The Devil's Advocate

Chapter 1

The first thing Arcee registered, after the ink-blots of unconsciousness finally cleared from her stuttering HUD, was pain. Her helm echoed, the metal lining it vibrating stubbornly as if it'd been subjected to a sander, and her stinging wrists were damp with what felt like congealed energon.

As internal systems slowly slogged back online, a flashing circuit of aches and cramps started to fill in her sensor nodes. Her neck cables protested as she stretched them, angling her ringing helm up and only managing to support it against a cold wall at her back that pressed her winglets flat. The surface of her optics sparked, a dim firework show across her HUD as they tried to filter some light through the darkness. All she could clearly see was the numb blue glow around her hands- definitely energon, along with thin lines of something shackling them together- and the hefty outline of something clamped on her ped wheels. She felt herself frowning, forced her servos to shift and found them firmly anchored to somewhere above her by a noose of chain dangling from her manacles.

"Those restraints should look familiar to you, Arcee. After all, you had me clamped in them not so long ago." The painfully familiar voice was like ice being poured over her audios, encasing her processor and trickling down her throat towards her spark core. Like a fang-fringed shadow, Starscream slinked into view with lofty wings framing his grin.

"What the frag did you do to me?" Arcee's glossa burned, either from the acid in her words or the raw croak of her dormant vocaliser. Her neck snapped backwards, letting her look closer at the manacles around her wrists with clenched digits clawing into her hands, and sparing her from Starscream's eternally insufferable smirks. The cuffs themselves were certainly of Autobot branding, but it was the bulky lock around her wheels that confirmed the truth; they were the same clamps that held Starscream's wings together, only modified to stop her spokes turning even when she forced her engine power way past what her energon stores could properly fuel. The cuffs were stubbornly strong, and Starscream just laughed at the futile rev of her engine as it eventually flagged and died.

"I just did what any opportunistic Decepticon would do when faced with an Autobot wandering all by herself," he said, approaching just out of kicking range even when his chin was such a promising target, as he knelt down to drill his optics into her properly. When she refused to meet his glare, he forced her helm up with claws biting into her chin. "I used my initiative."

Her processor still struggled to keep up with the course of events, never mind recollecting those that had left her abandoned here- wherever 'here' was. Wrenching her helm away from him and his cold, snarling vents only made the talons scar and sting deeper into her faceplate, but the pain was worth at least being able to pretend he wasn't so close to her. He eventually let go, allowing her helm to sag and drip energon down her shuddering chestplates.

"Whatever you have planned, the Autobots will find me before you can do it," she hissed through clenched denta.

He laughed again, the soundwaves grating against every active node in her protoform. "Oh, they would find you... if Decepticon ships didn't mask all life signals inside their hulls."

The scuffed and charred black plating beneath her legs looked much more familiar now- she'd found Starscream trussed up and thrown aside on the exact same material, just before he'd pleaded Optimus for amnesty that they all knew he didn't deserve. 'The Harbinger...'

"Besides, now's not the time to be worrying yourself about rescues," Starscream said with all the sympathy of an executioner, pushing back onto his peds with his wings flaring up behind him. "I just wanted a little... talk with you, is all."

Arcee would have laughed if she wasn't sure her vocaliser would snap in half from trying, but her twitching winglets got her amusement across. "If you kidnap and cuff all your conversation partners, that's probably why you don't have any left around here," she suggested.