Hypocrite
Chapter 3
Rewound picked his way through the junkyard, struggling to remember the exact route Inferno had shown him. It was a lot harder to navigate than he had thought. The routes weren't visible at all. There was only one thing that distinguished them from the rest of the junkyard; if you were on a path, your foothold wouldn't suddenly slide away or collapse on itself. And by the time you figured out where you were, it was probably too late to do much about it.
Rewound wondered how Inferno had managed to get a map of this place. He doubted anyone would explore the junkyard for fun. The only beings Rewound could imagine coming here were those hiding from the law. Decepticons and the like. Maybe Superfluous was right and he didn't know what he was up against (which, Rewound scoffed, was highly unlikely), but he had no idea what crime could be bad enough to make someone need to hide here.
The junkyard had no set topography. It was, as far as Rewound could tell, an endless plain of piles. The junk didn't form hills or peaks, just mounds of stuff. Rewound scrambled up one pile and balanced precariously on top, holding the leg of a broken chair, to figure out where he was. It wasn't easy; several hollowed-out, tilted buildings overshadowed the junkyard, forming a near fortress of walls and roofs overhead. Through the gloom Rewound spotted a low area where something sparkled. With his telescoping lenses he zoomed in as far as he could. The light was in deep enough shadows that Rewound couldn't tell what was causing it, but it didn't seem to be alive or just a part of the landscape. It was just a detached pinprick of light.
He lowered himself awkwardly down the other side of the junk pile and headed towards the low zone. He was already tensed for a battle, audio sensors straining for the sound of an ambush from any side, all his telescoping lenses retracted so he could see a greater area. The light might have been from Snowcat or Demolisher, and the other could be watching him right now. One would attack, and while they thought he was off-guard from the first, the other would attack. He'd fight them both off, catch them before they could run away, and contact Inferno to say he'd already taken care of the Decepticons. And after that…
"Hopefully, the end of their race." Rewound paused, balancing on a twisted pile of rusted machinery and the wing of a spacecraft. Their race. What was that supposed to mean? The Decepticons were just Cybertronians who'd joined the wrong army, right? Not a race. At least, that's how it had always been described to him. But if they were part of an army, then why didn't they switch allegiances when they lost the war, to protect themselves? Maybe it was impossible, like trying to make a squishy into a Cybertronian. Maybe that was what the phrase "Once a Decepticon, always a Decepticon" meant. They were just sparked as Decepticons and stayed that way; Minicons are Minicons and Terrorcons are Terrorcons, so Decepticons are Decepticons.
Realizing he'd stopped moving, Rewound headed towards the low zone again. He'd have to climb over another sloped line of junk, and then it would be just below him. He hadn't been attacked yet. Maybe the light wasn't the Decepticons.
Or maybe they were scared as petro-rabbits. Rewound smiled at the idea of the fierce warriors trembling in front of him and lifted his head over the crest of the slope to look down. He stopped smiling.
Below him, a naked light bulb crudely wired to an Energon cube lay on top of a flat, polished sheet of copper. Light bulbs were primitive, inefficient means of illumination. They were barely better than just setting the Energon cube on fire: they'd use up all the fuel, give off about the same light, and burn out just as quickly.
Surrounding the light were a little over twenty Transformers. Minicons, Terrorcons, and Decepticons still wearing their sigils, as well as a few factionless Cybertronians. Rewound stared at the group. Never before had he seen so many illegal beings together at the same time.
Illegal beings? What was illegal about them, the fact that they were alive? That they weren't Autobots? And who declared them illegal, Autobots?
A scowl crossed Rewound's face. "Hopefully, the end of their race." Why should Rewound help the Autobots get rid of them? Why was it so important to exterminate them? Who was the slagging genius that came up with that idea? Inferno, maybe? Maybe. He could proclaim their end in one second and then insist that the Autobots were here to protect all life in the next. But couldn't the other Autobots do that, too?
"Hey, you new around here?"
Rewound looked up, startled. Standing above him, with arms crossed and feet precariously balanced on the edge of a crumpled ship hull, was Snowcat himself. He looked a little different from the pictures Rewound had seen in the Academy. He was missing his tires, the cannons on his back, and his windshield glass. And he was much shorter than the pictures made him look. But still, Rewound was stunned. A Decepticon, one of Megatron's favorites, no less, a symbol of everything that was not Autobot, a lawbreaker and rebel simply for existing, was less than five feet from Rewound and speaking to him as casually as if they were two law-abiding neutrals on an Iaconian street.
"You're coming up the wrong part of the slope," Snowcat said, amused. "Go a bit to the left and you won't slide off the top."
"Oh. Um, sure." Rewound obeyed, climbed a little bit up, and let out a startled yelp as he slid to the bottom.
Snowcat cackled gleefully. Rewound forgot his annoyance to take note of the fact that his laugh did, indeed, sound like yodeling.
"S-sorry, my mistake," Snowcat said, still giggling. "You get down from there. You gotta to climb the other side to get up. C'mon, I'll show you." Not at all bothered by the strange landscape, Snowcat leapt down and headed around the slope, occasionally stopping to make sure Rewound was still following. So this was the vicious war criminal Rewound had heard so much about?
"Who's he?" The question came from someone looking over the top of the slope. He slid ungracefully down it and walked up to Snowcat. It was Demolisher, Rewound realized. He still had all his parts, but was also shorter than the pictures Rewound had seen. The pictures, apparently, were supposed to be intimidating rather than accurate. Rewound wondered if that meant Megatron wasn't really twice as tall as Optimus Prime and stained with dried mech-fluid.
"New guy," Snowcat said with a shrug, stopping to turn and look at Demolisher. Rewound gratefully took the pause to sit on a steady-looking metal sheet off of Primus-knew-what.
"You sure? Did you look at his chest?" Rewound's Autobot sigil was on his chest, on what became the bottom of his seat in motorcycle-mode.
"Everyone uses that for a disguise." Another shrug. "B'sides, no 'Bot would sell his tires."
"Unless that was part of the disguise!" Demolisher hissed, grabbing Snowcat's arm to turn them away from Rewound. "Look at his paintjob. How do you explain it?"
Snowcat glanced back at Rewound. For the first time, Rewound realized how dull all the other fugitives' paint had been. Most of them were completely gray, the rest faded and peeling. Now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure he could remember that some of them had had small rust infections, which looked like they had been scraped at with a shovel to remove them. So this was what the end of their race was supposed to look like. And it was the Autobots' doing. The Autobot in him whispered, as it should, that they had done nothing to deserve this slow extinction. The rest of him, which completely ignored the Autobot, bellowed that the entire Autobot race was hypocritical for promoting peace and murder at the same time. Why was he an Autobot? He didn't support the Autobots enough to salute Prime, much less become a hypocrite like the others. But didn't that make him an even worse hypocrite, for working for them regardless? Rewound was disgusted with himself.
Rewound would not help the Autobots destroy the Decepticons.
"Listen, I'm not gonna turn ya in or anything. I'm not helping the 'Bots, okay? I quit."
"Oh, sure, we haven't heard that before," Demolisher said sarcastically. "And when did you quit, huh? Was it about ten seconds ago, maybe?"
Rewound paused. "Er, actually…"
Before he could say anything else, his comlink turned on with a burst of static. "Lower Command Officer Rewound, this is High Command. Have you found any sign of Snowcat or Demolisher yet?"
His comlink wasn't on very loud, but in the silent junkyard it was loud enough for Snowcat and Demolisher to hear. Rewound muttered a long string of curses, standing warily in preparation for an attack.
No one moved. Snowcat and Demolisher's optics were almost white with fear. In the gloom, they were the only things that stood out. Glimmering lights, two bright and two shielded behind a visor, hard and bright like diamondswaiting to be shattered. They wouldn't attack him, even if he gave their exact location, their condition, and how many other fugitives were with them.
Looking directly at Snowcat and Demolisher, Rewound said into his comlink, "Negative. I don't see nothing alive in the junkyard." Demolisher's optics flickered in a startled blink.
"Really? Anything dead?"
"Er… negative." Who was this? Rewound wondered. Snowcat giggled and was silenced by a smack from Demolisher.
"Hmm. Did you follow the map, Rewound?" So, Inferno was contacting him directly? Why?
"Uh, yessir. There's nothin' here," Rewound said.
Finally catching on to what was happening, Demolisher mimed applause. Snowcat dropped to his knees, hands clasped together in mock-praise. Demolisher and Rewound both glared at him. Rewound wondered if they were always this distracting. Perhaps that was the real reason they were one and two on the Autobots' Most Wanted list.
Inferno didn't respond for a long moment. "I've never known you to show any respect towards your superiors, Rewound. What are you up to?"
"N-nothing! Ya asked me if I'd found anything, and I didn't. That's it."
"Show me, then," Inferno ordered. Demolisher and Snowcat froze mid-celebration. "Send the visual data from your optics. I want to see what you're really up to."
Demolisher and Snowcat shook their heads vigorously.
Rewound wondered if he could look off at some random point in the distance and say that was what he saw. But Inferno would ask him to look around, and then he'd see anyway. Rewound could use his telescoping lenses to zoom in as he panned and look down, and say he was looking at a wall. If he did it right his zooming might disorient Inferno. Would that work?
"Rewound, do you know what happens to Autobots charged with assisting enemies, especially Decepticons?" Rewound didn't answer. "They're arrested as if they are that enemy and receive a trial as such. And even if you do manage to escape, a life like the one you have now will be impossible."
"Go slag yerself."
A long pause. "This is your final chance, Rewound. Either you show me, or I come to the junkyard and see for myself."
Either way, the junkyard would be swarming with Autobots. Everyone in it would be arrested. If Rewound sided with the Decepticons, he would be too. And if he wasn't arrested he'd have to hide with them, until his paint peeled to reveal rust infections underneath. He shuddered. Maybe they hadn't done anything wrong, but he hadn't either. He didn't want to live like a fugitive.
"Yes, sir," Rewound said softly, and began transmitting the visuals over his comlink. Already prepared, Snowcat started making dirty signs towards Rewound and whoever was on the other side of his comlink.
"But they're the only ones here," Rewound added quickly. "There's no one else in the junkyard, I swear."
"Rewound…" Inferno said. He sounded puzzled. "What are you talking about? I don't see anyone there." He paused. "Your job is done. You can return to High Command now."
"What!" Rewound and the two Decepticons stared at each other in shock. "But they're just… What do ya think yer doin'!"
"My duty, of course," Inferno said. "There's no one here, so I need to report that. Just like the other seventeen so-called 'sightings' of Transformers in the junkyard, including Wheeljack and four supposedly treasonous High Command Autobots. And now Snowcat and Demolisher. The junkyard seems to have inspired a few Autobots' imaginations. Don't you think so, Rewound?"
"Who's Wheeljack?" Rewound asked.
Snowcat yodeled/laughed. "That's the best question you got?" he said, trying to stay quiet. "Man! Did they stop programming common sense in 'Bots or what?"
"Shut up!" Demolisher hissed, shoving Snowcat. "I think it's Inferno talking."
How did they know Inferno?
"I'm glad you went out there today, Rewound," Inferno said casually, ignoring his question. "I think Optimus Prime is a little concerned about how few reports of Transformers in the junkyard seem to be genuine. But since you didn't find anything either, obviously there's nothing there, correct?"
"What the slag are ya talking about?" Rewound demanded. "What seventeen sightings? Who on Cybertron is Wheeljack? And are ya blind, or can't ya see the two guys right in front of—"
"REWOUND!"
Snowcat and Demolisher took a step away from Rewound. When his audio sensors stopped trying to stab his CPU with a blunt knife, he squeaked, "Yes… sir?"
"This conversation could be recorded. I recommend you keep your facts consistent. Weren't you insisting a moment ago that nothing was here?" Inferno asked sharply. "The junkyard is empty. Is this correct or not?"
"Uh… c-correct, sir," Rewound stuttered, utterly lost.
"Good," Inferno said. "You'll have to come back to the High Command Center to file a report, and that should be all you're needed for."
"Whoopeeeee." Confused or not, Rewound knew filing reports was bad news.
Ignoring him, Inferno said, "I'll expect you back here in thirty minutes."
"Yeah, fine," Rewound muttered and turned off his comlink. He'd probably be there in fifty minutes. Assuming he could find his way out of the junkyard again.
"Hey, you didn't tell us you were workin' with Inferno," Snowcat said, sounding a lot more friendly than Rewound would expect after what just happened.
"I don't work for Inferno," Rewound said. "How do ya know him, anyway?"
"Oh, during the Second Unicron War, we knocked him around pretty bad almost every battle. Most of the other Autobots too. They're all wusses," Snowcat said proudly. "And now Inferno keeps everyone off track when they head to the junkyard. I guess something Megatron did to him stuck after all."
"'Resurrection War,' not 'Second Unicron War.' Autobot media says so," Demolisher told Snowcat, then said to Rewound, "Looks like Inferno's corrupting rookies' minds now, too."
"Oh, I see," Rewound lied. "So, where's the road outta here?"
"You either know it or you don't. You don't." Snowcat giggled at himself, then leaped up the side of the slope in two bounds. "Yo! We need a guide to get this Autobot out of here. He's working for Inferno."
"I don't work for Inferno!" Rewound repeated.
A Minicon jumped completely over the slope and landed in front Rewound, even more at ease in the junkyard than Snowcat was. He looked up at Rewound and beeped twice.
"Er… hi," Rewound said. He couldn't understand Minicons in the slightest. "So, do ya know the way out of here?"
The Minicon nodded, and then unleashed a torrent of beeping.
After Rewound had been suffering for several minutes, Demolisher said, "Maybe you should just show him."
The Minicon paused, beeped what Rewound hoped was an affirmative, and then set off through the junkyard at a sprint. He scrambled as well as he could to keep up.