The Devil's Advocate

Chapter 6

"Okay, this time... one, two, THREE!" Starscream's wings almost popped out of their joints from how he strained them, either working his cog way beyond what was necessary or just pretending he was. Arcee hadn't been able to tell between either of them the whole time she watched, cataloging all the absurd ways his faceplate managed to twist itself. She might have laughed if she wasn't certain he'd find a way to blame his cowardice on her.

After a particularly exhaustive attempt, Starscream ended up on his aft as his legs seemed to throw themselves out from underneath him. Yet he was grinning even as dust billowed up around him. "Ah! I-I felt the legs shifting! It's working!"

"I'm practically beaming pride for you, Starscream," Arcee intoned, while he scrambled back onto his tottering heels and flashed a habitual glare at her.

"If you're going to act like that, I can easily just have you chained up again!" he threatened, complete with a talon wagging at her.

"No, you won't. Deep down where you won't admit it, I think you like my company," Arcee said, while her leg dangled off the broken edge of the Harbinger's hull. It was the farthest Starscream had let her out from the bowels of the ship, and for once she didn't feel like pushing the boundary too much just now.

Starscream bared a curled, humming frown. "Better you than another Decepticon, at least..." He turned away before she could make anything more of the confession, and rolled his wing joints one last time before finally managing to snap them parallel to his body, just as the rest of it shifted smoothly into the streamlined form of a jet hovering just above the ground.

"AHAAAA! What did I say, Arcee?! I'm truly unstoppable now!" Though his voice should have faded the higher up his thrusters took him, the gloating shriek managed to soar down and assault Arcee's audios as if he was standing right next to her.

"I dunno about that, I could put a hole in your wings from this distance," she called up, even knowing her blasters were disabled and doubting Starscream could even hear her over his own mad cackles and the rush of his engines pouring white trails behind him, as he traced an intricate airborne sketch over the patchwork blue suspended above. Parts of him seemed to blend into the watercolour splashes of grey and white, his frame rippling in and out of sight like an illusion, or like a ghost flitting between the Allspark and Earth. Arcee had never seen the artistic side to a Seeker's flight, never been lucky enough to attend the annual air shows in Vos and the star skimming displays held to honour coronations, feasts, diplomacy; some births, some deaths, if they were important enough. Watching from leagues below, barely a shadow to the heavens, she actually saw some truth to the stories that Seekers were not creations of Primus; they were born of pure elegance and grace, crafted from the skies to run on clouds and bathe in starlight.

Is this what Starscream might have been without Megatron's war keeping him chained to the ground?

The question took such a firm hold of Arcee that she didn't notice it was the first time in days that she'd been left out of his sight; even if she had no idea if he could still see her, there was a relief flooding her nodes that could have only came from an absence of red optics anchored on her. She could practically see the Harbinger's static field wavering in front of her, a flimsy translucent wall between her and the Autobots. Her shackles kept her alt mode from being an option and her hands mostly useless, but she was fast on her peds. If her signal popped up just for a nanoklick, then the other Autobots could easily track her down, ambush Starscream, have him cuffed and caged just as she was.

And then she'd lose possibly her only chance at offlining Megatron. Even if Optimus eventually reached the inevitable point of realisation, where he knew he had no choice but to kill him to end the war once and for all, it would be far too overdue for Arcee to be content with. Megatron reached his expiry a millennia ago, before she was even sparked, and if even Starscream knew that it was a lot simpler to decide where her efforts would be better placed.