Chapter 3: Life In A Box
A/N: Starscream, YAY! XD I've been itching to write about her for too long! The word Imagos, is the 'acceptable other' term for Imago, but the latter is correct. Urgh, no matter how many words I write, it looks so short! (Obviously need to read more!)
The guard's keen sensors scrutinised her in shared silence, unwavering assiduity pricked to attention by any movement made from the red jet. The seeker humbly cradled herself in one corner of the cell, lazily stroking her hand with a curious finger; a small motion that bought the larger jet's natural curiosity. Timid prisoners preferred to look invisible in their cells, tucking themselves as far as they could from their captors, but Starscream found any form of self-exposure to be an ego pacifier. Under these particular circumstances, maybe she wanted him to look at her. Admire her even.
"Whatever you're planning Starscream, you're not getting out. So stop it."
Skyfire's authoritarian voice curtly roused the seeker out of her daydream and stopped fidgeting, as if it was the very reason behind his command. The Autobot's injunction was personally justified, having known Starscream for too long. Behind the tenebrous grey visage was an inexhaustible list of devious schemes and 'Plan B's', extending further than his own alternate mode. A rude stare from the Decepticon was in order, but she willingly submerged her interests elsewhere, admiring the jejune wall in front of her, looking flat and yellow as ever. This in turn irked Skyfire even more: why was she acting so…modest?
"(…This is the first time you've seen me in this mode…)" she muttered to no one, but her warden heard otherwise. "What?"
Starscream looked up at Skyfire's face, striped by the energy bars between them, and started rubbing her hand again. "It's the first time you've seen me in my real form (I mean)…"
"Oh really? Well, with you Starscream, no one can tell what's your 'real' form," he shot her with a dose of his own rancour, but the red jet served him an equal sneer.
"Funny hearing this from a turncoat, Skyfire, and I meant as a FEMALE," Starscream snapped back, continuing to bat the verbal repertoire back and forth.
"You mean all kinds of things!"
"Why did I even BOTHER!" Shouting for them both, Starscream brought the heavy silence to blanket them once again. The duo let their wings do the out-staring for each other.
"(…Loopy female)."
"(Dull-plated stiffbot.)"
"Wait…" Skyfire snapped his head to sight the femme con resting her chin in her palm. "…why did you even bother what?"
"You're a scientist, right? So you should be smart. Figure THAT out, braniac." Taking the bittersweet satisfaction to throw in the last words to their petty bickering, Starscream pivoted her body to the wall and continued showering it with her interest. Something about her made Skyfire rethink his current opinion on the red jet, recollecting his view. The passive foetal position, her head profiled to a demurring angle, and the general reticent attitude she reserved for herself…like a nervous sparkling, filled with false bravado of her own confidence.
"Starscream, what would you do if I walked into your cell…" the femme con quickly cut his sentence into half. "That'll be GREAT-"
"-And hugged you?"
"(-GREAT Primus of all that is cute and Autobot…)" she felt a nauseating tingle run up her throat.
"…Or kissed you?" Skyfire pushed his luck, and a long silence waited with him for Starscream's reply.
"...(Slagging sexual harassment stupid dumb mechs only know how to think with their slagging cockpits asking for a surge so badly up their-)"
He saw it. Within her darting optics, he spotted an uneasy hesitation in her words, clumsily hiding her scattered emotions. Skyfire wanted to ask another question, and not knowing the meaning of limiting his queries, he did not hesitate even while she was scolding the general male populace under her breath.
"Starscream, do you….LIKE me?"
"…Huh! You could say when we were explorers before the civil war….GO AWAY!" she fell to the floor and balled herself away from his general direction, but the valkyrie had ample time to watch for an answer from the seeker, mulling in her own thoughts. 'Great, now he knows too much! Once that big geek starts thinking he'll never stop until he gets all the answers, and HOW long am I going be stuck in this yellow bricked cage? I'll never be able to show my face again if anyone else knew!'
Starscream gazed at the overcast shadow stretched along the wall, and drew her head into her chest. "…(Maybe)."
The Autobot wasn't satisfied with her answer. "What do you mean 'maybe'? It's either a yes or a no."
"When I met you for the first time, I…"
'…I'm going to say it, Primus spare me-' she bit her lip. "…I couldn't stop thinking about you."
The mech was not spared a second to think. "At first, I took it to be some small fancy for that cute aft of yours…" the Autobot valkyrie suddenly felt more aware of his surroundings and pressed his back to wall. "Then, when I saw you with that other female, I wanted to be where she was…next to you. It…pains me to see you, waiting for the right time to tell you who I really was, but…when you look at me and smiled, I…"
"Starscream…" The aforementioned seeker looked up. "…I didn't know you felt this way. Is that why you joined the Decepticons? But…I-…you-…what do you-"
"…I just wanted you to hold me."
Gentle footsteps brought him to her side, and he kneeled down to receive her shaking body, pulling hers next to his. Skyfire held her tighter when he heard her hiccup, and she buried herself into his large frame. The white mech looked down to find her face warm and moist with tears. Soothing her with hushed whispers, Skyfire stroked her helmet to offer her a measure of comfort, but the seeker wanted more.
"(Skyfire…) I-…I know this is sudden to ask of you but…" she shuddered in his arms. "…will you…?"
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"Say Red, who was guardin' that two-faced femme, again?"
Red Alert immediately looked up to Inferno with a trepid face. "Skyfire. Why?"
The Countach followed the fire truck's finger pointing to the screen in front of them, catching a soft mewl from the speakers. The mechs stared dumbly at each other and back at the screen before their internal sirens went on full alarm, with Red Alert yanking the p.a. microphone and Inferno stomping out of the surveillance room. Shortly accompanied by Brawn, the two Transformers sprinted down the hallways until they met their designated valkyrie, gallantly face down in the cell with a missing seeker. Waking up to being rudely turned over, Skyfire looked up at his disgruntled allies to say this:
"(…She…she said she loved me…)"
Brawn swapped glances back at Inferno, and both Autobots turned with even angrier scowls at their dazed comrade. "…Ya' stupid frag head!"
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Taking to the free skies on Cybertron, the Decepticon female cackled to herself in recollection of her previous jailbreak. She was going to remember this for a long time…
"Starscream, do you….LIKE me?"
"…Huh! You could say when we were explorers before the civil war….GO AWAY!" she fell to the floor and balled herself away from his general direction. 'Great, now he knows too much! Once that big geek starts thinking he'll never stop until he gets all the answers, and HOW long am I going be stuck in this yellow bricked cage? I'll never be able to show my face again if anyone else knew!
'…Then again, keeping a secret for 20 million years isn't exactly comforting; it'll come out one day. 'Might as well get it over with…but that datapad lover will read into it, as always. 'Better serve up the best piece of romantic banality to kill his cerebral cells from processing any MORE ideas.'
"…(Maybe)."
In glaring anticipation of Skyfire's doubts, Starscream delivered her winning lines, with a feathery, over dramatisation of speech. "When I met you for the first time, I…"
'I wanted to vomit.' Thankfully, Starscream was not talking to the clairvoyant Soundwave, and settled for something more pleasing to the audio receptors. "…I couldn't stop thinking about you."
'If that little sycophantic line didn't stun his cerebral board into paralysis, the barrage of romanticised slag would and flood his head to the brim.'
"At first, I took it to be some small fancy for that cute aft of yours…Then, when I saw you with that other female, I…"
'I wanted to dice, quarter and kill that stupid two-byte bimbo latched onto your arm like some piece of low-grade slag, and B her remains until there isn't a sprinkle of ash left of her stinking hull! It didn't help when you had to do the SMART thing and crash into a giant ICE CUBE! …Hmmmm, but you do have a nice aft.' Starscream restrained her more undesirable tendencies as a Decepticon and continued the tirade.
"I wanted to be where she was…next to you. It…pains me to see you, waiting for the right time to tell you who I was, but…when you look at me and smiled, I…" the femme con was about to shut off her audio receptors from listening to her own words when Skyfire spoke up.
"Starscream…" The aforementioned seeker felt somewhat relieved that he stopped her from regurgitating any more bathetic slag.
"…I didn't know you felt this way."
'…What the-….is he-…is he for real?' Her jaw almost dislocated itself from her head, and Starscream had to shrink her circular optics back to normalcy. Stumbling onto Skyfire's mawkish sentiments, a devious smirk carved itself into the red jet's face. Pushing herself off the ground with both hands, she poised herself daintily and turned her head to her shoulder, wearing the most pure, saccharine expression she could muster.
"…I just wanted you to hold me." No words were needed to describe the lone tear rolling down her cheek. It took the Decepticon tremendous amounts of inner strength to not burst into fits of laughter, muffling a snort with the back of her hand. A stifled choke was produced from this effect, but it worked to her advantage when a melodious sound rang into her ears as the energon bars disappeared. Gentle footsteps brought him to her side, and he kneeled down to receive her shaking body, pulling hers next to his. Skyfire held her tighter when she choked again. 'Oh Primus this is slagging HILARIOUS! I mean-'
"Oh, Skyfire!" Starscream cried and buried herself into his large frame. The conned mech pulled her back to check her maudlin face streaked with syrupy tears, and wiped them away with his thumb. He embraced her trembling figure again, duped by the fragility of a mere female who was trying not to break into an epidemic seizure of cachinnation. Should she do it? If she were, let's say, a few million years younger, Starscream's spark would flutter at the very notion of the idea. She might even hurdle herself into self-induced stasis lock. But fainting is for the weak, and Starscream was much more urbane and mature than her giggly counterparts. '…Oh well, no harm trying!'
"(Skyfire…) I-…I know this is sudden to ask of you but…will you…?"
It took Starscream a few seconds to perceive what was happening when Skyfire pressed his lips against hers. Her system tensed to the sensation running through her circuits, leaving her body to slump into his cradled arms. 'Oh, wow…didn't know Skyfire was so daring! Dashing even! Mmmm~…'
Starscream at present pealed into howls of laughter when she recalled hitting Skyfire with a straight uppercut and stealing his gun from his sub-compartment to blast him unconscious. At that point she forgot what she had said to him, but the red seeker hoped that she could exploit his weakness in the near future. Swerving to avoid colliding with an extended roof pole, Starscream jetted to the nearest hiding place she knew on Cybertron. The disarray of both armies from the previous battle meant that the Autobots and the Decepticons are open for new recruits. Experienced soldiers are a plus, and the F-15 decided it was time to return to her rightful place as Megatron's second-in-command once again. But her latest stint with him (excluding her betrayal for the previous Thundercracker), did not win favour with the aspen tyrant.
'I must return. After all, I am THE Decepticon aerial commander!' Starscream softened her landing in a deserted alleyway. 'Bucket head would want something for losing this monumental battle (no thanks to me) …Heh…Time to go 'fish' for presents…'
The seeker checked her internal chronometer, listening to the disharmony playing behind closed doors. Starscream only had to wait an hour and a half for her first potential recruit.
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When the light shone onto her, she had to get out and start dancing. When people started clapping, she had to get back in. When it was noisy, she was going somewhere else. When it was quiet, she could recharge. When there was a new dance, she had to absorb the information force-fed into her memory circuits, and that included names and faces of important guests to remember. When she did wrong, they would twist her limbs at the joint. That was her life in a box. Literally.
She had no name, she had no identity. All she had was the alien concept of freedom and her shallow perceptions of life outside her box, catching snippets of information from whatever she could remember of the outside world. The haunting gaze of a certain seeker burnt into her own, as she stared blankly at the crowd. It was the same one she saw at every different venue, and she knew it. Starscream was magnificent. The red jet was bigger, stronger, and everyone knew her. Even a forced recluse such as she, knew Starscream was the epitome of greatness. No amount of entertainment skills could surpass her omnipotence. The seeker would perch in the near corner, undisturbed and unable to hide her magnificence, despite being cloaked by the dim lighting. 'Like a peacock taking shelter from the rain, with its tail folded. For a peacock, is a peacock', or something like that. But Starscream was looking at her. Her! A non-existent Transformer.
In comparison to the Decepticon jet, she was a dim bulb to the twin moons of Cybertron. Starscream was her idol, her sister, her mother, her creator. After meeting optic-to-optic for the first time with the aerial commander, she wanted nothing more. No disgraceful subjugation of her being could falter her dedication to be with Starscream, her ultimate desire. Starscream was not blind to her wordless wishes, because the way she looked at the female jet, was that of a lost puppy longing for its master.
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The hand that opened the box was blue like Starscream's. Her face was like Starscream's. Starscream came. Starscream came to save her. The unknown Transformer shed tears, but she never cried like this before. The situation was surreal. It was not painful or sad, but she wanted to cry. The reasons were too foreign to her. The jet opened her mouth to speak. She was talking to her! Starscream!
"What's your name, child?"
'Name? …Name?' She kneeled in the four corners, dumbfounded. She never had a name. Maybe 'it' or 'that thing'. No, but that wasn't her name. Child?
"…Mother?" she quivered to herself, and Starscream narrowed her vision when she caught that stray whimper. 'No…oh no! Starscream's upset!' "I-I'm sorry! I-!"
Starscream pouted at the Cassetticon cramped in the dull cube. Maybe she was mistaken after all. How would this small creature be able to make use of her abilities if she cannot even comprehend the facets of life? 'No,' Starscream deduced. 'She's been in that stuffy box for too long, she just needs some decent exposure. That can be easily done.' Starscream checked the Cassetticon's previous owners, lying behind the seeker brutally unwired. 'Stupid dullards! Squashed in this box is a potential warrior, and they make her sing and dance like some mindless marionette! What a waste of talent…but the girl's got gumption.'
"So. You think I'm your mother, is that so?" the signature grin graced Starscream's cheeks. "All right, I'm your new creator. I'm Starscream."
"I know!" she jerked in the box. A pair of blue fingers nipped the Cassetticon by the nape and freed her from her confinement, placing her on a now box-less hand. The small Transformer stared at her previous home being rolled aside like useless garbage, and sat obediently waiting in Starscream's hand. A small pair of energon wings unconsciously grew out of the minute robot's back, and she flitted to a standing position in the seeker's hand.
"You have no name."
"No, mother." Starscream winced at the newfound sentiment. "Well, you put up a good light show. And that's what you'll be. Lightshow."
'Lightshow?' she hated light shows, and Starscream read the discontented look smeared on her face. "What, you don't like your new name? Fine then. Lightburst. Better?" Lightburst nodded in agreement, fluttering to sit by Starscream's helmet and greet her new foster parent with a soft embrace, but the seeker pinched her body again and gently settled the tiny Transformer to the floor.
"You're free," Starscream declared. "You may go wherever your wings take you."
Lightburst's expression changed drastically. 'But why?'
"Go, before I change my mind. My creator was not as lenient, as for most of us."
Was Starscream telling her to leave by her own free will? The pink and white Cassetticon turned and took a few baby steps away from the jet. 'I'm free…? I'm free...Starscream says so. I-…she-…she let me…'
Lightburst peeked back to find Starscream seemingly indifferent to her departure. A small pair of heels clicked its way back to the seeker, whose smirk grew wider with each step.
"I don't wanna go! I-!" Lightburst watched Starscream's unchanging visage. The jet was not offended at her raising her voice! "I wanna stay with you. I wanna stay-!"
"Okay," the red jet shrugged.
Lightburst floated to Starscream's face and held her cheek guard tightly. The seeker had to get used to it. Not everything's perfect, and this cassette needed to be integrated into her new lifestyle before Starscream can teach her the delicate finesse of violent combat. Judging the Cassetticon's temperament, such gushy expressions were not surprising and fairly tolerable, so Starscream could live with that. If Skywarp was a permanent member of her Decepticon trine, surely she could live with a little fondness from a Cassetticon. A stray finger stroked her new recruit's head, who responded with a delighted purr. Peering behind Starscream's shoulder to her late captors, Lightburst threw her bottom down to raise an innocent question.
"What happened to them?" she asked. Starscream rolled her head casually to her pace. "They are currently in 'permanent stasis lock'. For your freedom, my dear child."
Lightburst gazed at the darkness ahead of them before mimicking the seeker's previous motion. "…Okay!"
A/N: Oh noes! An OC:D Hmmm, I think the description for my fanfic is misleading especially when I mentioned that Starscream is male; 'thinking of changing the chapter summary because it seems obscure and misleading, tho', I've already got an idea, suggestions are greatly appreciated ;) Thank you and congratulations for making it this far! XD