I wanted to get this one in as fast as I could, so I typed about 2/3rds of it today. If it feels a bit rushed, that's my explanation for why.

The chapter title is a playoff of the Trent Reznor soundtrack piece 'Hidden In Snow', which, again, comes from the TGWTDT soundtrack (You're going to find that this soundtrack is easily inspirable!). Since their is no snow where Starscream currently is, I decided to change the title around. The play on the word Silver, replacing Snow, refers to Starscream himself. It's kind of a symbolic meaning where we don't know what may really on the Seeker's mind.

You should also take note that Starscream's encounter with Star Wars was inspired by the Transformers IDW comic, For All Mankind (which, for some odd reason, a lot of people detested. I don't see why; I liked it). The sequence where Thundercracker is stranded in a deserted city for months and resorts to endlessly watching TV greatly inspired the sequence in my story as well!

'Hidden In Snow'. I HIGHLY recommend listening to this while reading this section! ( watch?v=WQk1U-VOM4)


Chapter VI

Hidden in Silver

The portal closed up behind Arcee once she had entered the base. Ratchet turned around from the computer unit and gave her a sort of both welcome and unwelcome, a common expression of his.

"I take it you got Jack home safely?", the medic enquired.

Arcee looked at him and returned a blunt reply, "Yes. We got to chatting for a while, and I lost track of time." She lied: she was perfectly aware of time, but just didn't give a scrap about it.

The femme then realized, 'What if he asks what we were talking? What do I say?' She didn't have to worry any further when the medic gave a silent snort of acknowledgement and went back to his workstation.

Arcee looked around the base and saw that it was vacant. It was just her and Ratchet.

"Have Bulkhead and Bumblebee reported in yet?", she asked.

"Bumblebee left before you beat him here. He will be here any minute. Bulkhead just left from Miko's house. He said he wanted to leave earlier, but Miko kept pestering on and on about him taking her to a place a bit off ways from here- San Francisco- for some sort of event-"

"The 'Flowers of Evil' tour?", Arcee quickly interjected.

Ratchet's mouth dropped in shock of the femme's psychic prediction. He stood there open-mouthed for a moment, then spoke. "…Actually, I believe it was called the 'Flowers of Mischief', but…"

"Jack told me that Miko couldn't stop talking about it at their school." She remember here conversation with Jack earlier this afternoon.

"…Right.", the medic responded.

"What about Optimus?" Arcee almost forgot about the team's leader.

"He is in his quarters. He's been back there for quite some time. When walked past him, was just sitting on his berth and…thinking."

Maybe he was contemplating the facts of Starscream that have come up from the past couple days. This might be good, because Arcee needed to speak with him about that damned Seeker.

"Do you think he would mind if I bugged him?", she asked. "I need to discuss a rather important and private issue with him."

Ratchet kept his optics and servos at work whilst answering gently, "You know what he's like, Arcee. He could be holding a rock five times the size of him above his head and he would still hold a durable conversation in the process."

"Noted.", she responded, and walked toward the Prime's quarters.

The femme navigated through the extensive hall, taking a left at the T-bone intersection. The right side corridor led to a giant training facility filled with exercise paraphernalia, an armory with extra shielding and ammunitions for the team, an energon storage room, a laboratory for energon processing and Ratchet's superfluous medical research, an infirmary section, and an spare chamber, used for additional storage. To the right corridor were berth rooms for every member of Team Prime.

Arcee slowly traveled down the long hall, passing everyone's rooms on the way: Bulkhead, left; Bumblebee, right; her own, left; Ratchet, left; and finally, Optimus, right. She reached the end of the hallway to find his door wide open. He was still sitting on his berth, optics closed, deep in thought, with slow intakes and exhales of breath. This was the first time, after seeing him in vorns of war and combat, that Arcee saw him to be so peaceful.

His tranquility, apparently, gave him extrasensory powers, because he felt the femme's presence in his room.

"Is there something you need, Arcee?"

She confidently strode to the Prime's side and sat right down next to him with an assured look.

"Optimus…do you remember what you told me yesterday about my further interactions with Starscream should I ever come across him again?"

The Prime looked down at his smaller comrade with a serious but heartening expression. "Yes. And…?", he waited for a response.

Arcee smiled up at him. "…And I think I've got a suggestion."


He checked his internal clock. 26 kliks he's been here, staring wide-eyed at the moving projections in front of him.

And yet….these projections weren't going anywhere: they felt like they weren't leading to any critical point, or educating him about the human history, or…or…anything essential!

Is this what these creatures do in all or most of their time? Generating pointless collections of photographs in motion set to rhythmic music and ambience? How pitiful….However, he realized that he was being hypocritical, because he found himself…..fascinated…by these moving pictures. Pointless, yes, but…fascinating as well.

Surely the humans must do something greater than these rather meaningless diversions. Perhaps some more productive workings; military enforcement; political headship; remedial study; historical archivism; Pit, even bartending work at an Engex hostelry! However, because of Starscream's external and internal gashes from yesterday's incident, a few of which have miraculously healed overtime, he couldn't roam the planet and explore further details among the inhabitants. For now, the Seeker was condemned to assessing the lower-class sciences.

No…no. Condemned was to harsh a word. He was more or less…situated here against his wishes. Even with the valueless entertainment be presented to him.

Just then, Starscream idea formed in his mind: 'Maybe I'm being much to analytical and eager to absorb data from this. Maybe this isn't supposed to be educational. Just…more or less an…an experience!

He drew himself higher from the hill and closer to the screen with a more open mind. He felt as if he were going to enjoy every moment of it.


The accustomed flash of green shone on Arcee as she drove straight through the groundbridge to the last set of coordinates before Jack's house: the mines where she had last ran into Starscream. Her back felt very laden with the rather heavy-sized pack of cargo strapped to her backside.

She didn't even stop to investigate the outside of the cave while the bridge up behind her. Instead, she rocketed down the nearly half-mile long corridor, making the known turn to the right at the split section, and towards the once energon-filled chamber to the Seeker's temporary base, hoping that he might still be there.

::You sure this is a good idea, Arcee?::, she heard the cantankerous medic's voice com-link her while she was driving.

The femme com-linked him back, ::Optimus gave it the green light, so yes, Ratchet, I'm quite positive. You know you can't argue with Prime!::

He paused over the link. ::…Affirmative…:: And with that, the medic cut off the connection.

Arcee continued to ride on and on until she found the entrance to the room of her eventful encounter. She slowed down and made the turn into the chamber, which was now entirely stripped of energon crystals. The barrier she had built for Starscream had fallen down, as expected. The crystal rations that she had given to him were already a third of the way depleted, but, much to her surprise, there was no sign of the Seeker.

At least until she looked down. The femme recognized the Con's rather feminine-like heel-shaped pedeprints in the ground, leaving a trail that, unfortunately for Arcee, led all the way back outside.

She com-linked the Prime to alert him of the Seeker's absence.

::Optimus. Starscream has left the cave, but just recently. I'm going to leave and see if I can find any traces of where he might have gone. He couldn't have went far.::

The leader's unmistakable deep, booming voice took over her receptors. ::Understood, Arcee. Return to base when you are finished.::

And with the link severed. The Autobot fast-tracked into a 180 and zipped her way back to the cave entrance. The Seeker's pedeprints led to outside, a few more taking outdoors, and then suddenly disappeared. He must have transformed to his F-16 jet mode and took flight…which meant he really hasn't gone far due to his immense injuries.

Arcee caught sight of a road just a klik away. Maybe she could find Starscream more easily this way. She pushed her accelerators to the max, zoomed through the semi-dense forest, and bowed sharply onto the street.

As the search went on, the femme thought about all the possible scenarios that could happen should she actually come across the Seeker. Some of them ranged from him cowering down in fear and beg for mercy (the most unlikely), to him knocking her unconscious, dragging her down to his lair, and mutilating her body into multiple fragments (the most likely).

But, alas, she was overreacting. Considering her last encounter with Starscream, things might turn for the best. And she made herself a pact to try and be more optimistic.

As if fate had decided to frag around with Arcee, she had remembered her dream- no, vision- no, nightmare- about Cliffjumper's demise at the hands of the wicked Decepticon.

'Calm yourself, 'Cee', she told herself. 'It was only a dream. It might not have even happened that way...maybe it was even worse!

And there was her pessimism taking over her self-esteem again.

Time flew by for quite a while before she drove by what looked like a giant wall to the left of the road, pulling of to the side and staring in its direction for a short bit. It looked like a drive-in. Jack had told her all about one aspect of the human culture's diversities: cinematography. Humans would take cameras, much like ones used on Cybertron, and record other humans performing fabrications on servo-built production sets. The filmed shots would then undergo through different process such as editing, mixing, soundtrack scoring, and computer-made visuals. Once complete, the finished project would become reproduced and sent all over the globe and presented at places called theaters, or sometimes to drive-ins like this one, to which other humans would pay to go to a session. These creations were known as motion pictures, and there were literally billions of them!

They never had anything like that on Cybertron. Of course, on her home planet, they had live newsfeeds that would broadcast on vast televisions across the planet, and the closest thing they had to 'motion pictures' were video documentaries of the history of Iacon, some of which were discovered to be false or made-up.

Earth had documentaries, as well; most of the pictures made here, however, were made more for entertainment and experience purposes. Arcee had seen a few of them herself. While some of them made her shake her head in discontent…she couldn't help but stand in awe of the very perception of the art. Humans truly were ascetically intelligent beings.

Some of the films (a shortened term for the custom) made her think otherwise.

The femme took a look at the drive-in's adjoining sign and saw that it was showing Star Wars: a film she had heard of before that first opened 34 stellar-cycles, or earth years, depending what organism you are. It was one of the most if not the most popular motion picture. Because of this, it was often re-released every year or so. Jack, Raf, and Miko had shown it to her of TV once. Personally, it became her favorite. Even if the storyline bears a suspiciously uncanny similarity to the current Cybertronian war going on.

Unfortunately, Arcee didn't have time for sitting around. She still need to find the Seeker.

At that moment, she needed to look no further. The femme saw two rather eerie crimson red lights spouting from the forest that lay behind the drive-in, like something out of a horror film, a genre that was quite widespread among this generation. The lights reminded her of Starscream.

Reminded her….that it was Starscream!

Instinct hit Arcee like a sucker punch, because the next thing she knew, she tore off down the road and made her way to the next left turn at another street. She wasn't about to let a cluster of innocent bystanders be blasted to smithereens.

She found a side street half a mile ahead and twisted herself in its direction. About a quarter of a mile down that road, she flung herself off-road and plummeted deep down toward the space behind the Seeker so that she could surprise him with a sneak attack.

When Arcee reached the bottom of the ravine, she skidded to a halt, sleekly transforming herself into her regular bipedal form. The cargo that rested atop her chassis was now tied to herself backside, right above the waist. It was much lighter now that she shifted into a larger scale. She looked to her left and up the semi-steep hill. The sight of sharp, silver stilettos, the same shape as the ones from the pedeprints, caught the Autobot femme's optics. Her optics slowly stared up to glance at his femme-like heels, up to his legs, his thighs, his aft, all the way up to his sleek wings. Arcee took it back: his pedes weren't femme-like….his entire lower body was.

She quietly changed her servos into cannons and prepared to alert Starscream of her presence. However, she froze. A realization formed in her mind.

'Why is he not attacking?'

If the Seeker hasn't initiated violence yet, then chances are…he wasn't going to.

Then…..why was he here?

Arcee lowered her guns and shifted them back into servos and decided to abandon her earlier strategy. She devised a new one: observation.

The Autobot femme sidestep her way right, keeping her optics on the unpredictable Seeker, and traveled up the hill in that direction. She went up and up, turning a little more to the right with each step she took, until she bumped into a tree that was perfect for scaling and surveillance. Her optics never left Starscream, but had to momentarily break the chain in order to climb up. It was a ginormous tree with thick branches; it looked like the only tree big enough to hold her up without snapping apart.

At last, she reached the top, and now could focus her ever-so-vigilant optics back on the Seeker.

The first thing that she noticed was his optics: they seemed different. Whenever she saw them, even last time, his crimson optics always looked threatening and malicious, or sometimes pitiable and terrified. But this time…

…This time, they looked alluring.

Alluring. Like….like he was truly enjoying what was being given to him. And, for the first time ever…he wasn't, or at least didn't look, blood-hungry or ready to tear something asunder.

When Arcee encountered Starscream in the cave, he seemed different, yes. But he was still as pathetic as he usually was. Here, he actually was different. He wasn't trying to be evil or faking despair to gain sympathy, but rather just soaking in the wonder of his surroundings.

The Autobot looked at the giant screen. It was halfway through the film, as it was showing the sequences on the Death Star. Even in one sitting, Arcee managed to absorb every detail of something that, on Cybertron, would be considered meaningless.

She looked back at Starscream, whose optics were still glued in the direction of the projection. It looked like he was never going to leave until the end of the production credits. Every film had them, and most humans at this time would exit the theater during the credits, since the credits usually took up 5 to 10 kliks of the film. According to the Seeker's expressions, which showed much awe and naivety, he was going to stay until the screen went black.

Arcee decided that Starscream was no longer a threat. At least for the moment.

She patched in her com-link. ::Ratchet. Have a groundbridge from the previous coordinates ready for when I reached the vicinity.::

There was a short pause on the medic's end of the link before he responded. ::Coordinates are set, Arcee. I will open it once you are near.::

::End Link::

The femme slowly scaled back down the tree and went back to the previous location behind the Seeker. She almost forgot why she came in the first place.

She stopped at the bottom of the valley and looked back up at Starscream, wondering whether or not she should disturb him of his cinematic experience. She unstrapped the package on her waist and held it while she thought on it.

'No.', she finally answered. 'I leave the Seeker to his preoccupation.'

Arcee bent down and left the package down at the bottom foot of the hill. Surely he would have to come back down in order to avoid human contact.

Once the Autobot got back on the highway, she slowed down at where she first swerved onto the road from the cave, and veered back onto that path. The proximity sensors on the base's mainframe must have detected her, because the portal opened up at the end of the trail where she first came from.

Arcee zipped through and then decelerated when she was riding on the bridge. She reached the end of the bridge to find herself back at Omega One, safe and sound, where she caught sight of the Prime at the corridor entrance.

She transformed back into bipedal form and raised her thumb digit to her leader.

"Delivery Successful."

Optimus looked down at her with a stern but welcoming look. "And what was the outcome?", he asked.

Arcee looked up at him. "I never got one."

The Prime raised an eyebrow in confusion.

"It's a long story.", the femme responded. "I'll tell you about it in a minute. I need to hit the washracks: my chassis is a little muddy from the cave dust."

She made her way down the hall and made a left.

Arcee hope she had made the right choice. Eventually, she'd know.


Apparently, the projection must be at its end; another form of texts began appearing in the form of human names, along with what must be human occupations. At this time, all the cars parked in the dirt began to drive of in an orderly method.

Starscream released his servos from the soil. There now lay giant, evenly-marked pits where his claws were. Was he really so into what he was watching that he dug his talons hard into the ground?

But…that was the truth.

In reality: He was sucked into every klik of this projection!

This truly was one of Starscream's greatest experiences of his life. Not even in his entire life-cycle with the Decepticons had he ever had so much pleasure from one simple moment!

And yet, like most good things, it eventually had to come to an end.

The Seeker sighed at that disheartening thought, and crawled straight in reverse back down to the foot of the valley. However, when he reached the bottom, his right stiletto hit something hard.

He turned his head and looked down to find a small metal crate, at least compared to his average-sized Cybertronian body.

'This wasn't here before!', Starscream thought.

He shifted his body around to face the crate, with a curious look, indeed, and plopped his aft down onto the hill. He touched the crate with his servos, trying to find the lock to open it. Finally, he felt the lock, and pried it open. The Seeker was shocked to find what he had just uncovered…

Energon.

And not just energon crystals…but energon cubes! There must be a dozen of them in here!

Unfortunately, there was no note or markings or nothing.

He picked up the crate and moved it all around, trying to find the slightest indicator of who might have sent this. Surely, it didn't fall out of the fragging sky!

…Unless…

No. It was sent. Starscream found an insignia marking on the front of the chest. It carried the Autobot symbol. What Autobot would ever be willing to-

…He knew…

…Only one living being in the galaxy would ever be so generous to do this deed…