When Starscream created his clones, he expected many things. A loyal army, his ticket to becoming ruler of the Decepticons, a chance to plot with great minds identical to his own. He did not expect to end up with a coward, a liar, a hoarder, a jealous whiner, an exhaust-licker, a femme and an egotistical spike.
He was under no illusions, he could admit to his own flaws. He realized quickly that they each showed the very worst of every trait he had been jeered at and mocked for. When he first realized, he had seethed at the utter unfairness of it all, of course. After a bit of time though, he figured it was something he could work through. They had their uses. They were just as strong and intelligent and, technically, capable as he was, they just needed training.
That’s why they were up here on this cursed grey rock in the first place. The longer the clones stayed online, the more their memories from him seemed to fade, the more they became their own bots. If he wasn’t trying to raise an army, it would be sweet. What it meant in the end was he needed to teach them to fight, to manipulate, to just exist.
Maybe he should have terminated them all the moment the coward clone failed on earth. He must be getting sentimental.
If he were less sentimental, he would have snapped at them to get back to training. Instead, he watched them, watched their sparring devolve into play fighting, wrestling in the dust. He watches them, noting the ways they deviate from his instruction, how their wings twitch and their claws scratch against each other. #3356214 was the first to pull back, hissing and trying to buff his scraped paint with his servos.
#2928102 would be decent at fake outs if the rest didn’t always anticipate him lying. #3350211 has potential, clearly, but keeps stopping to gloat over the other clones and getting knocked down. #2737681 tried, but kept backing out at the last second, too afraid to do anything but dodge and wait for another bot to turn their back, then running into #2716057 who did the same. Starscream definitely had his work cut out for him.
*
The colouring of the clones did not escape him. Part of him wished that they had all come out exact copies of him, giving the whole ‘clone army’ thing a more cohesive look, but he could appreciate things how they were. It was familiar. Nostalgic even.
“Starscream?” #3356223 asked him, looking up at him from his self-assigned station a foot behind him. “Are we going down to the organic planet anytime soon?”
“I’ll send down a couple of you in a weeks time,” He lied through his dentae. There was no way he’d send them back down there so woefully unequipped. Not after the last two. He was meant to be going over a training plan, but instead, he was watching the clones out of the corner of his optic.
#3356223 had the purple/black colouring, the teleporting ability, even the sense of humor on the rare occasion he could get over his fear of his own shadow. It would be easy to look at him and see Skywarp, but it was all wrong. Warp was too stupid to be afraid of him, never showed him his due respect outside of the battlefield, rarely worried about the consequences of his actions. They were so similar on the surface, but the actual personality was gone.
Even knowing this, that they were so different, Starscream couldn’t help looking back at the clone. It had been so long since he’d seen another seeker, let alone a seeker from his own trine, his eyes kept drifting.
He’d debated teaming up #3356223 and #3350211 for some future mission, to at least have the image of Skywarp and Thundercracker back together. But #3350211 was too volatile, more so than Cracker ever was, and bowled over #3356223 whenever they sparred. So perhaps, that was an idea to put on the rear heating unit.
*
Given the fate of yet another clone, the training had not been going well. He’d had to hold off watching them spar for a few weeks to try and figure out where exactly he had gone wrong and came back empty handed every time. Coming back to their training, he was completely unsurprised to see their scheduled sparring sessions had become a free for all.
He’s watching them, resisting the urge to correct them so he can see where they’re making repeat mistakes and where they self-correct. #2943107 keeps losing his footing, scrambling after #3350211 claws first, wings twitching down in anger. #3356223 was cowering behind #2967105, almost unwilling to fight at all. The femme, #3133502 was flying, just out of reach of #2928102 and #2737681.
And that was where Starscream’s gaze had stopped. There was something so familiar about her movements, the way she stayed low to the ground, like she was urging them to reach, but not teasing. #2928102 tried to fake her out a few times, pretending to go one way or to give up before jumping for her again, and failed each time. #2737681 laughed, a real laugh, and undoubtedly cheered them both on, the pedlicker he was. Still, it couldn’t have escaped #2928102 that he could easily reach her by flying as well, and in any other situation #2737681 would be shrinking back from the altercation or choosing a side.
He’s so confused, wondering just what’s happened in the time he’d been away to change their behavior, when he catches it. The fluttering of wings. The sheathing of claws before a grasp. The swoops and turns around and between the others. Closeness. Care. Connection. Joy.
Starscream hadn’t taught his clones anything about Seeker body language, hadn’t though he would need to, debated on whether they would ever see the light of Cybertron to use it. This, though, was proof he should have. Because He remembers that fluttering, those gentle claws, the swoops and laughs and kisses and belonging he felt with his own trine. And that's what this was. A trine forming, right in front of him.
*
"Are those our designations?" #3133502 had asked him while he sulked over the loss of another clone. "Just numbers?"
She was holding on to scraps of the failures’ berths where their number had been scratched into the metal.
#3370318. #271657.
“Don’t we deserve real ones?” She looked at him, “Are we really just soldiers?”
Maybe another time, he would have said yes and shoo’d her out of the room, going back to his plotting and seething. He shouldn’t care, they should just be soldiers, numbers for him to manipulate at will. Perhaps he was getting sentimental in his age and his loneliness, but just like he recognized himself in each of them, he recognized others too. Old friends, comrades, seekers he hadn’t seen in millennia.
“Of course not,” He huffed, not bothering to pretend she couldn’t see through his misdirection. He had thought that at some point. “You all have designations, proper designations befitting seekers.”
The femme looked at him, disbelieving at first, then confused, her optics narrowing the way his own did when he refused to admit he didn’t know something.
“What is… a seeker?”
The question itself pained him somewhere deep in his spark. How long had it been since their fleets had fought under the Decepticon banner? Since Vos became a wasteland? Who else was there to teach these newsparks how to be seekers?
Well. He signed up for this. Starscream’s plans to kill Megatron could wait.
He’d told the Femme to gather the other clones in the barracks, while he went back to the captains quarters to think. Once again, he had failed spectacularly. For once though, this failure had given him something almost better than what he would have had before.
A clone army was nice and all, would have done him wonders in taking down Megatron, he was sure of it, but these failed experiments were more than just copies. They weren’t just simpler versions of him. They had different wants, needs, schedules, cares… loves. It astounded him. He didn’t have a clone army in the end, he had seekers.
Functionally, the first seeker clutch in eons, since the fall of Vos. A Whole line of fresh bots who had no idea just how important they were or how to be. So that’s what Starscream would do. He would teach them how to be. Not just warriors, but real bots.
*
“#3133502,” He said, stepping up to the femme, “Your official designation, given to you by your commanding officer, Starscream, Air Commander of the Decepticon army, is Slipstream.”
“#3356223,” He continued with the next in line, “- Your official designation is Skywarp.”
“#2737681… Sunstorm.”
“#3350211… Thundercracker.”
“#2928102… Ramjet.”
“#2967105… Thrust.”
“#2943107… Dirge.”
He’ll have to rewrite the training schedules, find the time for learning battle strategy, body language, written language, seeker culture and biology, and (if he was hopeful) Cybertronian geography. The idea of introducing his clones, his seekers, to Cybertron proper is a pipe dream, but one he can’t help fantasizing about.
Looking at them now, squabbling and laughing and positively fluttering in excitement for their new designations, he thought that dream may not be as far off as it seems.
