A/N: Sorry that that was a bit of a wait! Wow, this is my most-alerted story! (If I got as many reviews per chapter as people who watch it, wow. That would be unheard of. XD) I'm glad to know that people are so interested in it!

3. Master

The orn after, Starscream pronounced me of sufficient aerial skill to discontinue our daily lessons. “But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.” I had no idea what an iceberg was, but I got the idea. “There’s more I can teach you, if you’ll deign to show up every so often.”

It seemed I wasn’t as free of Starscream as I’d hoped, however, for in the orbits following my discussion with Optimus he seemed to be everywhere I went, with the exception of my private quarters. I did my best to ignore him, but curiosity finally got the better of me. I cornered him on the site of our most recent “coincidental” run-in, the streets just outside of the Academy.

“Why are you still here?” I demanded of him. “Don’t you have duties to attend to, or something?”

He stared at me for a klik, then proceeded to laugh. I scowled, missing the joke. When he was through, his face was still lit with amusement. “You are my duties.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, taken aback.

“Didn’t Prime tell you?” he returned. I shook my head and he quirked an optic ridge. “Then I’d hate to spoil the surprise. Why not ask him?”

Optimus just blinked his optics once. “Because he’s yours,” he answered. I must have looked just as astonished as I felt.

“What… mine?”

Prime nodded. “Legally, he’s belonged to you since you were a sparkling.”

“But…” I stammered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What use would a protoform have for a slave? Think, Nova. How would you have treated Starscream?” I opened my mouth to speak, remembered the beaten, hate-filled Decepticons bound to other Autobots, and closed it again. Insufferable though Starscream may be, he at least seemed somewhat concerned with my well-being. “You see?” Optimus went on. “You’ve grown. Our conversation three orbits ago showed me that you are now mature enough to take on the responsibility. I’m not asking you to change immediately… only remember that, though they wear a different symbol and have optics of a different color, Decepticons are as Cybertronian as you are.”

“You might have told me,” I accused Starscream later.

To which he replied in his usual insolent manner: “Why, so I could have spent the last twenty vorns fetching you rust sticks? Hardly.”

“I don’t need this,” I grumbled. I already had everything I could possibly want—I would be the first to admit that Prime spoiled me.

Starscream smiled in his bitter way. “I’m sure you’ll find some use for me.”

I threw him a dubious look, reveling in it. “You’re a Decepticon. What do you have to offer?”

The comment glanced off of him as he raised a hand to tap on his helm. “Then don’t think of me as a slave, but as a teacher. As I said, I’m not finished with you. There’s much more I can teach you, if you’ll believe me.”

“What can you teach me that I can’t figure out for myself?” I scoffed. “I have the Academy for that.”

He fixed me with a smirk and raised an optic ridge. “If you hear only one side of a story, you’ll never know the truth,” he responded cryptically.

“I know the truth,” I growled. “I don’t need you twisting it.”

Starscream turned away with a shrug. “When you get curious… just ask.”

Eventually I began to notice things. It was subtle, so subtle that at first I didn’t notice that I was noticing.

It started with Starscream. It made sense, since I saw more of him than any other Decepticon—than any other mech, once I thought about it. The way even his smirks had moods… the pleased smirk, the amused smirk, the “I’m not really happy but no slagging way are you supposed to know that” smirk, and the ever-infuriating “I know something you don’t know” smirk. The way he listened, interested but hiding it well, to any scientific discussions that came within the range of his audios. The way his optic shutters were constructed, a unique and intriguing design meant for shielding the sensors from bright, high-altitude sunlight, which gave him slanted, elegantly curved strips of metal just above his optics and lent his face some of that exotic beauty. The glyphs engraved into his helm and along the upper edges of his wings, spelling out concepts that made Starscream who he was: speed, agility, freedom.

Over the vorns I grew to know the other Seeker nearly as well as I knew myself. All his quirks, all his habits, became intimately familiar. I even learned something of his history through his words and actions, scattered references to a far-gone time that I pieced together like a three-dimensional puzzle. In this manner I learned of his “brothers”—his wingmates, Thundercracker and Skywarp, who were closer to him than family. I couldn’t imagine being so completely connected to two others… much less could I imagine being separated from them for so long. I also heard the name Skyfire for the first time, though this character in Starscream’s past remained shrouded in mystery for some time. And occasionally, oh-so-rarely he referred to another mech, an enigmatic figure who filled much of Starscream’s memory. As curious as I was, however, he never let slip even the mech’s name and was careful to fall silent only nano-kliks after alluding to him.

“If he were here,” he would murmur to himself, or “I wonder what he would think of that…”

Then, to my utter horror, it was the rest of the Decepticons. I began to recognize them, to remember their names and personalities, though I didn’t care in the slightest, absolutely not. Where once they appeared as formless grey blobs, my optics grew to see that they were as diverse as the Autobots, varying in size and shape and altmode. I could see the faded colors beneath vorns of grime. Their optics varied in shade also, ranging from a deep purplish color to pale pink to nearly orange. Starscream’s optics, rather than the flat red I had once seen, had an orangish tint which resulted in a fiery gradient altering its intensity depending on his mood.

Starscream, as it turned out, had been right—though I occasionally found some menial task for him, teaching was the most valuable service he had to offer. He taught me complex aerial maneuvers and instructed me in the almost-forgotten culture of the Seekers, despite my protests that this knowledge was useless to me. He never repeated his offer to tell me what the Autobots allegedly did not about the Decepticons, but neither did I forget it.

Having Starscream as a near-constant presence wasn’t nearly as aggravating as I’d thought it would be. This miracle was due to a strange pattern of behavior that I’d noticed within decacycles of learning that he was mine. He would complain mightily and do as he pleased, to a point… but if I told him to be quiet, he wouldn’t speak a word, and if I told him to leave me alone, he would vanish until I sought him out.

I graduated from the Academy on schedule, if not at the top of my class then at least in the highest tier. My lines were humming in excitement all decacycles, and not just because I was finally free of that accursed campus with all its scornful classmates and snobbish instructors. No, I was quite eager to get this ceremony over with in favor of the promise of the orn after—that is, Optimus’s promise, in accordance with tradition, that I would be upgraded into my adult form. A real body at last, one not towered over by Prime and Ironhide and Starscream. One worth caring for and modifying and maybe learning to fight with.

A decacycles before graduation, I went with Optimus and Starscream to choose my new body. The medic who would oversee the transfer was Ratchet, one of Prime’s close friends. I had met him several times over the course of my life, and despite my aversion to medics I rather liked him. He had never treated me like a sparkling… and even better, he had never remarked on my wings or my optics.

Optimus and Starscream stopped just outside. When I looked back at him in confusion, Prime said, “He’s waiting inside.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“You’re mature enough to choose for yourself,” Optimus answered. By the tightening of Starscream’s mouthplates, I could tell that he disagreed… but his opinion mattered nothing. “Make yourself who you want to be. It’s easier without us looking over your shoulders, believe me.”

I nodded and continued on.

Ratchet was waiting in the first hall when I entered, red-and-white arms crossed over his windshield, one foot tapping impatiently. “There you are,” he said when he saw me. “You’re late.”

“Traffic,” I replied automatically.

“You’ve got wings, so use ‘em. No traffic in the air but drones.” He beckoned me to follow him. “Given any thought to your new body?”

I had. It had been a source of much consternation within me, endless back-and-forth arguments in my processor. Why, for much of my life I would have given anything to be like everyone else—wingless, wheeled, and groundbound. If it meant an end to the staring, the muttering, the utter humiliation of being a Seeker, I would swap this form for that of a normal Autobot in a nano-klik. If it meant separating myself completely from the slaves, disposing of my accidental resemblance to a Decepticon, I would do it.

And yet…

Now I knew flight. I had fired up my thrusters and shot into the air, sliced through clouds with ease. These wings of mine had felt wind rushing over and under them. The had caught the subtle currents of Cybertron’s atmosphere and carried me into the sky. Could I give up that for the sake of opinion? Could I really keep myself tied to the surface for the rest of my existence?

The same questions had chased themselves around and around in my head for vorns, but now I needed the answer.

You’ve got wings, so use them, Ratchet had said. They were terribly useful, when I wasn’t traveling with a normal Autobot, when Starscream and I could fly wherever I needed to go.

It would be impractical to take wheels now that I’d learned to fly. But you could adapt. Why walk if I could fly? To escape them. They call you Decepticon behind your back. Optimus would disapprove. But he would understand. Starscream would disapprove. Who cares?

Make yourself who you want to be. But who did I want to be?

By the time we’d reached Ratchet’s workshop, I had come to a decision. It was less logic than gut feeling, but in the end that made sense.

My mind could change someday; my Spark wouldn’t.

“I’d like a Seeker model, please.”

The operation went without a hitch, as Ratchet told it. Since I was offlined for most of it, I had no memory of it.

While I was offline, I dreamed. This wasn’t so unusual; sometimes a mech’s processor ran active during recharge, flitting half-conscious through old memory files or spilling nonsense patterns from imagined optic images. Perhaps because my processor had been roiling with thoughts of flight, I dreamed of the sky, endless azure with gold-pink clouds scudding across it.

My half-online processor maintained some thought. With my mature body, I would be nearly a fully-fledged Cybertronian. But there was still one more hurdle to clear… I needed to earn an adult name. According to Prime, “Nova” had been the designation chosen for me by my creators. An adult name, however, wasn’t something anyone could just give me. It had to be earned.

When I emerged, I took great satisfaction in seeing their faces—Prime’s smiling, the mask retracted, so proud that it warmed my Spark; Starscream’s shocked at first… I’d finally managed to take him by surprise!... before sliding into a knowing smirk.

“Not even blue optics?” he teased.

“It suits you,” Optimus soothed. I lifted my chin slightly, proud of myself (though, really, Ratchet should get the credit for most of it). In my mature form I was now taller than Starscream, though still smaller than Optimus. Ratchet had explained the slightness of my frame as the practical build for Seekers. There was little excess metal, but what there was was light and strong. In make and model I strongly resembled Starscream, but there were enough personal touches to clearly differentiate the two of us. I had no desire for a particularly bright or optic-catching color scheme, so I had been painted mostly silver and black, with highlights of intense red. The Autobot sigil held a place of prominence on my sleek wings—that should get their attention. Let them stare as they would. I had made my choice, and I wasn’t about to turn back.

A/N: That should tide you over for a while... hopefully the wait until the next chapter won't be as long.