Title: Juxtaposition: Everything you Know is Wrong

Canon: G1, "Juxtaposition" AU

Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers. HasTak does. I didn't write "Juxtaposition". Vaeru did.

Author's notes: I did it again. Only this time, I'm sitting in an open-air dorm in the middle of South Amman. Oh well. Once again. Prezzy for Vaeru.

Lights and Sirens

"Hide? I drive a giant red and white van with flashing lights and a siren. What are you, stupid?"
- Monte Parker Third Watch

A light sheet of rain swept over the hood of the sleek silver and black Porsche as it rolled through the warehouse door, sending waves of water cascading from its tires. As the door slid down behind it, Evelyn was already exiting the driver-side door. She was halfway out when she had to grab frantically for the roof of the car to to keep from landing ass-first on the concrete floor, the reason being that said oil-slicked floor had decided to vibrate horribly just as she put her foot down.

"Did you get it? Did you? Did you?"

Clinging to Jazz's roof, one leg still in the car and the other splayed out in a less than dignified way, the small woman glared up at the eager mech who crouched over her, looking so much like the world's largest, reddest and most robotic golden retriever.

"Christ, Sideswipe!" Evelyn swore, and bit her tongue. The mantra of "Mama would kill me" had long ago begun to lose its effect.

The red mech was unfortunately also immune. "Did you get it?" he asked again impatiently.

The brown-haired woman heaved a long sigh. "Yes," she said through her teeth. "Take it, with my blessings." She fished into the mesh bag in the Porsche's backseat and held out the rectangle of white metal, which was deftly plucked from her hand.

"'SSWIPE1?'" Sideswipe turned the tiny license plate in his fingers, eagerness replaced by crushing disappointment. "Are you kidding me? Why didn't you get the whole thing?"

"Wouldn't fit," Evelyn grunted, tugging at the bag, which had caught on the seat belt. "It can only be seven digits long."

"Why?"

"Because that's the law."

"I don't like it. It sounds like ..."

"Don't even finish that sentence."

The robot ignored her, flipping onto Side B of his ADD coin. "Where's Sunny's? I wanna see." His very large hand shoved Evelyn out of the way (who nearly fell on her behind again), and reached for the mesh bag.

"Hey!" A second metallic voice rang out. "Don't be puttin' your hands in ta some other mech's interior, thank y'very much!"

The voice was ignored and the mesh bag tugged out of Jazz's backseat. The latter wasted no further time transforming and giving Sideswipe a dirty look, which was also ignored.

"'SUNSHN1?'" Sideswipe chortled. He waved a second plate toward his yellow twin, who was sitting in a corner of the warehouse, scratching something onto one of the walls and pretending to ignore everyone. "Sunny! Hey Sunny, check it out!"

"No," was the automatic response.

Sideswipe flipped through the plates like a deck of cards. "'RATCHET' ... boring, 'MIRAGE' ... boring , 'WHLJCK1' ... boring ... 'BABYBLU' ... (snicker)... 'HNDDOG1'?" He looked at Evelyn incredulously.

She shrugged. "Jazz helped think them up."

"Hey Jazz, let's see yours."

The black and white mech turned and even did a little pose, showing Sideswipe his back bumper and the license plate that read "JZZYBOT".

Sideswipe stared. "I take it back," he said. "Yours is worse."

"You don't like it?" Jazz asked.

Evelyn snorted, picking her way across the floor to try and reclaim the bag of government-issued license plates from the red Lamborghini. "At least he chose an alt-mode that is slightly less conspicuous," she pointed out. "Emphasis on slightly."

"What can I say?" Jazz leaned against a support strut. "I liked what I saw. Speaking o' which ... Prowl!"

Evelyn looked up as the second black and white mech joined them from parts of the warehouse unknown. "Hello Prowl. Your panels have become ... 'doorwings'? It looks nice."

"Thank you, Evelyn. I take it your errand was successful."

"Er ... yes. Sideswipe ..."

Prowl's glance shifted to the red mech still crouched on the floor, who to Evelyn's surprise surrendered the stack of license plates back to her without a fuss. Except for one.

"Here you go ... 'PROWLER'," he snickered, dangling the last plate from his fingers.

Evelyn was quite sure she'd never seen that look on the tactician's face before. Jazz was leaning on the strut, trying very hard not to collapse into his own fit of giggles. She looked guiltily up at Prowl. "I can change it, if you want."

Prowl's expression schooled back into neutral. "That won't be necessary, Evelyn," he said calmly, plucking the plate from Sideswipe's fingers. "Thank you for all your efforts on our behalf." He nodded to her and, blatantly ignoring Jazz, turned to leave again.

"Wait," Evelyn stopped him. He turned back to her, and she made a spinning motion with her fingers. "Turn around," she clarified. Patiently, Prowl did as she asked.

"Your back," the human accused. "What is that on your back?"

"I believe you called them 'doorwings'."

"Not those," Evelyn pointed, her voice rising in tempo. "Those!"

He looked at her over his shoulder, and she swore if he had eyebrows he would have quirked one. "You will have to be more specific."

"On your back! Between your wings!" Her finger shook. "You have siren lights on your back!"

Jazz's giggling became audible. Prowl looked infuriatingly confused. "I'm afraid I do not understand."

"Lights! Sirens! On your back!" she shrilled. "What are they doing there?"

"They were present on the vehicle I scanned."

"You told me you picked a Datsun Fairlady Z!" Evelyn accused. "I registered you as a Datsun Fairlady!"

"It is a Datsun," Prowl told her, in a tone that was almost irritated. "I looked up the model's designation myself, as I did with the alt-modes chosen by each of us. What is your concern?""

Evelyn's hands fisted at her sides, fingers digging into the metal plates she still held. "It. Is. A. Police. Car."

"Is this problematic?"

She gaped. "Yes! Yes, this is very problematic! I can't have a police car driving around with a license plate registered in my name! It's a felony to impersonate law enforcement! Did you also happen to look up things like 'civil court' or 'jail time', or maybe 'don't drop the soap'?"

Jazz burst out laughing so hard he slid to the floor, his vocalizer wheezing with static. Sideswipe looked pleased that for once, Evelyn's famed verbal outrage was not directed at him.

Prowl ignored both of them. His optics flickered for a few moments, accessing data from who knew where, before he turned back to Evelyn with a look of chagrin that actually seemed genuine.

"I apologize. I have made an error," he said seriously. "I will attempt to change my alt-mode as soon as we have the necessary energy reserves at our disposal."

Evelyn schooled her features back into something like calm. "Okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "Alright, that's fine. I guess it'll probably be okay for now. Just keep a low profile until then. Vehicles with lights and sirens attract a lot of attention."

Prowl nodded. "Understood."

Crisis averted, Evelyn felt suddenly guilty at her outburst. "It could be worse," she conceded. "You could have picked a firetruck, or a ..."

The pulleys overhead grated to life as the warehouse door was activated from outside. A large red and white van pulled through, spinning a little on the wet concrete. The shrill wail of a siren cut off as the vehicle's familiar curves twisted and folded in on themselves, leaving a pair of red crosses emblazoned on the medic's shoulders and distinctive backwards lettering on his chest.

"Primus save me from this planet's ridiculous driving customs!" Ratchet snapped. "At least turning on that noise got them to move out of the way." His optics went to Prowl, then to Jazz on the floor, and finally down to Evelyn doing her best fish impersonation at his feet. "What," he said tersely, "are you looking at?"

Without a word, Evelyn threw her hands up and turned on her heel. License plates clattered to the concrete floor behind her as she stalked off to the back of the warehouse, muttering words under her breath that Mama would not only have killed her for saying, but would have had her corpse buried with a bar of soap in its mouth.

Jazz dissolved into quiet snickers again, joined by a less discrete Sideswipe. Sunstreaker had abandoned his antisocial pretence to sneer openly at the whole room. Only Prowl kept his composure. He bent smoothly to retrieve one of the plates where it had fallen and handed it to the medic.

"Lights and sirens," he told him, "are not advisable."

End "Lights and Sirens"

A/N: "Jazzybot" is my iPod's name.