A/N: This picks up directly following the events of the previous chapter and segues into The Plot that is in the making. I anticipate updates to happen more regularly from here out now that my lovely collabs and I are regularly scheming once again, scouring our All Spark Almanacs for juicy canon and new and exciting characters to inject into the fray, mwahahhah!

Enjoy!

For Science by ToyzInTheAttic

"He has converted me," Blackarachnia swung between the structures of Kaon's business district with a determined force, "into nothing but a blubbering fool!"

Having just departed from her unexpected pep-talk at Inamorato, her spirits were high and her will was strong. Her webbing streamed out rhythmically, fibers woven tautly, born from the richly condensed energon she had just consumed in excess at the club. But despite the enhanced organic grappling lines, she had to keep her swings short and quick as the webbing didn't grab as firmly to Cybertron's unique alloys the way it could to the porous masonry of Detroit's high-rises. That was one of many aspects she missed about Earth. It was probably for the better though. As much as she enjoyed the cathartic release of long, gliding swoops, the quicker bursts were more reflective of her mood and her intentions, of which she needed to keep intact by the time she reached Parlour Trix.

Arcee had been right: Blackarachnia didn't need Starscream anymore. She did once upon a time, back on Earth when her motivations were less complicated, and his human-infused being was something worth needing, but all that has changed. He was not the bot she resurrected him to be. The admirable human influence was gone, lost to the universe at some point between the Quintesson threat and Starscream's return. Blackarachnia would like to blame Megatron and his eight hundredth attempt to offline Starscream, but her gut told her Starscream was the one responsible for the man's demise-he was just too noble an entity to permanently inhabit the mind of a mech like Starsceam.

Blackarachnia should have learned by now to stop falling for the noble types. They never came through for her.

Not that she needed any of them anyhow! Her real love was for science: for innovative engineering. For experimenting and discovering! That was a passion worth living for, and she had a gift for it, just like Elita One. No, BETTER than Elita. The spider's work with the sciences had always given her a sense of fulfillment and usefulness. It even made her happy on occasion. She could always rely on it to be there for her. She always knew where she stood with her work, and that was on the path of continual learning and improvement. She was an asset to any faction. How many times had Megatron praised her achievements with weapon enhancements and upgrades. Blitzwing would have been a goner if she hadn't rebuilt him with her trademark triple-changer technology-she should seriously get that patented...once she works out the personality kinks of course.

Blackarachnia didn't need the help of anyone else to survive, and she never did need anyone. She had her shop, her wits, her striking looks, and her resourcefulness. Given enough time, she was certain she could decipher the meaning of the energon-conversion formula on her own. Starscream was now useless where that was concerned since he no longer carried the human's in-depth knowledge of organic chemistry. She was much more suited to the task than he was. She would crack the formula's code and build her own energon-converter-the ultimate bargaining chip for a universe of entitlement and recognition from whichever faction she wanted it from. The conversion technology was more valuable than Velocitron's crystal regrowth enhancements. Governments would pay through the denta for it! She would prove to the Elite Guard and that buffoon Sentinel that she was far more than some unfortunate mutation. Cybertron would be her oyster; she would never have to depend on anyone again. Her name would go down in history as the hero of the energon crisis: the brilliant scientist that cracked the code of converting organic material into planet-saving energon.

Blackarachnia smiled at the images painted on her cortex.

Three more swings until reaching Parlour Trix. She was more ready to be rid of that manipulative leech than she had ever been.

She planted down on spiked heels at the entrance to her store, riding high on her aspirations. Swinging the door open, she entered with one bold step. It was dark, as she liked it, blackout curtains blocking intrusive morning rays, but something was off. Starscream typically had the place lit up in the morning so he could see his many, incomplete tinkering projects. Blackarachnia took a couple more steps, senses alert and detecting an unusual displacement to her normal merchandise layout. She stopped when she kicked a cylinder of Glitter Glide Lubricant and sent it rolling across the floor. It clunked to a stop, it's sound was replaced by the most devilish cackling she had ever heard.

Cyber-adrenaline taking the wheel, Blackarachnia whirled into widow-mode and sprung with a 180-turn onto the ceiling, webbing ready to fire at the first hostile blob in her now-activated infrared. She quickly detected two blobs, one distinctly seeker-shaped and the other unrecognizable and alien, but glowing much hotter than the mech she assumed was an unconscious Starscream. Its glow was exactly how she imagined she would look under infrared, organic functions radiating more heat than Cybertronian. Neither blob moved. Both just sat sprawled on the floor, but the cackling kept coming in unnerving waves, causing the brighter blob to jiggle ungraciously.

Suddenly, the seeker blob let out a sigh and then slapped the wall, triggering the light to spill answers all around Blackarachnia. "Enough games." Starscream said way too casually as he was revealed to be very much awake, but not in the condition she had left him. His armor bore all the signs of a fight.

"Relax, Blackarachnia." Starscream attempted his calming voice, which was always more annoyingly theatrical than genuine. "We have a lot to discuss."

"You're telling me!" Blackarachnia spat, appalled at the scene before her. The shop's interior was trashed, far worse than the time Starscream and Lockdown had duked it out. Shelving was toppled and broken, wax containers were cracked open and littered the floor, artificial spikes lay scattered like artillery shells. And amidst the chaos was the second culprit, also seated casually on the floor, arachnid legs sprouting from his back and hanging limply, betraying signs of exhaustion. She had never seen this bot before, nor had she ever seen anyone like him outside her reflection in the mirror, but she knew exactly who he was.

"Tarantulus," she hissed, repulsed yet fascinated, and repulsed even more at being so fascinated. He was the offspring of hideous and beautiful, but she couldn't tell if the hideous came from his garishly shiny Cybertronian armor or exotically furry organic limbs. Either way, she couldn't take her optics from him.

"At your service, madam." It responded with a nod then chuckled again as if repeatedly tickled by a malicious inside joke. She wondered what was so fragging funny. Perhaps the sight of them both? Sprawled pathetically behind her check-out counter, surrounded by colorful merchandise of every rating, their chassis dented, scratched, charred, and even glistening in spots from globs of spilled shimmering wax. She would laugh too if she wasn't so infuriated, and confused. It didn't make sense what she was looking at. It made sense that these two would fight given their recent history, but fight to the finish, not peter out into what looked like the come down from a pair of drunken academy bots on an all-night bender.

"What's going on here, Starscream?" She never took her four optics off of Tarantulus, and he never broke his stare on her. "Why is he here?" Her voice had kept its edge from before, following Arcee's pep talk.

"He," Starscream vied for the spotlight, "is the missing link to rebuilding the energon converter."

The words slammed Blackarachnia cortex, like buckets of paint splattering across a her mural of ambition. No one else was suppose to know about their plans for the converter, but here Starscream was, casually spewing out their secrets to the very bot who robbed him of his human counterpart.

"We now have everything we need to begin planning." Starsream continued, rapping his talon tips. "I have the formula. Tarantulus can decipher it, and you, Blackarachnia..." He paused, cruelly, knowing she was on the brink of a meltdown. "You will be our liaison to Megatron.

Brakes screeched in Blackarachnia's processor. She whirled down into root mode, impaling Starscream with a four-optic strong incredulous stare.

"Your what!" She couldn't believe what she was hearing.

Starscream hauled his battered frame to his feet, offering a hand for Tarantulus to follow suit. "Allow me to explain." He arched his back, working out a couple pops and kinks then fell easily into his "scheme delivering" pacing, one hand tucked back at his wing base while the other proceeded to accentuated his words with showy flourishes. Blackarachnia just stood, stingers cocked, always keeping a vigilant watch on Tarantulus. She didn't care that Starscream now apparently trusted him, she wasn't ready to. How these mechs shifted from dueling enemies to allies in the span of a showdown was beyond her, yet not an uncommon system of negotiations between Decepticons. While she was disgusted and enraged by the events before her, she certainly wasn't surprised, and she'll be damned if she's trusting.

"The converter we are going to build," Starscream spoke with his typically delusional confidence, "must be on an exponentially grander scale than the first one you and I built. Otherwise there is no point. Unless we," he paused to chuckle, which triggered another wave of irritating cackling from Tarantulus "merelywant to become independently wealthy for the rest of our functioning. We need factories of converters, the bot-power to operate them, convoys to scour the galaxy for resources, and most importantly, we need the ability to mask our operations from that blasted watch-dog Elite Guard. This is where..." Starscream paused again, his face twitching to a sneer, "Megatron is needed." He quickly recomposed himself. "The underground catacombs beneath his arena are the only suitable place to base our operations. It will be...the staging grounds of the grandest Decepticon uprising Cybertron has ever seen."

"Stow the dramatics." Blackarachnia couldn't count the times she had heard similar speeches and she would be thoroughly annoyed if this plan actually didn't sound like it might work. "Why pick me to break the ice with Megatron? He doesn't trust me."

"You..." Starscream leaned toward her, attempting (and failing) at his charming act. "Are the lesser of three evils. He will listen to you before he listens to a long-exiled Decepticon-turned-mutant, and especially to me."

"Aren't you..." Tarantulus chortled, "being redundant?"

"Shut up!" Starcream snapped, unamused.

Blackarachnia sighed, shaking her head. "Assuming he does take us at our word, how can we trust him?" Did she really have to state the obvious? "What's to stop him from offlining you once he has his hands on our discovery?"

Starscream laughed, heartily and a bit psychotically, letting it climax obnoxiously then slide down into a telling tale of perpetual turmoil. It was an unsettling laugh, one that even Tarantulus didn't join in on. "Megatron can't offline me." There was a stinging and perplexing truth to Starscream's darkened words, Blackarachnia couldn't deny it. "So, Blackarachnia..." Sometimes she hated the way he said her name, as if pronouncing each syllable was a hassle. "Are you with us?"

Did she have a choice? What other options were there? Declare herself a neutral kink shop owner while her faction stages the grandest coup Cybertron has seen in eons? Step aside and let other Decepticon scientists have all the fun? Not in a million stellars. She would not relinquish control of the formula that easily.

Turning on her heel, she made for the door.

"Where are you going?" Starscream barked.

"To get some fresh atmosphere." She carelessly waved off Starscream's now commanding presence, grasping desperately at the boldness she had when entering her shop.

Stepping outside, she was instantly bathed in warm morning oranges. It was a time of day she typically recharged through, but today it was a welcome change to soak it in. She sprung onto the roof with a grappling stream of webbing, not wanting to deal with any early bird passer-bys, then ducked behind the cover of Parlour Trix's flashy neon sign.

"So much for my brilliant scheme." She murmured with a bitter, shameful defeat.

It wasn't a solar cycle before the spider heard the front door open, followed by the ignition of a pair of thruster heels which quickly tapped down beside her.

"Why are femmes so puzzlingly fickle?" Wrong thing to say, Starscream. Blackarachnia glared up at him, his angular form silhouetted by the morning rays.

"You're blocking my light." Specifically the one at the end of her endlessly dark tunnel.

Starscream stepped aside with a huff, letting the light spill onto her again. He opened his mouth to snap his disapproval of her attitude, but refrained when his optics took in the dazzling sparkle of the solar rays on her gold detailing. He hadn't seen her in a fresh morning light since their time together on Earth. Sometimes, he forgot how uniquely beautiful she was. Even while crumpled into a unacceptable pity party before him.

He sighed, relenting to sympathy. Okay, so, yeah, they did trash her shop, and he did spring a new partner on her, all in one morning. "I suppose you want to know more about my dealings with Tarantulus?"

She shot him a dumbfounded look of 'do you really need to ask?' "Alright, alright." Starscream made placating hand gestures. "So I already told you about how he and those other two techno-organics were the ones that rehabilitated me, but what I didn't tell you..." He fought the urge to maneuver around the subject, knowing Blackarachnia would not be pleased. "Is that during my time with them, I had asked Tarantulus to extract the human's...emotions from my processor, and he, being the backhanded opportunist he is, as any Decepticon should be...helped himself to the entire entity of my human counterpart."

Blackarachnia stared for an awkwardly silent moment, then bowed her head and let it hang there in a suspended state of...what? Disappointment? He was expecting a lash out-some kind of rant about undoing all the work she had done on him. Not that her feelings on the matter are of a concern to him. Starscream has been glad to rid himself of that human's moral influence. What happens inside his own processor is his call to make. So, why was her lack of response making him feel so uneasy? She should be glad he's back to his old self. Hecertainly is!

"Talk to me." Starscream demanded unsympathetically.

Blackarachnia kept her head bowed, silently, helm crest resting on her spiny bracers, her only movement the slow rise and fall of her ventilations. Starscream's patience was growing thin. He kept shifting his weight between thrusters, fighting back the urge to tap his toe as he would with anyone else. Didn't she know how much seekers hated to wait? When she finally spoke, is was barely above a whisper, as if she were talking to herself.

"His name was Faraday. Dr. William Faraday. He was renowned on earth for his work with biochemistry. He was a beloved professor, with an entourage of hopeful protégés. He was a candidate for the humans' next Nobel Prize award."

"Why are you telling me this?" Starscream snapped, feeling extremely uneasy now. His conscience hasn't pinged this hard since the human was still in him. Why was she saying this? Why should he care!

Blackarachnia lifted her head, finally meeting Starscream's optics, her optics distant and volatile. "I murdered him. I brought suffering to countless humans by removing him from their equation, and for what?"

"I never asked you merge me with a human!" Starscream floundered. "His blood is on your servos."

The spider twitched. She then shrunk, face backing into the shadows again. "You didn't deserve him." Her voice was venom. "You never appreciated what you had. And now you've gone and tossed him into oblivion, or worse, into the mind of that...thing you now call a partner."

"It was my call to make." Starscream snarled. He didn't at all appreciate being guilt-tripped for something he was more than justified for doing, especially not from her. Decepticons don't bother with guilt. Perhaps Cybertron's smog of peace was surfacing her Autobot roots.

"Your judgement has something to be desired."

"I know exactly what I am doing!" Starscream's circuits fizzled. "Once we've..." He cut off, looking around cautiously then lowering his volume. "Once Tarantulus has deciphered the formula, I intend to study his work and learn it for myself. I knew how to do it once and I find it hard to believe a mere fleshling can't prevent me from learning it again."

"Dr, Faraday," she adamantly spoke the name, "dedicated his life to his work. It's not something you can simply pick up overnight without physically embodying his essence again. That was the whole point of my experiment."

"My processor is far advanced to that of a transplanted human's." Starscream refused to give the human credit for his discovery. "It took my brilliant spectrum of intelligence combined with his limited knowledge to crack the conversion code."

"Exactly, Starscream." Blackarachnia's exasperation was steadily increasing her volume. "Combined. You could have never done it without him, or me."

"Don't you dare take credit for my discovery!" She was going too far. "I was the one who came up with the formula and Iam the one who gets to decide what to do with it! So enough with..." he gestured wildly, "whatever this is! I need to know where you stand."

Blackarachnia's four optics became mere scarlet slits that burned red lasers into him. Slowly, she rose to her feet, holding her stare, studying him as if sizing up her prey. Starscream was growing impatient with her protests and deliberations. Why was she making this so difficult? It was what she wanted, after all: for the two of them to be together, to jointly lead a Decepticon comeback. She wasn't fragging him for his good looks, that much he knew. Was she conflicted by her former Autobot loyalties? She better not be. Not after all they had been through together. She was on his side now, one of the few he could rely on to support his dethroning of Megatron. He needed her influence to spread among the other Decepticons, her cunning manipulations to show them who was really suited to lead their faction. She was vital to his plan and he needed an answer from her now!

"Forget the past, Blackarachnia, it is of no concern." Arguing would get them nowhere. He needed to convince her diplomatically. "I need to know that you are still with me on this, otherwise I have to assume you are against me." Okay so that was less diplomatic and more a cheap tactic that Megatron had always used, and Starscream should be ashamed of himself, but instead he now understood the value of it. It left no room for alternative options and created a means to an end much quicker.

Blackarachnia studied him with a scowl, an armor penetrating scowl that chilled the energon pulsing now uneasily through him. She was the utmost picture of dangerous beauty when she got like this-radiant and unpredictable, and a pleasant distraction from his impatience with her. He loved seeing her this way. She was stunning: a work of mutated art. Leave it to those foolish Autobots to label her a freak, completely blinded to the unique and beneficial enhancements her accident gave her. Starscream had always been sincere when he said she was better off how she was, and he was grateful that she actually listened to him, for embracing her upgraded identity instead of loathing it, which simply made her that much more desirable.

She stepped out of the shadows and crept into his EM field, hybrid armor once again gleaming brilliantly under the orange rays. His energon still pulsed uneasily, but now in a welcoming way, awakening his acute sensors, his injuries stinging delightfully. He was ready to take whatever she had to offer. She rose up to her tip toes, lining up their lip plating and placing her blue-tipped claws on his cheek, her finger on his lips. "You know where I stand, Starscream." Her tone bled with venom. She ran her sharp digit over his mouth and down his chin, purposefully scratching deep enough to hurt. He gritted his denta and couldn't help but shudder. He was ready to let her pin him down and frag him senseless, uncaring to the unsupervised predacon in the shop beneath them. Uncaring to their exposure to the awakening world around them. He would gladly let her have her way with him, especially if it resulted in her pledged alliance. When she spoke again, he could taste it hot on his glossa.

"I am going to go for a walk." Not her most seductive choice of words, but Starscream still enjoyed their flavor. "When I return, I expect to find you and your boyfriend GONE. I will join your alliance and I will be your liaison to Megatron, but you will not base your operations in my shop and risk attracting unwanted attention from the Elite Guard. Go charm your way into some abandoned warehouse and do not contact me until you two have built a working prototype I can present to Megatron. In the meantime, you will leave me alone to salvage what is left of my business and my dignity."

And with a sudden turn, she was gone, careening off into Kaon's business district, cruelly ripping away all her promising warmth and leaving Starscream in a perplexing state of unquenchable arousal to ponder, with impressive mix of frustration and admiration, what in the sixth moon of Eternia just happened.