Chapter Text
“Skyfire research log; stellar cycle six thousand four hundred and fifty, vorn five, breem… fifteen, I think. Where to start with this one…” The mech’s holomatter sighed, slumped over in his own private corner of the high-raise they’d all taken sanctuary within. This high up the only rooms were empty offices and conference hubs, perfect for hiding people who really shouldn’t have been there. One side of the wall was all windows, strictly off-limits for anyone who didn’t want to immediately give themselves away to whoever was waiting for them outside. So Skyfire took refuge, both from the harsh daylight streaming in and from the reality of how trapped they were, under a desk as he told his story into the microphone clipped to his holomatter’s collar. At this point, it was the only physical link he had left to his real body.
“Well,” he gulped, working some energy into the speakers embedded in his holoform’s throat, “we set off for Earth about two vorns ago, since that’s where Bumblebee decided to hold his wedding. Starscream’s trine and his siblings, Windblade, Flamewar, Soundwave, Thunderblast… oh, and the Coneheads.” Though Dirge was the only one of the three that could join their most recent ill-fated excursion, with the rest of his trine left behind in the ship (AKA Skyfire’s body).
“After Cybertron’s… well, complete and total destruction, there’s not many good starships left around so everyone just piled into my alt mode. As they usually do.” He didn’t hide how much he longed to be with his alt mode again, or anywhere else, instead of sitting there talking to his databanks stranded in his broken body beyond the walls. “Sadly, my quantum core malfunctioned before we reached the halfway point. Obviously, without it we can’t do any hyperspace jumps, which will make getting anywhere in less than a thousand stellars almost impossible. Luckily, there was a planet nearby.” This planet, in fact. The very same one he’d suggested they take a look around.
“Amishena, the natives call it. Humans, like the ones on Earth. Some of them seem to have taken the interstellar tech we shared with them and just left home for somewhere else, though these ones seemed to have developed some kind of phobia to just about any technology. Anyway. They had a part in one of their museums that could work as a replacement drive until we got closer to the Cybertronian refugee zones. Good news is that our holomatter generators let us beam right into the building and we found what we needed without any issue. The bad news…” He sighed again, hissing through unfamiliar denta as he gripped his microphone.
“Well, I’ll need to give an itemised list of all that… number 1; Amishena’s organic layout suddenly betrayed us, and my alt mode is currently trapped under a rock fall outside. Which… admittedly, might have been my fault for keeping our frames hidden near a mountain. We’ve lost comms with the other Coneheads and just about everyone else’s bodies were damaged inside mine, so much so that their holo generators couldn’t switch off. But, of course, Starscream’s frame wasn’t touched at all, and of course he was threatening to beam away with Thrust and Ramjet to ‘go get help’. Though, really it was more like ‘leave us all behind’…”
Starscream was a selfish glitch at the best of times, true, but he wasn’t entirely consumed by the tunnel vision of his own ego. No-one, not even him at the very heights of his recklessness, was quite stupid enough to risk a holomatter being captured, not when it could wreak so much havoc on its patron bot. That, and Windblade asked him nicely enough to not be such an aft since there wasn’t much the Coneheads could even do to assist without working generators of their own. And, shockingly, Starscream actually listened to her. Maybe she had something to blackmail him with… it would have explained a lot about those two.
“Anyway,” Skyfire shook himself, “that’s not all. Number 2; we-“
“If you’re done talking to yourself over there, Skyfire,” Starscream’s voice cut right through the atmosphere like a scalpel through protoform, “we could use some help in making sure we all get out of this fragging place alive .”
Skyfire closed his eyes- not optics, eyes, he had to remind himself, and he wished he could have just kept them closed. But eventually they had to open, to face Starscream’s own holomatter waiting expectantly for him to finish, so that his ranting and raving would have Skyfire’s undivided attention.
“End of log.” Skyfire pocketed the microphone and prayed that his databanks weren’t too damaged along with his body, not before he had a chance to backup all his recordings. They’d survived the Great War, the fall of Cybertron, the coming of Unicron, but would they survive being around Starscream and his trine…? With the way his luck was going, Skyfire would be grateful for just having his spark able to be salvaged from his frame.
“So tell me, Starscream,” the scientist said as he approached the other mech, “how are you going to save us all this time?” It was only half sarcastic, cause Skyfire really was desperate enough for an escape to put some faith in the fellow Seeker. Cause Starscream, again, wasn’t entirely dumbed down by his own narcissism. In some cases, so long as he was left by himself, he could even be pretty damn smart.
Starscream gave a trademark sneer that somehow translated perfectly between his normal and human body- really, the two were identical when it came to expressions.
“I do hope you know that this is mostly your fault anyway,” he growled, pointing a blunt finger like it was a jagged claw at Skyfire. “If you hadn’t needed that fragging part in the first place, if you’d just run an inventory check before we left like I told you to do-“
“First of all,” Skyfire cut in, careful to keep his voice down unlike Starscream, “I have my mode inspected more often that you go and see a medic- and considering how often you get yourself hurt, that’s really saying something. Second, if you all,” he pointed past Starscream to indicate the rest of their sorry group, including those currently off looking for an escape route, “had thought to get hold of a proper starcraft instead of just expecting me to be fully functional every day of the stellar-!"
Starscream rolled his eyes and swatted at the air. "Come off it, Skyfire, you should be used to giving everyone free rides by now. What, were you expecting us to just fly all the way to Earth with our wings? We're good fliers, but we're not that good." It was rare that he ever admitted to a gap in his ego, even if it was just for the sake of an argument.
“I could be that good with enough energon,” Skywarp protested from the other side of the space.
"Well, even if I agreed with you,” Skyfire said to Starscream, “it’s not like I can just pack up a quantum core in my subspace whenever I feel like it!"
Starscream let out a rich chuckle, a sound that wouldn’t have fit inside any real human’s body. “Is that so? But you’re happy enough dragging around a whole cargo bay of desiccators and spectrographs and fume closets just in case you need them?”
Skyfire rolled his eyes, just as he would constantly be rolling his optics around a mech like this one. “I’m a scientist, Starscream,” he reminded him with the last of his patience already running on thin ice. “It’s what I was made for, and it’s what I do best.” Pit, Starscream himself should have been able to remember what it was like to hypothesise and theorise and analyse from his own scientific background. But it seemed like the Great War had managed to corrupt everyone’s databanks in some way.
“Ah, I see,” Starscream drawled, “so we just need to get you to a laboratory, and you’ll have us all rescued in a nanoklick.”
Skyfire bit his lip, before his temper made him say something they’d both regret. Primus, he knew that they were all supposed to be friends now that Unicron was gone, but Starscream had the magical ability of bringing out the worst of just about anyone he was around (except maybe Windblade, who seemed to have the reverse effect of bringing out the best in only Starscream. Very strange).
“Even if I had the greatest minds of Crystal City with me,” Skyfire sighed, “they wouldn’t be able to save any of us from your bad decisions-” Before he even finished the scold, Starscream was already putting on his special brand of theatrics.
“My bad decisions?! Excuse me, but who was it among us that pointed out this very building for us to hide within? Who was it that covered for everyone when we had to flee in the first place? Who was it that so selflessly volunteered to return to your bloated chassis so we could-?!”
“Starscream!” Windblade cut in from across the space, silencing him even though her voice was barely audible over his own. The Seeker looked across at the femme, as if surprised to find her still there with them and not away with the others trying to find a way out. Or, maybe he was just surprised to hear her at all. He looked over at her, and her eyes hardened like they were made of tempered glass (much like her optics) as she looked back at him. Something silent and indecipherable passed between them in a nanoklick, and then Starscream’s lingering threat devolved into ragged curses as he turned away to go brood with his holomatter’s arms crossed over its chest. Skyfire watched that blip in his temper with utter confusion, wondering what kind of black magic Windblade knew that could get Starscream of all mechs to stop from throwing a tantrum.
Whatever it was that those two had between them, Windblade didn’t try and chase after him. It was Thundercracker, ever the poor diplomat, who took it upon himself to go and pull Starscream back before he wandered off and got himself hurt.
"Just… simmer down, Screamer,” Thundercracker said, catching up to Starscream and holding his arms down by his side like he was a misbehaving sparkling. “Remember what Rung said in our therapy sessions. Try and see the positive side…. ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’, after all.”
Starscream grumbled as he shrugged free of Thunder’s grip. “I hate clouds. I hate it when you say that. I hate it when that fragging therapist says it. And I especially hate it when anyone says it and there’s not a single fragging ‘silver lining’ in sight!”
On the other side of the room, the side without windows exposing them to the threat lurking below outside, Skywarp’s holomatter avatar couldn’t help but giggle. Even if they were all trapped on a planet full of people who would have them melted down for scrap metal, at least he was still able to enjoy himself at Starscream’s expense.
“All I’m saying is,” Thundercracker sighed, following Starscream as he paced back and forth, “things aren’t all bad. At least we get to try out our new holomatters before we hit Earth.”
“As unoriginal as they all are,” Windblade muttered, not quite quiet enough to escape Starscream’s notice (perhaps his audios were specifically tuned to her voice, so he could hear it no matter how much it was dampened).
“And just what is that supposed to mean?” he demanded, sauntering towards Windblade and bending at the waist to look down at her shorter avatar. Whatever she’d done to make him stop from going off on Skyfire clearly didn’t extend to herself- not that she seemed very concerned. If anything, she looked quite proud of herself for getting Starscream so close to her so easily.
“Hey, yeah, what the Pit are you getting at?” Skywarp chimed in, replicating Starscream’s pose.
“What she means is…” Thundercracker trailed off, before realising that Windblade was probably insulting them. “Actually, wait, yeah, what is that supposed to mean?”
Windblade looked to each mech in turn as she rolled her eyes.
"I mean that the only differences between you three are the colors on your jackets and your hairstyles. You’re practically triplets!” She pointed to each of them as they suddenly scrutinised each other. ”Just cause you’re all Seekers doesn’t mean you can’t be a little creative with your avatars, especially when you’re supposed to be going to a friend’s wedding! Then again, I’m not really surprised. You’re all practically joined at the spark, after all.”
“Are not!” all three of them said in unison, before looking at each other with newfound scowls. Windblade didn’t even try to hide her smug smile. Skyfire recognised the tactic; she was trying to bring some levity to a hopeless situation. Better to be distracted by petty squabbles than to fall head-first into despair.
“Well, at least my avatar doesn’t look like a tacky lawn ornament!” Starscream retorted.
“At least mine’s has the best hair!” Skywarp insisted.
“At least mine’s has the nicest eyes!” Thundercracker declared.
Of course, they’d all spoken at the same time once again. And, once again. Windblade rolled her eyes at them all. Skyfire wondered if this is how the trine’s therapy sessions usually went, like trying to psychoanalyse a three-headed hydra. But then figured that he’d better step in, before Windblade started a new civil war.
“Look, Thundercracker’s right, it really isn’t as bad as it looks.” He got all their eyes off of Windblade, but then found himself at a loss. He blinked, wishing he was closer to his processing unit so there wasn’t so much lag between his thoughts. Eventually, he thought of something that could at least take the edge off the situation.
“At least we were lucky that Amishena wasn’t that far from our route,” he pointed out. “And that they had a quantum core in the first place." Even a society that had rejected technology still liked to keep some of it on display, even if it was just a warning against straying away from what was natural to them. He supposed the Cybertronian equivalent would have been shunning anything that wasn’t ore and metal.
Starscream brought a scowl to his face immediately, an old and familiar friend of his. "That may be, but it was your idea in the first place to take us through this backwater part of the galaxy. Where the only fragging planet less than a light year away is infested with earthlings who all hate technology-”
“And who live in Black Block Consortia territory!” Skywarp helpfully added, as if that wasn’t the worst part of all.
“Yes, thank you for that…” Starscream’s sarcasm was so heavy that it practically made his holoform sag from its weight. Or maybe that was just the burden of being around Skywarp. Sure, Skyfire had brought them to the planet itself (and, by consequence, to the very edge of the Consortia), but he was the one who got them all trapped here thanks to his stairway mishap...
“While you’re at it, Warp,” Thundercracker stated, all his attempts at peacekeeping now evaporating into nothing, “why don’t you tell us all about how you tripped on the outside stairs and caught the Consortia’s attention in the first place? I’m sure that’d make a great addition to Skyfire’s log.”
It would have, but Skyfire had been rudely interrupted before he could even mention it. Not that it was worth bringing that up and riling Starscream up even more- Pit, it was hard enough remembering them all piled up on those stairs, a holomatter traffic jam in front of those hundreds of humans and the Consortia troops patrolling around them. All thanks to Skywarp’s clumsiness, they had no choice but to run for their lives to any place that looked safe. The high-rise they’d found themselves in wouldn’t have been anyone’s first choice (a fact that Starscream even admitted as he made a beeline for it), but at least it was empty like the museum was.
And here they all still were, a breem later, still waiting for death by Consortia or boredom or just by them all strangling each other. Skywarp would likely be the first to go, and he knew it very well from how his holomatter started sweating.
“H-hey, how was I supposed to know it was a festival day?” he stammered. “Or that the Black Block had anything to do with it… jeesh, I wouldn’t have thought those guys even knew how to smile.”
The festival going on outside, of whatever kind of things the Amishena natives celebrated, explained why the museum was so deserted in the first place. Which Skywarp would have known all about, if he’d done his recon job properly.
“But they do know how to wipe us all off the face of the universe,” Thundercracker reminded him. “Which is precisely what they’re going to do when they find us in here.”
“They saw us running to here, didn’t they?” Windblade asked, rubbing at her painted cheeks like she just needed to keep her hands busy.
“I don’t know,” Thundercracker sighed. “None of us will know, not until they start blasting the doors down. We don’t even know if they can detect holomatter…” The Consortia shunned mechanicals so much that it was hard to tell how much they knew about their enemies, if they were usually too disgusted to even do autopsies on them. But after Cybertron’s dealings with Earth, they must have known that Cybertronians at least had the ability to make human avatars. And avatars that appeared out of nowhere, wearing clothes that didn’t match at all with the natives’, would only have one obvious explanation…
“Well, thanks to Skywarp’s efforts,” Starscream growled with another glare for his trinemate, “we still look as suspicious as we’d be while walking around with Autobot and Decepticon emblems all over ourselves."
“Reminder, Starscream; that outfit idea was rejected.”
Soundwave’s voice coming from the doorway was shocking for two reasons; one, because its robotic quality did not suit the organic shell it came from at all; and two, because no-one expected the recon team to return so soon. Behind him stood Sunstorm, Flamewar and Slipstream. Dirge and Thunderblast weren’t anywhere to be seen- but most of the mechs in the room took that latter absence as a blessing.
“Er… right, Soundwave,” Starscream said uneasily, as the stoic mech moved his holoform with a fluid gracefulness that only made his voice sound even more bizarre. “For good reason, too. Precisely so that incidents like this wouldn’t happen!” He muttered mostly to himself since Soundwave wasn’t even listening. The comm’s chief simply seated himself at a chair, like he intended to stay there for the rest of his life, while the other three avatars slinked into the room.
“Well?” Thundercracker asked Slipstream. “Any luck?”
Slipstream shook her head, tucking a loose strand of hair back behind her ear. “Other than the door we came through, this place seems completely locked down. Anyone not outside for the festival is holed up in their apartments. Or they’re one of the few left hanging around the corridors, looking about as suspect as the rest of us.”
“One way in, one way out,” Flamewar confirmed, leaning against the wall just out of sight of the nearest windowpane. “Unless we wanna try and draw more attention by making a hole in one of these walls.” She thumped her fist against the wall at her back, and the surface sounded hollow- not at all like the brick and cement most human architecture seemed to favour.
“It’d be one thing if our holoforms could fly,” Skyfire mused, wistfully imagining how easy it would be to just leap from the window ahead of him and soar over to where his alt mode lay with its broken quantum core and holo generator. A generator that would need to be fixed, or replaced… or tweaked.
“Although… would it be possible to make one fly?” He felt something in his face start glowing as he held his chin, a thousand equations and software permutations now running through his holoform’s processor and making it overheat already- even if they weren’t mechanical, they were subject to most of the same vulnerabilities of a normal Cybertronian body. Just one look at Sunstorm was proof of that- even his holoform couldn’t quite dampen the nuclear output from his frame.
Though, speaking of him, he seemed to relish the heat he radiated (in Sunstorm’s own words, it was ‘Primus’ pure light shining through him in any form he took’, but everyone knew it was because he stuck a nuclear reactor right next to his holomatter generator). In such small bodies, with such close quarters, it was much easier for him to torment Starscream with it.
“There were some windows on the ground floor,” Sunstorm suggested to his brother, leaning in so that his warmth would quickly make anyone shy away. “Perhaps you could crack them for us with your enchanting voice, Starscream.”
Starscream curled his lip and leaned back, not quite giving in to stepping back from his brother. “’Enchanting voice’…” he scoffed. “Says the one who’ll be singing at the wedding.”
Sunstorm beamed even brighter somehow, his dark skin now looking flushed alongside Starscream’s similar tone. “Well, who else would they choose for such an honor? I’m second only to the bride herself when it comes to my rendition of the Praxian Anthem.”
Skyfire felt himself bracing his audios for Sunstorm to start belting it out, like he’d done so whenever he felt like the journey to Earth was getting too quiet for him. But thankfully Starscream, acting truly selflessly for the first time since they’d been stranded, clamped his hand over his brother’s mouth before he could even think of opening it.
“Yes, yes, we’re all very well aware of that. No need to bore us another one of your fragging concerts,” Starscream said pointedly, just as Slipstream swatted across the back of his head. Sunstorm followed close behind, though he had the front of his head smacked as Slipstream walked past the two of them.
“Will you two shut up?” she hissed. “There won’t even be a wedding if we don’t get the Pit out of here!”
Starscream grumbled as he rubbed his forehead, before rolling his eyes. “I suppose you’re right… Bumblebee wouldn’t dare start the ceremony without his best man, after all.” At that, his scowl instantly became a proud grin.
‘And here we go again,’ Skyfire thought hopelessly. Whenever Starscream had an advantage, or a threat, or an offer over someone, he usually always saved it for the sweetest moment. But ever since Bumblebee had made that honourable offer of ‘best man’ to him, the Seeker had taken every opportunity he could to brag about it. Primus, it was like he took the title of ‘best’ in the most literal sense.
“What’s the matter, Skyfire?” Starscream drawled. “Jealous that Bumblebee obviously values my presence at his big day over anyone else’s?”
Skyfire snorted as he rolled his eyes. “Not as jealous as you are of him.”
Starscream’s smug grin faltered as his teeth clenched together. “And why, pray tell, would I be jealous of Bumblebee?”
“Well,” Skyfire shrugged, “cause he found a femme willing to marry him. I imagine that’s something you can only dream about.”
“You cheeky…! I’ll have you know that-!” But then Starscream silenced himself before he could let Skyfire know anything, clamping his hand tight over his own mouth just as he’d done with Sunstorm. At first Skyfire thought Windblade had flicked some sort of hidden switch again to calm him down (or maybe to shut him up before he said too much…?), but then he realised everyone else had gone silent too. And then he heard it.
Knock knock.
Someone at the door. The only door, the only way in and out of the room. One of their own wouldn’t need to knock. Which meant who was waiting on the other side was a stranger… an Amishenan? Or an entire Black Block platoon? Everyone was frozen, not knowing how to confront either of those very real possibilities.
Then the door opened, and everyone prepared to take their last breaths in their imposter bodies-
“Hellooooo! Look who IIIIII found after he got lost!”
-before releasing it all at once, a hush of furious relief.
“What the Pit, Thunderblast?!” Flamewar scolded, abandoning her place at the wall to put her hands on her hips. “Don’t fragging scare us like that!”
“And what were you doing looking for Dirge in the first place?!” Slipstream accused with a hiss.
Thunderblast, with her arms around Dirge’s neck, looked at the audience of glares with confusion, before eventually deciding that she was offended by them. “Well, jeez, excuse me for being raised with manners. Someone around here has to have some…”
“Would you just get in here already?” Starscream spat, dragging Thunderblast- and by extension Dirge- in by her wrist and then slamming the door shut behind them. “Primus, I don’t even know why you’re here in the first place…”
Thunderblast pouted as she fixed the cuff of her holoform’s shirt, giving herself a thorough wipe down with her hands as she rolled her eyes. "Well, duh, why wouldn’t I be here, Screamer? I’m one of Rosanna’s best friends, after all. Not to mention, her head bridesmaid.”
Just as Starscream was wincing from his most hated nickname, he then let out a barely-stifled snort. "She chose you as her bridesmaid? Dear Primus, every day I find more reasons to pray for that poor girl…" He abandoned Thunderblast to her own incredulous expression with a turn of his heel and a shake of his head, which was a surprisingly merciful treatment for the femme. But Skywarp had noticed his trinemate’s sudden good humour, and then caught it like it was an infection as he whirled on Thunderblast in Starscream’s place.
“No way, you? She chose YOU?” Skywarp tried to muffle his laugh by covering his mouth with his hand, but the only thing that worked was to try and compress his wild giggles into snorts. Even Thundercracker had to hide a smile.
Thunderblast was not nearly as amused.
“Stop laughing! What’s so funny about that? I’m the only one Rosie trusted with anything when she was Flip Sides- I even gave her her first secret identity, you know.”
“And what was that of, dare I ask?” Skywarp wheezed. “A waitress in Macadams? A stripper? Cause, hey, you’ve got the body for it if I do say so myself!” He was laughing too hard with Starscream to come up with any more options.
“Don’t be silly, Skywarp,” Starscream chuckled from a distance, “they’d never hire the likes of her!”
Thunderblast’s scowl could have made pure energon ore go sour. “Only because they couldn’t possibly afford me,” she spat, turning herself away from the two Seekers in disgust. “I only lend my company to those who deserve it, when they deserve it-“ She walked around them while they were still laughing at her expense, and her eyes glittered when she came behind to Starscream.
“Isn’t that right, Screamer?” Her head hovered over his shoulder, and from Skyfire’s understanding of where her hand was she seemed to pinch his butt- very hard, from how Starscream jumped away from her with a yelp. His smile was dead, replaced with a clenched frown that struggled to hold back his snarls.
“Why you-! How dare you-?! Windblade, tell her to behave herself!” He pointed at the tittering nautical femme while pleading to Windblade with his eyes.
“And just how am I supposed to do that, Starscream?” Windblade asked. Everyone knew that there was no-one, no-one in that room, maybe even no-one left in the galaxy, who could get Thunderblast to do anything she didn’t feel like doing at any given moment.
“I don’t know!” Starscream admitted, throwing his arms out in exasperation. “But you’re a femme, you know how she works! Figure something out, for Primus’ sakes…!”
Despite the danger that already existed outside the building, the inside of the room became a minefield in its own right. And Starscream had just sauntered right on top of a live bomb. Windblade’s eye twitched as the other glared like the end of a fizzling charge at him, and none of the other mechs in the room dared to say anything (even Soundwave seemed to lessen the volume of his vents).
“For your own good,” she said slowly, “and because I know you don’t really mean it, I’m going to ignore how utterly ignorant that statement was.”
“Ditto,” Slipstream growled, with Flamewar standing behind her with crossed arms.
Starscream blinked at the femmes turned on him, but wisely said nothing more for the few seconds it took for them to let him go from their gazes. He didn’t seem to realise how narrowly he’d avoided an all-out war against him as he rolled his eyes and squared his shoulders.
“Well, Screamer,” Thunderblast tutted as she appeared next to him, “if that’s your attitude towards girls, then it’s no wonder we never worked out.”
Starscream first flinched away from her, though the rest of him seemed to freeze just a nanoklick later. “Wh… what on Cybertron are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on now!” Thunderblast cooed. You know exactly what I mean, don’t you, Screamer…?”
It must have been the shock or disgust of such an implication that made Starscream take so long to realise what it even was. And when he did, he clenched his jaw just before it let loose a repulsed howl.
“I… the…! You’re nothing but a damned troublemaker, you know that? You and I both know that there was never anything to work out in the first place, you simpering-!”
“Now now,” Thundercracker said quietly, appearing at the other side of his trinemate, “didn’t Rung tell you to work on your temper, Starscream?”
“To Pit with Rung!” the Seeker shouted. “And to Pit with the lot of you!” He shoved both Thunders aside as he stamped to the door, flinging it open and storming out. His footfalls echoed behind him down the corridor, drawing everyone’s attention to his dramatic exit.
“…Was it something I said?” Thunderblast asked with a smile, like she was proud of finding his breaking point.
“This is the Battle of Tesarus Square all over again,” Slipstream mumbled bitterly, not at all shocked by the outburst.
“Should we go get him, TC?” Skywarp asked Thundercracker quietly, as if Starscream could still hear them and would come marching back for a target to take his anger out on. The blue mech curled his lip, and Skyfire could only guess that he was weighing up the consequences of bringing back an obviously unstable Starscream vs letting him cool off- or go and get himself in even more trouble. With all their therapy sessions together, they would have known the best course of action usually, but this was a novel situation for just about everyone. Eventually it was Windblade who approached to make the decision for the two mechs.
“Leave him for now. He’ll be back,” she promised- or maybe it was a threat, a warning that they all should be prepared for his return. Either way, the remaining Seekers were happy enough to defer to her as they only moved forward to close the door.
Well, that was one way to deal with Starscream, Skyfire figured- just let him burn himself out. He just hoped his mood lasted long enough for the rest of them to think of a way out of this mess without any distractions.
“Why don’t we go up to the roof?” Thundercracker suggested, valiantly ignoring how his trine was slowly falling apart all over again. “At least there we can get a look of the perimeter and see if there even is anyone outside.”
“And we could see how far away Skyfire’s body is, maybe even try to signal to Thrust and Ramjet,” Windblade added on. “If it’s visible from there, at least.” She looked to the scientist as if he could confirm it for her, but with the state his frame was in he could barely even sense his own spark from this range.
“B-but…” Dirge’s eyes swelled in fear. “We’ll be exposed! For all we know, they’ve got a hundred snipers in position just waiting for one of our heads to pop up-!”
“Dirge,” Slipstream interrupted with a hand on his shoulder, “you’re hyperventilating again.”
“Am I? Am I really?” He asked through the second-long gaps that his frantic breaths allowed him. “Oh, Primus, I’m gonna go in stasis, or whatever holoforms do-“
“You are not,” Slipstream insisted, now taking firm hold of both shoulders and pulling him around so he faced her. “Just look at me, and breathe normally.”
Dirge gulped and nodded as he looked at her, and slowly he regained control of his artificial lungs. As his breaths quietened, the sound of Skywarp snickering nearby could be heard.
“What’s so funny, Skywarp?” Slipstream accused, looking away from Dirge now that she didn’t need to be an anchor for him.
“Oh, nothing,” Skywarp dismissed with a shrug. “Just that you two seem to treat each other like Windblade and Starscream do.”
Slipstream blinked, and Windblade shook her head as if to rouse herself from a daydream at the sound of her name.
“And what d’you mean by that?” Windblade asked, planting her hands on her hips as she confronted the purple mech.
“I think you know exactly what I mean.” Skywarp grinned and wiggled his eyebrows at her, which only served to confuse the likes of Skyfire even more. Primus, just what was going on between Windblade and Starscream that no-one was talking about?! Whatever it was, whatever Skywarp was trying to get at, Windblade didn’t approve of it.
“I think you don’t know your own trine nearly as well as you think you do,” she hissed as she leaned into him. “Hence why you all ended up with Rung to try and fix that.”
Skywarp’s smug grin suddenly fell, and he opened his mouth only for mute stutters to come out at first. He eventually coaxed them into words with his muffled outrage. “Why don’t you just stay out of things that are none of your business, when you clearly don’t know what the frag you’re talking about?”
Windblade only smirked at his indignation. “Maybe it’s more of my business than you think,” she said quietly, like a whisper from her vents. “And maybe I know more about Starscream than you’d think. Then again, you think you’re already so clever that you don’t even know just how much you don’t know.”
Skywarp didn’t scowl anymore. Instead his optics gained a new light that he regarded the femme with, like he’d just learned one of those tantalising things he didn’t know before.
“Leave him, Windblade,” Slipstream sighed, steering the other femme away from Skywarp as he kept staring after her. “Being an idiot is his hobby. Dirge, you feeling any better?”
The Conehead nodded with a weary gulp. “Yeah… a little. Just regretting ever coming along in the first place.”
“Don’t say that,” Slipstream scolded. “Where else were you gonna go, huh? This is just the last hurdle before we get to Earth. Before we can finally leave the Decepticons behind. That’s why we’re here, right? Just think of getting back to your trine… okay?” She met his eyes and wouldn’t let go of them until he at least nodded.
“Okay… I will,” Dirge said. “I-I’ll try, at least.” He even managed a smile for her, and kept it up until she looked away.
First the mystery of Windblade and Starscream, now Slipstream and Dirge… just what had been going on around Cybertron, before its destruction, that Skyfire had never noticed before?
“What about you, Thundercracker?” Flamewar asked the poor blue Seeker, one of the very few in that room not completely distracted by family squabbles, as she leaned on his shoulder. “What’re you hoping for on Earth? You got put on guard duty at another ‘Con prison over there? Or are you just tagging along for Bumblebee’s bachelor party?”
Thundercracker scowled down at her, physically pulling away like his EM field was trying to repel her own. “I’m the ringbearer, actually,” he muttered, clearly as much of a fan as her as Starscream was of Thunderblast (who was still in the middle of the two Seekers’ pointless bickering).
“Huh.” Flamewar snorted. “A ladykiller like you, I’d have thought you’d be allergic to weddings.”
“Only when it has the likes of you in attendance, Flamewar. Excuse me.” He turned away from her and sulked off before she could free herself from his shoulder, but as she lost balance Skywarp swooped in to help her stay upright.
“Damn, rejected by the big blue bore…” He tutted in disapproval after his trinemate. “Well, since he’s not interested, how about I do the honor of keeping you entertained when we hit Earth?” He flashed her what he must have thought was a winning smile, but to Skyfire it just looked like he was showing them to a medic for inspection. For a second it looked like Flamewar was actually about to humor him… but her smile in return was tight and pitying.
"Sorry, Warpy, but I'm not into purple. Besides, not every woman likes a guy who puts his plug in every socket he sees.” She winked like he would know exactly what she meant, and then floated away in the opposite direction of Thundercracker, back to her place on the wall.
Skywarp hissed in a breath and dramatically clutched over where his sparkchamber would have been on his normal body.
"Ouch… just pull my spark right out of my chest, why don’t you?" Then he heard Thundercracker starting to laugh, and he tore his mockingly wistful gaze away from Flamewar to glare at the blue mech. Because of course he was laughing over Skywarp’s rejection, even as Skywarp turned it into the joke that it was all along. There was nothing else to laugh at, trapped in this high rise with the Black Block Consortia surely closing in with every passing minute.
And yet the only people who even seemed aware of that were Slipstream, Dirge, Windblade, and Skyfire himself. Starscream was ranting at his brother about his dating choices, Thunderblast was relishing the fight over her, Skywarp was about to go and start a fight with Thundercracker, and Soundwave-
Oh, Skyfire had almost completely forgotten about him. When he sat so still and silent, it was easy to overlook him even as a human. Which was what made him so valuable to the likes of Megatron a lifetime ago.
“Well, Soundwave?” he asked the seated mech. “You got any ideas for us?” Of all the bots stuck together in that room, he must have been the most qualified for saving them. He was a first officer, after all. A war legend, an immortal as far as Cybertron’s history was concerned… and yet when he turned his head to face Skyfire, he just slowly shook it.
“Current possibility of survival: 5%,” he helpfully informed them all, still in that sterile monotone that not even his holoform’s speaker could cure.
“What if Starscream wasn’t here?” Slipstream asked, rhetorical to herself but Soundwave of course took it as a serious query.
“Hypothetical possibility of survival… 8%,” he decided. So even if the source of all their squabbles wasn’t there, even if Starscream had gone ahead and just left them behind like he’d threatened to, they’d still end up likely dead.
“Well, we’re doomed,” Dirge stated, with an admirable amount of resignation. “We’re all fragging doomed.”
Slipstream rolled her optics as she surveyed the room with all its own isolated micro-dramas going on. “With a team like this, I could’ve told you that as soon as we left.”
“Not so much a team,” Skyfire observed, with his eyes on Thundercracker and Skywarp bickering over their lady problems, Flamewar and Thunderblast snickering together, Sunstorm and Soundwave both sitting as stoic and unhelpful as each other. “More like a family.”
A very loose-knit, currently very fragged family. And minus one- or, in Soundwave’s words, minus 3%- of what they should have been. With nothing else to do and no-one at each other’s throats anymore, Skyfire figured he should probably go and retrieve Starscream before he inevitably found a way to hurt himself.