"Where is Blurr? I expected him to come say hello cycles ago!" Starscream looked over at Deadend, as if he knew the answer, but the tired grey-red bot merely shrugged.
"He needs to give me Kup's updated commlink." Stressed Starscream. "Without it, I can't leave for the Nemesis."
"Leaving? Already?" Seaspray huffed, his disappointment exaggerated yet raw. "But you just got here, ma-ker!" Starscream stepped against his side, smiling as he patted his helm - in a bid to provide the mechling some modicum of comfort, no matter how shallow. "Yes, unfortunately. I have to leave rather soon - ideally, immediately. If I'm away from the Nemesis for an unscheduled period of time, Soundwave will flag me for suspicious activity." Starscream shrugged, his servos twitched with idle fury. 'How dare Megatron not trust me, after all I've done for the Decepticons!' he wanted to scream his fury; but there was a time and place for everything - including screaming.
"The last thing I want to do is to have to weasel myself back into the good graces of Megatron." Starscream continued, after Seaspray shot him a concerned yet prickled look. Seaspray was looking at Starscream as if he'd suffered a malfunction.
Perhaps he had.
He could be himself.
When he was safe from the Nemesis.
Starscream shuddered, dramatically stepping backwards, envisioning a horrid future, 'Not when Unicron threatens to reawaken, any deca-cycle now.' He thought, with a vapid sneer. He decided to take the opportunity to ramble, now that he had a small captive audience following him around. "I have just begun to earn back the trust and respect I held from before my debut as a rogue; yet, ever since Shockwave has reappeared, The crew has been treating me as if I'm Third-In-Command!" Starscream stomped a talon, the sound a dainty clatter - the force a mere tremor, but briefly it made everyone stop and give him their attention. Starscream liked to think those were looks of respect and not annoyance. "I mean really? Can you all believe that?"
The bots following Starscream eventually stepped passed him like lost shaft-rats. Deadend and Seaspray didn't appear interested in instigating further conversations. As he walked ahead, Seaspray absent-mindedly amused himself by cleaning his typically pristine, white laboratory coat, flicking off congealed gel-bits of Skybyte's meaty rubber-flesh. Deadend, on the other hand, was content to daydream and he stared up with delight into the lights fixated against the ceiling.
"So you're Third-In-Command now?" Quasar politely asked, already knowing no one was about to bother to speak up.
"No. No! I'm still the best Megatron has." Starscream stated, but it was clear he himself wasn't convinced.
Quasar rolled her optics, Cliffjumper's chassis had opened - mandatory behavior for a polite conversation and Quasar's viewing pleasure, as she perched within the corpse's peel-painted husk like a particularly shrewd vulture.
Starscream nervously smiled down at Quasar, showing his teeth. He loved her, just like all his other sparklings, but he suspected she wouldn't be around much longer if she insisted on running around in an Autobot's corpse.
'You'd make a perfect Decepticon.' He'd wanted to proudly tell her, but all he could imagine was Megatron crushing her within a single servo the very moment Starscream dared to step out of line.
No way could he afford such a glaring vulnerability.
'Megatron wouldn't see any value in a sparkling-soldier.' He mused. 'He'd just see a disgusting corpse wandering his ship.' Cliffjumper's corpse reeked of perfume and cheap polish - but if Quasar ever neglected the hygienic-layering of her vessel, Cliffjumper would quickly stink of iron bacteria - a horrid swampy and sulfuric smell.
Everyone had learned that lesson the hard way.
That rust and corrosion stayed.
And never really went away.
'Completely disgusting!' and Starscream was thrown back into thinking about potential Decepticon-sparklings - the memories of rotting corpses slowly encroached upon his processor.
'Then again, Megatron had wanted to raise an army of the undead with Unicron's blood...perhaps he woul-' Before Starscream could entertain another ludicrous scheme, he'd stopped in front of a particularly unremarkable pair of doors - but it would be a mistake to dismiss the room as unimportant.
Deadend, Seapray, and Quasar all went their separate ways, muttering excuses and goodbyes as they retired to their respective offices. Starscream watched them go impassively, but there always was a bitter-twinge within his tanks, some kind of scratch upon his spark, as he watched them leave - as if he wasn't meant to be all alone that very moment.
But he was.
Always.
Starscream entered the room without difficulty. He had to badger Shockwave for clearance for cycles before he had been allowed inside.
It was Shockwave's personal office, kept sparse of all possessions save for an ominous glowing gestation chamber, which took up the entire room. It was large enough to host the growth of an adult predacon, but this one had been reserve for a special, peculiar use. The bulletproof glass had been covered meticulously by a metallic-mesh tarp, hiding the contents from view.
"Blurr, are you in here? You better be!"
There was a clink and clatter of a tool dropping.
Then the sounds of peds, quick and sharp against metal flooring.
"Blurr?" Starscream repeated. "I need Kup's commlink."
The room darkened. The glow of the chamber intensified.
Still Starscream stepped forward, with little choice to do otherwise.
"BOO!"
"Damnit Blurr!" Starscream fell over. His knee joints had automatically buckled in terror, dropping him to the floor. His wings had unfortunately been outstretched as he flopped over, and he rubbed the aching ends viscously - appraising any potential damage to his flight systems with paranoid vigor.
'Why do I always get hit in the wings?' he privately lamented.
"Blurr, must you do that horrid noise every single time!" Starscream screeched, gripping his chassis, as if his spark threatened to gutter out.
But both Blurr and himself understood he was just being facetious - releasing pent-up frustration Starscream simply couldn't let go.
"Heh! Because-it-keeps-working." A tiny teal-figure manifested within the room, just out of Starscream's sight, only visible from the corner of his optics. "It's-not-my fault-you-know." Blurr stepped closer, but Starscream could barely sense his approach - there was no metal beneath his peds. "You're-just-too-easy-to-scare. You-ought-to-be-used-to-the-sound-by-now." Starscream shuttered his optics, feeling a supernatural manifestation of fear begin to cloud his vision - but it was not from his emotions, a product of his spark - no, it was from Blurr , who shifted his peds uneasily against the floor as he stepped into view.
Blurr looked so alive that it was unreal.
But then Blurr took another step forward and the illusion was broken.
His ped sunk deep, into the ground.
Blurr didn't have the patience to approach carefully.
"Why-are-you-here?" asked Blurr. His voice was meekly quiet, as if he struggled to muster the energy; yet he proceeded to talk as fast as he had in life, but his words melded together in a way Starscream struggled to understand.
"I came to check up on you." said Starscream, for once completely earnest. "Shockwave is eager to complete your develop-"
"Yes! Yes! Before-Unicron-comes! I-get-it!" Blurr shook angrily as he spoke, waving his arms around madly. "It's-all-Shockwave-talks-to-me-about! The-only-thing-the-same-thing-it's-awful-I-hate-him-I-hate-his-stupid-purple-ore-face-I-hate-his-stupid-arm-cannon-thingy-but-I-love-his-fat-legs-and-his-"
"Okay! Blurr, I get it!" Starscream wasn't exactly hard to annoy, but Blurr had always been a particular expert in the matter. "You've made your feelings clear." He walked up to the gestation tank, and in that very moment Blurr's expression changed from anger to something unplacatable. "Wait!" But Starscream had already peeled away the metallic tarp from the surface of the glass.
Both were left to watch.
To ponder.
Blurr's unfortunate situation.
"This-is-disgusting!" said Blurr, and Starscream was quick to agree. "Certainly! I expected Shockwave to take you hostage - to turn you into a prisoner; I didn't expect him to...to murder you - you know."
"Really?" asked Blurr.
"It hardly seemed like the logical choice - to kill you."
"It-wasn't-logical? Not-in-the-slightest?"
"No, never, Blurr! He was your conjux endura. He shouldn't have-"
"Shut-up-Star-I-know-I-know-it's-messed-up-Shockwave-is-messed-up -why-did-he-do-it-why-did-he-not-trust-me-why-did-he-kill-me! I-keep-asking-him-why-why-but-then-he-just-leaves-he-says-nothing -he-hates-me-he-hurts-me-hurts-me-why-I-hate-him!"
A bream of silence passed between them. Blurr's manifestation paced back and forth in front of the gestation chamber, never taking his optics off of the contents.
"Yes-I-don't-like-this-I'd-never-accept-this! This-whole-dying-thing-it's-it's-makes-no-sense -so-so-what-do-I-do-after-this?"
For a bot who was known for being gregarious, Blurr was surprisingly hard to talk too. His words trampled over each other in a crescendo of madness only an undead abomination could truly conjure.
Blurr was dead, a ghost - and it was at that very moment Starscream wondered why he'd even bothered to engage in a conversation with Blurr in the first place. It was unlikely Blurr would even remember he'd came to check up on him - the perceptions of an apparition existed outside of time and space - what was happening around Starscream was irrelevant, even if Blurr appeared quite upset.
"So-are-you-finished-are-you-done? Recover-it-back-the-cover-back-on-put-it-back-on -I-don't-want-to-see-can't-see-won't-see-cover-it -it's-ugly-it's-filthy-it's-evil-I-hate-it!"
Starscream sighed, taking in the sight of Blurr (2) with a datapad, checking for any errors which could impede the rebuilding process. Slowly, nanobots had been piecing together an impossible puzzle, the shape of a protoform, a skeleton of etched metal.
Within the gestation chamber was Blurr's crushed corpse - his spark pulsed with reluctant life underneath a compacted cube of his own sky-blue metal. It was a visceral sight for any Cybertronian with a sliver of empathy - fortunately for Starscream, he had seen much much worse during his duties as Decepticon Second-In-Command - and any genuine compassion he'd felt in his spark was currently held hostage by Skywarp's persona.
Unfortunately, still, Starscream knew exactly how Blurr felt.
He didn't need his full range of emotions intact - to understand - such an obvious truth.
Shockwave had also betrayed Starscream - destroyed Starscream's trust in his once-brother. Before his empurata, Senator Shockwave had been a brilliant and carefree creature - more happy and kind than Starscream figured any Cybertronian had any right to be.
Not right now.
Not during the war.
Nor after.
The death of Cybertron.
Would not be easy to fix.
Regardless of the person Shockwave had been before, he'd been mutilated and sat beyond recovery.
And Shockwave had inflicted the same mutilation upon Starscream and Blurr - albeit in different ways.
Those mutilations.
There was a word for it.
It was the one word Shockwave always spoke.
"Experimentation."
When Blurr or Starscream.
Pressed him for a reason.
Some justification.
For what happened.
Shockwave had shredded Starscream into three people: Skywarp, Thundercracker, and a lesser, humiliating version of himself.
He'd yet to apologize.
Shockwave had crushed Blurr into a convenient prism of pain and confusion - perhaps to keep his Conjux Endura from proving to be a distraction or a reminder of the past.
Whatever the reason.
It would never make sense to Blurr.
"Oh yes, before I forget. Please give me Kup's commlink."
Blurr unceremoniously dropped a datastick onto a nearby table, produced from nowhere. Not once did Blurr take his optics off his new gestating body.
It was disturbing.
More disturbing than dying in the first place.