A/N: I don't own anything except the plot, Rewound, Rally, and Superfluous, High Command, Low Command, and various plot thingies. I also own Rewound's eyes. I want his eyes… All else belongs to HasTak.
Various niftiness is attributed to Seiber and Pivot, who betaed. If anyone else betaed (months ago…) and I forgot you, I am very, very sorry. Email me in great anger.
The chapters end without warning. This was a freakishly long one-shot that got cut into four pieces. If the chapter ends suddenly and you freak out, DON'T. It's SUPPOSED to do that. Expect weekly installations, four in all. Yay for steady updates!
Hypocrite
Chapter 1
"I think we've found two more Decepticons. Is anyone here not too overenergized to function?" The unfortunate Autobot on monitor duty turned around to give his buddies a smirk. "But you've been off-duty ten minutes now, haven't you? We'll have to find someone else, I suppose."
"Shut up, Superfluous," one grumbled, putting his legs on the table in front of him and turning on the lounge's holoscreen. "It's been fourteen minutes."
"Ah, my mistake. Terribly sorry, Rally," Superfluous said, chuckling. "I'll find an Autobot still on-duty to do reconnaissance. Most likely it will have to be someone in High Command."
Rewound sneered into his arm, optics slightly glazed from staring out into the city for the past two hours since he'd gone off-duty. The high-and-mighty Autobot High Command ran both the Cybertronian government and Low Command, which ran the law enforcement. They weren't really two different organizations, though; High and Low was just a division between the generals and the privates in Cybertron's army/government. A division between the arrogant cretins that ran things and the arrogant cretins that didn't.
As Superfluous turned on the computer's comlink, he said, "You might want to move your legs. You'll get tire tracks on the table again."
"So?" Rally adjusted his legs, purposely scraping a black streak of rubber off the tires on his heels onto the dull bronze table. "It's a crummy table anyway. The crummier it gets, the sooner we get funding to replace it."
"They'll leave ya with the crummy table," Rewound said, not even glancing at Rally. "Ya know 'Bots don't get money for stuff like that unless they're stationed at the High Command Center. We're Low Command Station 22 or 16 or somethin'."
"And what do you know about that?" Rally said irritably. "How long have you been off the assembly line, anyway? Three months? Four, tops. What's your serial number?"
"Don't have one. I wasn't made in a factory." Rewound tried to ignore what was most likely a startled silence from the listeners. If he hadn't been built in a factory, then the only alternative was sparking. Sparking had always been rare, but now it was almost shunned among Autobots. To spark a new lifeform, the creator must be desperate for someone to help him and unable to turn to the government for assistance. Either that or the creator thought that by providing the Autobots with a loyal mind to mold he could gain amnesty for previous crimes. The poor and those hiding from the Autobots sparked lifeforms, including former Decepticons, rebellious Minicons, Terrorcons that escaped from the Energon mines, and neutrals on the wrong side of the law.
Rewound had no idea who his creator was. He knew that he had a standard CPU, basic programming, regular body construction, and a normal spark. Plus, his memories of receiving his Autobot programs and being registered into the Autobot Low Command Academy didn't seem to include anyone pleading for a pardon. The only reasons he knew he hadn't been factory-built were that only Transformers built outside the factories had to be programmed and registered in the Academy and his CPU didn't have the serial code and digital watermark of a factory.
There wasn't anything wrong with him, but that didn't keep other Autobots from distrusting him. Rewound had never actually heard anyone say anything, but he could imagine the whispers. Street-slag. Son of a Cessna. Child of a Terrorcon beast. Demonic, disgusting, disgraceful Decepticon spawn.
He had often been told that it was his paranoia that kept others from trusting him. Rewound usually said that he wasn't paranoid, just on guard, because everyone always wanted to get rid of the less-than-perfect Autobots. The 'Bots he was talking to then claimed he'd proved their point. Rewound often wondered if those guys realized how stupid they sounded.
Superfluous was apparently ignoring the minor drama behind him. Rewound hear him attempt to contact High Command over the computer's comlink. He knew it would probably be at least ten minutes before anyone bothered to respond. High Command didn't give a slag obout Low Command.
Rewound shifted his arm to lean his forehead against the window, digging his heels into the floor so he didn't slide off the edge of his chair. From here, Iacon didn't seem like the hotbed of crime and conflict it was described as in the Academy. There were no shouts, no gunshots, and no sirens, unless the Autobots were making an arrest. Someone in High Command that Rewound had met at the Academy had mentioned the oddity once. Rewound had never thought of it again until he graduated from the Academy and moved out into the city. The Officer had been right. Rewound tried to listen to Superfluous, ignoring the silence of the city.
Rewound never wanted to associate himself with that High Command hypocrite.
Rewound heard Superfluous request to speak to a High Command Officer. Surprisingly, someone responded immediately. Without pulling his gaze away from the city, Rewound silently listened in on the conversation. This must have been something important, if High Command responded so soon…
"This is High Command Officer Inferno. What do you have to report?"
Rewound jerked his head up automatically at the voice. He almost slid out of his seat but quickly pulled himself up again. Inferno, the hypocrite! Speak of the devil and he appears. What was he doing on the comlink!
He'd been the one that had told Rewound about the silence of the city. He'd also made it a point to mention every flaw he noticed in the Autobot social structure. Inferno derided the Autobots, almost to the point of sedition, yet he never acted on his words. He still fought alongside the Autobots and followed every order, yet pointed out what he didn't like when they weren't listening. And he always seemed to do it around Rewound. Rewound couldn't stand him.
"Iacon Low Command Station 16 reporting, sir. We've recently been informed of the location of two possible Decepticons, on the outskirts of the city."
"Two of them?"
Rewound lifted his head. Inferno sounded surprised, which was perfectly normal considering the situation. It wasn't often two Decepticons were found simultaneously. For some time after the Resurrection War, they had tried to stick in groups. But after about a month it became almost impossible to find them together. Most high-ranking officers who'd had experience with the Decepticons believed that when they had discovered that group tactics didn't give them any advantage, they'd decided to split up and make themselves harder to find.
But what wasn't normal was that Inferno sounded almost scared. He was a highly-decorated veteran of the Resurrection War. How could he be afraid of a couple of Decepticons? Rewound turned around gleefully, eager to see fear on Inferno's face.
But Inferno had his blandly unemotional mask back on by the time Rewound saw him. Rewound grimaced, trying not to show any other signs of annoyance. Autobots, after all, weren't supposed to hate their "fellow" Autobots.
"That is what we think right now, yes," Superfluous said. He pulled up a text report on another monitor and glanced at it as he spoke to Inferno. "A garbage collector was transporting waste materials to one of the junkyards on the outskirts of the city when he spotted two Cybertronians on the edges of the junkyard. When they saw him approaching, they fled into the junkyard and disappeared. They appear to be adept at hiding in this area, so it's suspected that they're living in the junkyard."
Inferno nodded sharply. "I see. And what makes you certain that these Cybertronians are Decepticons?"
Superfluous paused. "Well… the witness claims that they resembled two of the top soldiers from Megatron's forces."
"They do?" Inferno's optics blazed momentarily. His voice was almost a little too excited. And, once again, scared. Controlling himself again, he asked, "Which two?"
Superfluous paused again. "He said they looked like Snowcat and Demolisher, sir. I know, it sounds preposterous. They were thought to have committed suicide along with Megatron and his other top officers. But the witness gave us authorization for an optic memory scan, and this is what we came up with." Superfluous opened another file, gave it a cursory glance, and sent it to Inferno.
Optic memory scans recorded residual impressions made by light on optic fibers. The impressions lasted for only a brief time before fading, and all the images seen would be layered on top of each other. However, skilled technicians with good artistic senses could extract a solid scene from a scan a couple of hours after the scene was witnessed.
Rewound pulled up telescoping lenses behind his primary optics to zoom in on the open image. Phantom lines and colors cluttered the image, completely overlapping and mixing around the edges, but in the middle was a fairly detailed, complete image of two Cybertronians. Both appeared to have ground bound alt-modes and were fairly stout. One, wearing a complete facemask, was icy blue and white with occasional dark red highlights. The other, with a visor in place of optics and no sign of a mouth, was dark green and had what looked like a dump truck bed attached to his back. Both were dented and dirty, but they didn't look weak.
Inferno's optics blazed again as he saw the image, again with mingled excitement and fear. "Yes… they definitely look like Snowcat and Demolisher. We'll have to be careful in approaching them. Out of all the remaining Decepticons, they're the most likely to fight back."
Snowcat and Demolisher. Rewound thought he had heard of them. When he really concentrated, he could recall a few lessons in the Academy that had mentioned them when talking about the Resurrection War, describing them as dangerous loose-cannon Decepticons and two of Megatron's most trusted subordinates. What Rewound remembered the most was that Snowcat yodeled and Demolisher had a giant Decepticon sigil, which seemed to be gone in the optic memory scan. Beyond that, Rewound couldn't remember much. He'd graduated using fighting ability, not random history trivia.
Inferno's gaze dropped from the screen and his hands moved over his own keyboard. "I'll find someone here to reconnoiter the area," he said, apparently looking at another monitor on his side of the comlink. "I doubt anyone below the elite would be able to survive an encounter with those two. If we find anything I'll contact you for backup."
That could mean Inferno thought the others weren't good enough for this mission. But Rewound was sure it meant that Inferno wanted all the glory for the capture of the Decepticon rebels himself. Inferno, the hypocritical slagger, the liar and the coward, to get the credit for a discovery that wasn't even his! Rewound wouldn't stand for that anymore.
"Sir! Requesting permission to do recon of the junkyard for the criminals, sir!" Rewound glared unflinchingly into Inferno's optics on the computer screen, all the way across the room, standing rigidly beside his chair. To his zoomed-in optics, he realized, Inferno looked a lot closer to him than he did to Inferno. Or anyone else in the lounge.
Everyone turned to look at Rewound. Half of them hadn't even been paying attention to the conversation, and none of them had ever seen Rewound volunteer to do anything on his own. They'd never even seen him hold a door open for someone right behind him. Rewound didn't break his gaze, optics bright and hard as diamonds.
To Rewound's indignation, Inferno almost looked pleased.
"That is ridiculous!" Superfluous said. "You only graduated from the Academy two months ago. You don't have any idea how dangerous real Decepticons are."
"What do mosta these guys got?" Rewound asked, forgetting his attempt to speak like a proper Officer. "A year on me, tops, and they probably took three times as long as me to graduate. Besides, ya don't know anything about Decepticons either."
Rally apparently did some math. It was, Rewound figured, a bit of a struggle for him. If the average time to graduate was six months, then Rewound had graduated in two months, and add that to the two months since then… "Ha! So you are only four months old. What can a rookie like you do, huh?"
"I can fight a lot better than ya," Rewound said, crouching in preparation for a battle.
Rally stared at him, baffled. Autobots simply didn't fight each other. Was that what came from being sparked by Primus-knows-what?
"Perhaps recon would be a good opportunity for you to gain some real experience, Rewound," Inferno broke in, distracting Rewound from his challenge. A ghost of a smile flitted across Inferno's face, but it was gone before Rewound could demand he explain what it meant. He was always doing that, at the most insignificant comments. Worse, Rewound never knew why.
"S-sir!" Superfluous said. "Are you sure you want to send Rewound? He doesn't have a strong record. He is known to be…" Superfluous paused, glancing at Rewound. "He is sometimes…"
"Rude? Impatient? Suspicious? Sarcastic?" Rewound offered. He'd heard the first three many times. The fourth was his addition. He thought he'd be pretty sarcastic if he didn't ignore everyone all the time.
"Insubordinate," Inferno concluded, but gave Rewound another half-smile. "I think this mission would be good for him. Come to the High Command Center and I'll fill you in on the details."
Rewound tried to say "Yessir," but ended up muttering, "Yeah, sure." He had wanted this mission to prove that he didn't need more experience. Inferno had used it to prove that he did. He couldn't back out now without proving Inferno right.
"Be here in fifteen minutes," Inferno said and cut the connection.
"I'll be there in forty-five," Rewound declared. As he left the lounge, he shoved Rally's back. The wheels on Rally's hips and ankles rolled him off the chair and dumped him on the floor.
Rewound left without a second glance, ignoring both Superfluous's protests and Rally's shouts.