sunchime | WRONG TURN TO THE BABY WAR

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character: starscream

WRONG TURN TO THE BABY WAR

So, good news -- the space bridge prototype worked. Less good news -- it seems to have taken Starscream with it instead of the drone, which was definitely not the intent. And he hadn't intended to send it to a...ship? It looks like he's on a ship. He can feel the hum of the engines through the bulkheads. There are almost definitely people on this ship -- whose is it? It seems Cybertronian in make, but it's not as though the ports of Cybertron have been especially bustling lately. The hallway he's in is too nondescript to give him a clue as to just what kind of ship this is, but the lack of Decepticon insignias in sight doesn't install a great sense of confidence in him.

His radio pings are hitting dead air, so either no one else was transported here, or the trip messed with his comms. Neither prospect is especially heartening. Clutching his datapad to his chest, Starscream flattens himself against a wall and starts inching toward the nearest turn in the corridor, calling out in a low hiss.

"Megatron?" Nothing. Well. Hm. "Slipstream? ...Strika? Anyone?"

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A prototype space bridge. Ugh.

"This is the Lost Light," says Megatron, frowning down at him. He doesn't like the way this Starscream doesn't seem to be in the slightest bit afraid of him -- and not in that smug, triumphant kind of way where most of the triumph is having gotten himself into a position where he thinks he doesn't need to be. It's like it's just never occurred to him at all. It makes Megatron uncomfortable. "And whatever's going on where you've just come from, you ought to know the war is over here -- but this is still an Autobot ship, and if you cause any trouble, it's not going to go down very well. Do you understand?"

Starscream really doesn't appreciate being talked down to like this, whatever the circumstances, but Megatron's throwing an awful lot at him right now. Starscream gives him an incredulous look, actually taking a step back.

"What do you mean, the war is over?" Already? Sure, the Decepticons had been gaining an edge over the Autobots, but truth be told, no side was all that close to victory. His eyes fell on Megatron's Autobot badge again and he narrowed his eyes with an accusing look. "You lost?"

Megatron's eyes narrow to a pair of angry red lines.

"Yes."

Any respect Starscream might have been beginning to harbor for Megatron by virtue of, well, being Megatron pretty much immediately drops away, and his expression goes cool and flat.

"You lost, and now you wear the enemy's brand?" This Starscream is, admittedly, not as practiced in the art of giving Megatron scathing looks of scorn, but despite that he manages it pretty well. "You might look like him, you even talk like him -- but you are not Megatron."

"I wear this by my own choice," Megatron snaps. "Do not presume you understand what went into that choice."

The idea that Megatron would choose to wear the Autobot insignia, to fall in line with the people who've been impeding Cybertron's progress all along, to follow Elita -- that's easily worse than if he'd been coerced into it somehow.

"I don't presume to understand," Starscream says shortly. Because this is utterly absurd. He's starting to wonder if space bridge flare knocked him back with a concussive blast, and if this is all some extremely discomfiting dream. "And I'm not here to make trouble. Frankly, I'd rather spend as little time on this ship -- the Lost Light? -- as possible. All I'm concerned with is getting back to Cybertron. My Cybertron."

He means it as a kind of biting insult at what considers to be fraudulent nonsense, but then he's forced to fully entertain the possibility that this isn't his Cybertron, his world, and that this is actually Megatron, in a manner of speaking, and that the space bridge did a hell of a lot more than just jettison him off to some random coordinates. With the nature of spacetime and the very specific ways space bridge theory manipulated it, there was just the slightest possibility that this was actually...oh no. And the "oh no" shows on Starscream's face pretty clearly.

Having already reached his own 'oh no' several minutes ago, Megatron has little sympathy for the one Starscream has belatedly arrived at.

"Good. With any luck we ought to be able to work out how to send you back where you came from." He sincerely hopes so, anyway. The last thing he needs is to be saddled with some kind of alternate universe Starscream doppelganger on top of everything else. If he's really lucky, maybe he'll be able to just foist him off on Perceptor and Brainstorm and wash his own hands of the entire thing.

He eyes Starscream critically. "Is there any chance any of your allies will be attempting to follow you here?"

"Well, they'll certainly be looking for me," Starscream says, not at all liking the tone here, like he's just some problem to be solved, and he isn't thrilled at being at the mercy of the Autobots, either. "Megatron wouldn't just let me disappear without an investigation. I'm too important."

Sure you are, buddy.

"Of course you are." Megatron doesn't bother suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. "What I'm asking is whether we're going to have to deal with any more of you showing up."

Edited 2018-03-16 18:37 (UTC)

Starscream glares up at him. What's with the eye rolling, Megatron, he super doesn't appreciate whatever shade you're throwing here.

"If they can pinpoint my location," he says impatiently, "then yes, they'll come get me. But if it's an attack you're worried about -- doubtful, unless it's provoked." At least, he's pretty sure that his Megatron's not going to bother picking a fight with a bunch of Autobots that aren't even from their own universe. "We're still fighting a war. It'd be a colossal waste of time and effort to launch an attack on this ship when there's plenty of fighting to be done on Cybertron, if you ask me. And I doubt Megatron would do anything that stupid and tactically unsound."

What he does have doubts about, though, is just how his Megatron might react to this one. He'd like to think that his own Megatron would regard this mech with the same contempt that Starscream currently does, but...there's a chance it could cause a delay. That it might make him hesitate, even just out of curiosity. No, Starscream decides, if -- when Megatron comes to his rescue, he's got to make sure that he doesn't ever actually meet this Autobot Megatron. He'd be saving everyone a whole lot of trouble. Obviously.

"Hmm," says Megatron, who is honestly more worried about an exhausting uptick in shenanigans than he is about the Lost Light actually being attacked by Decepticons. That said, though... he can definitely imagine a version of himself being offended enough by his own appearance to order an attack... But on the other hand it's much harder to imagine traversing alternate realities to rescue Starscream.

He decides he probably has nothing to worry about. At least, nothing that isn't already standing in front of him giving him the evil eye.

"Alright," he says curtly, and starts down the corridor. "Let's see if Perceptor and Brainstorm can send you back to where you're supposed to be. Cybertron, you said?" He glances down at Starscream, considering. "Is your war still contained to your home planet, then?"

"Yes," Starscream answers, a bit warily. It's Cybertron they're fighting over, after all, although he fully recognizes that the increasingly violent struggle for resources, especially energy, is starting to put a considerable strain on the planet. Evidently this Megatron's war had gone on long enough that they'd needed to go beyond Cybertron to fight the war.

Quickening his stride to keep pace with Megatron, Starscream gets an uncomfortable flash of deja vu to a conversation he'd had mere hours ago in one of the corridors in the Hall of Records. This is weird and he Does Not Like It. "I have data from our space bridge, you know, I don't -- did you say Brainstorm? You want me to work with Brainstorm?"

Megatron arches a ... forehead ... portion??

"I want you to give him and Perceptor whatever information you can about your prototype so that they can pinpoint where you went wrong and how it landed you here, yes."

“This is highly classified Decepticon research,” Starscream says haughtily, holding the datapad to his chest. “I’m not going to just hand it off to a couple of Autobots practically sight unseen. I helped build that prototype.”

It is starting to sound like they might know more about space bridge theory here, though, and on the off chance they do, Starscream sure as hell isn’t going to miss an opportunity to give himself a leg up on Shockwave. He crosses his arms, tapping the datapad against his hip. “I’ll only share this data if I work with them, and only if they share all of their available research on the subject, too.”

Another eye roll.

"You said it was a prototype, didn't you? From everything else you've said it sounds like there's some kind of time discrepancy at work here on top of the... other differences -- I highly doubt any of that classified research will be news to them." He narrows his eyes. "But if you'd prefer not to help them work out how to get you home I'm sure nobody would mind leaving you at the next planet we stop at instead."

Starscream manages to contain his squawk of outrage to a mere indignant grunt, glaring at Megatron through lidded eyes. "Really," he scoffs. "It might have been a prototype, but my space bridge apparently managed to punch a hole in spacetime to another universe. The exact cause of that is somewhere in this data. Have Brainstorm and Perceptor made contact with other realities? Because if so, you should've said so right away -- it'd make this much simpler."

He should probably, like, check the dripping sarcasm just a little bit.

Megatron levels him with an unimpressed stare. "You punched a hole in spacetime by accident," he points out.

Starscream puffs out his chest, refusing to be knocked off his cleverer-than-thou higher ground right now.

"Some of the greatest scientific discoveries in history were made by accident," he says smugly. "Do you know how Cybertronian scientists first split the atom? Or discovered gamma rays? Or the frequency of five-space fields? Of course you don't," he goes on, not giving Megatron a chance to answer. "But I'm sure Brainstorm and Perceptor do, and I'm sure they'd like to take a look at my data."

He was absolutely prepared to blame the accident on Shockwave, but now that he can spin it to make him look as brilliant and impressive as possible, he'll be keeping that credit, thanks.

Megatron pushes a frustrated hand over his face, and sighs. "Maybe they would, but I don't think even Brainstorm would want it badly enough to hand his own discoveries over to a Starscream from a universe where the Decepticons are still at war."

"Well, I'd like to hear what Brainstorm has to say about it for himself," Starscream says stubbornly. Brainstorm would surely be easier to outmaneuver, or at least manipulate. He'd certainly have more of a vested interest in it than Megatron. "I just want your research on space bridge theory, not your entire archives. Besides, as someone who's actually engineered a space bridge, I'm sure it would go much more quickly with my help."

He'd totally steal as much as he could from their archives given the chance, but he's willing to settle on what he thinks is a compromise for the sake of moving things along. But Megatron's comment nags at his attention and his eyes light up with curiosity, and while he doesn't quite smile, he does look insufferably smug.

"So there is a version of me here." He knew it!! He knew it. There's no way a universe that included both Megatron and Brainstorm in it could, like, not have himin it. "What's he like? Oh, wait -- don't tell me he's an Autobot too."

Megatron just kind of automatically grimaces. "No," he says, schooling his face into a more respectable scowl, "he isn't. He's a politician."

Starscream looks absolutely fucking appalled. "What?" he bursts out. The politics of academia are bad enough, but actual politics? Ugh. This Megatron has proven to be more or less disappointing so far, but Starscream assumed that this universe's version of himself would actually be cool and impressive. "How did that happen? I mean, what kind of self-respecting Decepticon fights in a war started over politics, loses, and then turns around and dives back into the reason it all started in the first place?"

That is certainly not what Starscream envisions himself doing after the war. Then again, the Decepticons here did lose, and Megatron did join the Autobots. That had to be even more disappointing to this universe's Starscream. He squints up at Megatron. "He is a Decepticon, isn't he?"

Edited 2018-03-16 21:14 (UTC)

"I think he's neutral now," says Megatron with obvious distaste, although, let's be real, that's not about the idea of being neutral, which is basically fine as far as he's concerned, it's just about Starscream. Fuck that guy. "He used to be a Decepticon, if that's what you mean. And as far as I can tell it was just the easiest way for someone whose main talents are lying and manipulating people to grab at some kind of power after the Decepticons disbanded."

Edited 2018-03-16 21:20 (UTC)

Starscream's gaze flattens. He assumes neutrality means something different here, what with the war being over, but admittedly he wasn't expecting...that response. He feels a little called out, frankly. No good liar -- and he does consider himself one, if maybe not in those exact words -- really likes being called out as such, but that's still a more vicious take than he was expecting.

"Well, maybe if you hadn't rolled over and let the Autobots walk all over you," he says bitingly, more than happy to assume that that's how that went down, because he'd like very much to blame this universe's Starscream's neutrality on Megatron, but it still doesn't...sit quite right with him, and it shows. He won't deny he wants power, to an extent, but mostly what that's meant for him is getting to do more exciting science, take more credit, and find a way to kick Strika out of Megatron's good graces so he can be second-in-command instead. But it sounds so bad when Megatron says it. And those are definitely not his main talents.

Megatron glares at him. "The war ended well before I joined the Autobots. I'm not proud of how long it took me to see reason," he says pointedly, "but Starscream made his postwar career decisions pretty quickly. Like a scraplet leaving a malfunctioning ship."

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