Eyeballing It

Flight was true freedom. Starscream had known many 'bots who had changed forms over the course of the war—because they'd been so badly injured it was safer, quicker, better to just transfer the spark in a new body and wait through the inevitable awkwardness until the person relearned how to move. Or because they had seen a gap they wanted to fill and were tough enough, smart enough to deserve the chance.

He, though, had never been tempted. He would never trade his wings and rockets—he'd been shot down a hundred times, mangled every limb and brace he had, but he'd rather have died than be transferred to a different form. Everyone knew that.

Because he was not surrendering the rush that was flying—the feel of the air so swift over his sleek foils it burned even his tough hide as it passed. The unbelievable lightness of his frame as the world tilted below him. He knew how to move in the air, and he didn't care who knew it. And it didn't need to be air. Spaceflight had its own joys, as the particle currents slammed into one and lit up the whole dark in a single incandescent instant that left one reeling but alive, alive, alive... The only thing comparable to that was the clash of a mid-air fight, of flying belly to belly with the opposition, shifting and clawing and falling, only to catch oneself in a burst of fire and heat, part, and come back to savage each other again.

Yes, flight was freedom—but not the cold, senseless freedom that some sought. No. Closed in his alt-mode, every sensor was awake to the faintest changes in the air around him, and when he dove down to hug the earth, he could feel it—feel it passing beneath him, as radar bounce and heat and mag-levels shifted and swelled. Sweet, sensuous freedom. Only flyers could love the earth like that.

But loving the earth did not mean he loved fighting ground-bound. Nothing good ever came of it. So when the first pain erupted in his face, Starscream had recoiled, impulse taking over as he'd sought to find height, find air. His insect-enemies had followed, and he'd heard one calling, then:

"Aim for their eyes!"

And it was then that it struck him, and despite the pain, he laughed. Take out their eyes? Their eyes, as if to see were so very much! Insect-eyes had insect minds—their eyes! He spared a moment to admire Prime's team, that had apparently failed to inform that one never bothered with the eyes for their own sake. For he could feel their heat and movement—fainter than he'd like, wetware was notoriously hard to detect, but low-speed, up close—no problem.

With a hiss and a snarl, he swatted one aside, strafed the others, and a toss of his head sent the two dangling like fools off their little harpoon smashing into a building, as he balanced, perched on the edge of a roof and waited... waited...

Nothing. Job done. It hurt like sunfire, but Starscream pulled that toy pinprick out and tossed it aside, then jet jumped up, transformed, and lit his engines off. Sensors opened to the beautiful chaos of a dying city's intricate airways, and he was free...

A/N: So yeah, watched Dark of the Moon, and as the battle scenes unfolded, my chorus of 'bots was going, "Um, that ain't the way I remember fighting this war. What is it with you and the anthropomorphic assumptions?"