“Monster? I am no monster.”
~Megatron in “Autobot Spike”

ushing myself up onto my hands and knees, I began to rise slowly to my feet. What I had just experienced had consumed my energy stores almost to the point of unconsciousness and although I had recovered quickly, it nevertheless took me an uncomfortably long moment, once I’d haltingly jerked myself to my feet, to entirely regain my equilibrium. I felt…dizzy, utterly drained, and completely exhausted. I even staggered a bit as I took a cautious, experimental step forward before catching myself and determinedly straightening my shoulders. And I accomplished that only by sheer force of will, since it seemed that I had no real strength at that moment.
I knew, of course, what I needed to do. I needed to recharge. I needed to return to the private sanctity of my quarters in order to recover from what had been a truly momentous occasion. I had just reached the door after steadily, carefully plodding over to it, fully intending to return to my own quarters, when a small scuffling noise and a muffled moan behind me reminded me that I was not alone in the room. I turned around sharply, caught and steadied myself again when the sudden movement precipitated another wave of dizziness, and regarded Starscream, on the floor behind me, with a scornful look on my face.
“Get yourself to the repair bay, Starscream,” I barked at him.
It was customary for me to have to remind him of the necessity of such a visit after one of our…encounters. And this time, as I stared down at him, I saw that Starscream looked somewhat more worse for the wear than usual. As I watched, he struggled to push himself up to a halfway-seated position. Gingerly favoring his bashed-in side, he pushed himself up, crawled laboriously to the nearest wall, and then slouched in exhaustion against it. Curled into a defensive ball, his entire body was shaking, as if he hadn’t the strength to hold himself even halfway upright, and he was covering his face with both hands. Yes, he was definitely having difficulty recovering, as well. That wasn’t surprising, I supposed, given that our…encounter…had this time been of a very different sort. It had been new and…deeply exciting. Our relationship had been taken to a new level, I knew. And yet I was now nothing but impatient for the entire incident to be over. I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish, and I wanted only to escape from Starscream’s weak, draining presence and return to my own quarters, where I could recover from our interaction in privacy.
“Starscream ! ” I barked, propping my arm up against the doorjamb and leaning heavily on it. “Acknowledge me!” All I could think about was the recharge berth in my own quarters and how badly I wanted to be in it. I did not have the will to deal with his weakness. Not this time…
In response to my order, Starscream slowly raised his head, leveling a dazed and unfocused stare on me.
“As you…command…Megatron,” he responded listlessly, his voice slurring, after a long moment spent staring stupidly at me.
Starscream’s voice was trembling and unsteady, and there was a pained hitch in it, as well. I knew that he was likely in more pain than usual after one of these incidents. Not that I cared, of course. In fact, I was glad of it. Perhaps for once the pain that he was experiencing would make the lesson that I had just taught him stick in his stubborn head. I waited impatiently for him to say something else, but he just continued to stare blankly at me, his expression indicating a complete lack of recognition. That empty expression, of course, served to remind me of the next question I needed to ask of him.
Over the eons, our encounters had become a predictable routine. They happened between us in a comfortably familiar progression of events: Angry confrontation followed by me reminding him, usually in violent ways, of who was in command followed by a bond followed by a need to verbally remind Starscream quite literally of who he was. Sighing, I walked back toward Starscream, pushing aside my own current lack of strength and equilibrium, and stood over him, staring expectantly down at him. In response to my stare, he flinched and lowered his head again, instead of defiantly meeting my gaze, as he had been doing before I had had to bring him back in line. His flinching and cringing were good signs. For one thing, they meant that, mentally, he was still there, still with me, still aware of his surroundings, which wasn’t always the case after I’d been forced to beat him into submission. But far more importantly, it meant that Starscream was once again recognizing his subordinate position within our relationship, and he was showing that submission in a physical way.
“Starscream,” I said as gently as I could under the circumstances, forcibly pushing aside my overwhelming fatigue and my lingering irritation with him, “do you remember who you are?”
To an outsider, it may have seemed a strange question to ask of Starscream, but I had had to ask it of him for as long as I’d been bonded to him. It was as if he had some irreparable short-circuit in the part of his brain that kept track of his identity. Most of the time, I would have to explain it all to him, remind him of who he was now and the worthless, pitiful creature he had been before he had met me, before I could leave his quarters to go about my own business. It was inconvenient at times – When I wanted to leave, I wished to leave right away – but on the other hand it afforded me an opportunity to reinforce in Starscream’s mind the very real fact that without me, he was nothing. It was an opportunity to remind him of how much he owed me for all the successes he had achieved in his life so far. Doing so helped to keep him in line, at least for a little while.
“I remember who I am, yes,” came Starscream’s weak reply. His voice was still shaking, faint, and unsteady. No doubt, he was attempting to assimilate what had just happened between us and determine what it meant for our future, just as I was. I was not sure if I really believed that he truly remembered who he was or not, but at the moment, I genuinely did not care. Recharge and sleep were all that I cared about, all that I desired. I wasn’t in the mood to cater to Starscream’s peculiar weaknesses.
“Excellent,” I said, nodding crisply, approvingly. “Then I expect to see you functioning normally at the mission briefing precisely seventy-six hours from now.”
With that, I turned on one heel and left Starscream’s quarters without waiting for a reply and without looking back. Although everything inside me fought against the effort, I forced myself to stand up straight and assume the expected stance of a fearless and mighty leader walking confidently to my own quarters. It would not do for one of my subordinates to see the great Megatron, ruler of Cybertron and commander of all the Decepticons, staggering wildly down the hall, barely able to put one foot in front of the other. Still, it was an effort simply to walk in a straight line. I had to fight for every straight, steady step I took. But as difficult as my progress down the corridor was, I still couldn’t help but smile inwardly as I considered the irony of the situation I had just left behind.
The unique bond I had just experienced with Starscream had left me feeling more confident and more certain of my control over the individuals and the circumstances that surrounded me since awakening on Earth just over a year ago. Yet that same bonding that had given me such a powerful high had also left me so completely exhausted that I was not able tap into that power and use it…yet. Irony, yes, but not really a concern. I knew that there would be ample time and opportunity to utilize that feeling of confidence and complete control once I was re-energized.
As I made my way down the corridor to my quarters, I passed one of the new, young Seekers that were here, training on Earth. He immediately stopped in his tracks and saluted me crisply. I vaguely remembered meeting this particular recruit before, once or twice, but his name now escaped me. So I just smiled and nodded as I passed by him. He was unbelievably young but eager and willing to follow my orders to the letter, no matter what was being asked of him. That was a good quality. Indeed, one of the advantages of young recruits such as that one was that they could more easily be molded to my needs, without having been tainted by past experiences...
Despite his age, the young Seeker I’d passed nevertheless gave the impression of being much older than he actually was. That was entirely un like Starscream who, for someone who was at least as old as I was, had always acted like a mere child. That childish trait had been endearing in its own strange way at first, but it had grown old quite quickly. And recently, I had found myself becoming especially intolerant of such behavior. I suspected that part of the reason for Starscream’s chronic immaturity was his inability to truly let go of the person he had been before the war. Perhaps that was why he’d always had those peculiar little identity crises after our bonds, as well. Who could know? Starscream had always been as baffling as he was brilliant. I knew that that bewildering nature of his was somehow tied to his past, to something that had happened to him before he had come under my influence, but I had never been able to pinpoint the exact cause of his more perplexing behaviors.
Not that it really mattered, of course. The past was the past, and I rarely thought about it, much less dwelled in it. The past was completely out of my control, and I believed that it was a weakness to dwell on things that I had no power to change. It was the present and the future on which I chose to concentrate because that was where victory would be found… Which was why I found it decidedly odd that I was suddenly beginning to reminisce about how Starscream and I had first met, many millennia ago. Perhaps it was an unpleasant aftereffect of the new and different kind of bond that Starscream and I had just experienced. I was too tired to care, so I just let the memories flow, hoping that if I didn’t fight it, it would pass quickly…
Out of a class of three thousand at the War Academy, Starscream had been at the top of the ranks in every category. The Great War had only just begun a few years before when I’d heard of this amazing new recruit. What I remember most vividly, however, was being completely surprised when I finally did meet Starscream. I had been expecting a quiet, intelligent, and competent warrior who was obedient to his commanders but who could also plan an attack and effectively lead other warriors into battle. At least, that had been what I had been looking for at the time, what I had hoped for, because that was what I had needed most. The Decepticons had been a young organization at the time, and I had needed an injection of some young, impressionable, but very sharp new recruits in order to bring about my vision of what Cybertron should be.
What I had found when I had finally met Starscream, however, was an angry, determined, yet completely unpredictable individual who regularly argued with his superiors, rebelling against their teachings. Paradoxically, however, he had also seemed to have an insatiable thirst for knowledge garnered from any source. In short, Starscream had been an unstoppable force, devouring and learning everything that was put before him and then demanding to be given more. Always more. And, indeed, there had been no denying the fact that he was the best at everything. In that sense, he had been – and still was – an enigma. Those given to rebellion and defiance usually weren’t the ones who excelled at everything they attempted at the Academy. I had known that there had to be a reason why Starscream was as strange as he seemed to be.
In an attempt to discover that reason, I had pored over all of Starscream’s records thoroughly, and – surprisingly, given his erratic behavior – all had seemed to be in order there. Before joining the Decepticons, Starscream had been quite an accomplished scientist who had won the praise and admiration of his peers as well as his superiors, although it was noted that he had a decidedly antisocial streak. I had also been surprised to learn that he’d also had a bondmate at one time, who had apparently died in an explosion, some experiment that had gone horribly wrong, that had resulted in many casualties.
Upon reading all that, I had begun to have doubts about Starscream. Even back then, I already detested scientists as being the useless dreamers that they are, with no ambition whatsoever, no vision , and to some extent I had a similar opinion of engineers. Starscream had heavy amounts of both disciplines in his background. While engineers, at least, could be useful to some extent – if they could survive their own experiments – I had no use for pure scientists. Plus, I had wondered if the loss of his bondmate had anything to do with Starscream’s impulsive behavior or his problems with authority, so I had decided to check his psychological evaluation. According to the report, the accident that had killed his mate had happened so long ago that he hardly had any memory of it. This had been reassuring as well as puzzling. It had been reassuring because, from what I had observed since the war had begun, some warriors became completely and irreversibly disabled and useless if their mates were killed, but that had not seemed to be the case with Starscream at all.
In fact, he had seemed determined to get on with his life, even to change it by making a drastic career path change from science to war. Starscream had not seemed to be overly affected in any negative way by the loss of this bondmate of his. It was reassuring, yes. Yet, it was also puzzling because I had assumed that Starscream’s reckless disregard for authority could be traced back to that loss. Had he been driven to near-insanity by the abrupt loss of a bondmate, I would have had some explanation for Starscream’s oddities. But that, apparently, hadn’t happened. So, I had concluded that his behavior was simply natural for him. Once I’d drawn that conclusion, the question had simply become one of whether or not I could deal with him and his behavior, whether or not I could still mold Starscream to reflect the vision I had for a top-ranking warrior under my command.
And in that regard, I could not have overlooked Starscream’s abilities and accomplishments at the Academy. I had known that I needed warriors like Starscream. And at the time, I had convinced myself that under my focused personal tutelage, Starscream’s emotional instabilities could be accommodated and eventually corrected. I had been determined to succeed because I knew that, once those quirks were expunged from his psyche, I would have in Starscream the individual that I had been looking for when I’d undertaken the trip to the Academy: the perfect second-in-command, the perfect protégé.
So, in the end I had taken Starscream from the Academy to live and train with a small handful of young Decepticon warriors with whom I was personally working at my small base of operations. Skywarp, of course, had also been amongst that handful. In fact, I had already begun to groom Skywarp to be my second-in-command when Starscream had abruptly entered the picture. But Skywarp had had only two things going for him at the time: natural – albeit untrained, unfocused, and unpolished – leadership ability and an undying loyalty to me. I had thought Skywarp to be something of a diamond in the rough, and I had been willing to work with him, refine him. But once I had discovered Starscream… Well, there was no way that Skywarp could have competed with Starscream’s lightning-quick mind and relentless determination and ambition. Grooming Skywarp would have taken many years, years that I could not have afforded to spend if my plans for Cybertron’s future were to come to fruition in a timely manner. Starscream had been naturally further along the road to being a perfect second than Skywarp had been. So of course, Starscream had eventually replaced Skywarp in training to be my second, and that has ever since been a point of contention between the two of them. The controlled enmity between them had had an unexpected benefit, in that I had always used the antagonism between them to my own advantage. Unfortunately, once Thundercracker had unceremoniously injected himself into Skywarp’s life, his influence had distracted Skywarp, dampened his jealousy of Starscream. He had become a sort of peacemaker between the two of them, especially so since we’d been on Earth…
At the thought of Thundercracker, my reverie was momentarily broken, and I let out a long and somewhat frustrated sigh. He was becoming…a problem. Thundercracker had dampened many things about Skywarp over the past several millennia, not just his enthusiasm for reporting Starscream’s dubious activities to me, and I was growing increasingly suspicious of him and his motives. In fact, the only reason that I continued to tolerate his presence was because I knew that I needed Skywarp and because, together with Starscream, Thundercracker and Skywarp were an almost unbeatable combination in the air. So, Thundercracker was an effective warrior, for the moment…but I knew something would have to be done about him soon.
I wearily rubbed my forehead at the thought. Something would need to be done about Thundercracker soon, yes...but not today. Thundercracker was still quite useful for now. When that usefulness was spent, however, then I would deal with him. At the moment, though, all that I cared about was my quarters, which I had finally reached. As the doors swooshed welcomingly open in front of me, I contacted Soundwave in the Control Room and ordered that I was not to be disturbed under any circumstances for the next several hours. And then, making my way over to the recharge berth, I lowered myself wearily down onto its hard, flat surface.
I was glad to be alone and secure within my quarters at last. My quarters were my sanctuary, the only place in the entirety of Decepticon Headquarters that was mine and mine alone. I preferred to keep them uncluttered and, usually, darkened. Darkness and a lack of clutter promoted clear thought on my part. So, here I had devised grand plans…and here I had retreated to recover when those grand plans had occasionally failed miserably. My quarters were completely under my own control, and with that control came a sense of security and as much peace of mind as a leader could ever have. So of course no one was ever permitted to enter my quarters, not even Starscream. I had come to think of my private quarters as almost an extension of myself in many ways. Therefore, access to this place was strictly forbidden just as surely as access to my mind and to my spark was forbidden.
As I lay there, enjoying the security and comfort of my quarters and allowing myself to relax in preparation for recharge, a nagging thought crept into my mind. I quickly realized that it wasn’t a thought but…a memory. Primus, what was it with this sudden urge to dwell on things of the distant past? I tried to fight the urge, tried to focus on the next strategy to use against the Autobots that had been slowly forming in my head. I tried to concentrate on formulating a list of the resources I’d need in order to carry out that strategy, tried to concentrate on thinking about who I would assign to oversee what aspect of the plan. In short, I tried to keep my mind busy so that no part of it would be available for pondering anything else in the past…but it was of no use. That cursed little memory fought its way equally tenaciously to the surface of my thoughts.
It was another memory of Starscream, of course. It was a memory of the one and only time I had actually let someone into the forbidden sanctuary that was my quarters…and my spark. I thought about fighting the memory with all I had in me…but I knew that I had little left. The bond with Starscream had almost completely exhausted me, and the walk to my quarters, as short as that walk had been, had consumed what little energy I’d had left after that. So in the end, I let the memory flow, hoping that I could somehow fall into recharge in the middle of it and thus forget about all of the nonsense that was suddenly plaguing me…
I had never intended, of course, to bond with anyone. In fact, I found the whole concept of voluntarily allowing someone into my spark and mind so that they could share my thoughts and memories and knowledge to be completely revolting. I was repulsed by the very notion of it. Every part of my being rebelled against the idea of sharing any of myself with anyone. Why would I ever want to dilute all the knowledge that I had acquired, all the skills that I had learned, and everything that I was by sharing it with someone who was inherently inferior to me? And why would anyone willingly relinquish sole authority and control of their life to someone who could misuse it or, worse, completely waste it, as I believed that Thundercracker, for instance, was wasting Skywarp’s life? I could not understand why anyone would voluntarily do any of that.
No, I had had no desire to bond with anyone, least of all Starscream. But it had happened and, oddly enough, my willingness to do so had stemmed from a simple desire to help Starscream become a better warrior, not because of any feelings of love or affection toward him. Love and affection were for the weak. They brought about nothing but chaos. They made the individual feeling such an emotion sentimental, and, most disgustingly, vulnerable. Still… I could not honestly say that Starscream and I had not been drawn to one another from the very beginning. Despite his rebelliousness, I knew that he harbored an adoration of me, a sort of devotion to me that Skywarp, even given his intense loyalty to me, even given his cheerful willingness to do whatever I asked of him, didn’t have. Starscream back then had been willing to do anything that I asked of him, indeed, but it had not been out of fear or mindless obedience or devoted loyalty, as it was with Skywarp. No, it seemed as though Starscream, back then, had worshipped the very ground I walked on, as if he had regarded me as some kind of idol, a perfect person to be emulated and adored. And slowly, as I had worked with him, Starscream began to depend on me for his every thought, his every action. For a while, I had been the only one in authority that Starscream would not defy. For a while, I had had complete control over every aspect of Starscream’s life.
Ahhhhhhh, how things do change…
Starscream had had no friends back then. No one liked him. I had been the only one who seemed to be able to tolerate his presence for any length of time. For me, it was easy to tolerate Starscream, and we had ended up spending much time together. And I had taught him everything I knew. I had tested him and drilled him and sharpened his skills in every conceivable manner. Still, he had been reluctant to go into actual battle, always saying that he hadn’t yet learned enough, even though his simulation scores were always remarkably high. But since the Autobots had been gaining a foothold in one of the northern sectors of Cybertron, I knew that I was going to need Starscream’s assistance in an assault to recover that lost territory. He had been nervous about the prospect of battle, falling back on the pacifistic notions that he had harbored in his previous life as a scientist. But his fear of disappointing me eventually overrode that nervousness, and he had reluctantly agreed to accompany me on that mission.
I smiled to myself as I remembered that particular battle. Like most of the battles I’d waged on Cybertron, the Decepticons had won that one. Remembering that victory made me keenly aware of how much I missed having so many consistent, long-lasting victories now, in the present. Earth, I knew, was a curse, one that delighted in tormenting me…
Nevertheless, Starscream had won his first battle, but his victory had not been without a few consequences. For one thing, Starscream had been seriously injured during the course of the battle…and I had been surprised to find myself genuinely concerned for him, more concerned than I had been about anyone else at the time. Looking back, I remembered wondering what in the universe I’d do without Starscream if he were ever terminated. I recalled at that moment having to stop and carefully analyze my feelings. I had known that I was not in love with him, at least not in the way that most would define the emotion. But somehow Starscream had managed to become something more to me than just another officer under my command. I wasn’t quite certain what the feeling that I was experiencing was, and I didn’t waste time trying to figure it out; I had just known that it was there. Starscream had become…necessary to me.
Some time later, after Starscream had recovered from his battle damage, I had found out from one of the lower-ranking officers that had been a member Starscream’s unit that Starscream had never fired off a single shot during the entire battle. That had been curious information, indeed, given Starscream’s usually volatile personality. I had decided to question him about it, to see if it was true. After all, choices such as the one that he’d made could make the difference between winning and losing a battle. So, that was when I had decided to invite Starscream to my quarters one evening, ostensibly to discuss strategies for our next assault. It had been, of course, an unusual request. I had been as scrupulous about my privacy back then as I was now, and I had never invited anyone to my quarters for any reason, much less to discuss battle strategies. But Starscream hadn’t seemed to think anything of it, so he had shown up that evening with a commpad in his hand, ready to learn.
Starscream and I had discussed combat strategies that night, and we had come up with a plan that later delivered a crushing blow to the Autobots and a great victory for us. But after that, we had talked lightly about the various goings-on within the base. And then, when I had sensed that he was relaxed enough, I had decided to question Starscream about his actions – or rather his lack thereof – during that first assault. He had been surprised by my questions, and his bleak expression had made it quite clear to me that he was not altogether excited over the notion of coming up with answers to them.
I remember sitting down close to him and putting my arm around him, a memory that made me shudder in my recharge berth to think back on it . I knew that I would never do such a thing now, at least not in the same caring, comforting, sympathetic manner I had used back then. After all, the only thing that spoke to Starscream now was a good blow to the head. Of course, we had both been very different individuals back then…
When I had put my arm around Starscream, though, he had instantly relaxed and leaned into me. I sensed his longing to be close to me – or at least to someone – as if it was something familiar to him, something that he missed and that he needed. The gesture had seemed to comfort him, to give him confidence, for after I asked him about the battle and his behavior again, Starscream had finally admitted that he’d never taken a life before. He had been a scientist for his entire existence prior to joining the Decepticons, and he had never had reason to hate anyone enough to justify killing them.
For a moment after Starscream’s hesitant revelation, I had been repulsed by it. Any inability to hate or to fight or to shoot to kill had been and still was a profound weakness in my eyes. Yet, Starscream’s true nature had been as a scientist, with all that entailed, including a certain pacifistic mindset…but in my mind that had not made him completely beyond hope. He had come extraordinarily far in the years that I’d worked with him. He had slowly become a very valuable, if not irreplaceable, asset to me. Frankly, I had needed him, and at the time I had been willing to do whatever I could to help him overcome his apprehensions and inhibitions. I knew that there had to be something that I could do about them. I had expended too much effort on Starscream to give up on him.
It had been then, of course, that I had made a fateful decision, one that eventually proved to be both blessing and curse. Usually more of the latter than the former.
Even before I had met Starscream, I had on occasion idly wondered exactly how much one could influence someone else through a bond. Indeed, that had been the only aspect of bonding that had truly intrigued me. Specifically, given the situation with Starscream at the time, I had begun to wonder how much of an impact a bond with me plus constant exposure to the issue that stumbled him – In this case, the taking of a life – would have on Starscream. I wondered if perhaps my direct influence would be enough to cure him of his weakness. It had also occurred to me, as I had sat there with Starscream leaning against me, that perhaps I could also directly influence Starscream’s ability to lead others as well, which was his other main weakness. The possibilities were…exciting, certainly. To have a second-in-command who was bonded to me and who was therefore almost an extension of myself had been a very enticing prospect, indeed. After all, one thing that was certain was that Starscream would have been hindered, if not rendered completely useless, if he hadn’t developed the ability to lead or to kill. I could not have had that in a second-in-command.
So, Starscream had agreed to bond with me that night. I could still remember that first bond very clearly. It was the first – and last – time I had given anything of myself to anyone. It had been a remarkable experience, and it had actually taken an incredible amount of willpower not to continue to give after that. But from that point on, it was only Starscream who gave of himself during a bond. I could not afford to let him in any more than he already was. I was to be the one influencing him , after all, not the other way around. I was also quite pleased to find no trace of that former mate of Starscream’s floating around within the bond that formed between the two of us. That would have…complicated things.
My theory had proven correct, though, much to my gratification. Only a few weeks had passed before Starscream had killed his first Autobot. After that, after he had gotten a taste of true power, it had not been long at all before he was leading Decepticon squadrons to massacre entire communities of Autobot sympathizers all over Cybertron. The only problem had been that the bond between us proved to have one unfortunate side effect that even to this day I had to keep constantly in check. That side effect was that with every victory he achieved, Starscream gained more self-confidence, and with that self-confidence came a hunger for more victories. He began to demand more command influence, more power…and more of me.
Starscream of course had never received any of those things, but I had understood what he was feeling. In fact, I liked to think that those desires had been wrought in him as a direct result of our bond, from my intimate, direct influence over him. I knew that hunger for power and control, after all. I knew it intimately well. I had heard it called an addiction – Certainly, Optimus Prime has thrown that accusation at me on more than one occasion – but I believed that, when placed in the right hands, that hunger was more a means to a glorious end. And that end was not one in which I was going to share equally with Starscream.
Yet, Starscream had almost immediately begun to reason that, since we were bonded together, all aspects of command had become our combined domain, not a domain that was mine alone. At one point, he had even proclaimed to be my very equal. Of course, when he had acted up in such a way, I had merely had to beat some sense back into him. No one, after all, would ever be my equal, and there were many times that I had had to remind Starscream of that, usually in ways that I had thought he would not easily forget.
So during all those years on Cybertron, Starscream and I had fought and argued and sometimes battled. But we had also had many successes. The dynamics of our relationship may have seemed unusual to outside observers, but for us it had worked, and I would not have had it any other way. I had had more control over Starscream than I had even dreamed possible, and we had achieved heights of victory that even I had not envisioned. I smiled as I remembered our final major campaign, the one that had resulted in the complete conquest of Cybertron, that final glorious victory for the Decepticons that had splintered the Autobots into shattered, fragmented enclaves. Optimus Prime had gone into hiding with a paltry handful of warriors who were foolish enough to remain loyal to him.
Things had been so incredibly good on Cybertron. What a stark contrast to how life had become here on Earth. I didn’t entirely understand why, but since we had arrived on this accursed planet known as Earth, we had endured one humiliating defeat after another. The Autobots quickly established some sort of alliance with the human natives, and by some unexplainable means it actually worked to both of their advantages. But perhaps most aggravating of all, at least personally, was Starscream’s extreme change in behavior towards me. Yes, he had always been greedy for my position and my power; he thought he deserved to share in my glory. And yes, he had always had a tendency to push and poke and needle me until I lost all control and was forced, sometimes quite violently, to beat him back into his rightful place. But lately, since arriving on Earth, all of those personality quirks that made Starscream uniquely Starscream had become exaggerated, intensified to the point that, if he had been difficult to deal with before, he had recently become beyond insufferable. In fact, I suspected that he was going insane.
True, everyone had had to change and adapt to the challenges of living and fighting on what was a very alien world to us, but with Starscream, the changes seemed to be more drastic and dangerous than they were in any of the other Decepticons. Thundercracker, for instance, had become broodier, more indecisive, and more withdrawn since our arrival on Earth. Skywarp had become, if anything, more indolent. But Starscream…? Starscream only became bolder, more demanding, and infinitely more insufferable than he had been at any time in the past. Of course, he certainly was not and never would be dangerous to me . I knew that no matter how many threats issued from his foolish mouth, none of them would ever come to fruition. None of them would ever really affect me. I chuckled softly to myself as I thought about Starscream’s constant attempts at trying to destroy me.
“Now who would punish you, if you killed me, Starscream?” I mused aloud, smiling fondly up at the dim light streaming from the recessed fixture installed in the ceiling directly above the recharge berth upon which I was laying. “Who would do that for you if you were to destroy me?”
It was true that, from the very beginning, Starscream had seemed to invite punishment, as if for some cosmic reason unknown to me, he thought that he deserved it. So he’d bicker with me, heatedly argue with me, and purposefully provoke me until I had to scream at him to shut up or go away. Most of the time – back on Cybertron, at least – that had been all that was necessary to quiet him. Occasionally, he’d need to be brought down physically, but those occasions had been rare, especially so because I usually assigned him to duties that took him to the opposite side of the planet from me. We had had room to move, room to be apart, on Cybertron. Here on Earth, however, the Decepticons only had one effective base of operations, so Starscream and I were always together. And now, especially recently, simply yelling at Starscream wasn’t nearly enough to discourage his wayward behavior. It was insane, I knew, but I was absolutely convinced that Starscream wanted to be beaten. And I, of course, graciously obliged him. Because if I didn’t, I knew that he would drive me insane.
I didn’t understand why Starscream seemed to be driven to seek punishment for some secret sin, nor did I necessarily wish to understand why he did so. All I knew was that, ever since we awakened on this Primus-forsaken planet, Starscream’s demands on my patience had increased astronomically, and my tolerance for his antics had been worn dangerously thin. He had begun to deliberately sabotage my plans at every turn, and he blundered about as if he had suddenly forgotten everything that I had taught him on Cybertron. It was nothing less than infuriating. Whenever I thought about it, I would feel anger rising in me. Even now, I clenched my fists, imagining that they were wrapped around Starscream’s throat…
It took me a moment to calm myself. After all, I was attempting to relax in order to be able to slip into recharge. I should have known that thinking about Starscream and his increasingly infuriating behavior would not be conducive to such a thing… I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing myself toward calm, focusing on the positive aspects on the relationship that existed between Starscream and me.
There were such positive aspects, after all. There was, after all, one curious thing that I had discovered since being on Earth and having to deal with Starscream’s increasingly erratic behavior. That was that beating Starscream into submission tended to have a rather cathartic side effect on my part. I always seemed to feel fulfilled and empowered after such an encounter. It was as if I subconsciously equated putting Starscream in his place with putting everything else in its proper place, and the subsequent euphoria was…addictive. I found that more and more often Starscream’s behavior ended up provoking me into beating him, whereas before the same behavior might have earned him only a stern lecture, precisely because of the high that beating Starscream gave me. Besides, stern lectures hardly worked on him anymore; physical discipline still worked very well.
And now… Now I had discovered an even deeper and more satisfying benefit, for no words could accurately describe the sensations I had experienced just a few hours ago. And it had come about quite by accident. I had been angry…no, I had been infuriated with Starscream. I had wanted to kill him, and I had almost convinced myself, as I’d marched to his quarters where I knew that he’d been awaiting me, that I was going to do so. Oh, it was not because I was really going to miss that piece of human-built scrap they called Nightbird, of course, but simply because Starscream, in all of his outrageous, rebellious arrogance, had actually had the nerve to try to take her from me. I had had plans for her, yes, and I had chosen to taunt Starscream with talk of replacing him with her, but I had not thought Starscream stupid enough to actually believe my taunts.
Still, I had done my best to protect him from doing something that would require me to discipline him afterward. I had warned him to stay away from Nightbird. I had even caged him so that he couldn’t botch up my plans. But it had all been to no avail, of course. As was typical of Starscream, he had instead chosen to defy me and take matters into his own hands and thus bring about his own punishment. He had nullified Nightbird, which had enabled the Autobots to capture her. In my mind, that was tantamount to treason. And then…
Then, he had laughed.
Starscream had laughed.
At me.
I felt myself grow increasingly agitated as the day’s events replayed in my mind, as I lay on my recharge berth, waiting for sleep to claim me. Starscream had laughed. He had mocked me in front of my Decepticons and, much worse, in front of the Autobots. No one… no one , not even Starscream, could do that to me with impunity, without brutal retribution from me. Which was, I reflected, what Starscream must have wanted to begin with, because no one in his right mind would have done what he had done and not expected some sort of retribution from me. Even so, Starscream had flown away as fast as he could after nullifying Nightbird. Primus knows why, since he had to have known that there was nowhere he could have gone on this accursed planet where I couldn’t have found him. And of course I had eventually caught him and brought him back to the base.
Several hours later, when I had entered his quarters, Starscream of course had begun to beg and plead with me, as if for some mysterious reason he thought he might be able to convince me that he had had no control over what he had just done. He always did that, and it only served to irk me all the more. I began to demand that he shut up, and when he refused to do so, I proceeded to beat him until he could do nothing but shut up. At one point, I remember repeatedly kicking him in the side so hard that the outer plating along his side had torn, creating a deep gash that had leaked quite a bit of energon. That was more damage than I usually inflicted upon him, but up to that point there had been nothing else different or particularly unusual about this particular confrontation between us. Starscream had been thoroughly flogged, beaten into submission, and he had been down at my feet apologizing repeatedly to me and whimpering pathetically, none of which was unusual when he had done something to force me to such extremes. We had also, over the years, developed the habit of bonding after these altercations, so that I could further reinstate my dominance over him, and we were both preparing to do so, when a thought had suddenly struck me.
That thought was that I was letting Starscream off too easy. I decided to do something about that… I had suddenly envisioned an entirely new dynamic to add to the bond between Starscream and me.
“You owe me a great deal, Starscream,” I had whispered to him as I adjusted my fusion cannon to its finest setting.
Why I had never thought of the variation I’d imagined prior to that moment was a mystery to me, because it was so beautiful in its simplicity and so enticing in its potential that it seemed to me as if I should have thought of it millennia ago. But I didn’t give the issue much thought beyond that. I just acted upon the impulse that had occurred to me. And so while we had been fully joined in the bond, I had activated my cannon and held it steadily over one of Starscream’s wings. A very narrow, highly focused beam of pure energy had spat itself out of my weapon and gouged a razor-thin but quite deep laceration into Starscream’s wing.
Starscream’s entire body had jerked in my grasp and he had gasped and cried out in pain and fear, completely taken off-guard by what I had done to him. And at just that precise moment, through the bond between us, I had felt something…indescribable. It was as if I could feel Starscream’s pain without it being painful to me, and it was…exciting. Even more than that, I had felt an intense wash of complete and utter control and power flowing over me as Starscream had cried out both aloud and through the bond, as he had begged me to stop what I was doing to him. It was, quite simply, exhilarating. The feeling of control, the non-painful pain, Starscream’s begging…It was all intoxicating in a way that I’d never experienced before. I never wanted it to end. Starscream had been completely at my mercy, at my command. I realized that he was, in essence, a conduit for this powerful sensation and that, now that I knew the secret to experiencing it, I could experience it at any time, as often as I wanted. I had never been more delighted with a discovery as I had been at that moment.
So, after threatening Starscream that if he didn’t hold still I’d cut into something worse than his wing, I cut him again. And again. In only a few minutes, I had created a dense group of closely spaced, perfectly straight lines on both of his wings. With each cut, I found that I felt more and more euphoric. I couldn’t stop myself. In fact, I didn’t stop myself until Starscream no longer flinched or whimpered or responded in any way when I cut him, as if all of the pain and emotion that Starscream could possibly feel had already been wrung out of him. Which was just as well, given that dealing with constant exposure to the cascade of sensory input from Starscream had exhausted me to the point that I could barely lift my arm anymore. In fact, I had had to shut down for a short while next to Starscream in the aftermath of the cutting episode, just so that I would have enough energy to walk back to my quarters. And when I had awakened, I had been filled with a new sense of purpose, of determination, of complete control over every aspect of my existence. It was a euphoria like nothing I had ever known.
It had also, of course, been a draining experience. I knew that, in the future, it would be wise to be fully energized before engaging in such a bond with Starscream, for it had drained me almost literally of all that I was. But the rewards…Ah, the rewards were well worth the draining of my energy reserves. Energy could be replaced; the sensations I’d just experienced, though, were irreplaceable. Inexpressible. Yes, I knew that a new era had just dawned between Starscream and me, and I knew, as I finally drifted off into the welcome depths of a healing recharge cycle, that those changes would be nothing but beneficial to both of us.