Disclaimer: Armada is not mine. Just this writing, I guess. And the page of transcript notes...

Lateral Listening

The dead shell of the vanquished enemy surrounded them. The threat had been eliminated. And yet the atmosphere was now tenser than ever. Emotions were running high; disbelief was foremost in all but one expression. That one watched the others, unperturbed by the reaction to his declaration.

One made an attempt at thwarting the inevitable; "OK then, explain to me why Starscream sacrificed himself!"

The reply was prompt, and when it came, it was cool and simple; "Because he was a fool."

Anything but, actually, but I won't mention that to them now.

It's almost a pity that they haven't yet managed to work it out; their expressions would be rather amusing. I wonder when they'll realise just what their beloved convert was really saying before his death.

And I'll restate this; Starscream was a good Decepticon. It's unavoidable; he was loyal to his faction . . . and to me. No? You disagree? Why? Yes, he said that he was unable to break his word to me, although he seemed to be a supporter of the Autobot cause rather than his original one.

But, again, he was a Decepticon. I suppose I'd better explain the emphasis. Why do you think the name parallels 'deception'? When dealing with Starscream, it wasn't enough to merely listen to what he was saying; you had to listen to what he wasn't saying, too. His final speech was . . . most unnerving, until I had time to think it over.

He sounded like an Autobot; his words were the kind that Prime and his ilk would love to imagine all ex-Decepticons used. Unfortunately, I suppose, people rarely work like that. An ex-Decepticon would think like a Decepticon who'd learned to understand the Autobot point of view (however misguided), and would explain their actions thus; not purely in Autobot style!

Starscream would have known that. And since Prime was there . . . well, suffice to say that the literal interpretation differs a great deal from the one that he meant.

Gah, that conniving, scheming, underhand . . . Seeker! The thought of him infuriates me, and with good reason. Do you know what that blasted flier succeeded in pulling on me? Hm? He manoeuvred me into a temporary truce with Prime! Prime! And the most aggravating part? I can't do a thing about it! He's well beyond my reach, and he knew he would be. I can almost see him laughing . . .

You know what disturbed me the most about his little oration? 'All of this could have been avoided . . . if only you had given me some respect.' That . . . that . . . arrrgh!

What? Oh, no, I'm not guilty about it, not by a long shot. It does sting, though, to see a Decepticon warrior almost begging for respect. As if I didn't respect him. . .

True, I'm not Prime, fond of being meek towards everyone else; though whatever the Autobots say, I am polite . . . as a rule. But I most certainly respected Starscream. He was, after all, a threat.

Did I not acknowledge him as such? I admitted, then, that he was good enough to be dangerous; a Decepticon accolade, if you will. He knew that; he had to have. What he was doing, then, was giving Prime a reason for his actions . . . and giving me the equivalent of 'I told you so'.

If I had paid more attention; if I had trusted his judgement; if I HAD respected his loyalty, then he wouldn't have been forced to take that course of action in the first place. I (and in turn, the Decepticons) wouldn't have been humiliated with his little self-sacrificing speech.

Much as I despise conceding it, he was probably right.

And then there was the part where he went on about Optimus being 'a leader of integrity', unlike me. I'm so ashamed . . . or not. The Decepticons do, after all, have their own specialised forms of honour . . . and honesty, in war, is optional. Soldiers should understand that, at least, and Starscream was no exception.

He was the same Air Commander as I'd always known him to be; and he still overdid it somewhat on the pro-Autobot additives. Rather like most of his endeavours, actually. But he tended to be fond of double meanings; that sentence in particular was a case in point.

You see, what he implied there was that the Autobots were honest in their claim that they work for the good of Cybertron than we were. That . . . hurt, in some way. It set my programming screaming; Decepticons were designed to protect Cybertron, and the notion that we were betraying that ideal was . . . was discomfiting, I suppose.

In going through with his effective suicide, Starscream showed just how far he was prepared to go; how certain he was that both factions would perish if I refused to form an alliance with Prime. He wasn't showing Autobot tendencies; he was displaying symptoms of Decepticon programming at full strength. He was convinced of the danger, and he was going to persuade me to act on it whether I liked it or not. I used to wonder about that Seeker, sometimes, just how far he'd go to prove a point; whether he'd explode himself with an unstable explosive some day (which he insisted wasn't) or if he'd attack me in an attempt to win an argument. I really used to wish I knew the answer.

I think I have the answer now. I don't think I want it any more, though.

Oh, he was good. I have this to thank him for; he reminded me not to let war cloud our function. At the same time, he gave me a valid-looking excuse to ally myself with Prime without the Decepticons being humiliated. Yes, they think his death brought me to my senses. It did; just not in the way that they believe.

And to think . . . even his own life was a counter to be played when necessary, when there was so much at stake that he had to. He did what needed to be done. We need more like him.

The context of a personal association (I wouldn't go so far as to call it friendship) can bring out very different inferences to the literal translation. They'll never understand that. I do.

They might have been his 'friends', but his final message was for me and me alone. Or rather, for me to pass on to all Decepticons through example. They'll never hear his last words.

Not the ones he said aloud.

The other ones.

'Starscream was a fool . . . but he was a good one!' Sorry. Anyhow, this isn't related to 'Loss of the Constant'. It's just a little thingy that nagged at me, simply for lack of any explanation as to why the Screamer was acting like that. As for why Galvatron felt the urge to have a showdown... who knows?