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Starscream’s memory banks were overloaded with the millions upon millions of years of experiences that made up his life, and beneath all the eons, the dreams of his earliest few thousand millennia were buried and left to degrade. But sometimes, those half-forgotten dreams somehow managed to float to the surface of his consciousness, and he remembered the life he’d once imagined for himself. In what he now thought of as his youth, he had dreamed of being the leader of a glorious, galaxy-spanning empire that flourished with scientific and technological innovation, cultural sophistication, militaristic prowess, and an unrivalled quality of life for its citizens, who rightfully adored him.
Well, he’d realised his youthful dream in part at least, as he was a leader, and had been for a very, very long time, but he didn’t lead any eudaimonic empire that spanned the stars. Instead he led an endless escape through the yawning void of space from the eldritch enemies that sought their ultimate annihilation in the most final and fundamental sense. Flourishing wasn’t an option – survival was the best they could hope for, and it was what they fought for every moment they existed. Leisure, recreation, exploration, art and the pursuit of self-fulfilment were all luxuries that they couldn’t afford; absolutely everything was funnelled towards the maintenance of their ship and the propulsion systems that kept them ahead of the ravenous hoard that relentlessly pursued them. Their lives were harsh and regimented – there was no freedom and nothing that existed for the sake of pleasure; all they could hope to do was simply exist and escape.
Their ship was an amalgamation of several Titans, principally Metroplex and Carcer. Resources were consistently scarce, and they’d long ago adopted the Carcerian practice of using the bodies of their dead to patch up their vessel; they couldn’t afford to waste anything. Starscream vaguely remembered having once had a vain regard for his appearance and a tendency to change his frame on a whim; such a thing was inconceivable now. Like the rest of his people, if some vital part of him was lost or damaged beyond repair, it was replaced with whatever was on hand; aesthetics got no consideration at all. His frame was a mismatched patchwork of grey, unpainted metal. The parts that were lost that were unessential were left unreplaced; Starscream made do with one optic these days.
He remembered – or at least he thought he remembered – that so unfathomably long ago he had rebelled against the society he had been sparked into because simply surviving hadn’t been enough for him; he’d wanted to live. He’d wanted everything he’d dreamed he could have, and to be all he dreamed he could be, so he’d challenged the system that said he had to have less, had to be less. Now he enforced a system far more restrictive than the one he had once rebelled against, because it was the only way to survive. Everyone had to conform to their exacting role as a cog in the machine that powered their survival, because to allow them to be anything more was to ensure their doom. Survival was the best Starscream could offer his people.
Starscream entered Metroplex’s brain chamber, which had been transformed from how it had once looked so many million of years ago. Like all parts of the vessel, and all its inhabitants, areas of it had been hastily repaired with mismatched materials, leaving clear evidence of where these repairs had taken place, while all aesthetic or otherwise unessential damage and wear had been left unattended to. Unnecessary walls and bulkheads had been removed and repurposed, making the chamber more cavernous, and the floor had been lowered in the process, so that Metroplex’s brain module now hung above Starscream’s head. A jungle of cabling now crisscrossed the chamber, managing to fill a substantial amount of space in the expansive room, as many of Metroplex’s functions had been rerouted and repurposed for the sake of efficiency and necessity.
The glyphs that danced over Metroplex’s brain module shone in the dimly lit room with colours that were now unusual aboard their vessel; they didn’t bother with coloured paint and light where it served no practical purpose. Anything brightly painted would be unable to shine anyway; almost the entire ship was very dimly lit to conserve power. There were less glyphs lighting up the brain module now as well – as Metroplex had aged and struggled under the strain of his burden, his mind had decayed, and the glyphs had dwindled in frequency and number as an outward sign of this inward degradation.
The most notable change about the chamber however was Windblade. She had been frequently found in here in the old times, but not as she was now. Now what remained of her body was suspended just below Metroplex’s brain, with much of the cabling that snaked across the room connected to her dismembered frame, keeping her fed and charged, and linking her into the titanic brain module and the other systems of their vessel. Her limbs and lower torso had been removed and used to patch parts of the ship, and now cabling poured out of the places they had been, while her head and spark chamber had been opened up to allow for more wiring to reach into these most intimate parts of her. Her optics and spark glowed unnaturally bright blue in the low light as more power passed through her than was ever intended for her frame, while her lips moved incessantly. She rambled an incoherent stream of consciousness as she processed the mental operations that had become too much for Metroplex to handle on his own.
energon flow rerouted as the princes kept the view pulsing in core the light infinitely turning and turning in the widening gyre for what demands of the resonance solar panel zeta repositioned primarily ready in the endless night the people devour the city the mind burns like a fire
Metroplex had lost so much of his mind that she was now more the brain of their vessel than his brain module was.
Windblade had been sparked from Caminus – a Titan who had allowed himself to be dismembered and strewn across the land for the sake of his people, and Windblade had inherited a similar sort of tendency for self-sacrifice. After they’d been forced into endless retreat, Windblade had become completely dedicated to maintaining Metroplex’s mind and interpreting his thoughts, and when it had become clear to her that Metroplex would be unable do what he needed to do alone, Windblade offered herself up to be integrated with him completely. Starscream had been glad she’d volunteered – it would have been even more painful for him to forcefully have her dismembered and assimilated into the ship’s processes.
In the very rare time he had to himself, Starscream came here to just listen to Windblade; his brief moments here with her were the one remaining luxury he still afforded himself. Some absurd part of him hoped that he’d find some kind of revelation in her riddles that would somehow solve everything, as though she were a divine oracle and not just a system processor spitting mostly nonsense, but he came here mainly because he just wanted to be with her. He wanted to see her face, and to hear her voice. She had been the one thing that had made his bleak existence into something resembling a life once, and now these moments were all that remained between them.
That being said, now that Windblade was part of the ship, Starscream liked to think she was always all around him, watching over him, and when he cared for the ship, he thought of it as caring for her. But he had no idea if she was actually aware of him anymore; he didn’t know how much of who she was, and how much of what he had deeply loved about her, had been overwhelmed and obliterated when her mind had been completely merged with Metroplex’s. For all he knew, her mind could be something completely incomprehensible to him now, and completely unconcerned with things like love and individual people.
But whatever may be, she was his ship, and he was her captain, and he would care for her till the end, and if she went down, he’d go down with her.
Starscream reached up and brushed his remaining fingers against her cheek as he gazed into her glowing optics, which looked towards him, but gave no indication of recognition, or that she actually saw him at all. He ran his hand down what remained of her body, before he pressed his lips to what little plating was left beneath her spark. He wished he could ask to softly kiss her spark again, as he had in their most deeply intimate moments back when they had so much more than what little was left to them now.
antimatter annihilates emerges eternity filtration system backups online outside in the cold distance a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun converging towards the completion through corruption lightning veins beat like a drum succour drawn in the evanescent eternal ultraviolet sensors twinkle redolently
Starscream wanted to believe that she was happy the way she was – she had always revered the Titans, so he hoped that now she was a part of one that she was fulfilled. He had to believe that she was happier than he was at least. Starscream’s life, and lives of the people he led through the void, were empty of any joy or meaning, but maybe her life was actually worth living, and that would be enough for him to keep going. It would be enough to make all of this worth it.
Windblade processed the navigational data that plotted their vessel’s endless escape from their pursuers, and sometimes Starscream wondered if maybe she’d found them sanctuary or salvation and was guiding them towards it. Once their progenitors had escaped their home universe to find refuge in this reality, where they had encased themselves in metal bodies to interact with the material world and eventually come to forget where they’d come from and what they were running from. But eventually, after millions upon millions of years, their pursuers had found a way to break through and hunt them down in this universe, driven by either unrelenting hunger or unrelenting hatred – after all this time they'd been unable to comprehend their enemy’s motivations. Did they feed on their sparks because they were their natural predators from their home reality, or did they seek to destroy them so utterly simply because they despised them? Either way, their progenitors had escaped them once, maybe they could find a way to do so again.
Or maybe Windblade kept them going because she was like him, and she couldn’t bring herself to give up no matter how hopeless and pointless the fight was. Neither of them had ever been willing to surrender, something that had once fueled a raging conflict between them, before it had become one of the things that had drawn them together. It was something that Starscream had loved about her, and after everything that had been stripped away, maybe that piece of who she was still remained.
where the ocean meets the sky beta junction power at 42% gestalt therapy non-stable state singularity salve of baryonic matter the centre cannot hold for the celestials continuing onwards along the watchtower necrotronic sapients obelus the magnetic force to forge forever sailing