A/N: This one's a bit shorter, but I needed to split up what I've got planned otherwise this would've taken too long to get out. Thanks to those who've reviewed and story alerted so far, you guys are awesome! I also wanted to give a special shout out to Killing Kathy for endorsing this story – with that said, I would highly recommend reading her story 'Once in a Blue Moon', she's got some great 'Starcee' dialogue in there to sate your Starcee appetites :P
And without further ado, I give you chapter five. Hope you enjoy :)
Chapter Five:
Duty could be a cruel mistress.
/\/\/\/\/\
Miko stood in between Raf and Jack, leaning on the rails with a smug expression on her face even as Bumblebee, Optimus and Bulkhead returned to the base via the ground bridge. Arcee on the other hand refused to even acknowledge she was there for the time being, not wanting to admit that after all the trouble she went through, she had been wrong.
Not a minute after she'd returned from the repair bay did she find Miko in the control room chatting to Jack and Raf as if she hadn't disappeared to begin with. 'Total shock' would've been the understatement of the year to describe what Arcee had felt at that moment, not to mention the stunned silence that followed. She was questioned, of course, but even then Arcee knew that she was fighting a losing battle.
She'd been exactly where she'd said she was. To think that Miko, for once, did not run off on a whim..it was hard to believe. She'd of course deduced that Arcee had gone looking for her in the repair bay, to which she'd playfully warned that "Optimus isn't going to be happy" in an annoying sing-song voice.
"I was doing my job – looking out for you," she'd argued, pointing a sharp finger at her.
"I can take care of myself," Miko had said, "But there's still no way I'd risk going in there for anything."
"Oh? Why the change of heart?" Truly, Arcee wanted to know exactly what it took to keep the human girl still and following orders.
"Because frankly, I don't want to get kicked out of the base by the boss-bot," she'd replied. "I could tell he'd totally meant it too when he warned us – I got chills and everything!"
So what Optimus had said to them – to her – finally hit. Even if it was at the expense of her own time and effort gone into looking for her, Arcee was somewhat thankful that she was unlikely to have to go through it again – 'unlikely' being the key word. It was unfortunate that the girl had given herself such a disreputable knack for being unpredictable, otherwise Arcee was sure that they'd have much less trouble being completely trusting of her.
Fifteen minutes later, and Arcee got the call to bring everyone back in for an important team meeting – so there they were.
Bumblebee shook off some loose leaves off his frame as he transformed into his bipedal mode, meeting Bulkhead, Optimus and Arcee near the centre of the room.
"What did I miss?" he asked, noting the silence between them all.
"Nothing yet," Bulkhead replied.
"We are only waiting for Ratchet to arrive at the present moment," Optimus added.
"No need," a voice emerged from the left-hand corridor.
Ratchet casually walked up to join them while he rubbed an energon stained piece of cloth against the plating on his right arm. Well, he was in one piece, the Autobots observed, if not a little worse for wear. Probably was in the midst of something important too, if the fresh energon stains were anything to go by. They were naturally inquisitive, but did not ask anything of it – not yet at least.
"Sorry I'm late," he apologised, "I had other pressing matters to attend to. So, what's this all about?"
They looked to Optimus as he spoke.
"During our mission, we learned of some valuable information that may prove useful to our knowledge."
"What, 'useful' as in it'll help us against the Decepticons 'useful'?" Arcee asked, crossing her arms.
"No, not quite," Optimus replied. "But it may help to prepare us for any upcoming encounters we may face in the near future."
"We're listening," Ratchet said.
Optimus moved towards the main console, pressing some keys which brought up the map of the area he had scouted with Bulkhead on the screen.
"During our scouting round, Bulkhead and I discovered an anomaly located here by the mountainside," he said as he highlighted the area on the map.
"A collapsed energon mine, due to structural instabilities," he continued.
"And as far as we know," Bulkhead added, "Whatever energon is in there is completely blocked off."
"How's that supposed to help us?" Arcee wondered, sharing a confused look with Bumblebee.
"That...wasn't the worst of it," Bulkhead slowly said.
Optimus nodded with a grim expression on his face.
"We have reason to believe that, due to Starscream's demotion from the Decepticon ranks, his position as an officer has been replaced by none other than Airachnid."
Distaste and hatred immediately sprawled up in Arcee at the mention of that name, the energon in her tubes figuratively boiling as she quipped.
"So she finally crawled back to the 'Cons," she said with a scowl. "Why am I not surprised?"
"She must of followed Breakdown after our fight for that polarity gauntlet," Bulkhead explained.
"It doesn't matter," Arcee shook her head. "At least now she'll be easier to track, now that she's back with the 'Cons."
'And easier to take a shot at,' she added as an afterthought.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Optimus placated. "We must not forget the disadvantage this places us in now that Megatron has another skilled and highly dangerous soldier under his command."
Arcee forced herself to maintain a composed expression and tone.
"With all due respect, sir," she started formally, watching as Optimus regarded her with a wise gaze, "Airachnid is far from being a soldier."
Airachnid was an opportunist – a sadistic creature in nature whose sole purpose was to appease her own desire for power. For control. It was no wonder that for this reason she bound her victims in a sturdy, sticky binding web before subjecting them to her will – torture, interrogations, psychological trauma, anything that kept her on top of the game; her game.
No, Arcee thought, Airachnid was no soldier; she lacked the honour to be considered as such. It would be insulting to those who fought and died to categorise her kind with them.
'Soldiers are no murderers.'
/\/\/\/\/\
His optics snapped open as a small gasp unwillingly left his vocaliser – to his relief, there was no one in the vicinity to witness the brief lapse in his guard.
He forced himself to breathe evenly, if only to prevent his already damaged systems from overheating. Before long, the warnings in his HUD cleared, returning his vision back to normal.
Starscream sighed finally, pulling against the restraints around his wrists that the Autobot medic 'Ratchet', as he called himself, had placed on him before starting a procedure, a precaution the medic took after Starscream nearly clawed an optic out from him when he was physically able to.
He wanted to smirk at the memory, but the vividness of the dream his processor had created was still clutching at his mind.
But if he was to be completely honest, if only with himself, it was more like a nightmare, remembered not in its entirety but in segments. Segments he would gladly wish to forget. He shut his optics again, willing his mind to clear of the thoughts. It was too often he lived the nightmares he dreamed – or rather, it was too often he dreamt of the nightmares he'd lived through.
It was unfair – 'Even in sleep, I cannot escape Megatron's wrath.'
And the nightmare once again threatened to push its way up from its forced recession. Glimpses – the memory of pain and fear, both things that he'd become so accustomed to and yet always hated, no matter the situation.
Because where one was present, the other would always be, lurking, crawling and paralysing his systems until his grip on sanity broke once more...
But he shook his head vigorously, willing his thoughts to clear again, determined to concentrate on his present situation and distract himself with what he did best.
He analysed, calculated and concluded, before choosing the most beneficial route that suited him.
It was no secret, he thought, that the Autobot leader believed he owed them something in return for their...what should he call it? Service? Sanctuary? After all, he'd practically waltzed into the repair bay speaking of his terms, his rules, expecting them to be followed as if Starscream had signed away the hypothetical deed to his own life to him.
'That pompous fool, had my weapons been online, I would've blasted that repulsive look off his face.'
And though he harboured hatred for the Autobots in general, there was none other that he hated more than the Autobot leader Optimus Prime, who on many occasions had attempted to persuade him against following Megatron's authoritarian lead – but why he would attempt to do so even after he'd blatantly rejected him every time (with a complementary missile blast, of course) still continued to baffle him. For every time they encountered each other as enemies, they would leave each other in the same way, if not more wounded.
Starscream found it amusing that it took his near death and almost unresponsive chassis to bring him – unwillingly – into the Autobot base.
'How's that for loyalty, Megatron?' he bitterly remarked.
Yes, he thought, Optimus Prime was certainly a persistent rust-bucket, but that hardly made the minions that followed his every order any more tolerable because of that fact.
The medic was a pain, as he'd discovered in the past few days. The green one was an imbecile, if he could be compared to Breakdown. The blue one was a femme, and that in itself was enough to make him scowl. And the yellow one was a bother, with his nosy and resilient nature.
'Not to mention, their filthy tendency to keep vermin in their midst.'
Without the ability to contain them either, if his short-lived encounter with the two wheeler was anything to go by.
He grimaced at the memory.
He'd been recharging restlessly at best, with sharp pangs of pain interrupting the potential for deep sleep every so often...it was never something he'd gotten used to. Not even after working for Megatron for so long, and certainly not with his methods.
He cringed.
He didn't want to imagine what he might be going through under Megatron's will had he still been under his command on the Nemesis. Ever since that..'incident' at the mine, his existence aboard the ship had been nothing but edgy, fretting constantly over what Megatron might spring up on him next. Not that it was the first time that Megatron had decided to 'teach' him a lesson in that way, no, but there was something..different about it this time. Something in the way that Megatron had looked at him.
He couldn't place it at all, and that frustrated him greatly. He let out a low snarl.
'All these millennia working for Megatron and still I cannot understand him.'
Not that it was really his intention to in the first place. But how could he have helped it? He was a scientist before he was an advisor, before he was a strategist, before he was a first lieutenant.
He groaned as a bout of what he could only place as a form of nostalgia hit him like an agonising wave, making him wish his hands were unbound so that he could hold his head if only to soothe the oncoming processor ache.
It was true that he'd hardly had it easy with the Decepticons, but he would take that familiar ground over being with the Autobots any day. He knew exactly what to say to please them at the very least, knew exactly what to do to keep himself alive and useful when he wasn't busy scheming against Megatron. But here? Here his claws itched to do something. It was a habit, he couldn't help it. Not when he'd been conditioned to expect pain from being useless.
He could only cringe as he felt a tingle course through his right arm, but a shadow of the memory of the pain of it as it was heated and bent and skewed by larger claws while his optics were wide awake and his vocaliser was screaming agonised pleas and...
No..no, perhaps it was better for him that he was there for the time being – and only for the time being, he concluded as he felt his body locking up in fear. Time would allow things to settle. His anger at his being brought here in the first place had already dispersed. Now? Now he was just bitter. Bitter at everything, at how everything had turned out. He was supposed to be the leader of the Decepticons by now, supposed to be leading new Cybertron into a Golden Age, supposed to be restoring his home and fellow Cybertronians to their former glory..things weren't supposed to be like this.
He turned his head to see the empty repair bay, with scraps and bits of pieces belonging to him strewn about, as well as repair tools of various description. And for the first time in a long time, he felt his body relax – to a certain degree, that is. Even though the bottom line was that he was a Decepticon in the middle of the Autobot base, he could recognise that he was not in any immediate threat; quite the opposite, he admitted.
Nothing about the place could be described as threatening – it was a workshop, like those illustrated in a sparkling's book about Vector Sigma the creator, Starscream mused. It was nothing like Knock Out's almost-torture chamber of a repair bay, a place he always tried to avoid landing in if he could help it.
'Yes,' he thought. 'These Autobots are too soft. Using them to my advantage would only be too easy.'
As his processor computed various scenarios and outcomes, he laid back against the berth, sighing loudly to himself while he shut his optics, finally allowing himself to drift back into his recharge cycle.
He would use them to his advantage, he decided, before he snuffed each of their sparks and escaped the base. With a more grim thought, he added:
'Before it is too late.'
/\/\/\/\/\
Their team meeting had been adjourned for some time now.
Ratchet had gone back to the repair bay, saying something about needing to perform an hour-long operation just to secure several important components near Starscream's spark chamber, and that he was not to be disturbed.
The rest of the Autobots, Arcee included, were given a half-hour long recess before their duties needed to be resumed. As far as she knew, Arcee was still scheduled on ground bridge duty, only this time Bumblebee was to accompany her because he'd completed his scouting duties for the day.
Bulkhead was busy picking branches and other organic matter that'd stuck onto him during his mission off and out of his frame, complaining that the broken branches "tickled" when he moved.
And Optimus had volunteered to recompile the missing section of the database after Arcee had told him of the glitch. She had intentionally kept her mouth sealed about Miko's stunt earlier on though. That was something she didn't want to bring up unless it was absolutely necessary, and since Starscream would no doubt be detained for a good two hours at least, she could only hope that Miko would not blurt out the first thing that came into her head.
She guessed she was lucky with the fact that Miko was probably too preoccupied with her own homework to really remember what had previously occurred. And with their recess at its near end, she was only too grateful that things had gone by without further incident.
Bumblebee was at the ground bridge controls, punching in co-ordinates into the console while Bulkhead stood by Arcee and Optimus, rolling his shoulders to work out the irritable kinks in there.
"So I guess I'll see you guys soon?" he said, concluding their conversation.
Optimus nodded once, "Stay safe, Bulkhead. You know what to do should you encounter any trouble."
He waved off to them, transforming into his vehicle mode and rolling out through the ground bridge.
As it closed, Bumblebee started punching in the co-ordinates for Optimus' destination, but Optimus politely interrupted, "One moment, Bumblebee."
He shrugged, only watching as the Autobot leader turned to Arcee and motioned towards the empty corridor to the left.
"Arcee, a moment of your time?"
She blinked once, her internal systems just about freezing as her processor repeated 'ScrapScrapScrap' over and over in her head while her vocaliser automatically uttered a brief "Sure".
'So, it was too much to ask for this one to slip by?' she thought, externally composed however as she stopped moving when she was within the walls of the corridor, though their headquarters was still in sight.
She didn't say anything, and waited for Optimus to start the inevitable conversation – if there was one thing she wasn't going to do, it was admitting to doing something he didn't know about.
Luckily for her, he cut straight to the chase without seeming to notice anything out of the ordinary with her.
"I needed to ask a favour of you," he started plainly.
"Oh?" she vocalised as her mind's frantic processes calmed down. "What's this about?"
"It's..on Ratchet's behalf," he stated quietly.
"Why, is something wrong?"
"No, nothing serious," he placated calmly. "Just, simply an action I believe we must undertake for his benefit."
He was being ambiguous. Too ambiguous. As if he was trying to avoid revealing the matter as much as possible. Perhaps he thought she'd decline if he told her outright? But no, no, his request (though on Ratchet's behalf) was as much an implicated order as any other blatant command was. And if he was coming to her specifically to ask for assistance, then how could she turn him – and through him Ratchet down?
She gave a sidelong look, "So Ratchet doesn't know we're doing..whatever it is we're doing?"
"That is correct. I believe that both you and I know that Ratchet is far too proud a mech to admit needing assistance in this way."
"And that would be..?" she edged on inquisitively.
Naturally, he started off with his usual explanation.
"As we all know, Ratchet has been working as efficiently as possible to complete Starscream's repairs," he sighed. "His dedication to his task has been unwavering, but now..now I fear for his own health."
"Ratchet wouldn't neglect himself for Starscream," Arcee pointed out.
"He is tired, Arcee, and at this rate I have reason to believe he may end up hurting more than just himself. Exhaustion has its ways with bots of all kinds – Ratchet is no exception to this."
She understood what he was saying – that Ratchet could make a costly mistake in his less-than-optimal state, but she would have figured those in Ratchet's line of work would expect such a thing as working on patients for hours on end.
"I'm sure he's been through worse."
"That may be true," Optimus considered, "But I would not want to risk that now and have to regret it later."
Arcee placed her hands on her hips – Optimus would not be swayed, it seemed.
"So, what? You want me to stage an intervention?"
"Not exactly," he admitted. "I have already tried getting Ratchet to leave for the sake of his own maintenance. Unfortunately, I was unable to convince him, not when he insisted that someone remain behind to watch over Starscream."
And there was the catch – 'There's always a catch,' Arcee thought to herself. She crossed her arms over her chest.
"So basically, you need me to babysit Starscream while Ratchet is out recharging," she stated rather than asked.
"Yes," he replied truthfully. "Ratchet seemed convinced that it would be detrimental to Starscream's recovery if I were to remain behind and watch him myself."
'I wonder why that is?' Arcee refrained herself from commenting sarcastically. Placing the Autobot leader in a room with the ex-Second in Command of the Decepticons was practically a vicious verbal brawl waiting to happen.
But there was something still bugging her about all this.
"Permission to ask freely, sir?" she spoke respectfully.
He nodded in response.
"Why me?" she questioned curiously. "I'm not saying I won't help Ratchet with this, but Bumblebee and Bulkhead are equally as capable as I am."
"Bumblebee and Bulkhead undoubtedly excel in their own strengths, that I cannot deny," he started. "But for this I need someone who can take responsibility in any situation. And you have proven to be more than capable in the past."
She looked away, thinking to herself. It seemed that no matter what she did, she was always thrown back into that uncomfortable place of having to choose between saying something out of duty and saying something because she wanted to. Of course she wanted to help Ratchet, but in this way? She could barely stand Starscream for the brief minute or two she was with him earlier in the day, but to spend a good part of the night in the same room as him was asking for trouble – and a processor ache, to top it off.
But she knew she couldn't refuse, not really. It seemed that the Autobot code that'd been drilled into her during her training had stuck with her as it was intended to. It wasn't that she had to undertake the task because she was ordered to, but because a fellow Autobot was simply in need of help.
"Autobots don't turn away their own," her first commanding officer had said. 'Brothers and sisters in arms' he'd called them. "And no one turns their back on family."
She sighed lightly out loud, and looked back up to Optimus without any doubt in her tone.
"I won't let you down."
End Chapter Five:
I wanted to point out that the next two chapters are going to be BIG, at least according to the outline I've got. I may disappear for a while, but know that I'm still writing this story. As always, constructive criticism is welcome, and your reviews make me happy. Like, really happy :D See y'all in the next chapter! Peace out.