Scenes like these jump into my mind all the time, no matter what series I'm watching--so I figured, why not write them down? xD Just as a forewarning, pretty much all of these are going to be very short and full of pointless fluff. No pairings either, really, except for Sari/Bee. And I promise I'll give you the time-frame for each moment, so nobody gets too confused. Right underneath the title. The two episodes the moment comes between. So...enjoy yourselves? xD;;;

DISCLAIMER: It's not mine, or else it wouldn't be over yet. So many loose ends... -cries-


Backbeat
(Five Servos of Doom - Predacons Rising)

Jazz let out a faintly irritated huff as, for what felt like the millionth time, his radio dissolved into a hissing, unintelligible mess of static. He'd never had this much trouble just getting reception before—he was sure it had to do with the heavy winds and the sheer amount of moisture coalesced in Earth's atmosphere. The rain had begun falling in thick, heavy sheets early in the solar cycle, and had steadily worsened as the megacycles progressed, eventually confining the Elite Guard bots to their allies' warehouse. Sentinel was less than happy about the situation, of course—but regardless of his own feelings, Optimus' warnings were not to be taken lightly. Electrical storms of any kind were dangerous to Cybertronians, let alone ones accompanied by this much water. So they were stuck, grounded and locked in, until the thunderstorm let up.

It wasn't the most enjoyable scene. Sentinel paced through the warehouse like a caged beast, snapping at anyone who even looked at him wrong. The twins were keeping themselves busy playing video games with Bumblebee and Sari, but they had begun to get twitchy and restless megacycles ago (try as they might, Perceptor, Wheeljack, and Red Alert had been unable to remove the line of code that caused claustrophobia and skylust). And even he, Jazz, the eternal well of calm fortitude, was beginning to lose his cool—not only from the strained tempers floating through the air, but from the fact that he simply couldn't find his music. During his down-time, he never went more than a few cycles without some station thrumming quietly in his ear, even when he was meditating. But the storm had completely cut off all signals, Earth-based and Cybertron-based alike, leaving his processor uncomfortably silent.

It was driving him up a wall. He would begin to hum snatches of some song or other, just to stave off the awful silence, and then have to stop a moment later as anyone nearby shot him an irritated glare. It wasn't as though he was lacking in self-control—the entire problem lay in the fact that music was his self-control. As long as he had a beat, everything else fell smoothly into place. Denied that, he slowly grew listless and unfocused, drifting aimlessly throughout the warehouse until he finally settled near the closest source of "music" he could find—in a corner of the main room, where the four youngest members of their collective team sat focused on their game.

"Uh...hey, Jazz?"

Jerked from his attempted meditation and the beginning of yet another tune, Jazz glanced up. Bumblebee had left Sari and the twins on the couch arguing about whether the twins were cheating or not and was now standing in front of him, shuffling his pedes, servos behind his back. "Didn't mean to interrupt or anything, but are you okay over here?"

"Groovy." Jazz managed to fake a smile, but his vocals gave away the raggedness at the edges of his processor. "What's shakin', 'Bee?"

"Oh, uh, not much." Bumblebee shifted his weight again, then grinned at the white mech, a bit sheepishly. "Prowl and I were just talking about you."

Jazz lifted an optic ridge, somehow unable to dredge up even a flicker of amusement. "Do I even wanna know?"

"Well, duh, or else why would I be here?" Bumblebee quipped, finally relaxing enough to give the cyberninja a real smirk. "I just asked him why you were so down. 'Cos, I mean, you're Jazz, and you being down is just slaggin' weird. Anyway, I didn't understand half of what he said—well, most of what he said, actually—but I know it had something to do with music. Er, well, more like you can't pick up any music. Or something like that. Right?"

Jazz glared mentally at his silent processor and static-filled radio, a mournful puff of air escaping his vents. "That's about right. Storm's playin' havoc with the signals."

"Tell me about it." Bumblebee rolled his optics, annoyance coloring his voice. "The TV's the same way, it goes down every time there's a storm. That's why we're stuck playing games instead of watching Night of the Living Zombie Things like we were supposed to."

That brought a chuckle from the white mech, but his humor was short-lived. "'S wearin' me out," he muttered, visor dimming. "Dunno how much Prowler told ya, but music's practically a part of my function. It's like the twins and their flying, or you and your racing—can't explain why, but it's just something you can't live without."

"I thought so." The smug tone in Bumblebee's voice made Jazz glance up, in time to see him pull his servos out from behind his back. He was holding a palm-sized datapad with two cords plugged into it, one red and one black. "And this is the answer to all your problems!"

Jazz's optic ridges lifted again, but Bumblebee pressed on, grin widening with every word. "Us glitch-detail maintenance bots might not have spiffy signal-boosters that can pick up even Cybertronian stations like you do, but we do know how to find a good media player. Prowl's been helping me set this baby up with all kinds of music since I got it, so you'll never run into the same song twice." He paused, smile turning sheepish again. "At least I'm pretty sure you won't. Long as you're only borrowing it until the storm's over. Heh..." He trailed off for a moment, then held out the datapad. "I need it back, though, 'kay? And don't break it!"

Behind his visor, Jazz's optics softened as he grinned in return—a real grin this time. For all that the yellow mech was still young and dumb, always thinking with his wheels instead of his processor, his spark was in the right place. "Thanks, 'Bee. I owe you one."

"Nah, it's all good." Bee flashed another of his brilliant smiles, passing the datapad to Jazz. "It was mostly Prowl's idea anyway. I think."

Jazz chuckled again, plugging the cords in behind his processor. An unconscious sigh of relief escaped him as the beat of the first song flowed through him, relaxing his tense frame and steadying the pulse of his spark into a comfortable rhythm.

"You ever need more music or anything, just come talk to me." Bumblebee's grin was bright with satisfaction as he turned and headed back to the game console, perfectly aware that Jazz, now blissfully wrapped up in the music, hadn't even heard him.