Both of you could have died!”

Optimus stepped forward, laying a steadying servo on Ratchet’s chestplate, his voice calm but heavy with authority. “Ratchet. Enough.”

But Ratchet snarled through his vents, pushing against their restraining arms. His fury was unrelenting, not the usual sharp temper of a medic—but the terror of one who had seen too many sparks extinguished under less reckless hands. “You played with the most sacred force on Cybertron! Without training, without protocols—by stealing a cold frame from a factory! Do you understand what that makes you?! Criminals! Heretics!”

Behind Jetfire, Ulcthar finally peeked out, his optics shimmering with the soft, almost fragile glow of his spark’s honesty. “It was the only way,” he whispered, wings lowering in shame. “The only way to escape. I couldn’t… live like that anymore. And Windblade—she gave me the chance. You don’t have to forgive us, Ratchet. I don’t forgive myself either. But I survived. I lived. And I became who I am meant to be.”

Windblade pressed her palm against Ulcthar’s trembling servo, holding him close even under the weight of Ratchet’s fury. “We did what we had to,” she said firmly, her voice breaking but resolute. “And I would do it again if it meant saving him.”

Ratchet’s vents snarled, his optics burning with an unholy mixture of rage and despair, but Optimus and Ironhide’s grip held him back, the medic’s frame shaking with the sheer effort not to tear the truth from them physically.

The room was thick with silence, the kind that cut deeper than any blade.

And in that silence, Ulcthar’s whispered admission still lingered, a fragile echo: I became who I am meant to be.

Ratchet’s vents rasped like a forge fighting to cool. His plating shifted with the sheer effort of holding himself together. He looked as though he could still tear the medbay apart, but at last his frame sagged—barely. His optics dimmed from burning rage to a simmering, poisonous glow.

“Where,” he growled, voice low but dangerous, “is Ulcthar’s real body?”

The silence that followed stretched taut as wire.

Windblade, still half-hidden behind Jetfire, lifted her chin and answered softly. “Safe. Deep beneath Vos’s foundations—in the subterranium. We placed it in a stasis pod, one connected to an external network Ulcthar built himself. It feeds directly off stellar energy. The frame has never decayed. It sleeps. Waiting.”

Ratchet’s vents hissed again, but this time it wasn’t fury—it was something closer to surrender. He dragged in a long, guttural intake, vented out, then another, and another. His shoulders trembled as he yanked himself free from Optimus and Ironhide’s restraining arms. He stood firm, his optics locking on Ulcthar like molten steel.

“I don’t care,” Ratchet spat, his voice like broken glass, “about your motives. I don’t care about your dreams, or your burdens, or whatever fragging duties you thought you had to escape. That—” he jabbed a finger at Ulcthar, so hard Jetfire nearly stepped back to shield him again “—is irrelevant. For the sake of your spark—for the sake of your life—we will recover your original body. And this time,” his tone sharpened, every syllable a blade, “the transfer will be performed under the hands of a specialist. By me. Do you understand?”

The weight of his words pressed down like a verdict.

Ulcthar’s wings sagged low, his frame shivering under the intensity. His lips parted, but before he could speak, Bumblebee tilted his helm, his optics wide with naive curiosity.

“What duties?” the young scout asked suddenly, his voice breaking the fragile tension. “What was so bad, Ulcthar, that you’d risk your life just to escape them? What could make you steal a body and risk your spark like that?”

Windblade stiffened beside Ulcthar. Her optics widened a fraction of a second before his servo darted out and clamped over her mouth, muffling her words.

But not before a single syllable slipped out, sharp as a blade in the quiet room.

“Wing—”

The word hung in the air like a crack of thunder.

Ulcthar’s optics widened in panic, and he cut her off with a nervous laugh that sounded far too thin. “Wings—preparations! Yes!Wings Preparation Nobility obligations, dull politics, endless ceremonies.” His voice rushed, scrambling to bury what she had nearly revealed. “Complete boredom. Pointless traditions. Endless politics to creat the perfect party for others nobles clans.”

Windblade’s optics burned into him, the sharp blue of accusation and protection all at once. She knew. She knew exactly what he was doing—covering the truth, shielding it like a wound not ready to be exposed. And though her mouth was still half-covered by his servo, her silence said it all: she would not betray him. Not yet.

Ratchet’s optics narrowed, suspicion cutting deep, but he said nothing. He only vented, long and slow, before turning away, muttering something bitter under his breath that no one dared to ask him to repeat.

The truth still clung to the air like smoke.
And the single word—wing—refused to die in their processors.

Ratchet, after several long clicks of silence, finally raised a hand. The sharp gesture demanded attention.

“Enough. We’ve wasted enough cycles already. We need a plan to retrieve Ulcthar’s body without alerting the Decepticons.” His voice was clipped, surgical, all business now. The fury still lingered beneath, but it was caged—directed.

Ulcthar stepped out from behind Jetfire’s looming shadow at last. His posture was straighter now, wings tucked but no longer trembling. His optics burned with determination as he addressed the room.

“It will be simple.”

The confidence in his tone startled them before the words even began.

“Windblade will lead the way,” he said, gesturing to her with a slight tilt of his helm. “Bumblebee scouts ahead—quiet, efficient, keeping the route clear. Ironhide and Bulkhead will work in tandem to carry the pod. Prowl will join us, for quick tactical response if you face resistance.”

The others exchanged looks, but Ulcthar’s voice only grew stronger.

“We cannot groundbridge directly to the location—it would trigger Decepticon sensors. Instead, we open a portal inside Autobot territory, and proceed on foot. The enter through one of the subterranian passages that Windblade knows. Once inside, locate the pod. She will help safely disconnect it from the stellar energy network.”

He paused, calculating. “When leaving, just plant a gas dispersal device. Once the pod is secure, just open a portal and extract the pod. The device will detonate, destroying the remaining systems. Decepticon sensors will only detect what appears to be a natural gas leak—empty, worthless. No one will trace a portal signature through it.”

By the time he finished, the room was utterly silent.

Even Optimus Prime tilted his helm slightly, his optics narrowing in quiet approval.

Prowl’s optics gleamed faintly—he understood just how airtight that plan was. Every step accounted for, no flaw visible.

Windblade smiled. A quiet, knowing smile that carried more weight than any words.

When Ulcthar finally stopped speaking, she leaned closer, her voice just loud enough for him to hear but not the others. “No matter how far you try to run from what you are… it always finds a way back. In one form or another.”

Ulcthar froze, processor stalling. He had spoken like a commander. A tactician. The kind of voice that stirred warriors to follow without question.

The realization struck him hard, and his wings drooped. He raised a hand to his face, covering his optics, his voice muffled with despair.

“…I’ve revealed too much,” he whispered to himself.

And the silence that followed felt like every optic in the room had seen the leader he never wanted to be.

Optimus Prime’s voice cut through the lingering silence, calm and deep, yet resolute.
“An excellent plan, Ulcthar. We will follow it exactly.”

Ulcthar’s wings twitched uneasily. He had expected… what? Hesitation? Rejection? Not Optimus Prime treating his words as military law.

“You,” Optimus continued, turning his steady gaze on him, “will remain here at the base. For your own safety—and as a precaution. Prowl, Ironhide, Bumblebee, Bulkhead—prepare immediately. Ratchet, ensure the medbay is ready for the transfer.”

The chosen Autobots nodded in unison, moving with efficient precision as though the plan were already battle-tested.

Ratchet’s optics glowed a deeper shade, his hand pressing hard against Ulcthar’s shoulder joint. “Fine. I’ll get the medbay ready. I’ll need everything sterilized, prepped, because we’re not risking a spark transfer going wrong—not with the way this seeker and his little accomplice have been playing games with frames.” His tone was biting, but beneath it was a surgeon’s fire, the need to succeed no matter the odds.

Windblade, however, broke the mounting seriousness with a lilt of amusement in her voice. She tapped her talons together with a little flourish, almost musical.
“I’ll prepare a medical kit to take along,” she said, airily. “In case of… sudden complications.”

She paused, then smirked. “Or mini spark-attacks, when the others finally lay optics on his real chassis.”

Every optic in the room turned toward her in confusion.

Windblade only grinned wider, lifting her hands and sweeping them along her own frame in an exaggerated silhouette—curved wings, proud stance, hips tilted just so. “Oh, you’ll understand when you see it,” she teased, her hands outlining the unmistakable shape of a bot who was far more… alluring than Ulcthar’s current, plain scientific body revealed.

There was a collective silence, followed by a few awkward static coughs.

Ulcthar groaned aloud, vents cycling sharply, optics rolling back so far they nearly clicked. His wings sagged in exasperation. “Primus, Windblade…” He muttered, trying to bury himself in the floor.

But Ratchet had seen the gesture. And Ratchet was a predator when he caught a weakness.

The doctor’s optics narrowed dangerously. With a growl, he seized Ulcthar by the arm before the seeker could retreat behind Jetfire again. “Oh no, you’re not getting away this time. To the medbay. Now. If you’re going to make me rip my fuel pump out of anxiety, you’re at least going to be prepped properly.”

Ulcthar dug in his heels, wings flaring wide in protest, but Ratchet’s grip was iron. The medic was already dragging him down the corridor, muttering furiously about seekers, reckless spark transfers, and the utter lack of sense Primus had given to either Ulcthar or Windblade.

Windblade followed at a leisurely pace, grinning like a cat that had tossed a datapad into the fire.

Behind them, Optimus only ex-vented softly, his optics shuttering for a moment. For a Prime, it was the closest he’d come to hiding a laugh.

Inside the base, Ratchet’s hands moved with cold precision as he prepped the medbay, Ulcthar strapped against the diagnostic table. Tools hummed, scanners pulsed, and the air reeked of sterilizing compounds. The doctor muttered constantly under his vents, fury wrapped in worry: about sparks being shifted like datapads, about fragile seekers gambling with their very lives. Behind the doors, Ulcthar could only brace himself, optics closed, while the others carried out the mission his plan had written in steel.

Far from the safety of the base, Prowl’s heavy steps echoed through the half-forgotten tunnels, the sleek gas bomb balanced carefully in his hands. He carried it like a surgeon’s scalpel—controlled, deliberate, deadly. Ahead, Bumblebee slunk like a shadow, every joint silenced, antennas twitching as he scanned for even the faintest movement. His blaster remained low but ready, his frame taut with nervous energy.

Windblade led, wings arched as if she could feel the very breath of Cybertron in these ancient veins. The subterranean air grew heavier the further they went, alive with a low hum that came from the thick black cables coiling along the walls. They pulsed with contained power, energy rushing like a heartbeat through arteries buried deep beneath the planet’s scarred surface.

“Here,” Windblade whispered, pointing her bladed fingers toward the cable cluster. “were’re close. These lines…” she let her talon brush one, feeling the vibration through her frame, “feed directly into the pod. Seven separate channels. Ulcthar never risked redundancy—he designed everything with backup upon backup.”

“Seven?” Prowl’s optics flickered in surprise. “Overengineered, even for him.”

“Not overengineered,” Windblade countered quietly, wings flicking. “Protected.”

They pressed forward, the cables twisting into thicker braids, leading them deeper into the earth until at last the tunnels opened into a forgotten chamber.

Time had smothered the place. Dust clung to every surface, years layered thick as cloth. The chamber’s walls had half-collapsed, jagged stone forcing the Autobots to duck and squeeze as they entered. Yet at the heart of the ruin stood the stasis pod, massive and silent, its shape unmistakable.

The glass was opaque with filth, streaked with soot, and choked in patches of bright blue moss that clung like parasitic vines. The eerie glow of the moss faintly illuminated the pod, giving it the look of an ancient tomb, guarded by nature’s quiet cruelty.

Bumblebee’s wings twitched uneasily as he stepped closer. “Primus… it looks like it’s been buried here for centuries.”

Bulkhead shifted his weight, heavy footfalls dislodging dust clouds. “And Ulcthar’s spark was inside this? How the frag did he survive?”

Windblade lowered her head, optics narrowed. “Because he built it. He designed the connections, the siphons. The solar feeds. The stasis cycles were regulated, sustained by stellar energy no matter how many ages passed.” Her voice softened. “He made sure it would never fail him.”

The Autobots surrounded the pod slowly, reverently, as though afraid to disturb the ghost that slumbered within. The hum of the cables was louder now, almost resonant, as if the spark inside was answering.

Prowl stepped forward, datapad already in hand. “Bulkhead, Ironhide—prepare to lift it once Windblade disengages the feeds. Bumblebee, keep scanning the tunnels. If we’re compromised, we need a way out before the bomb goes off.”

But even as orders rang, no one could take their optics off the pod. The faint outline of a frame could be seen through the filth on the glass—tall, sharp, wings folded tight against the body. Elegant, dangerous, regal.

Windblade touched the glass, brushing dust aside with a gentle hand. “There you are,” she whispered, voice trembling with a strange mixture of fondness and awe. “The real you.”

And through the veil of grime and moss, the dormant frame inside seemed to stir.

Chapter 7

Windblade’s hands were steady, every motion precise as she detached the conduits from the stasis pod. The thick energy cables hissed when pulled free, their light dying one by one until the chamber seemed to sink into shadow. The hum that had filled the subterranean cavern quieted, leaving only the fragile, rhythmic thrum of the spark slumbering inside the pod.

“Now!” she hissed.

Ironhide and Bulkhead moved in perfect synchronization, massive frames bracing on either side as they lifted the pod. Metal groaned, dust cascaded, but the pod held steady between them. The weight was more than physical; it was history itself they carried.

Prowl crouched low, deploying the gas bomb with mechanical precision. He keyed in the timer, optics narrowing as the countdown began its silent pulse.

“Bee, open the line!”

Bumblebee was already interfaced with the commlink. His optics flickered as he synchronized with Wheeljack’s systems back at the base. The portal ignited in front of them, a shimmering oval of raw energy cutting through the dust and ruin.

“Move!” Prowl barked.

The Autobots surged forward, slipping through the groundbridge just as the timer reached its end.

Behind them, silence reigned for a heartbeat—then the chamber shook with violent force. The gas bomb ignited, ripping through the old conduits in a thunderous chain reaction. A river of fire tore through the ducts, pushing up vents like geysers of molten light before dying just as quickly, smothered by the depths of Cybertron. When the last echo faded, the chamber was nothing but scorched ruin and silence.

Far above, in the Decepticon warship, Soundwave’s sensors flickered at the tremor. The data streamed across his visor: seismic readings, localized heat signatures, energy flares consistent with subterranean gas ignition.

“Report,” Megatron’s voice rumbled, sharp as a blade.

Soundwave tilted his helm. ::Localized gas explosion. No Autobot activity detected.::

The warlord snarled but dismissed it with a flick of his clawed hand. “Irrelevant.”

His optics swept over the assembled Decepticons, restless, uncertain, their ranks fraying without the tricolor seeker’s cutting voice to command them.

“Brothers!” Megatron’s roar filled the hall, silencing whispers and stilling wings. “Do not falter. Shockwave and I work without rest to locate the Autobots’ base, to reclaim what is ours. Starscream will be returned to us. His absence is temporary. His loyalty—eternal.”

Shockwave stepped forward with that cold, deliberate cadence that chilled every frame. “A direct assault would invite heavy losses. Therefore, I am crafting a precise recovery. Stealth. Timing. Perfection. No room for error.” His single optic burned in the dim light. “We will not fail.”

The murmurs eased, though unease lingered. The aerials shifted, restless, their trine formations fractured, their leader gone. Thundercracker’s fists clenched tight, Skywarp’s optics darting nervously, but neither dared raise their voices under Megatron’s shadow.

Yet deep in their sparks, unease remained. Their Commander Aerius was gone. Their voice in the skies had been silenced.

And no matter what Megatron thundered, no matter what Shockwave promised, the question would not leave them.

Why had their leader not yet been brought back?

Bulkhead and Ironhide’s heavy steps echoed through the medbay as they set the pod down with exaggerated care, as if afraid one jolt might shatter what lay within. The seals hissed when the pod connected with the medbay’s floor systems, a deep mechanical sigh as if the chassis inside was finally home after countless vorns of silence. Both warriors exchanged a glance—awed, shaken, almost reverent—before leaving the chamber.

Windblade lingered, her optics soft. She placed her hand over the pod’s fogged glass, tracing the faint outline of the frame within. “When he wakes… he deserves to see someone who knows him,” she murmured. “Not a medic with sharp instruments in his hands.”

Ratchet grumbled, but there was no edge in it this time, only a resigned sigh. “Fine. But you stay quiet during the procedure. If I hear one wing twitch out of place, I’ll throw you out myself.”

Windblade’s lips quirked, but she inclined her helm respectfully. “He’ll thank you for this, Ratchet. Even if he never finds the words.”

The doctor harrumphed, then flicked his servo toward the door. “Out. All of you. The fewer bodies in here, the less chance of contamination.”

When the chamber finally emptied, the air felt heavier, thick with the hum of machinery and the unspoken weight of risk. Ratchet’s optics swept to his assistants.

“First Aid. Red Alert. Quit staring like sparklings at their first energon cube. You’ll drown in your own coolant before you ever pick up a scalpel at this rate.”

First Aid startled, almost dropping the tray in her hands. Red Alert’s vents stuttered, his optics locked on the pod as though he had seen a ghost.

And perhaps, in a way, they had.

The pod hissed open with a drawn-out exhale, the stale air of centuries spilling into the medbay. Inside lay Ulcthar’s true frame—the hidden body crafted long ago, untouched, immaculate in its design. Blue and white armor with touches of lilac and red with silver,all in perfect harmony, gleamed faintly beneath the grime of stasis, wings folded like a sleeping predator’s, elegant yet strong. A body of nobility, of ancient lines that whispered secrets of Cybertron’s past.

“Primus above…” First Aid whispered, and Ratchet snapped his fingers sharply.

“Drain it. Carefully.” His voice was low, controlled, but his optics burned with something between awe and fury. “This is no relic—it’s his real self. No mistakes.”

The stasis fluid was siphoned away, draining in thick rivulets until the frame was left bare, cold light spilling across its armor. Red Alert and First Aid worked in tandem, servos trembling slightly as they lifted the frame free. Every joint was stiff, resistant, like a body not meant to wake.

They placed it on the berth beside Ulcthar’s current chassis, the contrast stark. One body, familiar and scarred by what Starscream had been forced to endure. The other, pristine, untouched, like an echo of the mech Ulcthar was always meant to be.

Windblade’s intakes caught softly, her optics darting between them. The past and the present, side by side.

Ratchet turned, his tone clipped but carrying the weight of absolute authority. “Anesthetics are stable. Spark chamber integrity confirmed.” He flexed his hands, already glowing with surgical instruments. “We begin now. No hesitation. No mistakes. Not when it’s his spark.”

The medbay lights dimmed slightly as the systems shifted to surgical mode. Monitors flickered to life, casting pale light across the berths.

Ratchet drew a long, deliberate breath before addressing his team. “This isn’t just surgery. This is a reclamation. What Megatron and Shockwave twisted, we will set right. By Primus, we’ll put him back where he belongs.”

And with that, the spark transfusion began.

The medbay was locked down. No distractions. No unnecessary optics watching. Ratchet needed silence, control — and frag, even with all that, his servos trembled. He wasn’t supposed to be afraid. But this? This was spark transfer without the natural buffer of protoform forging. A gamble where one misstep would tear a life to shreds.

Ulcthar lay on the berth, anesthetized, frame slack, vents soft and shallow. The innocent body he had lived in for so long — thin lines, fragile plating, hands still stained faintly with energon ink from his experiments. Windblade stood at his side, one servo gripping his arm, her face locked in determination but her spark nearly screaming in tension. She knew what was coming. She had seen it once before, under stolen light in Vos. But now there would be no shadows, no desperate rush. This was sanctioned, clean, but infinitely more terrifying.

Beside the berth stood the other frame.

Ulcthar’s true frame. The one that had been hidden away, sealed in stasis and fed with power like some forbidden relic. The glass was drained, the dust wiped clean, and now it rested on its own berth. Elegant. Deadly. Wings sharper, broader, shoulders powerful, lines sculpted with the arrogance of a Seeker Prince. Its optics remained offline, a hollow reminder of what it once was. But it was waiting. Hungry.

Ratchet ex-vented sharply. “Prep containment.”

First Aid and Red Alert obeyed instantly, attaching the luminous shell over Ulcthar’s sparkchamber. A crystal lattice hummed, ready to catch the raw core of the mech’s being once Ratchet drew it out. For a breath, it looked like nothing more than sterile science. Until Ratchet’s tools met plating.

The hiss of metal separating from metal cut through the silence. Ulcthar’s chest was opened, seams spreading, sensitive wires trembling as Ratchet parted them with steady, merciless hands. Beneath the layers of armor and cable, the glow of his spark throbbed faintly — silver-white tinged with a sharp trace of red. Smaller than Megatron’s furnace, brighter than most, fragile yet unyielding.

Windblade gasped, and Ratchet shot her a glare. She bit her lip, but her fingers never let go of Ulcthar’s arm.

“Focus,” Ratchet muttered. More to himself than anyone else.

The extractor clicked into place. Thin prongs reached for the trembling spark, trembling not because Ulcthar was conscious — the anesthetic kept his body slack — but because the spark itself knew. Sparks always knew when they were being touched, pulled, threatened.

The first tug came like a scream none of them could hear, but feel. The entire room vibrated. The containment lattice glowed bright, struggling against the raw energy it was forced to hold. Ratchet’s optics narrowed, hands steady despite the weight. “Hold it. Hold it steady…”

The spark lifted free.

Every cable connected to Ulcthar’s frame snapped loose with a whine like tearing sinew. The body convulsed, though unconscious, as if some invisible chain had been ripped from deep within it. Windblade almost moved to stop Ratchet, to scream for him to stop, but Ironhide’s words earlier echoed in her helm: For his sake, for his life, this must be done.

The spark hovered now inside the containment, pulsing like a terrified creature ripped from its shell. Small arcs of electricity licked against the walls of the cage.

Ratchet turned, his voice low, hoarse. “Prepare the receptacle.”

The real body — the hidden body — was opened next. Plating that had not been touched in vorns parted under his tools. No scars, no wear. It was pristine, preserved like a shrine. When the chest finally opened, the empty chamber inside seemed to suck at the light, waiting.

Ratchet moved slow, his entire frame hunched in tension. The spark was coaxed closer, the arcs of energy flaring against the edges of its new shell. For a moment, it resisted — sparks always did. It clung to memory, to the shape of the old frame, to the familiar shadows it had known. Ratchet gritted his denta. “Don’t fight me… frag it, don’t fight me!”

Windblade leaned close, whispering to the trembling light. Her voice cracked but carried, a melody soft and desperate: “Ulcthar. You’re safe. This is yours. You don’t need to run anymore. Come home.”

The spark stilled.

Then, slowly, almost like recognition, it pulsed once… twice… and sank into the new chamber.

The reaction was instant. The frame shuddered violently, wings snapping once against the berth restraints. Lights along the plating flickered awake, one after another. Ratchet cursed under his vents, forcing the connectors into place as the spark tried to burn through them. “Stabilize, damn you, stabilize!”

For a terrifying moment, it looked as if the new body would reject him. Sparks sometimes did — tearing themselves apart when forced into a shell too alien. Ratchet’s servo pressed down hard, literally gripping the chamber as though his own strength could will it into balance.

And then — silence.

The glow steadied. The pulses evened. Life spread outward from the chamber, through dormant energon lines, into circuits that had not felt fire in vorns. Optics flickered faintly beneath closed lids. The new wings twitched, once, twice, as if remembering flight.

Windblade’s vents hitched. Ratchet slumped back, servos trembling with exhaustion.

Ulcthar opened his optics.

The berth restraints creaked under the sudden arch of his frame as his entire body seized. His first vent was ragged, desperate, pulling in air like drowning mechs breaking the surface. His optics burned bright, wild, unfocused. Sparks of memory lashed through him, images too fast to contain — Vos skies, Seeker laughter, the voice of his trine echoing in his helm, Megatron’s command roaring like a chain dragging him down.

He screamed.

Windblade’s hands shot to his shoulders, holding him down as his wings thrashed. “Ulcthar! Look at me! It’s me — it’s Windblade! You’re safe, you’re safe, you’re—”

His optics finally found hers. Recognition flickered, raw and broken, but there.

He collapsed back onto the berth, vents shuddering, frame slick with condensation as if he’d run a marathon through fire. Ratchet checked the readouts, sagging in visible relief. “Stable. He’s fragging stable.”

Windblade leaned down, pressing her helm gently against Ulcthar’s. “Welcome back.”

His lips parted, the first word tearing out like a fractured plea:

“…Starscream.”

The false body shuddered one last time, plates cracking and seams breaking as if the very metal knew it was obsolete. Dust began to rise from the frame, floating in pale clouds, spiraling toward the medbay ceiling. The smell of old energon and corroded metal filled the air, a bittersweet reminder of what had been. Ratchet, First Aid, and Red Alert instinctively stepped back, servos tense, wary that the lingering consciousness of Starscream might linger in the air itself.

Ulcthar’s lips moved, almost hesitating, before the single word tore out, raw and jagged:

“Starscream.”

The sound struck the room like a hammer. Ratchet froze mid-step, every processor in his head analyzing for anomalies. First Aid’s optics widened, Red Alert’s teeth—or rather, servo grates—grounded in anger, fear, confusion. And yet, standing at his side, Windblade’s gaze remained locked on him, unwavering.

His optics flared blue. Then red. Blue. Red. A pulse. Another pulse.

Ratchet’s voice was low, tight: “The spark… it’s choosing. It’s deciding…”

He knew the signs. Ulcthar’s core was wrestling, memories of innocence clashing with memories of command, brutality, obedience programs long erased now colliding with the pure, unaltered self he had always been. The room thrummed with tension, the lattice of containment still faintly humming around him like an electric heartbeat.

Then Jetfire’s deep, calm voice broke through the storm: “You is neither. You is both. You are the balance between creation and destruction, innocence and brutality. You lived both. You survived both. You are that”

The words seemed to settle over the chamber, and for the first time, Ulcthar’s optics softened. The flash of blue and red slowed, blended, merged. A pale lilac sheen spread across his eyes like dawn breaking after a long, violent night. The processor quieted, circuits no longer jerking or firing in chaotic bursts.

Ulcthar/Starscream exhaled — a vented sound, tremulous, but steadying — and for the first time, Ratchet saw something like calm in the mech’s stance. He looked at the remnants of the false body, the husk of what could have been, and spoke, voice rough but sincere:

“I… I am sorry. I worried all of you. I… I didn’t mean—”

Windblade stepped forward, arms encircling him gently. Her optics glimmered with warmth, reflecting the lilac of his eyes. “It’s done,” she whispered, voice carrying relief, pride, affection. “Everything’s fine now. You’re back, completely. No lies. No shadows. You are who you are meant to be, and nothing can take that from you.”

For a moment, Ulcthar/Starscream allowed himself to lean into her embrace, chest venting shallow, irregular breaths, wings folding slightly, talons curled. Ratchet stood a little apart, still wary, hands flexing at his sides, but the tension eased slightly, silent reassurance, while First Aid monitored vitals and Red Alert simply gritted his mandibles, unwilling to admit he was relieved.

The lilac eyes, now fully awake, scanned the medbay. They landed on the pods, the dust settling, and the emptiness of the false shell, and Ulcthar/Starscream’s voice was steady now, measured, the edge of remorse softened by relief:

“Thank you… for waiting. For keeping me safe. For not letting me disappear.”

Windblade’s hands tightened around his shoulders, her smile soft but fierce. “You’re not disappearing. Not now. Not ever. We’ll make sure of that.”

And in that quiet, the first real peace settled in the medbay. Lilac light reflected from circuits and lenses alike, a promise that the balance had been found. Ulcthar/Starscream had claimed both names, both histories, both truths. And for the first time in vorns, he was complete.

Everything was finally, finally fine.

Chapter 8

Windblade’s servo lingered at Ulcthar/Starscream’s arm as she steadied him, her optics catching the subtle tremor in his newly awakened frame. The lilac glow in his optics pulsed faintly, like a spark that was still settling, still learning the rhythm of its own existence. She remembered the whispers of the Titans—the prophecy of those lilac eyes—and though her processor wanted to tell him, to ease the uncertainty, she bit it back. Too soon. Far too soon.

Instead, she curved her lips into a soft smile, and her voice came like silk through the charged air.
“Tell me, then… which name will you carry? Ulcthar? Starscream?”

He paused, wings twitching with the faintest uncertainty, then raised a clawed digit to his lips—an unmistakable signal. Not yet. His gaze swept the medbay, then settled firmly back on her.
“When they are all together,” he said, voice roughened by both new breath and ancient memory. “I will speak then. There are things… important things… and they must all hear them.”

Windblade inclined her helm, accepting his choice without press. She understood. Secrets this heavy could not be whispered in halves.

Behind her, Ratchet had been watching closely. His optics flickered between the monitors and the mech himself, then he moved forward, steady hands finding Ulcthar/Starscream’s shoulder struts to anchor him upright. The CMO’s voice was firm, edged with that gruff concern that always betrayed his supposed stoicism.
“Easy now. You’re still weak, mech. That spark transfer took more out of you than you realize. Your systems are recalibrating to your real chassis again—it’ll take time. No rushing.”

Ulcthar/Starscream gave a faint nod, though his optics never left Windblade’s. She, in turn, slipped her arm further around his back, carrying part of his weight as he leaned into her. His wings quivered with each step, rediscovering balance.

The medbay hummed quietly around them—the berth where his false body had turned to dust still bore faint traces of ash on the edges, and the smell of scorched metal lingered. But the living mech before them—the fusion, the balance—was undeniable.

Together, Ratchet and Windblade guided him forward, each step a claim of life reclaimed.

The medbay doors hissed open, and for a breathless instant, the world seemed to still.

Ulcthar—no, Starscream—stepped out, supported lightly by Ratchet’s steady servo on one side and Windblade’s gentle guidance on the other. His frame caught the light of the hall, and the Autobots waiting there almost forgot how to function. Their optics widened, their mouths hung open—if their jaws weren’t fixed by struts, they would have hit the floor.

He was gorgeous.

Even weakened from surgery, his presence filled the space, demanded attention. His frame was taller than before, lean yet perfectly proportioned, carrying that dangerous grace that only seekers seemed to possess. He wasn’t the tallest—still shorter than Skywarp or most of the aerials—but the new form gave him an undeniable aura of command.

His chassis gleamed in a soft celeste blue, kissed with subtle accents of light red and streaks of white across his plating, the palette catching in the ambient glow and giving the illusion of light itself clinging to him. The cockpit at his chest—deeper, more elegant—was tinted in a faint light red, half-hidden and half-revealed by the new shape of his frame, as though teasing the optics with every glance.

And his wings—Primus, his wings. Larger than any Seeker’s should have been, sweeping back in flawless symmetry, the plating layered so perfectly it gave the illusion of four instead of two. Every subtle twitch sent a ripple of refracted light down the polished surface, silver joints gleaming as though sculpted for beauty and nothing less.

The silver of his cable joints traced along his limbs like jewelry, bright and perfect, connecting celeste armor to the crimson-tinted plating in lines of absolute precision. His talons—sharp and delicate—curved with the elegance of a predator wrapped in artistry.

The Autobots could only stare.

Bumblebee’s optics flickered as though trying to record every detail and still not capturing enough. Bulkhead shifted on his peds, trying not to gape outright, while Prowl’s calm mask cracked into something halfway between astonishment and disbelief. Even Optimus Prime—always collected—allowed the faintest widening of optics, the slightest intake of breath that betrayed his awe.

But it was Jetfire who broke the silence.

He stood frozen, optic ridges high, his jaw slack so wide it looked as though he’d taken a blaster to the faceplate. Windblade, graceful as ever, turned her helm just enough to see him and, with deliberate teasing, reached up and gently pressed his mouth shut with one finger. She couldn’t stop the grin tugging at her lips, and the sound of her half-stifled laughter broke the heavy silence.

Starscream/Ulcthar tilted his helm, lilac optics glowing with mirth. He had seen this before, felt this before—the intoxicating mix of shock and awe he inspired. But this time he allowed himself to enjoy it. With a soft curl of his lips into a smirk, he spread his wings wider, letting them flare open so the full length of his span filled the corridor in impossible beauty.

The Autobots, still caught in that daze, could only look on as if in the presence of something both divine and dangerous, caught between reverence and fear.

The silence lingered for a few moments longer, heavy and reverent, until Starscream—no longer hiding behind borrowed names, no longer masking his truth—drew in a careful vent and lifted his helm. His lilac optics swept over the gathered Autobots, each one still half-stunned by his appearance, and when he finally spoke, his voice carried through the corridor like tempered steel—calm, measured, and resonant with authority.

“Thank you.”

The single word broke the air like a chime, deliberate, weighty. His wings gave the faintest shift as he straightened under his own strength, no longer leaning on Ratchet’s or Windblade’s support. “You captured me at the exact moment it was needed,” he continued, the faintest smile ghosting his lips. “And you believed me enough to dig deeper. To see beyond the mask, beyond the chains.”

His optics dimmed briefly, pain flickering like a shadow before the light steadied again. “You found the chips buried inside me, the programs of slavery, of obedience. You stripped them away. You returned me to myself. My true body.” He paused, his tone neither boastful nor self-pitying, but heavy with gratitude that seemed almost alien coming from him.

“You had no obligation to do any of it,” he went on, wings arching back as though to shield his words. “Not after the crimes I committed. Crimes I carried out with my own servos, even if forced, even if molded into something I was not.” His gaze swept the group again, locking onto each pair of optics in turn, unflinching. “Yet you did it. You freed me.”

A hush fell again, but this time it was reverent, the Autobots too struck by the raw honesty in his tone to break it.

“And for that reason,” he said at last, the calm steel of his voice ringing like truth, “I will continue to call myself Starscream. Not because I am a Decepticon. Not because I was a victim. But because I cannot forget what I did. No matter the chains, no matter the programming—I cannot erase the atrocities I committed.”

His lilac optics burned brighter, fierce but not cruel, luminous with something resolute. “But I can learn. I can improve. And I can move forward.”

The air vibrated faintly, as though the corridor itself had recognized the shift. Starscream’s voice had the steadiness of a Prime—measured, inspiring, unshakable—but there was something else woven into it, something that made the difference stark. Where Optimus spoke like an eternal pillar, Starscream spoke like a blade freshly forged, honed through fire and survival, tempered by guilt and wisdom both.

And somehow, that difference made him no less of a leader—only something… other. Something the Autobots had never seen before.

The silence after Starscream’s words lingered like a weight pressing on every spark in the room. The Autobots reacted each in their own way: Ironhide’s helm dipped in silent acknowledgment, a rare softness passing over his weathered features; Prowl’s optics narrowed with sharp calculation, but not suspicion—rather, as though reevaluating every strategic possibility in light of this new Starscream; Bumblebee stared, wide-eyed, almost drinking in the lilac glow of Starscream’s optics as if to anchor himself to hope; Jetfire—still slack-jawed—looked caught between pride, awe, and something dangerously close to reverence.

None of them, not one, saw him as a Decepticon in that moment. Not the liar, not the traitor. What stood before them was a victim—no, more than that. A survivor who had carved freedom out of chains, who had stepped from shadow into light, wearing scars but also a promise.

It was Optimus who broke the silence, his voice deep and solemn, but touched with something warmer. “Starscream,” he said, addressing him by name, not with hesitation, not with condemnation. “You have given us more than we could have asked for already. You need not burden yourself further. For now, recover. Learn your frame again. Rest.”

His optics, usually so unreadable, softened as he inclined his helm. “Already you have done enough. You gave us the cure for the Rust plague, a scourge none of us believed we would live to see end. And beyond that—” Optimus’s hand lifted, palm opening as if to present Starscream to all of them, “—you have given us Synthetic Energon. Fuel easy to craft, simple to maintain, with little waste. A resource that ends our long famine, that ensures no mech, Autobot, Neutral, or even Decepticon, must ever starve again.”

A murmur rippled through the room. First Aid’s hands twitched at his sides as though he wanted to applaud. Bulkhead’s optics flickered wide as he glanced toward Ratchet, who stood stiff and pale but unflinching, as though refusing to show just how moved he was.

“This is no longer the dream of one faction,” Optimus continued, his voice gathering strength, filling the medbay like a vow written into stone. “It is a promise. When this war ends, all will have the right to Synthetic Energon. Together, we will rebuild Cybertron. Together, we will rise again.”

That was not a Prime’s speech. It was not holy, nor unreachable, nor distant. It was a promise—a living one, tangible, one that all of them now shared.

And Starscream stood at the center of it.

With a hiss of hydraulics, he brushed Ratchet’s support away and forced himself upright, standing on his own. He wavered, wings trembling, but his optics shone fiercely lilac, unyielding. “Then… I ask for something in return,” he said, voice lower now, resonant but carrying an edge of vulnerability. He looked directly at Optimus, no games, no smirks. Just raw truth. “Help me rescue my trine.”

The silence deepened, tense as pulled wire.

“Skywarp. Thundercracker.” His vents hitched with a faint rasp, the sound of fear leaking past his composure. “I fear what Megatron will do to them. Even when I was… even when I was his puppet, even when my spark was bound and bent—” his talons flexed at his sides, scraping the plating of his thighs—“I chose them. Somehow, a part of me that still remembered Ulcthar… chose them. My brothers in battle. My family.”

For the first time since he had stepped out of the medbay, Starscream’s voice cracked, a note of desperation breaking through the steel.

Off to the side, Windblade’s lips moved in the faintest whisper, too soft for most audio receptors to catch: “Or hounds…”

It was a slip of her tongue, an echo of something older, something heavier. But Bumblebee—standing near her, bright optics still locked on Starscream—caught it. His audials flicked, and his head tilted ever so slightly toward her. He heard. He understood enough to know it mattered.

But he said nothing. Not yet.

The mystery coiled in the silence between them like a shadow waiting to unfurl.

The medbay had slowly emptied, the storm of awe and tension giving way to the steady rhythm of war that could not wait for revelations. Windblade, with Jetfire’s towering presence lending support, guided Starscream through the halls to a private quarter. The seeker’s frame was still trembling, wings shivering in faint spasms as though remembering chains no longer binding them. Every step was fragile, but Starscream held his head high, optics glowing lilac even through weakness.

The door slid shut behind them, leaving him to rest in privacy, and the Autobots dispersed like a tide pulled back by necessity. Patrols, repairs, strategies—they all had duties. But the image of that newly reborn seeker clung to them like a ghost.

Not everyone could shake it.

Bumblebee lingered in the corridor longer than most, his plating restless. His mind kept circling back, not only to Starscream’s plea for his trine but to that whisper—Windblade’s whisper—that seemed to cut under the surface of everything.

He found Ratchet in the supply alcove, the old medic pulling up lists of parts and muttering curses under his vents. Bumblebee’s voice came out hesitant but edged with determination: “Ratchet… what’s a ‘Hound’?”

The word hit the air like a shard of glass. It wasn’t shouted, wasn’t loud, but it carried. Several heads turned immediately—Ironhide from across the hall, Bulkhead who was half-stripped down cleaning energon lines, even Prowl with his cold optics flicking sharp at the sound. And further down, Optimus himself stilled, the faint clink of his heavy steps stopping as he turned back toward the young scout.

“Bumblebee.” Optimus’s voice was calm, but heavy with attention. “Why do you ask?”

The scout shifted uneasily, scratching at the seam of his helm. He hadn’t expected everyone to overhear. “When Starscream… said his trine was like his family… Windblade whispered something. She said they were more like… Hounds. I don’t know what that means.”

The silence stretched, thick enough to smother.

Then the grounders—those born of soil and steel, not sky—began exchanging glances. Something unreadable passed between them. It was Silverbolt who finally spoke, his voice steady, though his wings twitched with unease.

“Hounds,” he said slowly, “is an ancient term. A thing of aerial culture from Vos… older than the war. Older even than the Council.” His optics flicked toward Optimus, seeking permission, and at the Prime’s slow nod, he continued.

“It comes from the age of sparklings’ tales, though there may have been truth beneath them. Hounds were chosen by a Winglord—” his voice carried the word with weight, as though saying it out loud invited something unseen, “—to remain closest to him. They were more than guards. More than lovers. They were… bound. By loyalty, by spark, sometimes even by oath. To protect. To… serve.”

Bulkhead frowned, arms crossing over his chassis. “Winglord? Never heard of that rank.”

“Because it is not a rank,” Silverbolt corrected, tone low. “It is a title. A burden. A Winglord was said to be the pinnacle of the skyborn, chosen by Primus or perhaps by the Titans themselves. The Winglord was… an Emperor of the skies. Lord of the aerials. In some stories, Emperor of Cybertron itself.”

Bumblebee’s optics widened, his vocalizer clicking. “That’s… just a myth. Right?”

Silverbolt’s gaze darkened. “Perhaps. But the legends say a Winglord could command the heavens themselves. His wings would ignite with pure energy, growing vast, titanic, enough to blot out the stars. He could bend the weather, shape clouds, summon lightning. The skies would obey him. Storms would bow to his will.”

The corridor had gone still. Even Ironhide, usually too pragmatic for fairy tales, stood stiff with unease.

“And the Hounds?” Optimus asked quietly, his expression unreadable, though his optics burned brighter than before.

Silverbolt’s voice grew hushed, almost reverent. “The Hounds were his chosen. His family by bond, not by blood. His guard, his blade, his warmth. The stories say the first Winglord rose beside the Herald of the Titans—who became his right hand. And when the wars of that forgotten age ended, that Winglord was crowned Emperor of Cybertron. But…” He spread his hands, a small shake of his helm following. “These are only stories. Told to sparklings in Vos, to make them dream of the sky.”

Yet his tone carried no mirth.

Bumblebee felt the weight of every word sink into his spark. The phrase wouldn’t leave him—more than family… more to Hounds. Windblade’s whisper rang louder now in his memory, too deliberate to be idle.

And behind the silence, each Autobot wondered the same thing:

If myths were only stories… why did Starscream’s frame burn with something so powerfull as a light itself, the very shade of the skys whispered of in prophecy?

Why did he look so much like a Winglord returned?

Silverbolt’s tone eased as he folded his arms behind his back, wings held with rigid control, as if the very weight of the legends pressed down upon him. “But remember this,” he said, his voice no longer carrying the old awe but the clinical neutrality of a scholar. “It was only stories. Myths dressed up in the skin of history. I studied in Vos my whole youth—obligatory for every aerial, whether in the public towers or the private academies of the nobles. I read every text, every record I could touch.” His optics dimmed slightly, reflecting shadows of memory. “There was never proof. Nothing concrete. No relics, no accounts untouched by the exaggeration of time.”

He turned his gaze on Bumblebee, the smallest among them, whose optics still carried that spark of dangerous curiosity. “If Windblade whispered of Hounds, perhaps she spoke metaphor. Perhaps Thundercracker and Skywarp were simply so loyal to Starscream that they resembled the legends more than brothers. Nothing more.”

The logic was sound. It settled into the air with a faint sense of closure. The others, perhaps, wanted it to be true—for war left little room for prophecy.

It even made sense to Bumblebee. Mostly. Enough for him to nod, though his spark ticked uneasily in his chest. Then why whisper it at all? Why hide it? But he swallowed his doubt. For now.

The silence that followed was pierced by Jetfire’s voice. Smooth. Too smooth. “Windblade will see to him,” he said, arms folded across his broad frame, optics cutting briefly toward the closed door of Starscream’s quarters. “She knows him better than any of us. She will make sure he rests. See that he has energon.”

On the surface, the statement was simple. Logical. Reasonable. Yet his tone carried an undertow, subtle but sharp—a tension that could not be mistaken. Jealousy.

Ironhide caught it first, his brow ridge lifting, but he said nothing. Bulkhead shifted uncomfortably, pretending not to notice. Optimus, however, turned his head slightly, watching Jetfire with the calm patience of someone who saw too much, who weighed every flicker of tone like a blade in the dark.

Ratchet grunted from where he leaned against the medbay doors, audials twitching. “So long as she keeps him in recharge, I don’t care if she sings him Vos lullabies. The seeker needs rest, not more spark-wrenching revelations.”

That earned a short, tense laugh from Prowl. “Rest may be impossible. Not for one like him. His processor won’t let him sleep without chasing truths.”

Bumblebee bit his lip-plates, glancing between them all. He still remembered the way Starscream—Ulcthar, Starscream, both—had looked when he chose his name, when his voice carried calm like a Prime and yet different, fiercer, older. If myths were only myths, why had that moment felt like the opening of something ancient? Something waiting?

Jetfire’s optics flickered. The jealous edge in him whispered unspoken fears: that Windblade knew Starscream not just as comrade or friend, but deeper, far deeper than he ever could. That Starscream’s first smile of comfort would be for her, not for him.

“Then it’s settled,” Optimus said at last, his tone final, his shadow stretching over them all. “Windblade will remain with Starscream. The rest of us will prepare for the coming cycle. The Decepticons will not wait for us to unravel mysteries.”

The Autobots dispersed in pairs, some muttering, some silent. But Bumblebee lingered, his spark restless, watching Jetfire’s stiff wings as the larger mech left. The scout couldn’t shake the sense that the secrets weren’t over—no, they were only beginning.

Behind the sealed doors of Starscream’s quarters, the truth Windblade carried pressed against her spark like a blade. She would give him energon, yes. She would watch him sleep. But she also carried knowledge she could not yet share.

Knowledge of lilac eyes.

Knowledge of Hounds.

Knowledge of what the Titans had whispered.

The quarters were quiet, dimly lit by the faint blue glow of the energon dispenser and the soft hum of the ventilation systems. Starscream’s wings twitched restlessly as he stood at the table, slender talons scraping absently against the datapad he had abandoned moments before. His spark still pulsed too quickly, too unevenly—though not from weakness. From her.

Windblade sat in the corner of his berth, arms and legs crossed, her expression sharp enough to cut plating. Gone was the gentle smile she wore for Jetfire’s benefit. Fury—deep, restrained, but unmistakable—burned in her optics.

Starscream shifted uneasily under her gaze. “Don’t—” his voice caught, thin and strained. He tried again, wings lowering closer to his back. “Don’t look at me that way.”

Her helm tilted, lips curling into a sarcastic smile that was anything but warm. “What way, Starscream?” Her tone sliced like a blade, as sharp as the edge of her namesake. “The way I’m furious that you’ve woken at last, regained your true body, and yet—still—you refuse to embrace what you are? Or the way I’m furious that you insist on clinging to this pathetic image of yourself? This cowardice, this denial of who you really are?”

His vents stuttered. Her words were cruel, but they were true—and it made them burn all the more.

Windblade rose from the berth, her steps slow, deliberate. Her shadow fell across his table as she moved closer. “You are no victim, Starscream. No puppet anymore. The Matrix has chosen its Prime—Optimus—but you… you are something else. You are the Winglord. You could end this war with the flick of a talon, with a command of the sky itself. And yet—” her wings flared with restrained rage, “you hide. You deny.”

Starscream’s optics narrowed, a fragile defense against the storm she carried in her words. “It is not that simple.” His voice cracked, the faintest tremor betraying the weight behind his refusal.

Windblade leaned forward, optics burning violet fire. “Isn’t it? The Titans knew. I know. You know. Do you think I’ve forgotten? Do you think I could?”

Her words echoed in the chamber, dragging him back to memories he had buried deep. Memories of that day in Vos, long before war, before betrayal, before he ever knew the weight of command.

His vents hissed softly as he looked away, wings trembling. “We were only sparklings,” he whispered, fragile. “Playing in the temple, hiding from our tutors. And yet…” He shut his optics tight, as if he could stop the memory from flooding back. “We fell through the gates, into the Hall of the Gods. I remember the voices. They cried out—louder than thunder, older than time itself. They named you Herald of the Titans. And me—” his voice faltered, almost broke, “Ulcthar, no longer Ulcthar. They said I would awaken under another name. Winglord. Lord of the skies. The one who could bend the storm to his will.”

His hands curled into claws against the table, shaking.

“I saw it, Windblade,” he whispered, raw, terrified. “The stars reflected in the mirrors of that hall. I saw wings not my own. Vast, radiant. They called to me. But I—” his optics finally met hers, glass-bright with shame, “I turned away. I wasn’t ready. I will never be ready.”

Windblade’s wings twitched, her fury tempered now by something harsher still: disappointment.

“You were chosen,” she said, low, dangerous. “Chosen to lead our kind, chosen to wield the sky itself as weapon and shield. Yet you would rather cower behind your excuses. Do you think destiny waits? Do you think the war will wait? Megatron won’t. Optimus can’t.”

Starscream’s plating trembled, his vents dragging ragged air. His spark throbbed painfully against its casing.

“Do you think I wanted this?” His voice rose suddenly, sharp and desperate. “Do you think I wanted the weight of a name older than my frame, a destiny carved into my spark without my will? To be some Winglord from forgotten myths?” His talons raked across the table, leaving long scratches. “I didn’t choose this, Windblade. And I won’t be bound to it like some weapon for others to wield.”

Silence fell like a blade between them.

Windblade studied him, optics softening just barely, though her mouth remained set in a hard line. “Then you doom yourself,” she murmured. “And perhaps all of us with you.”

Starscream shuddered, wings tight against his back, shame and fear clawing at him. He wanted to scream at her. He wanted to fall into her arms. He wanted both and neither.

The Hall of the Gods lingered in his processor, voices still whispering. And deep within his spark, a name that was not his, waiting, waiting.

Winglord.

Starscream’s voice cracked, but it rose louder, sharper, each word weighted with a venom he spat only at himself.

“I am not like Optimus,” he snarled, wings flaring wide, trembling under the fury that rolled off his frame. “I don’t have an army that follows me because they trust me. They follow him because they believe in him, because he is family to them. They don’t question, they don’t doubt.” His claws curled into fists, scraping against the metal table until sparks leapt and danced. “And I… I never wanted to be Megatron either, leading through terror, making soldiers cower for fear of being his next victim.”

Windblade’s optics softened for half a second at the way his voice broke on the last word. But she didn’t interrupt. She let him bleed it all out.

“I wanted to be—” his vents seized, words catching before they could leave, “just a scientist. A dreamer. Someone who helped Cybertron in my way, with my inventions, my visions of what could be.” He shook his helm violently, wings clattering against the wall. “But instead I became Starscream. A weapon forged out of circumstance. A puppet. A liar. A killer.” His talons pressed against his chestplates as if he could claw the rot from his spark itself. “And now—” he laughed, brittle, jagged, “simply because I’ve awakened in this… this frame, simply because some ancient voice calls me Winglord, I am supposed to be reborn? A saint? A leader? To be forgiven? As if my sins could be erased by paint and prophecy?”

His wings snapped wide again, and the room trembled faintly with static.

“NO!” The cry left him raw, savage, as much at himself as at the universe.

Windblade took a step back, her frame instinctively bracing as the air thickened around them.

Outside, beyond the window of the quarters, Cybertron’s sky began to change. What had been a still, gray-blue canvas twisted into roiling darkness. Clouds gathered with unnatural speed, folding over one another like steel plates dragged across the firmament. Sunlight dimmed, choked by stormfronts, until day itself began to look like night.

A low rumble split through the horizon.

The storm answered his rage.

Windblade’s optics widened, not in fear but recognition. The Titans had spoken of this—how the Winglord’s fury would bend the skies, how the world itself would bear witness to his unrest.

“Starscream…” she said quietly, voice low but firm, as the wind outside howled against the fortress walls.

But he wasn’t listening. His vents heaved ragged, uncontrolled. “Do you see now?” he hissed, his lilac optics blazing, glinting like a forge fire in the shadows of the darkened room. “This is why I refuse. This power—” he gestured wildly toward the storm, his wings crackling with faint arcs of energy, “—it is no gift. It is a curse. Do you think I want to be feared for what I can summon from the sky? Do you think I want to watch others bow not to me but to storms I can’t even control?”

Windblade stepped closer despite the static snapping at her armor, her vents slow and steady. “You think you cannot control it because you refuse to claim it,” she said sharply, voice cutting through the thunder. “You let it bleed out of you because you’re too afraid to bind it to your will. The Titans weren’t wrong, Starscream. You are the Winglord. And this—” she gestured to the roiling heavens beyond, “—is proof.”

His talons dug into the table until the metal groaned under the pressure.

“I never asked to be Winglord.” His voice cracked again, desperate, trembling. “I never wanted to be anything but free. And now—”

The storm broke. Thunder boomed across the skies, shaking the walls, rattling the berth.

“Now even freedom is denied me.”

Windblade did not back away from the storm. She stood beside him, shoulder brushing against his trembling arm, her field open, steady and warm despite the crackling tension rolling off his frame. Her voice cut through the thunder with clarity, soft but unyielding.

“You are not alone.”

Starscream flinched as though the words themselves struck him harder than any blade. His wings trembled, energy dancing faintly along their edges, but she pressed on, refusing to let him turn away.

“You have me,” Windblade said firmly, optics locked on his. “The war may have torn us apart, dragged us onto paths neither of us wanted, but we’re here again. Together. You and I trained together, studied together, dreamed together. You know every scar on me, every flaw—and I know yours.” She tilted her helm slightly, her voice softening with the weight of memory. “I grew up with you. And that bond doesn’t break just because the galaxy tried to twist us into strangers.”

Starscream’s vents hitched. His claws flexed against the table as if he wanted to push her away, but the tremor in his frame betrayed how badly he wanted to believe her.

“And you’re not as isolated as you tell yourself.” Windblade’s optics glinted faintly, a spark of sly humor breaking through the gravity. “Jetfire practically trips over himself every time he looks at you. In fact…” Her lips curved into a smirk. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say he wants to glue himself to your wing strut.”

The sharp noise Starscream made—half a laugh, half an indignant sputter—cut through the tension like a blade. His optics flicked wide, wings twitching in embarrassed fury, and for the first time since the storm began, his vents pulled in air that wasn’t ragged.

Outside, the heavens responded. The oppressive black clouds that had swallowed the sky began to thin. The violent crackle of red light threading through them faded, leaving streaks of pale blue tearing the storm open. The furious weight pressing down on Cybertron’s surface eased, like a held breath finally released.

Windblade’s laughter rose, bright and unexpected against the backdrop of fading thunder. It wasn’t mocking—it was fond, full of the familiarity only someone who had known Starscream long before the war could carry.

“You should see your face right now,” she teased, optics sparkling.

Starscream’s frame slackened by degrees, his wings lowering from their rigid flare. Shame lingered across his features, an echo of the fury that had almost consumed him, but her laughter—her warmth—pulled him back. His talons loosened their grip on the table, finally falling away from the groaning metal.

The sky outside shifted once more, from storm-dark to the steady, calming hues of blue. The last traces of crimson lightning dissolved, leaving only the distant hum of Cybertron’s pulse, quiet and watchful.

Windblade leaned closer, her voice softer now, but weighted with meaning. “See? You can bend the skies. Even your shame, your embarrassment, can scatter the storm. It doesn’t have to be destruction, Starscream.”

He turned his helm toward her, lilac optics still burning faintly but no longer violent. His lips curled, not in a smile, but in something rawer, more vulnerable.

“…You always did know how to make me look pathetic,” he muttered, though his tone carried the faintest thread of gratitude buried beneath the bitterness.

Windblade only smirked again, lifting her chin in quiet triumph. “Not pathetic. Just… you.”

And for the first time since he had awakened in his true body, Starscream allowed his frame to sag, not in defeat but in release—trusting that, here with her, he could rest.

Windblade’s optics lingered on him, sharp but steady, her presence grounding against the remnants of the storm that had nearly torn the sky apart. Her voice cut through the silence, calm as the blue overhead.

“You’ll learn to control it. Gradually. That’s the nature of what you are.” Her helm tilted, her tone threading between command and reassurance. “It’s no secret between us—you’re the Winglord, raw, powerful, emotional. And I’m the Herald. My role has always been to keep you steady, to guide you back to yourself when the weight becomes too much. To remind you not to let the storms eat you alive.”

Starscream’s vents hissed out a long breath. The lilac in his optics dimmed, the heat in his wings easing. He hated how her words burrowed into him—hated more that she was right. She had always been right in ways that scraped his pride raw.

“Insufferable,” he muttered, his tone sour but the fight in it gone.

Windblade’s lips curved in the kind of smile that said she’d won yet again. “And I’ll keep it a secret,” she teased, folding her arms with exaggerated casualness, “that you’ve had a crush on Jetfire since you two were assigned as labor partners.”

Starscream’s wings shot high, vents stuttering into a sputtering whine of outrage. “You—”

“Oh, please. Don’t act shocked. The way you looked at him—”

He cut her off, talons pointing accusingly at her. “Fine. Keep talking, Windblade. But if you do, I’ll tell every single Autobot in this base that you have a thing for Strongarm.” His optics gleamed with wicked delight, a predator sensing blood. “And not just that. I’ll go further—I’ll tell them the great, untouchable Herald has a species-fetish for femmes with bigger, broader, cruder chassis than yours. That every time Strongarm walks past, you can barely—”

Windblade’s wings snapped open, her optics wide, her voice breaking in a sharp hiss. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Starscream leaned closer, lilac optics bright, cruel grin tugging at his lips. His voice was low, drawn out, a deliberate taunt.

“Oh, I would.”

The silence stretched, thick and electric. Optics locked, wings stiffened, vents cycling hard. Seconds dragged like entire cycles, each daring the other to break first.

Then—

Laughter.

It tore out of them both, sharp and uncontrollable, breaking the tension like a blade slicing through taut wire. Windblade bent forward, clutching her sides, optics burning bright with mirth. Starscream leaned against the table, shoulders shaking as a rare, unguarded laugh spilled from him, the sound raw but real.

When it finally died down, Windblade wiped at her optics and exhaled a soft vent, helm shaking. “It’s good to have you back,” she said, her voice softened, stripped of armor.

Starscream’s wings folded inward, his gaze softer now, almost fragile. “…It’s good to be back.”

Outside, Cybertron’s skies mirrored the shift. The clouds were gone, burned away by sunrays spilling down in brilliant shafts of gold and white. The light washed over the ruined cities and fractured landscapes, cutting through the scars of war. For the first time in what felt like millennia, the sky looked clean.

Starscream tilted his helm toward the window, lilac optics catching the glow. For once, he didn’t see storms waiting to devour him.

For once, the sky bent not in fear but in welcome.

Chapter 9

Megatron stood before the great viewport of the warship, crimson optics reflecting the shifting skies of Cybertron. Black and red storms dissolving into pure light—ominous, unnatural. He registered it, noted the change in the atmosphere, but he dismissed it with a growl. He had bigger concerns than strange weather patterns. The sky was not his enemy. His war was not with clouds or stars.

His war was with time. With inevitability. With the fragility of control.

Shockwave’s single optic flared faintly behind him, the cyclopean scientist’s voice clinical, detached. “Megatron. I have run three hundred and seventy-nine new simulations. None lead to a one-hundred-percent certainty of the Ark’s location.”

Megatron’s lip curled, plating bristling. “You assured me, Shockwave, that your calculations would pierce the Autobots’ cowardly veil. You assured me your data could not fail.”

“And it did not,” Shockwave replied, utterly unflinching under the warlord’s wrath. “The Ark is a mobile base, equivalent to Nemesis. Probability waves shift with every microsecond. Without a direct point of contact or traceable energon signature, the calculations are… incomplete. Logic dictates that luck is now a required variable.”

Megatron’s fist clenched, slamming against the cold metal table with enough force to send a tremor through the command chamber. Some of the Decepticons present flinched—others only exchanged glances. They had grown used to his fury. They had seen him rage at Shockwave, had even witnessed the two exchange blows when the frustration of failure became too heavy to mask. It was a theater as much as it was truth.

And yet, that theater had kept morale alive.

For the rank and file, watching their warlord’s frustration, hearing him snarl that Starscream was not lost, that their second-in-command would be retrieved, had eased the gnawing fear in their sparks. They could believe, at least for now, that Megatron had not abandoned him. That their commander still fought for Starscream, even in his absence.

But cracks… cracks had a way of widening.

Thundercracker no longer saluted. Skywarp no longer lingered near the throne like a loyal hound waiting for scraps of command. They slipped through the base in silence, optics downcast, their absence explained with half-truths that no one dared question.

Rounds, they called it. Reconnaissance. Patrols.

In truth, they vanished into the skies.

Hours, sometimes days, gone without a trace. Searching. Hunting. Not for Autobots. Not for weakness in Autobot defenses.

But for him.

For their Trine leader.

Dreadwing, left behind, had been elevated to commander of the air legion in Starscream’s absence. His frame bore the weight of command with stoic rigidity, but even he could not chain the loyalty of the seekers. He barked orders, sent squadrons to burn through the sky, but Skywarp and Thundercracker obeyed only when it suited them. More often, they flew alone, their signals ghosting in and out of Nemesis’ reach, silent in their rebellion.

Megatron knew.

He felt the fraying edge of his command.

He knew that every moment Starscream remained out of reach, every cycle Shockwave’s endless calculations failed to pin down the Ark, the thread of control slipped thinner.

And if Skywarp and Thundercracker found Starscream first…

The warlord’s optics narrowed, hands flexing against the cold steel of the railing. A low growl vibrated through his chassis, meant only for himself.

Starscream was not only his second. He was leverage. He was balance. He was possession.

And he would be recovered.

No matter what.

The battlefield screamed with fire. The Autobots and Decepticons clashed with a violence that made the very ground quake beneath their pedes.

Optimus Prime’s axe met Megatron’s fusion blade again and again, sparks lighting the battlefield like a storm trapped in metal bodies. Every strike between them was not just war—it was history colliding, hatred condensed into blows heavy enough to split stone.

Megatron’s voice thundered across the chaos. “Tell me where you’ve hidden him, Prime!” His optics burned, not with strategy, but with desperation. “What did you do to Starscream? What programs did you force into him?!”

Optimus parried, pushing back, his optics hard with something the Decepticons could not decipher—grief, perhaps. “Enough of your lies, Megatron. Enough of your chains. Starscream is not yours. He never was.”

“Do not play riddles with me!” Megatron roared

The battle raged around them. Blaster fire, aerial duels, ground-shaking detonations. Yet the armies heard pieces of their leaders’ words, fragments sharp enough to cut deeper than weapons.

They remembered how Prime once called Megatron his “arm-brother,” his tone breaking in a rare moment of emotion. They remembered how Optimus refused to explain, refusing detail, only saying: he died.

Some believed the Autobot commander at last surrendered the last of his hope to restore Megatron. That all the talk of brotherhood was only an elegy for something lost long before Starscream’s name entered the war. Others whispered darker thoughts—that Optimus hid truths too unbearable for even Autobots to confess.

In the chaos of metal tearing metal, in the screams of engines and weapons, no one noticed the quiet absence of one seeker.

Starscream sat in the berth chamber the Autobots had offered him, walls humming faintly with shielded silence. His talons curled against his thighs as he sat forward, wings trembling with restraint. He had been given stillness while the world outside burned, and in that silence, memories crawled back into him, uninvited.

He remembered Megatron’s voice. The weight of orders.

You will be my seeker.

His frame then, altered—Shockwave layering plates over the cold-built shell. They never realized, not Megatron, not even Shockwave, that what they thought was forged was only a shell hiding a far older truth.

The first command, the first demand that was not his choice: take the seeker trials. Break the records. Prove worth not as a scientist, not as a dreamer, but as a weapon.

He obeyed. He shattered every trial, every metric, until his name was etched into Cybertronian memory as The Last Seeker. None had surpassed him, none could. The badge was forced upon him, a brand more than an honor.

And yet, from that cruelty came what Megatron never intended.

It was in that proving ground he first crossed wings with Thundercracker, with Skywarp. They looked at him not with suspicion, not with hunger, but with recognition. And slowly, they came closer. A Trine born not from program, not from control, but from something rawer.

The orders to design weapons, to conjure strategies—those never came from chips or wires. They came from what he had always been: a noble of Vos, trained since youth in politics, science, and war. His brilliance was not theirs to claim. His genius was not born of chains. It was his, always his.

He stood now, wings flaring wide in the quiet chamber, the shadow of firelight slipping through the window slits and painting his silver-red plating with a glow like blood.

The war roared outside, but inside, Starscream’s decision crystallized. He had been caged by orders, by programs, by lies. He had been weaponized against his will, crowned with titles forged in pain.

But now—

Now he would write his own orders.

His optics burned, sharp with clarity.

He knew perfectly what he would do.

Starscream pushed the door open, wings flexing, talons sharp against the floor as he strode out of the berth chamber. His field carried weight now—commanding, undeniable, a storm brewing in silence.

Ratchet noticed first, pausing in the medbay corridor, his optics narrowing. Wheeljack was beside him, tools in hand, and even the scatter of other Autobots stationed within the base lifted their optics, sensors registering something in the air that was not there a klik ago.

Starscream’s gaze burned. His optics, sharp and vivid, were not merely tired or recovering—they were decided. Every step of his pedes clicked like a countdown.

Ratchet, ever the pragmatist, lifted a hand as if to halt him. His voice snapped through the silence. “Don’t even think about it. I won’t open a space bridge for you. You’ve only just recovered, Starscream—you’re still adjusting to your body. You’re not stable enough for the field.”

Starscream paused. His lips curved—not in gratitude, not in acknowledgment, but in that familiar, sideways smile that once drove Autobots and Decepticons alike to grind their denta. It was the smile of defiance. The smile of someone who had already made the decision and was only entertaining you by listening.

“Oh, Ratchet,” he purred, talons curling as his wings arched in sharp angles. “You misunderstand.”

Wheeljack frowned, visor dimming. “Then enlighten us, ‘Screamer, before you do something suicidal.”

Starscream tilted his helm, optics gleaming. “I am not asking permission to go to the battlefield.” His tone dipped low, dangerous, intimate like a whisper that filled every corner of the base. “I am warning you that I will.”

The words sank into the air like blades, and for a klik the entire corridor froze.

Ratchet’s hand, raised in protest, lowered an inch. Wheeljack’s visor flickered. The Autobots who overheard exchanged uneasy glances. Something in the seeker’s presence made even seasoned warriors hesitate.

And before Ratchet or Wheeljack could find another argument, before someone could throw themselves in his way, Starscream moved.

He ran.

Wings folded tight, frame swift, every stride faster than the one before until his talons scraped sparks against the hangar floor. His vents opened wide, pulling in air as though the planet itself fed him.

Ratchet shouted his name, voice cracking with anger and something perilously close to fear. Wheeljack swore, dropping his tools. But Starscream was already gone, a streak of silver and red tearing through the base corridors like lightning.

The hangar doors loomed. Starscream didn’t slow. He leapt.

Midair, his frame unfolded in a seamless, glorious transition. Panels locked, wings snapped wide, engines roared to life in a sound that rattled the walls.

And then he was airborne.

The first breath of wind slammed against his plating, cold and alive, filling every sensor with the freedom he had been starved of for too long. He cut through the sky with raw speed, higher, faster, burning the distance from Autobot steel to Cybertron’s battlefield.

Behind him, alarms blared faintly, Autobot voices barking in comms. But none could touch him now.

The battlefield awaited. And Starscream—smiling that sideways smile, wings slicing the clouds—would meet it on his own terms.

The battlefield was chaos. Blaster fire scorched the ground, energon spilled in glowing streaks, and the clash of metal against metal rang louder than thunder. Optimus Prime and Megatron were locked in a brutal exchange at the center, their strikes shaking the earth beneath their pedes, their roars of fury cutting through the din of war.

Optimus’ comm pinged. He lifted a servo, optics narrowing as Ratchet’s voice came through, laced with something dangerously close to panic.

::Optimus, brace yourself. He’s gone.::

The Prime’s vents hissed, confusion cutting through battle-rage. “Gone? Who—”

::Starscream! He ran from the base—took off through the hangar—he’s already airborne and heading for you!::

For a second, Optimus froze. His optics widened. And then, in a voice that carried over the battlefield and made even Decepticons falter in their strikes, Optimus bellowed:

“HE WHAT?!”

The word tore from his vocals like cannon fire, loud enough that every Autobot and Decepticon in hearing range stopped mid-motion. Even Megatron paused, his fist raised but not striking, optics narrowing as he tried to parse what could make Optimus Prime—calm, resolute, unshakable Optimus—scream like that.

Every gaze snapped toward the Prime, who stood with one servo pressed to his audio receiver, his vents flaring, his expression one of disbelief and dread. There was no time for explanations.

The sky answered instead.

At first it was only a tremor, a low hum buried under the cries of war. Then it grew—a high, sharp pitch of turbines cutting through the air at speeds no ordinary jet could hope to reach.

The noise swelled, overwhelming, shrieking like a blade against metal. Both factions stilled, optics lifting skyward, weapons lowering unconsciously.

The sound was beautiful and terrifying at once—raw velocity, something predatory in its approach. It rattled armor and vibrated through frames, as though the sky itself was preparing to split.

And then, piercing through the black clouds above, a streak of light-blue and silver broke the horizon.

When Starscream’s pedes hit the ground, the world itself seemed to pause around him. Dust swirled, sparks crackled in the scorched earth, and for one long breath everything was suspended in silence.

Then came the whispers.

“Is that—?”
“No… it can’t be—”
“He was supposed to be in medbay…”

Autobots exchanged uneasy glances, voices hushed but edged with disbelief. They knew Ratchet’s warnings, knew how fragile Starscream still should have been. The very idea of him crossing the base, transforming, flying to this battlefield so soon was unthinkable. And yet, there he was—standing unflinching in the heart of war, wings flared like banners, optics glowing lilac as though some strange fire burned within.

On the other side, the Decepticons were struck silent. Even Megatron’s warriors, battle-hardened and loyal by fear, found themselves hesitating, optics roving over the figure before them.

“Who is that?” one muttered.
“Never seen a frame like it…” another whispered.

And truly, none of them had. The celestial blue plating shimmered beneath the faint sunlight that pierced the clouds, accented with strokes of light red and the soft gleam of white. The cockpit, partially hidden by elegant armor lines, seemed almost ornamental now, a jewel embedded in living metal. His wings stretched longer, thinner, sharper than any Seeker’s, as though sculpted not for mere flight but for command of the skies themselves. The silver of his cables glistened faintly as he shifted, catching every movement like liquid light.

But what unsettled them most were the optics—bright, unyielding lilac, a color no Decepticon bore, no Autobot either. A color that spoke of something ancient, something outside the war.

And there was no emblem. No purple, no red. Only him.

Megatron’s visor ridges twitched as he studied the figure, and for one rare moment he did not look certain. His optics narrowed, tracking every detail, every line of armor. Starscream, some part of him knew, but his mind rejected it. That bot—his second-in-command—had never looked like this. He had never carried himself like this.

“Impossible,” Megatron muttered low, as if saying it aloud could banish the truth.

Across the field, Windblade dragged a hand over her faceplates, vents groaning. “Primus, Starscream…” she hissed under her breath, optics squeezing shut. He wasn’t supposed to be here, not yet, not with his strength only barely returning.

Jetfire, who still held a squirming Decepticon upside-down by one ankle, froze mid-motion. His optics widened, concern tightening across his faceplates until his grip faltered. He set the struggling Decepticon down with more gentleness than war allowed, all of his focus fixed on the seeker now standing proud in the midst of chaos. His spark lurched—equal parts awe and dread.

“What are you doing here?” Jetfire murmured, so soft it was almost lost under the shifting wind.

But Starscream heard.

He tilted his helm slightly, that familiar crooked smile curling his mouthplates—the one that had once meant mischief, rebellion, defiance. Only now it carried something sharper, a glint of confidence, of inevitability.

He did not answer immediately. He let the silence stretch, let every optic, every spark on that battlefield hang on the weight of his presence. The Autobots, anxious but trusting. The Decepticons, confused, teetering on the edge of recognition. And at the center, Megatron, unreadable fury simmering beneath the surface.

Starscream’s vents cycled slow. His wings flexed once, catching the fractured light, and for the first time since the war began, it felt as though the sky itself was bending toward him.

And then it happened.

The mysterious Seeker, still standing at the heart of the battlefield with wings stretched like blades, turned his burning lilac optics toward the Decepticons. Conviction radiated from him, undeniable, impossible to ignore. His voice cut through the battlefield like thunder tearing the heavens apart, reverberating in every spark chamber present.

“Thundercracker. Skywarp. To me.”

The command wasn’t shouted—it didn’t need to be. It rolled across the warzone, a sound so steady and sure that it carried more weight than cannon fire.

Thundercracker and Skywarp froze mid-flight. Their wings twitched, their thrusters sputtered as if their very systems staggered under the familiarity of that tone. For one disbelieving instant they only stared—at the stance, the raised wings, the optics alight with impossible fire. He looked like Starscream. No—he was Starscream. Not the tricolored frame they had bled beside, not the tormented puppet that had been bent under Megatron’s chain. But their Trine leader. Their bond recognized him before processor logic could catch up, sparks lurching with a ferocity that nearly drove them offline.

“STARSCREAM!!”

Their voices cracked like explosions, ringing over the chaos.

Without hesitation, without thought, Thundercracker and Skywarp abandoned formation. They cut through the battlefield, heedless of who stood in their way. An Autobot shouted, tried to intercept; Skywarp shouldered him aside like scrap metal. A Decepticon flier swerved to stop them; Thundercracker’s thrusters burned white-hot as he slammed past, sending the mech sprawling.

They shoved, clawed, tore their way through until nothing stood between them and that figure with the lilac optics.

And Starscream—yes, Starscream—watched them come with the faintest curl of his lip, not a smirk, not mockery, but something deeper. A quiet, sharp relief that cracked through his pride.

The Autobots braced, tension thick in their frames. Prowl’s optics narrowed, already calculating the fallout. Bulkhead muttered a curse. Bumblebee’s vents stuttered, spark hammering in his chest. They all knew what this meant—that the fragile balance of the battlefield was about to shatter into something far larger than Autobot versus Decepticon.

Across the lines, the Decepticons were chaos. Voices rose, fragmented and panicked.

“Starscream?”
“It can’t be—”
“He was—Megatron said—”

Confusion, shock, and something else—hope. A dangerous, trembling hope that buzzed like static through the ranks.

Megatron’s optics narrowed into slits, jaw clenched so tight it seemed the metal would crack. His vents roared, but still he did not move, not yet. He only watched, watched as the two Seekers broke through and fell to their knees before the one he had tried so hard to unmake.

Starscream extended a hand to them, wings trembling with contained emotion. His voice, softer now, still carried like command.

“You came.”

Thundercracker’s claws closed around his wrist as if to make certain he was real, as if he might vanish if they didn’t hold him tight. Skywarp pressed his helm to Starscream’s shoulder, vents stuttering like sobs through comms.

“Always,” Thundercracker rasped.
“Always,” Skywarp echoed.

The battlefield—Autobot and Decepticon alike—stood suspended in the shadow of that word.

Always.

And in that moment, the war shifted.

Chapter 10

Thundercracker was the first to break, voice tumbling out too fast, too raw.

“Are you alright? What did they do to you? Tell me they didn’t—frag, Starscream, your wings—your plating—”

Skywarp pressed closer, optics wide with something close to panic, words firing off over Thundercracker’s.
“What is this body? Where did it come from? Why are your optics lilac? What happened? Tell us, tell us now—was it the Autobots? Did they—did they force—”

The questions came like machine gun fire, tripping over one another, neither Seeker pausing long enough for Starscream to even breathe. Their claws clutched at him, trembling as if afraid he’d vanish the second they loosened their grip.

Starscream let it wash over him—his wings trembling with the weight of it, his spark surging with the ache of recognition. For a moment he looked at them as though he might crumble into their arms and let them anchor him. But then his optics hardened, and he raised both hands, steady, commanding silence.

“Later,” Starscream said, voice carrying like an edge of steel, both gentle and unyielding. “I will explain everything, but not here, not now. There are things that must come first.”

Reluctantly, painfully, Thundercracker and Skywarp eased back, their optics still pleading, their vents still ragged. Their trine bond hummed like a raw wound, half-satisfied by reunion but pulsing with unanswered questions.

Starscream’s wings flexed high, sharp and deliberate, and then he turned. He stepped away from them—away from safety, away from their desperate warmth—and walked toward the twin centers of gravity that anchored the war itself.

Megatron.
Optimus Prime.

The battlefield seemed to split down the middle, parting in eerie silence as he crossed the space. Decepticons shrank back, Autobots stiffened, optics locked on him.

Starscream’s stride was deliberate, almost regal, each step measured, each wingbeat thrumming with a challenge.

Optimus was the first to move. His massive frame shifted, separating himself from Megatron as if to intercede, as if to shield. His voice was quiet but firm, carrying only enough to reach Starscream.

“You are not yet recovered. You should be at the base, resting.”

It was concern, deep and unfeigned—but Starscream’s expression sharpened like a blade.

He raised a hand—slender, taloned—and the gesture silenced Optimus as effectively as a blow.

“No,” Starscream cut him off, voice calm but edged with something dangerous. “There are things I must do first. With him.”

His optics burned brighter, pinning Megatron.

The air between them thickened, charged like storm currents before lightning.

Starscream’s wings arched to their full span, glinting silver, red,blue and white under the dim battlefield light, every line of his body screaming defiance. His stance was daring, provocative—challenging.

And Megatron… Megatron did not move, not yet. He only stared, crimson optics locked on the Seeker who had defied death, who had returned in a body he could not recognize, in colors that denied faction, with eyes that spoke of power and secrets long buried.

Something unreadable flickered across Megatron’s faceplate—recognition, fury, and something dangerously close to fear.

Starscream held his gaze, unblinking, wings trembling with restrained violence.

“Megatron,” he said at last, low, deliberate, every syllable heavy with venom and promise, “you and I have unfinished business.”

Starscream’s claws came together with a sharp snap that cut through the battlefield like a signal. His optics glowed, unblinking, his voice venom and lightning.

“First,” he said, wings trembling with restrained power, “before we talk—there is something I must do.”

The words had barely settled when he moved. No hesitation, no fear. His frame blurred, speed and precision beyond anything the battlefield had expected from him.

His fist connected with Megatron’s faceplate in a sound that cracked like thunder.

The warlord’s massive body reeled back, armor screaming in protest as he was thrown several meters across the ground. He hit the earth with a crash that split silence into shock, dust rising around him, the impact leaving a carved dent in the soil.

And when the dust cleared—Megatron was on the ground. On the ground.

A jagged mark cut across his jaw where Starscream’s blow had landed, the imprint of talons etched into the warlord’s plating.

Gasps, whispers, disbelief spread across both armies. Autobots froze, wide-opticked. Decepticons stared, speechless, some flinching as if the punch had landed on their own sparks.

Starscream’s vents heaved, wings high, optics blazing lilac fire.

“YOU!” Starscream’s voice erupted, raw, primal, shattering the silence.

“YOU CAPTURED ME! Kidnapped me from my laboratory in Yacon—MY LABORATORY! You ordered Shockwave to carve into me, to bury obedience chips and slavery programs into my very spark! To strip away my mind, my freedom, my self!”

The fury in him was not a scream of chaos—it was controlled, deliberate, the fury of a storm bound tight enough to slice mountains apart. His wings trembled, his claws flexed, but his words were precise, every syllable a blade.

“Every vorn,” Starscream spat, “every few weeks, Shockwave opened my processor. Ripped through my thoughts, swapped chips, rewrote who I was. He erased me piece by piece until there was nothing left but a weapon you could brand as your own—your perfect soldier.”

Megatron, the great warlord, remained still where he’d fallen, helm lowered, crimson optics narrowed but not yet steady. He looked stunned—not just by the strike, but by the unmasking of truths he had buried so deep in chains and silence.

Starscream advanced, wings arched, every step deliberate. His voice dropped lower now, dark, calm, but no less searing.

“And yet… despite it all…” His optics flickered, softer, shadows giving way to a fleeting light. “…despite everything you stole from me—because of you, I found them.”

He turned his helm just enough to glance at Thundercracker and Skywarp, standing frozen a few steps back, their faces locked between horror, fury, and grief.

“My trine,” Starscream said, voice trembling for the first time. “Skywarp. Thundercracker. Brothers, though born of your false orders. Mine, though the reason was twisted. You could not take that from me.”

His wings snapped upward, sharp as blades, the gentleness gone in an instant.

“But now?” His voice cut like steel. “I owe you nothing. You have no power over me. No control. No command.”

He spread his arms, talons gleaming, his body lit in the fading red-blue of the broken skies.

“The Autobots captured me at the right time. They uncovered your lies, tore out your chains. They removed the chips, the programs, the falsehoods from my frame.” His optics flicked briefly to Optimus Prime—silent, watching, burdened with his own grief and secrets—and then back to Megatron.

“Optimus helped me recover my true chassis. My true self. My true destiny.”

He lowered his hand, pointing a single talon at Megatron, voice dropping into a growl, final, cold.

“You, Megatron… are nothing to me now.”

The words rang out like judgment, a verdict spoken before the whole war.

Megatron stirred at last, pushing himself up from the dirt, one massive hand wiping the streak of energon at his jaw. His optics burned like twin furnaces, but for the first time, there was something else in them—something raw, fragile, unspoken.

Fear.

Starscream stepped back from Megatron’s shadow, his wings folding slightly as he turned, sliding between Thundercracker and Skywarp with the ease of someone who had always belonged there. Their frames leaned toward him, protective, sparks burning with questions they dared not yet speak aloud.

The Autobots moved in then—Ratchet first, his hands out but not touching, optics scanning Starscream as though every vent and joint might still fail. Wheeljack lingered behind him, helm tilting, worry plain despite the casual set of his jaw. Bumblebee inched closer too, a low chirp of concern escaping him, the kind of sound he made when he saw a comrade teeter on the edge. Those two were afther the seeker when he had fly to get there they opened a portal.

“Are you hurt?” Ratchet demanded, voice sharper than the medic intended, because worry was sharper than any blade.
“You shouldn’t even be standing,” Wheeljack muttered. “You’re barely through full recalibration cycles.”
“Primus, Screamer…” Bumblebee’s voice faltered, more a plea than a statement.

Thundercracker and Skywarp stiffened instinctively, wings twitching, ready to bare fangs and talons at the slightest threat. But as they watched—watched Starscream lean back into the protective wall of Autobots without flinching—they froze.

Starscream trusted them. Not just tolerated. Trusted.

And so the trine held their ground, silent guardians, their vents hot but their hands at their sides, optics fixed on every twitch of Autobot plating.

Across the battlefield, the Decepticons were unraveling. Their optics darted between their leader and the silver-winged mech who had just revealed himself as their second-in-command reborn. Words whispered, muttered, shared in disbelief.

Starscream’s accusations still hung in the air like poison. What Megatron and Shockwave had done to him… no one could process it.

Even Soundwave—still, silent, always the shadow—stood frozen, visor flickering faintly. His hands curled tight against his sides, as though denying the words might make them less true. To believe that Megatron had torn into Starscream’s mind, replaced him with obedience and chains… Soundwave’s frame trembled, caught between denial and a truth too large to bury.

Megatron rose at last. His massive frame loomed, fury spilling from every joint. His voice was low, rough, but it carried across the field, heavy with barely contained violence.

“I created you.” His words struck like blows. “Without me, you would be nothing more than a trembling scientist rotting away in Yacon. A fragile dreamer among data pads, forgotten by history, unfit to survive in war.”

The words, meant to crush, drew a ripple of unease from his army. But Starscream did not flinch.

He shifted, wings relaxing, and moved behind Jetfire’s towering frame as if it were nothing but an idle step. Jetfire straightened instinctively, shoulders broadening, blocking Megatron’s line of sight like a wall. The massive shuttle-bot’s hand twitched, ready to snatch Starscream away from harm if the warlord moved.

From behind that vast shadow, Starscream’s voice cut clean and sharp.

“You only ‘created’ me because you could not stand the truth.” His optics narrowed, lilac glow bright with memory. “Because I—I, a mere scientist—dared not to accept you as a partner. Dared to deny your delusions that your strength could win what spark or mind could not.”

The words struck harder than the punch. And then Starscream leaned forward, his lips curling into a cruel, knowing smile, every syllable calculated to pierce through Megatron’s armor.

“Tell me, Double Sixteen…”

The battlefield went still. Megatron’s optics flared wide, the faintest hitch breaking through his mask of control.

Starscream’s wings rose higher, his voice lowering into something intimate, dangerous, carrying the weight of ancient secrets.

“…did you really think I would forget?”

The silence was a blade.

Thundercracker inhaled sharply, Skywarp’s fists clenched, the Autobots glanced between them all in confusion—but Megatron’s stillness betrayed everything.

Starscream remembered. All of it.

“Double Sixteen.”

The battlefield was silent, save for the hum of cooling weapons and the distant crackle of fire. Autobots shifted uneasily. Decepticons froze in disbelief. Megatron’s expression fractured, just for a breath, just enough for the silence to taste like blood.

Starscream’s voice carried, not loud, not shouted—but deep, deliberate. He turned his optics away from Megatron as though the warlord didn’t even deserve his gaze, as though the memories themselves were stronger than Megatron’s fury.

“Do you all know who Double Sixteen was?” Starscream asked softly, though his words seemed to echo across the ruined field. “Not a warlord. Not a gladiator. Not a revolutionary.” His wings arched, catching the fractured sunlight. “He was a poet. A quiet one. Words about the sunrise over Kaon. About workers laboring beneath furnaces. About the taste of still air before the shift-change. Simple poems… gentle. They spread across Cybertron like sparks on the wind, and no one ever knew who wrote them.”

Thundercracker and Skywarp blinked, confused but listening, caught in the thrall of their leader’s voice. The Autobots leaned in, uneasy, sensing the shadows hidden beneath each word. Even Soundwave’s visor flickered, slow, processing.

Starscream’s optics dimmed, unfocused, as though he stood not on the battlefield but on that old park bench.

“I was young then,” he continued. “Just Ulcthar. A scientist with too many theories and too little recognition. I sat in a park one evening, a datapad of Double Sixteen’s words in my hands. A miner approached—dirty, exhausted, dust ground into every seam. I knew he wanted to speak, so I called him over.”

His lips curved into a humorless smile.

“He said he liked those poems too. And so we spoke. Hours, days, nights—about starlight, about the rhythm of work, about the beauty of things most Cybertronians forgot. He was no warrior. Just a miner, fragile from labor, sparks dimmed from exhaustion. I thought him honest. I thought him kind.”

Starscream’s wings lowered slightly, his vents releasing a slow shudder.

“We grew close. Too close, perhaps. He listened. He understood. Or so I believed.” His gaze flickered sharply toward Megatron. “And then one day, that miner told me something no one else knew. That he was Double Sixteen. The words, the poems… all his. The fragile, gentle spark I admired.”

The air turned heavy.

Starscream’s tone shifted, venom edging every syllable now.

“He wanted me. Desired me. A miner and a scientist, bound together by words. He confessed it as if it were inevitable. And I… rejected him.”

The Autobots stiffened. The Decepticons glanced at each other, unease building like a current.

“I told him,” Starscream said, voice suddenly cold, “that my spark was already bound. That my loyalty, my affection, belonged to my laboratory partner. That his confession, however sincere, could not change that.”

He exhaled, slow, wings quivering.

“From that day, the miner walked away. And Double Sixteen vanished from Cybertron. No more poems. No more words. Only silence.”

The battlefield’s silence deepened.

Then Starscream lifted his chin, lilac optics burning like new-forged blades.

“And that miner, that fragile spark who wrote beauty into steel, became you, Megatron.”

Gasps rippled through both factions.

Megatron’s face twisted—rage, shame, denial, all crashing in his features. His mouth opened, but no words came, only a low, animal growl from deep in his chest.

Starscream stepped forward, every line of his frame proud, unyielding.

“You call yourself my creator? You forged me into chains, into obedience, into your perfect soldier?” His optics narrowed, wings flaring wide. “You were nothing but a coward, Megatron. Too afraid of rejection. Too afraid of weakness. And so you burned Double Sixteen alive inside your own spark, until nothing was left but a tyrant in his place.”

The last word struck like a hammer blow.

Thundercracker and Skywarp stared at their trine leader in shock and awe. The Autobots stood frozen, caught between horror and revelation. And Soundwave’s visor dimmed entirely, his helm bowing slightly, as if even he could not reconcile the truth with the loyalty he still bore.

Megatron finally bellowed, voice breaking with fury:

“ENOUGH!!”

But the damage was done.

Starscream’s truth lay bare, and no amount of rage could unmake it.

Double 16 was D-16 who turned into Megatron,cravet from iron and rage.

Chapter 11

The battlefield air itself seemed to tighten, as if even the atmosphere recoiled from the rawness of Starscream’s words. No mask. No embellishment. Just the truth, naked and jagged, carved into the sparks of everyone who listened.

It was not war that had birthed Megatron. Not the Arena alone. It was rejection. A quiet “no” spoken by a young scientist who already held another in his spark. That wound festered, rotted, turned inside out until D-16 burned his poems, scorched his own name, and rebuilt himself into something that could not be rejected again. A gladiator. A warlord. A tyrant.

Starscream’s wings arched high, bright against the dimming sky, his lilac optics unwavering. “That was the key, wasn’t it?” he hissed, his tone slicing like a scalpel. “Not justice. Not freedom. It was never about Cybertron. It was about me. About us. You could not accept being unwanted.”

The silence cracked.

Megatron’s hands clenched into trembling fists, denting his own armor. His vents roared as if they might ignite. The mighty warlord, who faced Primes without flinching, now stood as if flayed open. Because every word was true.

Optimus’s expression hardened, optics narrowing as he glanced between them. He saw now—the corruption, the origin of Megatron’s obsession with Starscream, how much of the war had been poisoned by one spark’s inability to let go.

Thundercracker and Skywarp shifted uneasily at Starscream’s side, protective but shaken. They had followed Megatron for vorns, endured his wrath, his commands. But now, with each word Starscream spoke, their wings trembled with the dawning realization: their leader’s hatred had been built on a lie.

Starscream’s voice dropped lower, quiet, but each syllable heavy with venom.

“And then… you changed.” His optics flared, remembering. “You shed D-16 as if he had never been. You remade yourself, bolt by bolt, plating by plating. You became Megatron—the arena’s monster, the people’s false savior. And what was the first thing you did when you clawed your way out of the Pit?”

His wings snapped wide, his frame trembling with fury and revelation.

“You came for me.”

The words landed like a weapon.

“You took Ulcthar, the scientist you once spent hours with, speaking of starlight and quiet things. You stole him from his laboratory. You chained him, carved into him, and handed him to Shockwave like nothing more than a test subject. Because if you could not have my spark, then you would own me. Twist me. Shatter me. Mold me into something that would never reject you again.”

A murmur of horror rippled across the Autobots. Even some Decepticons faltered, their optics darting to their leader, to the lilac-eyed seeker standing defiant.

Starscream’s tone sharpened into a blade’s edge.

“And I—” his voice trembled with restrained rage, “I was too naïve, too broken to see it then. I did not recognize you. I did not know the miner I once called friend, the poet I once admired, had become the tyrant who caged me.”

Megatron’s lips curled back, exposing his denta, but the fury in his optics was fractured, splintered by something darker beneath. Shame. Memory. Loss.

For a flicker of a moment, D-16 looked out through Megatron’s mask. The miner in the park, covered in dust, speaking softly about the way the sun turned Kaon’s sky into fire. That fragile spark, crushed under rejection, under rage.

And then it was gone.

“LIES!” Megatron roared, his voice shaking the ground itself. His fusion cannon flared, but the sound was less conviction, more desperation, a spark screaming to silence the truth that had already escaped.

Starscream did not flinch. His wings gleamed, silver and celestial blue catching the light as though the very sky answered to him.

“You can deny me, Megatron. But you cannot deny yourself.”

The battlefield noise dimmed around them, as though all the world itself was watching the tricolor Seeker whose wings still trembled with residual strain. Ratchet’s optics narrowed sharply—he’d been watching Starscream more closely than anyone else. That frame was quivering in ways no healthy flier’s should. The lines along the plating were too taut, heat shimmered faintly where vents should have been regulating. And then he saw it—thin curls of vapor escaping from the seams in Starscream’s armor.

“Slag,” Ratchet muttered under his vents. He strode forward, all gruff purpose, and without giving Starscream warning, gripped the Seeker’s chin and forced his mouth open.

Starscream recoiled with a half-formed protest, his voice breaking into static: “What are you—?!”

The medic shoved a cube into his mouth, smaller than any energon ration, almost fragile. The cube dissolved instantly, its liquid contents flooding down Starscream’s throat before he could spit it out. The taste was bitter, chemical, laced with medicine meant to drop a mech into recharge before their spark tore itself apart.

Starscream’s optics flared wide in startled betrayal, his claws twitching as he tried to push Ratchet away. But the effect was already surging through his systems, racing into his core.

Ratchet turned, his optics sharp and commanding. “You four—” he barked, gesturing to Windblade, Thundercracker, Skywarp, and Jetfire, “—be ready. He’s about to crash. And if he fights it, we will have to restrain him.”

The Seekers stiffened, their wings high and twitching in nervous reflex. Windblade opened her mouth to demand an explanation, but before she could speak, Jetfire’s optics widened. He saw it first—Starscream’s frame buckling, his wings dipping.

“Frag,” Jetfire hissed, lunging forward. His broad frame caught Starscream from behind, arms wrapping tightly around him, pinning his flailing claws before the Seeker could hit the ground. Starscream’s vents roared in panicked resistance, his optics burning with fury, but his body was already giving in to the forced recharge. His protests melted into static, his helm dropping against Jetfire’s chest as his systems shut down, one by one.

For a moment, the battlefield was silent except for the low hum of Starscream’s failing resistance. And then all optics turned toward Ratchet.

The medic’s shoulders sagged, but his voice was iron. “He’s not recovered. Not even close. He’s been flying with cables that should still be under repair. Primus, they’re as brittle as glass. You saw the vapor earlier?” Ratchet pointed toward the faint steam still hissing from the seams of Starscream’s wings. “That’s condensation from internal coolant—leakage from overstrain. Look here.”

He knelt, pulling Starscream slightly away from Jetfire’s hold to reveal the back plating. Drops of liquid clung to the seams, staining the delicate lines of the exposed cabling. Entire clusters of wires gleamed wet, brittle from tension and overheating.

The Autobots and Seekers alike stared, horror threading across their faces as realization set in.

Ratchet’s tone dropped, heavier, darker. “He forced himself into the air like this. With that kind of stress on his frame, he could’ve ruptured a primary cable in mid-flight. You know what happens when that gives way? He falls from the sky in pieces.”

Thundercracker’s vents stuttered, his optics bright with protective rage. Skywarp swore under his breath, wings flat in panic. Windblade looked away, fighting the tight ache in her chest.

It was Windblade who broke the tension with words, her voice sharper than she meant it to be. “I’d rather deal with this than try to calm a walking force of nature when he’s angry.”

Her words hung in the air. Everyone turned to look at her.

Windblade froze, her optics flicking nervously between them. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. Her hands tightened on the hilt of her sword as if it could cut through the embarrassment. Quickly, she forced a weak smile and muttered, “I mean—he’s dramatic. That’s all. You know Starscream.”

But the silence that followed was not laughter. Not even the Seekers moved to cover the tension. Because what she said was not wrong. And everyone there—Autobot and Decepticon alike—knew it.

The weight of Ratchet’s diagnosis pressed down on them all.

Windblade’s spark was still pounding in her chest. She hadn’t realized how close she had come to slipping, how near she had been to giving voice to truths that were not meant to be spoken before this crowd. Her wings twitched, trying to compose themselves, her smile faint and carefully drawn across her lips. The lie had passed. At least, that’s what she told herself.

But then—

“Windblade.”

The quiet, too-perceptive voice came from the worst possible direction.

Bumblebee.

He had sidled closer, his helm tilted in that deceptively innocent way of his, optics bright but sharp in their scrutiny. He was not fooled. He had never been fooled.

“Earlier, at the base…” Bumblebee began, not loudly, but enough that her spark tightened like a vice, “…you said Thundercracker and Skywarp were more like Hounds than Trine. And I remember you talking about Heralds. About Winglords. About—”

“Bumblebee,” she said, still smiling, still feigning calm. Her tone was sweet, melodic, masking the murderous rage rising inside her. “This is hardly the time.”

But the scout only tilted his helm more, determined, relentless in his curiosity. “So when you just called Starscream a walking force of nature… was that because of what you know? About them? About him?”

Windblade wanted to strangle him. Right there. With her bare servos.

Instead, she laughed. A delicate, airy sound that could have fooled anyone watching. She moved toward Jetfire as though leaning on him for support, her hands brushing his massive side plating. But her optics glinted sharp with intent as she reached for the latch at the back of his great frame.

The cargo compartment clicked open with a smooth hiss.

“Come here, little scout,” Windblade said softly, taking Bumblebee’s arm before he could step back.

“Wait, what—” Bumblebee’s voice pitched up in surprise, his optics wide as she tugged him closer.

“Don’t fuss.” Still smiling, still radiating that false calm, she half-lifted, half-shoved him into Jetfire’s compartment. He was too startled to fight properly, and the hatch sealed with a heavy clang that echoed like finality.

Inside, Bumblebee’s muffled protest rang against the sealed metal. “Windblade! You can’t just—! Let me out!”

Windblade smoothed her palms along the hatch, as though dusting it off, her smile unwavering. “Thank you, Jetfire,” she said sweetly, “for keeping our little scout safe. And quiet. Please don’t let him meddle in things too curious for his own good—for a few hours at least.”

Jetfire blinked down at her, optics uncertain, but his great arms tightened protectively around the unconscious Starscream he still held. He said nothing, but his silence was consent enough.

Windblade’s smile remained. It was warm. Beautiful. A mask that hid the darkness twisting deep within her spark.

And Bumblebee—trapped, frustrated, and silenced—could only pound once against the walls of the compartment before his voice dimmed into low, seething static.

Even the Autobots, who had stood beside her through battles and decisions, shifted uneasily. They had never seen Windblade like this, smiling with her optics lit in a way that looked more like a blade unsheathed than a gesture of reassurance. There was something wrong in it, something that made even hardened warriors glance away.

The Decepticons, for their part, were confused. Windblade had never been the focus of their attention—a quiet figure, sharp when needed, but hardly the type to bend entire rooms to her presence. Yet here she stood, perfectly still, smiling with her fingers still resting lightly against Jetfire’s massive plating, as if she had won something by locking Bumblebee away.

And no one—Autobot or Decepticon—dared to ask her why.

The air itself seemed to strain with tension, brittle, on the verge of shattering.

Then it did.

From the shadows of the Decepticon ranks, a familiar shape emerged. Towering, cold, a presence that made even the bravest flinch. Shockwave.

His single optic glowed, crimson and analytical, scanning Starscream, scanning Windblade, scanning the battlefield that had gone so silent it was as though Primus himself were listening. His clawed hands flexed with mechanical precision, and his vocoder crackled to life.

"Winglord."

The word struck like a cannon shot.

His monotone voice, sharpened by its inhuman cadence, carried across the broken land, slicing into every processor. The battlefield itself froze—not out of choice, but instinct. A word so old, so heavy with meaning, that it bound silence to it.

Shockwave’s optic fixed on Starscream, his tone void of emotion but vibrating with terrible certainty.
"Starscream… is a Winglord."

Gasps. Fractured whispers. The word rippled through the ranks like shrapnel.

"Winglord?" an Autobot muttered, disbelieving, as if saying the word aloud might summon punishment.
"That’s impossible," a Decepticon stammered.
"No… no, I’ve heard of them—" another hissed, cutting themselves off, unwilling to name what they feared.

Even Windblade’s smile faltered for the briefest second, just enough to betray that this—this revelation—was the very thing she had fought to keep buried.

Optimus froze, processor racing. Megatron’s fury twisted into something darker, recognition sparking across his faceplates. Thundercracker and Skywarp went deathly still, their optics wide as if their sparks themselves had been dragged back into ancient memory.

And Starscream—fragile, recovering, half-supported by Jetfire’s steady arms—lifted his helm. His lilac optics burned, glowing like twin stars, catching the weight of Shockwave’s accusation and wearing it like a crown.

Silence.

The kind of silence that comes before brutal storms.

Chapter 12

Windblade did not waste time. Her hand pressed to Optimus’ chest, sharp and urgent, her voice low but cutting through the silence that Shockwave had birthed.

“We have to go. Now. Starscream, Thundercracker, Skywarp—you guys come too.”

Her wings flared like blades, ready to slice a path through the battlefield if she had to. Optimus met her gaze, optics narrowing in reluctant understanding. He didn’t like being ordered. But the tone she used wasn’t suggestion—it was survival.

Starscream was trembling against Jetfire’s hold, his vents laboring, lilac optics burning even as his frame betrayed him. Thundercracker and Skywarp pressed closer on instinct, protective, the kind of reflex you couldn’t program out of a Trine no matter how many vorns passed.

And then Shockwave’s vocoder rose, sharp enough to make the air itself vibrate.
“Megatron. They are attempting extraction. We cannot allow Starscream to escape. If he is truly Winglord, then his value is beyond calculation. Capture is imperative.”

The word capture rang like a death sentence.

Megatron’s optics flared, rage boiling over his already fractured composure. His fist clenched, the sound of metal screaming against metal.
“Decepticons! Seize him! Do not let them leave this field!”

The order fell across his army like a blade. But no one moved.

Not a single soldier stepped forward.

The silence that followed was heavier than cannon fire. The weight of what Starscream had revealed still lingered like ash in their sparks. Every Decepticon present could see Megatron’s command, could hear his fury—but all they could feel was the truth. The truth that their leader had captured, mutilated, and enslaved one of their own. That their second-in-command, their brightest star, had been broken and reshaped against his will.

Shockwave’s optic flared in disbelief. He turned his head, scanning, waiting for obedience that did not come. Even Soundwave—loyal shadow, the one who had never failed to obey—remained still. His visor flickered, hands twitching, but his feet did not move.

Megatron snarled, stepping forward, towering, his frame radiating wrath.
“Have you all gone deaf? MOVE!”

Nothing.

The battlefield was suffocating in its stillness, the absence of movement louder than any charge. For the first time since he had risen from the pits, Megatron gave an order that no Decepticon obeyed.

Starscream’s smile came slow, faint, a curve of the lip that was half exhaustion and half triumph. He tilted his helm, wings flicking upward like banners. His voice was softer than Megatron’s bellow, but it carried farther.
“You see, Megatron? They don’t belong to you anymore.”

Thundercracker’s field surged, proud, fierce. Skywarp bared his denta in a grin that was equal parts joy and venom. The Autobots tensed, realizing they were standing in the center of something far larger than a battle.

Megatron’s optics burned like molten steel, but he stood surrounded by silence, his fury devoured by disbelief and betrayal.

And in that silence, Starscream raised his hand toward Windblade. His voice was clear, sharp as skyfire.
“Take us home.”

Jetfire’s huge servos were steady as they lifted Starscream against their chestplates, holding him like something fragile and precious. The seeker stirred faintly, vents hitching, optics dimming as the dissolving cube in his systems finally took effect. Ratchet’s medicine was dragging him into recharge whether he wanted it or not. His helm tilted against Jetfire’s armor, lips parting in a faint ex-vent, wings trembling as if even unconscious his body was resisting surrender.

Optimus didn’t waste a klik. His voice carried like thunder, commanding not just his own but the air itself:
“Bridge—now. Everyone through!”

The portal flared alive in green and blue fire, humming so loud it made plating buzz. Autobots broke from the stillness, filing into the light with practiced urgency. This time, however, two figures who had never stepped through such gates followed them: Thundercracker and Skywarp, wings high, frames bristling, their optics glued to the silent, unconscious body in Jetfire’s hold.

No one stopped them. Not Optimus, not Windblade, not even Ratchet. The trust in Starscream’s gaze, the way he had called them brothers again—it was enough. They belonged by his side.

In less than a breem, the battlefield was empty of Autobots. Only the crackling echoes of the space bridge remained before the portal shut with a final hiss.

And then—silence.

The silence that fell on the Decepticons was not the silence of discipline or respect. It was the silence of a dying faith.

Megatron’s rage was volcanic, his vents roaring, his field expanding in waves so violent that some of the lesser soldiers staggered back. His optics were molten red as he slammed a fist against the ground, leaving a crater in the scorched metal soil.
“AGAIN!” he roared. “AGAIN, HE SLIPS FROM MY GRASP! You—” his voice broke like a whip toward the assembled army “—you LET HIM escape! You pathetic wretches, all of you—”

But when he turned to look upon them, ready to pour his fury into flesh and plating, the sight that greeted him was not obedience.

It was dissent.

Some bots were already walking away. Not hurried, not fearful—simply leaving. A few brushed past him without bowing their heads, without shame. Their silence cut deeper than any blade.

Above, a formation of seekers broke ranks, their wings slicing through the smoke-filled air. They did not return to base. They climbed high, banked sharply, and flew into the horizon without so much as a backward glance. Along their path, as if shedding the last chain that bound them, insignias of purple metal dropped like rain, hitting the ground with a ringing finality.

Clang.
Clang.
Clang.

One by one, those who had borne the badge with pride now abandoned it with disgust.

Megatron froze, watching, as if the ground itself were betraying him. His hands curled into claws, frame trembling with fury—but it wasn’t fear in their optics anymore. It was revulsion.

They had heard Starscream’s words. They had seen his truth burn in the sky.

Megatron had taken the freedom of a bot. Not just any bot, but their second, their brother in arms. He had mutilated him, rewritten him, stripped him of memory, chained him in programs and lies—and then had the audacity to demand their loyalty.

He and Shockwave had played at being gods. And now, the truth laid bare, the empire they had forged began to crack under its own weight.

Megatron’s field surged with denial, a black sun ready to devour all, but the more he raged, the more they slipped from his grasp. The aerials were the first to disinherit in mass, the sky turning into a stream of wings that no longer flew in his name. But even grounders followed, their insignias tossed aside, optics narrowed in contempt.

The Decepticon army was not collapsing in screams or chaos. It was worse.

It was rotting in silence.

And Megatron, once the pit-born gladiator who commanded the very marrow of Cybertron with his voice, stood in the middle of that silence, more alone than he had ever been.

The space bridge sealed behind them with a hiss, leaving the war and Megatron’s fury far behind. The Ark’s halls trembled faintly from the reentry shock, and in the aftermath, silence reigned.

Windblade’s voice shattered it, sharp and tight with urgency.
“Jetfire. Medical ward. Now.”

The massive shuttlebot obeyed without hesitation, cradling Starscream carefully in his arms, but there was an edge in his optics—fear, jealousy, something unspoken—that lingered on Windblade before he left.

Bumblebee stumbled free from Jetfire’s cargo bay the moment the door clicked open, vents hissing in irritation. He straightened himself, plating bristling, but froze when Windblade’s gaze locked onto him. Her optics burned with a fury that made even the youngest scout feel as though he had trespassed into sacred ground.

“You,” she said, the word dripping venom. “You need to learn when to keep quiet.”

Bumblebee’s field flared with both shame and defiance, his mouth opening to retort—only for Optimus Prime to step between them, broad frame cutting off the line of fire.

“Enough,” Optimus commanded, his voice low but carrying weight enough to silence both of them. His optics softened, first toward Windblade, then toward Bumblebee, but the steel never left his tone. “Windblade—calm yourself. Bumblebee’s curiosity is not a crime. But the truths you guard, if they concern Starscream, if they concern all of us, cannot remain buried.”

Windblade’s vents rattled with contained anger, but she folded her arms, lips pressed into a thin line.

“Before we unravel this,” Optimus continued, his gaze moving toward the corridor Jetfire had vanished down, “Starscream must be tended to. Jetfire is to place him in the medical ward under Ratchet’s care.” His optics flicked back to Windblade, steady, unwavering. “When the doctor returns… you will explain everything. No lies. No half-truths. All that you know, Windblade. All of it.”

For a moment, Windblade did not answer. Her wings twitched, as though some invisible storm churned inside her spark, and the silence stretched thin like wire about to snap.

Finally, she ex-vented, sharp and bitter, her voice edged with something between resentment and resignation.
“You want the truth? Fine.”

But her gaze cut to Bumblebee again, sharp as a blade.
“Then all of you had better be ready to hear it.”

The air in the base thickened with unease. Bumblebee shifted on his pedes, shame prickling his plating. Wheeljack, watching from the side, muttered under his vents, “Well, this is about to get messy.”

And somewhere in the medical ward, under Ratchet’s careful hands, Starscream stirred faintly in forced recharge, oblivious to the storm his presence had dragged to the surface.

Ratchet returned sooner than expected, his hands still smeared with sterilized solution, optics weary but steady.

“He’ll live,” the doctor reported, tone clipped but carrying the faintest note of relief. “Stable. In recharge. He’ll wake in a few hours if no complications surface.”

The weight of his words settled across the room. All optics turned to Windblade.

She leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest, wings sharp and tense. Her faceplate was unreadable, but her optics betrayed it—stormclouds, rage and grief buried beneath iron discipline.

“This is the time, then,” Optimus said quietly, standing tall in the center of the chamber. His gaze never wavered from her. “No more shadows. Speak the truth, Windblade. All of it.”

Windblade tilted her helm back against the wall, ex-vented slowly, then began.

“When Starscream was not yet Starscream… when he was Ulcthar, before his wings had even earned the gloss of Vos’ skies, he and I were children. Nobles, yes—but not free. Never free.”

Her voice was steady, but the room grew colder, heavier with every word.

“One day, we were playing in the back gardens of the city temple. A game of chase. Laughter. And then the ground gave way. The soil split beneath us, swallowed us whole. We fell into the forbidden chambers below, a place even priests whispered about but dared never enter.”

She looked down, optics hooded, as though reliving the fall.

“We woke in darkness. And when we searched for a way out, we found it instead—the Hall of Titans. Great statues, taller than even the towers of Vos. Primus. Unicron. And others older still. Their optics glowed faint, like watching us.”

She paused, her tone dropping lower, sharper.

“And then the voices began.”

The Autobots shifted uneasily, Bumblebee paling, Wheeljack muttering something beneath his vents.

“They spoke to us. To me. To Ulcthar. I heard them in my spark, like knives scraping against metal. They named me Herald. They named him Winglord. They said his name would change, his life would change, that he would awaken as something terrible and beautiful. We were only sparklings, and the pressure of their words… it crushed us. We collapsed there, unconscious, and were found hours later.”

Windblade’s optics grew distant.

“From that day forward, the temple locked us in. We were no longer children. We were property. They trained us—combat, weapons, rituals. They forged us into tools of gods we did not want.”

Her fists clenched, wings flaring, then settling again.

“But Ulcthar was clever. Too clever. He built a plan. Transfer of sparks into cold-constructed shells, vessels the priests could not track. It almost worked. He saved me—no.” Her voice cracked for the first time. “He saved himself. He transferred his spark. I was caught. He escaped. His original body—the Winglord’s chosen chassis—he hid it, buried it away. And Ulcthar was reborn as a tricolored Seeker, free to chase his dream of science in Yacon.”

She ex-vented sharply, wings drooping now.

“But I… I was dragged back. Caged again. I learned discipline. Obedience. Hatred.” Her optics narrowed. “When I finally found him again, Ulcthar was gone. There was only Starscream. And Starscream… bent knee to Megatron.”

Her words fell like a blow. Silence followed, so thick it pressed down like a weight.

“Only months ago did I understand,” Windblade continued, her tone darkening. “Starscream was never Megatron’s dog by choice. He was collared. Controlled. Megatron used forbidden programs, slavery chips, to mold him. To erase Ulcthar. To make him serve.”

Her field flared, bitter with fury and grief.

“Ulcthar was gentle. Innocent. Too soft to ever become what the Decepticons thought they had. Megatron broke him. He stole him. And the truth you all saw on the battlefield… that was no accident. That was the Winglord stirring awake again, the truth they tried to bury.”

Her optics swept the room, landing last on Optimus, daring him to question her.

“Now you know.”

And in the silence that followed, no one dared speak.

The silence after Windblade’s confession was suffocating. It pressed in on all sides, thick with the weight of ancient truth. And then—

The aerials faltered.

Thundercracker was the first to stagger, his thrusters sputtering weakly as if the air itself rebelled against him. He braced a servo against the wall. Skywarp crumpled into a crouch, wings shuddering violently. Even Jetfire, towering and broad, dropped down to one knee with his vents roaring like he was starved of air.

The stories they had been told as sparklings, whispered in quiet dormitories and flight nests, the half-forbidden songs sung when no elder was listening—they were real.

The Winglord wasn’t a myth. He had a face now. A body.

Starscream.

Some tried to resist. Most failed. One by one, they yielded to gravity, optics dimming as if their very cores bowed to something greater than themselves. The ground became littered with wings and trembling frames. They didn’t look at one another. They didn’t have to. The truth was undeniable, seared into their very sparks: the legends lived in him.

Thundercracker finally managed to steady himself, optics sharp despite the tremor running down his arms. He turned to Windblade, voice raw.

“What does it mean? What happens now? He—Starscream—Winglord—how are we supposed to…” He trailed off, optics flickering. “Explain.”

Windblade’s expression shifted, a flicker of pity shadowing her usual steel. She ex-vented slowly.

“It began days ago. When the skies broke.”

Her voice was measured, but there was no mistaking the edge of awe beneath it.

“I was in his quarters. He was agitated, pacing, his wings restless. He told me he could feel it—the storm building in his core. He feared what it meant. And then it happened. The heavens themselves bent to his will. Thunder rolled where his anger flared. Lightning sparked with his grief. The skies answered him.”

A murmur of disbelief rippled through the Autobots, but the aerials remained silent. They already knew. Their bodies told them. Their sparks told them.

Windblade’s tone softened, though the heaviness never left it.

“He told me he wasn’t ready. That he didn’t want this. Not to be followed by fear, not to become what Megatron is. He said the thought of aerials obeying him out of fear—because of power, not love—terrified him.”

Skywarp lifted his helm, wings trembling, voice cracking.

“So he knows?”

“Yes.” Windblade’s optics swept across them, lingering on each frame, one by one. “He knows. And it terrifies him more than it terrifies you. He doesn’t want to be a tyrant. He doesn’t want to be worshiped. He wants to be free. But the skies don’t give choice. The Winglord doesn’t ask to be made. He is.”

The weight of those words fell heavier than weapons fire.

Optimus shifted slightly, his field a quiet storm of conflict. Ratchet muttered darkly under his vents. Bumblebee, wide-eyed, looked ready to ask something but thought better of it.

The aerials, though—they could not lift their optics from the ground. They could feel it, every pulse of their sparks in sync with the tricolor Seeker unconscious in the medbay. It was more than truth. It was command written in their code, older than war, older than Cybertron’s city-states.

Thundercracker’s hands curled into fists.

“He’s afraid,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “Frag, he’s afraid. And we… we’re down here on the ground like sparklings.”

Windblade finally uncrossed her arms, stepping forward, wings sharp behind her.

“Because that is what it means to be a Winglord,” she said. “And because deep down, you’ve always known.”

The silence cracked when Skywarp spoke. His voice wasn’t sharp or teasing, not the usual flicker of chaos that followed him—it was raw, quiet, almost reverent.

“Starscream… he always took care of us.”

The words hung there, fragile but undeniable.

“Even when he was… chained.” Skywarp’s optics dimmed, his claws flexing nervously. “He’d sneak energon to the wounded, slip datapads into hands that needed them, argue with commanders until his wings shook to keep us from getting slagged in missions we weren’t ready for. We thought it was rebellion. We thought it was fragging madness. But it wasn’t.” His field pulsed, wavering with emotion. “It was… duty. And I didn’t even know it. Not until now. It’s waking in me. The need. The pull.”

Thundercracker shifted uneasily beside him, wings twitching, but said nothing. He didn’t need to. His silence was agreement enough.

Windblade’s optics burned as she cut in, her tone firm and merciless with truth.

“The moment his spark was returned to his true body… the moment his optics turned lilac… he was no longer just Starscream. He became what he was always meant to be. Winglord.”

A shiver passed through the gathered aerials.

“And when he confronted Megatron,” she went on, her voice lowering, slicing through the tension like a blade, “when he cast off that weight of chains, when he stood unbroken for the first time in vorns—the bindings shattered. The codes deep in every aerial’s spark woke again. That’s why you feel it now. That’s why you can’t look away.”

No one breathed. No one dared.

And then it began.

The comm-lines flickered, one after another. Signals bleeding into the Autobot base with an urgency that rattled even Ratchet’s practiced calm.

First a transmission from the northern front—a squadron of Decepticon seekers, declaring they had cast down their insignias, wanting sanctuary, wanting the Winglord.

Then another, from the east. Then the south. Names they all knew, voices harsh with shame, breaking as they admitted they wanted nothing to do with Megatron after what he had done. Others were trembling with something different—not guilt, not rebellion, but awe.

“He lives,” one voice whispered over the comms. “The Winglord lives. And I will follow him.”

Dozens of signals. Then hundreds. The base’s comms drowned in them.

The Autobots stood frozen, some in horror, some in awe, some in sheer disbelief as the tide of messages flooded. Aerials Autobots from other sides of the galaxy,Decepticons and even aerials that was Neutrals.

Optimus’ optics narrowed, the weight of the moment pressing on his shoulders heavier than even the Matrix.

Windblade lifted her servo, gesturing at the chorus of voices as if pulling the veil from a nightmare Starscream himself had spoken of.

“This is it,” she said. “What he feared most. It’s happening.”

Her wings flared, her smile brittle, almost tragic.

“He didn’t want this. He didn’t ask for this. But the skies have already chosen. And whether he accepts it or not… Starscream is a leader now. A Winglord reborn. And all of us,” her optics swept across the room, cutting into each of them, “will be dragged into the storm he carries.”

The comms kept howling. The aerials kept bowing, if not in body, then in spark. And through the thick glass of the medbay door, they could see him: Starscream, recharging, fragile and trembling, utterly unaware of the empire waking in his name.

Chapter 13

Starscream woke with a sharp intake of air through his vents, wings twitching before his optics fully adjusted to the light. The medbay was too quiet. Too still. Only two figures remained inside with him: Windblade, standing like a sentinel with her arms crossed, and Optimus Prime, looming in that grave and infuriating calm that made every word he spoke sound like law.

Starscream immediately knew something was wrong. His field snapped open, a wild pulse of anxiety.

“Where are they?” His voice cracked, his vents working too fast. “Where are Thundercracker and Skywarp? Where’s Ratchet? Where—”

“You are safe,” Optimus interrupted, his tone smooth, steady as bedrock. He stepped closer, slow and deliberate, lowering himself so his massive frame did not overwhelm. “But there is much you must hear, Starscream.”

The Seeker’s optics narrowed, suspicious, sharp—but exhaustion weighed down his frame, and he listened.

Optimus spoke with unbearable patience, his deep voice weaving the truth with no room for denial. He explained everything: how, while Starscream recharged, aerials across Cybertron had reached out, abandoning Megatron, some because of the atrocities revealed, others because of something far older and deeper—the awakening of their Winglord. He explained how the Autobot base had been flooded with messages, how seekers, fliers, and aerial-bots of every type were swearing loyalty not to the Autobots, not to Prime… but to him. To Starscream.

The silence afterward was deafening.

Starscream’s wings curled in on themselves, his whole frame trembling. His vents hitched—too fast, too shallow—and his optics darted wildly, as if the walls were closing in.

“No. No, no, no—” His claws dug into his own plating. “This is exactly what I didn’t want—” His words broke, spiraling into static. “They’ll follow me because they’re programmed, because the past demands it, not because I deserve it. Not because of who I am!”

Panic devoured him, his wings spasming, his field lashing uncontrollably.

Windblade moved first, her hands on his shoulders, firm, grounding. “Breathe, Starscream. Look at me. Look at me.” Her voice cut sharp but steady, her wings framing him like a shield.

Optimus joined her, lowering one massive servo near but not touching. His voice rolled like thunder in the calmest of storms.

“Starscream. You are not alone.”

His optics met the Seeker’s, unwavering. “When I was chosen by the Matrix, I was as you are now—lost, afraid, unprepared. I thought I was nothing more than a soldier with a voice. I did not understand why anyone would follow me, why anyone would look to me for guidance.”

Starscream’s vents hitched, the words catching him mid-panic.

Optimus continued, each syllable measured, deliberate, heavy with sincerity.

“I tell you this not as Prime, but as one who once feared the same chains of expectation. You cannot rush to decide what you must become. You must first breathe, let your thoughts find order. The future will not wait, but you must be steady before you face it.”

Starscream squeezed his optics shut, wings quivering, caught between drowning in fear and clinging to their words.

Windblade pressed her forehead against his helm, voice softening for the first time, almost breaking. “Screamer… you’ve always carried more than you should. Let us help you carry this too.”

And for a long moment, the Seeker simply let himself tremble, caught between Prime’s calm and Windblade’s fire, terrified of what the skies demanded of him.

Windblade’s words still rang in the air like a blade pressed against his throat: let us help you carry this too. And Optimus, with that immovable calm that made Starscream want to claw at his chest and demand he feel the weight of it, had already made the decision for him. Between them, the Herald and the Prime, the path was carved whether Starscream wanted it or not.

He wanted to run. He wanted to rip his wings free and vanish into the skies until every voice fell silent. But escape was impossible; no matter how far he flew, the skies would still echo his name. Winglord. The word had become a chain, and the links burned against his spark.

So he accepted, because there was no other option.

They brought him to the saguão of the Autobot base. The wide hall was filled with aerials—seekers, fliers, triplechangers with jet alt-modes, even some small, sharp-winged scouts—crowding the chamber. They stared as though he were an apparition, optics bright, fields thick with a mixture of awe, terror, and desperate hope.

Starscream’s wings twitched, betraying his unease. For a moment he wanted to curl inward, to make himself small, but Windblade’s steady gaze from the side and Optimus’s silent presence behind him held him upright.

His spark hammered against his chassis. His mouth felt dry. Still, he spoke.

“I…” His voice wavered, but he forced it to sharpen, his wings angling up. “I will not play the tyrant. I will not demand you kneel because the old codes in your systems tell you to. I… I don’t even know if I can be what you want me to be.”

Murmurs rippled through the hall. Starscream swallowed down the rising static in his throat and pressed forward, each word cutting raw from his spark.

“I am not ready. I am not a leader, not a Winglord—at least, not yet. What I am is tired. Afraid. Still trying to remember who I was before all of this.” His claws curled into his palms. “If you follow me, then let it be because you trust me. Not because of programming. Not because of fear. If you cannot—then don’t.”

The silence after his words was heavy enough to crush. He felt the optics of every aerial burn into him, felt the weight of his own wings tremble with the strain of holding himself upright.

And then, something shifted.

Thundercracker stepped forward first, his voice steady, almost proud. “You always looked out for us, Screamer. Even when you didn’t have to. That’s enough for me.”

Skywarp followed, almost tripping over his own wings in eagerness. “Yeah! He patched me up more times than I can count, and I’m terrible at counting—but still!”

And then others joined in. A scout whispered that Starscream had smuggled extra energon to the wounded. A former seeker spoke of how he had shared tactics that saved their wings in battle. One by one, the aerials spoke, not of programming, not of codes, but of the moments where Starscream’s spark had already guided them, without him ever realizing it.

Starscream froze, wings wide with shock. He had expected rejection, suspicion, fear. Instead—acceptance, raw and unfiltered, met him in every gaze.

Something loosened inside his chest, though it terrified him more than the panic had.

Windblade’s smile was quiet, unreadable, and Optimus’s nod was almost imperceptible. Together, they had anchored him long enough to take the first step.

And so, a new normal began to form. Tentative. Fragile.

Starscream hated it—hated the responsibility, the weight pressing onto his wings. But as cycles passed, with Windblade’s sharp guidance and Optimus’s infuriating patience, he began to speak more. To listen. To test his voice not as Megatron’s puppet, not as a false tricolor frame, but as himself.

It was not freedom, not yet. But it was something. A beginning carved from the ruins of his past.

And deep in his spark, where the memory of the statues of Primus and Unicron still lingered like shadows on the walls of his mind, Starscream feared that beginnings always came at a price.

The price did not fall all at once. It bled slowly into their lives over the weeks, as subtle as corrosion eating through plating.

The Decepticons ceased to exist—not in some grand final battle, but in silence, in abandonment. Megatron’s empire rotted away beneath his claws as the truth came to light. His followers turned their backs on him, not with fire or vengeance, but with a cold, cutting rejection. Even Soundwave—once his most loyal shadow—severed himself and stood among the Autobots, silent as always, but no longer Megatron’s.

What had once been war was now only embers. The Nemesis still drifted through orbit, but Megatron was alone within its walls, with only Shockwave’s empty optics and cold logic to answer him. The battlefield was gone. The fight was gone.

And in that vacuum, Starscream moved.

Without realizing it, without wanting it, he was changing. The panic attacks still came, sometimes in the recharge cycle, sometimes in the middle of speaking, but he pressed through them. For others. For Cybertron itself.

It was different from Optimus. Optimus carried his mantle as a Prime like a weight of destiny, every step deliberate, chosen. Starscream moved like he was breathing. As though leadership was woven into the fine seams of his wings. He led not because he believed he should, but because his spark could not stop itself from answering when others cried for him.

And Cybertron listened.

Thundercracker and Skywarp walked at his side, unflinching, sharp-eyed and loyal in ways no one could have predicted. Among the aerials, they were whispered of as the Winglord’s Hounds—his protectors, his executioners if need be, trained and devoted with a fierceness that startled even Starscream.

Jetfire reconnected with him in a different way. No longer merely the scientist he had once sparred with in the lab, no longer the traitor who had chosen another path, but something gentler, older, truer. Their conversations stretched late into the night: about science, about Cybertron, about the ghosts of the lives they’d lost.

And one night, Jetfire’s restraint broke.

He pleaded—not with words of duty or oaths of loyalty, but with his hands trembling on Starscream’s shoulders, with optics searching him for permission, with a spark laid bare.

“Starscream,” his voice cracked with the weight of it, “I’ve wanted to tell you since the laboratories of Vos. Since before all of this. I—”

Starscream silenced him, not with scorn, not with mockery, but with an embrace. Claws tangled in plating, wings pressed together in fragile intimacy.

“I knew,” Starscream whispered against the seam of Jetfire’s helm. “I knew, and I… liked you too. Always.”

And that was enough.

The aerials called him the Winglord’s Lover, and Jetfire bore the title without shame, his place at Starscream’s side marked not only by affection but by memory, by the life they might have had if the war had never come.

Gradually, something even stranger took root. A new normal unfurled across Cybertron—not in riots or decrees, but in quiet, subtle alterations, like old programs reawakening from stasis. It was not only the aerials. Grounders, too, began to act differently, as if some ancient rhythm was rising from within them, rewriting the pathways that war had burned into their cores.

No excess. No tyranny. Just a quiet alignment, a cohesion that no one could explain.

Some whispered it was fate. Others murmured of divine interference, the hands of Primus or Unicron stirring unseen strings.

No one knew.

But all could feel it: Cybertron itself was rewriting.

And at the center of it, unwilling yet inescapable, stood Starscream.

Chapter 14

Ten long years passed.

Cybertron was not the same world that had burned beneath endless war. It breathed again. The wounds of ages past were rebuilt not only in steel and stone, but in spirit.

Hospitals shone like sanctuaries, their doors open to all, no matter the chassis or the scars of function. For the first time in millennia, a medic’s hand did not ask what badge you bore before touching your spark.

Schools and universities rose across the cities, their spires reaching into the living sky. Sparklings and younglings of all types filled the streets, voices bright, learning not to fight but to live. The old divisions between miner, scientist, soldier, flier dissolved like smoke, and where once there had been suspicion, now there was laughter.

The mines still existed, yes—but no longer did living hands dig themselves into collapse. Drones descended into the depths, their faceless labor sparing any bot the sentence of degradation.

Synthetic energon poured freely into every home, enough to sustain all, flavors legal and plentiful. Markets no longer whispered with contraband; they thrummed with color, trade, and music.

Cybertron had laws again—fair laws, written to honor life, not chain it.

And at the heart of this new age sat Starscream.

No longer commander, no longer seeker second to Megatron, no longer the outcast who clawed his way through manipulation and survival. He stood crowned in truth as Emperor of Cybertron. His throne was not gilded in fear, but in duty. And yet, he had not chosen it—never chosen. The world had turned to him, demanded him, forced him into the shape of legend.

Windblade and Optimus Prime stood as his advisors, one the voice of ancient tradition and the other the steadiness of the Primes. Together they tempered him, reminded him of balance when the weight of command threatened to fracture him.

There were no more emblems.

No Autobot red.
No Decepticon purple.
No banners of war.

The symbols had been melted down, erased from armor, dissolved into history. Factions were spoken of only in dusty texts, relics in museums where younglings whispered in disbelief that such a thing had ever existed.

Cybertron lived now in a fragile, blinding Utopia. Streets were wide and alive with the rhythm of wings and wheels, skyscrapers rose to accommodate every form, and for the first time, every bot had space.

And with the passing of time, memory itself betrayed them.

More and more bots awoke each cycle with fewer recollections of what had come before. The war blurred, then faded, then vanished entirely. For many, it was as though the centuries of bloodshed had been only a bad dream, or a story told by old fools.

The scars remained on the land, yes, but even those were vanishing beneath layers of reconstruction, hidden under gleaming metal and new stone.

Cybertron glowed alive again.

But beneath the perfection—behind the glittering towers, the fairness of law, the laughter of sparklings—there lingered something darker.

An echo.
A shadow.
The quiet suspicion that peace this absolute, this seamless, this unnatural… could not exist without cost.

And though Starscream wore his crown and played his part, deep in his spark he wondered every day if the utopia he now ruled was truly theirs… or if they had only stepped willingly into another kind of cage.

Crime had not vanished. It never could.

But it was no longer the plague that once devoured Cybertron. No more black-market wars for energon, no more faction lines fueling entire underground syndicates. Crime was reduced to the smaller cracks in society—bots desperate or foolish enough to test the limits of law.

And when they were caught, the process was not cruel.

The new police, forged not from soldiers but from peacekeepers, brought offenders in without brutality. They were judged swiftly and fairly, overseen by panels of bots from multiple backgrounds. No corrupted courts. No stacked decks.

The prisons—presidios—were not cages of rust and silence but institutions of reform. There were courses in engineering, arts, coding; programs of study and mentorship. Inmates learned trades, languages, sciences. For the first time in Cybertron’s long history, a sentence was not a death of potential but a chance to begin again.

And many did.

Bots who once ran illegal circuits now worked in hospitals. Former thieves opened energon shops. Even ex-gladiators found places as teachers, teaching self-defense to sparklings instead of killing in arenas.

It was not perfect. Nothing ever was. But it was more than they had ever hoped for.

Yet in the shadows, the old ghosts still stirred.

Megatron still lived.

Scarred, bitter, stripped of his army and throne, he was no longer the titan of revolution but a hunted fugitive. Still, he refused to vanish. His obsession with Starscream burned like poison in his core—how the seeker he had owned, broken, remade, now sat enthroned as Emperor.

Beside him, Shockwave endured, the cold scientist never abandoning logic even as their resources dwindled. With quiet patience, Shockwave built and calculated, seeking new recruits among the disillusioned and the bitter. New-birthed bots, some forged in secret labs, others radicalized with whispers of “truth” and “power.”

Together, they plotted.

Again and again, they tried to capture Emperor Starscream.

Again and again, they failed.

Every attempt collapsed under the weight of their dwindling influence. Every plan was crushed before it could bloom. And every time, the two of them fled into deeper shadow, wanted criminals with bounties that spread across the rebuilt planet.

Their names became warnings spoken to sparklings. Their faces became posters hung in cities—fugitives, relics of an age no one wanted to remember.

Yet for all the failures, for all the mockery, Megatron’s fury only deepened.

Because no matter how the world turned against him, no matter how the Decepticon symbol was erased from existence, Megatron could not forgive one truth.

Starscream had taken everything.

And Megatron would never stop trying to take it back.

Megatron’s rage had no end.

The galaxy seemed drunk, hypnotized by Starscream’s presence. To him, it was as though every bot had been blinded, stripped of memory, their processors rewritten with devotion for a tricolor winged ghost who should have been nothing more than his possession.

They cheered Starscream. They adored him. They obeyed him.

Even the Autobots, once fanatics of justice and councils, now bowed willingly. They did not protest that the Senate was gone, erased as if it had never existed. They did not question that the only law was the word of the Winglord-Emperor.

Starscream spoke, and Cybertron moved.

The so-called Herald, Windblade, stood at his right, whispering counsel with the certainty of someone touched by divine titans. Optimus Prime, the great Autobot leader, had lowered himself to the role of adviser, as if his legacy meant nothing compared to Starscream’s glow.

To Megatron, it was nothing less than blasphemy.

He stormed through the shattered hideout he and Shockwave called base, pacing like a caged predator, his fusion cannon trembling at his side with the heat of his fury.

“They forget!” he snarled, voice scraping like torn metal. “They forget everything we built, everything we bled for! They kneel to him—him!—as though he did not crawl from the mud of Yacon, trembling in the shadow of those who were greater than him!”

Shockwave did not flinch. The scientist stood at a console, his single red optic unblinking as he sifted through streams of data. His voice came calm, cold, devoid of emotion.

“They do not forget, Megatron. They are bound.”

Megatron whipped around, plating rattling, optics blazing. “Bound? Explain yourself, Shockwave!”

The scientist’s claw hovered above the glowing screen. “Winglord. The ancient legends describe their presence as irresistible. Not merely a title, not merely command of armies—but command of sparks. A Winglord’s will infects the collective consciousness of aerials first, then spreads. It is not persuasion. It is programming. Subtle. Inescapable. Starscream does not need to demand their loyalty. His existence compels it.”

Megatron stared, vents rasping in fury, disbelief curdling into dread. “You mean to say… this is not earned?”

Shockwave turned, and for the first time, his monotone carried a shade of gravity.

“It is innate. It is power older than factions, older than Primes. The planet responds to him. The people follow him because they cannot resist. You and I remember, Megatron, because we are… anomalies. But the others? They are his by default.”

The words struck Megatron deeper than any blade. For a moment he faltered, claws flexing as if grasping for a truth that slipped through them.

Starscream had not outplayed him. Starscream had not out-schemed him.

Starscream had been chosen.

And that was something Megatron could never be.

His roar shook the walls. “No! No destiny will decide this! I made him—he was mine, my creation, my weapon! He cannot surpass me!”

Shockwave tilted his head. “Yet he has.”

Megatron’s optics narrowed, burning. He slammed a fist into the wall, leaving molten dents in the alloy. He could taste the bitterness of defeat, choking him, corroding his spark. Yet in that same bitterness, a seed of something darker grew.

“If power bends the world to him…” Megatron’s voice dropped to a low growl, dangerous, unstable, “…then I will break the world before it bends to his will.”

Shockwave said nothing. His optic glowed brighter, recording every fluctuation in Megatron’s fury, every jagged thread of desperation.

The air between them thickened, poisoned by the birth of something terrible.

For if Starscream ruled by nature, then Megatron would rule by destruction.

And he would not stop until the Winglord was torn from his throne.

Megatron could not stand the irony of it.

His vision, his great revolution, reduced to ash. The very ideals he once preached—freedom, equality, a new Cybertron—were now paraded under the banner of Starscream’s reign, and worse: the people adored it. They adored him.

And so he and Shockwave gathered what remained. The unyielding, the broken, the anomalies who seemed unaffected by the Winglord’s natural pull. They struck in shadows, detonated sabotage along transport lines, whispered against the Emperor in dark alleys. They called themselves freedom fighters.

But to the world, they were terrorists.

Cybertron laughed at them. Arrests came swift, justice swifter. The Autobots-turned-Guardians of Starscream’s Empire hunted them down with precision. Aerials who once bowed to Megatron’s command now turned their weapons on him, answering only to the lilac gaze of their Winglord.

One by one, the conspirators were dragged away, shackled, stripped of arms and titles. Some spat until the end. Some broke quickly. All were cast into the reformation prisons—those vast citadels of steel and light that did not torture, did not kill, but rewrote.

Megatron sat behind bars, glaring with burning optics as, in the cells around him, his loyalists began to… change.

Programs were offered. Education. Reassignment. The chance to “find themselves” again. At first, they resisted, screaming loyalty to their warlord. But time gnawed at them. Time, and the insidious gentleness of Cybertron’s new empire.

A former warrior accepted study. A miner learned philosophy. A sniper began to sculpt. Piece by piece, the army that had once shaken the planet was swallowed, not by war, not by pain, but by peace.

It was a humiliation more complete than any battlefield loss.

Shockwave lasted longer. His logic resisted the soft corrosion of Starscream’s empire. He calculated, he theorized, he debated against reformers who came daily to his cell with datapads and questions. For centuries, he did not break.

But even logic bows to inevitability.

One cycle, Megatron saw it: Shockwave at the far end of the row, optic dim, claw cradling a datapad as he listened intently to a tutor half his age. The great scientist, his shadow, his accomplice, had accepted. He had surrendered to reform.

And when Shockwave walked free, reborn into a society that forgave him, Megatron felt something in his spark fracture.

He was the last. The only one who did not kneel, who did not bend, who refused to drink the sweet poison of Starscream’s world.

They called him dangerous. They called him irredeemable. They whispered “ancient warlord” as though he were a relic, too stubborn to update, too consumed by hatred to live in their paradise.

Megatron sat in his cell, massive frame hunched, hands shackled, optics glowing like embers in the dark.

He would not yield. Not to their programs. Not to their Emperor.

Not to the tricolor Winglord who had stolen the world that should have been his.

Chapter 15

The palace of Vos glowed like a jewel that night. Its tall spires shimmered under the artificial stars of Cybertron’s reborn sky, every panel humming with power, every corridor laced with silence that was more sacred than stillness. The Emperor’s home was more temple than fortress, though every mech who breathed in its halls knew its beauty hid fangs sharper than any blade.

Megatron slipped through it like a shadow torn from the past. His armor was battered, his energon-stained hands raw from the escape, but his hatred gave him direction. Hatred—and obsession.

The corridors seemed endless, shimmering silver veins pulsing with faint purple light, whispers of servos and quiet footsteps haunting him. He ignored it all. His mind carried only one image: lilac optics, silver wings, and a crown that did not belong.

When he saw him, he froze.

Starscream.

The mech walked with slow grace, long wings trailing the light like banners. Upon his helm rested a crown of gold inlaid with deep crimson stones that gleamed as though dipped in blood. A cloak of lilac velvet, embroidered with threads of silver, draped over his shoulders and swept the floor with each step. He spoke easily, lightly, to the attendants who walked a few steps behind him, discussing a conjunx ceremony with calmness that bordered on disarming.

“…something symbolic,” Starscream was saying, his voice lilting like music, “simple, honest, meant only to celebrate, not to conquer.” He laughed faintly, delicate but confident, and turned down the hall, completely unafraid, completely… different.

Megatron’s rage boiled over.

“You traitor!” His voice roared like a cannon through the vaulted corridor, making the attendants scatter in alarm. “I created you! Without me, you would have been nothing but a trembling scientist in Yacon! NOTHING!”

Starscream stopped walking. Slowly, deliberately, he turned. His lilac optics gleamed, calm and cutting, and for a moment Megatron faltered—for this was not the Starscream he remembered.

Then Megatron lunged.

Even unarmed, the gladiator was lethal. His fists were meteors, his strength a storm, and the walls themselves seemed to tremble as he threw himself toward the crowned figure.

But he never reached him.

The shadows peeled away from the very walls—silent, black-armored mechs whose presence had gone unnoticed until the instant they struck. Blades flashed. Energy restraints crackled.

Thundercracker and Skywarp were there in an instant, wings spread wide, optics blazing with the fury of hounds protecting their alpha.

The attack ended before it began.

Megatron was forced to the ground, his face pressed into the polished steel floor, servos pinned behind his back with restraints that burned at his armor. Dozens of weapons—blasters, blades, even the silent, humming halberds of the Emperor’s hidden guard—pointed at his chassis.

He struggled, snarled, spat energon, but he could not rise.

And above him, Starscream stood untouched. Regal. Crown glinting, cloak rippling, optics fixed upon him with a silence that was more terrifying than any scream.

The Emperor did not lift a weapon. He did not need to.

For the first time in countless vorns, Megatron realized: he was no longer the warlord. No longer the executioner. No longer the center of Cybertron’s future.

He was the intruder. The relic.

And Starscream—Winglord, Emperor, supreme—was untouchable.

Megatron strained against the binds, armor scraping against the polished floor, energon seeping from the corners of his mouth where the guards’ grips dug too tight. His vents rasped with fury. He expected Starscream to gloat with shrieking arrogance, to screech as he had once done on the Nemesis.

But the mech who stepped toward him was not that seeker.

Starscream’s cloak whispered against the ground as he moved, wings high and steady, crown glinting with cruel beauty. He knelt, impossibly slow, until his lips were close to Megatron’s audial sensor. His voice, when it came, was a whisper—soft as static, intimate as a spark-touch, poisonous as venom.

“You were right.”

Megatron froze. His vents stalled, rage colliding with disbelief.

Starscream’s lips curved, almost tender. “Power is everything. You knew it, you carved it into me, and now…” he let the pause linger, like a blade pressing against exposed wires, “…now I have it.”

He leaned closer, until the heat of his vents ghosted over Megatron’s cheek. His optics burned with lilac fire.

“I accepted it. I accepted my fate. I took the power that came with my wings, my voice, my spark. With me, Cybertron prospers. With me, my descendants will carry this order into eternity. And I—” his mouth twisted into something between smile and snarl, “—I will rule them all.”

Megatron’s struggling faltered. He felt the chains cut into his plating as he stilled, forced to listen.

“I will marry Jetfire,” Starscream continued, almost conversationally, as if describing a future already etched into the stars. “My first consort. Loyal, devoted, mine. After him will come Skywarp and Thundercracker, as it was always meant to be. And when I grow tired of the same faces, the same touches…” Starscream’s optics narrowed to a gleam, “I will take others. Optimus Prime, perhaps. Or any mech I find worthy of my favor. My power is endless. My pleasure—limitless.”

His wings arched higher, regal, cruel.

“You did this,” Starscream whispered, almost fond. “You created that part of me. The hunger, the ambition, the fire. And for that, Megatron, I thank you.”

His smile sharpened into something lethal.

He rose to his full height, cloak spilling like liquid shadow around him. With a flick of his taloned hand, he gestured to the Shadows and Hounds.

“Take him,” Starscream commanded. “Return him to his cell. Omega danger level. Do not allow him so much as a flicker of freedom again.”

The guards obeyed instantly, dragging Megatron up, shackled and bound, weapons pressed into every seam of his armor.

Starscream watched, smiling—not cruel, not kind, but absolute.

And in that smile, Megatron saw the truth.

His prison would not be walls and cells. It would be Starscream’s reign. A reign he could not break, a reign he could not survive. Every cycle would be a torment, every moment a reminder that the winged mech he once beat into the dirt now ruled supreme.

Hell was not death. Hell was living to see Starscream—untouchable, triumphant, and eternal.

Starscream turned away before Megatron was dragged from sight, his voice a silken echo through the hall:

“I will remain full. Supreme. Always.”

And Megatron, for the first time in countless vorns, understood despair.

And outside, Cybertron shone alive — whole again, rebuilt and thriving, united beneath the wings of its Emperor.

Starscream reigned, and nothing would ever undo him.