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Starscream was aware that he sat upon a throne of nothing. He was cognizant of his position, and of what it meant. However, he did not care to think about it. They say that a ruler is nothing without subjects, without a kingdom, but Starscream refuted such a concept. Who were “they,” anyway? And why should he listen to nameless bards and record keepers who had to be referred to with such a vague notion as “they”? They had no business telling him what he was and wasn't!
Yet he was aware that it was nothing. There were no subjects, and no land to speak of. Though Megatron and Mirage seemed to believe they'd been whisked away to some distant, alien world, Starscream saw the veil of their current reality with a far more grim outlook. He sauntered down from the throne, absently reaching for the same drop that respawned every rotation, (never to appear on any map, for he always swiped it the moment it appeared) he absorbed his energon without so much as touching his fuel intake.
It always appeared at the same time, from nothing, on a schedule.
This was not some distant planet, no, Starscream had been to plenty of those. This was clearly some elaborate, digital prison, and they were pets, being kept for the private amusement of some unseen creatures. Captors, perhaps, whether they were being kept for entertainment, or to learn their weaknesses, Starscream could not tell. To some degree, he was not sure if he cared. This place was both torment and an equalizer, but perhaps it was also a mercy for him; a virtual escape from a grim reality.
In his fortress, if it could even be called such, he kept his own maps, carefully marking spawn points, battle zones, and challenge locations. Sometimes, he was even able to track individual bots (it was a shame that Mirage kept finding and discarding his trackers, attaching them to “wildlife” such as birds, which had consistent, looping movement patterns). He recorded their movements when he could, and kept logs of who frequented which supply drops and spawns.
He knew which points had been discovered and which were private, or heavily guarded, but the far edges of the map were… expanding lately. Typically, he would fly beyond the edge and find himself emerging on the opposite side (though similar to a planet, this was not so, it was not round), but lately he could reach something of a boundary, where things became lower resolution for a time, and new areas were gradually filled in. It was in this strange new space that new supply drops appeared, and vanished in a matter of mere moments. They appeared long enough to register… and then they were gone. Starscream zoomed in, narrowing his optic apertures, as if looking at the same pixels, only larger, would somehow enhance the image.
It did not, but he leaned in close anyway.
No one was watching, but perhaps it was for the drama. (If his captors were watching, he couldn't just be bland!) Not that he cared about them. Not that he cared about whatever was happening outside. If he were to keep his focus on the prize, the prize was survival, and… he’d think of some way to escape. Eventually. Whatever plan he concocted, it would be far superior to whatever folly Optimus and Bumblebee were up to. He refused to rush about like a fool.
He set a reminder to monitor that point, and tried to dismiss it.
Not that he had much else to do. He could thrash Mirage or Grimlock or Elita a few more times for resources (Elita was a bit of a reach, she soundly beat him a solid 80 percent of the time, but he tried not to dwell on that), but it wasn’t exactly entertaining. Additional scouting and reconaissance were far more productive uses of his time.
Starscream occupied the next few rotations filling in as much of his map as he could. Artifact and resource spawns were appearing and disappearing at the same few locations at the far edge of the map at a regular space, often before they’d even registered to the larger map that was sent to his HUD. It was… odd. Could it be a new bot? An additional player outside of the usual band of insufferable mecha that came into his territory would be a welcome addition.
Perhaps it was time for a flight.
He’d explored to the edges of the map a few times, but often there were scant resources. The flight itself wasn’t terribly long, but the air was less refreshing than that of a real atmosphere. Still, flying was often superior to a walk, and it prevented the odd sense of claustrophobia that crept in when he spent far too long in his fortress.
He’d considered flying up until he found the skybox, but he had a suspicion that the sky would have a looping effect, not unlike the rest of the map, or invisible walls of some sort, and he wasn’t about to endure an air crash out by himself. Still, the winds were…the same as they always were, and sometimes Starscream found himself longing for a change in weather. Some thick cumulous clouds, or a few summer winds could be a welcome shift.
As he approached the areas where the artifacts would appear and disappear, he scanned the landscape. The trees did not thin out as much as they stopped, forming a thicket, and a rectangular field stretched out below him. A square structure of stone and wood had been erected around the first artifact spawn point, with a small pathway leading up to it. On either side of the path, someone had placed logs end to end, creating parallel lines that led back down to the larger rectangular field. In the field, several boulders were lined up across from a small structure of clay bricks and rocks, with a smokestack sticking out of the top. Beside it was a wooden box, built from the same wood as the trees nearby. To the west, there were rows upon rows cut into the field, far too neat and tidy to have been done by wildlife, or the game itself, which seemed to be doing its best to emulate an organic planet.
It was all a sort of peculiar Starscream couldn’t quite make sense of. Was this a ritual space? A new challenge zone of some sort? Was it an area that was still under development? On the opposite end of the square field, there was another pathway, this one with logs on either side as well, but they led back into the woods towards the river, and Starscream couldn’t make out where the path led from the air.
He circled the area twice. Upon closer inspection, there were the beginnings of another structure to the north of the field, with some baskets and a stone table at the location of the supply drop point he’d seen on his own map. As far as Starscream could surmise, this was either the beginning of a new challenge zone, or someone was here. Upon landing, he discovered that the pathway consisted of tightly packed dirt, as if it had been pounded down to provide extra support. This was…new. No one else he knew of had attempted to build a fortress, and admitteldly, Starscream’s had been built for him. He’d really just walked in and built some modifications, rather than constructing one from nothing himself.
His thoughts, however, were interrupted by the sound of someone coming down the path that was obscured by trees.
It was then that Starscream saw his first ever NMC, or, what he expected to be a Non-Mecha-Character.
At least, that’s what it must have been, because there was no way Skyfire could be in a place like this. Skyfire, the bot who’d been missing for millions of cycles, could not simply be standing in a virtual world, carrying a handmade wooden box of energon cubes. It was simply not possible.
Yet there he was, looking just as, if not better than, Starscream remembered him.
It was franky unfair how gorgeous he was. Shuttles often had solid white or solid black paint out of utility, (colored paints tended to be destroyed upon atmosphere exit and re-entry, or be bleached out of their regular color by the bright exposure to sunlight), and Skyfire wore it well. He wore a solid basic gloss white with simple visibility stripes on his wings, and a deep red on his cargo pack with bright reflective strips down the side. His legs were as wide as Starscream’s wings, and he stood over twice as tall as Starscream, emerging from the trees like some ancient titan in some lost vision of an ancient city marching to battle.
Starscream was gawking. He knew that this place was likely a virtual projection that his brain module made sense of by filling in missing information, but this was just spiteful. Had the game extracted Starscream’s memories of Skyfire’s appearance to generate this image of him? Was it all for some grand design of manipulating him into slipping up? Was this a guilt trip of some kind? If so, why did it bother to make him so pretty?
Something like recognition flickered across Skyfire’s face, and then surprise. “Starscream? What are you doing here?”
Starscream bristled. He even sounded exactly like Skyfire. A mockery of Starscream’s affections, he was certain. “I could ask the same of you!”
“Me? What does it look like I’m doing?” Skyfire’s voice was soft despite his size. Something the shuttle had always been aware of was that larger bots tended to speak with a greater volume, which created a tendency for them to have poor volume control, and, by contrast, a tendency for minibots and medium-to-small class mecha to shout more often.
Starscream’s optics flickered, and he glanced around the field once more. He had no clue what Skyfire was doing in this place. “Well, that’s exactly why I asked!”
“Is this not a… challenge of some sort?” Skyfire asked.
Starscream opened his mouth, shut it, opened it once more, and shut it again. Skyfire’s response was confusing. Perhaps he needed to just proceed further down the dialogue tree. “Yes, and I’m going to win, but this is not a combat zone. Proceed, tell me more, whatever! Just get on with it!”
And of course, Skyfire had the audacity to appear bewildered by this response. “Get… on with it?” His optics flickered to the side, his wings drooped a little, and he let out a small sigh.
Was he… a bit hurt by Starscream’s dismissiveness? Why did that matter? He just wanted to skip ahead to whatever this non-mecha character had to say, whatever challenge or resource it was going to provide. Especially since it… hurt Starscream’s spark to look at it. How dare his captors dangle his memories of his beloved before him like this. It was a mockery of something truly beautiful and real, something that could not be simulated by zeroes and ones. It filled Starscream with a sense of disgust. “Yes, yes, what are you doing here, what do you want, what do I need to bring you, or to defeat you?”
“Is this not a challenge to see how we can cooperate with nature? To draw on the limited resources we have to create something?” Skyfire asked, as though it were obvious. “I’ve built a small crucible and kiln for extracting ore from the rocks here, and I thought… well, I thought that was the goal. After all, there is enough energon to survive, and the ore can be used for repairs and tools…”
“Tools!” Starscream scoffed. “This place is a crucible itself! A crucible of Mechakind! A method of torture! We must fight for our resources, and fight to survive! Now, what challenge do you have for me?” He crossed his arms and raised his wings, a gesture of challenge. The natural act of flaring one’s wings to make oneself seem larger was… a bit futile before such a large mech as Skyfire, but Starscream did it all the same, a bit out of habit, and a bit to emphasize his point.
“I have no desire to fight,” Skyfire whispered.
Rolling his optics, Starscream waved a dismissive arm. “Fine, fine, then! Come with me, there’s no need to stay out here playing with rocks. Come to my fortress. Perhaps you can be of some use to me.”
Something in Skyfire’s disposition shifted, like a brief flare of irritation, appearing and vanishing in an instant. Starscream almost wished he could be in the presence of the electromagnetic field created by Skyfire’s mechanical form; for that would be a far better read. Unlike Starscream, Skyfire was a bit more open about his emotions. A weakness, but at least this program recalled that about him!
~*~
In the following cycles, the accuracy of this depiction of Skyfire began to fall away. He wasn’t a quiet yes-bot, instead asking Starscream about the construction of the city, the infrastructure surrounding it, the methodology he’d used to route power into his fortress, and the nonexistant wildlife. Starscream had been plagued by a ghost in his memories haunting him once before, pestering him like some sort of whisper of a conscience begging to be snuffed out, but this was… annoying in other ways.
Skyfire’s conversational tree never repeated, unless he was specifically asked to repeat himself. He was surprisingly capable of independent thought, and even seemed to come and go as he pleased, without regular repetition or scheduling. Nothing he did appeared to be a perfect loop, and he observed and learned, just like a real bot. It almost seemed that he was aware that Starscream was poking and prodding him, trying to determine who or what he was.
If this world was going to extract his memories from his brain module and use them to torment him, it could at least grant him the favor of romanticizing it!
He tried to maintain some semblance of his own routine, and beckoned Skyfire out to go flying with him each morning. Though the winds never changed, the scouting was essential to building out his personal maps of the areas.
“And Megatron is still a short-sighted fool. He’s truly gone native! He’s adopted this survival-of-the-fittest attitude, which is probably some extension of his gladiator trauma. He seeks out every challenge he can in search of domination. It sucks me in for these multiplayer gauntlets as well, and I don’t think I need to be involved in it! That said, I do still get a prize if I win, so I’m not complaining. I just think he needs to work through some things! It’s not my fault he’s taking his past and his problems out on others!” Starscream explained one morning, tipping to the side to graze a cloud with his wing. It was not as cold and refreshing as he’d like. It was the same cloud, in the same place as always, devoid of the chilly mist he was craving.
There was an extended beat before Skyfire replied. “Are you not trying to work things out yourself as well?”
“Maybe, but I’m not chasing around little Autobots about it!” Starscream snapped. “I’ve got standards. Besides, I’m successful here! I have my own fortress, my own city, even! You probably don’t realize this, but this is the most successful I’ve ever been! I don’t need him, or any of them. Honestly, there’s disadvantages to being on a team here. You can end up pitted against one another far too easily here. And would you believe Mirage? He has the nerve to offer to help me, and then two-time me! And he does this what, again and again! I’m done trusting any other bots to help me!”
"If you don’t want my help, I won’t help you, Starscream. I never thought you were a bot in need of help…”
“Of course I don’t need help!” Starscream hissed. “I don’t need anyone. I have all of this, and I took it myself! Sure, it was empty when I arrived, but that doesn’t matter. No one’s taken it from me!” It was easy enough to ramble on about his emotions to a digital interpretation of one of his memories. If the system was going to use his weakness against him later, let it try. There was something cathartic about venting this way. All of the anger that had simmered in his spark for thousands of cycles had an outlet now.
“I’ve always been impressed by you,” Skyfire admitted a bit sheepishly. “You don’t need to…” He paused, searching for the right thing to say. “There is no need to …defend yourself to me. I’m just a bit sad that you’re so clearly hurting.”
“Hurting? I’m not hurting! I’m the most successful I have ever been!”
“Being successful doesn’t mean you’re not hurting. It just mean you’ve succeeded at some things. It doesn’t, hm. I don’t think it takes the pain away.”
“How would you know?”
“I wouldn’t. I’m trying to understand. That’s why I listen, Star. It’s been so long, I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to hear your voice, and I’ll listen to anything you have to say. I just didn’t think you’d be so—”
The old nickname pierced Starscream’s spark.
To hear it now, to hear it in his voice, when he was here all alone, being mocked by this projection, it stung far more than he expected. There was no point in listening to this. He dove down, transformed midair, and landed abruptly on an empty beach. The quartz melted and formed glass craters beneath his thrusters, shattering in tiny showers as he stomped down into the sand and turned away. They were still quite a ways away from the artifact he’d wanted to investigate, but he didn’t quite feel like flying anymore. Skyfire was also shorting his circuits in a way he couldn’t verbalize, which only made him angrier.
When Skyfire landed across from him, he turned to face him, cutting the fire of his thruster and stepping in the same spot, a splash of glass melting and solidifying in the air like a crystal puddle.
“So what? Yes, a LOT is different since you last saw me! So what, so angry? So violent? So bitter? So cruel? Oh, is the way I treat my enemies offensive to your delicate systems and sensibilities, Sky? Am I too mean? Oh, I only endured millions of cycles of war alone, honing my ability to survive! I’ve dropped mecha from the sky, ripped out sparks, crushed helms, because I had to! It was that or probably become feral! You think that’s so easy? Does that hurt your big, soft feelings?”
Something crossed Skyfire’s face that made Starscream regret every word.
Venting was supposed to be cathartic.
He took pleasure in tearing his place into reality, carving it out himself with his own thrusters and fangs, but this felt like too much. The fantasy of stepping across every helm in the crowd to ascend a throne suddenly felt selfish and cruel, in some way he’d never thought of before. He could curse Skyfire for being an external manifestation of some conscience he’d tried to deny, but this time he’d come to the conclusion all on his own.
“…sad, I was going to say sad.” There was a pain in Skyfire’s voice as if Starscream had struck him physically. He’d reached out to Starscream and stopped mid-motion, his hand dangling in the air. He was heavy enough on the sand that there were pools of salty water at his feet. The tide came in, splashing around the glass at Starscream’s feet, and washing away more of the sand beneath Skyfire’s feet, creating small hills.
Starscream shot a glare at him, but it was devoid of his usual venom. Why was Skyfire so good at disarming him, even in a simulation? It was embarrassing.
“And what would you know of my feelings? You don’t even know me.” Starscream answered. The words tasted bad even as he spoke, and the regret was instant. He could see the glow of Skyfire’s optics dim instantly, and the way Skyfire’s gaze turned away from him, and out to the pixelated sea.
The pause between them was far too long. One after another, a thousand additional interjections cascaded to Starscream's mind, but died before they reached his vocalizer. The frantic moments of seeking further retaliation towards Skyfire became an uncomfortable span of time, and the silence lingered between them, carrying the weight of millions of years of separation.
When the silence was broken, Skyfire's voice was hesitant, as if he held onto each word before it could escape. “You are right. I don’t know you anymore. I wanted to get to know you again, and I knew you must be a far different mech now. I apologize for upsetting you, Star. I had hoped for a better reunion. I still…” There was an effort in his voice that revealed a torment Starscream had never noticed before. “I still love you. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.”
Before Starscream could retort, Skyfire turned, and began to walk away from him, heading back towards the edge of the map.
“Oh yeah?...Well!” After that incredibly sick burn that undoubtedly left Skyfire floored by his sharp wit, Starscream reached for another cutting response, but words failed him.
There was nothing to say.
And a realization he’d been denying was lingering at the edge of his mind, stinging him.
It was the realization that perhaps, perhaps this Skyfire was real. The real Skyfire had somehow been captured, or transported to this virtual world.
This wasn’t how he’d wanted their eventual reunion to go.
He was supposed to woo Skyfire with suave grace. Instead, he was floundering for words, and treating him like a mechanical diary.
He watched him go, his pride strangling any attempts at an apology before his mind could fully compose it.
~*~
There was little sense of time as he stood there, staring at the space where Skyfire had been standing. The pools his footprints left filled with water with each incoming wave, but eroded with each as well, until they faded away entirely. Starscream was left standing there in the collapsing splash of quartz glass of his own making.
He was so used to being the one to storm off. There was no way he could recall enough to count the number of times he’d walked out of a situation, or shot his way out of a situation, or smashed a window to leave. If he decided he didn’t like the way things were going, he’d simply leave. Skyfire had been the one time he’d stayed before, and even in the distant past, it was the one thing he regretted leaving. He should be indignant, bordering on livid, but instead, it was a vacuous pain that threatned to swallow his spark.
Skyfire hadn’t even lashed out at him.
Perhaps that was the worst part.
Skyfire was always the better bot, and Starscream had always pretended that his gentle nature was a sort of weakness.
Starscream stood there numbly until he was overtaken by a wave of exhaustion, and returned to his fortress. He half expected a summons to some game or gauntlet of some kind, just so he could let Elita One shoot him in the chest a few dozen times, and pretend he didn’t deserve it.
Was that too melodramatic?
He wasn’t sure if he cared.
All of this time, he could have been enjoying time with his previous mate! Idiot. Fool. Buffoon. Perhaps he was being as stupid as…
…as stupid as… someone! Some other bot! Optimus Prime, maybe!
Ugh.
He wandered off to find a few racing challenges, just to take his mind off of things.
~*~
The wind here still left so much to be desired, and he didn’t have the energy to bother with witty quips.
“What, no trash talk today?” Bumblebee demanded, sounding far more offended than Starscream expected.
“I shouldn’t have to waste my vocalizer on you,” Starscream retorted, without any real bite to it.
“That’s it? No stupid zingers, no making up dumb names to call me? Are you planning something? You better not be planning something!” The yellow bot whirled around just after they crossed the finish line, squinting his optics at Starscream. “If you’re planning something, like… I don’t know, breaking into our base, or hacking the system mainframe yourself, we’ll uh— actually, I don’t know if I should stop you or not. Maybe it’d be good? I at least a stupid, totally nonsense insult like bumble-breath or whatever…”
On an ordinary day, Bumblebee’s meandering way of talking would have irritated him, but no haughty insults or sharp replies came to him. “Look, I don’t have time for this. Wait, you have a base?”
“No, but we could! You don’t know!” Bumblebee crossed his arms, trying not to cringe as the points were tallied and the computerized voice announced Starscream’s victory for the round. “You’d know what we were up to if you paid attention. Heck, I bet Optimus would try to make some kind of truce, and would invite you to join our escape attempts. You don’t care about anybody but yourself, anyway!”
Starscream glowered at him as he accepted his prize, and turned on his thruster and took off. As he flew away, he called back down to him. “You don’t know the first thing about me or what I care about, auto-butt.”
“That’s more like it! I mean, not a great zinger, really lacking in some bite, we can workshop that, but that’s the Starscream I know!” Bumblebee shouted back.
Perhaps their banter was a comforting monotony, but it was not to be acknowledged.
Starscream pretended not to hear him over the sound of his engines.
~*~
Locating Skyfire was easy enough. He was never a difficult bot to track. Skyfire had always been far too big a bot to do any real sneaking around, and it wasn’t like he’d tried to hide his trail.
That, and he’d returned to that little farm he’d started on the edge of the map.
Over the course of half a rotation, Skyfire’s building of the rudimentary shelter now had a solid structure and a roof, and smoke was rising from the little smelter. Beside it, Starscream could see the beginnings of a second one.
Still, Starscream stood in the middle of the field, feeling rather silly.
He’d come here to apologize, but it dawned on him only now that he’d arrived that he didn’t actually know how to apologize.
There was a skill and wit to winning over and manipulating mecha to his whims, and that much was fun, but genuinely expressing himself was another matter entirely, one in which he was woefully out of practice.
Skyfire returned from the tiny path down to the energon spawn, carrying several cubes in a small basket.
“Hello Starscream,” he said, his voice measured and calm. Somehow that just made Starscream feel worse, though he couldn’t place why.
“Skyfire. I have realized that a few of the things I said earlier…”
Skyfire placed his basket near one of the wooden boxes, loading the cubes into it. He paused expectantly. “Yes?”
“Well, I realized that I say things, and yes, I do mean them, but I don’t always mean them the way that some mecha interpret them! Or rather, I say them and I don’t think the mecha I’m talking to are listening, like actually listening. Sometimes I think those mecha are just extensions of my own cognition, reflected in this twisted place, and it’s frustrating, but obviously it’s not the fault of those mecha, and it’s not really my fault I just…” as Starscream spoke, Skyfire’s expression was unchanged, and Starscream felt he was only digging his hole deeper. “The point is! My point is! That I’m…”
Angry? Stupid?
“I’m so…”
Irrational? Foolish? Selfish?
“I’m… so…”
Skyfire rolled his eyes, walked over to Starscream, and crossed his arms, his expression shifting to one of amusement. “You’re what?”
“I’ve never had to do this before!” Starscream bristled. “Give me a nanoklik!”
This broke Skyfire’s serene expression, and he let out an odd huff through his vents. It took another nanoklik for Starscream to realize that it was an aborted laugh. “Oh? Is that so?” The next chuckle was undisguised.
“You know what I’m trying to say!”
“No, no, now I want to hear you say it. If it’s so hard for you, perhaps it’ll mean more.” The shuttle was laughing now, and Starscream bit his lip.
“I’m… so… I apologize, okay? I… wasn’t respecting you or your emotions, and that wasn’t fair.”
“Oh, so you’re….?”
Starscream groaned. “I’m sor… sor—I’m sorry! There! I said it!”
Skyfire was full-on laughing now. He scooped Starscream up in both arms, lifting him off of his thrusters. “Thank you, Star. It means a lot to me that you broke your oath to never use that word in a genuine manner.”
“Hey! I didn’t have any oath of the sort!”
“Well, it certainly was difficult for you,” Skyfire managed through a laugh. “But thank you. I forgive you. I was never really mad at you, just… frustrated. You’re so independent and proud, and I really hoped our reunion would be different.”
Starscream deflated a bit, his voice small. “I did too.”
“I had hoped it would be beautiful and romantic. I had hoped to meet you in the sky, catch you in my arms, and kiss you.”
“If I kissed you now, would it be a waste, or would it be real?”
They shared a moment of contemplation. Did hesitation matter? If this wasn’t real, did it change anything?
“It would be real enough for me,” Skyfire whispered.
Their embrace felt real. Even if it was a dream, an imagined sensation created by electrical impulses and a pixelated image, Starscream treasured it regardless.