Happy (slightly late) Halloween! BD

I don't think this one needs much foreword... Blaster's a telepath in this one, though I think you would have figured that out... and everything else is revealed or left purposefully mysterious.

Enjoy!

It was a normal night on monitor duty. Come 2 a.m., Blaster was at his station, bobbing to some tunes on his internal radio while still keeping an idle optic on the monitors. He swept their base's firewalls with his mind every so often for any signs of attack. It was a quiet night, with his cassettes all settled on or around him in a light recharge, ready for action but taking advantage of the momentary lack thereof, and Blaster was enjoying himself as much as he could while on the monitor duty graveyard shift.

The door slid open and he glanced up, smiling at the silvery white femme that stepped through.

"Morning, Star," he greeted easily. "Welcome back. Mission go well?"

Star hummed vaguely, looking very distant, and Blaster didn't bother trying to get any more out of her. Star got herself lost inside her own head a lot, and it usually took Optimus, Prowl, Jazz, or Ratchet to snap her out of it if they really needed her. Usually she would come back on her own once she'd finished whatever she was doing in there, and it was best just to leave her be.

She sat down at a console and started working on it and Blaster went back to watching the monitors, content for once to not talk and enjoy the peace.

It was about a breem later, with nothing discernable changing, that Blaster began to feel uneasy. Steeljaw woke up a klik after, looking disgruntled, and the feline stretched before pacing under the console a bit. The metallic cat settled at his carrier's pedes again, trying to go back into standby. Blaster shifted, sweeping his mind over the firewalls and his optics over the monitors, trying to pinpoint the unease, but nothing had changed. Everything was exactly as it had been when he'd started his shift, and Star was still working away at the console over there.

He glanced over to see if she'd noticed anything, but she was staring fixedly at her screen, hands hovering over the controls. He went back to his own console, frowning. Steeljaw growled faintly and hauled himself up to start pacing under the bank of computers again, scenting the air and swiveling his ears every direction he was capable of. Steeljaw's unease only compounded his and he checked everything again. There was absolutely nothing wrong, as far as he could tell. It didn't calm his instincts in the least, though. Something had to be up. He would just have to stay alert until he figured it out.

Steeljaw slunk back to his carrier's pedes and crouched there, tail and ears twitching, a low, barely discernable growl vibrating his frame. None of his other cassettes seemed to be disturbed, but Steeljaw had long ago set himself apart as having much more acute sensors than his brothers. He was getting more agitated by the second, and Blaster was not far behind.

After another few moments of no change on the monitors or firewalls, the communications expert turned to the only other bot in the room again. "Star, have you noticed anything…"

He trailed off to see the femme sitting there, back straight and wings rigid, but arms limp and hands in her lap. Her helm was cocked to one side as if she was listening to something closely and there was something wrong with her. Blaster took a closer look, turning his mind to her, and realized that she was making some sort of sound—a disturbance that rippled through the air, her magnetic field, and her mental aura. It was a distinctly discordant sort of vibration. Blaster had never sensed anything like it. It made him feel kind of queasy.

He shook Rewind and Eject awake, setting them down to finish booting up, and slowly approached the femme. Steeljaw moved to go with him, and then whined and retreated back to his brothers, watching with ears pricked and a cautious note in his mental aura. He gestured the mech cassettes into silence when they started to ask what was wrong.

"Star?" Blaster asked cautiously, reaching out to touch her shoulder. He recoiled when the disturbance in her field and aura surged at him, stumbling back a few steps. When he looked again the femme had turned her head to stare at him, keeping it cocked at a slightly weird angle.

He froze when he met her gaze, a deeply instinctual fear gripping him. Her optics were a little wider than usual, blank, emotionless—soulless even—and the rest of her face mirrored them. It was unnatural and terrifying and Blaster couldn't move.

"Do you hear the singing?" she whispered, her voice a faint hiss in the silence of the room.

Blaster silently shook his helm, trying to regain control of himself. "Steeljaw," he muttered hoarsely. "Steeljaw, call Ratchet. And Prime."

He could sense Rewind and Eject's total stillness behind him, and he couldn't tell if Steeljaw had done as ordered because Star stood up, empty optics still fixed on him, seeming to suck the power out of his chassis and freeze his processor in its tracks. He didn't know what was wrong with the femme, but something definitely was. The discordant vibration pushed at him again, making his tanks churn and his spark pulse in panic. The Nova took a step closer and he lurched back.

"Do you hear the singing?" she asked, a little louder, and there was something wrong with her voice too, some sort of high pitch overlaying it that made it sound as unnatural as her optics looked.

"I-I-I don't hear anything," he answered shakily, vents spinning rapidly to cool his panic ridden chassis.

Star stopped short and straightened suddenly. "The voices sing." She said. "Don't you hear them? They're singing."

Blaster shook his head again, optics wide as the disturbance only got stronger and his hands began to shake. He sent a desperate query to Steeljaw, but all he got back was a chaotic message that screamed of fear and a terrible noise. He scrambled for his own internal comm, but nobody was answering him. It was like they were all completely out of range.

"They sing the song of the dead long gone,
That only those trained can hear.
And the whole world trembles
When the song shivers by,
But only the telepaths know why." Star said suddenly, her eerie voice taking on a sing-song quality.

"What?" Blaster whispered, his voice trembling as he tried to recall where he'd heard that before, tried to name the instinctual fear seizing his chassis and scrambled to get ahold of someone, anyone at this point.

"Listen," she whispered back, an empty smile twitching across her face. "They're singing."

A memory clicked in his frantic mind and horror pooled in his frame like congealed energon. "Nonononono," he muttered, backing away when Star advanced again, lifting his arms to ward her off. His cassettes scrambled back behind him, their panicked auras only feeding his own. The vibration pushed at him, threatening his mental walls, trying to tear them down and take him. He threw up every defense he had, flailing to find anything that could protect him from what had possessed Star, and in a blind panic turned to the very last resort he had.

He shrieked a terrified call for help across their bond and under other circumstances would have been amused and smug at the flash of shock and surprise that his brother jolted back at him. Right now, though, he shoved the situation at his brother, trying to keep the panic from crossing with it.

The Ether has her, don't let it take me with her Soundwave, please don't let it take me with her! He wailed, frightened as he hadn't been since they were younglings and their creators had first warned them of the horrifying place among the cosmos that all telepaths simply called The Ether; the place among the stars that whispered out dark things to any telepath foolish enough to listen, that would suck them in and break them completely if they weren't careful to stay away. It had been so long, he'd almost forgotten those horror stories.

How he wished they'd only been stories.

Under other circumstances, feeling Soundwave's presence in his mind would have thrown him into a firewall-engaging panic, but now it only brought relief. Soundwave would know what to do. Soundwave would protect him from The Ether, same as he had when they were little and Blaster was too afraid to recharge because he just knew the voices were going to come and whisper his mind away from him. His older brother had stood watch for him then; he would do so now.

Don't let her touch you! His brother ordered sharply, his mental voice calm despite its urgency. He still couldn't hide the alarm that swelled up beneath it, though.

Blaster dove for the door, his cassettes clinging to his frame like terrified sparklings, but to his horror it was locked, and it denied his password.

Come sing with us, Blaster, Star's voice whispered through the cracks in his firewalls, a hundred others whispering after hers in a cacophony of insidiousness.

A flash of anger crossed their mental link as his brother retaliated, throwing up his own defenses alongside Blaster's flagging ones and reaching out around them to slam into Star's. She paused her physical advance again, a wide, disturbed grin spreading across her face.

Come sing with us, Soundwave, She teased, and they could both sense the madness pervading her mind.

Blaster frantically searched for the crack in their defenses that was allowing her to slip in, but Soundwave found it first and plugged it. Almost instantly, another crack wedged open and the voices slipped through again like a poison, sending bolts of panic and terror through Blaster. Soundwave worked hard to calm him, sealing the cracks as they came, but without coherent help from Blaster it was a losing battle.

Vent, there. Send Steeljaw for help. He ordered, and Blaster snatched his feline from where he was hissing and spitting at the possessed femme to shove him into the indicated vent.

"Find somebody! Ratchet, or Prime!" he told his oldest cassette, his voice desperate and terrified. Steeljaw turned tail and ran.

Shoot her.

Any other situation and Blaster would have at least hesitated. Instead he fumbled for his gun and discharged three shots at the Nova, his aim atrociously shaky. She was only a few feet away, though. He hit his mark every time.

The shots pushed her back, but she straightened up just as quickly, seemingly unaffected, and all the damage they did was to scorch her armor.

Blaster's mind seized as the femme reached out to him, grinning her disturbed grin, and not even Soundwave's bellowed order to RUN! directly into his head could get him to move. His walls and Soundwave's shredded like rice paper when she touched his chest, and the voices were inside his head, their whisperings drowning him, pulling his mind apart at the seams. Soundwave cut the connection between them, and not even Blaster's shriek of anguish could be heard above the cackling voices of The Ether.

Star cocked her helm, still grinning. We are The Ether, Blaster. She said.

~0~

When the Autobots found him a mere two breems later he was collapsed on the floor, optics wide and staring soullessly, an unnatural half-smile plastered across his face that was reflected on every single one of his equally limp cassettes. When Ratchet crouched down next to him, shining a light into his unresponsive optics and trying to get him to say something, the mech jerked to look at him, freezing every single bot in the room.

"Do you hear the singing?" he asked, his voice straining at a hundred frequencies that weren't his own.

When Ratchet moved, Blaster's gaze didn't follow him. Those were the last words any of them heard him say, and the last time anyone saw him move. Nothing Ratchet, Wheeljack, or Perceptor could do helped the mech in any way.

Blaster simply wasn't there anymore.

When Star got back from her solo mission she tried to help, working at the problem every way she could, but not even she could get a response out of the mech. Eventually, they put him into suspended animation with the hope that one day they would be able to sort out the problem and bring him back. Until then…

Star stood and stared at the small, boxy apparatus deep in the med-bay that now housed Blaster's and his cassette's sparks and other vital components. She gave a small sigh and placed a hand on it.

"Sorry about this, Blaster. They don't often take control, but there are quite a few of them and I can't keep them in check all the time." She told the box rather matter-of-factly. "And you know, I can't have anybody figuring it out, and you'd certainly be able to tell them a thing or two. I'd hate to have to take drastic measures to keep you quiet. It's better this way."

Can we go get Soundwave?

A smile flitted over the femme's face as she gave the SA box a final pat and turned to leave the storage room.

I don't see why not. She answered the mental voice, ignoring the many others seething beneath it. The new ones were always the loudest and the most coherent. Need to level the playing field, after all.

She slipped out of the Autobot base and took to the skies, easily honing in on the last telepath's signal and slipping just as easily into the Decepticon base.

Soundwave looked up from his graveyard monitor duty shift, glancing around the dark room. It was still empty, as it had been since he'd started his shift, but something felt off. A klik later, Ravage started awake, looking disgruntled, and paced under the console a bit before trying to settle at his master's pedes again. Soundwave scanned the monitors, checked the firewalls… even though he knew the firewalls would be in no danger. Not since…

He glanced back sharply at Ravage's growl and started to his feet when he found wide, burningly bright, and completely empty optics staring at him out of the darkness. The Nova slid out of the shadows without seeming to move at all, the light of the monitors falling over her disturbed grin and casting her silvery white frame into shifting, pearly shades of fear and malice.

"Do you hear the singing?" she whispered.

A/N: (There may be more to this. we'll see.)