Notes: Remember me saying this was a one-shot? Guess what?
I'm blaming Kirin for this part as well - after all, she was the one to post another Cliffjumper bunny, claiming inspiration from reading this and "Bonds." I took the hint and decided to see where the bunny would lead. There's more to come, especially considering what's cooking in my head!
It seemed like it was always the same story, cycle after cycle, vorn upon vorn.
The double agents they had seated early in the war would send a coded message to Jazz, informing them of when and where Megatron was planning a strike. A team – which inevitably would include three specific frontliners – would be assembled to go deal with the situation. One twin or the other would realize that the seekers were present and decide to bring them down. Megatron would eventually call a retreat and one of Jazz's insiders would contact him to confirm that the objective had been complete and that none of them had come to any serious harm (mostly for Ratchet's sake, as the mech fumed whenever he knew that those particular 'bots were damaged and he couldn't do anything about it).
And once everyone had been repaired and retreated to the rec room for a refuel, Cliffjumper would get into it with Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, or both at the same time, which always ended with the participants visiting the med bay and the brig, not necessarily in that order.
Optimus heaved a heavy sigh and rubbed at his optics. The main problem wasn't that the twins were abrasive – it certainly didn't help matters any – but that the 'minibot' loathed them for no reason that was apparent to a vast majority of the Ark's residents. However, there were at least three mechs who could sum up Cliffjumper's hatred of the twins in two words: Jet Judo.
Optimus had always known about the red mech's true origins, as did Ratchet and Jazz; the Prime didn't think he would ever forget that long-ago day when his head of special operations rushed into the med bay accompanied by one functional refugee seeker, said seeker's severely-damaged mates, and their nearly-offline creation. He could only figure that Skywarp evaded damage by utilizing his teleportation drive to get behind their attackers and take them down while the other three did the best they could to keep attention away from the dark seeker. Thundercracker had been fully functional again in a matter of joors, but there was nothing that Ratchet could do to repair Starscream's vocalizer.
The worst by far had been the damages to the youngest of the four, only a proto-adult. Ratchet did what he could, but the young seeker's spark had been in danger of extinguishing if something wasn't done quickly. The trine had apparently discussed the situation (even with the memories granted by the Matrix, Optimus could tell when seeker-cant being used but had no idea what was being 'said') and agreed to allow Jumper's spark to be placed in an available minibot frame.
It had been almost cruel to separate the four after that, but the fact of the matter had been that they needed someone on the inside; no one had expected the trine to reach the upper echelons of the Decepticon hierarchy, but it had proven invaluable to the Autobots in planning their counterattacks. Cliffjumper – Jazz was under the impression that it was close to the ex-seeker's true designation but off just enough to keep anyone from making a connection between him and the trine – had adjusted decently to being physically separate from his creators and the inability to take flight, although he did sometimes vanish for several hours with no explanation for his whereabouts upon returning. Ratchet's working theory was that just being able to see the sky helped to keep the phenomenon known as 'sky hunger' at bay, although he'd confided in Optimus that he suspected at least one of his creators was taking him up whenever possible; unless Cliffjumper started talking about where he went, there was no way to either prove or disprove the medic's theory.
But what was obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt to the three mechs in the know was that Cliffjumper had most definitely inherited his bearer's quick temper, and the most frequent recipients of his ire were the resident twins. Even with a few hundred feet between him and the med bay, Optimus could already hear Ratchet gearing up for yet another lecture that was doomed to failure.
"Prime, got a minute?"
Optimus turned slightly, not truly looking forward to hearing the same argument for the millionth time since arriving on Earth, and gave a nod to Jazz. The frown on the smaller mech's faceplate was troublesome, and he decided that Ratchet had the situation as in-control as possible where a temperamental mostly-grown seeker-in-disguise was concerned.
"Of course. What seems to be the problem, Jazz?"
The head of ops glanced around briefly to confirm that there was no one in the hall and gave a short nod to the camera in the corner. When the red light blinked out, Jazz spoke quickly and quietly: "Got a message I've been dreading from our eyes in the sky."
Optimus could almost feel his fuel pump stop. "What were the contents?" he asked, optics narrowing in concern.
"Short and to the point, like anything we get from TC: Soundwave suspects." A faint grin crossed Jazz's lips as he added, "Followed almost immediately by a similar message from Warp with the addition of get us the frag outta here."
Optimus almost asked if Starscream had had anything to chime in with, but remembered that had that been the case he would have received a personal comm peppered with deactivation threats on the Decepticon communications officer; as he'd noted many times in the past, the seeker had one pit of a temper, and his offspring had inherited it in spades. Even if Starscream was naturally soft-spoken – the first time he'd heard the mech ever say a word was shortly before they'd left on their assignment, and the vocalizer damage hadn't sounded quite so bad when Starscream was speaking quietly – the seeker was quick to anger and would lash out viciously.
"Do we know the trine's status?" he asked instead, waiting for either a positive or negative from his TIC.
"Couple of dents from the twins, but nothing to prevent them from winging it if they gotta."
The Prime gave a sharp nod. "Contact them on the coded channel and tell them to head for home the very next time they're scheduled for a patrol. I'll inform Prowl that the twins are to be kept in the brig for a while longer; the last thing we want is four torqued-off seekers getting into a scuffle with Sideswipe or Sunstreaker."
End Notes: Mwahahahaha cliffhanger!
Well, not really. More to come as soon as I can make the words flow forth.