As the MECH soldiers surrounded him, it began to dawn on Starscream that he might have screwed up. Again.
He should have tried to defend himself, but his mind had gone curiously blank. What could he do? He'd failed, and when a MECH soldier raised a shock-gun towards him, all Starscream could do was wait for the inevitable consequences.
But before he even had time to flinch, one of the humans jumped on the MECH soldier and yanked their arm away. The MECH soldier shouted and knocked the human- it was unmasked, like Silas- to the ground.
As the other MECH soldiers were distracted by the fight, Starscream felt his mind go into overdrive. With a swift kick, he swept several of the MECH soldiers aside and while they tried to sort themselves out, he scooped up the unmasked human in one hand and ran into the forest. He paused only when he'd gotten several meters away, and fired a missile towards the group.
Without waiting to see if he'd hit his target Starscream transformed, tossing the human into his cockpit as he did, and flew off.
He kept going until he'd put a good distance between himself and MECH. Once he'd been flying for several minutes without being shot at, Starscream slowed down and tried to process what he'd done.
He had a human in his cockpit. A tiny, oozing, furless ape thing and a former member of the group that had just tried to betray him. After he'd taught them about Cybertronian biology and given them a sample of his energon and had even helped them locate more and regaled them with tales of his exploits and defended their pathetic little project from Autobots, they'd tried to rip him open for spare parts!
He stewed in the injustice of it all for a few more moments before he remembered why he'd picked up the organic in his cockpit in the first place. It had tried to stop that MECH soldier from shooting Starscream, even though it had been unarmed and outnumbered. And Starscream had no idea why. What did he have that this human considered worth such a risk?
Was it even still alive? He couldn't feel it moving around, which was less of a relief when he realized the organic inside him might be dead.
The idea disgusted Starscream enough that he decided to stop and land on a nearby cliff. He transformed back into his robot mode, landing with a thud on the hard ground. After taking a moment to scan the skies, just in case MECH had sent helicopters after him, he opened his cockpit and gingerly extracted the human from inside himself.
The human was pale in colouration, with white hair, light skin, and a white shirt that was too large for it. It wore pants and shoes that looked like those the MECH soldiers had been wearing, but Starscream began to wonder if it really was one of them. He'd seen a few of the MECH soldiers escorting the human about, but it hadn't said or done anything until it attacked the soldier that had threatened him. Before that moment Starscream hadn't given the human much thought, as it had seemed neither dangerous nor useful.
Currently, the human was regarding him with a worryingly blank look.
"You," Starscream spat out. "Are you dead, fleshling?"
"No," the human said, sounding indifferent about it.
Well that was a start. "Why did you attack that other human?"
The human seemed to consider this. "He was going to hurt you," it eventually said, speaking in the same indifferent tone.
The human's answer was... both unexpected, and unhelpful. "Yes, I knew that much! Why did you try to stop him?" He added, "Not that I needed help from a fleshling."
The human regarded him blankly (Primus, were all humans this stupid looking up close?) and eventually said, "I don't know."
Starscream would have been quite happy to say he didn't have much experience with humans, but even he knew the average human was more sapient than this. Had its neural net been damaged when that MECH soldier hit it?
He held the creature closer to his face. Starscream wasn't sure if its leg was supposed to be bent like that, there was a noticeable rip in its shirt, and- ugh! Its head was bleeding and the red ooze was mixed in with its hair. Starscream thrust his hand away from his face, and as the human made no effort to resist the momentum, it rolled off of his hand. For a single alarming moment he thought it was about to die, but he managed to catch it with his other hand.
"You- you pathetic wretch!" Starscream said. "Have you no sense of self-preservation?"
"I don't know," the human said.
Unsure of what else to do, Starscream glared at the human. "What are you?"
"...Mytho. My name is Mytho." He continued to give Starscream a blank stare. "Silas called you Starscream."
"Correct. Were you one of his troops?"
"Not really." Mytho hesitated, then added, "He said I was... the result of an experiment."
Starscream's eyebrows raised. "And this experiment was...?"
"I don't know."
"Did it have anything to do with that mockery of a Cybertronian they were trying to build?"
"I don't know."
"Do you know anything?"
"Probably."
Starscream let out an irritated sigh. "You are the most idiotic human I have ever had the displeasure of speaking to."
"Do you speak to a lot of humans?"
Starscream's eyes narrowed, but Mytho still seemed indifferent. "Thankfully, I don't," Starscream snapped. "Now stop saying 'I don't know' when I ask you a question!"
"Okay."
"Do you know what MECH was planning on doing with you?"
"I..." Mytho shrugged.
"How long have you been with them?"
"About a month."
"And what happened in that month?"
Mytho leaned his head back and stared at the nighttime sky. "I woke up somewhere cold and dark. The ground was hard. Then I saw some moving lights. They were being held by men in masks. The MECH soldiers. Silas was with them, and he said that... the experiment had worked. He asked if I could understand him, and when I said yes he kept asking more questions."
He looked back at Starscream. "They did tests on me with these strange machines. And they had a doctor cut me open so they could look inside me. There were always soldiers guarding me, so they could make sure I ate and slept and didn't run away. When they weren't paying attention to me, they were experimenting with more of their machines. And then you were there."
"Mm. Well, consider my rescue as thanks for your good-willed, if entirely unnecessary, attempt to help me." Starscream held Mytho up to his face again, ignoring his disgust at the red ooze in Mytho's hair. "If MECH was so interested in you, perhaps you're not as useless as you seem."
Mytho said nothing.
"Let me make you an offer. I will discover what MECH intended to do with you and keep you from getting yourself killed. And in return you will obey me unquestioningly."
Mytho continued to say nothing.
"Do we have an understanding, fleshling?"
"...Sure."
"Good. Just remember that if you fail to uphold your end of the bargain, your punishment shall be swift and merciless." He brought his hand down to his cockpit and opened it up. "You may stay in there for now, but do not touch anything."
"I can't."
"Why not? I assure you, I'm no more thrilled at the idea than you are!"
"My leg won't move."
"...Couldn't you have mentioned that earlier?!"
"Probably."
"Oh," Starscream muttered, "I can tell this is going to be fun."