Starscream wasn't quite sure what he was expecting from a vocaliser that evolved on the other side of the galaxy, but in a way it helped him appreciate what came out of it even more. For just a few klicks that passed far too quickly, he forgot who Windblade was. He forgot where she came from, that there was anyone else in the bar or even the whole galaxy.

And her voice certainly wasn't wasted on his brothers.

"Primus, she sings like a goddess," Thundercracker whispered in awe, cradling his helm in his hands. "Like a little red siskin..."

"A what?" Starscream broke away from gazing at Windblade to raise a puzzled eyeridge at the blue mech.

"It's a bird on the earth," Thundercracker explained, not suspending his own glazed-optic stare at her. "I usually heard it singing in the morning, just after waking from recharge..." The music faded and applause replaced its noise, mostly from Skywarp drunkenly cheering and a blue femme pumping her fist in the air. Even Starscream found that his hands were lightly pressing together, so he promptly pulled them apart before someone saw him.

"She's a little too delicate for my tastes, though. But that purple femme, she has an interesting alt-mode, don´t you think?" Thundercracker asked, more swirling his drink than sipping from it. Some liquid sloshed out of his glass when he gestured to the femme as she bowed and stepped down from the stage (with Windblade keeping herself close behind her, Starscream noticed). "I think she likes me, she winked at me while she was singing."

Skywarp laughed and ended up snorting out some of his drink before it could reach past his throat."Either the high-grade is getting to your optics or you're blind as a luna rabbit, Cracker, cause she was clearly winking at me."

"She was not!"

Knowing they'd both be bickering for the rest of the evening, Starscream turned his back to them and cradled his glass, returning his attention to Windblade. He wasn't surprised to see her guzzling energon like a starved turbofox after a performance like that. If he'd tried to hold her notes for even a few nanoklicks he was sure not even Flatline could have fixed his vocaliser. Maybe it was something she did often on Caminus, filling the starry nights with her evangelical voice.

Maybe he was downing his high-grade too fast to be thinking something as pathetic as that.

The purple femme his brothers were so invested in suddenly looked up and glanced over at him, but her gaze went past him to where Thundercracker and Skywarp were verbally at each others throats. Starscream saw TC pause in his ranting and raise his empty glass at her with a smile. She returned his smile with a distant giggle and threw another infamous wink at him while her blue companion scowled across at her. Windblade seemed cheerful as well, Starscream noticed, but there was more amusement than friendliness in the creases of her mouth.

Thundercracker himself spent a few nanoklicks admiring the other femmes gathered around his violet curiosity, including Windblade. Starscream viciously squashed the tinge of jealousy that arose from seeing that. "I must confess, those other two have a certain... charm to them."

Skywarp squinted at the femme table, with particular attention to the blue one and the very un-Seeker like wheels on her frame. "TC, I think you've drank too much already. I always thought you couldn't stand most grounders?" Skywarp himself was less hostile than most Seekers towards them- as long as there was a valve somewhere, he didn't care what a femme turned into.

Starscream as well studied the two ladies with only passing interest for Windblade and a grimace when he spotted her cerulean bodyguard. "Yes, especially with Chromia, that blue one-"

Skywarp jumped to interrupt him with a giddy grin. "Ooh, what about her? Did I misjudge the object of old Screamy's affections?"

Somehow, that notion was even more annoying than being constantly hounded about Windblade. "Do I look like I have a death wish to you, Warp? I'm not stupid!" Starscream asserted, grumbling into his refilled glass. "I know she's... 'off-limits'."

Thundercracker turned back to his friends and raised an eyeridge at them. "Would someone bother to enlighten me on what exactly makes this blue femme so special?"

Skywarp was the only one not too sulky to explain. "There are rumors that a certain red Autobot, with extremely aggressive tendencies, has his optic on her. So, digits off her..."

Thundercracker scoffed. "As if I have any time to wait around for grounders to catch up with me." He leaned across the bar to snatch his drink up, missing the sly smirk spreading over Skywarp's faceplate.

"Yeah, not when you've got your own little flame to dote on-"

"Skywarp, you are perilously close to having a glass shard stabbed through your vocaliser if you don't keep it shut." Rather than silencing the purple mech, Thundercracker's remark only served to spurr him on. Skywarp shook his helm in disapproval and waggled a digit.

"Tsk, tsk, violent thoughts towards your fellow trine member. Now what would our therapist think of that?"

"If he was here, I'm sure he'd sympathise with me," Thundercracker growled into his glass as Skywarp took a long gulp from his own after his tipsy giggles subsided. Starscream only rolled his optics, grateful that the spotlight wasn't on him for once while Cracker droned on.

"Therapists hardly ever know what they're talking about anyway. You know half the time the ones on Earth end up doing more bad than good for their clients?"

Skywarp had since polished his drink off and draped a servo over TC's shoulder, waving his empty glass around. "Well, TC, I may not know a lot about psycho-... about cerebra..." His slight slurring seemed to stop him from finding the right word, and he eventually gave up on searching for it. "But I do know one thing for sure."

Thundercracker carefully raised an eyeridge. "And what would that be?"

"That you've been watching too many crappy dramas, and that you definitely spent way too long on that organic dirt ball."

Rather than choosing to share Skywarp's sloping smirk and stuttering laughter, Thundercracker returned it with a deep scowl. "Oh, really?" He roughly shrugged the purple mech's servo off. "And who do I have to thank for that? Who shot me in the face and then left me to rot there?"

Either Sky was too tipsy to realise the depth of his friend's anger, or he just didn't care about it. "Ah, come on, TC, we've already spoken like, a thousand times about this!"

"362 times," Thundercracker quickly corrected him, met with a dimissive wave from Skywarp that almost collided with his faceplate.

"Oh, you're as resentful as a minibot. I've already apologized a million times about that!"

"5232 times!"

"Will you both stop!" Starscream pushed himself between the two mechs, anger simmering in his optics. "For Primus' sake, you act like it's the first time either of us stabbed the other in the back." And it wasn't like it was the last time, either.

Thundercracker snorted but didn't try to advance on Skywarp again. "Well, I don't know about stabbing, but you certainly know enough about shooting bots in the back." His scowl deepened with bitter memories of Starscream's betrayal. The plasma round tearing through his spinal column didn't hurt nearly as much as the fact that his comrade, his trinemate and brother, was the one who fired it. All because he was too stubborn and egotistic to let him live outside the Decepticon's shadow.

Now it was the tricolour traitor's turn to defend himself. "Oh please, if I really wanted to kill you back then, you'd be dead by now. And for your databanks, everybody had a unpleasant time back then, but you don't hear us wringing our vocalisers raw complaining about it!"

Skywarp had seemed content to be in the background for once, but now he tried to wedge himself between his friends. "As much as I love our little disagreements, we really should stick to our treatment plan of not crucifying each other every other klick. Y'know, the one Rang told us to stick to if we wanted to go around without being forcibly handcuffed to each other?"

Starscream snorted a shadow of a laugh, turning back to the bar. "In that case, I'd just cut my servo off."

"His name was Rung, you idiot, " TC growled, roughly pulling the leftover Mercrackers towards him.