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The assassins actually got into Windblade’s apartment – just for that, Starscream could almost be impressed. Not really, of course – they still had woken him up, which meant that they were bad at their jobs. He did so dislike grunts. They were making their way down the hall now – when Starscream sent power up to his audials, he could hear their clinking footsteps (autobot amateurs – real decepticon assassins would have replaced their pedes altogether (so, Elita must have nothing to do with this. Prowl still might, he’d have to tell Windblade in the morning)) but it did nothing to wake Windblade, who wasn’t habituated to sleeping with her audials left on. The assassins, whoever they were from, probably wouldn’t have guns – a laser to the wires works just as well and is easier to get through. They’d get to the bedroom in 3 minutes, give or take… hmm.
Problem #1: Get out from under Windblade.
Madam Chancellor of Cybertron slept like a space squid, limbs splayed out and entrapping anyone unfortunate enough to be in berth with her. And, shockingly, in the time he hadn’t had an eye on her (because he was in jail, thank you for that, dearest) she hadn’t been killed for her lax colonist recharge-safety.
Of course, that didn’t mean she slept deeply. When he turned slowly to the side, her head tipped back on her neck (obviously on her neck, where else would it be?), her hinged mouth opened a bit and a staticky snore came from her processor. Adorable? Unfortunately. Bad news? Definitely.
“Shh.” He hissed, trying to coax his sharp voice into something vaguely soothing. “Shh, go back to sleep~” Her engines hummed but slowed back down. Good, too – his hand was in one of her stupid turbines. As hers was in the space between his cockpit and armour at his waist. He jiggled his fingers free of the propeller – bad bad bad bad – and slowly put it over hers. He was intensely aware with every finger he loosened, of the assassins making their way through the many unused recharge-rooms that Windblade regularly switched between (an old Camien tradition, she said, and the barest possible precaution, he thought), of his foolish trusting rival lover saviour friend companion booting up, and of how little his own treacherous hand wanted to let go of hers, now that he had it. This, right here, was why they had fraternization laws, this unbearable pull from her to him. Electromagnets had nothing on it.
After this, he’s going to have to screech at her for doing this to him, and/or propose conjunxion.
He manages to make sure neither of them is being sit on and roll over to his side, one hand bracing her across her back, sliding her onto the berth. Freedom! He leaps off the berth in triumph, before remembering what the objective was in the first place. He lands on his toes with just a little crash, and she doesn’t wake.
Problem #1: Solved with grace!
Problem #2: Do not die.
He stretched and loosened his stiff parts, preparing himself for the fray. There wasn’t anything that jumped out as a weapon in the room – except Windblade’s sword, which hung on a wall, and whose blade was powered directly by her own spark signature. Pretentious, thought Starscream the hypocrite. It seemed he was going to be depending on his memory of the war, his wits, and the long, sharpened nails of his frame for this.
Now, if he was alone, he would barricade the door and hide alongside it, so that when the assassin forced it open, they would be caught unawares by his broadside strike. But fighting in the same room as Windblade was a no-go, not if he wanted to keep her asleep, so he’d have to meet them halfway. And there’s another reason to kill them – he hated meeting ‘bots halfway.
Well. No time like the present.
Projecting a casualness both for their benefit and his own, he swung the door open and closed it neatly. The assassins were still on the other side of the hall: they stopped and gaped at him, and he noted their neo-decepticon insignia as he gave them his third-most predatory smile, crouching low and throwing himself forward.
Their reaction was… oddly slow, and unorganized, and useless; he thought mid-stride. One of them raised his – shouldn’t be a colonist – hand to their comm. “Aaah, Boss?!” He sounded panicky. “It’s – there’s – Sta-”
Slag! He was supposed to be dead!
Problem #2.5: Prevent girlfriend’s political death.
He grabbed the assassin’s head before he could finish and stabbed a nail through the side, where the area of the processor related to speech was. Sparks flew out as his pronunciation of Starscream’s name gave way to a helpless screech. He could almost see the terror messages popping up on his HUD.
Problem #2.5: Solved.
One of the others had his hands in front of his face, waving desperately. “Wait-wait-wait!” He cried. “We’re- we’re on your side! We’re Decepticons!”
A blaster was lifted – Starscream jumped aside, grabbed the hand holding it, and shoved it backwards while twisting, to lock up the limb. “My side?”
“Yeah! Yeah!”
“I don’t have a side. I’m on my own side, not anyone else’s.” He’d been preparing for the day he could say it aloud, not that he’d expected this kind of situation to be it. “And if you’re on my side, then why would you be out to kill my objective?”
So saying, he pulled the arm he was holding forwards and cleanly divested the third of his head, dropping it to the ground with a *thump* and letting the lifeless body down more slowly. The fifth and heaviest of the bunch threw himself at him, propellor-blades spread out, and he had to grab and throw him aside with a move he had definitely not learnt from the combaticons. He didn’t have time to finish him off – the surviving two rushed at him, shoving him against the wall, and something sharp glanced off his cockpit.
He stabbed and punched, claws drawn and voice scratching his throat in rage, and just barely escaped, as limbs flew around him crazily and the whole pile of hissing fighters crashed into each other and walls and furniture.
A very expensive sculpture-thing had been set on the mantlepiece, and he had to jump sideways like a loon to catch it, cradling it against his chest and trying to find his balance one-legged – there was still someone holding onto his knee. He ignited his heel thruster and stabbed the hot, sharp stiletto down onto Second’s hand.
He ran down the hall, but was grabbed at again by Fifth from the back: he toppled forwards, then forced all his strength into toppling backwards, slamming him between himself and the wall. A try at transforming out a shoulder-blade from his back returned a moment of confusion as he tried to bring back weapon systems from his old wartime body. Fifth was clearly stronger than him, and already recovering from the shock – for a single, absurd second, he considered breaking the statuette over his head.
An unknowing saviour came up – Fourth, recovered enough to point a blaster at his head – with a final burst of energy, Starscream pulled forwards and felt, blindly, the heat singing his back as Fifth exploded.
“NOOOOO!” Howled Second in horror and pain, and Starscream felt an all-too-familiar grin bend across his face, evil enjoyment tickling his circuits once more. It mostly dissolved once he saw the burn against the hallway wall. “That’s going to be a pit to explain.” He muttered, slipping free of the corpse’s grasp. There were a set of sharp knuckle-dusters attached to his fists – why was this guy on an assassination mission?
“I’LL KILL YOU!” Second rushed him headlong, blinded by emotion. Yeesh. “Keep your voice down.” He hissed, pulling the knuckle-duster – which had turned out to be the chain part of a chainsaw – out of Fifth and using it to garotte him.
Four down – one, Fourth, to go.
He seemed in no hurry to finish the night, following Starscream as he backed into the living room. He likely thought this was a bad idea – the jet clearly had the upper hand in the hall, but here the warframe could grapple with him more easily, even if somehow the blaster he was already firing up failed.
He would be wrong.
Starscream twirled on his heel and slammed a button on the wall, and at once Fourth felt the unfortunate effects of three lasers aimed at three different points around his chest, letting his armour burn off to leave his spark chamber hanging open, its position triangulated by the system operating the security lasers – a fourth laserbeam shot directly in, and left him staring down, greying mouth open, as it turned his spark to cinders.
“Thank you.” Starscream groaned, rolling his eyes. He tiptoed to the bedroom and poked his head in, just to make sure that Windblade was still asleep. Then, he got to work, grumbling all the way – he gathered the dead assassins in a pile and threw them out of a window, one after the other (someone far below screamed, but he chose to ignore them. They were aldreay dead, stop overreacting), soaked up the energon stains with a poilshing rag, and fixed a painting over the burn mark using his claw and a screw he’d borrowed from Fourth.
At last, as the sky turned a brighter green, he could return to berth and berthfellow, flopping down anyhow onto the big bed. Windblade’s engine tick-tick-ticked a few times, and her optics glowed faintly as her systems came online. “Starscream…?”
“Oh, go back to sleep.” He groaned, burying his head in the berth.
“Where… did you go somewhere?”
“Just into the hall.”
“You’re…” She frowned. “You’re hiding something.”
Starscream turned his head and glared at her. Even so sleepy, she barely flinched. Still glaring, he bent closer and kissed her mouth, pushing her back down. Once satisfied, he buried his head in her shoulder. “Go back to sleep, ungrateful.”