Rain poured in sheets from the sky, soaking the forest and blurring the world outside Blast Off's viewports. It was a massive change from the desert climate surrounding the Harbinger. When Blast Off had first landed here, Starscream had vehemently protested against making camp in such a waterlogged excuse for an Earth locale. Four hours later, Starscream was still talking—to himself, presumably, since Blast Off had stopped responding a while ago.
"But the Decepticons haven't found us yet, you say? Well, of course they haven't. Why not? Because no one rational would set up camp in the middle of a storm when there are plenty of better forests nearby. Dry forests. Ones that would hide us just as well from Decepticon surveillance, only without this infernal dampness. Without corrosive liquids falling from the sky," Starscream grumbled.
Starscream was not the one getting rained on. Starscream sat comfortably inside Blast Off's alt-mode, fully sheltered from the weather while his energon condenser chugged away at Swindle's supply of oil. Starscream had wheedled this arrangement out of Onslaught with the promise that he could make Bruticus functional again if he concentrated on his work.
Thus far, all Starscream had to show for his efforts was a spiky array of random scrap metal bent around a tangled blob of wires and circuitry. It vaguely resembled an Earth crab. The whole device was about half the size of Blast Off's fist and considerably less solid. It occasionally twitched without prompting.
The ground outside felt soft and spongy to the touch, and rainwater gave the topsoil the consistency of quicksand. Blast Off was slowly but surely sinking into the ground. Outside, Brawl and Cylas dug drainage trenches around Blast Off to draw away the worst of the water that pooled beneath his landing gear. They had already made three deep grooves in the ground. A fourth was in progress.
On the far side of the trenches, Onslaught lifted broken trees upright and rearranged the surrounding forest to conceal traces of their arrival from any aerial surveillance. There was still a large patch of flattened vegetation in the space Blast Off currently occupied. Earlier, Onslaught had draped a woven net of tree branches over Blast Off as a temporary disguise. The branches felt wet and slimy across his hull, but he endured their presence with immense self-control. It was a necessary indignity.
A slimy rope-shaped creature wriggled atop Blast Off's left wing. Inside his cargo hold, poor dry Starscream continued to mourn the miserably wet conditions outside as he fiddled with his scrap metal project. Blast Off resisted the urge to open the cargo hold door and let water flood inside. It was a counterproductive impulse. While a flood would indeed help Starscream understand the true meaning of misery, it would also make the interior floors wet.
The energon condenser needed to stay dry. Blast Off refused on principle to drink unrefined oil.
Further away, Vortex flew a standard patrol pattern around the perimeter. His stealth paint diffused the signal from Blast Off's sensor sweeps, making his profile fuzzy and indistinct compared to the crisp shapes of more distant human aircraft.
The thrum of rotors carried through the air, and a small dark dot descended from the clouds. Without searchlights on, Vortex was almost the same color as the stormy sky. Cylas and Brawl paused their work, sticking tree trunk shovels upright in the ground. Standing at full height, only the upper torso and shoulders of both mechs were visible above the edges of the trench. Rainwater streamed across their frames, adding to the drainage pools at their feet. Cylas's fist clenched around his shovel. Brawl lifted an arm in greeting.
Vortex transformed a few meters above the ground. He landed at the top of the nearest trench and skidded, plowing shallow grooves in the mud. Clumps of dirt flew everywhere. Rotors spun to a leisurely halt, shedding rainwater in all directions. Cylas raised a hand to shield his optics.
"Nice progress. Almost deep enough to bury a mech," Vortex said, lightly hopping over the trench.
Brawl laughed. "Maybe a short one."
Onslaught stood up from a dense clump of vegetation. He had a heap of woven branches draped over his head and shoulders as a low-tech camouflage cloak. Twin missile launchers poked through matching holes in the back of the cloak. "Status report."
"We're good. Nothing out there but trees and more trees. The closest human town is on the other side of those mountains." Vortex indicated a snow-capped mountain ridge far in the distance.
"And Swindle?"
"Swindle? He's coming. Couldn't keep up with me on the ground, what with dodging trees and carrying a passenger. I offered to help, but he said he'd rather carry the squishy. Might've taken a detour to feed and water her along the way."
Onslaught looked Vortex over, noting the dim visor and slower than usual motions. "Good work. Get some fuel. Starscream has a cube or two to spare."
Vortex walked up to the outside of Blast Off's cockpit. He cupped his hands and peered through the front window. The interior was dark enough that he could not see much beyond the reflection of his own visor and the pale glow of fuel dripping from the energon condenser. "Hey, Blast Off. Is Starscream in?"
Inside the cargo hold, Starscream hunched beside the energon condenser with his back to the cockpit. This position conveniently hid the glow of his optics from Vortex's view. Two and a half energon cubes were stacked on the floor in front of him. He prodded at the tangled mass of electronics that was somehow supposed to fix Bruticus's loyalty problem. All the while, he muttered about how prolonged exposure to water vapor rusted the processors and drove good soldiers to madness.
"Unfortunately, yes." Blast Off boosted all of the cabin lights to maximum illumination. Vortex's visor flickered as he hastily readjusted gain and contrast settings to compensate for the sudden increase in ambient light.
Inside, Starscream jumped, nearly dropping his project in surprise. "I said the lights were unnecessary."
Blast Off cleared the static from his internal speakers. "Vortex is looking for you."
Starscream turned around and saw Vortex through the window. He scowled and flapped both hands in a shooing motion. Vortex waved back, then ducked out of sight beyond the windows. He walked around Blast Off to stand in front of the cargo hold door. Starscream's scowl deepened.
"What does he want?"
"Energon. Give him a cube before he tries to fetch it himself. I will not have him tracking mud inside." Blast Off opened the cargo hold door just enough to allow room for a single energon cube to pass. A fine spray of rainwater splashed in through the gap, cold and wet against Blast Off's interior.
Outside, Vortex was just a bit too short to see through the gap at the top of the door. He hopped up and down, visor appearing and disappearing through the gap as he watched Starscream gather and deliver one energon cube. Starscream waited beside the door longer than necessary. When Vortex dropped out of sight for a moment, Starscream shoved the cube through the gap.
The energon cube bounced off Vortex's head. He yelped and fumbled the cube, folding over in an awkward crouch. When he sprang up again, the cube was securely tucked under one arm. The other hand carried a dripping fistful of mud.
Blast Off quickly slammed his door shut and engaged the environmental seals. "No. Put it down."
A gleeful light shone in Vortex's visor. He raised his arm, winding up to throw the mud straight at Blast Off's door.
Ion cannons rotated around, humming with charge. "Down."
Vortex froze as the cannons aimed at him began to glow. He slowly put down the mud and chuckled, raising his dirt-streaked hand. "Okay. It's down. I'm going, I'm going."
The cannons tracked Vortex until he sauntered out of mud-slinging range. As he moved, the surrounding rain glittered and sparkled with countless reflections of the glowing blue cube in his grasp.
Inside, Starscream looked directly at one of Blast Off's internal cameras and smirked. "A most effective dismissal. Well done, Blast Off. We make a fine team."
Blast Off deactivated the cabin lights, plunging the cargo hold into darkness.
After two days of continuous rain, Cylas smelled like dead fish from all the damp. Miko refused to go anywhere near him. When Swindle drove within twenty meters of Cylas, Miko flopped over in his front seat and made gagging noises.
"It isn't so bad. Not the first time we've had decomposing squishy around. Right, Swindle?" Vortex said, watching Miko flail in protest behind Swindle's windshield.
"Decomposing?" At once, Swindle recalled the unpleasantness of finding that his merchandise had begun to rot while stored in subspace. While he was not exactly squeamish, it had taken a while to decontaminate his subspace compartment after removing that unfortunate batch of organic matter. If the rain outside made Miko similarly decay while riding inside his alt-mode, it would be difficult to clean off his seats.
Swindle dropped Miko off in one of the drainage trenches near base camp and drove off into the wilderness.
Miko landed in a knee-deep river. When she regained her balance, Swindle was nowhere to be found. This opportunity was too good to pass up. Miko climbed up the sloped side of the trench and ran toward the cover of the forest.
Three steps away from freedom, Onslaught scooped her up.
"Swindle, return at once. Your prisoner escaped," Onslaught sent over comms. Inside his cab, a drenched Miko shouted and kicked against the driver's side door, splashing water all over the seats.
Swindle replied in static and claimed interference from the rain.
With Swindle away, someone had to watch Miko. All of their storage cubes were either already full of energon or soon to be filled by the energon condenser. Brawl and Cylas were both too busy setting up defensive structures around their campsite to watch a prisoner. Vortex's flying habits were unsuitable for carrying live human passengers, and Onslaught had better things to do than contain Miko in his cab.
Fortunately, someone else was already sitting around in alt-mode. Onslaught delivered Miko to Blast Off's cargo hold.
"The human had better not touch anything. I will not tolerate organic residue in my cabin," Blast Off warned.
Once Miko was secure atop a stack of energon cubes too high for her to climb off, Onslaught took a moment to inspect the device Starscream was building. The proposed decombination trigger looked complicated. Perhaps overly so.
"Is it done?" Onslaught asked.
"No. It's only been two days. What did you expect? I'm working with limited tools here."
Onslaught looked at the floor in front of Starscream, which now contained an array of welders, laser cutters, electronic components, and scrap metal that Starscream had gathered from everyone's subspace inventories. It was a fairly sizable collection. Brawl and Blast Off in particular had contributed a wealth of useful supplies that Starscream now called his own.
"Cylas is rather clever for a human, and he understands Cybertronian technology from his time at MECH. Perhaps his help would hasten your progress," Onslaught suggested.
"What? No!" Starscream's wings flared wide in indignation. "Aside from the obvious deficiencies in the processing capacity of a human brain—giving control of Bruticus to a human? That human, of all choices? Not on my watch. We should have terminated Cylas the moment he arrived. Mark my words: he will betray us all, just as he betrayed his own kind. As he betrayed me."
Onslaught looked him over. "You clearly have... strong opinions about this. Alright. Cylas will remain uninvolved in your work. When do you expect results?"
Fists gradually unclenched, claws sliding apart with metallic clicks. "Soon. Progress may be slow, but I'm close to a breakthrough."
After three days, it stopped raining—and not a moment too soon. With both Starscream and Miko inside Blast Off's cargo hold, Blast Off felt his sanity slipping further away with each passing moment. Miko may have been physically trapped atop a high stack of energon cubes, but her verbal jabs only encouraged Starscream to talk more. Blast Off entertained fantasies of transforming and walking away while they floundered in the mud outside his hull. It would be easy, so very easy to leave all this behind and return to the welcome solitude of outer space.
Easy was not how the Combaticons operated. Blast Off remained on the ground, sheltering his passengers. After days of overcast skies and rain, the sunlight felt delightful against his hull. He basked in the warmth and tracked the evaporation of water droplets off his armor.
With the end of the rainfall, Starscream's complaints about the weather lapsed into a productive silence. Miko took advantage of the quiet to catch up on sleep. She curled up in a little ball atop the energon cube stack, shivering in the cool post-storm air. Blast Off adjusted his environmental settings to make the cargo hold a few degrees warmer.
Starscream worked more efficiently without Miko distracting him. The decombination trigger evolved from a chaotic ball of electronics into a spindly claw reminiscent of an inhibitor clamp. Instead of twitching randomly, it began to react to specific sounds.
"Bruticus, decombine," Starscream said softly.
Speech-recognition algorithms in the device responded to his command. The prongs curled inward and sparked with electricity. Miniature lightning bolts danced between them, ionizing the air. Miko flinched and sat up, woken from sleep by the light show. Starscream grinned.
"Brilliant work, isn't it?" Starscream pressed a switch on the side. The decombination trigger shuddered and went dark. "To think that I scraped this together over the span of a mere three days. Why, it's a record-setting achievement! And that, despite all the distractions and interruptions. Not to mention this truly unfortunate humidity—"
Miko coughed. Starscream shot a glare at her.
"Do try to show some appreciation, human. My invention could revolutionize—" The cargo hold door opened. Starscream squeaked, spinning around. Onslaught stood just outside. Starscream raised his chin and spoke with confidence. "Ah, Onslaught. Perfect timing."
"Blast Off relayed your progress," Onslaught said.
Starscream's wings drooped a bit. "Of course he did. At last, my work is complete. Let's proceed with the field test."
Onslaught nodded and activated his comms. "Combaticons, return to base."
A full set of acknowledgements pinged back over the open channel. Swindle's static interference problem seemed to have mysteriously resolved itself. Brawl pinged twice on behalf of Cylas, who still lacked access to the encrypted group comm lines.
While waiting, Starscream brought the energon condenser, the decombination trigger, and Miko out of the cargo hold. He rearranged Miko's stack of energon cubes on a relatively dry patch of ground. It was daytime, and the overcast gray sky of before had peeled back to reveal bright sunshine. Miko stretched her hands toward the sun, drinking in the light and warmth.
Once the sensitive items were unloaded, Blast Off transformed. The rest of the fuel and tools inside the cargo hold went straight to subspace. Blast Off stretched his limbs and rotated joints through their full range of motion. Three days of inactivity and rainwater had left his armor a mess. He gingerly poked at the mud coating his landing gear. It squished and smudged.
Brawl drove out of the forest with Cylas trailing close behind. Once they entered the campsite, Cylas immediately noticed the energon condenser running unattended. This was the first time he had seen it in operation. He wandered over to watch it convert ordinary fossil fuels into energon.
"No touching," Starscream snapped, pulling the energon condenser away from Cylas. The sudden motion spilled a few drops of energon on the ground.
Cylas frowned and retracted his hand. "Merely inspecting the insulation. I had a few ideas to improve the conversion efficiency—"
Starscream's armor flared out with offense. "It's perfectly efficient as is. Keep your clumsy paws off. One wrong bump and you'll have us drinking organic muck instead of energon. Wait. I see it now. That's your scheme, isn't it? You mean to poison us all by sabotaging our most convenient source of fuel."
Blast Off and Brawl walked up on either side of Starscream, drawn over by the sound of raised voices.
"Is there a problem here?" Blast Off asked. His cannons idly rotated, and Cylas glanced at them with considerable alarm. He had seen those cannons in action only once, but once was enough. With those two backing Starscream, cooperation was the more prudent option.
"No problem. A misunderstanding." Cylas stepped back, hands raised in surrender.
The thrum of rotors filled the air, breaking the standoff. Heads turned upward, and Brawl shouted a greeting. Vortex flew in with Swindle dangling under him on the end of a long cable. Both were in alt-mode, but a helicopter airlifting a Jeep was an unusual enough sight that Cylas did a double-take. Onslaught merely sighed.
As Vortex banked over the campsite, Swindle transformed and caught the cable with one hand. He released the cable at just the right moment to launch himself at Onslaught. A few meters away, he hit the ground feet-first and stuck the landing. He straightened up with a broad grin.
"Good morning, boss! I did get your message this time. Such a pity about that comms outage the other day—"
"Due to your negligence, the hostage nearly escaped." Onslaught gestured at Miko, who still sat atop her stack of energon cubes and soaked in the sunlight. She looked healthy, although her exposed skin seemed a shade more red than usual.
"What do you mean, my negligence? Miko was well guarded in my absence—by you. And look, she's still with us. No problems there. As for my part, well, I simply went to run a more productive errand." Swindle sidestepped around Onslaught and knelt in front of Miko. "You're looking hungry there, Miko. Don't worry. You won't have to eat laser-cooked snakes anymore." He produced a handful of fast-food cartons from subspace. "We flew to a city and got you a week's supply of processed food."
Miko looked at the offering suspiciously. "Takeout, huh? Who'd you steal it from?"
"Steal? Me? Well, I never." Swindle drew back, one hand pressed to his chest. Somewhere behind him, Vortex giggled. Swindle's indignation morphed into a sly smile. "I paid good money for that food. You see, it cost me good energon to generate those holograms. Holographic sheets of paper, each one individually colored and textured, each independently responsive to external forces—they burn a lot more power than you'd expect."
In the background, Cylas stared at the heap of food with mixed longing and desperation. Surely no one would notice if a couple of takeout boxes went missing.
With the entire team gathered in one place, it was time for the field test of Starscream's new decombination trigger.
The Combaticons crowded into a clearing some distance away from Miko and the energon condenser. After the loyalty code had thrown the last combination sequence awry, it was difficult to predict how Bruticus might react without Megatron present. Combining too close to the hostage, the fuel storage, or the fragile energon condenser might risk irreparable damage to anything within reach. This clearing was reasonably far from those sensitive items. Over here, there were only trees—nothing of value to risk losing if Bruticus went on a rampage.
Starscream equipped Onslaught with the decombination trigger, magnetizing it to the open space between the back of Onslaught's neck and his missile launchers. The narrow prongs of shock probes socketed into the space between armor plates. Starscream had designed the trigger exactly to spec, and it fit precisely as intended. It was lightweight and non-invasive, positioned in a spot that would not interfere with mobility in either individual or combined modes. Onslaught rolled his shoulders.
"It will suffice. Stand back," Onslaught said.
Starscream retreated behind a nearby cluster of trees. He also put on the Apex Armor. The extra bulkiness negated any camouflage effect they might have gained by standing behind the trees. Cylas glanced at Starscream and frowned. Starscream returned a scowl.
"What are you looking at? Don't watch me. Watch them." Starscream waved an armor-encased hand at the Combaticons. "In fact, you should move closer. Get a better view."
Cylas positioned himself about halfway between Starscream and the others. "View of what exactly?"
"You are about to witness one of the triumphs of Decepticon science. Be honored. No human has ever before seen a combiner in action." Starscream raised his voice to carry over the distance. "Onslaught, whenever you're ready."
In the clearing, Onslaught nodded once at Starscream and turned away. The decombination trigger gleamed on his back, a bright silver claw across the navy armor of his shoulders.
"Combaticons, merge into Bruticus."
Five frames moved as one, simultaneously transforming. Swindle and Brawl folded into legs. Onslaught landed atop them as the centerpiece. Blast Off and Vortex attached as arms. As the hardware linkages locked into place, five individual consciousnesses submerged beneath the awakening of a greater unity.
For the first time in four million years, Bruticus was complete. His missing right arm had been restored. Also, nobody was actively shooting at him. This was most unusual. Bruticus existed for battle. Where was the enemy? For what purpose had he awakened in this strange and peaceful terrain? He queried his components' memory banks for an answer.
Contradictory input flooded in from five separate sources. Bruticus was on Earth: a place understood through disjointed glimpses of his components' impressions. Earth was a planet full of squishy fleshlings and brilliant innovation, of tepid mud and thrilling lightning storms. It was alien beauty and repulsively organic at once, rich with opportunity while simultaneously a worthless ball of dirt.
Bruticus shook his head, focusing on the here and now. In front of him, puny organic trees barely came up to hip-level. Most of them stood vertically, but one was horizontal. He picked up the horizontal one. It squished between his hands, fragile and malleable. The fuzzy green at the top felt as soft as it looked.
The sensation triggered a latent memory. One of his components had encountered these horizontal trees before. There had been a task. A goal. Yes. Bruticus understood. He lifted the tree, rotated it to vertical, and plunged it into the ground. It stuck there, wobbling slightly.
Bruticus stepped back, admiring his handiwork. Now all of the trees were vertical. The fixed one was a little shorter than the rest, but it would grow in time. Trees grew like crystals, after all.
"Bruticus, destroy Cylas," a loud and irritating voice shouted.
Destruction sounded fun. Bruticus turned. A small blue mech stood on the ground a few steps from him. Memory files identified the small blue mech as Cylas.
The loud mech who had spoken was further away, trying and failing to hide behind a cluster of trees. His frame looked strangely bulbous, but Bruticus recognized his voice. Memory fragments pulled together, chaotic yet conclusive.
"Starscream. Traitor to Lord Megatron." Bruticus lunged past Cylas, sweeping aside the barrier of trees in a single blow. He reached out one hand and grabbed Starscream around the middle. Cylas scurried away as Bruticus lifted Starscream up to visor level.
Starscream yelped, limbs flailing uselessly. "Release me, I command you!"
Annoyance flooded Bruticus. Starscream made far too much noise for such a small mech. He could speak for days and days if left unchecked. Intolerable.
"Enough talk." Bruticus squeezed. Unexpectedly, Starscream did not crumple like tinfoil in his grasp.
"Unhand me at once. That is an order from your superior." Starscream banged a very round arm against Bruticus's thumb. The force of his blows tickled.
"Bruticus takes orders only from Lord Megatron." Bruticus pinched the errant arm with two fingers and yanked.
Starscream shrieked.
Most unexpectedly, the arm did not tear off. Starscream reactivated his optics. He looked just as shocked as Bruticus at this development. Shock quickly turned into smugness.
"You leave me no choice," Starscream said. "Bruticus, decombine."
Something twitched at the base of Bruticus's head. He reached back to rip off the offending presence, but he reacted too late. Electricity ripped through his systems, shattering his awareness into five pieces.
A heap of tangled limbs crashed to the ground, groaning in five discordant voices. Transformation sequences rippled across each component, and the limbs unfolded into sets of even more limbs.
Blast Off staggered upright, brushing mud off his frame. Vortex rolled sideways and curled both arms around his head. Brawl pushed himself to a sitting position, visor flickering. Swindle squirmed underneath the deadweight of Onslaught.
"Oof. Boss, you're heavy," Swindle said, kicking at the ground with the one foot that was not trapped. "Uh, boss? Onslaught?"
Onslaught emitted incoherent static and shuddered, but he could not move enough to free Swindle. His frame was caught halfway between modes, partly in combiner form and partly in root. Brawl lifted him by the shoulders, allowing Swindle to crawl out from a large dent in the soil. Once free, Swindle knelt by his side.
"What's the matter, boss?"
"Get... remove... trigger," Onslaught croaked, visor flashing almost white. His arm spasmed through partial transformations, plates folding and refolding into nonfunctional shapes. A hand eventually emerged from the shifting mass of metal. He reached for the decombination trigger at the back of his neck, but the servos in his hand trembled and misfired. He could not get a solid grip on the device.
Brawl yanked it off, snapping a couple of the attachment clasps in the process. Onslaught finished transforming to root-mode and collapsed. His visor went dim with relief.
The trigger sparked and hummed in Brawl's hand, live current arcing between the prongs of the claw. Brawl turned it over, found the power pack, and pulled that out. The trigger stopped sparking.
Further away, Starscream observed the proceedings from inside the Apex Armor. "Excellent. It works."
"Does it really?" Onslaught muttered, sprawled flat in the mud. That was a rather optimistic view. Bruticus was still bound by the loyalty code. Meanwhile, a single forced decombination had incapacitated half of the team. If they faced the Decepticons with this as their backup plan, any battle efforts would be doomed the instant Starscream activated the trigger.
After the field test, Starscream repaired the decombination trigger. The damages were mostly cosmetic: warped prongs bent back into place with minimal force, and the broken clasps reseated after a few precise spot-welds. It was surprisingly straightforward work. When Brawl ripped the trigger off Onslaught's back, he had somehow avoided crushing any of the more delicate control circuits.
The forced decombination had done no lasting damage to Onslaught himself. Instead of being pleased with this, the Combaticons pestered Starscream with complaints about the decombination process. It hurt too much; it happened too abruptly; it left the whole team unfit for combat—the problems went on and on.
"Do try to show some appreciation." Starscream pointedly set down his tools and picked up the trigger. "See this? This is the only reason you are not bowing to Megatron right now. I never said that decombination would be pleasant—just that it could happen. As it did."
Onslaught did not take this well. "In a true battle, we would not bow to Megatron because we would all be shot dead the instant you decombined us. Do you call that a solution?"
Starscream shrank back, chuckling nervously. "Eh, well, it's not like there are many options. Bruticus is quite resilient. The voltage needed to stun him even momentarily, let alone divide him into component parts..."
"It is the electrical impulse that disrupts the combined form, not the duration of the shock. Have you considered a pulsed drive current? Apply the same instantaneous disruption to local neural nets while avoiding the long-term paralysis of a full system overload," Cylas suggested.
"Of course I've considered it. First idea I scrapped," Starscream said.
For some reason, Onslaught looked thoughtful. "Pulsed. Hmm. That's not a half bad idea. Starscream, give it a try."
"What? No. You can't listen to Cylas just like that." Starscream gestured sharply, claws shredding the air. "He doesn't know the first thing about combiner tech."
"But I do know machines." Cylas smiled, and the sheer arrogance in his bearing recalled previous incidents.
Starscream's side ached where his missing transformation cog should have been.
"You think machines are so simple, Cylas? Fine. Do it yourself." Starscream swept the decombination trigger and all of his tools into subspace. He picked a random direction and walked that way as quickly as his feet could move—while still retaining an appropriately dignified manner, of course.
"Starscream," Onslaught shouted. He switched to comms. "Starscream, return at once. Your task remains incomplete."
"Ask Cylas to build you a new trigger, since you value his fleshy intellect so much," Starscream sent back.
Brawl joined the group comm lines. "Think you can mouth off to Onslaught and get away with it? Think again. I'll drag you back by the wing-struts."
Behind Starscream, Brawl charged into the forest with a roar. Starscream abandoned dignified speedwalking for an outright sprint. In root-mode, he managed to run just a bit faster than Brawl.
"Brawl, stop. Let Starscream go." Onslaught spoke with cool confidence instead of defeat. "Starscream will come crawling back in due time. After all, we have his precious energon condenser—"
Starscream muted his comms as he ran, and whatever else Onslaught said went unheard. Dwelling on those words would lead nowhere. Onslaught was absolutely right about that energon condenser, but Starscream could not do anything about it now. Not without going back.
This was just a short walk to burn off frustration. Starscream fully intended to return to the campsite in an hour or two, after tempers cooled and Cylas left the area. After almost four days of being stuck in close proximity to the rest of the Harbinger outcasts, some welcome solitude would do wonders to clear his head—as well as clear the stench of organic decay surrounding Cylas.
The trees in this area of the forest were half again as tall as Starscream. He wandered between the trunks, stepping over low-hanging vegetation or simply slicing it out of the way when it grew too dense to navigate. The severed branches left traces of sticky organic residue on his claws, but better his claws than the rest of his frame.
Native wildlife rustled around in the underbrush, fleeing from Starscream's presence as they rightfully should. They feared him, and that fear gave him power. He recalibrated his optical settings toward the infrared spectrum to better spot their heat signatures among the complicated tangle of vegetation. Small blobs and streaks of heat crawled or wriggled among the trees and shrubs around Starscream.
If only Cylas understood his place as well as these critters.
The forest dwellers fled from Starscream in all manners of ways: on four legs, two legs, no legs, or two wings. One individual fled on three legs. After a moment of puzzled deliberation, Starscream decided that it was injury-related rather than an intrinsic property of the species. Another critter did not flee at all, but instead took out a cell phone and snapped a picture of Starscream.
The chitter of a human data transmission jolted Starscream out of his reverie. The data contained a blurry photo of Starscream from a ground-level perspective. He reset his optics to their normal visual range. In the infrared spectrum, humans looked just as warm and blobby as monkeys, if less elegantly proportioned. In full spectrum view, the artificial clothing and the cell phone in this individual's hand marked him as unmistakably human.
"You there, hand over the phone." Starscream lowered his hand toward the human.
The human clutched the phone close to his chest and stumbled backward, squeaking unintelligibly in some language Starscream had not downloaded the translation packs for. Beside the human, a four-legged pet jumped up and down on the end of a rope, barking wildly.
Starscream lunged. "Come here, you—"
The human screamed and fled, taking the phone and dog with him.
After trudging through the forest to distance himself from the campsite, Starscream was in no mood for a footrace. Moving on two legs across the ground was frustrating at the best of times. Right now, his patience was thoroughly exhausted. He lined up his right arm and fired a missile. The heat signatures of the human and dog disappeared in a fireball.
Cinders and charred branches poured down around Starscream, bouncing harmlessly off his shoulders and wings. Sooty smoke wafted out from the burning organic matter, darkening his armor to a sooty gray color. In this oxygenated atmosphere, wood burned at a far lower temperature than standard energon-fire. The flames were not even hot enough to warp his paint. He wandered through the blast zone, poking at unrecognizable clumps and scattering ashes with a foot.
Nothing moved. Nothing lived. The phone no longer transmitted data. Problem solved.
As the flames sputtered and died out in the dampness of a recently rained-upon forest, Starscream's satisfaction faded as well. This was the problem with Earth: everything was just too fragile. There was no true achievement in winning victories against the locals, but one small defeat at human hands had cost him his alt-mode and all the freedom therein.
When the embers at last cooled, Starscream stood in a blackened clearing amid an otherwise healthy green forest. The sky had shifted since he last saw it, and the pale cloud-speckled blue of daytime now faded to a colorful dusk. The last golden rays of sunset trailed over the treetops, diffracting around the edges of leaves like echoes of the extinguished flame. Framed by the charred remnants of trees splintered in the missile detonation, the sunset resembled a second wildfire.
Not everything about Earth was terrible after all. Starscream watched the sun descend beyond the horizon, wordless longing coursing through his frame with every second that stretched on. The water vapor clouds in the sky looked rather stunning when they caught the sunlight—but oh, how Starscream wished that he could fly through those clouds instead of merely observing them from afar.
Blue-green light washed across the clearing from behind Starscream. He flinched and spun around, aiming the missile on his left arm at the groundbridge. A fearsome silhouette emerged from the portal, and Starscream froze before he could shoot.
"Megatron?!" Starscream backpedaled, putting distance between himself and the groundbridge.
"Well, well, well. Look who it is. Starscream, all alone." The groundbridge closed behind Megatron, plunging the world into darkness. His optics burned crimson as his gaze swept across the surroundings. "Where are the Combaticons?"
Starscream's fists clenched. "Never mind them." He took out the Apex Armor from subspace. "Facing me was your last mista—AGH!"
Megatron lunged impossibly fast, ripping the Apex Armor out of Starscream's grasp before it fully activated. The other hand closed around Starscream's throat, lifting him off the ground effortlessly. Starscream kicked at the air and clawed at Megatron's hand, making pained noises. The pressure on his vocalizer distorted his words into incoherence.
"Ah, yes. The Apex Armor. Dreadwing did mention how he failed to retrieve it in Antarctica." Megatron inspected the compact disk of inactive armor, ignoring Starscream's struggles. "He will be pleased to hear of its recovery."
Starscream hissed static, and his optics flared with incandescent rage. He pointed his left missile at Megatron's head.
Megatron stowed the Apex Armor in subspace and seized Starscream's left wrist, clamping down on the missile mount before it fired. The mounts crumpled, distorting under the force. The missile was now locked in place on his arm. If Starscream tried to launch it, he would destroy his own arm in the detonation.
Starscream writhed, pinned by the neck and left arm. His right arm was still free, but he had already shot that missile at a human earlier. For some reason, his auto-reload protocols had not equipped a new missile yet. He tried to reload from his subspace ammunition pocket, but his right launcher remained unarmed. Panicking, he checked subspace inventory.
That ammunition pocket was empty. There were no more missiles to reload. Starscream was in deep trouble—and in very immediate risk of losing either his left arm or his head, depending on Megatron's whims.
Out of options, Starscream turned to his last resort: screaming for help. He flooded all comm channels with a distress signal at maximum priority.
No one responded.
Megatron chuckled. "Calling for backup? A futile endeavor. Soundwave has this area under a full communications blackout."
Starscream desperately tugged at the hand around his throat. Held aloft like this, his feet dangled in the air several meters above the ground, placing all the weight of his frame on spinal struts and neck cables. The strain sent structural integrity warnings cascading across his internal display. He activated the thrusters on his heels, exerting just enough upward force to counteract gravity without impaling himself on Megatron's sharp claws.
"Did you really think you could hide anywhere on this planet? One curious little human, one photo sent to their cellular network, and your cover is blown. There is nothing on the human datanet that Soundwave cannot monitor." Megatron lowered Starscream to the ground.
The moment Starscream was released, he staggered back, clutching his neck. He looked up, optics wide and fearful. Even if he tried to run, there was no possible way he could escape Megatron without access to his alt-mode.
"Spare me, my lord. Please. Have mercy."
Megatron looked thoughtful. "I might consider mercy—if you can prove yourself worthy of it."
"Prove. How?"
"Bruticus." At Starscream's shocked expression, Megatron smiled. "Surprised? Soundwave recovered your project notes from the Harbinger. I know that you were attempting to subvert Shockwave's loyalty code. And that you have failed. Your task is simple: deliver the Combaticons to me, unharmed and in their combined form."
"Betray them? Have you lost your mind?" Starscream quailed an instant later, cowering almost to the ground. "Ah, that is to say, I can't... er, I'm not capable of handling this important task."
"Not capable."
"No. Well. Erm." Starscream made static noises and shifted uneasily. Without his tenuous alliance with the Combaticons, he would truly have nothing on this planet. He attempted a tense smile. "Perhaps I could prove myself in some other way?"
Megatron was unconvinced. "You've never balked from treachery before."
"I've changed! Seen the error of my ways."
"Spare me the humble act." Megatron stepped sideways, walking in a slow circle around Starscream. "Is this what you are truly meant to be? Groveling in the dirt, pathetic and grounded? Scrounging around for energon scraps in the company of mere renegades and that MECH abomination wearing Breakdown's carcass? You cling to this group of misfits out of fear, but that very same fear holds you back from achievement."
Megatron paused directly behind him, and sharp claws traced up the outer edge of one wing.
"What use are wings without the open sky?" Megatron asked, voice low and filled with promise.
Starscream shuddered, bracing for the inevitable agony of losing that wing. Instead, Megatron stepped around to face him again.
"You were meant to command the airspace and rule armadas." As Megatron recalled the glory of times long past, a sharp ache went through the void where Starscream's transformation cog should have been. "What happened to all those grand ambitions? Conquering the galaxy. Ruling the Decepticons. Plotting my own demise."
"I, ah. Er." Starscream hesitated, fearing a trap. Plotting Megatron's demise had been a rather frequent pastime of his, but not one that Megatron had ever appreciated before. "That was an accident? Incompetence, not plotting."
"Was it? That spark of ambition, the unquenchable drive to reach ever higher—that is precisely how you earned the rank of second in command."
"It... it is?" A slight hope grew in Starscream.
"Indeed. Make use of it. Reclaim your rightful place among the Decepticons. Handle this one small task, and we will restore your wings. Make you whole again." Megatron looked at Starscream expectantly.
Yearning flooded through Starscream. More than anything, he wanted to fly again. He wanted to believe Megatron. His vocalizer activated with a soft click, but no words emerged. Megatron shifted, impatient. Disappointed.
"If you are indeed content here—being nothing, achieving nothing, commanding no one—then perhaps I have misjudged. Perhaps I am speaking to the wrong individual." Megatron turned away, and a groundbridge portal appeared in front of him. "That clever little human from MECH. Silas, was it? Perhaps he would be more suitable for this task."
"No! Wait." Starscream stood to his full height. New resolve burned in his optics, bright and hopeful. "I will do it."
"Excellent. Deliver Bruticus within two days, and all will be forgiven. The Decepticon Cause rewards those who perform meritorious service—as you yourself well know."
"Two days?" Starscream echoed faintly.
"Soundwave will monitor your progress. Fail me, and you forsake the sky forever." With those words, Megatron stepped through the groundbridge and vanished.
The groundbridge closed, leaving Starscream alone in the darkness.
It was quiet without Megatron. Too quiet. Starscream sank to his knees amid the burnt organic detritus underfoot. Carbon residue crackled and seeped into his joints. His processors raced even as combat subroutines disengaged and his frame slowly relaxed from high alert.
Too soon, the unwelcome thrum of rotors cut through the air. Vortex swooped down from the darkness to hover just above the treetops. Searchlights switched on, trapping Starscream in a circle of pale illumination.
Starscream leapt to his feet, wings and armor flared aggressively. He raised an arm to shield his faceplates from the light. Neutral-density optical filters automatically locked into place to diminish the brilliance of those searchlights.
"Heard you screaming for help. What's up?" Vortex called down, drifting closer.
"Screaming?" The distress signal from earlier. Of course. Unfortunately, backup had arrived too late to be of any use. Starscream scowled at Vortex's landing gear. "That was a drill. Congratulations, you responded. I commend your loyalty and dedication."
"My what now?" Vortex transformed and dropped into the blast zone, landing on his feet in front of Starscream. As he approached, he inspected the burnt and flattened vegetation at his feet. "Blowing off some steam with explosives? Good method of stress relief. Brawl swears by it. So, seeing as you're still in one piece, I presume there's no emergency. Did you want a ride back to base camp or what?"
"No. After what you tried last time? Not a chance." Starscream resisted the urge to step back as Vortex advanced. His frame shuddered, and he clamped down his outer plating before the fine tremors could betray him. "Stay back! Don't come any closer."
Vortex tilted his head to the side.
"Whyever not? Weren't you just appreciating my loyalty and dedication? No one's ever noticed those qualities of mine before, you know. It's quite touching." Vortex's voice was bright and amused. He took another deliberate step forward.
Without the Apex Armor, Starscream was weaker than ever. Instinct encouraged him to turn tail and flee, but pride kept his feet planted on the ground and his wings held high. Starscream pointed his left arm at Vortex, bluffing with his last remaining missile. "Leave, or I'll shoot you."
Vortex glanced at the primed missile, evaluating the seriousness of this threat. His gaze lingered on the scratches around that wrist, the slightly crushed missile mounts. A long moment passed. At last, Vortex shrugged. "Suit yourself. It's a long walk."
After Vortex flew off into the night sky, Starscream slumped against a tree stump and deactivated his optics.
Yes, it would be a long walk. A very long walk indeed. Starscream did not look forward to it.