CHAPTER 14

Stowaway


Starscream checked out his new room before laying down for the evening. It seemed almost identical to his old room, except the desk was empty and there was more floor space. Plenty of room to walk around in and stretch your limbs.

First Starscream pulled forth his swords and put them on the two top rows of the shelf, which didn't have any datapads on them. Afterwards, he opened his subspace and took out the various puzzles and put them on the table. He put down the stress relief ball as well, to have both servos free. He laid all the metal rods puzzles in a pile for themselves in one corner of the table, then laid the jigsaw puzzle pieces in a pile in the other corner of the table, followed by the rectangles and planks. Afterwards he put the color cube in the middle of the table, sided by the cylinder and the stress relief ball.

Curious, he picked up the cylinder to see what exactly it was. He realized he had forgotten to check it out. As he lifted it in the air, faint rattling could be heard from the cylinder. He looked at one end of the cylinder and looked through a small glass container with a lot of tiny colorful pearls in it. He hummed, uncertain what purpose they served.

He turned the cylinder and looked at the other end to see if there was a case with pearls in that end as well. What he saw surprised him.

Instead of a container, he looked through a special lens that formed a highly detailed image with the colors of the pearls. Curious, Starscream shook the cylinder a little, and suddenly the image changed, the pattern and colors having been rearranged in another beautiful image.

"Fascinating," Starscream said. "Well, it's not a puzzle, but still... fascinating."

"It is, isn't it?"

Starscream almost jumped out of his armor as a sudden small voice sounded below him. He almost lost his grip around the cylinder, but caught it in time before it fell on the floor. He turned around to see who had talked. What he saw shocked him.

"Amy?!" Starscream exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

Amy stood right by Starscream's pedes, still wearing that same pink dress she always did, and her usual smile still adorning her face.

"I followed you," Amy replied.

"But how?" Starscream asked, calming his tone. "You didn't walk through the GroundBridge with us, the Autobots would have said something... wouldn't they?"

"I climbed into your subspace thing," Amy explained and chuckled. "No one noticed me."

Starscream was taken aback. "When? I didn't notice you climbing in there, and I would've noticed if you did."

"When I snuck down here this morning to see you, I heard the other bots talking about moving you to another base," Amy explained further. "I didn't want to be away from you, so I snuck into your room and climbed up into your subspace while you were asleep. Then I just waited until we arrived here and you were alone."

Starscream hummed and tapped his chin with his thumb and pointer. His optics widened for a moment. "How did you get into my room? I closed it after you left, and only a bot can open those doors."

Amy's smile seemed to falter for a moment, her eyes widening a bit. "Oh, I...uh..." The perplexed expression was brief, and soon her smile returned, though this time rather forced than genuine. "I crawled in through a vent shaft. Right above your bed, it wasn't a long fall. You bots have big vent shafts."

Starscream frowned with skepticism and hummed, crossing his arms. He rolled his optics and let out a sigh. "Are you sure your... parents, you said? Are you sure they won't be worried about you? You just said last night they would worry and come looking for you."

"That was back in the desert," Amy replied, still smiling, now more genuine. "Here they won't look for us. Or, for me. Sure, they may be worried, but I, uh... I left them a note saying I was, uh... out on camp? So I would be gone for, like, a few months?"

"You don't sound so sure," Starscream said and kneeled down, holding out a servo. "Here, I'm getting tired of having to bend my neck all the time."

Amy's face seemed to light up by the gesture and eagerly climbed into Starscream's servo. As soon as she was onboard, Starscream rose back onto his pedes, and Amy seemed to fall flat on the palm by the sudden speed upwards. As Starscream stood straight, Amy climbed back onto her feet and gazed up at Starscream, now near eye-level with each other, and smiled widely.

"Wow," she keened and looked down. "I've never been so high up before. I've only looked at you bots from a distance, you're the first one I've actually been in contact with. This is awesome."

Starscream couldn't help but crack a faint smile. "I suppose you've never met someone as great and cool as me, have you?" he said.

Amy smiled back and chuckled. "No, you're the coolest, Starscream," she said. "I'm so happy to be your friend." She paused, her smile falling for a bit. "I mean, we are friends, aren't we?"

Starscream blinked in surprise. "Friends?" he repeated and thought for a bit. "Uh... okay? I guess? We can be friends? Uh... yeah. Okay, we're friends, I guess."

Amy's smile returned, having evolved into a wide grin reaching above her eyes, which were gleaming like stars in the night sky. She let out a whine and bounced up and down while waving her arms. Starscream moped at the reaction, but then cracked a smile of his own, though without jumping up and down.

"What are you doing?" he asked with a chuckle.

Amy calmed down and resumed a more calm position. "Sorry, I'm just really happy to hear that from you. I don't really have any friends, they all think I'm weird and avoid me."

Starscream's smile faltered and was replaced by a soft line. "You too, huh?" he replied. "Seems you were right about before."

Amy cocked her head in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"You said people don't like people who think or act differently than them. I haven't met a lot of humans, so I can't say I know anything about them. But I feel like you don't act or think the same way others do. All the other humans I've met were scared or wary of me. Yet you aren't. Why is that?"

Amy's smile disappeared, replaced with her own soft, neutral line. "Can't say I'm sure," she replied and held her hands behind her back, looking at Starscream's palm. "But others might say there's something wrong with me. That I'm not right in the head. I guess it makes sense. It doesn't seem logical to follow after a giant, scary alien robot. But you don't seem dangerous to me, Starscream. Just different. You have issues, I got them too. I guess because you remind me a little bit about myself, I was drawn to you. Like a moth to a flame."

"A moth to a flame?" Starscream repeated.

"It's an expression. It basically means that you're interested in something dangerous, since a flame would burn a moth to a crisp. At least, that's what I think the saying means."

Starscream hummed and gazed at the table. "Mind if I sit down?"

"Not at all." Though Amy did kneel down and grabbed onto Starscream's digits before he sat down by the table and let his servo down to allow Amy to get off, which she did.

"Now," Starscream began, "do you know what this cylinder thing is?" He grabbed hold of the cylinder and shook it a little, making a rattling sound.

"Yeah, that's a kaleidoscope," Amy replied with a smile. "I guess you already know what it does. Simple, but pretty, right?"

"I suppose," Starscream replied and put the kaleidoscope back down. His servo lingered before picking up the color cube. "Do you know these?"

"Ooh, a Rubik's Cube!" Amy said excitedly. "I love that. Have you managed to solve it yet?"

"No, not really," Starscream replied and gazed between the cube and Amy. "Do you know how to solve it?"

"Yeah, I can do it in three minutes," Amy replied and fidgeted a bit with her hands. "Though that one is a bit too big for me to solve..."

"Can you tell me how to solve it?"

Amy held her chin with her thumb and pointer, speculating. "It's not really something you can just tell a person," she explained. "The first layer is pretty simple, anyone can fix that. But for the remaining two layer, you need to use algorithms."

"Algorithms?"

"Yeah, specific steps, kind of like instructions on a recipe or such. But they're pretty difficult to remember unless you have a special way to remember it."

"Such as...?"

Amy let her arms fall and started pacing back and forth on the table, glancing between Starscream and the table, while she talked. "In my case, I see the algorithms as sentences and words. The first two algorithms are mirrors of one another, I use the right algorithm as the standard, and the left algorithm..."

Amy explained very detailed about how to solve the so-called Rubik's Cube. Starscream tried to pay attention, but Primus did that girl talk a lot. From what he remembered, she didn't usually talk this much. Perhaps it was because in the past few days, she could only stay with him for a short amount of time before she had to return to her parents. Now that she was apparently here to stay, she had plenty of time to talk.

At some point Starscream lost track of what she said and just dazed off. He started thinking about things. He thought about Wheeljack. Now that they were friends, how would they stay in touch? Maybe the base had a communicator of some sort so he could call the base in Metroplex when he wanted. He also thought about Skyfire. How could he have forgotten about his best, perhaps even only friend ever? As soon as he had laid optics on the big bot, he knew he looked familiar, and suddenly his name had come to him as clear as the sun. He could feel in his Spark that this mech was special.

Special. Starscream stiffened. Someone special. He recalled Ratchet saying something about someone special. But what was it? Was it that thing he called interface? What could that be? Would they be sharing thoughts together? Memories, perhaps? He'd have to ask Skyfire sometime. Interface sounded interesting.

"Starscream?" Amy's voice sounded.

Starscream jolted upright. He looked down at the girl who stood with crossed arms and a frown.

"Have you been listening to me?" she asked, seemingly irritated.

"Uh... yeah, I have," Starscream lied, without really knowing why. "You see the algorithms as sentences and words, you say something about a rue and a... a rock?"

Amy sighed and let her arms fall to her sides. "You didn't listen to me at all, did you?"

Starscream lowered his head and looked away, his claws thrumming each other. "Sorry," he said.

Amy's frown was replaced by a smile. "Don't worry about it. I'm used to people dazing off when I talk. I'm told I talk a bit too much sometimes. And like I said before, you can't teach someone else your own techniques on how to solve the Rubik's Cube. It's the same algorithms, but people remember them in different ways. If you want, I can write them down for you?"

Starscream looked back at Amy with thought. "No, I think I'll try to sort it out myself," he said with a smile. "Wheeljack told me only the best and most genius bots can solve it without help from others. I want to be one of those special bots."

Amy's grin returned. "Of course you do! Who'd want to be normal and boring? I had to look up the algorithms on the internet and memorize them before I could solve it myself. I still needed help. But I feel like I cheated by doing that. I hope you can solve it on your own, your very own. I'm actually glad you didn't listen or understood what I just said. That means I didn't do anything to help you, and you won't feel like a cheat!"

Amy turned away from Starscream and went over to the stress relief ball. Starscream smirked at her. "You really are a weird girl," Starscream commented. "But I guess you're alright. Even if you're stalking me."

Amy felt on the ball, about half her height, and pushed it down to misshape it a bit, though not as much as Starscream could. "I'm not a stalker, stalkers are creepy," she said and climbed onto the ball, which didn't return to its round shape, as she was apparently heavy enough to keep it down. "I'm not creepy, I'm cute. Right?" She gazed at him with a big, toothy smile and glittering eyes.

Starscream felt a bit unnerved by the expression. "I don't know what 'cute' is, but that expression you're making is kind of creepy. Please stop it."

Amy loosened her expression immediately, her smile disappearing. "Sorry, I didn't mean to creep you out."

"You're forgiven," Starscream replied and studied her on the ball. "Are you going to sleep there?"

"That was my plan. I didn't bring anything with me, not even my toothbrush. It was kind of a spur of the moment to go with you."

Starscream decided not to ask what a toothbrush was. "Well, I suppose you can just make yourself at home here," he said and rose from his chair and walked over to his new berth. "I'm going to go to recharge now."

"Alright, goodnight, Starscream," Amy replied and settled into her soft, bouncy new bed.

Starscream sat down on his berth and hauled his legs up. "I get why I'm tired, I seem to get nightmares all the time," Starscream said. "But why are you tired now? Isn't it still morning, or noon or something in Metroplex City?"

"It is probably still daytime in America," Amy replied without looking at Starscream. "But like that bot Bluestreak said, it's practically night here. I've been up late last night, so I didn't get much sleep either. Not that tired yet, but I guess it's better to get used to the time difference here if we're gonna live here now."

Starscream hummed and closed his optics. "Well, in that case, goodnight, Amy."

Without another word, the two of them fell asleep at the same time.