capitalh | WHAT YEAR IS IT!?!?

Who: Starscream, The Decepticons, Sollux, and potentially, YOU
Where: Variable, the Decepticon Base and the Mojave/California wilderness generally.
When: March 18th and beyond.
What: Starscream wakes up from his visit to Scary Jail and has a lot of personal bullshit on top of probably a pretty angry boss to deal with. Then he goes energon scouting. Reluctantly.
Warnings: Some medical talk in the setup, discussion of SCARY JAIL TORTURE, probably some gay. Okay definitely some gay.

[Options 1 and 2, CLOSED TO THOSE WHO COULD FEASIBLY BE AT THE 'CON BASE]

It's a few days before he regains proper consciousness.

Starscream’s last encounter with the AI and put him completely down for the count. He failed to escape, of course. It hadn’t been for a lack of trying, in fact he had come painfully close on his last try, but then he got caught and at that point he just didn’t have the energy left in him to put up enough of a fight. He’d gotten another good zap and then his internals went into automatic shutdown, an involuntary emergency defense mechanism designed to divert all of his remaining energon to prolonging the life of his spark for as long as possible.

Help did finally come, as he had predicted before passing out from Energon depletion, but he certainly wasn’t awake to witness it. Fortunately it came from (relatively) friendly forces and not humans as he had feared and Orion Pax had suggested. So he’d been carted back to the Decepticon base, completely dead to the world.

When it came down to it, his symptoms were fairly straight forward. Energon starvation was easy enough to fix; a few transfusions and he would be back up to acceptable levels, though their limited resources meant that he was only just hovering above what was strictly necessary. Starscream has a vague recollection of hazily waking up a few times, confused and enraged and swatting weakly with his one good arm, desperate to get his claws on what he assumed to be the antagonizing AI, but those moments were few and far between and he can’t even remember what put him back out again. The real problem was the implant; it hadn’t taken long to locate and remove, of course, but the procedure had required him to preferably be unconscious, so perhaps it was a blessing he was in such a bad way.

Once the offending piece had been removed though and he was no longer starving to death, it is only another 12 hours or so before he opens his optics for what feels like the first time in ages. It’s slow coming at first, and then the situation hits him with a sudden, startling clarity.

He bolts upright, snarling and digging his talons into the berth he is laid out on, optics wide with panic.

----
[HERE'S OPTION 2]

It doesn’t take Starscream long to get up and moving around after that. What’s notable is the manner in which he seems to be skulking around the ship. It’s not in his usual, scheming, swaggering kind of skulking. He seems almost dejected, likely troubled by the thorough ass kicking and pathetic state in which he was retrieved in. Of course he’s not going to admit any of this out loud, because he’s an emotionally constipated piece of shit, but it’s easy enough to infer. Beyond that he just seems to be in a particularly foul mood, and oddly unwilling to go back outside the relative safety of the ship unless directly ordered to do so.

----

[OPTION 3: OPEN TO ALL]

Sometimes he has to go outside though; without a complete formula there’s still naturally occurring energon that needs to be gathered and recon to be done. Those who know what they’re looking for might spot a fighter jet zipping around where it doesn’t belong. He’s carefully cloaked from showing up as an obvious threat on scanners, but those with the know-how can easily tell that he is at least Cybertronian, and can therefore potentially engage him. Those without the know-how might be lucky enough to catch him in robot mode, digging around in the wilderness (desert, forest, whatever floats your boat) for supplies to bring back to the Decepticon base.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Starscream snarls wordlessly, too preoccupied by the dead signal he's getting back to strike back with any sort of suitably witty banter. He is also increasingly aware of the hole that he's dug himself here by threatening Airachnid and then not having any of the muscle to back it up. Probably better to cut and run.

So, without any warning, he looses a shot at her to cover his ass while he transforms and tries to fly off.

Injured as she may be, Airachnid's reflexes are nothing if not sharp. It also helps that she's lucky. She manages to evade the surprise shot with little enough effort so that she can simultaneously shoot two webs at Starscream from her already-raised hands. As if he's getting away that easily.

Both webs hit their mark, fastening to the bottom of the retreating jet. Starscream curses and kicks on the turbo, straining at the other end with ferocious determination. The heat from his thrusters manages to burn through one of the webs, but the sudden release causes him to spin out. He transforms in midair and plows, upside-down and backwards, into a tree.

Determined as ever though, he still fires off two rockets directly at her from his rather undignified, upside down position, hoping to keep her at bay until he can get back on his feet.

Airachnid watches with satisfaction as Starscream crashes into the tree. What a perfect place to keep him immobilized while she...asks him some questions. She takes the beginning of a step forward, preparing to shoot another web at him, when the rockets fire. She's caught in mid-movement, but there's just enough time for her to put both feet on the ground and leap ungracefully to the side.

She just barely evades the rockets, which whiz by her feet as she dodges. Thankfully, the direction of the leap finds her landing on her good side. As she regains her bearings, she becomes keenly aware that Starscream may be one step closer to escaping. She shoots another web in his direction and scrabbles to get up in case he attacks again.

Starscream is already back on his feet by the time the other web is coming at him, but before he can jump out of the way and take off again the web clips him, adhering him to the tree by the right wing and arm with a yelp.

He does a ferocious amount of tugging, firing off both blasters repeatedly in the hopes of preventing her from sending another blast in his direction before he can free himself from the first.

Airachnid gets to her feet as the web hits Starscream, giving her enough time to recognize how precarious this opportunity is. When he starts shooting, she darts behind the nearest thick tree for cover. It's not ideal, but it's better than nothing.

She sticks her head and arms out into the open, despite the blasts coming her way, and shoots two more webs. This time, she aims specifically for Starscream's free arm and torso.

There's not much he can do in the face of that; being half pinned leaves little room for maneuvering, and a enraged squawk signals that the webs have hit their mark, leaving Starscream fully stuck to the tree, only his head, legs and the tips of his wings still visible.

He struggles frantically, trying to at least free his claws enough to start hacking at the web because like hell he's going to let himself get stuck like this, but even moving his wrists is proving to be a challenge. What is this stuff made of, anyway?!

Seeing that Starscream has effectively been immobilized for the moment, Airachnid steps out from behind the tree and walks toward him carefully. She keeps her hands up in an attack posture, though she's cycled out her webs for her blasters.

"You'll freeze if you know what's good for you," she says. She stops a few feet in front of him and lets her blasters charge up a little. "We can do this the easy way, Commander, or we can do this the hard way."

Starscream laughs nervously, effortlessly switching from his prior aggression to rather undignified groveling.

"You'll have to forgive me, but I honestly have no idea what the "this" you are referring to could possibly be," he says in a level tone, the corners of his mouth twitching. He does freeze (reluctantly), and stops working at the webs, but what she can't possibly see are the internal self diagnostics he's running to at least get a text message out to the other Decepticons...

Airachnid regards him for a moment, her guard very much still up. "You're going to answer some questions -- truthfully -- and I might just leave you in one piece." She doesn't intend on hurting him unless she needs to, but she's not about to clue him in on that. "Let's get started. What's the size of the Decepticon presence on this planet? Why are you here?"

Alright so he might be a bit of a gigantic unrepentant coward, but he isn't about to just spill valuable information to a fellow schemer like Airachnid just like that.

"Oh? And what could you possibly need information like that for, if you have no intention of returning to us?" He squirms a bit, flexing his claws under the web. "Come now Airachnid, you can't expect me to share such sensitive information without some sort of gesture of good faith?" he holds a polite little smile on his face, dodging the question while still, he hoped, managing to convey a willingness to cooperate.

WHAT YEAR IS IT!?!?

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