There was a bot outside the door.

Starscream groaned and buried his helm deeper into his berth. The air out in the hall shifted around as whoever it was who lurked out there shifted around in… was that a hint of discomfort in their field?

If Ratchet was about to burst in here with a saw again then Starscream would not tolerate it—

"Are you awake?" Ratchet asked. Oh, it was the medic alright. It would be so easy to just slide the door open, smack Ratchet, and then just skitter back into his room.

"I don't have a saw this time," Ratchet laughed weakly. Starscream looked at the door. No, he wasn't imagining things. There was definitely a hint of tension in the medic's field.

He jumped to his pedes and creaked the door open and glared at a green-opticed Ratchet out in the hall.

"So what is it this time? Midnight mission or midnight rant?"

"Does… a midnight talk work?"

Starscream blinked. Then blinked again. "Are you certain there is no saw?"

"No saw, I swear! Primus, are you ever going to let me live that down?!"

"Not at all. What brings the mighty and empowered Ratchet to the lowly doorstep of cowardly Starscream at an unholy hour?"

"Starscream, when you… when you joined Megatron, did you feel that you were making the right decision?"

He leaned against the doorway and let out a heavy vent. He could still remember the way Megatron proudly looked down at him as he reached out and took his outstretched servo—

If only he could go back in time and smack it away.

"Obviously, yes, what kind of question is that?"

"But when did you realize that you did the wrong thing?" Ratchet asked softly. Too softly for Starscream's taste. He had just wanted the grouchy medic to quieten down, but now that he actually had… it just felt wrong.

"I think," Starscream said slowly, because there was a saw here, yes there was, but it wasn't a physical one and Ratchet had it pointed at himself. "I think that… there was not one moment in which I realized joining Megatron was wrong. Merely just many many little moments that added up until I realized that I had done something bad by joining him. Why do you ask?"

"You had little moments in which you slowly realized in each one that you had done something wrong. I've been having, er perhaps… my own little moments."

"Little moments? Oh. Oh, uh. Are you… beginning to regret your horrible synth decisions?" Starscream gasped.

Ratchet's faceplate spasmed. "This was a mistake," he groaned. He turned around and marched through the door and back into the dark hall.

Starscream popped his helm out, but Ratchet was already a dim silhouette at the end of the hall. Only a few strides were all it would take to catch up to the medic.

His frame stayed still and frozen in the threshold of his doorway. Ratchet was gone now, as quickly as he had come.

Apparently the medic didn't want to actually change. Starscream snorted and shut the door before he went back into his berth.

"I hope I didn't just make a mistake," he mumbled to himself.


The sight of blood on Megatron was strange.

That was an odd thought, yet there it was, lodged in Soundwave's processor in a way that refused to come out. Megatron was the warlord, the gladiator, the bloodletter—

But it did not feel right to see Megatron's own energon drip down his faceplate.

Drip. Drip.

The long vertical slash on his faceplate that had just luckily missed his optics continued to drip on and on in a steady blue and purple stream.

"The old coot did a number on you too, my lord," Knock Out tsked as he hurried up to Megatron. "If you'd just let me—"

"I will let you do nothing. Whine in whatever ways you want, but leave me alone."

The sheer indignity of being struck by Ratchet of all mechs did not escape Soundwave.

Megatron snarled and punched the cave wall. "Who am I? I am not the kind of mech to be bested by an old, broken mech, I am the mech who breaks mechs! And yet…" Megatron stared off into space with wide violet optics. "And yet. This happened," he said as he gestured to the cut on his faceplate. "This is a perversion, this is a disorder of nature, and who am I if not the bringer of order?"

He transformed his servo into a sword and grinned widely as all the drones around him watched their leader prowl around the cave. "The dark energon is not enough as it is now. I need something more."

"You need more repairs, that's what you need!" Knock Out scoffed. "So does Breakdown!"

"'Breakdown'? Who cares about that coward, he who fell like a sack of potatoes before that wretched old medic?"

"I care," Knock Out huffed as he rolled his optics, yet there was a hint of tightness to his field that reeked of hidden worry.

"I bleed purple, but soon I will bleed green!" Megatron laughed. The cut on his face continued to bleed as well. It dripped and dripped and dripped.

Soundwave felt as if his optics were instead trained onto a computer screen and was a witness to the entire spectacle from afar. He could not be here, this could not be happening, this was the last thing anybody needed, why couldn't Megatron just understand and stop with the synth-en and the dark energon and—

Another drip echoed out, not from Megatron, but from behind Soundwave. He turned around as Megatron thrust his fists into the air and whooped and laughed with his soldiers.

A faint green glow shone from around a corner and Soundwave approached it as he tightened his armor.

He reached down and picked up a rogue canister of synth-en that had rolled loose in the fight. It sloshed around all hot and vivid and green.

It would be so easy to just tighten his talons and let the synth-en shatter and bleed green all over his servos. The glass would cut into him and he'd bleed too, but what was a little more bloodshed in this million year-long war? Because if a bit of blood was what was needed to keep this from his warlord's greedy talons, then he'd shatter it a hundred times over—

His servos tightened and another crack appeared in the glass. But he didn't tighten his servos any further.

Suddenly a pair of massive talons settled down over both of his slender shoulders. Soundwave froze. A distinct crack noise echoed into the air and a spiderweb of cracks crawled across the glass. Not a huge crack, no, but a little crack was all that was needed to make Megatron crack.

The air erupted with static as Megatron's field suddenly flared out—

No, here came the anger, the inevitable wrath—

And Megatron leaned down as he clutched Soundwaver tighter to his chestplate. He leered his helm down and looked down at the bright green vial clutched in Soundwave's now-still servos.

"I will not run from my enemies," Megatron growled. "Let there be no mistake, this slight will be corrected and the next mech to get cut and bleed will not be me, but my victim! And this is the answer, this beautiful green strength!" He snatched the canister out of Soundwave's frozen digits and lifted his high above his helm so that it could shine like a green sun in the narrow tunnel. "Bow to me!"

So they did, one by one, each drone fell prostrate the ground as if it were their one and only purpose for being forged.

Soundwave felt the cables within his leg tense as he prepared to drop down into the motion he had so dutifully performed literally thousands of times before—

He froze. His legs locked up and he remained upright.

Megatron turned in a slow circle as his hot violet optics lit up at the sight of his followers bowed down around him. He turned around to Soundwave, his smile was wide—

And then nonexistent.

The proud rumbles of the drone's engines quietened and the only noise came from Megatron's deep rasps as he stared right at Soundwave.

Soundwave felt his legs shake. Then he dropped to his knees.

"How interesting. He who bowed to me first now bows to me last."

"A MISTAKE, MY LORD. I WILL BOW," Soundwave said in Starscream's voice.

The two of them stared at each other as the air grew thick and uncomfortable with static—

A groan came from around the corner as Breakdown's optics weakly onlined.

"Help me, you bastards, help me, Primus! What did that Autobot do to you, Breakdown?!" Knock Out shrieked as he pulled Breakdown's fallen frame along. "Open a bridge! Help me!"

Soundwave opened a bridge and let a burst of green light and wind wash over the cave. For one blissful moment there was no purple, no dark energon visible, for a split moment Soundwave could pretend it was not there, not present, not within his leader—

Megatron's optics flared hot violet. "All will be helped. All living beings will soon receive my assistance. Especially you, Soundwave."

He approached Soundwave with a soft field and even softer optics. This was a tenderness he hadn't approached Soundwave with in years. Ah, here was the Megatron he knew, the same Megatron that looked kindly upon the downtrodden and the oppressed.

"Using this new power of mine I will oppress those who dare to stand in my way!" Megatron cackled as he raised the synth-en into the air again with one servo as he transformed his other servo back into his sword. He held both high into the air and the drones around them all flashed their visors and rumbled with glee and anticipation as Megatron's smile grew wider and wider and sicker and sicker.

Soundwave felt sick himself.


They walked through the trees.

Optimus and Starscream moved through the dark forest beside each other in silence as Optimus's scanner beeped on and on.

He thought that going on a mission would ease the tightly wound ball of anxiety in his chestplates. It didn't, but being near Prime made him somewhat less likely to stab something. Somewhat.

Bright shafts of moonlight lit their way as they moved through the woods. The scanner beeped louder and louder as they closed in on their target and—

Optimus paused and just stood there amongst the trees. He stared long and hard at the scanner as he tightened his grip on it. Starscream heard the scanner faintly yet distinctly creak in the Prime's grip.

"Um," Starscream said as he shuffled up to him. "Are you okay?"

Optimus flinched and looked up again at the trees that stretched ahead. "I think," he started to say. His calm and reassuring smile faltered. "I am perfectly alright. It is you who I worry for."

Starscream glared through the trees as if scowling would somehow solve his problems. "I feel useless. He's still high, you know that? He's probably chugging that awful green stuff as we speak! By the vatfulls!"

Optimus frowned at the scanner as it beeped louder. The only light came from the brilliant green glow of the scanner, that same sickly shade of green that made Starscream's tanks roil. Optimus's field grew hard and cold around him as another freezing cold blast of night air struck their frames.

"I hope that he has still retained enough caution to refrain from indulging himself too much…" Optimus paused again and turned to look at Starscream. "I ask you to be honest with me. How extensive is your history with the synth-en?"

Starscream felt a cold chill descend across his entire frame, and it didn't come from the cold night wind.

"I—"

"Be honest with me. Please. If you lie to me you also lie to yourself."

Starscream sighed. "I made it with my own talons."

Optimus frowned. "You helped Ratchet?"

"No, I invented it."

Optimus leaned back and looked down at him with wide optics.

Starscream offlined his own optics and tightened his armor. The anger would come, the disappointed glare, the clenched fists, the dark and deep hiss of disappointed static, the low and calm but oh-so angry voice—

Optimus lunged forward and hugged Starscream, "Then I am sorry your own mistakes have come back to haunt you in such a terrible way. And I am especially sorry that you are about to find even more of your own hated creation."

Starscream felt his frame sway, not from sickness or physical exhaustion but from surprise. The sheer strength and suddenness of the Prime's hug left Starscream's optics staticky and his entire frame feeling tingly.

"I, uh, you don't need to apologize. It's not your fault, really," he choked out.

Prime just sighed. "But you must receive an apology anyway for the wrongs done to you. So I am sorry, Starscream."

"And I'm sorry for you, too."

Optimus's calm and strong field faltered a bit. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that—that I'm sorry you're losing another friend to madness," Starscream said. He stopped and tried to recall where those words came from. They just leaped forth out of his processor and hung in the cold night air between them.

Optimus extracted himself from Starscream's shaky frame and just stared down at the Seeker. Maybe this would finally be the moment the Prime would open up to him in return and—

"It is this way," he said as he walked through the trees and into a clearing in the woods.

Starscream's wing fell and he followed after him. He turned a corner past a tree and let out a vicious trill in Seekercant at the sight before him.

Giant thick puddles of acidic synth-en sat in the unnatural forest clearing and steamed under the harsh moonlight. Bright green synth mingled with regular blue energon and lit the entire night in vivid shades of aquamarine. The only light came from the hot and acidic spilt energon and the sharp white light of the moon above.

Starscream shuddered. It wasn't the organic shade of green he had come to associate with this wretched planet, nor was it the dark but somehow warm shade of green that was Bulkhead's armor. No, this was a pale and sickly electric green that he'd seen in the optics of an angry medic not long before.

Optimus's frame vibrated and small puffs of smoke escaped his smokestacks. "This could only be the work of Megatron. He killed our homeworld in his lust for power and will poison this world too if that is what he feels he needs to do to destroy his goal."

"I just thought we were seeking regular energon," Starscream whimpered.

"So did I. Once the signal on the scanner grew stronger, though…" Optimus trailed off as he picked his way through the puddles. Crushed in computer consoles and shattered vials of synth-en sat scattered around ripped out wires. Sparks shot into the air and the synth-en pulsed and pulsed, but Optimus's attention was caught onto one thing in particular.

One shattered but still faintly lit-up computer console stood amongst the carnage with only a few scratches on it. Optimus leaned down to inspect it as Starscream turned around in a circle and beheld the spilt synth with increasing horror.

If he had known what pain his creations would have wrought, then, then—

"This is not the synth lab," Optimus said slowly as he stared at the computer console.

Starscream's wing hiked up high on his back. "What does that mean?!"

"I believe that this is just the first. A proto-lab. It was… not a success."

The acidic smell of the spilt synth-en came back in full force and nearly made Starscream gag. "So there's another?" He growled and raised his pede as he shattered a fallen vial of synth-en with a sharp kick. Glass exploded and shards flew into the air, but he didn't care, he didn't care—

"Do not do that," Optimus rumbled deeply as he grabbed Starscream from behind and gently but firmly pulled the Seeker away from the glass.

"I have to destroy it!"

"Do not destroy yourself in the process. There is nothing left to destroy. This lab has already been abandoned." Optimus said. He narrowed his optics at the ruined lab before him and clenched his servos into fists. His normally calm and smooth field hardened around him and froze and loomed like a glacier in the air.

The air buzzed.

"Wait, is that?" Starscream's wing fluttered and he gulped as he squinted through the trees and at a distant yet distinctly violet shape.

Optimus moved past him and pushed several trees. His field blared surprise and Starscream craned his helm to look at just what had the Prime so disturbed.

Soundwave stood there, his back to the Autobots and his helm upturned to look at the moon. All of his cables were lazily draped out around him and strewn across the ground. Each one shone green with spilt synth-en.

A growl rose up within Starscream's throat cabling and he flexed his talons. A warm and heavy servo landed on his shoulder and Starscream glanced up at Optimus. He shook his helm once and then narrowed his optics at the new second-in-command of the Decepticons.

"We know that you are aware of our presence, Soundwave. There is nothing in this fight for both of us and we should go our separate ways."

Soundwave slowly and gradually turned around. His red optic narrowed at them as the remainder of his visor perfectly reflected the full moon. The air itself buzzed and pulsed erratically and made Starscream shiver. There was a harsh field in the air, but it wasn't either his or Optimus's and it wasn't from the lab either. He looked around for the staticky source of confusion and then glanced at Soundwave—

He resisted the urge to gasp. Soundwave's field was normally either nonexistent or very sharp and cold and controlled, yet now it hung anxiously around him. He clenched his long and thin servos into fists and bits and pieces of shattered glass fell out from them.

"There is no need for violence," Optimus said as he stepped in front of Starscream.

Soundwave turned to look up at the moon, then at the two of them, and then at the moon again.

His erratic field calmed slightly and Starscream felt hope bloom within his own field. The last thing anybody wanted or needed was a fight and slaggit, he was tired, Optimus was tired even though he hid it—

Soundwave hummed. "THERE IS ALWAYS A NEED FOR VIOLENCE."

His cables launched him into the air and he propelled himself at Optimus. Optimus's battlemask snapped shut with and he braced his frame as Soundwave slammed into it. He forced Optimus backwards with his cables and forced the Prime farther and farther back and back. More glass shattered around them, sparks flew, and synth-en splashed into the air as Soundwave pushed the Prime backwards through the ruined lab.

Soundwave repeated himself over and over again with a corrupted voice file of Starscream that sounded harsher and harsher with each repetition. "ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS—"

"No, there is not," Optimus grunted as he held two of his cables at bay and kept him back. "You are distressed in a way I have not seen you since… since…"

Soundwave's optic flared bright red.

"No, you are angry and upset and this fight has nothing to gain either of us and you know that. There is no need for violence."

"HE SHOWS YOU MERCY WHEN HE SHOULD SHOW YOU VIOLENCE, VIOLENCE IS NEEDED TO END THE WAR."

"It is not needed to end the war."

"IT IS THE ONLY WAY IT CAN END."

Starscream cleared his throat as he watched the two mechs grapple with each other. "Uh, Prime?"

"If I could save him, then perhaps I can still save you," Optimus said.

Soundwave went still and his optic widened. The air stopped buzzing, Optimus and Soundwave just stared at each other—

Optimus knelt to the ground with a hiss of pain as Soundwave turned on his heel and swiftly vanished into the trees.

The only sound came from the whistle of the wind and Optimus's labored vents.

"Oh, frag!" Starscream swore as he ran up to him. "Did he get at you with his cable? I swear if he cut you, then I'll—"

"I failed," Optimus said. His voice was soft yet still managed to sharply cut through the silence.

Starscream said nothing and watched as Optimus grunted and rose to his pedes. He held a servo to his side and frowned as his field and abdomen spasmed. "I believe…" he began as he looked down at his side and the now newly torn wound there. "I believe that this is of my making."

The aggravated puddles of synth-en grew and grew and grew and expanded hungrily across the forest floor in a stream of sickly green and blue. The faint silver colors of the moon and the forest faded away and all the both of them could see was just green and blue, green and blue, green green green.

"It's not your fault you got that stupid injury, it's mine," Starscream said softly. He really couldn't change, could he? He either hurt the bots he cared about or reopened their wounds.

"No, this is not your fault. Do not bury yourself again under guilt. This entire lab operation is of my doing for failing to stop the synth-en from being made."

"Don't bury yourself either," Starscream whined as Optimus's field shuddered. "You'll be fine, right?!"

"I do not know if I am good enough for the mission—"

"The mission, the what?!"

"The computer has confirmed my worst fear," Optimus grunted. "This truly is just a proto-lab. The true one is not here and Megatron has placed it in a location where he is free to experiment with it and lord it over the Earth as much as he pleases. It must be found and destroyed for good. That is our mission now."

"You're hurt again, it can wait a little bit! Who cares about the mission?"

Optimus turned suddenly and stared right at him. "I failed my mission to be a good friend to Ratchet all those years ago. This is the product of that."

The synth-en flowed over their pedes and Starscream jumped back as if burned. Optimus just stood in the viscous puddle and frowned down at his own green reflection. He took a deep shuddery vent and—

"It is on the moon," he said as he looked up at it.

"Please tell me that you're not referring to the location of the new lab," Starscream moaned.

"The Decepticons have the ability to create such remote bases with their groundbridge technology. I just do not understand why Megatron would waste so many resources having a base be built in such a distant location."

"Because that's Megatron for you," Starscream hissed as he glared up at the bright sphere of the moon. The light of it fell down onto both of them and cast harsh silver shadows on the ground.

"What do we do?" he continued. He always took so much pride in his ability to know what to do next, his ability to plan, to scheme, but that was before and this was now.

"I am disappointed in Megatron for daring to experiment with such a dangerous and volatile substance, but I am not surprised. This lab was abandoned, but I do not know why."

"Pah, somebody trashed it. Either Megatron had a temper tantrum or the little fleshies dissected it."

"Perhaps, but I believe Soundwave himself disposed of it. I do not know for certain but my intuition tells me he chose to destroy it—and without Megatron's permission. The remainder of it must be utterly annihilated in order to ensure it cannot infect the environment or endanger any humans."

"But your wound! You'll be fine, right?!"

"I…" Optimus frowned down at his side as it began to bleed more and more. "I will offer you no lies. I am uncertain Ratchet can repair me and I might have to be sidelined from this next journey the Autobots must undertake."

"No, frag, I need you with me if I'm going to destroy the product of my own mistakes!"

Optimus rose to his pedes and gently grabbed Starscream's talon with his other servo and led him to the treeline. The entirety of the ruined lab became visible and Starscream's optics widened at the sight of how much it had ruined.

"Do you see the devastation Megatron's hubris has brought upon this once peaceful and untouched land? He will use the moon as a blank slate and then—"

"He'll get creative and move on here to this backwater world," Starscream said duly.

Optimus looked at him. "This 'backwater world' is your home. It is all of ours. Do not allow yourself to think of this place as something worth letting get destroyed just because it is not your favorite home. Being an Autobot means saving places you hate. We must save this place by creating further destruction."

Starscream's wing flared. "Wait, wait?"

Optimus transformed his arm into a blaster and pointed it right at the puddles of synth-en. "It must be destroyed so that it will not seep and spread farther."

He fired off a single blue bolt that arced through the trees and collided with the distant computer console in a blast of shattered glass and metal. They stood in the treeline and watched from afar as the ruins of the lab went up in a massive explosion of pure green and blue.

Starscream kept his optics locked onto the moon the entire time and watched it as it vanished from view behind the explosion as it rose into the air.

Soundwave watched from afar in the trees.


Optimus walked through the bridge with Starscream at his side. The entire team watched them come through and their fields flared at the sight of blue energon spilt down Optimus.

Ratchet was beside him in an instant and frowned at the cut. "It reopened," he said. Not a question, but a fact.

Optimus looked away. "Megatron has a new synth-en lab upon the moon. It is our utmost priority now and needs to be destroyed."

Bumblebee trilled in alarm, Arcee swore, and Bulkhead just gasped. Ratchet just scowled and pointed at Optimus's bloodied side.

"It. Reopened. Again! Right after I told you to rest, too! It's worse than I thought. You fool, you Primus forsaken fool, now you can't go on the mission with us!" Ratchet swore.

Starscream held perfectly still. Maybe if he held his plating still and his vents still and his spark still then maybe he couldn't pretend that he wasn't there and that Optimus's blood wasn't there either and—

Optimus pulled him close and held him to his chest. Starscream felt the Prime's blood well up between them and felt as if it was his own that was being spilt.

"I trust you to be able to all perform this mission without me if that is needed. You both know the synth-en far better than I. Together, you will destroy it."

A choked noise came from off to the side. They both looked off at Ratchet who stood near the bridge and whose optics were even wider and greener than ever before.

"Optimus," he said, his voice raspy and raw with desperation. Starscream held tighter onto the Prime and hissed at the medic.

"You have to let go," Optimus said as he glanced back and forth between the two mechs.

"Who are you even talking to?" Arcee scoffed.

Optimus let out a deep and heavy sigh and looked between the riled-up Seeker and wide-opticed medic. "Both of you."

Starscream hissed again and clung on tighter to Optimus. "No. You'll be patched and then we'll go on this mission together! No matter how dysfunctional it will turn out to be!"

"The wound is small but the puncture is deep, Starscream."

"Most wounds are," he mumbled.

Ratchet shepherded Optimus off to the medbay as Starscream watched on forlornly. He looked down and saw droplets of blue energon smattered across the floor.

The ground shook slightly as Bulkhead stomped up behind him. "Aww, Star, it's not your fault it reopened."

"It's my fault his wound even opened at all in the first place!" Starscream snapped as he leaned out of the way of Bulkhead's servo outstretched in comfort. His tanks lurched and he scowled as he stormed off into the shadows of the base.


Optimus leaned against the wall as he stared down at his now patched side. The coordinates to the new lab flashed on and off on the main computer, ready to be inputted and ready to be travelled to.

"I know it seems odd that Megatron would choose such an unconventional location for his new laboratory, but I know that he has his reasons and that whatever they are they are most certainly nefarious."

The air was pierced by the sharp creak of metal. Everybody looked over and saw Ratchet hunched over the main desk, his servos tightly gripped onto the metal surface.

"I think," he began to slowly say as everybody held their breath. "That the synth-en is a gift."

The urge to stab a bitch rose up within Starscream.

"But," Ratchet said again, his voice thick with… something, maybe synth-en, maybe emotion. "But Megatron cannot have it because he will turn this gift into a weapon. And—yes, the synth-en can be a weapon. But it can also be so much more."

"Look at me," Optimus said softly.

Ratchet continued to stare at the distant wall and kept his back turned to the team. "I see you just fine, Prime. I see more clearly than you do."

Optimus sighed. "Old friend?"

"I will go on your mission. But! Only so that I can clock Big M up the helm again and teach him not to mess with things he shouldn't! And so that I can keep an eye on that winged scraplet you decided to drag in." Ratchet turned around and shakily punched the air.

"'Winged scraplet'?" Starscream gasped as he lunged. "Scraplet?! I'll show you my scrappy side you upstart ambulance—"

Optimus stepped in between Starscream and Ratchet and wrapped both his arms around each mech in a hug. The two mechs glanced between each other as their fields flared in surprise at the sudden act of intimacy.

"Do not allow your anger for each other to jeopardize yourselves or this mission."

"Pah," Ratchet scoffed. "We're not going to rip each other apart in our hatred!"

Optimus's engine rumbled. "You do not actually hate each other, you just hate what each other represents." He let go and stepped back to the bridge as he left the two confused bots behind.

He gave the team a single solemn nod as he pressed down on the groundbridge lever. The Autobots raced through one after the other, but both Ratchet and Starscream lingered behind upon the bright green threshold of the bridge. They looked at each other and then glanced at Optimus.

Optimus gave them a single nod and tightened his armor and field around him, something wasn't quite right there—

They turned around and both vanished into the bridge with a flash.

Optimus turned the bridge off and just stared at where the bridge had once been.

He stared for a long long time.


Starscream looked out across the lunar plains. It wasn't the sight of the vast craters that caught his attention and neither was it the view of the Earth high in the starlit sky. He looked—and then outright glared down at a small droplet of synth-en on the ground before his pedes.

Somehow, he knew what he'd see before he even looked up. Puddles of synth-en were scattered all across the surface of the moon and smoked and steamed under the stars.

Ratchet raced forward and leaped over the puddles with grunts of effort and the occasional hooah.

"Work your legs, team, and follow me! I've got my emergency fog lights on," Ratchet smirked as he looked over his shoulder plating. He ran off again and jumped into a puddle with a splash—

"Do not splash in it like an overeager sparkling!" Starscream screeched, but his didn't come out in its usual high shriek and instead sounded choked. The rest of the team looked over at him.

Green everywhere, smooth and round puddles, round Earth above and round horizon and round puddles of hot synth-en, of hot hot poison—

"I am the siren of the night," Ratchet whooped to himself and Starscream had to resist the urge to let out a bitter laugh.

"Maybe you should go back?" Bulkhead said behind him. Not with callousness or judgement, but just pure concern, an odd emotion that sparked even odder emotions within Starscream himself.

"I need to stay here on this mission. I proved myself to everybody in the past, I can do so again," he said as another long and low hooooahhh drifted over the craters.

Ratchet's proud voice echoed around their helms. "I am no sidekick, I AM the kick—"

He cut off suddenly and the team raced over the curved horizon and up to Ratchet's side to see what had abruptly caught his attention.

The puddles of synth-en stopped abruptly up ahead where a sea of it began, bright and green and as far as the optic could see. The distant sharp shape of a fallen ancient ship blotted out the stars and rose up from the acidic green sea like a rusted metal island.

"Oh," Ratchet breathed. "Oh."

Starscream bit his glossa, but his words came anyway. "'Oh'? That's all that you have to say for yourself?! 'Oh, whoopsie daisy, silly me, I accidentally allowed the enemy to gain control of a highly dangerous substance that when ingested results in its victims having bizarre, aggressive, and deeply personal reactions! Ahahaha!' What a hoot we're having here, Ratchet! Oh indeed!"

Ratchet flinched back at the anger in Starscream's voice and looked at the Seeker with wide optics. "Had I known…"

Bulkhead stepped in between them. "Guys!"

Starscream spun on his pede and pointed a shaky talon at Ratchet's shocked faceplate. "'Had I known?' You knew what this would result in, yet you went through with it anyway! Y-you just made it at first because you wanted to help bots, because you thought you needed to make more, but then you were compelled to make more and more of it by Sentinel and continued to craft more of it even after it became clear you needed to stop—"

Ratchet's proud plating deflated. "Uh?"

"—I am not done, I am not done! You just continued 'cause it made you feel good, made you feel like you had an actual Primus forsaken purpose—"

"What does Sentinel have to do with this?" Ratchet interrupted.

Starscream fell silent and looked around at the team. They stared at him with surprise in their fields and a deep current of tension.

He let out a shaky vent and looked up at the Earth above. Somewhere up there was Optimus, the one mech who always knew what to do and what to say and yet who could say and do nothing for them right now.

"Just… let's get into that wretched fallen ship. That's where the lab has to be."

Optimus didn't address his pain, he just moved past it and took initiative. So would Starscream, no matter how much it made Bumblebee and Bulkhead's fields tense up with pity behind him as he stomped away.

Voices echoed down the corridor. "Antagonize the Autobots and Starscream—"

Starscream froze at the familiar sound of Megatron's voice. He dove into an empty crater with the rest of the Autobots as the sound of voices drifted over to their helms.

"Please leave," Starscream softly whispered to himself over and over again. "Please leave, just leave." Bumblebee beeped in concern and leaned forward.

"He will leave, he will, just you see. We won't. We're right here."

"Perhaps even try to capture them?" Megatron chuckled. "My treacherous Seeker, the scout, the two-wheeler, the medic, and then the Wrecker are all threats in that specific order."

The sound of Megatron's raspy laugh grew fainter and fainter. Arcee poked her helm up over the rim of the crater and glanced at the ship. "All clear," she said as she vaulted back up onto the surface.

Starscream stayed down in the crater for a moment longer as everybody clambered back up. Optimus wouldn't hide in a hole in the ground, he'd act. So Starscream acted. He rose up to his pedes, tightened his plating so it wouldn't shake, and they all walked into a hole rent into the side of the spaceship and wandered into its dark halls. As they descended deeper and deeper the entire spaceship began to shudder and creak all around them. A crack formed in the pipes over their helms.

"I didn't know the moon had earthquakes, or, er, moonquakes," Bulkhead scratched his helm.

Starscream and Ratchet just looked at each other. "It doesn't," Starscream said slowly as he knelt down and felt every vibration in the ship around them. "It's geologically dead."

"Then where are these shimmy-jimmies coming from?"

"From this ambulance's mighty engine!" Ratchet laughed. The rest of the team just stared at him.

"...I am going to ignore your awful sense of humor for now and refrain from mocking it because we now have much more serious issues to worry about," Starscream groaned. "Megatron's lab must be sending out vibrations. Sloppy lab work, really, my own labs were much better—"

Ratchet suddenly grabbed onto both of Starscream's arms and looked the Seeker right in the optic. "It's near here, the synth-en, it's stronger now. But why, it's not even flowing in here?!"

"Gah, get your faceplate out of mine!"

"No, no listen, just move past your anger and disgust and think for a moment," Ratchet hyperventilated as he seemed to come to a realization. "I sense synth-en here. I am more attuned to it now that it is within me."

I sense synth-en, I sense synth-en, I sense—

synth-en.

Starscream's HUD pinged as his frame detected the familiar signal of synth-en nearby. "I sense it too, but I don't see it anywhere in here? Unless, oh. Oh no." He turned around and held his vents tightly shut as he watched the synth-en rise up from the pipes in a thick green smog.

Ratchet's field was sharp and cold around him and his frame shook imperceptibly as he tightly turned around in a circle and beheld the rest of the team and the synth-en. It curled around them and got sucked into everybody's vents in a green haze. Bumblebee, Arcee and Bulkhead coughed and hacked and tried to wave it away with no avail as it streamed back into their frames. Their optics began to rapidly flicker between blue and green, blue and green, back and back again.

"Okay, okay," Starscream said calmly. Surprise shot through him at the calm in his own voice. "Just… watch your own emotions and carefully analyze your thoughts to make sure that they are actually yours and not the synth's."

"Oh, Primus, this gives me the heebie-jeebies," Bulkhead moaned as the synth drifted around his helm in a green haze.

"Everything gives you the 'heebie-jeebies,'" Arcee sighed.

"Frag, she's being mean! It already got to her!"

Bumblebee beeped. "No, that's just classic Arcee. You feeling fine?"

Arcee narrowed her optics at Starscream and Ratchet. "For now. But the real question is, why have neither of you been infected yet? Your optics are as still as red as ever, Starscream."

Hold your vents shut, hold them, tight as you can—

Starscream waved the green fog away with his arms and wing only for it to immediately flow back in and infuse the air in a sickly haze. "My systems are better at keeping air in and out. One of the virtues of being a Seeker." He grimaced and pointed at Ratchet. "As for this chucklefuck, he's already high on the stuff!"

Ratchet nodded. "'High' is not the word that I would use. I would prefer 'empowered,' mhmm, perhaps 'independent,' and wait, what did you call me before that—?"

A keen broke through the air and from Starscream's vocalizer as he ran off and kicked the wall. A dent formed in it and he stared back at the warped reflection of his own wide-opticed faceplate.

Starscream flinched as Bumblebee rested his servo on his shoulder. His optics flickered rapidly between green and blue. "We will get through this, okay? We just need to outlast it!"

"Why are you comforting me?" Starscream asked. "You're the infected one, I should be comforting you!"

"We'll get through this," Bumblebee repeated more loudly.

Hold your breathe, hold your breathe, hold—

What would Optimus do?

Starscream looked around at the team around him, synth-en everywhere, hundreds of thousands of miles away from home base, and took a deep vent.

"We are going to find that lab. We are going to destroy that lab. And then we are going to go home all before the synth-en has a chance to ruin us all."

Everybody stared at him with now slightly greener optics. The rest of the team moved forward except for Ratchet. He watched the green smog of the synth-en rise higher and higher and shuddered.


"I am so tired of Megatron's theatrics! He just had to go off and set up a base in a decrepit labyrinth of a spaceship!" Starscream shrieked at a collapse tunnel ahead of them.

"...Well," Bumblebee cleared his throat. "I kind of remember the layout of ships like this from scouting around back on Cybertron. I think this blocked-up tunnel might lead us to the labs."

"Clear a way, Bulk," Arcee said.

Bulkhead transformed his wrecking ball. Then he paused.

The Autobots looked between each other as Bulkhead just continued to stare at the pile of debris that blocked the way.

"Uh, buddy?"

Bulkhead flinched and shook off his stupor as he began to swing and clear the way. "Oh, er, let me get on this—"

Rocks were ground apart and moondust flew into the air as he smashed his way through. Starscream glanced over at the rest of the team and shuddered at the sight of their green optics. There was something else there in the air though, not something physical, but a hint of static from the team's fields that just felt off.

Ratchet flexed his shoulders. "Alright, Arcee and Bumblebee and I will go up front. Bulkhead, you stay with Starscream in the back."

Bulkhead's optics twitched. "In… the back," he duly repeated.

Ratchet sighed. "Yes, must I repeat myself? Watch the rear."

Bulkhead's faceplate spasmed and for a single second Starscream swore he caught a glimpse at the Wrecker's true feelings. Then his faceplate smoothened and he said coldly: "Okay."

The team moved forward and into the dark tunnels as Bulkhead and Starscream walked beside each other in the back. The Wrecker's field grew darker and heavier as his massive frame grew twitchy and twitchier.

"Uh, are you well?" Starscream asked.

Bulkhead's optics locked onto him and Starscream resisted the urge to scream. Somehow they were greener than before.

"Why wouldn't I be fine, Starry?"

"Just—just an observation, hah!" Starscream laughed as his processor kicked into overdrive. The infection should be weaker now, not stronger, yet there was nothing weak at all about the synth-en now in Bulkhead's systems.

The urge to say something rose up within Starscream suddenly, but his bit his glossa and just continued to stare at the back of Bulkhead's helm as they moved along.

He sighed. "So, uh..."

Pedes came from around the tunnel.

"Drones ahead! They might want to capture, dodge!" Arcee shouted. A blaster bolt slammed into the air and struck the wall between Starscream and Bulkhead and the rest of the team. Bulkhead grabbed the Seeker and pulled him backwards as the rest of the team lunged forward and fought a contingent of drones that came out of the darkness.

Bulkhead's optics gleamed. "I can be strong, I can be worthy," he muttered. He rose up high, rolled his shoulders and prepared to jump ahead into the fight, and—

Another group of drones ran down at them from the other end of the corridor. Bulkhead shoved Starscream behind him and growled at the oncoming drones.

They ran right past him and leaped into the fight with the Autobots ahead.

"Why are they not shooting at me?" Bulkhead said as his green optics widened with the light of realization.

More drones ran, they ran and ran, all right past Bulkhead without even a single glance at the Wrecker. They lunged and sliced and kicked at the rest of the Autobots in a flurry of movement, yet paid no attention to the lone Wrecker at the edge of the battlefield.

Starscream looked between the battle and Bulkhead and felt his spark sink. Oh, he knew this feeling well, the sensation of looking up and realizing that no foe on the battlefield was paying you any mind, not because they did not know you were there, but—

The drones continued to just rush past him as Starscream stayed hidden behind his massive frame.

The memory of Megatron's voice rasped within Starscream's helm. "Antagonize the Autobots and Starscream. Perhaps even try to capture them? My treacherous Seeker, the scout, the two-wheeler, the medic, and the Wrecker are all threats—"

The drones ran by, glanced at Bulkhead, and then drove off to the other members of the team.

"—in that specific order."

How do you tell a mech that all his fears about other bots seeing him as lesser and inferior are true?

"Oh, Primus, they think you're the least dangerous," Starscream breathed.

Bulkhead let out a deep and shuddery vent. "I am a threat, so then why don't they see me as one?"

Starscream slapped his talon over his faceplate and groaned as he fell backwards into the dust. "No, no, ah, did I say that out loud? What I meant to say—"

Bulkhead's helm snapped over to face him as another contingent of drones ran by. "You spoke the truth, Star. I'm at the bottom of their list of priorities. But here's the thing—I'm about to become number one." He charged forward at the drones. "I'm important, I'm dangerous, c'mon you slaggers, fire at me, I'm the shield!" Bulkhead roared as he rose his wrecking ball high and ready to strike.

The drones swerved at the last moment and went past Bulkhead. Suddenly Starscream found himself right in the headbeams of a drone on its way at him at full speed—

Bulkhead growled as he twisted around and rammed his wrecking ball down into the front hood of the drone's alt-mode right before it hit Starscream.

Smoke and sparks vented into the air as Starscream twisted his helm up and froze at the sight of Bulkhead's enraged and green-opticed faceplate stuck in a snarl above him.

"Bulkhead," he whispered harshly as the rest of the drones fled. "Hey, hey, come back to me you pesky Autobot, don't…"

Don't tune out, don't give into the anger as I did—

His green optics flared and for a horrible moment Starscream's spark flared in fear as well.

And then the sheer confusion hit, but it didn't come from Starscream's field, but instead came from Bulkhead's.

"I don't understand," he mumbled.

But you do, you do, yes you do, Bulkhead, you're just not that important to Megatron—

"Why am I not a threat?!" Bulkhead growled. The rest of the team looked over at him and their own green optics widened at the sight of the erratic Wrecker as he got up and began to pace around.

"Let's just be grateful they chose not to make you a target today, hmm?" Starscream laughed nervously.

Bulkhead's servo lashed out and he gently but firmly grabbed Starscream's talon in his hold. Starscream yelped and for a single moment he thought he'd see two hot red optics fixed on him, but instead all he saw was Bulkhead's pained green ones.

"When I was still an enemy to you and you were a 'Con who saw me as a threat to be clanged out, did you… have a list?"

Starscream tried to twist away, but the Wrecker's hold on his talon and the silent and expectant gazes of the rest of the team held him down even more. "You do not want the answer to this question."

"But there is an answer? A list of who to kill first? It exists? Was I up high on it?!"

"Er—"

"Was I ever a threat to the Decepticons? Did Megatron fear me?!"

"Listen, okay, perhaps…" Starscream trailed off. Past the green tinge Starscream saw something familiar and something reminiscent of the old synth-free Bulkhead he had come to know and begrudgingly enjoy the loud presence of. "This isn't some paranoid delusion conjured up by the synth in your systems, isn't it? This pain is real?"

Bulkhead remained silent but the silence of the infected team pressed down harder. Their own fields roiled with the wild and erratic aftereffects of synth-en, but within each of their own fields were the hidden yet still present staticky remnants of other emotions tightly tucked away.

"I am strong!" Bulkhead shouted as he raised his wrecking ball up high. "I am, I know I am—"

Starscream twisted his helm over and narrowed his optics at the team. "Leave me alone with him."

Ratchet's optics widened. "What? But.."

"Shoo, shoo, go find something to shoot at! We're having a Seeker-on-Wrecker chat here and I don't need you infected 'Bots getting in the way… just, give me a moment with him. Except you, Ratchet. You need to stay and… and see this."

Their fields did that thing again, that thing where they roiled with synth-induced static in a way that hid something deeper and more raw beneath. The rest of the team turned a corner and went away, not far, but not too close either.

Bulkhead continued his rant. "I am strong!" he shouted, and the synth-en in his systems pulsed. "I am, I know I am, so then why..."

And there it was, the crack in his voice that Starscream had heard so often and so many times in his own voice, the way your voice cracks when you're speaking aloud as you simultaneously realize that—

"I'm at the bottom of the hierarchy... why do the 'Bots and the 'Cons just see me as the clod with the wrecking ball?"

Starscream sighed and awkwardly patted the distressed Wrecker's back tire. "You are my favorite clod, you know."

"What? I thought we were supposed to reassure him!" Ratchet hissed.

"Well, that's Optimus's job, and Optimus, er." Starscream pressed his plating tight and took a deep vent. "Is not here. So I suppose it's fallen to me to dispense his Primely wisdom!"

Ratchet's sputtered. "'Primely wisdom?!' That's rich coming from the mech who tried to resurrect a corpse and use it as his lackey—"

"I make up for my rare lack of caution with my abundance of creativity, you already know this, oh Doctor of Doom—"

Bulkhead transformed and drove off with a loud screech in the opposite direction.

"Oh frag, he just scattered like a scraplet!" Starscream swore as he ran off after the rogue Wrecker.

"But the rest of the team?" Ratchet asked as he scowled and ran after him too.

"Well, they can just wait! My second-favorite Autobot just vanished!"

"You have a list of favorites?!"

The rev of Bulkhead's engines echoed down a corridor and Ratchet transformed to race after him. Starscream watched with wide optics as two sets of taillights vanished into the gloom of the halls.

"Oh, great. Alone again." He turned his comm on to listen in and he winced.

"Just come back, where are you even going?!"

"I am off to prove myself, Ratch, so go bump somebody else's tailgate!"

"But why, why do you feel this desperate need to prove yourself?"

"Ask that question to yourself!"

Starscream winced at the loud metallic clang noise that echoed over the comms and through the air seconds later. He skidded around a corner and saw Ratchet in his alt-mode in the middle of the hall, a slight dent in his cardoor where Bulkhead had scraped him.

"So it only took one minor scrape to get you out of the chase, hmm?" Starscream sighed.

"I…" Ratchet stared off into space and oh, there it was again, that familiar waver in his field—

Starscream hoisted the medic to his pedes. "You didn't stop chasing him because he scraped you."

"I refuse to answer that question."

"That was not a question, that was a fact I just stated."

"Is this why you wanted me to stay, but not Arcee and Bumblebee? You just wanted me to see just how terrible synth-en is, didn't you?" Ratchet said. He crossed his arms and narrowed his optics, but there was a certain kind of waver in his field that only the most overconfident and zealous of mechs ever felt.

Bulkhead sent out a loud honk.

"Get to him before I do," Starscream sighed. "Just fragging drive or do whatever it is you grounders do to get about because that infected, confused mech—" Starscream loomed over Ratchet for a moment as he snarled and pointed with his talon, "is caught up in a delusion of grandeur and is about to 'prove himself.'"

"You're familiar with the synth-en," Ratchet gasped. "You know what it does to mechs."

Starscream's outstretched talon began to shake. "Find him."

Ratchet began to shake. "It brings out the worst in them and their worst fears and it's specific to every one of its victims and oh Primus, Bulkhead—"

He drove and turned on his siren as he ripped down the hall while Starscream ran after them again with the comms on.

"Bulkhead, you don't need to prove your worth to the team. Just because the Decepticons do not see you as a high-value target doesn't mean anything! You're worth something to the Autobots and that is what matters!"

"The 'Bots do see me as nothing, Star! That's why I'm the last to take command in an emergency, because I'm just the Wrecker, the muscle, the clod with a wrecking ball!"

"You love being a Wrecker though!" Starscream skidded around another corner and the lights from a massive room up ahead shone down the hall. He frantically looked around for Bulkhead and spotted a trail of tire tracks that led into the massive room.

"I do, I do love being one—"

Starscream turned another corner and slid to a stop on a tall balcony that overlooked a large room. Bulkhead stood near the railing and looked down at whatever was below and Ratchet had his servos wrapped around Bulkhead's arm in a desperate attempt to pull him away from the edge.

"But maybe I wanna prove to everybody that clods like me can think!" Bulkhead shouted as he turned around and stood over Ratchet and Starscream.

"How long have you felt like this?" Ratchet said as his own green optics widened in fear.

"When I joined the Autobots I did so b-because I wanted to prove to everybodyespecially the bots in the castes above and below methat I can do more than just stomp around and destroy! And look at me!"

Sometimes the memory of Megatron's voice was as soft as a whisper in Starscream's helm and at other times it rumbled like a storm.

The memory of Megatron's voice thundered. "You tried to break the chains of society's expectations and only ended up tightening them and fulfilling them, my foolish Seeker—"

"You feel like you just ended up fulfilling that stereotype, don't you?" Starscream whispered.

"You are walking and talking evidence that warframes are just simply meant for war and nothing more—"

A red glow shone from the right and Starscream turned to look over at what was down beneath the balcony below. A contingent of drones watched, their fields confused and conflicted and their visors red and bright.

Bulkhead screwed his optics shut and took a deep vent. "I want to be like…"

Starscream sighed and offlined his own optics. There were times where he also wanted nothing more than to be just like Optimus.

"...more like you, Starry."

"What?" Starscream's helm shot up.

There was an entire group of drones just right there who were witnesses to all of this. Soundwave would see this which meant Soundwave would soon know about all of this.

"Excuse me? Him, of all mechs?!" Ratchet gasped.

"'Cause you're a Seeker and all Seekers were seen as all vain and touty and stuck-up, the kind of bots who would never care about somebody literally beneath them. Then you came along and you proved that, huh, that Seekers do care. Everybody else on Team Prime proved the old Council wrong. The Council thought young bots like 'Bee could never make a difference, then he went and did. They thought an archivist could never be great, so Orion went off and became great. They thought two-wheelers were too weak n' soft, and Arcee proved she is neither of those things. Ratchet proved that there are good medics out there who don't discriminate based off of frametype. The rest of the family proved to our home's old tyrants that we don't have to act certain ways 'cause of our certain frames. But then there's me, the outlier, the demolition construction worker who still just destroys stuff, and—"

Starscream waved his talons in the air in panic. "Bulkhead, no, you do not want to be me!"

"I just want to be something!"

"Can't you just be our Wrecker? Is that not enough?!"

"I love being a Wrecker, I do, I just want to prove that I can not only destroy but create something, too."

Starscream went still. He thought of two winged warframes in a lab long ago at the Iacon Academy who both wanted to desperately prove the same thing.

"What are you even trying to achieve here?!" Ratchet balked.

"I am going to create some respect for myself!" Bulkhead shouted as he jumped off the balcony. The entire floor rumbled as he slammed down onto it. "Come at me, c'mon, I am a threat—"

"Oh frag, he is fast!" Starscream screeched as Bulkhead goaded the drones to him. He dared not descend down into the room below and get himself captured and create new problems, but Bulkhead…

There was that waver again in Ratchet's field, that strong waver of uncertainty.

"I know what you're going through, okay?!" Starscream shouted down below. Bulkhead briefly paused his boasts and looked up at Starscream with wide optics as the drones closed in. "I understand that more than you know—"

"How?" Bulkhead's voice echoed around the room. He turned his glare onto the drones and smacked his wrecking ball into the palm of his other servos, over and over again, a beckon and call forward to fight.

"I—er, I—"

Ratchet looked at him intensely. For once there was no judgement in his green optics, instead there was just apprehension.

"Don't lie," Ratchet whispered so low that only Starscream could hear. "He needs the truth. What the frag even happened to you in the past?"

He thought of the sly smirk of a past Prime, the musty smell of a cramped Iaconian lab, the familiar raw need to prove himself—

"Do not lie," Ratchet whispered. "Do. Not."

"Come at me, come on!" Bulkhead shouted below. "I'm going to be like you, Star!"

"Don't, please Bulkhead, just choose someone else to emulate, I am not your mech!"

"But you proved everybody wrong, you said so yourself!"

It felt like a whole shard of energon was stuck in his throat cabling. Somebody actually believed his arrogant lies, somebody actually looked at him and saw a glossier and better mech who wasn't actually real.

"Oh, Starscream…" Ratchet whispered.

"I made him believe my lies, don't you see that?! Ratchet, you comfort him! You need to get him to stop!" Starscream hyperventilated. He was not ready to delve into his history of failing and trying to prove himself, much less with Ratchet and a whole contingent of drones to bear witness to the reopening of his millennia-old wound.

Ratchet inhaled shakily. "I created this mess—"

"Come at me!" Bulkhead's voice thundered.

"—but I am not the right Autobot to fix it."

Starscream's optics widened. "Did… did you just call me an Autobot?"

The air hissed with static as Ratchet's field roiled around him. "I suppose I did."

He had wanted to truly be called a genuine Autobot by Ratchet for so long now. But now that the actual moment had come, Starscream would have to shatter it.

"Then I'm sorry."

Ratchet blinked at him.

"Why aren't you coming at me, you 'Cons?!" Bulkhead shouted.

"I'm sorry," Starscream took a deep vent as he glanced at some piping on the wall nearby. "I am sorry because Autobots are meant to be honest, but I am just not ready to be honest yet. I'm not ready for this legacy."

He reached out and slashed at the piping with his talons. Starscream offlined his optics and ducked as a massive plume of steam jetted out of the piping and into the air. The hazy steam descended across the entire room and the drones looked back and forth in confusion and fear as they turned and drove off in droves.

Bulkhead moaned. "No, no, why did they leave? I need to prove myself, I need to, I have to—"

Starscream leaped over the railing and stood in front of Bulkhead. "It's fine, it's over, don't let the synth have anymore control over you!"

"See, you do care for me!" Bulkhead laughed wetly. "You do, you do, you proved everybody wrong. But I couldn't."

Ratchet dropped down beneath Starscream right as Bulkhead wrapped the Seeker in a massive hug and he hoisted him into the air. Starscream felt bile rise up in his throat and stared down at a very tired-looking Ratchet down below.

Bulkhead's engine shuddered and Starscream felt every distressed vibration of it as the lie and the steam covered everything once more.


The team all stood together in the confluence of several hallways. Starscream stared at the floor, Bulkhead wranged his servos together, and Ratchet just stared off into space as he tried hard to not look at Starscream.

"This tunnel system is a dead-end," Ratchet said slowly. "But don't worry your little helms, I am built for instant care after all!" His field flared out with arrogance but with a deep undercurrent of some other hidden emotion tucked away under his prideful static. Starscream glanced over at the smug medic and the two of them locked optics before they sharply looked away again.

Bumblebee sighed. "This is a mess! This ship is such a maze and we need to get out of here and figure out where we are."

The entire team flinched as Ratchet whipped out his saw and began to slice through the thick metal wall of the tunnel. "Then let's move, team!"

"What?! You can't just rip open tunnels and burst out of them like a scraplet!" Starscream shrieked as a beam of light from the outside fell over them. He lunged forward and placed his talons onto Ratchet's arm as the medic finished another slice of his saw. "You're burning up inside!"

Ratchet froze and the loud grind of his saw went silent. He looked over at Starscream with wide optics. "Did you just say…?"

The portion of the wall he cut up fell with a metallic shriek to the lunar surface and the wide open plane became visible.

"Well, follow the ambulance," Ratchet grunted as he ran across the surface.

Arcee sighed as the team followed after him. "Where the frag are you leading us again?"

"I know it's near, the lab, it's near here, I feel it within me!" Ratchet said as he shakily ran across the rocky plain, his entire frame filled with nervous energy as he sped away. "I am the siren of the night, the siren of the night—"

He came to a halt over a tall cliff that overlooked the rest of the crashed remains of a spaceship stuck in a lava tube in the ground. The dark opening to the tunnels yawned open like an open mouth that stood out starkly against the bright white silver plains.

"Oh frag no!" Bulkhead shook his helm.

"You always do such a good job of summarizing my thoughts, Bulkhead," Starscream gulped as he stared down into the hideous tunnels below. "We were in the wrong half of the ship all along."

"We need to get out of view, just get in there, and blow the thing up," Arcee said.

Ratchet ran in place and punched his fists together. "Scared, huh, aren't you? We're not in an emergency situation! I am the emergency! Hooah."

Starscream barked out a harsh laugh. "What does that even mean?"

Ratchet huffed as he ran up a small pile of rocks and spread his arms to the stars. He stared at something off in the distance beyond the curve of the moon's surface and took in a shaky gasp. "He's here," he said as he laughed. "He's here and I am ready for him. He made a fool of me once—"

Dread dropped into Starscream's tank like a heavy weight. "Please no."

"—but he will not make a fool of me twice. I am the emergency," Ratchet said as the pebbles on the ground began to shake and rumble.

Megatron flew by over their helms before he then transformed and flipped onto the ground in a shower of dust that struck all their frames. Everybody flinched at the bombardment of pebbles except for Starscream who remained still. A jagged smile crossed over Megatron's faceplate. His violet optics narrowed at them all, especially at the sight of Starscream and Ratchet together.

"Ah, so the owner and his pet are here," he rumbled.

"Let me at him! I might be missing some grease in my gears but my crankshaft still has some bite to it!" Ratchet grunted as Starscream grabbed him by the shoulder and wrenched him back.

"The sparklings are fighting again. Charming." Megatron snorted. "Do you see this?" He opened his servo and a jagged shard of glass with droplets of synth-en on it clattered out of his open servo and slowly fell to the surface. Starscream watched the glass spin around and reflect the light in bright flashes as it fell.

"I've never seen that before," Starscream choked as he forced the lie out.

"Ohoho, do not lie to me! I know you Autobots destroyed my first synth-en lab! Do not play coy with me. When what belongs to me is destroyed I will destroy what belongs to you in return."

The team looked between each other with wide optics.

"Who messed with the lab? Did you?!" Ratchet shouted at everybody.

"No!" Bumblebee beeped.

Bulkhead shrugged and Arcee rapidly shook her helm.

Megatron's attention swung onto Starscream like a lighthouse beam. "Did you dare to sink your claws into my fine work?"

"First of all, your lab was shoddy, and second of all, we found it after it had been trashed!" He thought back to the lab's ruins and remembered the way Soundwave stood amongst the synth-en, glass in his servos and cables stained green.

All he had to do to reveal the truth was just open his intake and say it. The void around his helm buzzed and buzzed with static and anticipation. He didn't need to see Soundwave to know that he was near.

And Megatron's anger was near, too. If he told Megatron just precisely who had really destroyed his lab then Soundwave just might get in trouble. Maybe.

He looked up into Megatron's blood-red optics and angry field and jagged snarl and...

No. There were few bots who deserved the likes of Megatron. Starscream hated Soundwave, loathed him, loathed what he represented, loathed what he did—

But he did not loathe him enough to subject him to Megatron.

"I don't know who ruined the lab. As I said, we found it ruined—"

"'We'?" Megatron boomed. "Who dared to help you destroy it? It was none of these imbeciles and was most certainly not this rusty charlatan," Megatron pointed at Ratchet, "so then who? Unless…" His optics widened and grew redder and redder.

Starscream shook his helm. "No, no, do not—"

"Prime. Prime destroyed it, didn't he? He was not content to steal the Matrix nor my second-in-command, no, he simply had to go in and destroy my work, too!"

"Optimus destroyed nothing!" Starscream shouted back.

"He destroyed everything! How could he do this?!" Megatron snarled as his field roiled and wavered. A hot stab of pain burst through the static of his field and then was smothered again with rage.

A chill went down Starscream's spine and he turned around with a gasp as he frantically looked around the plains. A violet shape appeared above the curved horizon and slowly walked into view. Soundwave rose like a planet and softly crept behind Megatron and stood in the frantic warlord's shadow.

"TAKE REVENGE, KILL," Soundwave said in a spliced series of audio clips. Starscream shivered at the distorted recording of his own voice.

Soundwave's long and thin servos rested on Megatron's arm as he lurked behind him and tilted his shattered visor up to look at him.

The sight sent a pang of familiarity through Starscream and made him stumble back. The rest of the team glanced over at him and frowned, Starscream saw none of that. All he saw was the familiar way in which Soundwave lurked behind Megatron and tried to whisper words of vengeance and deceit to him.

"No, Soundwave, no," Starscream whined. Soundwave's shattered visor swiveled over to face the Seeker and he gripped onto Megatron's arm so tightly that he scratched several small curls of silver paint off of the warlord's arm.

Megatron just stared up into the cosmos, his optics hot violet. He looked between Earth and the stars of Cybertron over and over again in rapid succession as his field thrummed with the finality of a decision.

"Yes, we should do something about these intruders, shouldn't we?" Megatron said slowly.

Soundwave detached himself from Megatron's side and prowled along the edge of the field until he stood behind the Autobots and opposite Megatron. Starscream's field hitched at the sight of Megatron's giant silver form and Soundwave's sharp and purple one on both sides of the field.

Megatron laughed as Soundwave raised dozens of his cables up high and whipped them around him as they pulsed sharply with violet light. His normally invisible field flared out, stiff yet still somehow hungry.

His exposed optic shone brighter than Starscream had ever seen it shine before as he looked up at Megatron and awaited the warlord's approval.

Starscream took a deep vent. He'd had nightmares about those cables lunging into kill him and now they were finally going to come true—

"No," Megatron said softly. His voice was quiet yet still managed to be deafening.

Soundwave blinked. Then he blinked again. "REPEAT."

His calm and hungry field lapped around him with uncertainty. Starscream felt a tingling sensation in his chestplates and resisted the urge to laugh, to just laugh and laugh at how the calm and unflappable Soundwave who had always managed to rise above Megatron's madness was now drowned in it.

"You heard me! Why should you and I kill the Autobots when we can instead let them hopelessly wander this ruin of a ship? Why not have some fun, Soundwave?"

Soundwave's cables froze above his helm. "BECAUSE THIS IS A WAR, NOT A GAME."

Megatron scoffed. "There is no such difference. When will you learn that? War is a game, fighting is a game, and fear is a game, too. Fear will be your master, Starscream," Megatron said softly. Starscream's optics widened because he was familiar with that soft tone of voice from the warlord. It was like the soft air that hung around you right before the hurricane came.

And the hurricane came.

Megatron thrust his sword up into the air with a flash of silver light and brought it down into the ground in a wide arc just inches from Starscream's frame as he leaped away.

Starscream shrieked as he dodged. "Are you ever going to actually try and end the war, or just keep playing games!?"

"I define the war and the war defines me!"

"Your entire sense of identity just revolved around warlording! Without the war you're nothing, Megatronus!" Ratchet spat.

Megatron's field roiled around and around him in the kind of hungry way a storm out at sea just rages on and on, endlessly violent yet never satisfied. "There is only one bot left who can still call me by that name and not incur my wrath. You are not him."

He grabbed Starscream by the neck and pulled the Seeker close until his hot breath washed over his frightened faceplate. "You act as if I am the problem here, wretch. It is your own pathetic behaviour that prolongs this war. The war is a well-oiled ship that has glided on and on and that will continue to glide on." He squeezed and Starscream's vision staticked out as Megatron's growly voice spoke again just inches from his audial. "The ship of war goes on, my second-in-command, it just goes on and on and on because mechs like you run it."

He dropped Starscream into the dirt and laughed and laughed. "Because you know nothing will ever truly change. Oh, you Autobots show up, you fight me, you leave, we patch our wounds, and then rinse and repeat. Because why? Because the Autobots, who now tolerate you for some reason, will never be able to end the war because you are unable to make the necessary changes inside of yourselves in order to do so!

"The Autobots, those who criticize injustice even though they were the ones who first dealt it out! You are all the same vapid vain and debauched Council-sympathizers you were since the first day of this war and will still be so until the last day of it! Not until you change on the inside and see the truth—"

"And what is the truth?!" Bulkhead spat as he charged at Megatron with his wrecking ball.

Megatron grabbed the wrecking ball in his servo and Bulkhead watched in horror as the warlord tightened his grip hard enough on it to leave dents behind. Megatron just laughed. "The truth that I am not the one who needs to change. You are!"

Bumblebee and Arcee helped Starscream back to his pedes. "I have already changed, right?" he whimpered.

Dust flew into the air, Megatron and Bulkhead shouted as they fought off in the background, and Ratchet wildly flared his sirens.

Bumblebee smiled behind his battlemask, but it was that kind of smile that didn't quite reach his optics. "You have. I just wish you could see that."

Bulkhead was thrown across the ground and rolled into a small crater as Ratchet charged at Megatron with a shout. He stepped to the side as the medic barrelled by and crashed into the dust behind him.

"You Autobots will pay for this!" Megatron snarled as he encroached upon Starscream.

"KILL. KILL," Soundwave intoned.

"No. I won't." He ignored Soundwave and continued to stalk up to Starscream.

Soundwave's cables deflated and fell slowly to the dust. A cloud of moon regolith drifted up into the void around Soundwave as he stared wide-opticed at Megatron's back. He walked backwards into the cloud of dust and glanced at Starscream one last time before the cloud of dust swallowed his violet frame for good.

Something had changed, but Starscream did not know what. He gulped and looked back up at Megatron again. He had come to a halt right before the Seeker and loomed over him expectantly.

"Well? Why the awkward silence? Go on, let us have some fun. I want to see you try to find the lab." He turned around and faced several drones. "Drones! Harass the intruders, but do not harm them. No, they must suffer for their sins."

The team stood frozen and silent beneath the high hill Megatron stood upon. His mirthful expression disappeared and a sharp scowl took its place. "Stop wasting time!"

"You heard the mech, come on, hep hep!" Ratchet shouted as he ran into the ship's tunnels with the rest of the team close behind.

Starscream stopped on the threshold to the tunnels, darkness ahead of him and bright lunar planes behind him. Ratchet turned around and rolled his optics at Starscream's hesitance.

"Come on, don't linger, move those legs—"

Starscream stood frozen. He and Megatron stared just stared and stared at each other. There was nothing between them but the cold empty lunar plains and all it would take for Megatron to take him down was just one fusion bolt, one act of anger.

Ratchet rapidly glanced between the Seeker and the warlord and his vents hitched. "Listen, listen, ignore him, stay away from him—"

"You are walking and talking evidence that warframes are just simply meant for war and nothing more," Megatron said as he continued to stare on.

Starscream's optics widened. "I…"

A servo wrapped around his talon and pulled him into the tunnel. Megatron vanished from view and the last thing Starscream saw of the outside world were the stars of Cybertron before they too vanished from view.


The halls were calm but their fields were not. An agitated and upset EM field clung to each of them as they moved down the tunnel.

"It's near, I can feel it," Ratchet mumbled as he held his servo to the wall while he walked along.

"Finally! My wrecking ball is eager for some action," Bulkhead laughed as Bumblebee beeped in agreement.

Starscream looked over at Arcee and frowned. Her faceplate was set in a grimace and she stomped down the halls as her winglets erratically twitched behind her. Starscream nudged Ratchet with his elbow and the medic looked over.

"Gah, what now?"

Starscream pointed at Arcee with his wing and Ratchet craned his helm to see. His field went cold around him and he commed the Seeker.

"Is she going to have a breakdown next?" Ratchet asked.

"Frag if I know! I want nothing to do with it if it does happen!" Starscream hissed back.

His pedes collided against something and Starscream looked down. He recoiled at the sight of a fallen drone frame collapsed on the floor and covered in synth-en. They all looked down a turn in the tunnel and saw a series of collapsed drone frames ahead of them.

Bulkhead scratched his helm. "Did we already go through here or something?"

"No, something else killed these Decepticons," Bumblebee beeped lowly. The entire hall shone bright green and was drenched in the synth-en from ceiling to floor.

Arcee's entire frame began to shake as her optics darted between one fallen frame and the other. "They died because of this stupid, stupid war, that's why!"

Ratchet shrugged. "Maybe Megatron threw another one of his infamous tantrums, but don't worry. You have an emergency vehicle here to help!"

Arcee scowled as she ran ahead and clambered over each dead frame. Her entire frame got covered in synth-en all the way from her pedes to her crest as she determinedly plowed ahead.

"Uh, maybe not a good idea?" Ratchet called ahead.

Her helm whipped around and she glared over her shoulder. Her optics were greener than ever before and the sight of them made Starscream shudder.

"I am going to end this war. We don't need it and I especially don't need it!" Arcee snarled.

She transformed rapidly and fired off a volley of blasts down a sidehall before she then leaped sideways to the next sidedoor and fired off more shots.

On and on she went, the entire hall lit up with the bright blue flashes of her blaster as she fired off round after round after round.

"The synth-en has gotten to her too, hasn't it?" Bumblebee beeped as he turned around and narrowed his optics at Starscream and Ratchet.

More explosions boomed ahead of them and the two mechs just looked at each other.

"What do we do?" Bulkhead groaned as the hall thudded with each one of Arcee's blaster bolts.

"I don't, I don't…" Starscream trailed off. The hall was drenched green, their optics were green, everybody looked to him for some reason—

He ran in the direction Arcee vanished off to.

Starscream panted as he ran to catch up with her. Sparks flew and smoke bellowed out from each one of the halls she laid waste to. Starscream jumped through cloud after cloud of smoke and destruction and watched as the hall ahead flashed and flashed with more and more blue blaster bolts.

"For Primus's sake, stop!"

Another volley of blasts were fired off, and then another. He'd flown over entire cities laid to waste, yet the sight of their ruins somehow managed to disturb him just as much as the sight of each destroyed hallway Arcee left in her wake. Yet she continued on despite the smoke and sparks and sheer destruction.

He burst through a cloud of smoke and let out a vent of relief as Arcee's silhouette came apparent through the smog.

"Oh, you're a fool, you know that?! The last thing we need is more attention! Not only that, but you could compromise the safety of the tunnels if you keep firing with no caution! We need to be strategic here—"

The smoke cleared and Arcee's frame finally fully became visible. Her optics were hot green, yes, but it wasn't their color that gave him pause. No, it was what she had her optics on that made his vents hitch and his wing fall.

A drone was collapsed in front of her with a smoking hole in his chestplate. His spilt energon was splattered onto the reflective wall behind him and she stared intensely at her own reflection framed by the blood of the bot she'd murdered.

"Am I like you?" Arcee said without a hint of emotion. She kept her blaster outstretched and pointed at her reflection.

"...Ah, what? I think we've firmly established that we're polar opposites, two-wheeler," Starscream scoffed.

Arcee snarled but did not turn to look at him. "That's not what I meant!"

The drone's chest sparked and exploded in a flash of blue-tinted green energon.

Arcee stared down at the drone as her field roiled around and around her in the kind of hungry way a storm out at sea just rages on and on, endlessly violent yet never satisfied by it—

"You're acting like Starscream," Ratchet groaned.

"I am nothing like him! I'm not some vain vapid mech whose entire existence and sense of purpose revolves around making war and lies!"

Starscream's wing flared and he bit down a hundred insults that suddenly rose to his processor. The urge to spin on his heel and smack Arcee with his wing as he stormed away up grew within him. The tunnel shook around them again and Arcee looked up with wide green optics.

The lab was nearby, it had to be.

But Arcee's impending crisis was much nearer.

"You are reacting to the synth-en," Starscream said slowly with a calm he had to pretend to have. "You are letting it bring up your worst fears—"

The emergency lights flickered rapidly on and off again.

"—so don't you dare give in," Starscream finished.

The two of them just stared at him. "This is a waste of time," Arcee grumbled as she turned away. She was going to go and shoot the halls again and be destructive again and recklessly go ahead again and there was no way in the Pit he could let that happen.

Starscream lunged forward and grabbed her by her arm as she tried to walk off. Her helm swiveled around and sharp hateful green optics met exhausted red ones as the entire hall tremored around them again.

Ratchet reached forward and gently grabbed ahold of both of their clasped servos. "This is not the time for a spat!"

"This is so much more than a 'spat,' Ratchet. This—this killer here thinks the synth is messing with me and making me act erratically, but it's not!"

Starscream sighed. "That is precisely what Megatron would say."

"Are you implying I'm Megatron?"

"No," Starscream snarled as he loomed over her. He looked at her, really looked at her, and then offlined his optics and felt out her field with a gentle touch of his own.

Her field hungrily roiled around and around her like a nonstop storm and just raged on and on with the threat of violence.

"I think," Starscream began to say before he took a deep vent, "that both you and Megatron like the war deep down because it gives you a purpose."

Arcee lunged and Starscream veered out of the way of her blades as they flashed silver in the lights. He jumped backward and backward as they sliced through the air and narrowly missed him over and over again.

"Don't lie to me!" Starscream shouted at her as he dodged a slash to his neck cabling.

"I am no liar like you!" Arcee shouted back as Starscream dodged an uppercut that would have severed his arm from him.

"Takes one to know one!" Starscream laughed shrilly as he crouched down to avoid a slice meant for his optics. "Lie to me and say that some part of you doesn't enjoy fighting me, your hated enemy! Lie to me and say that this doesn't give you a sense or purpose!"

She crossed her bladed arms and brought both of them down in the shape of an x over Starscream's chestplate just as he reached out with both of his talons and held her blades off. "Lie to me," he breathed just inches from her infuriated face.

Her optics flickered in synchrony with the flickerings of the lights above and her arms went tense in Starscream's grip.

He let out a deep breath he didn't know he'd even taken. "Lie to me," he said again much more softly.

Arcee frowned and her arms began to shake in his grip. "Outside of being a soldier… what am I, actually?"

"Annoying."

Arcee growled at him and retracted her blades as she stomped off.

"Okay, okay, let me see if I can summon the willpower to choke down my bile and force up a compliment! You are rather competent at dealing with the spiderous menace. You… are good with John?"

"His name is Jack!"

"John, Jack, Job, Arcee 2.0, yes, sure, the fleshie who is the subpar version of Rafael."

Ratchet snorted. "Genius move, be snarky to the bot who just tried to cut your helm off!"

She turned around and pointed at him. "You're a medic! You fixed things and saved lives before the war, during the war, and will continue to do so afterward! But unlike you, I don't have a purpose after the war ends because my only purpose is fighting in it!"

Ratchet recoiled and stared at her for a few seconds. His plating rumbled and his optics flared and then he deflated. "I can't repair this," he sighed. "Some injuries can't be fixed with a wrench or a welder."

Starscream shrieked. "What, so now it falls upon me to help the motorcycle with the existential crisis?"

"Because you're the plane with the existential crisis! You're the only bot who can understand what she's going through."

Starscream rolled his optics. "Um, we are nothing alike. I don't understand her and her weird two-wheeler problems at all." Her words didn't make painful pangs of familiarity tremor in his spark, no, not at all. The entire lab began to shake around them because that was the true priority here, the lab, the lab, thelab.

Ratchet groaned and dragged his servos down his faceplate.

"You think that maybe you're more than just some bot-killing lackey, you said that yourself—"

Starscream froze. "Do not use my own words against me!"

"You were unsure of your own words, you weren't and still aren't sure if you've really become more than just a bot-killer," Ratchet gulped as Arcee watched.

One swift turn of his frame and one strong slash of his talons was all that would be needed to gouge a scratch into the medic and get him to shut up. He clenched his talons into fists and ignored the turbulent fields of the two bots around him. But he couldn't slash at Ratchet like that, he just couldn't, bile rose up in his throat cabling at the thought of it. If he did turn around, if he did just kill Ratchet right then and there, then he really was just some bot-killer.

Ratchet continued, "You won't kill me. I know that now. You said... 'I honestly don't know what I am, if I'm a scientist or just some bot meant to destroy.'"

"How… how did you even manage to remember every word I said back there?" Starscream laughed as he continued to stare into the shadows of the hall.

Ratchet frowned. "It's my job to catalogue all injuries. Even the ones I can't fix."

Starscream finally turned around and faced the medic.

"I don't need some upstart Seeker to come in and calm me down!" Arcee glared right up at Starscream. "I know bots like you. You never actually have felt any doubt about whether you should fight or let your identity center around fighting—you just fragging fought. Maybe I want to have some actual sense of identity outside of 'Con killing because if I really am just a 'Con killer and that alone, then… I'm not much else of anything at all, then am I?"

Starscream took a deep and steady vent.

There was no way in Pit that he would look one of his greatest and most hated enemy in the optics and say oh yes, I too have existential crises, oh yes, I also have lost all sense of identity and doubt who I really am—

"No, I can't understand that. I've always been above such insecurities," he said as that familiar pang of pain hit his spark again. "Listen, two-wheeler—I mean, Arcee, you're… you. You're not just some mindless Decepticon killing machine."

"Oh, I am?"

"Yes, you're…" Starscream trailed off. The right words to say were there in his helm, he knew they were, but he kept his intake tightly shut and just sighed.

"I don't even know why I'm talking to you about this!" Arcee shook her helm. She transformed and raced down the hallway. Only seconds later the distant hall began to flash with green flashes as Arcee fired her blaster nonstop again.

"Her blaster bolts are green now," Ratchet breathed. "The synth-en has begun to really get to her. And you…"

Starscream crossed his arms.

Ratchet's optics widened and he knelt over as a spasm of uncertainty shook his already unsteady field. He slid his wrist plating open and stared at his vital signs for a few seconds before he swore and stumbled away after her.

"Was that a moment of weakness and panic that I just witnessed, oh mighty medic?" Starscream called after him. Ratchet's field flared with a sharp burst of annoyance as he walked down hallway after hallway with Starscream in pursuit.

"Quiet," Ratchet grit out. "Which way did she go?"

"We're still pursuing her? Fine then. I perhaps lost track of her."

"Perhaps indeed!" Ratchet snarled. "This mission has gone to bits, you know that—?"

Pedesteps came down the hall. Heavy pedesteps. Familiar ones Starscream had felt make the floor shake and tremor as they stalked after him many times before.

His wing shot up on his back. "Ah, could those perhaps be Arcee's?"

"Not unless she suddenly gained several tons. There's only one Decepticon I know of with such heavy pedesteps and I know it isn't Breakdown. You know who's on their way here," Ratchet sighed.

"What?!" Starscream laughed shrilly as he began to drag his talons down the sides of his helm. "You've suddenly lost all interest in punching Megatron? You did so before! Frag, you even joined this mission specifically so that you could do so again, so why the hesitance?!"

Ratchet rapidly glanced around and his optics locked onto a shut sidedoor that Arcee's blaster bolts had only managed to singe.

The sound of metal on metal shrieked through the hall and Ratchet looked over and gasped. Starscream's frame shook with anxiety and his talons were closed around his own helm. Ratchet grabbed ahold of both of Starscream's talons and pulled them away from his now scratched silver helm.

"Do not hurt yourself like that! Here, come on, into the sidedoor, hep hep, hide—" Ratchet grunted as he threw the door open and thrust the Seeker inside.

"So you do care about me!" Starscream scoffed as fell into the sideroom. Ratchet pulled himself into the room and shut the door as Megatron's pedesteps grew nearer.

Starscream's chest shook and the urge to let out a high-pitched keen overwhelmed him. He bit his glossa so hard he felt energon well up.

"Look," Ratchet said softly. He pointed at the small foggy and blurry window in the door. The faint and smudgy glow of distant synth-en shone through the dirty glass.

"The lab," Starscream gasped.

A shadow fell over the door and cast them into darkness. An enormous and angry EM field sizzled through the metal and tremored like a hurricane as Megatron stood outside. The only sounds came from the quiet whir of both of the hidden mech's systems and the heavy and deep rasps of Megatron's vents.

Megatron moved along. His massive pedesteps thudded away and Starscream and Ratchet just stared at each other in silence as the warlord retreated. The only light came from the dim red glow of the emergency lights above their helms.

"... I think he's gone," Ratchet said softly.

"Hah! He's never gone, not ever, not here, not now, he's still out there so don't you stand there and lie to me and say that he is not gone—"

Ratchet reached forward and grabbed Starscream's talons. "Do not tear at your frame again, do not. He is not present here at this moment. But we are, and the synth-en is near. We just have to destroy it."

The entire tunnel system shook and tremored all around them and the emergency lights went out. Starscream keened and held his helm in his talons as Ratchet sharply inhaled and pulled his talons away again.

"No, do not, hey, don't hiss at me! Just, just look at me!" Ratchet held Starscream's talons in his own scarred servos and looked the Seeker in the optic. "You managed to save yourself from Megatron many times when it was just you and you were completely alone."

"I also completely and utterly failed to save myself from him multiple times as well!"

"You were alone then. Now you have this old cog to look out for you!" Ratchet smirked as he briefly let go of Starscream just long enough to smugly punch his fist into the palm of his other servo. He then grabbed Starscream's talons up again and held them tightly.

Starscream squinted at him. "I've gotten used to your sickeningly arrogant smiles that you now have because you're high on synth-en. That smile you gave me just now? It… it didn't quite reach your optics. I know a lying mech and a fake smile when I see one. The synth-en is wearing off, isn't it?"

Ratchet's smile faltered. "Maybe. Maybe not. Hep hep hep, it's none of your business!"

"It is," Starscream said softly. "You're just as scared as I am, aren't you?"

They both said nothing and just stared at each other.

"...Are you ready to come out into the hall yet?" Ratchet asked.

Starscream looked through the foggy pane of glass and tried to swallow the sudden tightness in his throat cabling. "The team… I don't want to be out there, but I know I have to be. The mission needs to be finished."

"Unfortunately, and…" Ratchet tugged at the handle, but it didn't budge. "Wait. I think I might have shut the door perhaps too strongly…" Ratchet groaned as he awkwardly rubbed his neck cabling.

"Did you just trap me in here?! With you?!"

"Hey, I'm trapped with you too!"

"Oh, yay, we're trapped together! Hoorah!" Starscream said as his spark began to pulse faster and faster and faster and—

"Stop clawing at yourself, please, stop," Ratchet begged in the softest voice Starscream had heard him use yet.

Starscream scowled and settled back down as Ratchet fiddled with the door. He offlined his optics and pretended he was with Optimus.


Starscream stared at the floor and Ratchet stared at the ceiling as the medic tightly held onto Starscream's shaky talons.

The lights briefly turned on again, they looked up with hope, and then the lights went out and darkness plunged down onto them once more. The only other light came from the bright red and green glows of their optics.

Starscream let out a bitter laugh. "Hopefully you're like one of those scraplets who thinks it's nighttime and just instantly falls asleep whenever you throw a cloth on their helm."

Two green optics narrowed at him.

"What?" Starscream scoffed. "You called me a scraplet earlier, I'm returning the favor!"

"Primus!" Ratchet shouted suddenly and abruptly as he looked at his vitals. The sharp burst of noise from the once calm mech gave Starscream pause. He leaned in and looked, really really looked at Ratchet's optics. The room was dark but the green glow of his optics lit the lines of stress around them all the more clearly.

"The light," Ratchet hyperventilated as the sounds of his panicked and frantic vents rapidly filtered in and out and in and out in a harsh staccato of breath. His field flared and flickered around him, not out of anger, but of an emotion very familiar to Starscream.

"Stop panicking," Starscream said as he tried to reach out to the panicked medic, but then froze halfway in the air with his arms held out and wrapped around nothing.

"The light, Starscream! We need light, otherwise we can't pry open the door and get to the lab and—"

Ratchet forlornly stared out the foggy glass window in the door and at the distant glow of the green synth-en so close and yet so far.

He reached up and punched the glass, then again, and again and again and again—

Starscream lunged forward and wrapped his arms around Ratchet's midsection and pulled the frantic medic away from the door. "Stop, stop stop stop, you will just hurt yourself. These doors were built to last!"

"So was that synth-en! So was the happiness it gave me!" Ratchet struggled and thrashed as Starscream pulled him farther from the door.

"Wait…" Starscream breathed. "You're extra strong right now. You could resist me. So then why are you letting me pull you back?"

Ratchet said nothing and stared at the door as Starscream's expectant red gaze settled on the back of his helm.

"You're…" Starscream said as his own field flared. "You're panicking because something new is going wrong. I bet some part of you wants to be pulled back from the door, is that it?"

"No," Ratchet said thickly. "Not at all!"

"No, that's… you're right, that's not all of what's going on here. You're only just now realizing that your beloved little poison is actually a poison, aren't you?" Starscream mused as he held the exhausted and scratched medic back from the door. "But there's even more to it, isn't there? You knew it was a poison all along, didn't you? You just couldn't accept that."

"We need more light in order to be able to see the wires to cut through them and get out," Ratchet said as he extracted himself gently from Starscream's grasp. "And I know how to get that light."

Starscream frowned. "How—?"

A quiet snick noise echoed through the small room and Starscream looked down at the new source of light. Ratchet had his arm held out and his wrist plating retracted. His vitals were open to see and the bright glow of them shone brightly in the room. That wasn't what caught Starscream's attention, though.

"They're not entirely full anymore," Ratchet said blankly as he kept his faceplate blank.

"Your hunger levels? Why wouldn't they be?"

"Because," Ratchet's faceplate spasmed, "when we destroy that lab—when I destroy that lab—my hunger level is going to go back down, down down down until it's close to nothing again."

A familiar and sharp ache stabbed through Starscream's tank. He would know the ache of hunger anywhere. Except he didn't need to look at his own vitals to know that he was still decently fueled. No, the ache of hunger was a phantom one that followed you and reminded you of its presence even when you were full, a ghostly remembered pain that swept in and stabbed.

"You said 'again.' So that's how the team's meagre energon supply managed to fuel all of you for so long. To fuel us for so long. It was never actually fully fueling six whole bots, it was really just fueling five. Am I correct?"

"If somebody got hurt," Ratchet sucked in a sharp breath, "and we did not have the energon to save them because I used it to just fuel myself, even though all I do is just sit around at a computer all day, then I would never and could never ever even begin to even forgive myself—"

Starscream reached forward and wrapped his arms around Ratchet as the phantom hunger pains stabbed harder and harder. "And when you destroy that synth-en you know that when you go back to base you'll have to destroy the synth there, too. Then you'll go back to being hungry. That's why you panicked, you saw your levels go down again."

Ratchet said nothing but nodded tightly.

Starscream took a deep vent. "Ah. Ah. That explains why you're so grumpy all the time." His optics widened and he froze the moment the words left his intake. He was trying to comfort another victim of starvation and all he did was just snap at him, Primus, Optimus would be so disappointed—

"No. He wouldn't be disappointed in you, Starscream." Ratchet sighed in the Seeker's grip.

He held the medic in his arms as a thousand thoughts raced through his processor. How would Optimus handle this? Except Optimus wasn't here, he was far far away from here and Ratchet and his pain was right there—

"Wait," Ratchet sniffled. "You said out loud that… that you're trying to comfort me.Another victim of starvation. What do you mean by 'another'?"

Starscream went still as the phantom hunger pain ripped through him as memories of a hidden energon stache leaped unbidden to his processor.

He kept his intake shut and bit down so hard on his glossa he felt energon well up. His grip on Ratchet trembled—

And Ratchet hugged back even tighter.