A/N: Ugh. This was supposed to be finished last weekend, but procrastination as Ceramics got in the way. I may aim for getting Mad World's last chapter done for next weekend, but I make no promises.

In this fic, and in my headcanon, Bumblebee has the ability to alter the coloration of his plating to sort of match the environment. Because who ever head of a bright yellow spy?

As this is a one-shot I'd like to thank in advance everyone that reads, reviews, and favorites!

Due to Cliffjumper's temper, fights were a near daily occurrence. There was always somebody waiting to push his buttons, or willing to start up some snide remarks while he was within audial range. Sometimes, if one of the command staff could be located in time, there was only a lot of shouting. Other times things escalated into a full brawl, occasionally involving more than one combatant. Those generally ended with damaged plating, brig time, and whatever kind of punishment appeared on Prowl's 'Torture a Mech a Day' calendar.

Today had been no exception, and a fight with Mirage earlier had landed him in the brig and Mirage in the Medbay. And yeah, scuffling with the noble while the brass were still watching him like cyberhawks for the whole electrocell incident probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but then again Cliffjumper had always preferred using his mitts over his mind.

Not at the moment, though. Right now he was sitting on the narrow dented berth at the back of his cell, one leg swinging free while the other was bent, chewing the fingers of one of his 'mitts' as his mind worked at full tilt.

He had punched Mirage in the face. Which wasn't really that extraordinary by itself, as he punched a lot of people in the face. It was one of his favorite places to punch, after all; lots of damage to the other guy and very little to his hand.

The problem was that he had punched Mirage in the face, and Mirage hadn't dodged.

Hadn't even tried. And it wasn't as if it had been a sucker punch either. Both mechs had been shouting at one another at the top of their vocal range, about what he had already forgotten. Despite the noble's origins Cliffjumper had long since learned that Mirage could hold his own in a brawl, even with a much larger opponent, and he never held anything back when fighting with him. Which is why it had been so surprising when his fist had connected with the other Autobot's face.

Mirage was Special Ops. Considering what little he knew about Special Ops training from Bumblebee, Mirage should have been able to block the attack easily. If nothing else he should have tried to shift or turn his head so that Cliffjumper's fist couldn't pound his olfactory sensor into slag. As it was, Cliffjumper had been too shocked by actually landing a blow to really continue the fight, and by that point Ironhide and Jazz had arrived to do damage control. Mirage had been led off towards the Medbay, one hand over his ruined face, while Cliffjumper had been left to Ironhide's tender mercies.

Why hadn't the noble dodged? Was he trying to send a message? That he was too good to get into fisticuffs with the minibot? Cliffjumper snorted as he recalled the murderous expression on Mirage's face before he had caved it in. There was no way Mirage felt he was above a good scuffle to sort out bad feelings, at least not with Cliffjumper. The electrocell incident had proved that.

So what was it then?

The deactivation of the energy bars at the front of the cell distracted him from his thoughts, and he stopped chewing his fingertips into slag. Apparently his time for reflection was over. Prowl was waiting in the doorway, wings hiked up at that particular angle that meant Cliffjumper was in for a very unpleasant punishment.

The door to Mirage's room looked identical to that of just about any of the other warriors, except perhaps the one that belonged to the Twins, as it had several large convex dents from the frontliner's personal fights. Just one out of several hundred plain metal doors on the ship, the color matching that of the floor and the walls. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a door.

A ping on his comm startled him out of his thoughts, and he continued scowling at the door as he answered it. "Yeah?"

::I was just curious to know if you're going to be loitering in the hall all night, in which case I will take the initiative to alert Prowl now.:: Cliffjumper sighed, turning his scowl on the nearest camera along with a rather rude gesture he had learned from Spike. Not that it would bother Red Alert any.

"Don't get your undercarriage in a twist," he growled. Cutting the comm, he took vented deeply, then pounded on the Mirage's door. There was a moment, then it slid aside.

Cliffjumper dialed down the sensitivity of his optics, the light in the room being far brighter than what was in the hall. The noble was sitting on his berth, his gun disassembled and laying in pieces around him for cleaning. The room itself was rather bare, a few trinkets here and there that had been collected during his career with the Autobots. On a shelf was a small but intricate sculpture, probably something left from the Towers.

Mirage looked up from his gun, a slight frown on his newly repaired face as the minibot entered the room. Cliffjumper didn't say anything, leaning up against the door after it closed, and just waited.

During his punishment detail, there had been an accident involving a coolant line and a lot of shouting from Grapple. It had been rather messy and unpleasant, but it had given Cliffjumper an idea about Mirage's recent behavior. Now all he had to do was test his theory.

The silence between them stretched past the point of politeness, and Mirage's frown deepened. He cleared his vocalizer meaningfully and, when that didn't get response, finally spoke. "Is there something I can help you with?"

Cliffjumper just shrugged, keeping silent as he stalked across the room. Mirage tracked his movement, then turned his attention back towards the disassembled gun in his lap. Out of the corner of his optics he watched his guest inspect some of the knickknacks. "I'll ask you again, Cliffjumper. Is there something you need?"

The minibot snorted, abandoning his false interest in the sculpture and stalking back over towards Mirage. "Yeah, actually, there is. How many fingers am I holding up?"

Mirage stared at him and his raised hand in confusion for a minute, then scoffed. "Really? You can punch rather hard, Cliffjumper, but you did not do that much damage."

"This isn't about the fight, Towers, though I could totally rearrange your faceplates if I wanted to," he said. He watched Mirage's expression morph from disdain to somewhat irritated puzzlement. "I want you to look me in the eye and tell me how many fingers I'm holding up."

"This is ridiculous! What do you hope to prove with this? That your time with Prowl didn't result in missing digits?" Mirage shook his head, his normally cultured voice taking on a sharp note. He looked back down at the gun in his lap, obviously intending to return to cleaning it, but was stopped by Cliffjumper's sudden growl. The minibot grabbed him by the chin with his free hand, forcing his head back up.

"How. Many."

At first Mirage did nothing but glare murderously at him, and for a moment Cliffjumper feared he might soon be going to Ratchet with a very interesting story about his missing fingers. Finally the noble sighed and, sounding like the answer pained him, ground out: "Three".

Cliffjumper released Mirage's head, which immediately bowed down towards the gun as if ashamed. The minibot also dropped his other hand, fingers uncurling from their tight fist. The same fist that had punched Mirage earlier that day.

It was quiet for a long moment. Then: "So, are you going to tell me why you're going blind, and why the frag no one is doing anything about it?"

Mirage let out a soft chuckle, shaking his head slightly. He motioned for Cliffjumper to take a seat on berth next to him, collecting the pieces of his gun and moving them to a nearby table so the minibot actually had somewhere to sit. "I have to ask, how did you figure it out? Not even Hound knows. Just the command staff and the medics."

Cliffjumper snorted. "Oh I don't know, something about the way you decided to catch my fist with your face was a little odd."

Mirage smiled a little. "Leave it to you to notice something is wrong because of a fight."

The minibot scowled and punched him lightly in the arm. "Shut it, Towers, and stop stalling."

The smile faded, and Mirage sighed. He leaned back against the wall, one hand pressed to his mouth as he apparently collected his thoughts. Cliffjumper scowled as the silence threatened to stretch on, and Mirage let out another small chuckle. "Always the impatient one, aren't you?" He sighed again before looking forward.

"Do you know how my electro-disruptor functions?" Cliffjumper shook his head, then remembered that Mirage most likely couldn't see it. It didn't seem to matter, as the noble continued anyway. "My electro-disrupter sends out a signal that interrupts the visual centers of the processor. In this way a specific area can appear to be 'invisible' to mechs and even security systems. Of course, it doesn't work on organics."

He ran a hand down his face. "It was experimental technology when I first joined Special Ops, and in fact it still technically is. The developers assured me that I would suffer no ill affects from using the electro-disrupter. This... has proven to be untrue.

"Physically, my optics and the wiring around them are perfectly fine. The same cannot be said for the visual centers of my processor. Such close proximity to the electro-disruptor has begun to erode the connectors to the point where they will no longer transmit signals. Replacing the components will not encourage the connectors to start working again as they have 'learned' to be ignored."

Cliffjumper stared at the noble after he finished. Sure, he knew the risks that came with some of the more specialized weaponry. He couldn't count the number of times he had ended up in Medbay due to a miscalculation while using his own glass gas. But brittle plating and wiring could be replaced easily, and even cracks in the protoform would heal eventually, albeit only after a long and painful recovery process. There were very few things that could permanently injure a Cybertronian, and the thought of the noble going blind, for good, just seemed... wrong, somehow. He opened his mouth, closed it, then huffed and leaned back against the wall as well.

"And the command staff are okay with this?" He finally asked after resetting his vocalizer.

Mirage shrugged. "Not exactly, no, but we are more valuable as Special Ops, so retiring to a different department isn't an option at this point."

"We?"

The former Towers mech visibly winced. Clearly he hadn't meant to say quite so much, and Cliffjumper scowled at him. There was more to this than just Mirage going blind? The former Towers mech chewed on his lower lip for a moment, as if debating with himself on how much he wanted to tell the minibot, and Cliffjumper let out a low growl. No fragging way Mirage got to hide any more of this from him. Mirage sighed.

"Jazz is going to kill me, you know. Slowly." The minibot's expression didn't change. "Yes, we. All of the Special Ops mechs are suffering the side effects of their specialized equipment. My problem is the most noticeable, I suppose, but on its own it is hardly life threatening. The same cannot be said for Jazz, whose mag generators are starting to destroy his internal systems. The processor, fuel pump, even the spark chamber... none of them are designed to be exposed to close-range electromagnetic fields for an extended length of time, let alone for the duration of an entire war."

Cliffjumper's head spun. "And 'Bee?"

"'Bee's manipulation of his chromatispore nanites has caused problems with his whole nanobot system. Instead of just self repair and color projection, they will now occasionally change the density of his armor, causing weak spots in vital areas. The more he messes with his nanites, the longer it takes them to settle back into a normal working pattern, and the self-repair systems don't always function correctly."

Cliffjumper was stunned. No only was Mirage going blind, but Jazz was dying and 'Bee's nanites could very well get him killed. As a warrior class mech Cliffjumper didn't have color nanites, just self repair, and he had always envied his fellow minibot's ability to change his colors at will. Now, though, it didn't sound like such a great trick.

He knew that it really shouldn't be bothering him as much as it was. Not every Autobot was killed by a Decepticon, and in fact complications from battle killed more 'bots than the actual fighting. But that was always some other 'bots. Not Bumblebee, his best friend from long before there was even talk of war. Not Mirage, who regularly tussled with Decepticons bigger and stronger than him. Not Jazz, who seemed to be practically invincible.

Mirage seemed to sense his unease, or perhaps he was clued in by the long silence, because Cliffjumper flinched as a hand was placed on his shoulder. He didn't like physical contact, but he'd tolerate it for now.

"We are Special Operations, Cliffjumper. It is our job to risk our sparks and processors to go behind enemy lines and retrieve vital data. Without us frontliners like you won't have the information they need to fight. I'm touched by your concern for us, really, but it's fine."

"Yeah but... you're going blind, Mirage. And what's happening to Jazz... how is any of that fine?" The minibot frowned as Mirage let out a chuckle.

"Okay, so it isn't 'fine', but it's certainly not as bad as it could be. Jazz is already under strict orders from just about everyone who outranks him to use his mag generators sparingly, and to report directly to Ratchet after every battle. 'Bee is keeping a close optic on his armor density, and if he has to use his ability he stays out of any battles until his nanites have stopped malfunctioning."

Okay... when the noble put it that way things weren't quite as bad as they had first sounded. "And what about you?"

Mirage smiled at him. "As I said, don't worry. Ratchet is reasonably sure that I will not lose my sight completely, and there is a chance that it will return if I no longer use my electro-disrupter. In the meantime I can still use my alt mode sensors to get around."

Cliffjumper shrugged, removing Mirage's hand from his plating. "So... what now?"

"For starters you can stop thinking of me as crippled. Blind or not, I am still better than you at hand to hand combat." The minibot snorted. "Just try to keep in mind that I cannot see anything directly in front of me. So no more punching my faceplate."

The noble paused, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand. "And... if it wouldn't be too much trouble... I find that physical contact helps me keep track of mechs in a room. So please don't freak out or anything if I happen to latch onto you."

Cliffjumper made a face, punching Mirage in the arm again. "Ugh, you sound like a femme. But yeah, sure. Whatever."