[Transformers] Ghosts of Cybertron (4/11) - written with raisedbymoogles
Title: Ghosts of Cybertron (4/11)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: What with exorcisms, possession, and the occasional kidnapping, it's a wonder Rodimus Prime gets any work done. Especially with a ghostly Starscream making trouble around the base. But when the stirring of Cybertron's restless dead isn't limited to sarcastic ex-Seekers... Who you gonna call?

Contains an assortment of pairings, general bot-sluttery, crack, humour, and Decepticon/Autobot... 'alliances'. And Starscream. Lots and lots of Starscream.

*

When Rodimus returned - somewhat the worse for wear, needing medical attention and grinning like fury - Starscream lost the ability to amuse himself by possessing people, so he was reduced again to simply bugging them for attention. Consensus around the base, though, was that the ex-Seeker was easier to tolerate now that he'd worked things out (sort of) with Skyfire and Silverbolt.

Not by much, though. "I still can't believe you," he was telling Rodimus, with an injured tone. "You went off on a dalliance with my killer-"

"I was kidnapped!" Rodimus protested, all wide-opticked innocence.

"Oh, I'm sure you put up so much resistance, Prime!"

"I did so," Rodimus huffed. "It's a matter of principle. Anyway, it wasn't as if I was idle while I was there."

"I don't need to hear details!" Starscream shrieked.

"Oh, fine, spoilsport. Just mark Targen on your star charts as a pacified system. Galvatron and I cleaned it out of slavers." At Starscream's dumbstruck look, Rodimus grinned. "What, you think we just shagged all that time?"

"To be frank, yes!"

"Not all of us are insatiable as you," Rodimus sniped, and ducked an insubstantial swipe.

"Anyway," Starscream went on, "I've got some news for you, as it happens."

Rodimus shot him a suspicious look.

"Does this involve what I've been hearing about you and Skyfire, Silverbolt, Tracks, any of the Aerialbots, or - and I have to ask what you were thinking here - Wheelie?"

"That never happened!"

"Sure, whatever you say."

"I mean it! I have standards!"

"Low ones." Rodimus leaned aside easily as a datapad shot past his head. "Now, now, what have I said about poltergeist activity on the base?"

"Fine. See if I tell you anything important."

Starscream began to sink through the floor. Just as his chin reached the decking, he smiled in a way that Rodimus was not entirely comfortable with.

"... like who else is haunting your base."

"What?"

But Starscream had vanished.

*

After a thorough search of the base, Rodimus came to the conclusion that Starscream was blowing smoke. He went to bed (somewhat early for him - he'd had an eventful day) content in the knowledge that things were still safe as houses for himself and his people, with no bothersome ghosts (only a slightly irritating one) to menace them.

An hour later, Red Alert was banging on his door, wailing about angry spirits and poltergeist activity and needing an old priest and a young priest. Rodimus, who was the closest thing Cybertron had to a priest, rolled out of bed and opened the door before he had fully awakened, listening to Red Alert rant until he'd spent himself. Then he yelled, "Starscream!"

The Seeker appeared almost immediately. "What!?"

"You know what!" Red Alert burst out. "Stop shaking the furniture in the common room!"

"I'm not doing anything!" Starscream shot up to the ceiling in indignation. "How dare you accuse me!"

"Oh, and I suppose if I go back there right now it will be all quiet-" Red Alert paused, a strange look on his face. "Red Alert here," he said to the air to one side, and Starscream and Rodimus respectfully drew back to let him listen to his caller over comm. "...I see. Yes. I will inform him." Red Alert turned back to him, optics pale. "A chair was just flung at Bluestreak. He's injured."

"It's not me!" Starscream protested, "I'd have to be in the room to do it, I like Bluestreak-" but Red Alert and Rodimus were already racing to the common room.

By the time they reached it, the furniture had settled down and the mechs present were cautiously starting to pick things up and get the room back to its normal state. It was still easily apparent to Rodimus that someone had done a number on the place, though - datapads had been flung all over, furniture overturned, odds and ends smashed or rolled into far corners. Even without Starscream's protestations of innocence, it was far more devastation than the ex-Seeker had ever carried out.

"Report?" Rodimus asked of the room at large.

He got back a confused babble - apparently it had started with little things, small objects moving by themselves, then built up over the last couple of joors to the crescendo that had resulted in Bluestreak taking a chair to the head and the rest of the room's occupants building themselves a sort of siege fort out of couches (this had been the Twins' idea). A few minutes of questioning established that no-one had seen anything apart from the flying objects, and that Starscream had definitely not been anywhere in the vicinity.

"I'm really okay," Bluestreak was protesting as First Aid explored the dent on the back of his helmet with gentle fingers and a sour expression. "I mean, I guess I'm a bit shaky, but it's not any worse than that time I hit my head on the bunk after Hot Rod - I mean, Rodimus - I mean, well, he was Hot Rod then - anyway, you remember, that funny little radio-controlled thing that started talking to me in the middle of the night..."

Rodimus was torn between maintaining his image as Prime, and acknowledging that the prank had been rather a good one - Sideswipe was grinning at him. In the end he contented himself with telling Bluestreak to take some time off duty, and wondered what, exactly, he was supposed to do next.

That part of the question was at least partly answered when Starscream popped out of the wall, followed by Skyfire and Perceptor (using the more conventional means of entering the room) carrying a number of complicated-looking scientific instruments. Silverbolt trailed in after Skyfire, looking like he'd been asleep and didn't particularly want to be awake.

"Starscream--" began Rodimus.

"He was with us all evening," Skyfire put in quickly. Rodimus shot a glance at Silverbolt, who had the grace to look embarrassed. "It wasn't him who--"

"Yeah, yeah, I know." Rodimus fixed the ghostly Seeker with a pointed glare. "But you've got some idea of what's going on, haven't you?"

Starscream hovered over Perceptor's scanning implements, apparently absorbed in watching him set them up.

"Me? What gives you that idea?"

"Because you said that someone else was haunting our base."

Starscream spared him a glance that was almost flirtatious in its pretended innocence.

"Did I say that?"

Rodimus sighed. The crack about standards had obviously been one step too far for Starscream's pride.

"Oh, alright," he muttered. "I'm sorry I implied that you'd taken advantage of my absence to shag half the base, okay? ... even if you did..."

Out of the corner of his optics, he saw Silverbolt clap a hand over his optics and edge behind Skyfire, the air around him practically burning with humiliation. Starscream abandoned all pretence of examining Perceptor's instruments and came to hover in front of Rodimus, high enough to force the Prime to look up at him, his smirk a parsec wide.

"And are you going to tell me how utterly indispensable, blindingly intelligent, and ravishingly beautiful I am?"

"Pushing it," murmured Skyfire, without looking up from his readouts.

"No," responded Rodimus with his own sweet smile. "But I'll consider not approving Chip Chase's request to let the paranormal investigation unit in here with those vacuum-cleaner things of theirs."

"You wouldn't."

"I'd hold the door for them and everything."

Starscream sank towards the floor, face all twisted up with indignation, but he seemed to have abandoned his game of pretending ignorance for the time being.

"It's only a theory," he said.

Rodimus folded his arms and leaned back.

"I'm listening."

Starscream cast a quick glance around at their audience - half the base seemed to have congregated by this time, and all except for the two scientists were watching him and Rodimus eagerly.

"You're not going to like it."

"Try me."

Starscream threw up his hands and drifted backward towards Skyfire - Rodimus suspected he didn't know he was doing it - as if seeking support.

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you." He paused for dramatic effect. "My best guess is that it's that medic of yours."

There was a confused pause, as most of the assembled mechs turned to stare at First Aid. For his part, First Aid fixed Starscream with a sour glare.

"Not him," Starscream huffed impatiently. "The other one. The dead one."

The silence that followed Starscream's proclamation was approximately as weighty as a very weighty thing. Most of the assembled - Rodimus included - had known Ratchet personally and mourned his loss nearly as deeply as that of Optimus Prime himself. With the Cybertronians' penchant toward cults of personality, there had been talk of erecting a temple in his honor where the faithful could come and be guided in his competent, yet cranky, footsteps.

"But-" Typically, the near-reverent silence was broken by Bluestreak. "But Ratchet is - was - he was a good person! He always fixed us, why would he wanna hurt anybody? Why would he throw a chair at me? - well, sometimes he used to throw things at me, but that was only when I did something stupid, and I haven't done anything stupid lately, have I, Rodimus?"

"Not lately," the Prime told him kindly.

"If it's any consolation," Starscream added, "I doubt he meant to. Being in this state can be... disorienting." His voice had calmed a bit, regaining the lower, more thoughtful tones he employed when he'd unbent enough to speak of his past. "I myself would likely still be trapped in that mausoleum if not for Rodimus Prime."

"And aren't we all grateful for that," someone (possibly Springer) muttered.

Starscream graced the assembled with a righteous glare. "Would you condemn one of your own to such a fate, oh noble Autobots?" he demanded. "Forever trapped in the nothing-world between life and death, condemned to wander and haunt those he once cared for?"

It was always uncomfortable when Starscream of all people had a point, ethically speaking. "So what do we do?" Bluestreak wanted to know.

Starscream opened his mouth to speak, then deflated and dimmed. "That I don't know."

*

"Are you sure you don't mind helping us?" Rodimus murmured into the dark.

Though he couldn't feel the ghost, he could feel his amusement. "Don't you want to help your poor dead medic?"

"Of course." Rodimus propped himself up on one elbow, peering into a spot on the ceiling. "But you don't owe him anything."

"Perhaps I do," Starscream answered in a low tone, and Rodimus remembered with a small shudder the role Starscream had played in the assault on Autobot City.

Whether the ex-Seeker was maudlin or merely contemplative about it, it passed quickly, and Starscream appeared before him, sitting comfortably in midair with his legs crossed. "But if you feel so strongly, Rodimus, you know how to entice me to do anything your spark desires," he smirked.

Rodimus laughed. "You're amazing, Starscream. I don't know what I'd do without you."

Starscream drifted closer, optics bright. "And?"

"And you're beautiful. And brilliant." Rodimus tilted his head in invitation. "And, hmm. Am I missing anything?"

"You'll get to them all eventually," Starscream purred, and descended onto the Prime.



(TBC)