A/N: Thank you to all my reviewers so far! Love hearing from you!

Guest: Thank you for being so consistent, lol! 3

thorison1080: Jazz and Prowl will get their day- I think that they aren't really the "villains" here but they definitely made a serious error. And THANK YOU yes, this fic is definitely about how everyone reacts to Starscream's changes. Not all of it is good.

haildemons: And I quite enjoy your comments! lol 3 Thank you I hope you enjoy ;)

schwiftygeek: Warp will definitely get a little more ;) 3

Both Skywarp and Thundercracker had pestered him about what had happened with Shockwave, and he told them the details dispassionately. He explained what they had discovered that inadvertent damage to objects was okay, but not when it came to sentience. He left out the part about his accident though, feeling emotionally and physically drained after the whole ordeal.

Starscream wasn't quite ready to have the conversation asking his trine as to why he hadn't been fully informed about the nature of anything yet, given Shockwave was telling the truth. Something told Starscream that the enigmatic purple mech had not been lying.

"Your wings are drooping," Skywarp observed with a frown. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Starscream looked to his wings as if they had betrayed him. "I'm really just tired, 'Warp. It'll pass."

Thundercracker sat next to him on the berth, pulling the tired seeker next to him in the crook of his arm. Starscream felt a little bit of a blush flare up his neck at the sudden proximity to his attractive trinemate and could feel the blue seeker's warm plating and whirring components deep within. Thundercracker's arm was draped around Starscream's back, just below his wings.

"I'm proud of you," he murmured, settling in to get comfortable with his trinemate. "You've been through a lot, and you are trying to stay positive. That is difficult."

Starscream considered this for a moment and then leaned his cheek down so that it was resting on TC's shoulder. "I feel like I can only get through it because of you two," he said. He looked to Skywarp and held out his servos, inviting the third seeker into their pile of cuddling arms and wings. He definitely didn't need to be asked twice.

They lay there, talking quietly about nothing in particular, just enjoying each other's company. Starscream slipped into recharge quietly and drooped against Thundercracker's frame.

"Do you want to talk to Shockwave, or should I?" TC whispered, his face dark.

"Or do we go straight to Megatron?"

"Not yet," TC replied. "Not until we know for sure. Starscream is holding something back, and we can't let him do that. We need to find out what it is first."

Skywarp chuckled lowly. "He used to be so good at lying," he said with a fond smile.

"Apparently, that was from practice," TC said leaning down to kiss the forehead of his sleeping trinemate as he pet Skywarp's helm in his lap.

Over the next couple of days, Starscream and his trine fell into a rhythm of sorts. Starscream would wake and one of the other seekers would be out on some kind of duty, and the other one would be there, reading a data pad or watching something on their display with the volume turned down. They would refuel and relax until the other trinemate appeared. Then they would go to the flier training barracks where the other seekers, triple changers, and other flying types would run through drills with them.

Starscream watched from the sidelines with rapt attention, not only to the tactics but also to how Thundercracker led the drills. It seemed he was pretty good at it, but it also seemed like the other fliers were giving him a lot of leeway. Starscream had actually begun to notice when Thundercracker made a mistake in a command and began to take a datapad with him to write down notes. He wasn't sure he would ever show Thundercracker the notes, as he felt that it was not his place. But it felt like it was going to overflow out of his processor if he didn't try.

He threw the pad into subspace after training was done for the day. Ramjet appeared beside him on the bench and threw an arm over his shoulder.

"Ah, our little observer! What'd you think of my performance today?" Ramjet said boisterously.

Starscream smiled. "Hmm, a tad slow today, don't you think? Your left leg was twisting and throwing you off balance."

Ramjet paused and looked at Starscream with surprise. "Yeah… I guess it was. Twisted it on the last mission, still a little stiff. You're uh… smarter than you look," Ramjet said slowly. Starscream smiled a little broader. They both heard the conspicuous noise of someone clearing their vocalizer.

Skywarp had affixed Ramjet with a frigid look, and the jet quickly removed his arm from Starscream's shoulders. Starscream couldn't help but laugh a little but stood and gave Ramjet a gentle pat on the back. "I think getting an alignment would help you," he said, taking Skywarp's proffered servo as he was led away. Thundercracker turned and followed them out as well.

Ramjet watched them leave with a contemplative look on his faceplate.

To Starscream's surprise, they didn't go back to their quarters. "We're going to try refueling in the canteen," Skywarp said. "It's… an experience." Starscream had begun to understand his trinemate's humor that this meant to be on his guard.

They entered the canteen which had more mechs in it than Starscream had ever seen together in his short lifetime. His optics were wide, watching mechs chatting, laughing, yelling, refueling, and carousing. The sound in the room was almost deafening.

But when they were noticed, there was a ripple of silence that crashed over the mechs in the room, as they all turned to stare and get a good look at him.

He wanted to wince and pull back from the attention, but he swallowed the feeling and put on a light smile, throwing the crowd a small wave. There were murmurs of surprise and a more than a few mechs waved back. Some started to get up, making for the seeker when Skywarp jumped in front of them, shouting, "Alright, shows over; get back to your regularly scheduling fueling. You will meet him eventually, so work on your first impressions. Because I can tell you, you all suck slag," he said, earning raucous laughter from most of the mechs in the room.

Starscream was charmed all over again.

TC was smirking too, his smile reaching to his optics. He took Starscream on a path around the outside of the tables to get to the back where the dispensers were.

Starscream almost walked right into two short mechs that matched each other.

"Heya, 'Screamer," one of them said, looking up through his red visor with a dumb grin.

Starscream was about to reply when Skywarp came rushing up behind him. "Nope, nope, cassettes, get the frag away from my trinemate."

"Hey frag off, 'Warp-"

"Rumble, I swear to Primus, I'm going to stomp on you-"

"Wait, Skywarp," Starscream said gently. He put a servo on Skywarp's arm to stop him from advancing. "Rumble?" Starscream asked, looking at the little mech before him.

Rumble brightened. "Yeah! It's me, 'Screamer. You remember me?"

Starscream shook his head. "No I don't. But someone told me we went on a lot of missions together?"

Rumble extended his arm around so that his servo rested on the back of his neck. "I mean yeah, we did. There was the anaconda, the snow, the beach-"

"We get it," Skywarp drawled. "You're an annoying little glitch that likes to hang on Starscream."

This time Thundercracker intervened. "Skywarp, cool off." The black and purple seeker bristled but relaxed his wings with a flick.

Rumble smirked but turned his attention to Starscream. "Mind if we refuel with you?" he said sweetly.

"Absolutely not-"

"Sure," Starscream said cutting off his Skywarp.

Starscream started walking again with the two cassettes flanking him on either side.

"So what do you think so far?" Rumble asked. "Oh and that's Frenzy by the way," he said indicating his dark red and grey twin who grinned with flashing denta.

Starscream smiled at the other mech. "What do I think of what?"

"The Decepticons!" Rumble replied, as if it were obvious. "We haven't had an outsider's opinion in a long time. Just curious what your impressions are," he said with a grin.

Starscream felt a polite answer come into his processor and was about to say something along those lines. But then he thought better of it. "Honestly? You all are pretty rude."

Rumble, Frenzy, Skywarp and TC froze, and Starscream feared he had said too much. But then Rumble and Frenzy burst into loud, squawking laughter, holding their stomachs and falling over with abandon. Skywarp was laughing pretty hard too, and he could hear TC behind him trying to stifle a snicker.

"Ru- Rude?" Rumble said, barely able to breathe out the word. "Primus I suppose we are rude," he said, wheezing.

Starscream smiled, supposing that they were laughing with him, rather than at him. Still. Part of him wondered about these mechs he was allied with.

Their mirth died down, and TC said he would go get them some energon.

"Actually, I was wondering if I could get it?" Starscream asked. "I appreciate you all helping me, but I do need to learn how to do it myself."

Skywarp slapped him on the back and pulled him into a hug. "Our 'Screamer is all grown up, going to get his own energon and everything!"

He called him 'Screamer, now, huh?

Starscream felt himself squeezed and was now slightly annoyed at the teasing. Even more frustrating was that he could no longer move. It felt like the kind of situation that someone would just roll their shoulders to get the friendly mech off of them, but Starscream found that he could not. He felt powerless and small.

He was reminded that this was probably because of his… program.

"Skywarp, please get off of me," he said gently.

Skywarp's smile immediately dropped at the pleading note in Starscream's voice. "Oh, slag, sorry," he said quietly.

Starscream tried to give his trinemate a smile, but found it was too much effort. He turned and kept walking towards the energon dispenser, determined to try and figure it out for himself. To his relief, his companions let him go by himself.

It didn't look terribly complicated. Still, he waited until another mech came up, pressed a button and cube appeared. He pressed another button and gave a retinal scan to a lens near the buttons, and what he assumed was his allotted ration came out into the cube. Starscream watched the mech take his cube and leave.

Starscream then stepped up and performed the same actions, rather proud when his own ration came out into the cube. He smiled, knowing that at least he knew how to feed himself now.

He was walking back over to his trine when he heard the bellowing roar of a mech nearby him. He snapped his helm to see the mech tackle another one to the ground as they started to punch each other incessantly. Pretty soon another mech had dogpiled on top, punching the mech below him. Then there were others who were both encouraging more violence, and then others who were trying to drag mechs out of the rapidly growing chaos.

A mech bumped into Starscream, and his energon cube went flying out of his servo and hit a mech on the cheek.

Starscream sighed.

The mech was light and dark grey with two bladed wings on is back and a red visor. His helm snapped to Starscream and stared for a long moment. Then he started advancing through the throng of fighting to get to the tri-colored seeker. Starscream thought that yeah, he did look hostile, but it had been an accident and surely if he just explained what had happened-

A terribly loud noise echoed through the canteen. It almost felt like it would have broken his audios if it had just been a little louder.

"Hey SLAG-cakes," he heard Skywarp yelling into the surprised silence. "That's enough of that," he yelled. "Back to your energon or to your duties, don't dawdle." The fighting stopped, and there were murmurs of complaint, but everyone obeyed.

Starscream noticed TC had a weapon on his back that was now powering down. Maybe he had been a source of the loud noise?

Rumble appeared next to Starscream. "Heya buddy, don't think you want to stick around and see what Vortex wants to talk to you about."

Starscream looked back to the mech who was looking conflicted about coming after Starscream and obeying the black seeker's orders. The seeker nodded and followed Rumble back to the safety of his trine.

"We'll get you more energon," TC said with a smile.

A feeling Starscream couldn't quite identify the feeling coiled tightly around his spark. It was heavy and unwanted.