The Fault in Our Starscream

[Rebecca Chambers]

And so the malignant hand of the Fallen Arbiter descended upon Cevanti, manifesting as a monstrous cloud of wickedness high above the wretched slums of Markov. Darkseid’s influence cast across the city’s decrepit buildings and streets like the wingspan of a colossal bird of prey, cloaking it in interminable shadow.

At a distance, this black morass appeared to be almost alive, a host of amorphous shades writhing and pulsing from within; a swarm of parademons straining to escape. It beared down upon the decrepit landscape like the maw of a massive extraterrestrial beast, fangs of corruption sinking into the planet’s earthen flesh, and from this darkness emerged a horde of monstrous beings. Comprised of shadow and machinery in equal measure, this army marched upon the tomb world’s last spark of life with a single-minded purpose: snuffing it out.

Miles and miles outside of the city, a little robot sped along, narrowly navigating between tall heaps of stacked debris and twisted metal. The robot was a Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Cevanti class unit (colloquially known as a WALL-C), trundling along as fast as its meager construction could manage. The robot’s fading yellow paint allowed it to blend in with its surroundings, the small, box-shaped chassis letting it fairly vanish into the similarly drab scenery.

But, this WALL-C unit wasn’t running from just any cybernetic monster intent on gorging on its machinery. No, what it was fleeing from was far more dangerous— others of its own kind.

The WALL-C had been just one in a coalition of exactly fifty WALL-C units. What had begun as a simple enough day of gathering loose rubbish and wreckage, compacting it into cubes utilizing the machinery within its chassis, and stacking it. The work was monotonous and simple, but the robots were all pleased to do it. That is, until the darkness had descended from the sky, twisting many of the cheerful little robots into something… else.

And now… well, now they were intent on assimilating their lost brethren. Which wasn’t going to happen if this WALL-C could help it!

Dry lightning crackled across the sky, spitting fiery sparks like bits of burning confetti to set the ground below ablaze. The plucky WALL-C unit spun wide around the corner of a toppled building, treads tearing across the ground with such ferocity that a spray of dirt was cast into the air. The ancient machinery concealed within its artificial frame protested loudly, the stabilizing sprockets of its treads screeching and squealing as it moved far faster than any WALL-C had any right to move. Yet, the little robot understood that if it stopped for any reason, it would certainly be annihilated, and thus it did not stop.

A long, articulated neck turned this way and that, the head mounted upon it searching desperately for a place to hide, the world passing by in a blur of blue and grey. The WALL-C’s audio-visual sensors strained to pick out anything amongst the heaps of trash and crumbling ruins, a low keen of panic hissing out from the speakers embedded in the robot’s chest.

[Where, where, where, where, where, where—] the WALL-C’s processor chanted. It could hear the others gaining, the sound of at least a dozen individual, heavy treads clunking noisily over the ground. The WALL-C unit hoped that perhaps the others who hadn’t been similarly affected by the darkness had managed to escape. It did not want to consider the possibility of capture, lest its own processor grow too frazzled to evade its pursuers.

Drawing to an abrupt halt in the shadow of an oblong vehicular shape (a ”bus”, the WALL-C’s processor supplied), the WALL-C ducked down, drawing its arms within its body and backing up swiftly to huddle beneath the overturned, rusted-out hunk of metal. Its head and neck were drawn into its frame, much like a Terran crustacean, until to all appearances the WALL-C would seem to be naught but a simple cube of indeterminate purpose, scarcely different from the other chunks of trash scattered across the landscape.

Tentatively, a pair of binocular eyes peeked out from the top of the robot’s cube-shaped frame, the very crown of the WALL-C unit’s head. Its audio-visual sensors scrutinized all within a roughly ten foot radius around its hiding place, a gentle tremor of fear rattling through its angular body.

A stampede-like chorus of clunks came trampling through the area. Massive WALL-C’s moved past the smaller robot’s hiding place at maximum speed, their enormous treads rending anything caught beneath their tracks to dust. The smaller WALL-C unit’s head retreated once more, turtling back inside its frame in the hope that it would be indistinguishable from its surroundings, or at least not recognized as anything worth destroying.

It seemed that the group of massive WALL-C’s was poised to move on when one of the corrupted robots, just one, deigned to pause beside the bus. Large binocular eyes that seemed to glow with an inner hellish glow turned, slowly, to regard the tiny WALL-C unit’s hiding place.

The little WALL-C shivered, straining to remain absolutely still. It committed to an exercise of thinking purely object-like thoughts, imagining itself as something incapable of movement— a rock, maybe, or a discarded shoe.

Finally, the large WALL-C seemed to be satisfied. Its treads dragged noisily along the ground as it trundled steadily away, likely to follow the rest of its horde. As the corrupted bot vanished from its field of vision, the little WALL-C emitted a soft, relieved boop, beginning to unclench from its defensive posture.

SCREEECH!

The WALL-C unit nearly toppled over in surprise at the sudden deafeningly loud noise, head craning up to stare in horror as the destroyed bus it’d been nestled under was effortlessly lifted, like a child lifting a stone to get at the worms tucked beneath. The glowing red eyes of an immense WALL-C glared down at it, its fearsome chassis colored an oily, dripping black.

Kicking into vehicular mode, the tiny WALL-C rolled backwards, wheeling away in terror. It seemed that there was just one corrupted construction bot chasing it, frighteningly large treads grinding against the ground as it tore after the little, faster robot. A roar like a foghorn boomed in the WALL-C’s audio receptors, rattling its chassis as it sped desperately away.

Wailing and waiving its two hydraulic arms around, the WALL-C aimed for yet another hulking pile of debris in the distance, hoping to find a new hidey-hole to throw its pursuer off its trail. Unfortunately, its processor did not calculate escape as a very likely possibility, not without significant interference, anyway. And that would be nothing short of a miracle.

Quest: An Arbiter's Rage
Word Count: 1,107 words

 

[Rebecca Chambers]

Rushing toward the looming pile of garbage it had identified in the distance, the WALL-C spotted something off about it. Namely, the massive jet lying at a haphazard angle across the pile, grey smoke gusting out from it to join the already black as pitch sky above.

What’s more, the cockpit was slightly ajar. Mentally cheering in elation, the WALL-C unit clambered clumsily up the pile of obliterated concrete and other such debris toward the crashed aircraft, treads working overtime to navigate the uneven terrain. It could hear the mutated WALL-C somewhere behind it, searching for it through all the clumped piles of trash— the bot would need to move quickly, then, if it wanted to hide.

Treads teetering precariously over a few bits of discarded concrete from a long since toppled building, the construction bot managed to reach the still-smoking craft’s side. With little regard for the deep black scorch marks gouged into the artificial waste beneath the jet, the WALL-C unit stuck out its little hydraulic arms and hauled itself inside, dirty treads trailing streaks of oily grime all across the cockpit’s seat.

Chirping happily to itself, the tiny construction robot swiveled around to face the bubble-shaped canopy that was propped open above its head, wondering how best to shut it. The WALL-C leaned forward, hydraulic arms extended and the attached bracket-like fingers straining to reach, clicking together in impatient little grabby motions. If only it could just, reach up and force it into place—

Unbeknownst to the robot, one of its treads dragged across a little red ribbon that had been loosened in the crash, or perhaps (and this was far more likely) never securely tucked away at all.

The WALL-C yelped as something beneath it ignited with a heart-stopping bang. In a second’s time it was rocketing into the air in a plume of smoke, literally thrown into the dark sky atop an unwittingly activated ejector seat, the landscape around it spiraling wildly as the robot cart-wheeled hundreds of feet above the world’s surface.

As WALL-C units were never meant to leave the ground, this was all rather upsetting to the robot— especially when gravity took hold, dragging its unfortunate chassis straight back down with great and terrible force.

[BAD, BAD, BAD!] The construction robot’s processor screamed, the speakers mounted on its chest emitting a terrified wail. Its tiny optics clenched shut as it hurled through the skies, not wanting to see the cold, hard ground it would surely be dashed to smithereens against.

The robot had braced for an explosive impact, prepped itself for the pain of its machinery being blown apart upon smashing against the ground. Thus, the WALL-C was quite surprised when there was nothing of the sort. Instead, it thunked firmly against… something, the harsh, grating sound of metal striking against metal ringing out.

Shivering and with its optics firmly shut, the WALL-C shook its head, emitting a distressed whirring noise. Slowly, its optics blinked open, and it was then that the WALL-C beheld its savior.

It had landed in the waiting palm of another machine, though this one was far larger than any the WALL-C had ever laid its optics on since its activation. The other robot was at least nine times bigger than the WALL-C, needlessly spiky, and painted all over with a shimmering silver finish. A fairly compact creature in comparison to the other mechs the WALL-C had observed in Cevanti’s wilds, all things considered, but the sleek set of wings arching out from the bot’s back more than made up for it.

A pair of searing red optics glared down at the little robot nestled in the giant mech’s palm, several long, claw-tipped servos bracketing around it like a cage.

“Wo-ooowwwww,” sighed the little WALL-C, immediately and hopelessly smitten.

Quest: An Arbiter's Rage
Word Count: 631 words
Total Word Count: 1,738 words/2,500 words

 

[Rebecca Chambers]

It had felt much like falling. He had not fallen, truly fallen, for… centuries, at the very least. Yet, Starscream could recognize all too well the horrible sense of vertigo that came with being cast into an uncontrollable spiral by the wind. The sensation was enough to momentarily convince the seeker that he was but a young flier again, only just coming into his own and realizing his flight capabilities, often in danger of hurtling down, down, down towards certain annihilation...

Experience dulled the knife’s edge of terror, quelled the bolt of panic that pierced his spark. It granted his alt-form balance even as he was sucked into a fathomless well of abyssal blackness, a sensation not unlike traveling through a space bridge rattling throughout his frame, setting every circuit and fuse alight. For a moment it seemed that he would plummet forever in this tunnel of darkness— that is, until he crashed into something that his sensors were somehow incapable of picking up, the impact striking him senseless with resounding finality.

(The screams within his dreams were not those of his enemies, for once. Instead, they seemed to emerge from the darkest recesses of his processor, commingling together in a wail of infinite rage, the powerful emotion crashing over him like a roaring wave.)

Emerging into wakefulness was a trial, but nevertheless one Starscream’s cerebral processor attacked with a vengeance. Almost as soon as they had flicked online the seeker was demanding a status report from his more delicate systems, the ones most likely to be damaged in a crash landing such as the one he had just endured. The response was immediate, albeit a tad garbled— whether the reason for this was because of any sustained damage or a misfiring of his logic circuitry remained to be seen.

For a split-second, fear gripped Starscream’s spark in its icy grip. It appeared that his propulsion systems were… malfunctioning?

Starscream’s awareness extended beyond himself, snapping outward to scan the area surrounding him for danger. It seemed that his jet form was nestled atop a pile of utter garbage, crushing scraps of twisted metal and chunks of fragmented concrete beneath his comparably immense weight. There was nothing of note within his line of vision, really, save for gloomy, sunless skies and a landscape consumed by ruin.

But, there was something else. The sound of something alive clattering about somewhere approximately to his left, if his audial receptors were to be believed. In that direction lay a partly-toppled mass of a building completely overgrown with vines, the dreadful noise reverberating off the crumbling stone in a series of noisy clangs.

After a few more clatters and bangs, an indistinct shape came whirring out from behind the hulking ruin, trundling along at a fairly unimpressive speed toward Starscream’s perch. After a moment of careful study, Starscream tsked softly to himself, regarding the oily and disgustingly yellow creature with disdain. Just what did this little insect think they were doing, approaching him—

Slag, they were approaching him. Starscream regarded the oddly cube-shaped bot with growing concern as they paused at the foot of the pile, binocular-shaped head craned back, black optics zeroing in on his position. Oh Primus. Now they were clambering up to his perch on their ridiculously dumpy, deflated-looking treads.

Go away, Starscream silently willed, though he was privately impressed by the tiny bot’s gumption— especially considering the apparent inefficiency of their limbs. Go away, little bot, and maybe I won’t turn you to scrap.

And then, well. Then the disgusting vermin had the audacity to clamber inside his cockpit, greasy wheels and all. His cockpit!

It was purely accidental, then, that the idiotic bot just so happened to activate his ejection seat. So accidental in fact, that Starscream shifted into bot-mode a mere second after the seat went rocketing up into the sky, observing the thin plume of pale smoke trailing behind it with altogether far too much cheer. He then waited rather patiently as the seat plummeted straight back down, extending an arm to catch it— the tiny bot, seat and all, landing in his outstretched palm with a solid thunk.

Starscream surveyed his prisoner with a critical eye, one optic ridge raised. It appeared that the bot had… tucked all of their limbs inside their body during the fall, transforming into a nearly perfect cube. How… mundane. Perhaps it was a particularly poor attempt at camouflage...?

Helm tipping to the side, Starscream observed as two dull optics peeked out from the top of the cube, blinking warily. They focused on him almost immediately, inner components widening behind a pair of scratched lenses, whirring as they expanded and shrank to adjust to the light.

“Wo-ooowwwww,” the little robot said, limbs emerging from their defensive transformation.

Oh. Well then. Starscream tried to keep from preening— really, he did. Unfortunately, his wings betrayed him, giving a delighted upward skip even as the seeker did his level best to scowl. This was an interrogation, after all; simple flattery would get this pathetic construction bot nowhere.

Red optics narrowing, Starscream leaned forward, bringing the tiny bot closer to his face.

“Now then,” he purred, voice taking on an oily, wheedling cadence. “What do we have here?”

“Huh...” the tiny thing seemed to scramble for a reply, lowering their visual scanners, suddenly seeming… shy? How curious. Finally, the bot lifted their oddly binocular-shaped head to regard him, cube-shaped body swaying gently from left to right, treads creaking audibly. “WAAALL-CEEEE.”

Hmm. With a ridiculous name like ‘Wallcee’, Starscream supposed that they had good reason to be bashful. The seeker shifted in irritation, then ex-vented harshly as the movement jostled his somewhat compressed spinal struts. In fact, all of his interior components felt painfully… shifted to the left, no doubt a direct result of his crash landing.

“Uh…” droned Wallcee. Starscream’s glowing red optics snapped to the construction bot, lip plates bared in a snarl, blade-like claws curving even more harshly around the box-shaped bot in his grip.

Yet the other bot merely stared at him, tilting their head to the side, not doing much of anything. Like a Terran puppy. Despite his misgivings and general nature, Starscream relaxed.

He was in dire need of refueling. Though his systems had managed to conserve enough energy to permit him to remain functional, it was obvious that his processor was suffering for it; every little thing seemed inordinately life-threatening, startling him into a defensive state. To make matters even more complicated, above him were unfamiliar skies, not a single recognizable constellation visible through the swarming mass of vaporous shadow.

Starscream needed information, and he needed it now.

Directing his attention to the other bot once more, Starscream’s glare hardened. “What is this planet’s designation, Wallcee?”

The little bot merely stared. Their optics shuttered once, so they had obviously heard him.

For once in his life, Starscream decided to be... patient. At least a tiny bit. “This world’s name,” he repeated. “Do you understand?”

Slowly, the other bot’s head jerked in a series of weird little bobs that might have, in some parallel universe which Starscream was not privy to, approximated a nod.

Starscream waited. When it became apparent that no additional information was forthcoming, the seeker sighed aloud, vocalizer crackling in his irritation. Shifting, he had just been judging what direction it might be best to fling the useless thing toward, when a staticky buzzing reached his audial receptors.

“Greetings,” said the speaker mounted on Wallcee’s chest, the distant rumbling of gunfire audible in the recording’s background. “I am Major Roy Mustang of Palatinus’s Eastern branch, and I am requesting your help. Our city is under siege by a force beyond the scope of anything we have seen before…”

“This is of no importance to me,” Starscream informed the construction bot, scraping one long talon along a delicate transformation seam in his shoulder. A piece of debris tinked against his metal chassis as it was plucked out, landing somewhere beside one massive pede. “I asked for your planet’s name, not about its inhabitants’ struggles.”

“Oh!” said Wallcee, perking up. It reached up to thunk its bracket-shaped fingers against its own chest and, amid a sharp crackle of static, the speaker spat out a single word: “Cevanti!”

“Cevanti…” Starscream mused, regarding his immediate surroundings with a sneer. So this was the planet he’d been transported to? It certainly wasn’t much to look at. He was about to voice as much to his… companion... when a sudden, great crash came from a nearby ruin, a curtain of dust descending upon them with a mighty whoosh.

Talons curving around Wallcee, Starscream stuffed the other bot inside his cockpit, slotting his pilot’s seat neatly back into place. What, like he was going to leave the seat lying around somewhere on an alien world? Parts like that weren’t easy to replace; taking the construction bot prisoner was just an added bonus, though his tank positively churned at the thought of those greasy, disgusting treads touching any of his internals.

A mob of machines emerged from the dust swirling around the area, their blocky frames faintly visible from atop the pile of debris Starscream was perched upon. It was only as the cloud settled that Starscream recognized that they were bots of a similar frame-type to Wallcee, albeit much larger. One emerged as the clear leader, rolling to a stop in front of the gathering of bots, its crimson optics glaring up at the seeker.

It was then that Starscream noticed something… off about these bots. Their frames seemed to be riddled with some kind of living shadow, tendrils of inky black coiling around their joints and cabling, writhing and frisking about like tongues of corrupted flame. Their movements, too, were unnaturally precise— perfectly in sync with one another, almost as if they were being puppeted about...

From within his cockpit, Wallcee emitted a gentle, concerned beep.

The corrupted leader bot reached the base of Starscream’s perch. Starscream stood at the very top, wings slanted downward in apprehension, but his optics remained focused on the approaching horde, fierce and bright. His opponent gave a disconcerting croak, head craning up so that it faced him, and the shadows dripping from its frame slithered along the ground like a nest of razor snakes, wallowing in their own perverse darkness. The bot raised one spike-littered arm, a sharp wave of electricity sparking along the limb like a cattle prod. Fire danced in optics that mirrored Starscream’s own, hellish and brimming with twisted intent.

Starscream remained steady.

“And what are you?” he asked— no, demanded. The other creatures had swarmed around them now, choking all avenues of escape; the little bot tucked inside the seeker’s cockpit quaked in fear. “I am Starscream, Megatron’s one true heir, Commander of the Decepticons! You cannot hope to oppose me, pitspawn. Go back to whatever rust-littered hovel you crawled out of, and maybe I will reconsider reducing you to a smoldering husk!”

But the corrupted bot did not answer. As one, the legion of bots circling around him moved forward, and a dangerous hum swelled in the air. Their leader shifted forward slowly, tank-sized treads pulverizing anything caught beneath them, and abruptly seemed to grow even taller, its chassis seeming to elongate and stretch unnaturally, metal shifting like liquid to take on a new form. Still Starscream stood firm, silver-painted wings glinting like a pair of crossed blades at his back, though his long legs bent at the knees, prepped for flight.

From out of the shadowy bot’s form grew a set of wings, its form no longer matching that of a clunky construction bot, but a… a…

Oh.

Starscream moved swiftly; there was a roar of thrusters as he leapt into the air, transformation sequence faltering for several long, horrifying seconds (curse his faulty, half-starved circuitry!) before he was but a streak of silver shooting across the sky, navigating through ashen clouds and clashing spears of lightning alike.

There was a sharp snap behind him, not unlike a bubble popping, and a dark shape materialized at Starscream’s rear. The corrupted seeker easily matched him in speed, jet-form tearing after him like a creature possessed— and he supposed it was.

“I am Major Roy Mustang—Eastern branch,” came a tinny, rattling voice from inside his cockpit, much of the message’s contents lost to Starscream over the howling of the wind. “I am requesting— help. Our city—siege—beyond—anything we have seen before—”

“Fine!” Starscream snapped, the nose of his jet-form tipping downward.

With a slight wobble the seeker pitched forward, jet form plunging down amongst wispy clouds and freezing air currents. The other seeker was quick to follow, the obsidian metal of its frame glinting like the snarling visage of Unicron himself, but Starscream remained resolutely focused on what lay ahead. He and his pursuer shot through the clouds, weaving inelegantly through the air, traveling in circles akin to a pair of buzzards fighting for supremacy over a corpse’s stink, and it was then that he saw it, like a glimmer of sunlight arcing over the horizon—

A massive energy shield, rippling violently with every blow that struck it, and nestled in its protective curve was a city. A pitiful cluster of a city, but a city nonetheless.

Starscream made a beeline for it, his little shadow chasing doggedly after him.

Quest: An Arbiter's Rage
Word Count: 2,225 words
Total Word Count: 3,963 words/2,500 words