Author's note: I do not own any of the characters listed in this fanfic!

Reviews welcome! Enjoy!

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Astrotrain grumbled as his shuttle alt-mode was forced off its trajectory yet again by the bots waring inside his passenger hold. He was very close to just cutting his loses and chucking the remaining Decepticons out into space like they had just done with Megatron and the rest of the wounded. That wasn't really what he had meant by lighten the load. There were Functional flyers onboard after all, but hey whatever worked he supposed.

However, it was amazing really how quickly slag hits the fan when Megatron wasn't around. As soon as he had been dropped out of the shuttle by Starscream a mad power battle had begun. Everyone it seemed wanted to be next in line for the silver mech's position.

Well, everyone but Astrotrain. He wasn't much of a leader, never had been. Sure he did have some moments of leadership. Like when he and Blitzwing had doublecrossed Starscream and trapped both him and Megatron underground. But in reality he hadn't wanted much out of that situation.

Astrotrain was more just going along with what the other triple changer wanted to do than anything else. Which would definitely explain why he merely messed around with some trains. As opposed to Blitzwing who had had actual Decepticons under his command and had some idea as to what he was doing in terms of leadership.

No, Astrotrain was content to let whoever won this skirmish rule. He just wished they'd fight it out when they actually got back to solid ground. It was hard enough navigating with all the random junk floating around up here without tons of weight suddenly being thrown at his inner walls. And it hurt.

He was having a miniature panic attack when the Constructicons went to form Devastator. A mech that size would have surely been much too large to actually fit in his hold, and would have turn a hole right through the shuttle. So it was with more than a little relief he felt when Rumble and Frenzy had managed to stop them from doing so. The dents from their hammers however were aching even now. And the ach was intensified every time someone stepped on them. Which, with everyone being thrown around, was often.

He was pulled out of his musings as Scrapper went barreling into his controlpanel, jarring the manual steering unit forward and causing the shuttle to nosedive. The sudden angle caused all of the other Deceptions to fly forward and pile down in his cockpit.

"MOVE!MOVE! GET OFF THE FRAGGING STEERING CONTROL!" Astrotrain practically screeched as the plummeted further off course and straight towards a large ominous looking asteroid.

Scrapper, unfortunately, had been rendered unconscious by whoever had hit him into the cockpit and didn't look like he was waking up anytime soon. Not that it would have mattered much if he was awake the way everyone was crumpled against one another, he wouldn't have been able to move. Or hear the shuttle for that matter, not with how much screaming was now going on.

Well this was just great! Astrotrain was going to die because some stupid bunch of slagheads decided they were going dook it out to see who the next leader was inside of their cramped and moving transport! He tried desperately to override the controls like he would have been able to do if he was in his original cybertronian form. This however wasn't his original form. It was his Earth shuttle disguise. Agro the panel was directly connected to every fin and booster in his mechanical body and he could do nothing as they charged closer and closer to their doom.

Starscream, who had landed on top of Scrapper, reached forward and flicked the switch controlling Astrotrain's gravity simulators. This made every passenger weightless and slammed anyone that wasn't holding onto something into the back wall of the shuttle including the limp Constructicon. He then grabbed hold of the steering mechanism and pulled towards himself and to the left, effectively slowing Astrotrain and dodging the oncoming space rock.

Astrotrain took over after the other flyer let go and turned towards everyone else who were now huddled by the back wall. Everyone was silent for a moment as Astrotrain stabilized himself and righted how far off target they had gotten. Then Starscream smirked, which was never good, and spoke up,

"You see! This is why I am the best choice as leader!" he screeched, "While you microbrains were cowering and doing all of nothing I was busy saving your sorry chasseuses!"

No one spoke as the seeker continued to list just why he was the new leader, nor did they question further at the proclamation. Astrotrain sighed inwardly.

Well, it looked like the Decepticons had a new leader.

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Thanks for reading guys! I always thought it was funny how Astrotrain never spoke up during the fight for leadership in the way back to Cybertron so I decided to write a little something on what he was thinking about.

Hope you guys enjoyed!

~Adam