Starscream sighed quietly in frustration.

Nothing was working. He had a remote that seemed to work only half of the time on the door to the storage room in the laboratory. It never worked on the washroom in the lab. It always worked on the door leading out of the lab, but that one was also triggered by proximity.

Why did they make this base have a thousand doors?

He leaned back on his little stool looking down at the components, trying to think. He hadn't expected it to be easy, but he had hoped he would have made more progress than this. He had written down a bunch of ideas and had scratched off more than half of them by now. He was extremely frustrated and wasn't sure what to do next.

But at the same time, he was actually a little pleased. He felt like he was doing something about his situation for once and he was having some success even if it was slow-going. He was free to tinker and experiment, hypothesize, and test. His mind did in fact seem wired for it, he just lacked the experience to completely figure out the puzzle.

Wheeljack kept coming over to try and initiate conversation, and Starscream was being polite but he really did want to try and figure this out on his own. He knew that Wheeljack was likely bursting at the seams to offer him some solutions, but Starscream couldn't bring himself to ask. Wheeljack seemed to be respecting that at the moment.

But it didn't stop him from talking.

"So what did you do for fun with the Decepticons? Culturally speaking, I have no frame of reference and just assume they came up with plots to take over the world all day." Despite his words, his optics were glinting with amusement.

Starscream gave a small smile as he kept working on calibrating the remote. "They read, they brawl, they play games, they watch Earth entertainment sometimes and any old Cybertron media they might still have. I think mostly the same things you do," he added with a shrug.

Wheeljack seemed surprised. "I wonder if they have any movies we don't have." He looked down at the remote and Starscream's notes and then couldn't seem to stop himself from asking. "What is this little project actually about, Starscream? I can tell you're frustrated. Skyfire's wings used to do the same thing when he had a problem he couldn't solve but really needed to. And… the Aerialbots would do the same thing when they were upset."

Starscream looked to his wings as if they had betrayed him and frowned a little.

He considered telling Wheeljack it was nothing, it was just a game, a fun experiment, he was trying out to pass the time, a diversion, some lie. But in truth, the reality of what was happening scared him a little and he could use someone else's perspective.

So he explained what had happened, leaving out Sunstreaker from the story.

"Primus," Wheejack breathed. "Does this mean the program is progressive?"

Starscream swallowed. "Maybe. Shockwave theorized that there might be other built-in behavior modifications; this definitely seems like one of them. But it must have been useless to have someone who couldn't even open doors."

"You'd think they would have a way to reset it," Wheeljack said, bringing his servo up to scratch his chin. "With a program that unstable you could drop an energon cube by accident and never be able to drink from a cube again."

Starscream remembered that something like that had almost happened in the canteen back at the Decepticon base. He looked down at his servos and stifled a shiver.

"I can't live in fear of being disabled further," he said more to himself than to Wheeljack. He slowly raised his optics to look at Wheeljack directly. "I also can't rely on someone else to get me out of every situation."

Wheeljack paused and then nodded. "I won't do it for you. I just want to help. The second I overstep, you tell me and I'll leave you to it."

Starscream sighed and then nodded. "Here's what I have so far."

"A message came in from Optimus," Silverbolt said, looking worried. The mech often looked pensive in their new base of operations, as if his very presence was an offense. Skyfire knew it was because he had left the only family he had ever known, rejecting them for something he didn't quite understand.

But all of them had also been dragged into a war they didn't quite understand.

Skyfire sighed and stopped working on the energon generator that had stopped working for the second time that week. He knew how to fix it, he just barely had time to do so anymore.

Leading a faction wasn't easy, he mused. But as a Neutral and without a war to worry about, things were significantly improved for those that had left with him. Many of the Aerialbots' various idiosyncrasies had diminished since they had left, and they had genuinely seemed happier at not having the war looming over them. Even the other Autobot fliers like Powerglide seemed to relax.

Except Silverbolt, because he still felt like he let Optimus and Wheeljack down.

Skyfire lumbered out of the generator room, unspacing a cloth to try and clean his servos. Their little base wasn't much more than an old airplane hangar that a scientist friend of his had let them have to live in. They were slowly outfitting it to make it function better for them, but it was hardly glamorous living. It was on a little remote island so it was going to take a little bit of effort for the Autobots to roll up and demand they come home. Some had certainly tried.

Just being able to fly away had its perks sometimes.

Skyfire reached the console and played the message Optimus had left for him.

"Skyfire, if you are getting this, I wanted to let you know that Starscream sought asylum with us and he has expressed interest in talking to you. I was hoping we could set a date and a time to meet. Let me know. Hope you all are well. Optimus out."

Here we go. Things were starting to happen.

Silverbolt turned to him. "What are we going to do?"

Skyfire sighed, smiling. He typed some things on the console and started to record a return message. "Optimus, thank you for your message. I would like to talk to Starscream. I'm sending available times and dates. Please ping us your choice. Skyfire out."

He ended and sent the communication back and turned away from the console to go back to the generator room.

"Wait, wait- just like that?" Silverbolt said, running after him, almost tripping. "You just talked to Optimus- I thought we weren't supposed to talk to him?"

Skyfire dipped his helm to go back into the generator room and continue working. "I want to check on Starscream's welfare. Since he's part of the reason why we decided to leave the Autobots anyway."

Silverbolt folded his arms over his chest, almost looking like he was hugging himself. "I'm constantly worried we made the wrong decision, Skyfire."

Skyfire paused and put his tools down. He had tried not to baby the Aerialbots and let them develop into the mechs they wanted to be. They were adults, but… it was complicated. But here he knew Silverbolt needed reassurance and guidance.

"You can always go back, 'Bolt," Skyfire said gently, turning to look at him with a smile. "There comes a point in time in your life where you need to decide whose approval you are seeking and whether they are worthy of your attention. Optimus is unhappy with what you decided, but if he could see you all here and how much more relaxed you are, he would pause at dragging you back into the war."

Silverbolt sighed, his large, flat wings dipping a little behind him. "Isn't it our duty to help with the war? To fight the other combiners?"

Skyfire stood and walked over to him, putting a servo on his shoulder. "They told me more or less the same thing when I woke up from the ice. And frankly, a lot of the other mechs made decisions that led them to this war, but you and I didn't. I'm making the decision for myself now." Skyfire smiled again and shrugged. "I can't make decisions for you or the rest of you, but I am offering an alternative here. You might have been created for war, but you can choose to do anything. You've always had that choice."

Silverbolt sighed again. "You're not telling me what to think. Everyone has always told me what to think, and I was… comfortable with that. I don't like having so many choices."

Skyfire nodded, patting his back. "I know. But you'll be better for it." Skyfire turned and handed Silverbolt a wrench. "Want to help?"

Silverbolt looked at the wrench and then back up at Skyfire. "Sure."

Starscream stood in front of the door to his quarters in the hallway with Perceptor and Wheeljack standing beside him. "I promise, it won't blow up this time," Wheeljack said.

"If it does, I'm taking you with me," Starscream replied with a furtive look at Wheeljack.

He then looked back at the door. They had figured out that the remote wasn't going to work, so Wheeljack and Starscream had developed a holo-emitter that created a physical representation of his servo and could be used as he wished.

He wasn't technically touching anything, so it might be a loophole around the program that he needed.

Wheeljack kept calling it a "mage hand." Whatever that meant.

Starscream stepped up to the door and activated the emitter with a small wince. Some previous prototypes had been a little volatile.

He was also worried about the program activating. He still remembered the tingling weakness and pain that had shot down his arm the previous night.

But to his surprise, the emitter cast a beam of light shaped like his servo without any unexpected hiccups. It hovered over the access panel. With his mind, he was able to control the servo to touch down on the access panel and the door to his room opened.

Starscream whipped around with an excited smile on his face to look at Wheeljack and Perceptor. Wheeljack had given a loud "WHOOP!" and was hugging a surprised Perceptor who was voicing meek protests, but also gave a small smile as well.

"I can't believe that worked," Starscream murmured, looking at the small bracelet that housed the emitter. Eventually he hoped to integrate it into his wrist so that it would be more discreet and safe from possible damage.

"'Course it worked, you have the best processors on the case!"

Perceptor managed to extricate himself from Wheeljack's exuberant hugging. "Yes and this has the added benefit in case the program prevents you from doing something else with your servos, you can replace it with the holo-emitter without missing a beat."

"Oh yeah, gotta keep access to those servos!" Wheeljack laughed, giving Starscream a lascivious wink.

Starscream had been around Skywarp long enough to know a dirty joke when he heard one. He smirked even as his face heated a little. "You're disgusting," he said laughing.

"Hey, look, I know I would be missing it-"

"I get it," Starscream said, chuckling again. "Thank you. This… means a lot to me."

Wheeljack's laughing kind of died away and he moved his arm so that he was rubbing the back of his neck with his servo. "Uhh, well. You're welcome. I'm glad you let me help, but you really did most of the work."

Starscream nodded. "Still. You were a good teacher."

Wheeljack was clearly a little embarrassed which amused Starscream. He knew he was a little blunt sometimes which seemed to catch mecha off-guard, but he wasn't sure why. He smiled again. "I'm going to just retire to my room, if that's alright with you. I'll tell Bluestreak where I am."

"Sounds good to me!" Wheeljack said, his buoyant cheerfulness back. He gave Starscream a wave and started to bound back towards the lab. "Stop by anytime, Starscream."

"It was a pleasure working with you," Perceptor said smoothly. "I look forward to seeing what you add to science in the future." He turned and left as well.

Starscream watched them leave and found his smile was easy. Working with the Autobot scientists had been like working with Shockwave; applying themselves to a project togethet and testing things. It had been stimulating and Wheeljack had been quick with his praise at Starscream's ideas. He thought maybe he was trying very hard to make Starscream feel welcome, and though it still made Starscream feel like an outsider, the thought was appreciated.

Starscream opened the door again with his "mage hand," thrilled with the novelty of it. There were many applications to this, and he couldn't wait to get started.

:Bluestreak. I wanted to let you know I'm back in my quarters for the evening. Wheeljack and Perceptor just dropped me off.:

:Uh okay! Erm I was sent to pick you up though. Skyfire wants to talk to you.:

Starscream froze in his room, his good mood slipping a little for anxiety. :Oh, as in now?:

:Uh, yeah. Sorry. I just found out.:

Starscream took a seat and waited, his spark spinning. :Okay. I'm… ready. I'll wait for your arrival.: