Miko goes boldy where the others haven't gone before. Starscream's uneventful rogue life comes to a crashing halt.


The insecticon almost looked like every other one. But there was an odd plum stripe on one of the lower mandibles. A cybertronian skin condition? Who knew. Ratchet probably would, but Ratchet wasn't here. None of the team were.

Its purple marring always dragged her attention away from the safer place she put her mind in and back to her situation. It made this one look different from all the others. And the minute she recognized it wasn't an identical face, June was putting humanizing characteristics on it.

In her head, she had taken to calling this one 'Bob'. It had only visited twice now, but there were certain mannerisms about Bob that made it a little more bearable than the others.

By 'visited', June meant it was that guard with the boring job to bring her water.

Never food. Her light head and aching stomach were already feeling the side effects of that. But water is better than nothing.

By what little she had seen of Airachnid, June wouldn't have expected her to have any more than what was absolutely necessary for her survival. Although maybe 'Bob' just didn't know how much water it was supposed to bring her. The monster-sized creature brought gallon sized containers of lukewarm water. The next time it came by was with another gallon.

June had looked up at it with a frown.

"I don't drink this much," she gestured at both bottles with her good arm. The one with the cut hurt to move and so she'd taken to keeping it still.

The extra water was used to clean the jacket wrapped around the cut and the thin gash itself. It was far from an antiseptic, but it was also far better than nothing.

Unsurprisingly, the insecticon didn't answer.

The only other one who'd guarded her had growled whenever she so much as made a noise. The dumb quiet of Bob was far preferable.

"Thanks."

She didn't need to add it. If it was just a mindless creature, the word wouldn't even mean anything.

It made a little grunt. Not a growl.

June's stomach rumbled.

"What about food?" she asked without being able to help it. The insecticon cocked its head to one side.

"Food?" it rumbled.

Well look at that. They did speak.

Sounded male too, but she wasn't even sure insecticons had a gender.

"Like energon for you," June tried to explain.

It pointed at the water.

"Like energon," it repeated.

Well, yes, they were both fluids but-

"Never mind."

She shook her head and moved cautiously over to the water. At the start, she would've simply walked to them. June didn't know how long she'd been here, but she did know better than trying to walk normally on top of a tall ledge. The way her head spun from stress and hunger and blood loss made her worried she'd teeter right off the edge of the rock surface.

If she didn't have a kid to get back to and the hope of rescue from the more-than-capable autobots, June wouldn't have been as adverse to the idea.

Airachnid liked to tell stories. Enough of those hanging over her head as possible fates and teetering off that ledge may not sound so unappealing.

June refused to humor that thought. She had to be strong for Jack. He'd been strong in that forest and that night when those M.E.C.H. people had kidnapped her. It was her turn for strength now.

The jacket wrapped around her arm peeled off. The dried water on the fabric and the dried blood from the cut stung to separate from skin; she grit her teeth and did it anyways. Then the stained sweater was dumped in the already contaminated gallon jug and swirled around. When she'd finished and tied it back on her arm, June noticed that her guard was still watching her.

Not with an expression that signaled 'I want to eat you'. More of a...well, she was no expert in reading alien monster's expressions.

"You wouldn't happen to let me off if I ask, would you?" she tried with an exhausted smile. The insecticon's face flinched back in surprise.

"Fuel here-" it pointed at the water again.

Damn this dumb thing, did it not realize that she didn't want to be here?

"Home there-" June pointed to the cave door. She tried to wrack her mind for the right word to explain it to this thing. "...Hive..." she tried experimentally "-there."

There was a low titter. The nurse had no idea what it meant.

They went silent again. June felt the cold of the rock beneath her seeping through her pants while she sat. This whole room was cold and fear made her cold and overall she hadn't been able to sleep soundly or warm up since she'd been abducted (again).

A mixture of boredom and an attempt to distract herself from the fear Airachnid always brought when she returned prompted June to ask: "Why follow her?"

Bob's expression didn't change.

"Queen," it (he? She wanted to start calling it a he) said.

The answer, if it could be called that, was too cryptic for her to understand.

"What?" June asked.

"Queen."

"That doesn't mean anything to me," the human admitted.

Her head pounded. The insecticon remained expressionless. And somewhere behind him, she heard an unfortunately familiar laugh.

"It means," Airachnid stepped forward from behind the warrior "-that Scalewing here won't be trying anything I don't authorize. See, insecticons need a dominator. They need a queen. You and I both know the dumb brute types need someone like us, someone with intelligence, to lord over them," she winked and poked June in the side with a knuckle.

It made her rock back. June didn't try to stand back up again. Not until she got food and her head stopped ringing.

She didn't bother to answer Airachnid's false attempt at affability either.


Starscream had been enjoying the rogue life.

Well, not really. In all honesty, it was going awful. There wasn't nearly enough fuel. There was no expert to reinstall his T-Cog. Without a T-Cog, there was no flight. The Harbinger was completely empty of like-minded company or even just stupid drones. He could practically feel his processor stagnating.

But all that said, there were still the perks of being independent. Sure, the autobots and decepticons and other neutral rogues on this planet all would kill him when they saw him. That lack of allies meant nothing though!

Besides, who needed allies when he had the Apex Armor?

It had taken time to pull himself out of the bottom of the arctic sea in the bulky suit, but the armor hardly allowed any cold or discomfort to seep through. The moment he did manage to heave himself over the flat ice again, Starscream had to laugh.

And laugh and laugh.

He really needed more energon. Deprivation left him susceptible to ridiculous moods.

The others had apparently left while he was still trying to climb the submerged portion of the glacier. Good for them. It just meant they would not die by his servos that cycle.

The seeker had made his way back to where the vehicons had first ambushed him. That stupid pathetic excuse for transportation was not needed when he had the Apex Armor; who needed speed if they no longer needed to be quicker than pain because pain no longer came? He'd stomped the scooter into bits and pretended it was all his enemies under his pedes rather than some tiny vehicle. And what a lot of enemies he had now.

That fact, despite having the Apex Armor on his side, kept Starscream perpetually worried.

Then he'd found the groundbridge controls and returned to the Harbinger.

The armor didn't do anything about his energon problem. So the seeker spent the next good cycles working on bridging to mines he had left hidden caches of energon in, like the one where his old master had tried to terminate him, and wore the Apex Armor to keep any threats away.

The cycles ticked on. His supplies of energon were never comfortably large, but they were suitable. His stagnating processor did not receive more company, but Starscream insisted to himself that he was fine alone.

In other words, all things considered, he was finally settling down to life on his own.

Starscream- servant to no one bot or cause. Master of himself.

Only himself, seeing as he lacked an army or even a few lackeys...but that had to be preferable to the alternatives, didn't it?

His plans had slowed down. Starscream wasn't fully certain what either faction was paying attention to these days. He felt perpetually out of the loop and not knowing their plans didn't let him know what his plans should be. It didn't stop him from plotting.

Perhaps if given enough time in that status quo, he would have stopped himself. The lack of stable energon supplies, allies, purpose, and praise could have drove him to giving up his rogue life (though he didn't feel that there was much of an alternative; with enemies on all sides, who exactly could he even turn to in the off chance he wanted to give up this life?).

Time didn't get the chance to test such a theory.

During one boring jour of scanning the human knowledge base for any weapon of use to him, the Harbinger's recently repaired (by his servos, of course; he had far more talents than anyone ever gave him credit for and systems repairs happened to be one of the more boring ones) proximity alarms flared to life.

Oddly enough, the alarms weren't coming from the exterior of this half of the ship. They were coming from from the hall outside this very room.

What the frag?

Before he even had time to stomp to the door and yell at the (sadly unresponsive like everything else in his lonely rogue life) security system, the wall ripped away.

Quite literally ripped away. First the metal pinched together in a distinct mark of claws, claws he recognized, and then a nano later the pinched indent screeched backwards.

Ducking through the gaping hole, spikes scraping against the remains of the wall left above the gap, red optics flaring, pedes echoing heavily with every new step-

Unmistakable.

And Starscream's panicked, if confused, reaction was unmistakable as well.

He caught sight of Soundwave drifting into the room from behind his ever approaching former leader. Both of them? Both of them?

Oh slag, slag slag-

Starscream let out a wordless whine from where he was plastering himself against the desk. His servos were scrambling over its surface for something, anything, deadly enough to go up against the most unkillable mech in the universe. All they scraped up was the same drill he'd once planned on giving himself self-surgery with. The drill pointed up at Megatron's unimpressed face and got knocked aside a moment later.

Slag it, slag it all, he was fragged. This was it. He was dead.

Oh Primus, he didn't want to die! He didn't wanthedidn'twantodidn'twantdidn't-

Instead of melting him down with a single cannon blast, as he had the clones on the Nemesis, Megatron grabbed his head; his massive servo fit effortlessly over the entire vital appendage.

Panic had Starscream fully believing that said vital appendage was about to be crushed into nothing but a sad stain

Somehow, that didn't happen either.

Still wordless, the warlord dragged the momentarily stunned seeker off the desk, over the floor, and through the gaping hole in the Harbinger's wall.

Like the shadow he was, Soundwave trailed behind them, ready to bridge all three back home.


There was just one brief moment where Airachnid seemed surprised. In her slimy little hands, Fowler could see the yellow and blues of June Darby's working apparel.

Then the insecticon femme began to smile.

"A double cross? Really, Ar-cee, I expected you to value June here too muc-"

The premonition could very well have been false, but it was still one of the possibilities; he imagined that, having discovered that the bots weren't about to stick to their bargain, Airachnid's hand would clench shut. The nurse inside would never survive such an action.

So maybe he didn't think very long on the matter. Maybe he acted rashly without figuring out who exactly would help break June's fall.

But Fowler wasn't about to let that imagined premonition enter reality.

He swung the M.E.C.H. made weapon forward and shot Airachnid dead on in the chest.

Not having expected the blow, especially not a shot coming from so low on the ground, the insecticon stumbled back. Her focus broke and concentration wavered.

And so the cage made of carefully closed claws opened and June Darby fell out.

For a single moment, Fowler's heart stopped and he feared he had just let her die from the fall. His mind flashed with the worry that her shriek would sear in his memories.

Breathing returned a second later.

Fast as she was, Arcee had dove in and caught the human long before she reached the ground.

Recovering from her brief shock, Airachnid flexed her claws and transformed onto a longer set of many legs. She shrieked and the sound was so different from June's.

That was the call of bloody murder.

Despite his old training, Fowler couldn't help but backtrack away that sound.


He'd seen these relics in Iacon before but never held one before. Let alone used one. How cool was this?

The phase shifter had attached itself to his arm with its little claws. First thing he done to test it was take a swipe at Knock Out. Well, he'd found out that the shifter was working alright.

Although in revenge for the 'scare', the medic had taking a swipe at his own paint.

And since Knock Out was not the one wearing the shifter in the moment after Smokescreen had turned its effects off, those claws had peeled right through his silver. It stung like a glitch. Smokescreen, despite his over all glee at wearing one of the Iacon relics, didn't let his happiness filter over the glare he kept directing at the medic.

"Thanks, buddy-" he sneered. Knock Out smiled innocently.

Still acting incredibly uncool about this all, the tiny human Raf finished looking at the human military's tracking geographical map for the Nemesis.

"I can try to bridge you onto it, judging from what I have here," he said reluctantly, "But this is a really bad plan. Besides, Optimus wanted the three of us to man the hub!"

Ah, protests, smhotests.

"Come on, Raf-" Smokescreen pleaded. "He said that, but think of the payoff! The forge! The resonance blaster! The war, in our servos!"

The look the human cast him could not be read as anything other than unimpressed disbelief.

"Fine," the boy shrugged and started clicking away at his little keyboard. The groundbridge tore to life again. Smokescreen hopped where he stood and then ran for it.

He paused outside to look behind him.

"Hey, KO. Why aren't you moving?"

The doctor started to inspect his own claws nonchalantly.

"Oh, you know. No phase shifter for me, no protection against every warrior on that ship that wants my head. I think I'll stay and do the job Optimus gave me," Knock Out brushed the rookie off.

Oh no. Smokescreen's expression peeled into a plotting grin.

"Really?" he started slowly, "You'd leave all the glory to me?"

As he'd expected, a little taunt did the trick. Knock Out dropped his servos back down and glared at him.

Unhappy about it? Sure. Still falling for the taunt?

Absolutely.

He slapped the red mech on the back when he reached Smokescreen's side.

"Great! I needed a guide on the old boat anyways-" he laughed.

Since the phase shifter was still disabled, Smokescreen felt every ache when Knock Out grabbed the offending servo and twisted it in the direction it was not meant to go.


The situation was absolute chaos. June had gone from the palm of Airachnid's servo to free fall, from free fall to another femme's servo, and from that palm into a ruined building. Arcee stood up over her while June tried to get her legs to work at turning her around to look up at the bot.

"Stay in cover," Arcee ordered and then she'd run back into the chaos.

Blaster fire. Insecticon screams. The roar of engines and explosions and yells.

June tried to ignore the noises, but they were everywhere. They were everywhere and her head was ringing from a lack of food and the noises bounced around every part of her skull and-

Where was she even hiding? The nurse found herself rather distracted by the state of the building she'd been shoved into. The 'cover'. It was without a roof. Rubble lay everywhere and two of the walls were caved in on themselves. What sort of cover was this?

There wasn't time to scrutinize anymore. The large shape of Bulkhead crashed through one of the still standing walls. The impact threw dust into June's eyes and made the ground beneath her shake. She shrieked, covering her face from the flying debris with one arm, and ran stumbling away from what was no longer a safe place to hide in.

Nothing was. There were giants everywhere. They stomped and fell and flung other giants. The ground had yet to stop shaking. Stray shots landed too close and June, as disoriented as she was, could see that there were far more hulking insecticons in the air above than autobot rescuers.

"MOM!" a familiar voice yelled and June looked wildly through the dark to see it. At the word, her heart had pulsed with relief, hope, happiness at hearing Jack, Jack alive, Jack here where she could embrace him- but the rational side of her returned seconds later and her hearts joy sank down to panic.

Why was Jack here?

This wasn't safe. This was chaos. This was the sort of chaos that was unmistakably dangerous for anyone her size.

And then he was visible in the flashing lights and they were hugging and all thoughts of grounding him for life were put on hold.

"Hey, hey, hurry it up!" a clipped voice snapped at them and June recognized it too. "We gotta get out of the open, don't we?"

What had the world turned into, when it was Miko that acted as a voice of reason?

June disentangled halfway from Jack and reached, despite the pain of moving that arm, to tug the other teen into their hug.

"N-wha-"

Miko's protests turned into token grumbles muttered into the side of June's arm. The cut beneath the teen's crushed face pulsed in angry pain but the nurse made herself ignore it.

Then Jack was tugging on them both.

"Let's go!" he said with a cracked voice. This time, June let him lead her away. They ran through the chaos until they found a mostly stable looking building. From here, the three humans looked at the madness outside.

And it was from here that they noticed-

There was a red-opticed decepticon out there, fighting off hordes of insecticons. She recognized him from the stories brought back to base. Dreadwing. The con who liked to fight with bombs.

And he was using those bombs now. Their flashing lights were attached to many of the battling insecticons. Dreadwing shoved the current warrior away and pulled something that looked oddly like an old flip phone from his side.

A remote. His thumb went over it but before he could press the command to the bombs he'd been sticking around, a new insecticon leaped onto his back. The con crashed down to the ground and the floor beneath them rumbled. June lost her balance and leaned against her son momentarily.

All three humans saw it. It was frozen in her vision, fried into June's disoriented mind. Too important to look away from. Too important to ignore.

Laying on the ground only some short distance away.

The remote.

They stumbled out of cover to approach it. This could be the exact edge the bots needed. This could kill who knew how many of the insecticons that Dreadwing had managed to attach a bomb to.

Airachnid could lose. June really, really wanted Airachnid to lose. To lose lose die and never hurt again, not her, not her son, not Arcee, not anyone-

But as soon as she stood over the device, her hand hovering over the large control that no doubt would set the chain explosions off, June's dizzy mind had another thought.

She was a nurse.

A nurse. She'd taken the Hippocratic oath.

And insecticons were sentient. She'd seen enough of that in the eternity spent in Airachnid's cave. They were far from the smartest of people and far from independent, but they were alive.

She was not supposed to inflict harm.

Harm, harm, do no harm

June wavered momentarily.

And in the pause, Miko pushed her undecided hand aside and pressed the trigger.