Skywarp and Thundercracker remembered when Starscream returned to Vos. They couldn’t recognize his voice at first - a vocalizer that had once trilled beautiful, lilting tones had been damaged beyond repair. Now their trinemate sounded like a choking turbofox. It was too expensive for them to replace - medical attention in the struggling city-state was expensive enough, let alone a full out replacement of any more intricate and delicate parts - such as a vocalizer. They joined the decepticons.

Thundercracker and Skywarp remembered the first time they saw Megatron beat Starscream in the middle of the command center. They watched, horrified, as their leader’s claws sunk into Starscream’s wings, twisting and tearing them, as his powerful fists shattered his cockpit in rage. Then he left him there.Thundercracker and Skywarp hurried him to the medical bay. Starscream still went back to Megatron’s rooms that night. They remembered the first time that Megatron had used Starscream’s vocalizer in a personal attack against him. Thundercracker had been surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner. It wasn’t even that bad of an insult, Megatron had simply called him ‘screechy’. However, even Skywarp wasn’t dense enough to not have noticed by then that his vocalizer was an extremely touchy topic. Starscream reclaimed his berth in their quarters that night. And the war carried on, Megatron and Starscream’s relationship continuing on as it had for vorn before that - simply without them making up their mistakes to each other every night by fragging each other's processors out. Skywarp and Thundercracker’s relationship with Starscream continued to sour as before everything started going wrong they could have been called an ideal, perfectly content trine, by the time that Megatron had announced that they were to leave Cybertron, they could barely stand to be in Starscream’s presence. So they started calling him Screamer. He started staying in Megatron’s quarters again. He didn’t talk to Thundercracker and Skywarp much after that.