-1The Art Of Revenge
Chapter Two
A/N Thanks to MeowthTwo/Anne Clothier for the use of her OC, Dr Syn. He gets a brief mention.
Three Weeks Later
"Okay, if he keeps to the same pattern he's been keeping these last two weeks, he should fly by here in the next two hours or so." Sideswipe informed his brother. They had stashed the items they had gotten nearby that day, and had selected hiding places not visible from the air a week before.
"Remember, Sunny, you hold him as still as you can while I search for his offline button, because we'll never get it done if he's awake and aware and wriggling." Sideswipe said.
"Yeah, sure, Sides, we've been over the plan before. It might be an idea to hide and wait for him, if he's early and sees us, he'll change his flight paths, and we'll have to take a few weeks to figure it out again."
Seeing the sense in this, Sideswipe ducked into his chosen location, and Sunstreaker quickly hid in his. They tied some branches together to conceal their paintwork, and waited.
Their patience was rewarded about a half-hour later as they first heard and then spotted Starscream flying fairly low, and obviously oblivious to the possibility of attack from below.
The Twins had practiced this bit. They both had, as twins, identical Spark beats, and when Sunstreaker gave Sideswipe a signal visible at ground level but not from above, Sideswipe counted ten Spark beats, while Sunstreaker did the same.
They both exploded from the shrubbery at the same time, just as Starscream's wings were in the perfect position to be leaped on and grabbed. Starscream realised they were there too late, crying out and twisting upwards to try and avoid them and gain altitude, but by then, they had hold of his wings and as one pulled the other pushed, sending Starscream into a spin. At this point, they would usually let go and hope they could get to him in time to bend his wings, or stuff wet grass up his engines, (or worse if they could find it,) but this time they had to be sure to get him down and keep him down to do what they had planned. Thus, they hung on.
The spin, plus their combined weight, brought him down as they had planned. As he landed, he converted to robot form, which they had hoped for.
"Get off me, you slagging Pitspawned glitch-heads!" he yelled.
"Ooh, what a nasty mouth you have their, Screamer." said Sunstreaker as he grabbed Starscream's head, pushed it into the soft earth, and sat on it. Although Starscream managed to twist his head to one side, Sunstreaker was too heavy to throw off, especially as Sideswipe tied Starscream's hands behind him.
They had never done anything like this to Starscream before, and Starscream began to get frightened.
"What are you doing? Why are you tying me up?" he cried. "Let me go, you Autobot scum!"
"You'll find out soon enough, Screamer." said Sideswipe, as he sat on Starscream's waist area. He started squeezing his hands under Starscream's back plating, but couldn't find anything that felt like an offline button, and he wriggled his hands and fingers to work them further under. As his hands brushed a cable, Starscream let out a hiss that sounded almost like he was enjoying it.
"Ooh, Autobot, I didn't know you cared. Do that again, that was nice!"Starscream said.
"Sideswipe, you're supposed to be finding something, not finding out what he likes! We don't give you pleasure, Starscream, just punishment for your various crimes."
"I can't find the slagging thing! Its not my fault he's enjoying it, the pervert!" grumbled Sideswipe, trying not to touch the various cables and wires that he kept running into. Then, abruptly, he found it.
"Goodnight, Starscream"!" he said, as he pushed Starscream's offline button. As Starscream realised what was happening, he cried out, a terrified "Noo!" which was cut off as his optics darkened and he offlined.
Sideswipe untied the arms, spreading them out either side so they didn't get in Sunstreaker's way.
"You'll have to do the first bit, Sunny, but I can join in the second bit, I know how to paint between two lines." Sideswipe said.
"Okay, bring over the stuff." Sunstreaker said. Sideswipe carefully brought over a small drum of paint stripper and a suitably-sized paintbrush. Dipping the brush in the paint stripper, Sunstreaker began daubing paint stripper on Starscream's back.
Half an hour later, Sunstreaker had done his part, and Sideswipe gleefully brought over a tin of heavy duty red paint and two more paintbrushes, as Sunstreaker carefully washed the remains of the paint stripper off Starscream's hide. Sideswipe sniggered.
"It looks almost good enough like that, Sunny." he said.
"It'll look better in red. C'mon, let's hurry up, if we take too long he'll realise we've done something else to him." Sunstreaker said.
"Hah, the other surprises we've brought will explain any time taken." Sideswipe said. "We just say we needed him to stick around while we got them. He doesn't need to know that we ordered them a week ago!"
Both of them picked up two paintbrushes, and they set to work.
They waited for the paint to dry before taking a hologram of their work for everybody else's amusement, tying Starscream's arms back behind his back, and then re-onlining him.
"Let me go! What are you going to do to me?" Starscream whined.
"Oh, we nipped off to get you something special, Screamer. Our order came in this morning, it's just for you, enjoy!" said Sideswipe, pulling open a piece of Starscream's plating, and tipping in the contents of a small plastic box. He pushed the plating back into place.
"We know you love organic creatures, Screamer, so here's about a hundred to keep as pets. We'll be going now, we'll let you undo your own rope, we know you can do it." he said. Then they left, laughing, and got on the road, heading back to Base.
Starscream could feel something crawling and pinging off his internal systems and under plating. "Eww, they ping and tickle, disgusting!" he cried, managing to get rid of the rope around his arms. Pulling at his plating, he saw a dozen crickets spring out.
"Revolting!" he cried, spinning around to try and dislodge the insects.
Pulling at his plating managed to get rid of most of them, but he could still feel them pinging about inside him, so he decided to go back to the base, and get Dr Syn to give him an insecticidal wash.
He was halfway back when some of them got comfortable enough to start chirping.
As it happened, all but a few of the crickets had gotten away by the time Starscream got back, and he got rid of the remainder himself, scratching under his plating until they hopped out. He must have looked very odd, gyrating and scratching just outside of the Decepticon base, but that wasn't what Frenzy, Barricade, Skywarp, and Thundercracker were staring at.
"Well, I'm not telling him, you know that Starscream will even lash out at the bearer of bad news." said Barricade. "I'm not risking my hide!" Frenzy very quickly said that he, also, was not about to tell him.
"Well, that leaves one of us flyers, a logical choice, I guess, as we're the closest thing he has to friends." said Thundercracker. "Skywarp, you're nominated." he said. Barricade and Frenzy quickly added their vote to Thundercracker's.
"Why me? Why not you, Thundercracker?" asked Skywarp.
"You have that useful teleporting ability, you have a better chance of getting out of the way." Thundercracker told him. "Anyway, you're nominated, so do you really want to wait till he finds out himself in a day or three and punishes us all for not telling him earlier? Anyway, you can point out that the time chasing you might be better spent getting that off his back. I doubt he'd like to fly about with too many humans - or other Cybertronians - seeing that."
"You have a point." said Skywarp. "All right, I guess I am the logical choice to tell our leader that someone has painted a fifteen foot high, bright red Autobot logo on his back." He headed towards the building Starscream had just entered.
Ten minutes later, a scream of rage was heard from Starscream.
"They've done WHAT? No !Those slagging twins! How DARE they!"