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[Chapter Eight: Access Granted. Displaying Contents.]
. . . . .
Tarantulas, terribly amused, sat in his lair, reviewing the details of the upgrade surgery on Kickback. It was acceptable, he reasoned, and the Insecticon would function according to Shockwave's plan. He had to admit, Shockwave showed great promise, his scientific accomplishments growing despite having been reared as a Senator's progeny. Such was the inherent flaw of the caste system; the lower classes suffered greatly, their greatest talents wasted, but they had never considered that the upper classes had suffered under the Functionist yoke just as much. Shockwave was living proof, bound by guild dictates to serve as a member of the ruling class instead being allowed to fully pursue his inborn calling to research.
There were so many promising researchers from that batch of sparks pulled from the well, and yet many of them due to their powerful or unusual forms had been selected as Senatorial progeny. Their CNA had the genetic earmarks of Primes, falling into certain sparklines of the Thirteens, causing them to be assigned positions as future Senators. Tarantulas had been informed of the auspicious mass birthing of Primal contenders after the disappearance of the Ark; the Guildmasters had said it was the beginning of a new Golden Age, a comforting message from Primus in aftermath of the Age of Wrath. Elders such as himself, Alpha Trion and General Strika had been called in to observe the new potential Primes and record their unique characteristics. Tarantulas and Jihaxus had both made note of young Shockwave. Quintus Prime's stamp was heavy on the bright-eyed, intellectually gifted protoform.
The Shadowplay done to Shockwave - the forcible firewalling of his emotional capacity away from the rest of his brain module's programming - had cleared the way for rationality and the ambition behind it to flourish. Shockwave had given himself up to logic, finding the sudden lack of storming emotions inside him a welcoming calm. The old spider cackled aloud to himself. He had been the founder and creator of the Institute, and no one but the now dead Senator Proteus, who had commissioned the mental abattoir for the price of a rotorcraft's freedom, was the wiser.
Yes, Tarantulas thought to himself. Let Shockwave congratulate himself on his genius. He is a fine lad for retracing the baby steps of his ancestors. Given enough time, he might even discern that the Insecticon he had put through frame-type alteration was already an engineered creation, a revival of potentially lost frame-type that had not walked the face of Cybertron since the days of the Ancients and their Metrotitan colony ships. One day Shockwave would truly delve into the reason why he found only three sentient Insecticons among the hives of mindless beasts, why Airachnid could interface to their hive mind, and why Shockwave's predacons would eventually discern the bugs as kin. On that day, Tarantulas would be waiting, ready to pour the sanity-destroying secrets of the Ancients into Shockwave's mind.
. . . . .
Bombshell stared up at Kickback, uneasiness growing in the pit of his spark.
Oh Kickback was unequivocally a her now, there was no denying it. The hyper-evolution chamber sped up the healing process after the intense frame-alteration surgery, but it also sped up the shifting of base CNA that had been programmed in through reconstruction at the nano-cellular level. He had seen it done to the Lightning Strike Coalition Force, how Shockwave had taken genetic samples from the giant reptiles of terra, converted the organic, carbon-based DNA into silicon-based CNA, and recreated Grimlock and his team from the cell upwards. He knew it could be done, but the results never failed to impress him. His trine-mate was a different creature now, and the balanced relationships between the three Insecticons would be shattered, at least for a little while.
He placed his hand on the glass of the cylindrical chamber, emitting a questioning resonance, testing to see if Kickback was anywhere near consciousness. He received nothing in return. His trinemate's field was silent and even in stasis-recharge.
Through the honey-gold fluid, he could make out Kickback's new shape. Still identifiably an Insection, still a swarmer - what the Terrans would call a locust - but the body structure was all wrong. The legs were longer. The hips were wider. The chest lacked broadness of shoulder and the forward transformation plates were more pronounced and bifurcated down the center into two masses. The arms were slender, and the wings and antennae much longer - and a faceplate. When did Kickback ever have a faceplate?
That is when Bombshell stopped and took a step back, withdrawing from the immediate presence of the hyper-evolution chamber. Maybe he'd stared too long, because a rush of new urges were flooding his processors.
He'd felt these before, but from the safety of the other end of a cerebro shell, so he could identify them; he knew the mind as well as any mnemnosurgeon (no, better than any of them, as he could probe far more deeply into the brain module and gain total control from the safety of his own internal firewalls!), and he was familiar with neural coding unique to each of the thirteen frame-types.
It was for this reason that Bombshell withdrew from the immediate presence of Kickback. The urge that had briefly roared through him was one he did not believe he possessed, until now.
There it had been; he had wanted to open the chamber, pull the now remarkably female Insecticon from inside it to himself, to hold and to possess her, and to violently drive away any mech that might try to separate him from the object of his - yes - desires. He wondered if Shrapnel had felt the same foreign, powerful drives rising up in his spark as well. The trine bond would not survive long if he had. The competition creeping up between them would shatter the unity of the team.
That, however, was not the most pressing thing on Bombshell's mind. The tactician was busy fretting over what he considered to be the more worrying aspect of the entire affair: If the Insecticon breed had previously been an all-mech frame-type, why had he reacted differently to even the *sight* of Kickback as a female? By all logic he should not have felt anything out of the ordinary at all - if Kickback had been reforged into a tank or a train he would have gone on as normal, with perhaps a slight longing to have his trinemate an Insecticon once more - but he HAD felt something different, and that was what clenched his tanks shut in fear. Why did an all-mech frame-type seem to instinctively know what to do when a female of the frame-type appeared? Where had this long-dormant base programming come from ... and why was it there at all?
Nevermind the subtly-threatening glances Shrapnel was now casting his way from across the recovery ward; rivalry tearing apart their trine would be dealt with later! Bombshell was in full mental upheaval, the tactician's previously ironclad assumptions about himself, his frame-type and his species being detonated out from under him, casting him into the terrifying pit of fumbling ignorance. His entire modus operandi hinged on solid, reliable, provable fact, and now that impregnable fortress of information had turned out to be an assumption-built house of cards. Nothing was solid anymore, nothing knowable! What other secrets were lurking inside his CNA, waiting to spring on him and take him unawares?
"Nothing makes sense anymore!" he cried, his mind turning in on itself, trying desperately to sort out mismatching shards of his broken worldview. He cursed his intellect, that he understood the ramifications of such a simple set of feelings, and wished for Shrapnel's less impressive processing power. Perhaps sanity would not be slipping from his grasp if he were stupid!
I'm sorry, he thought to Kickback, looking up at her quiescent form in the tank a few steps away. I don't know how I can help you keep your sanity when I feel like I'm losing my own.
. . . . .
It had been awhile since anyone had come to check on Starscream, and he was beginning to wonder if he truly was going to be left to rot.
The worst part of his confinement was the lack of marking time. There was nothing to tell him when it was day or night, nothing to mark the passing of cycles, no way of knowing if he'd been in there a megacycle or a whole lunation. While he cursed the situation, he could not help but admire the sinister perfection of the prison's design, which would hold him fast and torture him at the same time, breaking down his sense of reality without anyone so much as having to lift a servo to do it. Shockwave was frighteningly skilled at this sort of thing. Starscream wondered how he had never noticed it before.
He was beginning to doubt himself, to question everything he'd done, his skills, his motivations, his capacities as a commander, his mind caving in on itself, his will to fight crumbling. He would suffer a complete breakdown without anyone having ever touched him, reduced to a quivering mess that could not trust his own thoughts and memories.
The sound of footsteps echoed in the silence of the prison. breaking his downward mental spiral.
Starscream sudden got to his feet, going to the forcefield and bars of his cell, trying to crane his head around to see if he could catch a glimpse of someone coming, see where the sound originated from, it was something! Something to keep his mind from eating itself alive!
"Who's there?!" he shouted nervously. "Is someone coming for me?"
The sound stopped.
Starscream vented pensively. Had his mind been playing tricks on him? Had he only imagined the sound? Or was it something else, something far worse, perhaps someone sent to actually torture him?
Footsteps again. The seeker's wings rose like hairs on the back of a human's neck. Someone was coming for him - the sound was drawing ever near! Starscream darted over to the side of the cell and flattened himself against the wall facing the direction of the oncoming stranger. He positioned himself so that he would not be seen until the last minute. If whoever was coming was not cautious and opened the cell early, he might be able to overpower his captors and escape.
The sound of footsteps stopped just a short distance from the edge of the cell.
The seeker grimaced, clenching his dental plates. Were they going to taunt him now, make him wait? What kind of testing was being done to him?!
"Starscream." It was a sultry voice, barely above a whisper, brushing past his audioceptors soothingly.
"What do you want!?" he peevishly snapped.
Immediately he slapped his hand to his face, disgusted with himself for answering without a second thought.
Feint strolled into view, hands on her hips as she stood on the outside of the cell, looking in at the fretting, captive Seeker. She laughed softly in amusement, a digital smile and the outline of alluring female eyes in neon orange displayed on the black plate of her visor. "Well that's hardly a way to greet a lady, Air Commander," she teased, shifting her weight to her right leg.
Starscream snorted dismissively, folding his arms, walking away from the wall and turning his back to the female, trying to recover his dignity and pride. "I stand by my statement. I have no idea who you are or what you want, so state your business and leave me in peace."
"Tsk. I would have thought you'd be dying for some company by now. It must be terribly boring in there. Nothing to do, nothing to see, nowhere to fly," Feint casually replied.
Starscream's ailerons flicked, her words striking a nerve-cable. "I'm perfectly fine," he lied, gesturing with one servo as if to shoo away a servant. "I don't have time for one of Shockwave's little drones."
"Do you have time for Shockwave?" Shockwave asked flatly.
Starscream startled in surprise, nearly falling forward, whipping around. The massive purple scientist was there, the female suddenly gone. "Sh-Shockwave!" the seeker gasped. "Wh-what is the meaning of all this?! What are you going to do to me?!"
"Oh I see how it is. Full attention to the scientist but not the assistant. Isn't that sort of thing how you ended up in this mess to begin with?" Shockwave sighed, putting one hand to his hip and shaking his head.
Starscream blinked twice. "Shockwave, are you... feeling all right?" the seeker questioned, watching Shockwave examine the cleanliness of his one good hand, hip tilted to the right.
"Oh I'm perfectly fine, Starscream," the scientist reassured, opening the door of the cell, passing through the forcefield easily, stalking towards the jittery seeker. "In fact, now that I'm here with you, I'm even better," he purred.
Starscream's spark nearly jumped out of its frame and he fell onto his rear, scrambling away backwards. "Sh-Shockwave!" he squeaked. "I-I had no idea that you had such... feelings!" He found himself up against the back wall of the cell, Shockwave still slowly stalking towards him, shadow falling over the Seeker, that crimson optic burning like the pit. "Really, I'm very flattered that you feel this way butI'msorryIdon'tthinkitwouldworkoutbetweenus-!" Starscream blurted out all at once, wings stock stiff, body trembling.
WHAM! Shockwave's hand and cannon barrel slammed into the wall on either side of Starcream, who jumped and screamed, eyes widened to the limit his physiology would allow.
"How's about a kiss?" Shockwave cooed.
"You don't even have a mouth!" Starscream shrieked.
'Shockwave' suddenly burst into laughter, no longer able to keep up the charade; his form started to contract, colors changing from purple to blue, arms, legs and body reshaping as if made of water. It resolidified into Feint, laughing through the whole metamorphosis, voice shifting tone and pitch in step with the transformation. Hands still on either side of Starscream, she turned her visor to him, an emoticon of teary-eyed laughter spread across her face, trying to bring her laughter down into fits of giggling.
Starscream suddenly scowled. "You're a Shifter!" he snarled.
"Very good!" Feint praised, emoticon changing from laughter to smugness. "You finally noticed! What was it that tipped you off, the way Shockwave was not at all like himself or the transformation in front of your eyes?"
"You little vermin-!" Starscream lunged for Feint, furious at having been humiliated, trying to wrap his hands around her neck.
The moment his hands made contact, burning, unimaginable pain shot through his arms. He howled, jerking back his hands, only to see the mesh and paint bubbling, blackening and peeling away from his endoskeleton. His arms were on fire! They were smelting away in front of him, the circuits turning to slag and even the skeletal frame underneath turning white-hot and sagging into an amorphous puddle of molten metal! The pain! The pain was going to make his systems lock up-!
And then he was fine. His hands and arms were whole and untouched, the sensation abating as fast as it had come on him. He vented heavily, gasping for breath, staring at his limbs and trying to make sense of what had occurred.
"You aren't allowed to touch the dancer," Feint purred from in front of him. "Or you'll be thrown out of the club. Do you understand?"
"How did you...?" Starscream was still trying to make sense of it all, rubbing his hands to make certain they were, in fact, still in one piece.
"Oh, but I thought you didn't have time for one of Shockwave's little drones?" Feint taunted, folding her arms over her chest.
"I changed my mind," Starscream flatly replied, scrutinizing her.
"Smart mech," Feint said, pleased with the response.
"I reiterate: What do you want with me?" Starscream brusquely questioned, eyeing the shifter warily.
"That is the question, isn't it?" Feint replied coolly.
Starscream frowned as she avoided giving an answer. "Yes. That's why I asked it."
"I don't believe I'm required to answer you," Feint cheerfully rejoindered.
Incredible! Where in the depths of the Pit did Shockwave find this creature? "If you're just here to torture me I'll deny you the pleasure and offline myself!" Starscream threatened, moving his sharply pointed digits towards his own throat.
Feint flashed an emoticon of doubt and focused on the former Air Commander, now serious. "I don't think you're capable of it."
"Try me," Starscream smugly retorted, narrowing his eyes. Oh, it was possible she'd simply do whatever it was she did to make him feel as if his arms were smelting away from his body, but he had moved away from being repeatedly shocked to trying to grasp hold of the situation by any means necessary. She was testing him - he firmly believed it - and now he would push back using the only leverage he had available. He would hold his own life hostage to determine if they had need of him still, or if she were here to toy with him like a turbofox with a cybermouse before the final blow.
Feint's visor blanked its expression, guarding herself from any physical tells that might clue the seeker into what was going on in her processor. That in itself gave Starscream hope. If she had to hide her face, perhaps this threat held some weight. There was always the possibility that she was trying to misdirect him with such a maneuver, but if he gave in to overthinking the situation, he would lose valuable reaction time. No, sometimes you just had to go with strut instincts and hope for the best.
"I can just as easily override your sensors as I did before and prevent you from doing anything," Feint challenged. "And then what, Air Commander? What will you do if I can imprison you inside your own body and leave you no escape from anything I wish to do to you? I can keep you alive and suffering for an unbelievable amount of time. You are without information, without allies, without hope, without escape," Feint stated firmly. "There is no way left for you to resist me."
"You're wrong," Starscream boldly countered. "I can will myself to die."
"You don't have the strength," Feint icily denied.
Something inside the seeker boiled over. He'd been pushed into a corner, stripped of everything, even control over his own life, and this Shifter continued to push him, dress him down, crush him further against the mental wall. He had always feared death, and Megatron had held that over him like the sword of Damocles, used it to break him like a falcon to Decepticon leader's fist. But here and now, death would be the ultimate act of rebellion, of spitting in Shockwave's eye, and taking control of his fate.
"YES I DO!" Starscream shouted in fury, turning on Feint and catching her offguard, shoving her to the ground. Instantly he felt the searing heat of a smelter not just on his arms, but on his whole body. He was burning, roasting alive, he could see his mesh crisping off and dropping away, but at that moment he no longer cared. "If I'm burning I'm taking you with me!" he snarled, tackling Feint, pinning her to the floor, fighting through the pain, steeling himself to his end. He would not die cowering in a cage, alone, broken and mad - he would go down fighting, resisting with every ounce of power in his spark!
And then the pain began to subside.
The edges of the illusion were beginning to crumble - he could see flickers of whole, perfect mechanical flesh amid the burning, melting skeleton. There were spots of cool in the fire. Spots of relief against the soaring agony.
He was only encouraged as he wrestled with Feint, screwing his courage to the sticking point, trying to focus through what he now understood was an illusion, a war over control of his sensors, fighting her with his mind and his will as well as his body. The more he focused on the goal of restraining her completely, the more he refused to let death and pain frighten him, the less effect the illusion had on him, until finally, it broke.
Straddling Feint's waist, pressing her wrists to the floor just above her shoulders, Starscream's vents kicked in heavily, plates opening wide to release the heat of his exertion. He'd done it. He'd won.
Feint's visor snapped open, drawing away from her face to the sides of her head, golden-orange eyes bright, smile pulling at the corner of her lips.
"Bra-vo," she praised, catching her breath. "You did it."
Starscream was no longer in the mood for games. He squeezed her wrists until he could hear the metal whine in protest as it deformed. Feint's face screwed up in discomfort, and she sucked in a vent of cool air, holding it in her torso. "What do you mean?" he demanded, glaring down at her.
"Nngh! - You finally found your will!" Feint blurted out, squirming, hoping for a reprieve from the Seeker's hard grip. "That's what I came here to find out - to find out if there was anything left of your will!"
So that was it?
Feeling generous, Starscream relented, releasing Feint's dented hands, sitting up, keeping her immobile beneath him for the time being, thighs pressing against her waist and torso to prevent movement or transformation - or so he hoped. She was a shapeshifter after all. "Explain yourself," he commanded. Yes, commanded. No more whining. No more snivelling. He had been second to Zeta Prime once - how had he forgotten it after all this time? How had he managed to swallow down and extinguish the ambition that once drove him to believe he should have been rightfully prime?
The answer came moments later in the back of his mind.
Megatron.
"I've watched you for a long time," Feint began, "and I was starting to wonder if Megatron had ruined you. If I had misjudged your potential for leadership. I had to test you, to see if you'd fold or if you would finally resist. I had to press you until you finally broke your own mental chains, or died trying."
"And who are you to attempt such a thing with me?" Starscream demanded, still angry, his systems still locked in overdrive, fight-or-flight.
"Someone who is far more loyal than you can ever know," Feint responded firmly, narrowing her optics.
The Seeker glanced down at her. "You don't even wear a Decepticon badge," he mocked, "so I question exactly to whom you are loyal."
"Us." Feint countered. "I am loyal to Cybertron, to us, to our species."
"So you're a supremacist," Starscream snorted in disdain.
"Tell me you weren't," Feint countered again. "Tell me, when you joined the Decepticons, that you valued other species over our own. Tell me you did not set out with Megatron and his rebellion in the hopes of unlocking our species from the stagnation of the castes."
He had no ready comeback for that statement. She was right.
"That is why I presently serve Shockwave," she continued. "So far, he is the most fit individual on this world to recover our species and keep us strong enough to compete with the other races in the galaxy. We are a blacklisted species, Starscream. The galaxy will not even lift a finger to help us in a time of genuine need. If we have no vision, we will go extinct. That is why I pushed you. I saw in you the potential that Megatron no doubt did those millennia ago, but I had to make certain you had the will, the intellect and the cunning left inside you to do what is necessary to help us all survive."
Starscream studied the face of the femme pinned beneath him as he rolled all of this over in his mind.
"And you say all of this knowing Shockwave might be listening to all of this right now?" he asked.
"Do you think Shockwave does not take into account these sort of things in his plans?" Feint answered.
Starscream smirked. "So you willingly risk your life to try to incite me to rebellion against Shockwave?"
"The needs of the race outweigh the needs of the individual," Feint smiled. "Take it as a bit of an ego stroke if you like. After all you've been through, I would think that you could use one."
Starscream leaned over Feint. "Only those who think they're superior show pity."
"Prove that I'm not," the shifter stated.
The Air Commander's optics brightened. "Challenge accepted."
. . . . .
[Chapter Eight: Complete.]
[End of Transmission.]