Chapter Text
"You can't be serious."
Wheeljack didn't often feel the need to question Skyfire's choices... but Skyfire rarely made choices that were so very questionable. Science Outpost Titan Skyfire was famously even tempered, easy to deal with, and even sweet. By the standards of a Titan, anyway. He was by far the most active of the living Titans, certainly the most willing to talk to anyone living within his halls. The one most people might think would neither need nor want a city speaker of his own.
One might think.
Skyfire's hologram flickered as he feigned sitting across the desk from Wheeljack, making a fine show of threading his fingers together. If not for the unnatural silence of it, if not for that annoying flicker Wheeljack had been working on for weeks, he would have thought he was in the room with another mech.
"I've made my choice, Wheeljack."
"But him?" Wheeljack threw up his hands. "Primus on a pogo stick! He'll have half the labs set against the other in a week!"
Skyfire's wings twitched. "I like him."
And that really was all there was to say about it. The Titan had spoken, after years of interviewing and rejecting city speakers presented to him. He had chosen. The suite of the city speaker was to be made ready-
For Starscream of Vos. An obnoxious peacock of a seeker who had managed to annoy and offend every mech on the station during his short time there.
"Did we do something? We can get rid of whoever pissed you off."
Skyfire tilted his helm. "I'm not sure that I follow."
"Skyfire, you saw him. You met him. He'll destabilize the entire community for the fun of it."
"You're repeating yourself, Wheeljack." The hologram flickered again. "Do you trust my judgement?"
Wheeljack put up a hand. "Do you want an honest answer to that?"
Skyfire had always welcomed, even encouraged disagreement before. The Station Titan gestured for him to go on, but Wheeljack had nothing else to say that he hadn't already said a dozen times. No fresh arguments, only the evidence of his own optics and audials. "I feel like your judgement may be clouded."
"Ah." Skyfire nodded, a thoughtful look on his carefully crafted face. "Could you... humor me? This is the first time I've felt a connection to a city speaker in a long time, Wheeljack."
"You feel a connection to him?"
"From the moment he set foot in the landing bay."
Starscream studied his face in the mirror, inspecting the way the new paints seemed to change the shape of it. It made his optics look positively enormous, and did wonders for the shape of his chin. A strong pattern.
Skyfire's pattern.
His mouth curved up in a smile that even he would admit was smug.
And why shouldn't he be smug? How many city speakers before him had gone before Skyfire only to be turned away by the infamously choosy Titan?
He was in a truly elite club indeed, unlike the swarm of speakers who served the likes of Navitas, Metroplex, or Caminus, those great lazy beasts.
The glitter impregnating the paint caught the light beautifully when he turned his helm. Oh yes, this pattern did suit him wonderfully.
But that was just a bonus. His optics fell on the box on his berth, full of his most precious possessions. Data pads full of schematics and the precious tools his teachers had often confiscated from him, things he'd been ordered time and time again to give up so that he could properly devote himself to the service of the great Titans.
It had never occurred to the fools that had thrown speaker after speaker at Skyfire that a Titan serving as a research station and outpost might value a city speaker with similar interests. Starscream was certain he had only been sent to try his luck in an effort to humble him, rather than any actual attempt to install a new city speaker.
I could use a lab partner, if you're willing.
They had been the first words Skyfire had said to him as he'd connected to the Titan's powerful processor. Starscream had never encountered a Titan so... so lively and aware. Connecting to Skyfire had been like diving into a pool of fresh oil after vorns of wading through sludge.
A lab partner. A laboratory of his own, free to do research as he saw fit.
Or... did Skyfire mean to use him as a pair of hands? Just one more piece of equipment?
No matter. Starscream would find a way to do just as he pleased.