Disclaimer: Transformers and all associated in this aren't mine... unless I decide to bring in someone. Which will not happen... probably. Ish.

Author Note/Foreward/etc: Just an idea I needed to get out. Sequal to the movie, if Starscream hadn't managed to leave the planet. He'll also be sommat OOC... But I hope to generaly get all their personalities right.

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If anything, being captured by a small, squishy endoskeleton species like humans would be the most humiliating deffeat to any Decepticon.

----------------------- One month after the final battle over the All Spark

Everything had been cleaned up by now. Though buildings and streetways were still being repaired, the only thing that really remained of the final Decepticon and Autobot throwdown were the final desperate scrounges for news coverage on the entire event. There had been some trouble between the general citizens and government between the coverup, but that wasn't to be his problem.

A firm alliance had been established between the U.S. Military and the Autobots, which had been provided a command center far from civilization and large enough to easily accomidate their size. Though the Autobots tended to be more spread out than concentrated, to a certain extent. Bumblebee stayed strictly with Sam and Mikaela, Ironhide stayed with Commander Lennox, keeping any tabs on military involvements. Which mostly involved searching for the two remaining Decepticons on the planet. Barricade had been keeping very low profile, along with Starscream. The more troublesome of the two would have to be Starscream due to his jet form, and the fact that none of the Autobots on the planet had arial anything. Aside from the basic long-range weaponry.

The best they could all hope for was arial support from any Autobots that recieved Optimus's signal. If there was any chance of Decepticons reassembling, it would most likely come from Starscream. Any Autobot that looked past the basic battles knew that the lead arial commander for the Decepticons and his (former) leader, did not get along well. There had been more than one victory given to the Autobots thanks to Starscream's attempted backstabbing and overthrow of Megatron. And like all back stabbing schemers, Starscream ran from a fight when the odds were against him, relying more on speed and deception. While that made him easier to deal with as far as a straight fight, since he would hardly ever try anything risky on his own behalf, it made him hard to deal with and predict at the same time. Being a coward made him smart to make up for the lack of bravery. The personality concept of his most fit with the human term 'snake'. And like a snake in the grass, he was damn hard to find, and catch. It was a wonder why Megatron had kept him around at all.

As for Barricade, trying to track down a slightly altered human police vehicle should have been easy with police recording. Such a thing was turning out to be not so easy. The military had been trying to set up check points, using the special radiation scanners made exactly to sense the radiation coming from a Transformer's spark. There had been ONE time. Only one time that the reading had come up positive, but Barricade had immediatly sensed the danger of being caught and fled. Satelite tracking had been put into effect, but had been quickly blocked and taken down. Later reports of an F-22 Raptor having gone AWOL aproximately the same time of the tracking black out, and subsiquent loss of Barricade's location, confirmed Optimus Prime's suspicion that the two remaining Decepticons were in contact. And probably even more cautious now. The pilot that made the distress call that his plane had diverted from course was not recovered.

In order for the two of them to survive without any other support, they would have to rely on each other. Until more Decepticons arrived. If they arrived.

This was the very reason the two Decepticons needed to be captured; to find out the current status of their side, so to speak. Would they simply fall apart, break ranks, and scatter, refusing a leader with Megatron gone? The bot HAD had a rediculous drive to win and for power, but there were others like Starscream that could take over. Eliminating the threat before it became a threat was a very good idea.

Their forces were rather stretched, and only Ironhide was regularly at a military base, a place that would be difficult for any of the other Autobots to reach quickly should something actually happen. Ratchet was medical, their ONLY medical, and couldn't be risked to go out completely to fight, though such a fact made him feel demeaned, no matter the logic.

All of these factors had been determined with part of the heat of the final battle over the All Spark was still lingering, keeping them all on high alert.

Almost a year passed before anything happened.

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A large blue truck with red flames was driving down the highway, transporting military goods. Ratchet had stated, with some sullen undertones, that he would be fine at their new base of operations alone. Optimus Prime had used the oportunity to go outside, and check up on Bumblebee and Ironhide. Commander Lennox had requested through Ironhide to bring a shipment of parts to the military base since he was coming to visit. After all; you couldn't get much safer than having an Autobot trasport materials. Perhaps it was by sheer luck that he was on his way to the base. Optimus's communications relay cracked to life 40 miles from the base,

"Optimus! Pick up the pace, we've got Starscream in the hangar, and he is definetly not happy about being caught." in the background he could hear gunfire and even some explosions. Ironhide's transmission ended with cutting off his apparent leap into battle, "Oh no you don't-!"

"Hang in there Ironhide." it was all he could do to speed up, alerting over the communications system to Bumblebee and Ratchet that Starscream had been found, and Ironhide was engaged.

------------------------- About ten minutes ago---------------------

"Keep it coming, get all the jets back in from their routine runs." ground crew waved their arms to indicate the pilots should move foreward slowly.

They weren't to say a word about the inspection once inside the hanger, and the doors were closed and pilots leaving the planes. Once the pilots were out of the main hangar, they were all scanned with Spark radiation scanners. When one had come up positive and with high readings, he was quickly asked which jet was the one he had come from. Commander Lennox had immediatly informed Ironhide through his radio.

The harpoon-like cables were already in the hanger for this very reason, and when human military quickly began to move out and arm all of them, Starscream had immediatly become suspicious. Quick bioscans revealed adrenalin rushes and increased heartrate. The straight forward attack with the heat-enhanced weaponry made Starscream quickly start up his engines and try to take off. Slightly too slow, one grappled harpoon had shot out to one of his wings, sliding along the hard metal surface before catching in the nooks and crannies to hold fast. He'd immediatly opened fire, increasing engine power as he felt another grappling harpoon latch onto the tail of the plane. Deciding that being in jet form made him close to useless, Starscream hadn't hesitated to transform. And thus the major difference between an Autobot and Decepticon was revealed; Starscream fought. Hard. And without restraint on any sort of weaponry, unlike Bumblebee.

Outside, Ironhide had finished relaying the message to Optimus Prime, already rolling out to the hanger and transforming. Something that had been just in time since Starscream busted through the hanger ceiling, full thrust and breaking off one of the grapplers, shooting down and fully transformed. It was at this point that Ironhide had cut the communications with literally tackling Starscream out of the air to stop him from escaping. Nearly all of the jets inside had been shot to pieces already.

------------------ Military Hanger, present moment

"GET OFF ME AUTO-SCUM!" Starscream's raspy voice had demanded, trying his best to remain airborn as he was tackled, quickly hitting the ground and further ruining the hanger's ceiling. He could feel another grappling harpoon latch onto one of his arms and quickly pull it to the side just as he had gotten it to aim at Ironhide, point blank. Another spray of bullets rained accross the hanger, igniting his thrusters again and twisting to flip Ironhide over so he was the one on the ground, free hand gripping his chest plating while the other proceeded to beat his face to scrap. Which hadn't worked so well with the grappling harpoon around his arm, lessening the hits. He could feel a steady pull on the cable attatched to his ankle, looking back and trying to jerk it forward, seeing one of the surviving jets having been quickly hooked to the cable and pulling.

"Give it up Starscream, there's no way you're getting out of here!" Ironhide had taken the oportunity to plant his fist into Starscream's face in order to knock him off and throw him to the ground. Which the cables made a bit difficult, since they held him down, and the Decepticon wasn't about to just let him go to get out and leap on him again. There had been a good ammount of tussling and restricted rolling due to the two cables, the humans there merely trying to stay out of the way and avoid getting shot, or trying to get a clear shot at one of Starscream's limbs.

The fight had reached its standing point when Ironhide had managed to get Starscream somewhat pinned with one arm stretched out and the other leg stretched out due to the jet, having been careful to keep Starscream's missile launcher arm away from the assisting human jet.

"I'LL TURN YOU INTO SLAG!" Starscream had raged, thrusters firing up again and managing to throw of Ironhide once more, quickly aiming his missile launcher at the jet and firing. The fire was indeed a success, and the target jet went up in a large blistering fireball with shrapnel flying in result. Right after the missile had been launched, Ironhide had fired a shot from one of his dual plasma canons at the arm, successfully damaging the missile launcher and almost tearing off Starscream's arm. Said Decepticon screamed at him and swung his now free leg at him, which was caught and resulted in another tussle.

After a few minutes of playing 'who can get the better leverage', Ironhide won with pinning Startscream and trying to tie down the remaining arm, while trying to keep it pointed at the Decepticon to save whatever humans were left here. He quickly tried to punchout and damage the jet's thrusters since they'd caused enough trouble already, "Quit struggling you creten! Optimus wants you alive! For the love of... QUIT IT!" it was hard to keep balance with Starscream doing everything he could to throw the other off. What was even harder was to capture him alive instead of just blasting his spark into oblivion and ending it. Which would have been much easier. And he'd always been able to blast his targets to slag before.

Ironhide also wanted to rip out Starscream's voice capacitor to stop his unpleasant screeching. And it would be fair payback for Bumbebee's heavily damaged voice capacitor, courtesy of Megatron. But they needed him to talk, so that wasn't an option. Though who was to say it wasn't an option later...

----------------------------------- Approximately 10 minutes later

"Optimus, everything is under control. Bitchy, but under control." Ironhide radioed, standing over and watching the restrained Starscream with a careful optic. The Decepticon was clearly seething, straining hydrolics and gears clearly audible as he growled and struggled in the heavily reinforced cords of steel.

"Let me go Autobot! I don't know what you're hoping for by capturing me, but it's not going to work!" Starscream had raged on at him in human and in Cybertron language, cursing any way he could think of. Ironhide just took a breath and waited for him to finish yelling,

"You done yet, punk? I'm talking here." Ironhide growled, speech pattern following Clint Eastwood's, the chosen pattern he'd found on the internet, "How long until you arrive? I bet we can transport him," he gave Starscream a bit of a kick for emphasis, "in that big cargo truck you're carrying on behind ya." Starscream just ground his gears in anger.

"That's a good idea. I'm afraid he'll have to be frozen for the transport," he didn't add on 'like Bublebee had been',"or risk exposure. Do the humans have their CO2?"

"Yeah, they do. We'll start freezing him now so we can leave as soon as possible."

"Roger. Optimus out."

"Ironhide out."

And with that, the communications link closed, Ironhide tilting his head slightly, looking down at Starscream and recieving the Decepticon's piercing death glare. He didn't like the reminder of Bumbebee's capture and subsequent brief experimentation or whatever had happened, but he sure as hell wasn't sorry for Starscream.

"... Sucks to be you, punk." all he recived in return was an angry yell and more struggling as the humans moved in to freeze him, moving out of the way and crossing his arms, not about to transform back into car form until Starscream was frozen solid with no chances of something going wrong. The devistated air hanger was the human's problem.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TBC

Maybe.

My god I haven't written a story in forever. And I wanted to get rid of this idea. If enough people like it, express yourself through the reviews. Should Starscream lean toward the Decepticons or Autobots? He's a bit of a wild card, so could go either way.