Starscream held his talon to the vein of energon.

Optimus came up behind him. "There is something wrong with it, is there not?"

"Oh, deeply. It feels… living." Starscream placed his audial up to the energon vein visible within the wall of the mine the team was in.

It felt cold to the touch—and then it burned. But it wasn't like the burn of a fire or of the rim of an activated blaster. It felt warm as if it were alive

The energon began to glow purple. The entire mine was lit up in all the possible shades of violet that there even were, and then the energon became a cool blue again.

Bulkhead just stared. "...Spooky."

Starscream tilted his helm up to look at the vast spiderweb of energon that was embedded into the ceiling and walls. There were so many crystals high up on the cave ceiling that they looked like a second set of stars.

"Why did Megatron abandon your mines so quickly?" Bumblebee beeped.

"He couldn't allow me to be able to continue to claim credit for our vast energon supplies. He was certain he could create enough mines to support the Nemesis's needs himself." Starscream snorted. "But this… this is different." This mine was alive, fruitful, and plentiful in a way too good to be dropped and ignored.

Yet it had been abandoned nevertheless. The remnants of old pedesteps and the grooves of departed heavy machinery criss-crossed the dirt floor.

The energon crystals flashed blue, then hot violet, then blue, again and back again in a rhythm.

"He's planning something big," Starscream said. "But I do not know what."

"Starscream," Optimus said in that certain deep and heavy way of his. "Could there be other reasons that this mine was abandoned?"

"...None that I can think of. Megatron is up to something."

There was a crash of noise and a crate of energon tumbled to the mine floor. Miko sat in the crate and looked down at the mess she created.

"C'mon, Miko, the 'Bots won't let us come with them anymore if you just crash everything over!" Jack sighed from beside Raf.

"I'm channeling my inner Wrecker!"

Optimus and Starscream just stared at the scene.

"So, eh, do you always bring the fleshie sparklings with you on mining trips?" Starscream rubbed the back of his helm.

Optimus frowned. "Occasionally. But I am beginning to sense that that was a mistake."

Starscream looked up at the cave ceiling and—mistake, mistake. Vertigo hit him like a wave and he shakily sunk down to his pedes with a sharp intake. Suddenly Optimus was there and leaned over him, his orbital ridges furrowed as he looked down at the Seeker.

"What is the matter? Is this a medical issue?"

Starscream shook his helm. "No, just fun Seeker claustrophobia."

Something nudged his pedes. He looked down and saw the kids clustered around his pede tip as they looked him over.

Starscream blinked down at them. "...Hi?"

Optimus firmly squeezed Starscream's shaky shoulder and then stood up. "I will let the rest of the team know that I am going to ask Ratchet to send a bridge for us so that we can send the energon through—along with you." Optimus nodded at the kids. "Keep an eye on him."

"What?! You can't just toss me through!" Starscream sputtered.

"Your own fears will endanger you."

Miko laughed. "You're stuck with us, Star!"

He groaned and sat cross legged in the dirt with the kids. "What, have you all gathered around to witness my little breakdown?"

"No!" Raf said. "We were just checking on you."

Checking. On him. Apparently even tiny fleshies now needed to 'keep an eye on him.'

The mine rumbled around them.

The energon flashed and vibrated all around them in vivid shades of hot violet.

"Is it me, or is the energon kind of flashing as if it has a…" he struggled to find the word, "a pulse?"

The energon flashed with the rhythm of a sparkbeat.

There was movement off in the shadows. Starscream whirled around and saw a silhouette of a drone there on the other side of the cave.

The air burned with the sudden intensity of four upraised blue Autobot blasters.

The drone just stood there unflinchingly and said and did nothing.

Arcee glared. "Come on, 'Con, out with it. Why are you hanging around in the ruins of some abandoned mine?"

The drone just stared at them. "By orders of Lord Megatron." He activated his blaster and then pointed it—

At the vein of energon in the wall. Then he fired.

The Autobot's optics only had a fraction of a second to widen before the wall went down with a massive crash. The drone vanished and the entire mine shook all around them as energon veins exploded and shattered one by one.

"Bridge, we need a bridge!" Arcee shouted into her comms as debris and sand poured down over their helms.

Optimus walked over to Starscream to retrieve him—

A giant chunk of purple energon fell down between them. The two mechs stared at each other through the transparent purple crystal as the mine continued to collapse.

A bridge opened up behind the Autobots as a wall of rock and sand fell down between Starscream, the kids, and the rest of the team. Optimus saw Starscream crouch down and shield the kids with himself and then they were no longer visible as if they had never been there in the first place.

The mine around them continued to shake but all Optimus could feel were the intense vibrations of his spark as it thrummed rapidly in his chestplates.

They were gone. Just gone.

And it was his fault—

A heavy servo gripped his arm and yanked him away from the fallen wall. Bulkhead dragged his leader over to the bridge, but Optimus dug his pedes in.

"Bulkhead, I need to—"

"—not get yourself killed, how about that?!" Bulkhead shouted. "This whole place is going down and there's nothing we can do to get them out now!"

Optimus tightly shut his optics. The energon crystals of the cave flared such a bright and hot shade of violet that he could see their glow through his opticlids.

Bumblebee beeped desperately. Arcee stared at him. The bridge spun round and around. Optimus took one last look at where he'd last seen Starscream and the kids and then let himself be pulled through the bridge.


Optimus stared at the empty bridge. He stared. Then stared some more.

"Frag," Ratchet muttered as he adjusted the comm settings at the base's computer. "Starscream, do you come in, copy?" Hot static was the only noise they heard. Ratchet punched the desk and leaned over it heavily. "What happened back there?"

Optimus responded flatly. "The mine collapsed. We got divided."

Ratchet and the rest of the team gathered behind their Prime. "Did they…?"

"They have not perished. I can feel it. I saw Starscream shield them and the ceiling was not thick enough to crush them."

Bulkhead scratched his helm. "It makes no sense, though. I mean, that drone made the mine collapse so easily. And then there was all that weird purple flashy nonsense!"

"The energon of the mine has been infused with dark energon. The reason why is beyond me."

Bumblebee beeped confusedly. "Megatron infected it. Who else could have?"

Starscream had sensed a pulse. Maybe it was nothing. Or maybe it was definitely something.

He and faced Arcee, Bulkhead, and Bumblebee, their own fields as tense and tight as his.

"They did not perish. I strongly feel that they are still alive. The cave-in is causing interference to our comms, but so is… something else." Optimus trailed off. The few energon crystals they'd gathered sat in a crate near the wall. They flashed violet again before they returned to their regular shades of blue.

"I'm scared," Bumblebee beeped.

So am I, Optimus thought as he offlined his optics. But he could never say that out loud. "Let us just hope that Starscream will bring the children back safely and that we will all find a way to reestablish contact." He gently nudged Ratchet away from the computer and took his spot there as he tried to activate the comms over and over again.

Bulkhead clapped his servos together. "I trust Star, he's got a soft spot for little sparklings! They'll come back safely! And with more vulgar vocabulary, too."

Optimus frowned. "Let us… perhaps not hope for that last outcome."


"I think we need to leave," Breakdown said softly.

Knock Out paused right in the middle of the hallway. Breakdown continued to walk for an extra few seconds before he then turned and looked back at Knock Out.

"And what makes you think we could pull that off?" Knock Out glanced between Breakdown's faceplate and the other end of the hall. Anybody could come at any moment and overhear whatever… whatever this was.

A vast window covered the side of the hall with a wide view of the ocean. There was a reef, but it was empty. The fish had fled. Perhaps they were smarter than the two of them were.

"He sends us on missions all the time," Breakdown said as he angled his faceplate away from where he knew the ceiling cameras to be. "If we just didn't come back…"

"Where would we refuel? How could we get energon ourselves? Where would we stay? Where would I get the products needed to upkeep this fabulous polish?" Knock Out smoothly gestured at his sleek red frame.

Breakdown frowned. "Well, there are… some… who might be willing to help us—"

Knock Out held both of his buffered servos out. "Do not say the name I think you are about to!"

"It starts with 'Auto' and ends with 'bots.'" Breakdown bit his lip and looked away. "We need to begin to think about this."

"Oh, what, you think we can just strut off the Nemesis and right into the arms of the enemy without a farewell to good ol' Megs? He's going to miss the sight of this sweet polish walking around his ship, Breaky!"

"They accepted Starscream. Why not us?"

"Because he's Starscream! He's always been special!"

"But why could he make it and not us?" Breakdown pounded on the glass and made the wall shudder. The lights flickered overheard.

"He's more useful to their cause than we are! They already have a medic and a former Wrecker. Oh, this sudden scheme of yours to flee off into the night wasn't inspired out of a desire to see your wrecking buddy, is it?"

Breakdown clenched his servos into fists. "We are on a sinking ship and we need to bail out. I don't want to leave. But we need to leave. I worked so hard to get into the 'Cons. Do you think jumping ship will give me any pleasure?"

"Well, no—"

"It will give us survival—"

Knock Out moved forward until they were faceplate-to-faceplate. "We can't have Megatron chasing after our tailgates! He's already terrifying enough when he swings by the medbay to angrily froth about Starscream before then stomping off! Maybe… maybe we could hide low on the Nemesis for a while."

"Soon there won't be anywhere else to hide," Breakdown said as his field crinkled around him like crushed foil.

"Where did this sudden desire to flee come from?"

Breakdown turned and just looked at him. "It has always been there ever since Megatron went insane. It's just coming out now."

"Well, if we go to the 'Bots we risk getting shot or even rejected due to being too much of a burden on them, and going rogue into the woods is no option because of, well… nature." He shuddered.

"Why are you always so complacent? You always just want to switch sides to the winning team. This team we're on has already lost."

"DO NOT LET HIM HEAR YOU SAY SUCH THINGS."

They both whirled around and saw Soundwave there in the hall. His single visible optic shined a hot red as it fixated onto the two mechs like a search beam.

"Ah, ehehe, Commander, we were just having a good old hallway chat!" Knock Out laughed as a tight smile stretched across his faceplate.

"A TREASONOUS ONE." Soundwave walked between the two of them and did not give them a second look as he strode right past.

He paused near the end of the hallway and analyzed the way both mech's fields flickered and twisted nervously behind him. "I CAN'T SHIELD YOU BOTH FOREVER."

Then Soundwave was gone.

The doors to the throne room were not mountains and yet loomed like them. They shrieked and groaned as they slid open to admit him.

Megatron had his back turned as he sat in his throne in front of a viewport. Earth fish—sharks, Soundwave recalled—prowled around some poor prey in long and slow circles right outside the glass.

"Round and around. Around…" a shark swam past in a hurry… "and then around." Megatron's throne creaked as he turned to face Soundwave. His optics were bright and tinged with hot violet. "Do you know why the sharks go around and around?"

Soundwave said nothing.

Megatron waved a lazy servo as he leaned forward in his scratched throne. The scratches were new. "I think you know why," he rasped out, his voice raw and hoarse from his shouts of rage. "I think you've always known… why the sharks go round and around and around. I think you already know why us Decepticons have always gone around and around."

Soundwave said nothing. Megatron rose from his throne and threw his arms up as if the whole world was there in midair and ready to be caught. He walked around Soundwave in long and slow circles.

The sharks outside attacked whoever their prey was. Blood bloomed like a giant red flower outside the viewport and cast Megatron's frame into sharp silhouette as he came around to the front of Soundwave again.

"I have made the Nemesis go around and around and made this war go on and on… because why? You used to know why. You chose to forget why."

"I FORGET NOTHING."

"But you have forgotten this." Megatron clapped his servos together with a loud smack. "Because when you go around and around the enemy then they can't escape you. They try to go one way? They can't because you're there. They try to go the other way? They can't because you're there. They try to sabotage the glorious war effort they helped build up?" Megatron leaned right into Soundwave's audial. "They can't because I'm there."

Soundwave said nothing. Megatron loomed over him as Soundwave stared at both their reflections in the bloodied viewport. He saw a glint of light out of the corner of his optic and saw a row of drones silently stood there, their visors locked right onto the two of them.

"And from now on, Soundwave, I am going to always be there." Megatron walked away and then flopped back down into his throne as if he wasn't about to shatter Soundwave's world with his next few words:

"Starscream has been spotted."

Soundwave had already been frozen still in the first place but in that moment he went truly solid. He was the one who told Megatron of the comings and goings of the enemy, he was the designated Seeker-hunter, he was the one who gave Megatron intel. Not the other way around.

But things always went around and around.

"Go and take care of Starscream," Megatron said without even a glance back at his second.

Soundwave blinked. "IN WHAT MANNER?"

Megatron turned and looked over his shoulder at him. "Must I spell everything out for you?"

Test. This was a test. The same kind of sick twisted games Soundwave had helped his Lord inflict onto Starscream were now being inflicted onto him.

Soundwave looked down at the cuts on his servos. He hadn't yet patched them up. He had known the glass vial that had contained the synth-en would shatter sharply when he'd break it, yet for some reason it still felt surreal to see the evidence of his own treason scratched onto his body.

The drones off to the side all walked off past Soundwave without a second glance as they vanished into the hall. The blood that had spilt out into the water out the viewport had begun to dissipate until all that was left was floating scraps. Scraps of just a few pieces of flesh floated outside as Soundwave realized just what few scraps he had left of his Master's respect.

"I was informed of Starscream's sighting by my very loyal new personal drones," Megatron said as he continued to watch Soundwave's reflection. "Loyal to me."

The urge to look around for Laserbeak was unbearable, yet he bore it. He wouldn't allow Laserbeak to become one of Megatron's new lackeys. I will protect her, Soundwave thought.

"HOW DO YOU WISH I APPREHEND STARSCREAM?"

"You have fallen. I wish to see how you choose to get back up. So how you rise back up into my good graces again is entirely up to you, my current second-in-command. I'm going to give you ten chances. Ten chances to hurt, apprehend, capture, or just do something to Starscream. You seem rather fond of helping him. So prove to me that you don't want to. Does it seem like a lot? It is not. 10 chances can go by in just ten seconds."

Soundwave held very very still. "TEN," he repeated. "AND WHAT HAPPENS AT ZERO?"

"If you use up all your chances and reach zero… then I will know what to do with you next."

Soundwave nodded stiffly as the coordinates were pinged over to his helm. He cast one last glance over his shoulder at his Lord. Megatron continued to just watch his second's reflection in the glass.

The walk from the bridge back to the viewport in the hall went by in a half-remembered daze that he would later struggle to recall. This was the same window Knock Out and Breakdown had stood by earlier, but they were long gone now. The only trace of their past presence here was the faint sense of tension and worry that hung thick and staticy in the air.

Soundwave stared out into the empty ocean expanse. He couldn't even see the bottoms of the waves.

Then the glass shattered and circular fractal shatter patterns radiated out all over the glass. He turned to see just what had hit the glass hard enough to make it break like that and he frowned. It was his own fist. He shakily drew his fist back and stared at the tiny powdery shards of glass stuck to it. Primus, he didn't even remember the punch. He had been angry, angry angry angry, and then suddenly that anger was out in the world.

Soundwave looked at his reflection again and saw a hundred different reflections of his faceplate stare back at him through the cracked glass. Water dripped through the cracks, bright blue like spilt energon.

He didn't know who it was who looked back at him anymore. A hundred faces that were all technically the same but that all felt so different. He was so good at understanding other mechs and yet did not understand himself anymore.

Soundwave shook his left servo and watched the glass shards fall free from it to the floor. He stared at his clean left servo and tried not to look at his right glassy cut-up one. It was almost as if each servo belonged to its own different mech. He didn't know which mech he was anymore.

Tingles went through his side as he activated a long and unused piece of equipment he'd had installed into his frame but had never seen fit to really make use of. His frame flickered shimmered and flashed with the faint transparent holoforms of a hundred mechs with a hundred faces.

He didn't know whose faceplate he wanted to see, but he knew it wasn't his.

Soundwave opened up a bridge.

The bridge spun round and around—

—and vanished into it.


The cave wall collapsed and Starscream felt his spark leap into his throat. Debris fell down, no, the ground shook, no no no, and claustrophobia gripped ahold of him, please, Primus, no.

There was movement by his pedes and he looked down at the children who all stared wide-eyed up at him. They weren't his to take care of—

—but one last look back at where the rest of the Autobots were confirmed to him that he was the only one close enough to take care of them.

He grabbed the kids with one talon and held them to his chest as he ran up the sloped mine wall. Silt and rocks and sand poured past him in a wave, but he waded through it and punched an arm up through the mine ceiling.

Starscream heaved himself through the ceiling with a gasp. A hot blast of air struck his frame and he squinted at the sudden sunlight as he shakily climbed away from the mine behind him.

The ground underneath him shook and rumbled as the subterranean system shuddered and collapsed. He flinched with each massive vibration that travelled through his frame.

Optimus. The rest of them. They were still down there—unless they had escaped? But maybe they didn't, maybe—maybe—

"Starscream," Jack said. "Starscream. You're talking out loud again."

He looked down at the kids in his palm. Right. Kids. Childcare.

What was something reassuring that he could say? "That was not supposed to happen!"

Miko snorted as she dusted debris from her shoulders. "Oh, you think?"

Raf just curled up on himself. "They survived, right? And we'll reestablish contact, right?"

Starscream paused. "...Yes. We will." Hopefully his lie would become the truth.

Miko dialed her phone but groaned at the lack of signal. "Why can't you 'Cons—or former ones—ever build mines in places with cell service?"

Starscream snorted. "My apologies. I should've kept texting in mind when I was an evil second-in-command of the enemy army."

The commlines hissed static and Starscream swore under his breath. He looked out over the landscape and paused at the sight of it. Or more precisely, the lack of it. Dunes, dunes as far as the optic could see, right on and on with no sign of any end.

"We are staying put, right where the rest of them can find us." Starscream nodded.

The ground shuddered behind them again and they all watched as a seam opened up. Sand poured in hot waves down into the purple-tinged tunnel system below.

"Okay, frag, change of plans, now we're on the move!" Starscream ran away from the collapse behind him as he held the kids tightly in his palm.

"How big is the collapsing tunnel system?!" Raf shouted at him.

"...How big is your town that you live in?"

The kid's jaws dropped.

Starscream sighed. "The entire thing was rigged to blow. We're still on top of the tunnel system as of right now." The ground shuddered under his pedes. "Which means we're standing on ground that is going to collapse soon, so we have no choice but to flee far from where we last were. Unless we all went to get swallowed by the sands and sucked into the darkness and—"

Vertigo hit him again and he stumbled. The kids cried out in alarm and he held up his other talon to silence them.

"We'll be fine. I'll be fine. Ignore… whatever it is that you felt you just witnessed happen to me, okay?! Look at the sights. Oh, look, sand, sand, and ohhh, guess what? More sand!" Starscream grumbled as he rose up to the top of a dune and looked out over the bleached landscape. There were no signs of red, blue, yellow, or green armor. He'd even be grateful for the sight of orange armor right now because at least Ratchet had more personality than a sand dune did.

"Curse my amazing ability to construct vast mine networks," he grumbled.

His back struts tingled and he looked up. Clouds streaked through the air in white slashes against the hot blue sky. Something black drifted into view before it vanished into another cloud.

Starscream squinted up at the clouds and raised his other servo to shield the children from the view of what it was that he'd witnessed. Another black shape spiralled into view against the blue, then another, then another as they drifted around the sun in the shape of halo.

"What? What is it?" Jack said, too curious for his own good.

Starscream took a deep vent, breathed in hot abrasive sand that sliced into him, and wondered how long it would be before Soundwave descended from the sky to slice into Starscream's frame.

He looked down at the children. Three pairs of curious eyes looked at two bright red ones. They didn't need to know what hung over their helm and heads, did they? Why couldn't they just be content to think that this was all a mishap, a detour, a short road-trip?

Starscream gulped. They did need to know. Starscream just didn't want to be the one to make them know.

"We are being watched by the Decepticons. They are watching us from above."

"What?!" Jack shouted as he and the others scrambled to get a look. More and more drones flew into view.

"Ohhh, why?" Raf groaned.

"Can we shoot them down?" Miko asked.

Everybody just looked at her.

"...What? It's a valid question," she huffed.

A new shape flew into view, sharp, violet, smaller and yet deadlier than all the others. Starscream knew the silhouette of Soundwave when he saw it. And yet for some reason his frame was the highest above the clouds, just a sharp flash of fluorescent purple that came in and out of view.

The sun beamed down, stress beared down, the sand in his joints ground down, and the children looked up. Starscream refused to meet their gaze. "He is testing us, oh, of course he is."

Raf blinked. "Megatron?"

"Who else?! Testing, testing, that's what he does. Impromptu challenges are his signature. He wants us to wave his goons down and beg for help as we sink away into the dunes. We're not going to sink. I won't let us!" Starscream snarled.

The ground continued to shudder behind them as more and more sand sunk inward into the hidden tunnel system beneath their pedes. The landscape itself contorted right behind him and the sun's heat struck him as the ground fell away from him. Starscream turned in a wide circle as he looked out at everything, at the sun on his face and at the enemies in the sky and at the children he had to watch out for and at the ground that vanished without a trace—

And moved on.

Frag. He had nothing for them. No shelter or food or water, nothing, nothing nothing.

The children just continued to stare at him. Perhaps talking would comfort them.

"...Sand. Did I mention that I hate it?"

The kids all groaned. "Yes!"

Starscream returned his gaze to the horizon right as one of the kids rapidly shifted in his palm and made his servo shake. He shrieked and glanced down. "Oh, Primus why did you move so rapidly, what's wrong, what's happening—?"

Miko just stared up at him from where she'd flopped onto her back. "...I laid back. Y'know. I flopped down. Gettin' some rays."

Starscream blinked and then laughed sharply. "Just—just—don't scare me like that, I thought—"

Raf softly cut in. "—that one of us had collapsed?"

Starscream dragged his talon down his faceplate. He took in a hot and sandy vent that scratched his insides as he internally screamed inside. "Perhaps?"

He was always the victim. He was the one who needed to be protected. And yet now he was the protector.

The kids glanced at each other and then began to mindlessly chatter amongst themselves. Starscream ignored the glance Jack sent his way.

He'd protect them. Somehow the Autobots had managed to protect them all this time, so why couldn't he?

"So why can't I?" Starscream mumbled as he walked along.

"What was that?" Raf asked.

Starscream sighed. "Nothing."


"Is the ground behind us still all shifty and suspish?" Miko asked.

Starscream turned and looked back at his pedeprints. They had already begun to fill in with sand again. The natural smooth slopes of the landscape were broken up by a contorted series of much more jagged rocks and dunes directly behind Starscream. Primus, his miners had done a number on this place. The air hummed with the sound of more sand as it plummeted and flowed deeper into the depths behind them.

"This tunnel system was extensive, so yes, we need to keep moving." A tall dune rose up ahead. Starscream began to scale it. "Aha! Maybe I can get a signal to the team from up here."

The sand particles clogged up all his joints and cables and struck into him like sharp knives that jabbed with each step. But the pain they'd all feel if they didn't escape the desert would be much worse than the pain Starscream already felt. So he climbed, all the way up past the sandy and abandoned drills deposited liked dropped toys all along the dune's side.

"See, I still got it," he laughed as he reached the top of the dune. "This Seeker can still seek and—oh my Primus, no, why, I hate everything!" Starscream shrieked at the sight of what was before him.

He shifted his talon that he held over the kids for shade so that they could get a clearer view of the horizon. A large mountain loomed on the horizon in all the shades of red and orange and gold imaginable.

Jack shrugged. "It's a mountain?"

Starscream grit his dentae. "No. It is not."

The mountain moved. Slowly, gradually, hardly noticeably, but it moved nevertheless.

"It's a sandstorm," Raf whimpered. Lightning flashed from within its depths.

Starscream offlined his optics. "Yes."

"Let me at it!" Miko shrieked.

Jack gawked at her. "I am not going to let you fight a sandstorm!"

"That is a fight I would like to see. But I won't let it happen!" Starscream groaned. Something purple flashed over the side of the dune. The children continued to bicker in his palm as he inched his way over to the dune's opposite side.

His helm popped over the dune crest.

A drone stared right back at him.

"...Hello," Starscream said. The drone's shield flared with shock.

Starscream clutched the kids to his chest as he struck out with his leg. The drone's helm snapped backwards and a crack split up the middle of his faceplate from where the sharp tip of Starscream's pede had sliced right up into it.

He slid back with a spray of sand as more v-shaped red visors glowed hot all around him.

The kids all went silent as Starscream gently deposited them down onto the ground as the drones encroached from the other side. "Don't wander too far, yes?"

Then Starscream fought. Each particle of sand within his frame scratched around within him as he scratched open one drone's neck cabling after the other. Bright blue energon spilt and sizzled under the intense heat of the dunes and melted down the slopes of them like slow waterfalls of electric blue. Drones fell, Starscream snarled, the storm approached, the sand in his joints grinded away, and one drone broke off from the rest.

Miko lightly punched Jack's shoulder. "Look!"

She pointed at the drone from earlier. The cut that went right up the middle of his faceplate bled steadily and his visor flickered, but he was still coherent just enough to maybe do harm. He stumbled over to the other dark side of the dune and blended within its shadows so that only his dim red visor was visible. Starscream threw back one drone after the other under the hot sun, oblivious to the one enemy hidden away from it.

"Star, watch out!" Raf shouted.

Starscream looked over at him and then dodged a blaster bolt that slammed through the air right where his helm had been.

"He still doesn't get it," Raf moaned as the enemy drone snuck up behind the Seeker. Starscream took a hard hit to the back of his knee and went down to just one. His frame shook and the sand that poured out of his joints made an audible scratch noise that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. He rose back up to both legs again.

Miko looked over at one of the half-buried drills hidden on the dark side of the dune next to the enemy drone. "I'm going to kill the bastard and proudly proclaim that I'm a Wrecker!"

Jack and Raf both lunged to stop her, but she was faster. None of the bots noticed her as she sped over to the nearest drill and clambered her way up it. The boys followed suit and the three of them all just stared at the massive control console covered in alien glyphs.

"'Kay, so I'm just gonna press stuff 'till we get something hot going here, okay?" She slammed down on a bright red button. The drill made a loud screech noise, but it was drowned out by the unholy screech Starscream made as he split another drone's helm apart with a sharp kick.

The drill puffed smoke and slid down and deep into the dunes, half-sunken and totally lightless as it trundled towards the drone too focused on the Seeker up above.

The last drone Starscream had been in a fight with crumpled dead and onto the heap of drones he'd already killed. He shakily rubbed away the spilt energon that was now smattered on his frame and turned around—

The hidden drone turned, his visor flashed, and he let out a grunt as the drill's tip rammed right into his abdomen.

He froze up when he felt cold energon splatter all over his frame. He slowly turned around and his optics widened at the drone dead due to Miko.

The drill shuddered as it sunk into the sand. The motion was enough to dislodge the impaled vehicon. His frame fell down dark and lifeless next to the dozen others Starscream had already dropped.

"Ha!" Miko shouted as she leaped up to her feet. "I'm a…"

Miko trailed off. Starscream just stared at her as her triumphant expression gradually vanished and her eyes went wide with some emotion Starscream could not identify.

"I'm a…" she continued with only half of the bravado as before. She gulped. "A Wrecker," she said. She looked down at the dead drone and flinched.

"Come here," Starscream said as he knelt down and put his talon out for her to climb into.

"No."

"'No'?"

"I—I'm sick of being carried, okay! I can handle this!" She shook her tiny fist at the dunes. "I can carry myself, I can handle this, and I can handle that." Her fist fell back heavily to her side and she pointedly did not glance at the drone's bloodied form.

"What is it that you think you can handle?" Starscream said slowly and cautiously because there were two traps he could sink into here: the mess that was the sunken ground, and the disaster that was about to happen to this girl. He knew those kinds of tremors that shook her body, the special kind of tremors that shook you up inside and outside after you took a life.

"Do not coddle me!" Miko snapped.

Jack shuffled up to her. "Hey—"

"Not now, golden boy! I need to make sure the enemy is dead!"

Jack sighed. "C'mon, Miko, he's dead for sure!"

"That's the problem!"

There was silence for a moment.

Starscream sighed. "Miko."

"You heard nothing, you got that? Don't go yapping. Especially to 'Bulk." She stomped off away from them intent on headed… somewhere. Just somewhere that wasn't there near that corpse.

"And why would he be disappointed in you?" Starscream called after her.

Miko pointed an angry finger at him. "He has no reason to be, why'd you assume that that's what I meant?"

Starscream sighed and sat down heavily into the sand. "You implied it."

"I am a Wrecker and Wreckers do not feel bad for killing. We don't."

"But you do. Feel bad, that is."

"I do not!"

Starscream hummed thoughtfully. "Is that so?"

Miko took her left shoe off, gave it a few whacks to get the sand out, and chucked it at the cross-legged Seeker. Starscream watched it hit his knee before it harmlessly flopped onto the sand.

"That was by far the worst attempt on my life. I'll give you points for creativity and style, though."

"Shut up!" Miko shouted.

Jack and Raf shuffled up to Starscream and retrieved the shoe-turned-projectile. Raf looked up at Starscream with wide red eyes. "What's happening to her?"

"I suspect that the heat is getting to her and making her… burn up." You're burning up inside, Bulkhead's voice rang around and around in his helm. Burning up, up, up.

Miko sat way off in the hot sand.

She heard a fwoosh fwoosh sound behind her and turned around. Starscream had walked up to the fallen drone's body and had begun to kick heaps of sand over it. She watched silently as the drone's black visor and greyed out violet armor was hidden amongst the sand.

"What, are you mummifying him?"

"No. I am hiding him."

"This is one twisted game of hide-and-seek!"

"I am hiding him because seeking his body out will only bring you pain. I can tell the evidence of your kill is haunting you."

"Wait, did you really accuse me of being haunted? Like by his spooky floaty ghost or something?"

Starscream just looked at her. "Yes. By his ghost."

Miko just stared. Then she snorted and lazily waved her hand. "I don't regret killing bots! I had to kill him."

Starscream sat beside her. Jack and Raf moved forward but he held up his talon to keep them away. "You did have to kill them. That drone might have hurt me so though I am loath to admit it your assistance is… appreciated. But don't assist again! My pride can't handle it…" he gave her a moment to puff up in pride before he continued, "...and neither can your conscience."

Miko reached down to pull off her other shoe, but then just screamed and punched the sand instead. "The only reason I haven't sent my other shoe after you is because I don't want to lose both!"

"Have you discussed this with Bulkhead? Does he know about how you really feel about killing bots?"

"Well, er…"

"Let me guess. You've kept this clamped up and you just go on dune-rides with him hoping that it will help you forget."

She stared at the slopes of the distant dunes and watched as they grew hazier and harder to see as the sandstorm encroached. "What if everytime I go dune-riding with 'Bulk from now on all I can think about is the 'Con I killed in them?"

"The weight of killing cannot be lifted and will always wear you down forever. The only thing you can do with the weight is bear it." Starscream looked down and raised his orbital ridge at the sight of Miko as she punched at his thigh plating over and over again with her tiny fists.

"Stop going into therapist mode, I hate it! You sound like Optimus. Primus, you're like the… the Walmart version of him."

"I do not understand the reference. But I sense the insult." He sighed. "You know, Bulkhead has his own problems with killing."

Miko snorted. "No, he doesn't. He's the Wrecker extraordinaire!"

"And also the biggest softie on this Primus-forsaken world. Do you disagree with me on that? Talk to him. It upsets me to hear that sparklings have had to get dirty and kill to survive. Even adults cannot handle that responsibility, so I have no clue how a sparkling is supposed to."

"...Will it ever go away?"

Starscream glared at the sandstorm that swept their way as it swallowed one dune after another in its orange haze. "Does what?"

"The guilt? I mean, I got rid of a real bad dudes! Really! But even though he's already dead and buried I can still see him in his mind's eye andddddd…"

"You question things? Look," he lifted his talons up. "These are the talons that unjustly murdered Cliffjumper. I think about that almost every time I see them or use them. I will say to you what I said to Bumblebee: you can comfort yourself knowing that the bot you killed had to die. I, on the other hand, have no excuse for my crime. So just be glad that at least your murder was justified."

Miko turned in order to hide the way she rubbed at her face. "You really think 'Bulk won't be upset with me for being upset about this new drone I killed?"

"Not at all." He glared at the sandstorm. There was something off about it. The upper cloudtops were tinged a light shade of purple. Not an intense hue of it, but just enough to make Starscream's armor lock up.

He grabbed all three kids in his talon and walked right past the fallen drone frames as he looked left and right for a new dune to hide behind. Starscream looked up and took one last look at the bright white sun before it also got covered in that awful purple and orange haze.

"That's it. We're finding a dune to spend the night by."


"This is fine." Starscream's optic twitched. "Just fine."

The sun had set and the wind whipped around them. The bulk of the dune behind them shielded them from the most destructive winds, but that didn't stop a few rogue streams of wind that escaped around the dune. The kids all sat tightly together in the harsh sandy breeze.

"This will be fine," Raf said.

"You stole my line," Starscream frowned.

The kids looked at each other. Jack spoke up. "You're doing your best. We know you're just trying to keep us safe."

Starscream spun around. "What are you doing?"

Jack blinked at him. "Uhh… we're talking?"

"No, no, no no no. I can tell you're doing more than that." Starscream squinted down at the three of them. "Are you sparklings making an attempt to comfort me?"

They looked between each other again. Raf cleared his throat. "Maybe?"

Jack and Miko both groaned beside him.

"Oh! Oh! Fantastic! Look at me, a grown adult Seeker needing to be comforted by three sparklings. Brilliant."

"There's nothing wrong with being scared," Jack said.

"I should be the one telling you that—not the other way around! Primus, why can't I do anything right?" He groaned. The lack of energon had begun to get to him and the very familiar and the very sharp hungry sensations stabbed into his nearly empty tank. He didn't know when the kids had eaten but it definitely had been far too long ago.

"You don't have to feel bad, you know," Raf said softly. "It's not your fault we got stuck with you. We just wanted to check on you."

Starscream whirled around and pointed at him. "That is precisely the problem." He took in a sharp vent. "This is all partially my fault. I just had to go and let my claustrophobia overwhelm me! That's why Optimus left me alone, that's why you went to check on me, and that's why we all got separated because I couldn't handle my fears like an adult!"

Raf shrank back at the Seeker's pointed talon and angry voice. "I… no. You didn't know this would happen, did you?"

"Well, no—"

"So then please don't beat yourself up over it. Please."

"Well, someone has to beat me up for it, so it may as well be myself," Starscream muttered.

"What did you just say?" Raf asked.

"Nothing! I said nothing! How sensitive are your little audials anyway? Primus. Prime said my own fears would endanger me and he was right. He just didn't know you three would get endangered as well."

Jack stood up. "You know what's not only endangering us but especially you right now? The way you keep kicking yourself. You—you can't keep doing this."

"'This'?"

"These self-hate sessions!" Jack said hoarsely as he fell weakly back down into the sand. "We see and hear them, y'know."

"Are you seriously telling me that I've had three sparklings witness all my mental breakdowns all this time?"

"Not… all of them. But we hear most of 'em. That's how we know that you're just way too unfair to yourself."

Starscream dragged his scratched talons down his faceplate. "I'm sorry you had to be witness to them."

"And I'm sorry for yourself because you keep mistreating yourself."

Starscream sighed. "Just… stop."


"I'm hungryyyy," Miko whined.

Starscream squinted at the sand. His optics widened at the sight of a few bushes that grew in a crack in the dusty desert floor. "Well, then eat! There's food right there."

The kids looked out at the dunes and saw nothing.

"That? Starscream, that's a scratchy bush," Jack said.

"Yes. Leafy stuff. Food. You are organic and they are organic too. So eat up!" Starscream scoffed as scooped the kids up and then deposited them closer to the "food."

"You have got to be kidding me," Jack muttered. "This is not food!"

"How is that not food? Look, it's green, it's leafy!" Starscream poked one of the bushes with his talon. It got stuck on his digit and he flicked it off into the air before he then watched it land about a mile away.

He stared at where it had vanished for a moment. "Well, you're just gonna have to split the remaining one because I'm not going to get that one back."

A loud chitter burst into the air.

Starscream glanced between Miko and the bush that remained. "Miko, was that you?"

Her jaw dropped. "Did you just compare me to a wild animal? I'm kind of honored."

A fox scurried out from the underbrush.

"Look!" Starscream said as he pointed. "Meat. Eat that. There you go, surf n' turf, dinner is served, and right on time, too."

Raf looked up at the lack of the sun in the sky. "I think it might be midnight, so, not dinnertime? And also that fox thing is coming towards us—"

"A friend," Starscream nodded.

"Not a friend! Not!" Jack waved his arms at the animal as Miko inspected the bush.

"Could I eat this?" she mused.

Raf and Jack spoke at once. "No, do not eat that, do not—"

All of the children minus the fox found themselves scooped back up into a large metal talon and lifted off of the dunes. Starscream rolled his optics as the creature wildly hissed at them.

"I just want one nice and peaceful dinner, you know that? And you just had to ruin it!"

"That was not dinner! That was child endangerment!" Jack shouted.

"Oh, it's all poh-tayto, pah-tato—that human saying does refer to food, yes?"

Raf nodded. "I am so glad that you have begun to pick up on human sayings!"

"We're starving and stranded and you're praising his vocabulary?" Jack's jaw dropped.

Starscream groaned loudly. "You Autobots always go on about 'making new friends' and 'the power of friendship,' but when I casually suggest that you befriend a fine desert creature you have the audacity to get offended? Hypocrisy at its finest!" Starscream grumbled as he held the kids in one talon and dragged the other down his faceplate.

"Weird desert foxes could have…" Jack thought for a moment. "Rabies!" He exasperatedly threw his arms into the air.

Starscream raised an orbital ridge. "And those are?"

Miko cleared her throat. "What Megatron has."

Starscream blinked. "...Oh. Well, never mind. No new friends today."

Jack sputtered. "He does not have rabies!"

"I have seen Buckethead froth at the mouth, Jack! The way you are now!"

"I do not have rabies—"

Starscream cleared his intake loudly and made all the kids look up at him again.

"Well, I don't know how to take care of this… this!" Starscream wildly gestured at the three of them.

"Uh, 'this'?" Jack asked.

"Yes! Thissssss!" Starscream groaned as he pointed at them again. "Your fleshie states are an enigma to me. I mean, I have no clue how to go about caring for a human. Did Prime write some manual or something? 'How to Care for Children When Being Hunted by Drones in Sahara, foreword by Prime?!'"

Miko laughed. "Nope, no reading material!"

"I mean—I have no idea how to construct a proper human nest, burrow, cocoon, whatever it is that you all shelter inside of."

Jack scoffed. "What? 'Cocoon'? Do you really think we live in cocoons?"

Starscream ignored him. "I honest to Primus have no idea where you live or how you live. Please tell me you can digest sand."

Miko squinted at a small pile of it in Starscream's palm. "Let's find out."

"No, no, oh my god," Jack shouted as he shoved Miko back from the tiny pile she'd been eying.

Starscream sighed long and dramatically. "See? See? I have no clue what to make of that interaction. The mystery grows ever deeper."

"I don't feel so good," Raf said quietly. His voice was whisper soft and as gentle as the weak breeze that now blew over the dunes.

Starscream dropped to his knee behind the dune and squinted down at Raf. "...Are your internals shutting down?" No. No. He'd already lost so many already.

But to lose a child?

Raf shook his head as he shakily cleaned his glasses on his sandy shirt. "No. Not yet, I think. But…"

Starscream took a deep vent as he tightly shut his optics. "But soon."

Nobody said anything and everybody just listened to the soft hum of the wind.

He put them down again. The sand shifted as Starscream sat down beside them and stretched out his remaining wing over them.

"The sun's not up, y'know," Jack said softly. "You don't need to shield us from it."

"That's not what I'm shielding you from." He glared up at the drones. They were still there, he could tell by the way their black forms blotted out the stars. One of them lit up bright red. Then another and another and another.

Starscream stared up at the high and wide halo of bright red dots that circled in the sky like a pack of vultures. They watched him and he watched them. His dim red optics looked up into the ring of red lights.

One Decepticon high up there in the sky didn't have their light on. Starscream squinted at the small black form of Soundwave as the drones all circled around him as he flew around in a smaller circle within the center of them all.

"I think you should go to sleep," Starscream said before he then winced at how scratchy his own voice was.

Miko frowned. "But—"

Jack put his hand on her shoulder and shook his head.

"Come on, I want a nighttime story," she moaned.

Starscream just continued to stare at the ring of drones above and wondered if this would be the end of his and the kid's stories.

Raf cleared his throat. "I have a story! Y'know, one time my family and I went to this waterpark, right? It was fun. Uh, until they lost me, that is."

Starscream raised an orbital ridge. "How could they possibly lose the likes of you?"

Rafael stared up at him. "What… what is that supposed to mean?"

Starscream snorted. "Everybody's obsessed with you. How could you just be left behind?"

That was apparently the wrong thing to say because the boy then flinched. "I'm the youngest in my family. Never mind, I should've never told this story."

Now the boy had a sad look on his face that made something inside of Starscream's chestplates twist. Frag, what was that weird twist sensation? More sand? He patted his chestplate for a few moments to identify the problem and then groaned. Oh, emotions. Those.

He looked down at Raf again. "I… ah, should apologize for my callous attitude towards your water park abandonment tale. I just have difficulty relating due to…" Starscream wildly gestured his servos at himself and then at the kids.

"Due to jazz hands?" Miko asked.

"Gah! No! Due to just the fact that you're aliens, that is all. Hard to relate, you see?"

Raf laughed. "From our perspective you're the alien."

Starscream sighed. "Potato, potahto."

"Did Megatron ever abandon you at a water park?"

"He's left me behind on moons. Asteroids. The occasional interstellar refuelling station. But at a park of water? Not yet at least."

Raf laughed. "'Not yet'?"

Starscream shrugged. "Could still happen."


Megatron stood at the computer and frowned as he listened in on the conversation. "And to think that we spent all that time, effort, and energon on outfitting my new spy drones with new microphones! This is the racket they capture! This!"

Knock Out laughed. "Ooh, this is better than the radio."

"Gah! This intel is useless to me!" Megatron roared as he punched the computer console.

Knock Out stood beside him and flinched at the new hole crushed into the equipment. He rapidly glanced back and forth between the audio stream on the computer and Megatron's intake. He leaned over to Breakdown.

"The fleshies are right, he does kind of have some frothing action going on—"

"Knocky, no," Breakdown harshly whispered.

"It's really unattractive—"

Megatron strode up to the viewport and completely ignored everyone and everything behind him. He stared out into the depths of the sea and looked out over the vast and empty expanse of the seafloor.

"Do you see the life here?" Megatron said to no one in particular.

Everybody looked between each other. Knock Out cleared his intake. "Ah, no, my liege? Perhaps it will come back?"

"The aquatic lifeforms fled in terror. As they rightfully should have, of course. I cleared them away. No, they are not coming back to this expanse because this territory is ours now."

Knock Out looked long and hard at Megatron. "...My liege?"

Megatron hooked an arm around Knock Out's shoulder and dragged him close to him. He flinched and looked over his shoulder at a tense and wide-opticed Breakdown.

"Laugh, laugh at the fleshies and at him and their pathetic banter, laugh laugh laugh!" Megatron's grip on Knock Out's shoulders dented the metal slightly. "Enjoy their pathetic frivolities because soon they will have them no more."

"My liege?" Knock Out said again more tensely as the grip on his shoulder tightened.

"Appreciate the fleshies and the humor they bring you before I clear them away, too."

They stared out across the lifeless expanse for a long time.


"New rule." Starscream glared at the sun as it rose over the crest of the dune. "We're not moving anymore. Why should we? We had to flee in the first place because the ground was unstable, but it seems stable enough here. No need to risk drifting farther from where we were last seen without a good reason to do so."

Jack pointed up at the silhouettes of the drones who circled above. "What about them?"

"They have been hunting us for a while now. I must admit that I do not understand why they have not come down to apprehend us."

Jack's red burnt face somehow went pale. "Hunting us," he mumbled.

"Mhmm, yes. So get comfy on the side of the dune because this is our new hang-out spot."

Raf gasped. "Star, what would be considered a good reason to get up and move again?"

Starscream just stared at him. "The ground begins collapsing again, Decepticons come, a sandstorm comes, so on."

"I think there's a good reason to move coming right our way." Raf pointed at something past the edge of the dune. Starscream craned his helm and saw what—or who—was headed his way.

Broad shoulders, blue optics, two tall smokestacks. Starscream's entire frame shook as he grabbed the kids and darted right towards Optimus.

"About time, haha!" Starscream laughed. He paused. A giant sandstorm was at Optimus's back, massive and loud and fast. But that didn't matter. Optimus had come to save them from it. Just one bridge and they'd be back in the base in no time.

Starscream ran at Optimus at full speed. No more long walks through the sand, no more hateful little particles stuck within him, no more hungry children, just Optimus.

"Starscream?" Optimus called out. He could even hear the frown in the Prime's voice. "Are you there? I… have come to take care of you."

Starscream froze. The way Optimus said "I have come to take care of you" made dread settle within Starscream. He didn't speak those words in his usual warm and welcoming way. He instead spoke them deeply and heavily as if the words themselves weighed him down.

He came to a stop when he and the Prime were a dozen feet apart.

"Hey, what's the holdup?" Miko groaned.

Jack tapped on Starscream's wrist to get his attention. "Is something wrong?"

Starscream just stayed there, frozen coldly in the hot sand.

Optimus's field flowed around him deeply and heavily the way it always did, but it felt off. Like if he just looked at Optimus with the sides of his vision then maybe the mech would disappear.

Starscream frowned. "Optimus, what did you say to me so long ago in the collapsed cave?"

Prime just blinked at him and frowned. It was like a switch had been flicked. His faceplate contorted and his blue optics shined brightly as his entire frame tightened.

"What did you say?!" Starscream shrieked.

Optimus frowned down at him as he approached the Seeker. "I said…" His faceplate spasmed. "I... CANNOT DO THIS."

"Optimus's" faceplate spasmed and his entire frame shimmered and seemingly shrank in on itself only to reveal the lithe and scratched form of Soundwave.

Starscream stepped back. "I don't know what's going on here! Do you even know what's going on here?"

Soundwave just glared at him.

"You're as scattered as the sand around us! You… you have no idea what left to do, don't you? You want to bring me in, you know that you have to bring me in, but you just don't know how."

Soundwave's field hummed and buzzed around him more erratically than Starscream had ever sensed it before. It clashed against itself around and around again as some sort of internal strife clashed within Soundwave around and around again.

"If you're going to face me then do so with your real face," Starscream pointed at him sharply. "Not with his."

"I COULD SAY THE SAME FOR YOU."

Starscream spun on his pede and a flurry of sand splashed into the air. "And what do you mean by that?"

"WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?"

Starscream snarled. "What. Happened. To you?"

The two mechs just stared at each other as the sand whipped past. Soundwave dragged one of his servos down his visor. The tips of his digits made a long and pained scratchhhhh noise as he raked them down his visor slowly and deeply.

Starscream pushed his way forward through the thick sand until he and Soundwave were faceplate-to-faceplate. Soundwave's holoform projector activated again and Starscream watched as his frame shimmered red and blue and gold and white and all the Primus-forsaken colors of the rainbow.

"You don't know what to do with yourself anymore so you don't want to be yourself anymore, do you?" Starscream asked softly as a hundred images of a hundred faceplates flashed onto Soundwave's own. "Face me with your own face. What is happening to you aboard the Nemesis?"

Soundwave did not respond as the wind screeched by their frames.

Starscream groaned and threw his other arm into the air as he held the kids tight with the other. "What is happening to you down there on the bottom of that ocean? Will you not tell me because I won't understand… or because I'll understand a bit too well?"

Soundwave extended all his cables out and slashed them through the sand. With one swift whirl of his frame he vanished into the orange gloom. Starscream reeled back and recoiled from the sudden new sand cloud that got caught up in the already intense winds that whipped around them.

The sand under his pede gave out, Starscream fell to a single knee—and felt something fall out of his talons.

"Frag! Okay, who just took a drop?" Starscream groaned as his sparkbeat thrummed within him as intensely as the wind that blew around them.

"It—it was me—" Raf cried out from somewhere beneath him before the wind stole his voice away.

Starscream shrieked. "Oh scrap, not my favorite one!"

He felt Miko offendedly punched the inside of his fist. "Heyyy!"

"Shush!"

Starscream looked down at his pedes and didn't see any sign of the boy. But that didn't mean he wasn't there. Just one wrong step and Raf could be dead.

He swore under his breath as the wind picked up around them. Of course he couldn't try to search for him without making things worse, of course.

"Rafael, can you hear me?"

There was a whimper. "I—yes, but I can't figure out where you are and I can't follow your voice." Raf's own voice got caught and swept up in the wind and since the boy didn't emit an EM field there was no sign of him that could be detected.

Starscream dragged his talon down his faceplate. "Are you on the side of the dune?"

For a moment there was just silence and yet somehow the silence felt louder than the noise of Raf's voice before.

"...Yes! I think?"

Starscream would've clapped both his talons together if he didn't have the other two kids held in one of them. "Ahah! See, I'm decent enough at childcare—Rafael, I'm still at the top of the dune. You need to get back up."

"I don't think I can—"

"You can. I need you to. Because if you slide down that dune and the sands gets all shifted around… Rafael, I won't find you again.

There was another even higher-pitched whimper. "I don't think I can, Star!"

"Rafael Jorge Gonzales Esquivel, get your aft up this sand dune!" Starscream shouted down its side.

"Howwww? Please don't leave me!"

Starscream blinked at the boy's words. "Why would I do that?"

"Why—why wouldn't you?!"

Starscream's wing flared. "I am many things but I am not a sparkling abandoner. Where did you even get such an idea?"

The wind blew by for a few moments as Raf softly grunted in his attempt to clamber up the dune. "Because that's what they'd do," Rafael whispered so softly that only Starscream's highly sensitive audials could pick his voice up.

"Who? Bumblebee? The scout is obsessed with you, so why would he leave you behind?"

"My family, Starscream, my family! Okay?! I'm used to them leaving me behind. I mean, they care, but things get hectic and they just... it was a mistake."

Starscream blinked. "This is not a waterpark! I mean, frag! Okay, I'm bad at this."

When the Autobots all had their own breakdowns due to the synth-en it was different. When he'd interacted with them in their delusional states those were the interactions of kindred wartorn bots who'd been through the same Pits together.

But this. This was an alien, an alien child, from a different world with a different family with different customs and different everything.

But he was still a child.

There was a soft sniffle. "I mean, they never meant to leave me behind. They'd come back. But…"

"They should not have left you behind in the first place."

Raf sniffled again. "You asked Soundwave if he knew what Optimus said to you in that cave. What did he say?"

Starscream shut his optics tight against the harsh sand and tears that prickled in them. "He said, 'you're dead inside.'"

Raf was silent for a moment. "If you don't find me then please don't be dead inside again."

"I am going to find you! And we'll both be alive inside and outside, together. Back to topic." Starscream cleared his intake. "Your family. The big one who ignores you. Well, what did they do when they lost you?"

"They searched for me. It took them a while sometimes, but… they always did find me."

"Yes, okay, fantastic. I'm going to beat their record."

The wind blew by and there was no response. Raf hadn't slipped too deep into the sand yet, had he? Panic clawed up Starscream's intake—

"An hour." Raf said something else but then the wind blurred his voice and made it unintelligible.

"What?" Starscream shouted. "I can tell you're getting farther from me!"

Raf took a deep breath. "That's—that's the shortest amount of time it's ever taken them to find me!"

Starscream nodded. "Okay. One hour. Okay. I can work with that. I will not leave you behind."

"Please, please please don't—"

"I won't. And I'm going to outdo your stupid fleshie family while I'm at it!"

Shuttles lost in the arctic, human boys lost in the desert, it was all the same. He lost them all. It was his own record. But maybe Starscream would break this record as well.

"How are you going to find him?" Jack shouted up at him.

"Work in progress here!" Starscream laughed nervously.

He was frozen, locked in the dune, not by the sand but by the threat of Raf getting buried within it. The wind blew by and shook and rattled the smooth panes of his wing.

His wing. He still had just the one.

Starscream raised it high up to the sky as high as it could go and ignored the alarms that flared on his HUD as he stretched the cables way up past their limit.

He felt every breeze, every gust of wind, every blow, every particle of sand—and he sensed an obstruction within it.

There. Just a few yards from his pede. Starscream stretched his free arm out as far as his joints could allow, reached out to grab ahold of Raf's small and delicate form—

A vicious burst of wind slammed forward and made the sand under Raf shift away. He rolled down the dune with a loud cry as his small orange form vanished into the orange haze.

"Scrap!" Starscream shrieked. He held Miko and Jack close to his chest and transformed with them in his hold. His jet alt-mode slid down the dune's surface nosecone first as Starscream raised his glass cockpit. Raf got swept up and over the tip of his nosecone and slid right into the cockpit.

He felt the children scramble around within him.

"Oh, come on!" Miko shouted. "Why does he get the pilot seat?"

Starscream hummed. "Because Rafael is Rafael, that is why. Now skoosh and be content there in the back with Darby."

He awkwardly trundled forward in his lopsided alt-mode. His entire frame leaned off to the side due to the weight of only his single wing. But it was better than nothing.

Starscream laughed. "Ha! Tell your family that their record just got beaten!"

Raf wiped at his eyes as he laughed weakly. "I, heh, I'm not legally allowed to tell them about your existence, Star."

"Paraphrase, child, paraphrase. Tell them they got showed up. 'Hey, so I was in the Sahara and some cool guy—is that the right terminology for me, a 'cool guy'?—saved me!' See, it's not hard to give me credit."

Raf paused. "But… how am I supposed to explain how I got to the Sahara?"

"Just say you booked it here because you were sick of the waterpark—"

"Oh, Starscream!"


The storm was gone—for now, at least. Starscream stood in his root mode and stretched his achy joints as the kids laid flopped down in the sand beside him. He was careful to ensure that the shade of his single outstretched wing stayed on their burnt bodies. They didn't look good. Their clothes were bleached hot white and their skin was so burnt it was as red as his optics, but they were alive.

Starscream sighed at the static on the other end of the comm.

There was a tingle on his back.

Starscream twitched his wing. It was not really a physical sensation but was instead the sensation of being under watch. He'd felt that familiar cold tingle shoot down his spinal struts before so many countless times while aboard the Nemesis. Sometimes it was Megatron who watched him and at other times it was Soundwave. Sometimes it was even Starscream himself who watched himself for long hours in the reflections of the Nemesis's floors as he wondered when he'd fall through them.

The kids looked up at him quizzically, their hair matted and skin red and raw. They looked like they were in pain. It was a shame he had no choice but to tell them all something that would pain them more.

"We are still being watched."

Miko tiredly waved her hand. "Pah, we knew that!"

"I mean…" Starscream took a deep vent, "that things have changed. I can feel it. They have watched us for a long time now. Now they are about to come after us."

"Haven't they done that already?" Raf whimpered.

The air buzzed. "No, that earlier battle was not the true one."

Starscream felt a shudder in his palm. He looked down at the kids and saw that Jack's gaze was fixed onto an empty stretch of horizon, his eyes wide and his skin somehow paler than Starscream had ever seen it before.

"Not again," he rasped as he drew in on himself. "Is she here?!"

Starscream blinked. "Arcee? You know that she is not."

"Not—not her—" Jack shook his head as his voice shook with its inability to form itself into the proper words. "I mean... her!"

Miko shook his shoulders. "Calm down, Jack, she's not here."

"That's what I thought," Jack laughed. Starscream flinched back at the sharp strained noise that burst out of the boy. "But then she abducted my mom and I couldn't find her or Mom anywhere. That's how Airachnid is."

The harsh wind blew around them faster and Starscream raised his talon to shield the kids from it. Jack shrank in under the new shadow Starscream's palm created and retreated so deep into it that he was just a small form hidden in it.

Starscream knelt down under the shadow of the dune. "Jack, are you reliving something?"

The boy looked up at him. "I've never heard you ever say my name like that. Never."

Starscream gulped. "Well… here we are. Jack, what is happening to you?"

Jack looked off into the dunes and scanned them as if he expected somebody to rise over their crests at any moment. "She—she's here, isn't she? Crawling over the dunes, here to attack, here to abduct!" He stood up in Starscream's palm and pointed shakily at the Seeker. "How do I know she isn't here?"

"Human, I…"

Miko lightly punched Starscream's palm. "Call him by his name."

Starscream stared down at her. "Uh—"

"Call him by his name," she said, all traces of mirth now gone.

Starscream deposited the kids on the dunes. The wind blew, the dunes stretched on and on, the drones circled above, and Starscream just… sighed.

"I can't help you."

"What?" Raf asked as he pushed his glasses up. "There's nothing you can say to him to make him feel better? He's reliving Airachnid!"

"And how am I supposed to make this better?" Starscream said softly. "Jack, you live in perpetual fear of being hunted by an enemy that is impossible to find. If it is impossible to prove that she is here then it is also impossible to prove that she isn't."

"This is a game!" Jack laughed bitterly as he stumbled off over the dunes. "Don't you see? The way we got stranded, our struggle to survive, those drones watching above! it's all part of a game."

"This entire war is a game," Starscream grit out as he dragged his talon down his faceplate. Anger bloomed within him hot and fiery, but it was not directed at the traumatized teenager below. Kids were supposed to be free of the horrors of war, not embroiled in them. And yet—

These kids were as stuck as deep in the war as they possibly could be.

"Where are you going?" Starscream asked.

"This is a game and I'm going to win it," Jack coughed. "I—I know she's here, I know it, I know it—"

"Jack, the only way to win this game is to not play in it." Starscream flared his wing and threw his arms into the air. "How am I supposed to convince you that she's not here? How? I—I can't even convince myself that Megatron isn't always watching me over my shoulder at all times. Because that's… the way of things. Bots—and especially spider-bots—they just come into your lives and ruin everything and you live the rest of your life knowing, feeling, thinking, 'yes, they will come back one day.' And I'm not going to emptily lie to you and say 'oh, she won't come back,' because I know she will. And I know she has not come back for you, not yet, but I also know that I can't prove to your traumatized mind that that is not the case."

Raf and Miko stared up at him, but Jack continued to look away at the dunes and let the wind strike against him as he looked out for an enemy who wasn't there.

"Is… is she going to come back after Arcee and I?" Jack rasped out.

Starscream nodded. "Yes."

Miko lightly punched Starscream's pede. "Oh, real comforting!"

"We must face down the most uncomfortable truths in order to become comfortable with them. I will not lie to you. I've lied enough for ten, no, a hundred lifetimes." Starscream walked down the dune's slope and left Jack up at the top of it so that he was optic-level with the human.

"How do I… how do I convince myself that she isn't constantly stalking me and hunting me at all times?" Jack asked.

Starscream stared at him. "The only thing you can tell yourself is that when she comes again you'll be ready."

"How can I ever be ready?!"

"By accepting the fact that you will never be."

They all fell silent and listened to the sound of the desert wind as it moaned by.

"Do you feel better?" Starscream asked softly.

"...No. But maybe one day I will."

"Acknowledging the fact that one day things will be better is the first step needed to make things better. I am not Airachnid's personal target so it is unlikely I will happen to be there when she makes her return. But you will have Arcee with you. And if I happten to be there I will make sure to give you another garbage pep talk."

Jack laughed for real this time. "Well. Okay. If it's not Airachnid here though, then… who is?"

The air buzzed. Starscream turned in the direction he knew Soundwave was in. "I will protect them," he hissed. He ran up the dune and scooped the children back up right as Soundwave became visible.

Soundwave rose over the dunes. His bright violet armor looked like a sharp purple bruise atop the dune itself as he glided onto the top of it. Minute shudders wracked his frame as he broke his perfect posture and stooped down for a moment, almost as if an invisible weight had dropped onto him. He glanced up and narrowed his optics at the ring of drones that prowled above before he then looked back down at Starscream again.

Starscream held the children tightly in his talons and held them off to his side. If Soundwave was as distracted and distraught as he looked then he'd just think Starscream had his talons clasped over something on his side that caused him pain. It wasn't even a lie. Maybe he didn't know the kids were there.

The way Starscream stood there protectively reminded Soundwave of… something. But he wasn't sure what.

The memory of Laserbeak flashed into his CPU. I will protect her, Soundwave had thought to himself what now felt like an eon ago.

Starscream glared at him. "This is not the first time I have begged you to stop."

"AND IT WILL NOT BE THE LAST."

Soundwave glared up at the drones that flew around and around in the sky above. His entire frame rose and fell as he took deep vents.

"THERE ARE TEN CHANCES."

Soundwave lunged and sliced through the air. He gripped ahold of Starscream's other arm that did not have the kids in it and swung Starscream down over the side of the dune. Starscream hung there, suspended only by the tight hold of Soundwave's two thin servos clutched onto the scratched white armor of Starscream's arm. He held the kids to his chest and felt their tiny rapid heartbeats thrum against his sparkbeat.

The sun shined behind Soundwave's helm as he just held Starscream there in his complete grasp and control.

"Go ahead," Starscream said dryly as the winds that crested the dune flowed over it and hit his battered frame. "Create the bridge. Toss me through to the Nemesis. What are you waiting for?"

He looked up and narrowed his optic at the ring of watchful drones above before he spoke up to them. "THAT WAS TEN."

"What are you counting down to?"

Soundwave's sharp voice was sharper than the sand particles that blasted against their frames. He paused for a moment. "I AM TAKING CARE OF THIS."

"You hesitated," Starscream spat. "I heard it! The oh-so infallible Soundwave hesitates. Did you even stop to hesitate before you began to hunt me? Did you? Or did you just do it?"

Soundwave then dropped him. The two mechs just stared at each other as Starscream slid down down down and away from Soundwave's tall slender form on the dune.

Starscream kicked both his legs out and halted his downward slide halfway down the dune's surface.

"You… let me go?"

Soundwave took a deep vent, flexed his armor, looked right up at the watchful drones again, made sure they were on watch—and then lunged in again. He shot down the side of the dune right towards Starscream and right before he collided with the Seeker Soundwave flipped up into the air with one spring. He arced over Starscream in a flash of violet armor and a flurry of sand. Their optics made contact, two tired ones stared into a conflicted single one—and then Soundwave's leap was over. He landed down hard onto the other side of the dune so heavily that it made small waves of sand flow down the dune's side.

Starscream stared at him. "You could've sliced my neck cabling open. But you didn't."

He just looked up at the drones. "NINE. THAT WAS NINE, MY LORD."

"What is this, some kind of game?" Starscream snorted. "'Catch and Release Starscream'?"

Soundwave flinched. Starscream drew back. Oh, he'd hit a nerve alright.

The drones flew closer down to the ground, still high up in the clouds, but just low enough for their red lights to shine beams down onto the ground in a ring of red rays that encircled the two mechs.

Soundwave held up nine digits for the drones to see. He dropped the ninth one slowly and gradually.

"EIGHT," he said. Then he moved. Starscream fell back into the sand as Soundwave's lithe frame suddenly slammed into Starscream's and pinned the Seeker down into the shifting dunes. Starscream held the kids tight in a fist near his chest and heard their muffled cries at the sudden shift in direction.

Starscream tried to budge underneath Soundwave's weight but found himself trapped under the Decepticon as if his slender purple limbs were somehow cage bars. His frame was light, so light, yet weighed down by something Starscream couldn't identify.

Then Soundwave sat up and gripped onto Starscream's neck cabling. Starscream's widened at the sudden and yet oddly soft hold on his neck cabling.

"Are y-you going to slice my neck cabling as you have done to so many mechs before?! Is that what you are going to do?"

It would be simply easy, so easy, just one swift moment, one swift slash, and then Starscream would be deceased there in the sands.

Soundwave tightened his grip, not tight enough to be lethal, but just tight enough to be noticeable to the drones above. And they noticed. Their flight paths wavered from their perfect circles, but then they were back on course again in a smooth circle.

Then the weight of Soundwave atop Starscream's frame vanished, almost as if the Decepticon had just vanished into thin air.

He scrambled to his pedes and saw Soundwave not too far away with his back turned. Starscream clutched the kids tighter to his chest and briefly unfolded his talons just enough to catch a glimpse of the kids inside. All three were there, hidden, wide-eyed and terrified.

Starscream mouthed I'm sorry. Then held them close to him again.

"What's next?" Starscream shrieked at Soundwave.

He turned around with his blaster extended. The last time Starscream had seen Soundwave brandish his blaster was centuries ago. But there it was, pointed right at his helm, the barrel as red-hot and as bright as the sun over them all.

It glowed hotter and hotter and brighter and brighter as Soundwave charged it right up. Starscream stood frozen right within its path, his helm right within the blaster's way. Just one shot and he'd be blasted to bits, a smear of white and blue on hot orange sand.

Soundwave looked up at the drones again. Their red spotlights converged upon Soundwave's form and lit him up from pede to crest in blood-red light as a cloud passed over the sun. He charged his blaster up, it glowed and a hot red that left an afterimage in Starscream's optics—and then Soundwave dropped it to his side. He transformed it back into his servo.

"SEVEN."

He made a massive groundbridge appear upon the top of the dune. Its green depths swirled and stormed viciously atop the dune's crest. Soundwave raised his arms and made the massive portal drift downwards and slide down the slope of the dune until it was just inches from Starscream.

Starscream stared into the bridge's blinding white depths as it blasted hurricane-force winds at him. The blast from the bridge made all the sand in front of it rise up in massive waves of warm red gold that crashed over Starscream and Soundwave's frames one by one. Soundwave ignored them all as each wave cut into him like a knife and left a new slash on his frame from where each wave's crest struck him.

Then the bridge vanished and the only breeze came from the gentle breeze of the desert.

Soundwave looked up at the drones again. They flew up in the sky in faster and more frenzied circles now, their formation and tighter and yet shakier before they corrected themselves onto their perfect path again.

"What are you doing?" Starscream asked softly. But the truth of what he witnessed felt as obvious and intense as the sun in the sky. "Did… did he also give you ten chances?"

Soundwave glided forward again until his chestplate was one arm's width away from Starscream's scratched one.

"Please answer me—!"

Soundwave brought his arm up in a sudden slash of movement. It was so intense that he displaced the air around their helms and made a void appear within the air that was suddenly occupied by the deadly sharp edge of his forearm plating.

Starscream laughed. "One swipe of your arm and I am dead. But you won't slash me open."

Soundwave stared determinedly up at the drones as he made sure they witnessed him. He gently slid the sharp edge of his plating down Starscream's neck cabling so lightly and softly that all Starscream felt was a breeze indistinguishable from the breeze around them.

"SIX."

Soundwave then outstretched all his cables, one by one, and let flurries of electricity race up and down their lengths. Starscream watched as the air flashed and sparkled and popped with the intensity of the miniature bolts of lightning that coursed up and down Soundwave's cable.

"I have seen you electrocute many mechs with those before," Starscream leaned in as the air flashed and flashed and flashed hot hot white. "But you won't hurt me."

"FIVE."

The drones swooped in much closer now and their low purple forms cast shadows that flashed across the both of them.

Soundwave reached up and tightly gripped Starscream's wrists. The Seeker flinched. No, no, just one pull and then his grasp around the kids would be gone, vanished, and then they'd plummet down to the ground.

The drones shined their rays of light on them, watchfully, intently.

"You will not capture me. That's why you're grabbing my wrists, aren't you? Go ahead and put the cuffs on."

Soundwave gripped Starscream's wrists so tightly that dents were left behind.

"Soundwave… what are you doing?"

He glared at Starscream and then turned away as if he wanted to hide something. But the truth was already out in the open.

"He sent you to hunt me down," Starscream stated.

"NEGATIVE."

"To apprehend me, to somehow bring me in."

"FALSE."

"It has been much longer than five seconds. You're stalling."

"FOUR."

Soundwave kicked him. Starscream fell down in a spray of sand and down onto his back, the kids still clutched to his chest as he was on the ground. Again.

The drones swooped in and saw everything. Soundwave stepped forward and put his pede atop Starscream's abdomen triumphantly like a gladiator of old. Starscream froze. He knew what the old Kaon gladiators did to those they felled and placed their knees upon.

"Are you going to slay me, Soundwave?"

And then Soundwave walked off, the opportunity gone. Soundwave lifted four digits up to the drones as he walked in a wide circle around Starscream's fallen frame. Then he let one digit fall until only three slender ones were still up. Still three chances.

Soundwave walked forward. Starscream stared. Soundwave was not the kind of mech to just walk. His pedes always glided, drifted, skimmed and floated and hovered, but never seemingly just walked.

Soundwave walked up to him and held his arms out and flared his armor as the wind increased and blew around and around in waves of sharp orange and gold. The wind and the sand shrieked into his seams, but he ignored it, his exposed cabling flinched at the barrage, but he ignored it.

He held his arms out, let the wind and the sand scratch him all over, and emptily intoned the next number. "THREE."

Three seconds passed. Nothing happened

"Three seconds to what?" Starscream screamed. "To what?!"

"TO—TO—"

The drones circled around and around overhead.

Soundwave shook his helm and looked Starscream in the optic. "THREE," he repeated more softly, his voice just another breeze caught in the wind.

"Did you just repeat yourself?" Starscream said.

Soundwave just looked at him as he began to shake. "THREE." He pointed at Starscream's clutched talons as his voice became as rough and deep as the dunes around them. "Three."

Starscream felt the kids freeze up within his palm at the same time his spark also froze up.

There was a flurry of activity in his talons and suddenly Miko poked her torso through the gap in his digits.

"Leave Star alone!"

"You idiot sparkling!" Starscream shouted down at her.

She shoved her way right through his talon and fell right onto the sand between his pedes. Starscream stepped after her but the sand gave way under his frame and made him slide down the side of the dune again.

Soundwave reached his servo out to grab Miko, she shrieked—and then he retracted his servo and left her alone. Another chance to capture the prey just totally squandered.

"TWO," Soundwave intoned.

Jack pried his way through Starscream's digits as well and dropped down beside Miko.

Starscream's frame sunk disorientedly into the dunes and his talon shook uncontrollably. "Raf, no, not you too—!"

Raf took one last look at Starscream's faceplate before he then clambered his way out of Starscream's grip as well.

Soundwave looked down at the kids with a wide red optic. He leaned down and scooped them up in both his thin servos. They all laid frozen in his palm and stared up at him with wide eyes.

"Well what are you waiting for?!" Miko shrieked. "C'mon, c'mon, bring me aboard the Nemesis and lock me up in the slammer!"

"Mikkkko!" Raf cried.

Then Soundwave dropped them—gently, but still—and Starscream watched as they both fell down onto the ground with a soft thump.

Starscream scrambled his pedes underneath him but this just made more waves of thick sand flow away from him. He activated his back turbine with a single hot blast and rocketed up to his pedes before he then slammed down right over the kids and shielded them with the bright wide surface of his wing.

"ONE."

A new bridge appeared, but not nearly as intense as the other one. It spun slowly, gently, almost welcomingly.

The drones came down and flew so close to the ground that the wind created by their flight blasted down over their frames. Their lights were so bright as they blinked and flashed and pulsed and flared like a hundred sets of watchful optics that wanted to witness everything.

Starscream looked up at Soundwave. He reached down and picked the kids up and held them up to the Autobot logo on his chestplates.

"Is this what I think it is?"

Soundwave nodded stiffly.

"You used up your chances to catch me," Starscream shook his helm. "To catch us. The drones were never hunting us, they were hunting you."

The drones circled by overhelm.

And then Starscream wanted to just stay. To just be there in the dunes with this mech who had intentionally thrown away each opportunity he had to take him down.

The children shifted in his talons again. The kids were more important.

"Soundwave… thank you."

"But wait, how do we know that that bridge is trustworthy?" Jack asked.

"We don't. But I don't think you're going to hurt us, now are you, Soundwave?"

The second-in-command of the Decepticons refused to look at him.

Starscream walked through the bridge.

It closed behind him and then Soundwave was alone with the watchful and predatory drones high over him.

Soundwave took a deep vent that made his entire frame shake. "Z… ZERO."


The orange dunes tantalized him. The urge to wander off across their vast golden expanse and sink into them and become one with them tempted him. But no, he didn't belong under the dunes, he belonged under the ocean.

Soundwave created a new bridge, took one last look out at the desert, and then walked through the bridge—and right onto the bridge.

The Nemesis's computer consoles shined and flashed brightly. Megatron turned to face his newly returned second.

"Ten, ten! I generously out of the goodness of my spark nobly offered your traitorous self ten whole grand opportunities to right your grievous wrongs and correct your sins. And what do you do? You intentionally waste each and every one!"

"ZERO.."

Megatron blinked. "Fool, you have committed far more crimes against me and the universe than just zero."

Soundwave raised all ten of his digits and lowered them one by one by one until all had been lowered. "YOU SAID, 'If you use up all your chances and reach zero… then I will know what to do with you next,' AND NOW I WISH TO SEE WHAT 'NEXT' IS."

Megatron continued to just stare at him. "You…"

"YOU DID NOT EVEN STOP TO CONSIDER WHAT TO DO, DID YOU?"

"I—"

"YOU DID NOT EVER THINK THAT I WOULD FAIL YOU—AND ESPECIALLY NOT INTENTIONALLY, DID YOU?"

"Soundwave!"

Silence fell again. Megatron breathed heavily as he walked in tight circles around his disgraced second.

"I… I am stripping you of your command. From this moment onward, you are no longer Soundwave, second-in-command of the Decepticons—you are now just Soundwave, the soldier, the failure."

There was a skitter noise. Soundwave looked past the bulk of Megatron's frame and saw Airachnid crawl into view on all her legs. Her magenta optics shined and her field gleefully vibrated around her like a strung spider web.

"I see that a vacancy has opened up, yes?" Airachnid laughed, her voice as smooth as the silk and lies she spun. "I would be honored to occupy it my liege, I am so grateful that you have me in mind."

Megatron hummed. "Yes, you would do good in this role. But there is one who would do better."

Megatron sharply backhanded her. Her frail frame was flung backward and into the air before she then crashed hard onto her back into the sharp edge of a computer console. Her legs curled up around her like a shield and her once prideful and now wide optics stared through her legs.

"Disregard the wretch," Megatron said.

"MY LORD… WHO WILL TAKE MY PLACE?"

Megatron looked out over the crowd of gathered Decepticons. He strode through it and all the bots within the crowd flowed away from him as if his just sheer presence was enough to force them to the side. Knock Out and Breakdown both stepped away and pressed themselves up against the other computer consoles.

Twin breaths of relief left their frames as Megatron walked past them.

Knock Out let out a quiet laugh and patted both of Breakdown's arms. "Safe once again," he whispered for only Breakdown to hear.

Megatron shot his arm out behind him and tightly gripped Breakdown's shoulder. The tips of his talons gouged into Breakdown's shoulder plating as he grabbed the ex-Wrecker and pulled him forward. The backs of Breakdown's massive pedes dragged along the floor and dug deep scratches into it and even made sparks fly. Then Breakdown was there in front of the warlord right under his gaze.

"Breakdown," Megatron began, and no, no, no no no—

"My Lord…" Breakdown softly shook out.

"I am promoting you." Megatron shoved Breakdown down onto his knees and loomed over the mech. "From this moment onwards you will be Breakdown, Second-in-Command of the Decepticons."

Breakdown's jaw dropped and he just stared. Knock Out clenched his fists so tightly that the tips of his digits scratched the paint on his palms off. Soundwave stayed frozen.

"Do not fail me the same way my past two seconds have." He leaned in and hissed right into his new second-in-command's audial. "Do not do treason… or even speak of it. It would not be wise of you to let me hear you say such things." Megatron then walked off as if he hadn't just completely upended the hierarchy of his army. The door to the bridge slid shut behind him with a loud and final clang.

For a moment there was only the sound of the whir of the computers and systems of the bridge.

Somebody cleared their throat. Knock Out walked forward. "Well, hello there, Sir. I must admit that you are the handsomest second I've ever seen!" Knock Out said as he smiled tightly. He approached his dazed and stunned conjunx and helped Breakdown shakily rise to his pedes.

"K.O, I—"

"Shh, shh," Knock Out whispered as his frame shook and his field boiled over with a rarely-felt emotion: rage. "This will be fine, we will make this work."

"How… how can we get out now?!"

"Breakdown. Breakdown."

Breakdown stared at the scratched off paint on his partner's palms. "Your paint…"

"...is not nearly as important as you in this moment, Commander."

Knock Out turned and looked at Soundwave. "Is this what you wanted? For your burden to get passed onto someone else? Or did you think Megatron would tolerate your constant frag-ups the same way he tolerated Starscream's?"

Soundwave just stared through the viewport. "HE IMPROVISED."

"He what?!"

"HE SAID HE WOULD MAKE ME PAY. HE DOESN'T REALIZE IT… BUT HE GAVE ME EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED. I HAD NO IDEA HE WOULD END UP GIVING YOU WHAT YOU NEVER WANTED."

Soundwave ran off. His pedes stomped against the floor harder than they had in years as he barrelled past drone after drone.

He was on the deck. Somehow, he'd made it onto the deck. The sun was gone, the bright red deck lights of the runway lit his path, the drones carefully considered him and watched him, he looked up at the stars—and screamed.


Starscream tumbled out into the snow. The cold shock hit his frame and made him seize up with a breathless gasp. His grip on the kids loosened and they clambered out of his grip and into the snow.

Snow, so much of it. Starscream rolled onto his back with a weary gasp and watched millions of cold white flakes whirl and spin in the cloudy black night sky above his faceplate.

"...Huh."

The kids all ran around with whoops and cries of glee as they fumbled around in the cold. Starscream shakily rose to his pedes. The sharp jabs of the sand within him continued to grind around within his very being. Perhaps they would never go away.

A vast pine forest was all around him. He looked around at the clearing he and the kids had been sent to and then peered through the trees at a frozen lake. The surface wasn't perfectly uniform, there was a large round section of it where the ice was thinner and discolored. It was almost as if something wide and heavy had plummeted through the ice and the ice had only recently just froze back on top of the hole.

Starscream went still. He knew this place.

Why did Soundwave bridge him back to the forest in which he and Ratchet had confronted Optimus over his duel with Megatron?

He turned around and stared at the spot in the snow where Soundwave had sat as he had pointed out Optimus's location to them.

A new bridge opened up and Optimus stepped through it for real. His field and frame loosened as his field bloomed with raw relief at the sight of them all. Starscream ran to them and slammed into him with so much force that a clang echoed through the cold air.

Optimus held him. "I was so worried about you all. Are you all well? How did you manage to find yourselves here?"

"I can't be you!" Starscream shook out. "I can't keep being the one to comfort and protect and console everybody, I can't, Optimus."

"You made sure everybody survived. You did protect everybody. And now there is only one mech you need to comfort from now on."

Starscream drew back and stared at Prime. "Right. You."

Optimus just stared at him. "...I'm sorry?"

The other Autobots came through the bridge in a flurry and ran up to Starscream, but paused at the sight of him within Optimus's grasp.

The sound of the rest of the 'Bots reunion with their child charges echoed in the distant background as Starscream just let Optimus hold him.

"I had to carry everybody. Literally. I don't know how you manage it, I… I don't know how you handle this all the time. I have no idea how you haven't broken yet. But I'm going to help you. There was one person I couldn't save."

Optimus's optics widened and he glanced over at the kids. All three were there. Confusion crinkled in Optimus's field.

Starscream drew back and looked up at the stars. "Soundwave rescued us. Then he escaped us. And I think I know why."