"Cliffjumper spent most of his time on Earth wondering who'd betray him next."

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Title: (Re)boot to the Head

Warning: Captivity, gratuitous use of a character's paranoia

Rating: G

Continuity: G1

Characters: Cliffjumper, Jazz, Wheeljack, Constructicons

Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

Motivation (Prompt): "Hitting one's head" & "Priorities"

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Cliffjumper spent most of his time on Earth wondering who'd betray him next. Not that he seriously thought that the humans were in collusion with the Decepticons or his fellow Autobots were all Decepticon sympathizers. Well, not all of them. That would be kind of stupid. Then it would just be him versus the universe. It just wasn't logical that the entire war was being fought between secret Decepticons and real Decepticons. He was up to the task of holding the Autobot cause out of the mud by his lonesome, but that was a ridiculous thought(1).

No, he was fairly sure Sunstreaker was also an Autobot. He was also fairly sure the sociopathic ray of Autobot sunshine had a badly-hidden fetish for brig time. It handicapped their cause. They couldn't win the war from inside a cell.

Case in point: his own dilemma. Being in the Decepticons' clutches was never fun, and being in a Decepticon cell added an extra dollop of Abandon hope, all ye who get locked up here! to the gangs of fun he wasn't having. Not that he'd admit to wanting Sunstreaker here right now — never give away the true Autobots to the false ones! — but it'd be nice to have at least one 'bot with him he could trust. Sort of. So long as neither of them had a chance to indulge in a macho competition. They'd get to yelling about who had a larger gun or could kick more aft, he'd scuff Sunstreaker's precious finish, and they'd both forget that they were locked in with the enemy during the ensuing fight.

Put it this way: he'd trust Sunstreaker at his back in a fight, but not even on the same planet afterward. *Psycho.*

Cliffjumper onlined his optics, took a quick look around the dark, dank, and above all secure Decepticon cell, and wished very, very hard for Sunstreaker's crazed warrior presence. *Right here, right now: hard, fast, and take me with you when you break, baby.*

Oh,no. He was starting to sound like Jazz. It was pop culture osmosis, being constantly surrounded by radio and wireless frequencies that sounded exactly like everyone's favorite traitor(2). Maybe Jazz had picked up Earth slang with his famous mimic skills, but Cliffjumper bet Earth had actually adjusted to sound like Jazz. The humans had an amazing ability to adapt to what the universe threw at them, but although humanity was good, Jazz was better. Only the universe's best saboteur and spy could manage that feat. How had everyone else conveniently forgotten that laughable, lovable Jazz headed Special Operations?

Unless they were all in on the conspiracy, too, and Sunstreaker couldn't get his aft out of the wash racks long enough to see what was going on.

Which was entirely possible.

"Traitor," he muttered, and in the cell across from him, Jazz shook his head painfully. It wasn't clear if he was shaking his head at the mini-bot or at the strobing light show currently flashing through his cracked visor. Despite his dire suspicions over Jazz's real alliance, Cliffjumper caught the next comment before it left his mouth. He stuffed it away somewhere to complain with later. Why waste his voice when there was no one with authority to hear? Not that they ever did anything, even when he spelled out the traitors' traitorous traitorisms(3), but it was the principle of the thing. Autobots respected the chain of command, even if the chain was corrupt.

Besides, he might hate Decepticons, but even he had to admit that Jazz would be hard-pressed to sabotage anything while reeling around like a drunk in a box. He'd spent a few entertaining minutes watching the black-and-white Autobot stumble into the cell walls over there before he'd started flinching with sympathetic pain. Eventually, he'd stridently demanded the dumb 'bot "Sit the frag down!" He liked a good laugh as much as the rest, but laughing at someone's obvious pain was a Decepticon pass-time.

Soundwave had gotten the drop on Jazz well before the battle today, scrambling the majority of his visual and vocal circuitry and throwing some sort of curveball into his notoriously excellent balance. He'd been blundering around the med-bay like a newborn kitten for two days, beeping Morse code jokes to keep Spike from worrying — and let him know where not to be underfoot. Even an incapacitated Jazzmeister was an eerily quiet Jazzmeister. Easily-squished humans distracted by repairs beware: blind robots are still giant slagging robots. Jazz had been cheeping with annoying cheerfulness and creeping along with his back to the walls when everything went straight to the Pit this morning.

Cliffjumper only knew this because he'd been held back when Prime had summoned the Autobots to roll out against a Decepticon attack in Los Angeles. Literally held back, because that was the only way to keep a real Autobot off the field of war, even an Autobot on the disabled list after that incident with his cannon and a door that anyone could plainly see had been too narrow. Ratchet had pinned him to the berth with restraints to fix the damage "For your own good!"

That had, of course, been a blatant act of treachery meant to lead to exactly this situation. He'd been helpless to stop anything, even if he'd seen it coming. Jazz had been in his line of sight, as had Ratchet and Wheeljack. They'd been doing a fair job at the innocent act under his watching optics, but they were all professionals. Everyone knew Ratchet could lie his chevron off, especially when a mech was missing an arm ("Stop panicking, it's just a scratch. You're fine!"), and Jazz was probably held together at the weld seams by lies, none of which anyone could prove as false or, in fact, prove had been said at all. As for Wheeljack…well, he was Wheeljack. Wheeljack didn't have to lie. Wheeljack could invent a machine to lie for him. Then it would blow up to destroy the evidence.

And then Cliffjumper would wake up in a cell, because amidst all the other things going wrong with Jazz's internals, no one thought to check the mech's fritzing visor for Decepticon implants. As Starscream had gloated to the groggy Autobots, a battle in Los Angeles created the ideal opportunity for Skywarp to warp into the middle of the Ark's med-bay and cause havoc inside the Autobot base. Not that Cliffjumper would fall for that line, of course. It explained the situation perfectly, which made him suspicious. Perfect explanations were too convenient. Covert operations trained their spies to spot surveillance devices as a rule. Even giving Jazz a free pass this time — good actor he might be, but nobody voluntarily crippled himself with dizziness like that — surely the Autobots Chief Medical Officer wouldn't fall for that. It took a special kind of stupid to miss that big of a security glitch. Medics had many specialties, but stupidity was one kind Ratchet didn't study(4).

Meaning that it had been intentional. What had the Autobots come to that even the medics couldn't be trusted?

It made Cliffjumper furious that Starscream ordered Ratchet taken from their shared cell before the red minibot had finished telling the medic off for betraying them. The extent of Skywarp's mischief seemed to end at kidnapping the four Autobots in the med-bay at the time, but Cliffjumper could see it was obviously a cover for retrieving the Decepticons' undercover agents. Jazz might have been the — unintentional? Were the false Autobots aware of each other? - victim for this particular plot, but Ratchet was currently off being 'interrogated' by Soundwave. *Yeah, right. More like spilling his guts.*

What puzzled him was Wheeljack's continued presence in the cells. The abduction had been a complete success, so why was Wheeljack not being 'interrogated' as well? At the very least, he should have been giving a dozen excuses to get himself out from under Cliffjumper's scrutiny *Not that I'd believe him. Maybe he decided not to waste my time.*

If the little red Autobot pressed himself to the very front of his cell and risked getting shocked by the spitting blue bars, he could catch a glimpse of the mad inventor's foot in the cell next door. It hadn't moved in the four hours since Cliffjumper had regained consciousness. That worried him. Wheeljack's self-repair systems were boosted enough to handle explosions in his face on a regular basis. The foot he could see hadn't so much as twitched, however, and he was beginning to be more than a little concerned. He'd accused the scientist of trying to kill the Autobots before, but he honestly couldn't make up his mind if Wheeljack was a Decepticon sympathizer or just insane. When it came down to it, Cliffjumper really just didn't want somebody to die next door. Not wanting people to die was part of being an Autobot, after all.

If nothing else, Jazz's aborted escape attempt across the corridor during the second hour of captivity had caused enough noise to wake the dead — which was a poor word choice under the circumstances but aptly descriptive. Surprise alone should have caused Wheeljack to flinch if he'd been pretending to be offline.

Finally, Cliffjumper couldn't take it. He stood up and shook a fist at the ceiling, ignoring Jazz's inquisitive "Beedlebeep?" He had no other direction for his ire. "If you're going to take our medic away, then it's up to you fraggers to repair us!" The beeps turned into a more frantic message in Morse code, but he ignored it to continue shouting at whatever cameras were watching, "What kind of cowards are you, letting the enemy bleed to death? Yeah, stand proud and brag about how you sat by and bravely watched him deactivate from fluid loss. Ooo. Color me unimpressed, ya slag-eating bumper-humpers. Alert the media: Decepticons win by default!"

The code had settled into a constant message of "Shut up shut up shut up." Jazz had his head in his hands, blinded visor covered by his fingers. Either he was laughing too hard to change the message, or he'd given up in despair.

Cliffjumper obeyed no orders from traitors. He upped the verbal abuse. "—toaster-spawned ugly pieces of a rejected microprocessor like to take it up the crank shaft with a twist! I bet you'd kick turbopuppies if Decepticons didn't have the collective coordination of a joint-sprung trailer after Omega Supreme fu—"

"I'll fix you if you say one more word!" roared down the corridor, and the hands were definitely covering a smile on Jazz's face. The saboteur hid his smirk behind his knees, drawing himself into a small ball on the floor as Cliffjumper blared a wordless jeer back. *That's right, look at the shiny red minibot target with the big mouth. Jazz who? What, the poor, crippled, dangerous Special Ops 'bot? Pay no mind. Heeeere, Decepti-creep…*

Multiple feet stomped down the corridor, and Cliffjumper's scowl deepened. If Jazz's visor were working, the two Autobots would have exchanged calculating looks. Four 'bots; possible to overcome, but difficult. Jazz was pretty limited. Four Constructicons would not be taken down by a lone minibot. Three, maybe, but the Decepticons had not been gentle when they'd dumped Cliffjumper in this cell. His right arm had a problematic hitch.

The loudest stomper stuck his face near the bars and sneered, face twisting unpleasantly. Not that he'd ever been astonishingly attractive, but the smugness added an edge of ugly that inspired the onlooker to pound it off again. And, oh, Cliffjumper felt inspired. "Ya keep up the noise, shortie, and we'll take you apart, orders or not," Bonecrusher snarled. "Learn your place, Auto-bint: down on the floor with the rest of the minis!"

Inspiration often felt like stymied rage, in Cliffjumper's experience. "Orders, my drive train! You couldn't take me if I lay down first."

"Is that an invitation?" The snarl widened with anticipation, and the red Autobot beat a hasty retreat to the back of his cell.

"That's just disgusting," he snapped, deliberately misunderstanding the threat for innuendo, and Bonecrusher's face went blank. Then it warped into a patently overdone leer as the bulldozer Decepticon caught on with an almost audible click. Cliffjumper feigned illness that…wasn't all that feigned. He'd do a lot of things for his — theoretical — fellow Autobots, but interfacing with the enemy?

Ew.

Priorities, he had to remember priorities. Bonecrusher was uglier than a Dinobot's rear end and louder than the front end, but he wasn't the one giving orders. No, that was Scrapper. The leader of the Constructicons, unfortunately, was paying no attention to the minor mini-bot drama; instead, he focused on Jazz's miserable form in the other cell. The other Autobot had curled into a ball that prominently displayed the damage done by their captors. The sparking, fritzing visor added nicely to the effect. If Cliffjumper didn't know better, he'd say Jazz wasn't in any shape to fight his way past tin toy soldiers, much less four Constructicons.

"You can cut the act," Scrapper said crisply to Jazz as Bonecrusher made kissy noises and Cliffjumper gagged back. "We've already examined your damage. No Decepticon will be falling for that trick today." Jazz moaned faintly, too all appearances not acting, but Hook and Mixmaster followed Scrapper past his cell without a second look. The background sizzle of the cell bars suddenly cut off next door, and Cliffjumper glared at Bonecrusher as Hook disappeared from sight. Scrapper and Mixmaster observed whatever was happening in the other cell impassively, sharing a low-voiced conversation and ignoring the other two Autobots entirely while the dull clanking of repairwork started.

Bonecrusher stuck a hand through the bars and gestured obscenely, but they both knew the invitation wasn't serious. The second Cliffjumper moved toward the front of the cell, Bonecrusher would back off. The Decepticons weren't stupid. The Autobots had taken advantage of that game too often to get out of these cells in the past. Yeah, ew. But war sometimes called for disgusting solutions. He'd interface with Bonecrusher if he thought there was actually a chance of that trick working. Without a distraction, Cliffjumper and Jazz were stuck here. That left Wheeljack at the mercy of three Constructicons next door, and Ratchet…probably deserved the benefit of the doubt. He might not be a traitor. Maybe. Starscream was a lying fragger, but maybe he'd been telling the truth about their abduction, as ludicrous as the idea of getting truth from Starscream's chronically-untruthful vocalizer seemed.

Two Autobots down and out. Jazz and Cliffjumper locked in cells nobody was going to open. The only other bid he could make for freedom was of the expensive kind. Decepticons loved targets. Goad them into coming into the cell for a beat-down, and he might be able to take advantage of that. Bonecrusher had a temper, but what would catch the attention of the other Constructicons? *C'mon Jazz, use that clever processor of yours!*

The clanking on the other side of the wall stopped abruptly with the satisfied slam of a hatch. "As we thought, it was a simple case of broken leads." Hook emerged from Wheeljack's cell to join Mixmaster and Scrapper. He made an elegant gesture back into the cell, sounding bored, "Autobots. No design redundancy at all. A few crossed wires, and they fall offline."

"Hey, be fair." Across the hall, Jazz jolted in place, and Cliffjumper couldn't help but be relieved. Wheeljack's words dragged woozily, but he was awake! "I wasn't designed for war."

Hook didn't deign to make a sound so undignified as a snort, but it was heavily implied. "You weren't designed at all. An assembly line made you out of waste scrap."

"Oh, I was designed." That was, uh, not woozy. No, not at all. "I was designed for the chaos of invention, not for the manufacture of stable structure. I was designed for you, much as I hate to admit it."

Bonecrusher twitched, his head turning almost against his will, and the quiet murmur of words between Mixmaster and Scrapper cut off as even Hook straightened. The steady chug of a racecar engine was unique to Earth, a sound that clicked in Cybertronian joints and coaxed their engines into trying to match the cycle. Wheeljack's engine revved, accelerating from a comfortable stand-by to the quick vibration characteristic of true high-performance propulsion. The audible sensation thrummed through the floor and walls, less of an invasion than a pervasive osmosis. It didn't just change the other mechs' individual rhythms; it absorbed them into itself, made them Wheeljack's through nothing more than reverberation. They were following his body even before his words went after their minds:

"I was made to measure alkali and acids to absolute precision, to find new elements and their limits," the inventor's voice dipped lower, weaving through the subsonic purr already touching circuitry concealed behind armor, and the last place Cliffjumper had see that expression had been on Spike when the human had been hit on the back of the head with a board. Which was odd, because Mixmaster and Spike otherwise looked nothing alike. "All the mixtures you haven't dared try, I've perfected. I can create things you've never even dreamed of, Scrapper, and build them on my own. Crude by your standards, Hook, but my primary standards are those of an inventor. I'm not made to conform to your standards. It's not in my design to build within the limits or follow the rules. It's my job to experiment and survive to try again. Where I go," the scientist drew out slowly, hanging the Constructicons on his every word in breathless realization, "you follow."

The engine thrum subsided, ticking gently as cooler air reacted against hot metal. Four Decepticons, attention riveted by whatever they saw in Wheeljack's cell they hadn't seen before, stood staring in frozen silence.

Across the hall, Jazz uncoiled. Cliffjumper smirked. He was never sure who was a true Autobot on any given day. Sunstreaker wasn't here to back him up, leaving him no option but to rely on what traitorous mechs were at hand. As the saboteur ghosted to his feet and Cliffjumper prepared for the painful shock of lunging against the cell bars, he gave the other Autobots the benefit of the doubt. Again. For now. He couldn't win the war from in a Decepticon cell, after all, stuck here wondering who'd betray him next.

Hey, what the slag. Unreliable allies were the fun kind.

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Footnotes

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(1)No, not the thought of one minibot keeping the war going by himself. Obviously, Cliffjumper was capable of that. He meant that it was ridiculous to think that the fake Autobots and Decepticons were completely aware that they had replaced all the real Autobots and were so stupid they kept fighting anyway. Although…Decepticreeps were pretty stupid, sometimes.

(2)Cliffjumper had once asked how exactly the humans had managed to create a style of music that mimicked Jazz's Cybertronian namesake almost precisely. Blaster had thrown out some musical blather, of course, but what it boiled down to was that nobody really knew. They'd just woken up on Earth and — BAM! Jazz. Everywhere. There was coincidence, and then there was this, and what baffled Cliffjumper was that nobody else questioned it. Seriously? Come on.

(3)Totally a real word, and not just in Cliffjumper's vocabulary. Red Alert had used it once, too, even if he'd immediately gotten a funny look on his face and asked the room in general if they thought his glitch was acting up. General opinion had been Yes, really. Go de-stress for a while before something burns out. But it was definitely a real word.

(4)Prowl had been known to sourly comment that Ratchet's specialty was Out-Stubborn-Fu, a form of combat that seemed to involve standing over patients on the battlefield and refusing to surrender them even when Megatron waved a fusion cannon in his face. The medic also practiced his specialty on his fellow Autobots, although with them he brought out moves like the Moral Hipthrow and Ethical Armlock. For a while, the running joke was that the only way to become the Ark's Chief Medical Officer was to behead Red Alert's latest security measure, a la The Highlander. There can only be one CMO!