Okey-dokey people, the action-packed Chapter Six is here and I'm officially on twenty-three pages! Wooha! (Calm down, calm down, just get on with the intro...) Ahem. Apologies. I'll get on with it now...

Nobleknightkaeru: Thank you, thank you... (grins hugely and bows) Screamer wasn't in any danger reeeeeally. Honest. Would've meant I couldn't've finished the story! (gasps in mock horror.) Plus Skyfire and/or Dreadmoon would've killed me, not to mention the fangirls... brrr.

Soryu: (grins again happily) It seems I'll have to make my terrible mock-challenges a bit harder then... still, it's nice to know I'm getting people's personalities right. Glad you thought the dream was scaryish - I wondered if I'd overdone it, but then I'm paranoid (pulls face) As for the rest...well, you'll have to read this'n to find out, but it ain't pretty - again...

Skins Thunderbomb: 'Course he is! ;) Don't you worry, they'll get what they deserve this chapter. Maybe. It goes a bit pear-shaped... And PWP stands for "Plot? What plot?", usually an excuse for a random 'sex' scene (note the quotation marks there ;) ) I had no idea what it was 'til I asked, so now I've passed on the favour. "Ask And Ye Shall Receive An Earful", guys! Pass on the sacred knowledge of the PWP!

Heh. Sorry. I'm hungry, and I get...weird when I'm hungry.

Right then, on with the show!


Dark clouds rising

By the time the medics decided that a certain red flier was recovered enough to return to classes, he'd quite thoroughly driven their entire staff into either fits of giggles or apoplexy. It wasn't that he was a demanding patient - far from it - but when he was cooped up and unable to fly - or concentrate on playing 'What the slaghappened to my null ray?!'- he became, as the friendly tech affectionately put it, a "bother with wings". With one particular medic, who was of the opinion the flier's injuries weren't half as bad as his colleagues made out and was merely being coddled because he was a "newbie student", Starscream took a perverse pleasure in seeing just how far, exactly, he could push the unlucky medic's restraint and temper whenever he came in to check up on him. A typical exchange would result in the medic storming out the door growling uncomplimentary remarks about Starscream's designer and complaining to Primus about being stuck with the young mech, while Starscream would chuckle demonically to himself and give Skyfire a totally innocent, beatific 'Who, me?' look and forget, for a while, that he couldn't fly or do much else.

At Starscream's request, as well as to try and save the medical staff's collective sanity, Skyfire brought the younger mech the remaining pieces of his null ray. There weren't many.

"I don't understand it," the flier said for the hundredth time, scowling down at a small container half-full of shredded pieces of metal, singed wires and burnt out connections. "If anything went wrong it should have been in the wiring, or in the converter, or...or something logical! It doesn't make sense that it just blew up!"

Skyfire had been sitting beside the irate mech for a while now and still hadn't managed to get a word in edgewise other than a sympathetic "mmmh" or two. Starscream was still too upset and worked up to make any real inroads into what had happened that day, and Skyfire had his suspicions that they never would - the pieces were far too small and either too charred or damaged to give up their secrets. Almost conveniently so...

He shook his head. That sort of thinking will make you paranoid, he thought. There's nothing to suggest that this was anything more than a particularly horrible accident. But somehow, deep at the back of his mind, there was a suspicion - just a tiny, niggling thought that wouldn't quite leave him - that it was no lab accident that caused Starscream's injuries.

Not that he would mention such a thing to the flier, of course. The last thing Starscream needed was Skyfire voicing his conspiracy theories; the mech would go flying off to do who knows what, and he was emotive and irritable enough as it was, due - Skyfire was sure - to trying to work out the riddle of the null ray when he should be recharging and repairing. Skyfire kept his thoughts to himself, and helped the flier as best he could.

When the medics finally, finally said that Starscream could leave the infirmary, the young mech whooped joyfully and jumped into the air, transforming and doing a dizzying somersault down the corridor before yelling his thanks again to the medic and the tech femme who had let Skyfire in four days earlier, then roaring off down the passage. The medic rolled his optics and sighed good-naturedly, while the tech snorted with laughter and complimented Skyfire on his choice of pupils. Skyfire heaved a sigh of his own, thanked the medics himself and followed the flier out at a more sedate pace, despite having to hastily smother a snigger at the sight of the unfortunate medic - who'd been on the decidedly wrong end of Starscream's cabin fever - down on his knees and thanking Primus that the flier had left. It took some restraint on the scientist's part not to tell him that if he hadn't patronised and sneered about the younger, rather more intelligent and above all temperamental mech's misfortunes in front of Starscream, the medic wouldn't have been so glad to see him leave.

Skyfire decided to let the medic stew in his own juices and followed the flier out to the courtyard, where he was doing enthusiastic loop-the-loops and being watched by a few curious students who'd heard of the flier's 'accident.' A femme from his class called up to Starscream and the flier responded - twisting over in midair, flipping into his robot mode and landing gracefully in front of her.

Skyfire watched the two talking for a moment or two, satisfying himself that Starscream really was fine and functioning before turning and walking back to his classroom with a spring in his step. He missed Starscream turn, cast around as though he'd lost something and gaze almost disappointedly over to where they had entered the courtyard. The younger mech's optics brightened when he caught sight of a white wing disappearing into a higher corridor.

Oh, well, I'll catch up with him later... he thought. I thanked him before, but I really owe him...as if I minded that!

Shrugging, Starscream turned to try and fend off the clingy femme cooing over "the poor wounded flier!" as if she couldn't see he was perfectly fine. He was convinced she was about to either expire from excess gushiness or fall on his shoulder and ask him to bond with her.

I know which one I'd prefer... he thought irritably.Thankfully one of her friends saw he was suffering and came over to innocently and unobtrusively pry her friends' gooey digits off his arm. Starscream gave her a relieved, thankful glance, which she returned with a dramatic roll of the optics and a muttered apology, leaving him to wonder just what sort of transformer would get the surges for any mech purely because they were a bit battered?

He sighed inwardly, and was about to hurl himself into the air again and forget about it when one of his classmates came over - Byzarre, one of those mechs who was permanently curious to the point of being gratingly nosey. Nice enough, the flier supposed, but with an irritating habit of being excessively chummy to hide his rampant curiosity.

"Hey, Screamer" he grinned. Starscream hated that nickname with a passion. "What's the story on the conspiracy theory? I hear someone strapped a gun to your arm an' tried to terminate you!" Starscream rolled his optics and made to answer him, when -

"I heard he made the gun himself" muttered a sulky-looking mech slouching on a low wall a short way behind the newcomer. "I heardhe was trying to make a weapon."

"What?!"

Starscream looked from one mech to the other in shock as Byzarre dropped his optics and stared at the floor, the sullen mech obviously saying what had been on his mind from the start. "Who told you that?"

Byzarre shrugged his shoulders and mumbled something incoherent about some sort of 'mill' whilst the other slunk unnoticed into a passing crowd of older students. Starscream ignored the xenoism, whatever it meant, and fixed the xenobiol student with an increasingly irritated glare. "Bizz, if you don't tell me right now what's been going on..."

He trailed off, surprised and a little hurt when Byzarre shrank back from him, hands upraised. "Hey, Screamer, don't get mad at me... I mean, I only heard it around, you know? I never thought it was true for an astrosecond, I swear..."

"Oh, for Cybertron's sake - Bizz, you look like I'm about to take your head off!" Starscream snapped, by now extremely irritated and more than a little worried. The apprehension was rapidly getting covered over by the exasperation, though... "Never thought what was true? Just tell me what's been going on!"

Byzarre seemed to come to a decision and lowered his hands - slowly though, defensively, as you would if you were in front of an enraged xeno animal. Or a Seeker. "Okay, okay, just...just don't shoot the messenger, all right?"

It was, Starscream later thought dryly, when he'd come to his senses, a rather apt phrase.

Skyfire had the strangest feeling of deja vú as he walked into his classroom. It wasn't of time repeating itself in the proper sense, it felt more...uneasy, somehow - almost ominous, like storm clouds covering the stars...

He shook his head, firmly trying to dispel the feeling. As a scientist he tended to live more by reason and patience than intuition, but he was unable to rid himself of a sinking, almost despairing sense of something close by going horrible, dreadfully wrong. Skyfire busied himself around the room, fiddling with datapads and equipment that didn't really need to be fiddled with, trying to concentrate but not realising he was failing until he snapped out of an absent-minded daze with a test tube just on the edge of tipping its contents all over his fingers. He sighed and replaced it in the rack, then wandered over to the windows. There was actually a stack of reports and classwork waiting that he'd...neglected somewhat over the past few days, but he still couldn't quite bring himself to settle down and do anything. For a being who prided himself on his patience, it was a little worrying. Not to mention irritating.

With an exasperated huff, he strode determinedly back to his desk, sat down and picked up the top datapad with a determined expression. He would get this heap done and out of the way, if only for his students' sake. Skyfire paused in his writing as his mind drifted back to Starscream. I wonder what he'll do in the lab now...probably scowl at his null ray and drive Ripplewing insane. The skimmer hadn't changed her opinion of Starscream one bik after the...accident, despite - or perhaps because of - Starscream thanking her afterwards. Maybe it was the quiet surprise in his optics - at her old profession, Skyfire knew - that she'd misinterpreted as surprised that she'd helped him. Whatever the reason, the two seemed to have resumed the old pattern of contentedly and professionally Not Getting On.

In the short pause, in the brief lull after he'd stopped scribbling absently on a battered datapad, Skyfire became vaguely aware of a noise he hadn't noticed during his musings. As he listened, a faint frown appearing on his face, the hum became slightly louder.

Then louder still.

It turned into an all-out screaming match. And, to Skyfire's horror, he recognised one of those voices very well indeed...

The scientist hurtled over to the window, threw it open and leant out as far as he could, hastily scanning the courtyard for the source of the din. And to his dismay he found it in the dead centre of the courtyard, where a howling scarlet dervish was beating the living scrap out of Combine and Derby.

Starscream was attacking like a mech possessed, screaming and lashing out with a berserker's fury at the two slower, heavier groundbots who could only try to ward off the strikes - he went at the brothers like a fiend from Hell, cracking Derby's faceplate with a lightening bolt of a punch even as he dodged a pathetic kick from Combine and dug his fists into the other mech's midsection, buckling the plating and knocking him to the floor. Starscream's face was flooded with an unspeakable rage; he was a roaring, punching, flailing kicking blur of red, an avenging devil - Skyfire stood frozen in total horror as he stared down at a student he barely recognised, staring and staring even as his heart screamed at him to get down there and stopit, to find out what was wrong later and just Stop it, stop it, for Primus' sake stop it now!

As he threw himself out of the window and cannoned through the sky to the gathering crowd, Skyfire didn't even notice he'd cried out loud.

He hurtled down into the courtyard and straight to Starscream's side, grabbing his arms and heaving him backwards as the flier struggled in his grip, kicking and shrieking as if he'd gone completely insane. For all Skyfire knew he had - the scientist yanked him off his feet and tried to hold him still as Derby and Combine pulled themselves painfully to their feet, wincing and moaning with an impressive display of injuries a real seeker wouldn't be ashamed to admit to. None of this came through to Starscream though - his optics blazing with pure hatred and utter fury, he bucked and writhed in Skyfire's grasp as his vocaliser gave out and he snarled like a demon, the scientist trying vainly to make him calm down and hold still and failing miserably.

An almost paternal panic and a sudden, infuriated anger whipped through Skyfire - he swung the berserk flier round and shook him twice, hard, and snapped for him to get a hold of himself, glaring so angrily he finally got through the blood-red haze behind Starscream's blistering optics, even the young flier seeing that, this time, Skyfire was really mad - at him.

"Starscream, what the HELL do you think you're you doing?!"

Even if the flier could've replied any answer he had died in the face of Skyfire's abnormal fury and mixed-up concern. He stared into angry, anxious ice-blue optics, and the traces of his outburst ran cold. The scientist saw, and put him down far more carefully than when he'd scooped the flier up. Skyfire noticed with a painful flash of guilt the dents his fingers had made in cracked silver shoulders.

Before he could apologise or say anything at all to the flier, let alone get to the bottom of the matter, a small flock of the Academy's more senior Professors, all lesser members of the Council that oversaw the teaching section of the Academy, swooped screeching and gobbling onto the three young mechs like vultures to the field of honour, bearing off the scarred shells of Derby, Combine and Starscream in no uncertain terms to the Council Chambers - where, no doubt, they would be picked clean of the scraps of events and laid bare before the entire Council for judgement. Skyfire made to follow them but a short, almost tubby mech half turned to dismiss him with a cursory wave of a hand, well pleased with their catch and bearing off their guilty bounty to the higher Council members for display.

Skyfire seethed. His patience had been tested enough that day, and a snooty lower level Council member was almost - almost - enough to set him off completely. He growled quietly but reigned in his struggling temper, looking after the group as they trooped off. Starscream, a little nervous but not about to show it in front of the two brothers hobbling and sparking beside him, glanced back with an appealing expression that was just short of an entreaty. Please understand... his optics seemed to say, Please...

Skyfire looked back at him, feeling hopeless and helpless, and totally missed the sly smirks passing between a battered Derby and a dented, limping Combine.

Things are going exactly as planned.

Skyfire clenched his fists as the group retreated, Starscream still giving him the occasional glance back until they disappeared into a high corridor, and felt like the most useless mech in creation. Gritting his teeth in utter frustration, the Professor turned and abruptly broke up the whispering crowd of gathering onlookers with an uncharacteristic sharpness that continued into his next lesson immediately after, leaving his students wondering what on Cybertron could have happened to their normal teacher. The lesson endured and finally over, Skyfire stormed down the corridors to the Council Chambers - specifically to the Audience Hall where most complaints were aired. Traditionally, students were disciplined by the tutor whose lesson the misbehaved in, but it seemed someone somewhere influential had taken things out of the tutors' hands.

Skyfire strode into the hub of the chambers and, to his surprise, saw Starscream sitting alone outside the huge main door to the Hall, elbows on his knees and staring at the floor. The scientist hurried over, any lingering irritation at the flier's stupid behaviour vanishing with the echoes of his steps as he wondered aprehensively at the strange, limp way the young mech was sitting. He came up beside Starscream, but the flier didn't so much as glance up at him.

A sick, gnawing dread started to rise in Skyfire's internals. He bent over and sat on his haunches next to his pupil and asked, "Starscream, what's wrong - what happened? What did they say?"

Now the flier looked up. His dark face was dead, devoid of any emotion other than a slow, far-off threat of deep shock that hovered in the depths of his dull optics like the herald of an earthquake. In a lifeless, hollow voice Skyfire had never heard before and hoped to never hear from his lips again, Starscream stared right through his aghast mentor and said,

"They want me barred, Skyfire. I've been expelled."


Oh boy. I can't wait to see the response for this one...so, as ever, please read and review - but don't yell too hard. My concrete bunker's only three floors below sea level...

Skyfire and Starscream are © Hasbro or somebody. Not me. I only have the story - that is © me and I will ritually disembowel anyone who steals it now I've got this far.