CHAPTER 1

His Name Is Starscream

At first, there was darkness.

Then, there was a sound.

He opened his optics and found himself lying on the ground. It was a dry ground, made mostly of sand and rock, but it had tufts of grass sticking up here and there.

His head hurt. He reached a servo and held on it. He sat up and felt how the headache got worse, making him dizzy. After getting used to sit up for about a minute, the headache seemed to vanish. In return, he started feeling discomfort on the inside and laid a servo on his abdomen, trying to soothe the pain.

"What happened...?" he said and was surprised to hear his own voice. It was scratchy and somewhat high-pitched, like an old radio that had difficulty switching between channels.

He looked at his servos and took a look down at himself. He was mostly silver, but had blue pedes and lower arms, while his chest seemed to be red. His digits were long and sharp like claws. He did not know what he was looking at.

He did not know who he was looking at.

Who was he? What was his name? How did he get here? Where did he come from? What had happened to him?

Why couldn't he remember anything?

He decided to stand up, steadying himself onto his long legs, ignoring the discomfort and looked down at his large figure. He felt something funny on his back and looked. What were those things sticking out of his sides? Those things that moved up and down as he looked around in confusion?

"Who am I?" he asked himself. "What happened to me?"

He looked around once again, but found no one present to tell him. He did see an odd line on the ground, dark gray as opposed to the overall orange rocky ground, and it had thinner white lines in the center. He walked over to the line, knelt down and poked it with a digit. It didn't feel like the orange ground. It felt more smooth and warm. Perhaps it was a path of some sort?

"Maybe this will lead me to someone who can tell me who I am," he said and got up.

He chose a direction and followed the path, walking calmly, though with some soreness in his torso, while looking from side to side, taking in the landscape surrounding him. Huge rocks, mesas, plateaus, adorned the horizon, which was light blue with a few white clouds scattered here and there on the sky. A sun shone down on him as he walked for miles until he reached someplace new.

It was smaller than the surrounding area, but it was still somewhat big. Large mesa-like things stood here and there close to each other, most of them silver or black. Small things were moving in and out of the area on more of those strange little paths with white lines in the center. Even smaller beings were walking like he did, along those paths, some entering the strange mesas.

"Maybe they can tell me who I am," he said to himself, assuming the moving things were alive.

Without hesitation, he walked into the area and looked down at the small beings that started screaming and running as they laid eyes on him. He looked around, unaware it was him they were afraid of, and decided to talk to one of them.

"Excuse me," he said, but the little screamers were already seeking shelter inside the weird rocks.

"Can I ask you something?" he tried asking another, but they simply ran away without answering. Could they not see he just wanted to ask them a question?

The noise was awful. He was beginning to get another headache, and he found the high-pitched screams annoying for some reason.

"Why are you all running away?" he said, starting to get frustrated. "Why won't you shut up and listen to me?"

Again there was no answer. But only because there was no one outside anymore. They had all fled into those strange square-shaped rocks with crystal-like patches that enabled him to see the inside of the rocks. He looked through one. A group of the screamers were gathered inside, seemingly terrified as he gazed at them. He noticed a pair of red dots on the clear surface and adjusted his optics.

He saw a face not belonging to any of the screamers. He blinked, he gaped, he tilted his head, and he watched as the face did the same at the same time. It appeared to be his face. He had a pair of red optics with white pupils in the center, gaze fixed on himself. From his optics were a pair of black lines going down, below them was a mouth filled with two rows of flat dentas and a gray tongue protuding between the rows of dentas. His face was dark gray, his head covered by a black helm in a somewhat square shape, and just above his optics was a pair of black optical bridges. A pair of grill-like things protruded from the sides of his helm, assumingly what allowed him to hear.

Unable to see himself in full figure, he turned away from the clear surface to find a bigger one. He walked for a bit until he came across a rock with fairly shiny sides, not clear like on the smaller rock, but shiny enough that he could see himself in full figure and much more clearly.

He was tall, sleek, shiny silver with a red torso, blue lower arms and pedes, as well as something orange in the center of his chest. Furthermore, he could more clearly see the odd things sticking out of his back, also silver, with red stripes on each. On each of the things he saw an odd symbol in purple. It looked like a face, and a rather ominous one. For some reason, it made him feel uncomfortable. Looking himself over again, he began to also notice several scratches on his face and across his body. They seemed to be merely superficial and didn't sting, though there was a lot of them.

"You there! Freeze!" someone shouted.

He turned around and moped. He had been surrounded without noticing, even in the shininess of that odd mesa. There was a bunch of screamers around a group of larger objects, somewhat round and edgy with rods sticking out of them, having holes at the tips. The objects were green and spotted, and so were the screamers. He tilted his head in confusion.

"Freeze?" he replied confused. "What do you mean?"

"Put your hands up!" the screamer shouted.

He looked down at himself and gazed at his servos.

"You mean these?" he asked and held them up. Suddenly a pair of rods similar to the green objects appeared on his arms, though his were silver like his torso. "What the...?"

"FIRE!" the screamer shouted.

Suddenly a volley of fire launched upon him. He felt the little fireballs sting his armor but they did not do much damage. The attack did surprise him, however, and he retaliated by instinctively swiping his claws across the screamers, knocking several on the ground or onto the structures around him. The action caused the discomfort in his torso to intensify a bit and he froze with a faint groan. As the pain subsided, he watched as his blue claws were stained red and stared in wonder. The screamers were red on the inside yet colorful on the outside?

He didn't get to wonder long before one of the green objects suddenly shot a large fireball at him, exploding in his chest. The force of the blast was more powerful than that of the tiny rods the screamers were carrying, and he was knocked into the structure, which began shattering into shards with high-pitched sounds.

He opened his optics, sitting on the ground, holding a servo on his pained abdomen and stared into the green object, pointing its rod at his face, which was probably from where the fireball came. If it launched another one, he would probably receive a lot more than a few scratches.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, worried about his safety. "What did I ever do to you?"

"You just slaughtered my men in cold blood, and you wonder what you did to us?" the screamer shouted. "You won't terrorize humanity any longer, Starscream!"

"What did you call me?" Starscream asked offended.

"Take this!"

The green object launched a fireball, hitting Starscream in the face. The power of the impact knocked him unconscious, leaving him at the mercy of the screamers.

"He's down, Commander," one of the men said. "Should we finish him off?"

"No," the Commander replied, studying the unconscious bot. "Chain him up. We'll bring him to HQ and let the Autobots decide his fate."