#vanoodle

He’d just spent hours trudging through miles of prickly, growth-infested filth, after all. He was more than ready to make the call that it was all worth burning into ash and abandoning that way.

If he’d had the choice, he would have flown away, or at least called a space bridge to bring him back to the Nemesis, but neither was an option. He was banished from the Nemesis, and his poor choices in so-called allies had now left him stranded and without a T-cog. And thus, stuck on the useless, muddy ground.

He skulked his way through another stand of useless greenery. By now, the ping of branches scraping against and breaking on his armor wasn’t even enough to even make him twitch. His paint probably looked disastrous, but as much as it grated to know that he looked the vagabond he now was, avoiding it was simply impractical.

A faint sound in the distance had Starscream going still, tuning his sensors to the surrounding landscape. Most of the wildlife was frightened off by his size, but some of it was surprisingly fearless and occasionally damaging. His leg had a dent from where the largest of them had rammed him with its headgear, before he’d managed to get it with a rocket and vaporize it.

The scan did not show any more of the titanium moosebot lookalikes, but it did reveal several of the world’s top species (calling them intelligent seemed like giving them too much, even despite the reasons for his current… plight).

They were making far more noise than him, and Starscream scoffed. Funny, how a relatively large non-native species could still make less disturbance than a pack of irritating natives.

Still, for all of the noise they had been making, they were surprisingly close. A consequence of the many hills and valleys of this region, he supposed. It was one of the reasons he had stuck to it for so long. There was a relatively large number of hiding places within a small geographic area, even if it meant a lot of tiring, unfortunate trekking.

It didn’t make the natives any less welcome in his territory, and Starscream growled to himself, stomping a pede in a fit of pique. “Lousy little humans,” he hissed. “Just what do they think they’re doing out here, anyway? Why,” he started, slowly, “Something could happen to you out here.” An idea was occurring to him, and it brought a slow smile slinking across his faceplates.

Rather than hunker down among the trees and let the dim light of dusk in the mountains the way he usually did when trying to hide his presence, he stood tall, and brought up one arm, sighting the missile down the length, narrowing in on the humans as his weapon…

Didn’t fire.

“What??” Starscream shrieked in anger, clawing at the mounting. There was organic debris jamming the launcher, he could see, enough to activate the safety mechanisms and prevent the missiles from launching, but in the dim lighting, he couldn’t make out the extent of the blockage.

It didn’t matter. His hissing shriek had alerted the humans. Starscream went tense, waiting for the little creatures to try something.

The lead one, the largest of that group, let out an audial-piercing shriek. It seemed to serve as a signal to the other organics, who all started to make the same grating sounds and fled, stumbling and running into each other as they scrambled, dropping the items they carried with the sounds of shattering glass and splashing liquid. The ones with lights didn't all drop them, but it was a near thing. 

“…Well,” Starscream muttered to himself, as they half-ran, half-fell their way down the slope and out of sight, “that’s one way to get rid of an organic infestation.”

--

That should have been the end of it.

Starscream certainly set the whole affair out of his mind, in favor of continuing his plotting. He needed a T-cog before anything else, before he could even think of plotting to deal with his current issues with the Decepticons and Megatron in particular. It was complicated, now, by the need to avoid the Autobots as well, after the disastrous altercation with the annoying yellow one. He didn’t have the time to start bothering with more pesky humans getting underfoot.

So of course, like pests, they were getting underfoot everywhere.

It wasn’t during the day, either. That wasn’t a bad thing for Starscream—currently in this climate, the local plant life lost most of its mass, which made hiding in daylight difficult, considering his metallic exterior blended in with nothing in the area. In the dim light, he could better escape notice.

It wasn’t the normal roaming period for the local life forms, as far as he knew, which made their sudden appearances at dusk and at night all the more troubling. And irritating—considering his Autobot problem, smashing one of their precious organics would not end well if they found out. Considering his luck, of course, they would. Better not to risk it. 

However, that meant his options for dealing with his sudden human infestation were limited, usually to hiding somewhere, in silence, until they left again. It was irritating, and more than that it was degrading, a terrible thing for a Seeker who was once Second in Command of the Decepticons. 

His third evening in a row hiding from humans, and he'd finally had enough. He'd picked up on two separate groups wandering around and making nuisances of themselves. Never mind that he'd been able to successfully hide from both groups by sneaking into the space between them and letting both pass by him. That was entirely too much effort to put into avoiding humans.

"Let's see them come back after this," he hissed to himself, rubbing his hands together in glee. He tracked the group's progress, as they started to come to the crest of the ridge. 

He wasn't in hiding at all. No, that would keep them from discovering him, but it wouldn't drive them out of his territory, so to speak. Instead, Starscream was standing out in the open, still and tall. They might mistake him for one of the surrounding trees, if he stood still, which he was. The only thing that would make him stand out were his red optics, glowing in the dim light. 

He could tell the moment the humans began to notice him. They began to slow in their pace. The little group of them bunched up, closing the gaps between them and getting in one another's way. Tactically speaking, they were a perfect target. Starscream had since cleaned the debris out of his missile launchers, but he didn't raise them. He waited until every last human was watching him... 

And then he shrieked. It was a hissing, terrible sound, as unlike anything native to their planet as he could make it. 

Just like the first group, this one was scared out of their wits. There was plenty of shouting, this time around, but they didn't flee just yet. They were pointing their light beams at him, as though in a futile attempt to blind him. It hardly worked, since the beams were wavering so dramatically. 

Their courage only lasted until he started advancing on them, still making his ungodly shriek. 

 "Fuck this!" One of them shouted, and turned to flee. The others tried to hold out, but they were wavering, clearly disheartened by losing one of their number. 

All it took was one particularly fierce glare from him and the remaining humans scattered. They were only hampered by the way that some of them refused to take their optics off of him, as if afraid of what he'd do. 

 Starscream let his laughter echo after them as they fled. 

---

He discovered what the fuss was about only later, once he'd found the Harbinger and started researching he human information network. 

 It was almost impressive, how much useless information they managed to constantly collect. Filtering through it all was nearly impossible, and drove him to frustration and banging on the console more than once. 

He only stumbled across it hunting for any information the humans might have leaked about the status and location of their Autobot allies. Instead, the entire forum was abuzz over what seemed to be blurry, grainy images of a tall and distant figure with glowing red eyes. 

The humans all seemed to be theorizing about ghosts and the occult. Starscream snorted derisively, more than ready to simply move on, when the location for one of the images caught his attention. 

Those coordinates were for the area Starscream had been hiding out in, and it only made him scoff more. Humans. If there really was some sort of creature there, he would have seen it.  

Only… Wait. The packs of humans infesting the area morning after he'd first been seen, the flashes and the screaming... 

He took another look at the images. The quality was still terrible, but now that he was looking for it, he could see the point of his helm, the outlines of his wings. 

Starscream cackled. "Oh, this is rich! Me, an icon of terror among the humans." He smirked down at his console. "At least they know to recognize a superior being when they see one! Why, if they weren't squishy organics, they might even be worth my time." 

Only, he had far more important things to do than gawk at human media. The protoforms required preparation before he could use them as intended, after all.