Flashback: Cast Adrift (Closed)

[Deleted]

The Autobot patrol finds him long before he finds himself.

Wheeljack peers up at the broken ruins above him. He knows this place, he thinks, which is strange given that he knows so little about himself. His access to his own memory files is a distant thing, they lurk just out of reach in his processor. He shakes his helm as if the simple action is enough to clear it but all that does is draw his attention to the weight on his servos.

He glances down to find broken shackles trailing down from where they are welded to his wrists. Wheeljack doesn't remember why they are there or how he got them. Nor can he recall the origins of the lacerations adorning the rest of his body. They're methodical, each one of them. Precise. Exactly the same length and symmetrically distributed. The ones down his fore-arms were to cut motor control to his servos. The ones around his spark chamber-

Torture, he thinks distantly. Imprisonment. He's seen it before, on the mechs he'd rescued back at-

His memory cuts out. Wheeljack fumbles mentally as he tries to recall the exact details. But the familiarity is fleeting and the recognition fades quickly, slipping from his mind like sand through his servos. He is left standing, confused and alone amidst his shattered refuge.

The atrium, he thinks. This was the atrium. But to what, he doesn't know. Wheeljack cranes his helm back, optics sweeping the broken levels above him. The floors above are littered with debris, broken glass and twisted metal. Most of it though is crystal, ranging from enormous chunks to a fine dust that could kill a mech from the inside out if too much of it accumulated in their vents.

It was a gestalt, he decides-remembers-recalls. A new one, being tested in battle. It had smashed through the city's defences, letting in the Decepticons to raze the-

The-

-the-

-Crystal City-

Like a dam had been breached, the recollection of his home city's name brings with it a deluge of other memories so strong, he quickly loses touch with what is real and what isn't. The atrium is overlayed with the past, it gleams in all of its glory when Crystal City stood strong and was the proud home to the greatest minds of Cybertron. Its emptiness is quickly filled with the ghosts of scientists long dead, they walk past Wheeljack, debating and arguing over the latest theories and paradigms. Soft sparks, he recalls with a touch of derision, the lot of them. For all their brilliance, they'd believed that they would remain untouched by war so long as they didn't pick a side. Stupid, Wheeljack had called them. Foolish. Blind, he'd rallied. In return they'd labelled him a disruptive, violent simpleton and threatened to revoke his tenure if he didn't quiet down.

He'd left, Wheeljack believes, though with his past and present so thoroughly tangled together right now, it's impossible to tell if it had actually happened or if maybe he's dreaming of a vivid fantasy about a life he'd never had. He'd left, swearing to never return whilst his cohort had been gaping in sheer disbelief. When Crystal City had finally fallen, he'd been fifteen sectors away, fighting to hold down the East barricade in Polyhex. The fighting had been brutal and lasted orns and he'd been swept directly onto another battle once it was over. He'd never had a chance to look back at what had become of his home after the Decepticons had broken through those defences his cohort had been so proud of and brought Crystal City to its knees.

The only good defence was a strong offense. Curling up and hiding away from the reality that had claimed Cybertron would only get you killed. In the end, the only thing that had surprised Wheeljack was how long it had taken for it to happen.

Those who'd witnessed it said that the fall of Crystal City was the most beautiful thing they'd ever seen. Except-except-

With unsteady servos, he reaches out to the nearest gleaming pillar. He is so convinced that it is real that when Wheeljack's servo passes through empty air, it's like an electric shock to his systems.

No, he thinks, as he watches Botanica flit past with a flock of eager young students trailing in her wake. This is wrong, Wheeljack tells himself as he struggles to push back the flow and sort out what is memory and what isn't. Beneath the solid crystal façade, he can see the shattered support beams, the dust and the rubble that makes up the atrium now. Wheeljack tries to reconcile the two, the truth from his long dead past. It is because of his distraction that the other mechs -real mechs, he thinks because he's never seen them before or at least, he thinks he hasn't- are able to get so close.

"Unknown mech. Identify yourself."

Instinct has him automatically pinging them his ID codes. Wheeljack looks up again as his mind is flung wide and clear then sinks deeper into the flood. "I lived here, once," he rasps at them deliriously, trying to keep hold of this fact. Or maybe he just thinks it at them. It really isn't clear.

In the corner of his optic, something moves. Wheeljack's instincts twinge in warning, his servos dart to his back to grasp empty air. His swords are-

The back of his head flares with pain.

Everything goes dark, after that.

[Flatline]

The sound of dripping water was apparent through the hazy darkness, intermixed with a few static sparks of electricity that crackled across old and deteriorating lines. Within the shroud of waning unconsciousness, distant voices could be heard. One was roaring out, its vocals reverberating across metal and concrete as if sound itself was trapped in an echoing cage. It added a delusional edge to everything, the echo repeating some words that were more punctuated, while the lower ones faded away sooner.

"I don't know why you bothered bringing him here!"

A softer voice followed then, not having the same amount of reverberation, but more hissing out with an edge of nervousness that laced between each word in tight coils. The pitch was anxious, high strung, as if they expected the walls to cave in upon them at any given moment.

"I got to admit it was not... the smartest of ideas..."

In contrast to the two, a third voice slipped out, one far more confident and calm. Power, authority, it would always be quite odd how one could tell who led the team by vocals alone. It is almost as if those people that get shoved in such situations, all conform to a single mold of expectations. It was something unexplainable until you yourself were thrust into such a role of overbearing responsibility.

"You act like he is tainted, for all we know he just got lost. Beside-"

"LOST!? He had SHACKLES on him!"

"-Besides... I recognize him, war hero, I don't see that easy to break."

Wheeljack would find himself pinned up against a wall, the level of restrains almost... ridiculous... as if they were put together by one that suffered from extreme paranoia at every given corner. Bands of metal were clapped over limbs, bolted on either side to the wall itself with heavy duty pins that ground deeply into the concrete. They were stapled around randomly, maybe three on a forearm, two on the other, one on one bicep, two on the other. There was even a single plate strapped over the palm, as if having just the left hand mobile was some atrocious sin, while no care was given to the right which was left semi mobile despite the wrist strap. There was no rhyme or reason to this logic in any way whatsoever. The only certainty was that there'd be little if any movement permitted by the number of these across his entire frame.

The absurdity was only duplicated, when the pose itself was not even symmetrical, Wheeljack would find one arm higher than the others, and his head slung to one side awkwardly so. It seriously was as if they threw him against the wall, and whatever pose had happened is what stuck. This wall was within a room, or more accurately a cell, some partly twisted but still structurally sound rebar creating bars at the maw of the small quarters. They cast long shadows into the cell from the faint red light that filtered in from down the hall, most likely from an aging exit sign that clutched desperately for life.

"So you want to take a risk on him?... I don't know... You know what happened with-"

"Don’t you say it! Don't you say that fragging name!"

The silence after this uproar was suffocating; the sheer volume of the yell booming through the corridors with such vigor it could wake the dead. The lingering after effects of its cry seemed to serpentine along, ringing in audios as a reminder, whispering quiet repetition. After what seemed like forever, softer words followed, muffled, not able to be understood. It was the leader figure, that much information could be gleamed from it, but he was speaking in a low tone. His words garnered a huff of a scoff of anger, as well as a soft whine of distress from the two mechs respectively.

Footfalls could be heard, but from Wheeljack's position. He could not see who. They were light; soft clicks against concrete that could almost be mistaken for hard taps of a finger atop a metal table. They stopped just outside of the Autobot's line of sight, though a shadow was cast across the floor, showing that someone was directly outside the cell and to the right, though had fallen motionless and silent.

"Why are we discussing this?! SLAG! This is pointless! Why change what isn't broken!?"

"YES! Yes... *whine* What we have been doing has kept us ALIVE Cobalt... If we do something new, if... if we deviate, we will just get torn down. I don't want to lose anyone else... I... No no we got to just go deal with this!"

Panic was surging in their voice, amping up gradually from the meek quiet tones before, to almost a psychosis, crying out in horror and despair.

"He could be pulling free already! We don't know how strong he is! We don't! We don’t! *wheeze* Nononono Harvest gogo! Go and end this before something goes wrong!"

"Don't have to tell me twice..."

There was a loud clicking pop, akin to a shotgun being pulled down upon, followed by a humming rev of the weapons internals rumbling to life. The type of weapon was not readily apparent by sound alone, it didn't sound like a typical rifle, or that of one that used real metal ammunition. Whatever it was though, definitely sounded like it would have enough power to cleave someone's head right off in a clean line from their shoulders. The sound caused the shadow outside of the cell to flinch somewhat, their form easing forward to look down the hallway, in the direction of where the voices were originating.

"...And I don't need to tell you twice to stand down..."

"But-"

"Look, Fallstreak did the restraints... FALLSTREAK there is no way he is getting out, let is just... talk with him ok? If he really is unhinged? And if he shows ANY signs of following in the footsteps of-"

A pause, the heightened levels of tension suffocating until he slowly continued.

"-of... others... then we will end things before they go out of hand. We do not make mistakes twice, you all know this."

There were some mumblings, quiet sounds of disgruntled approval, mixed with soft sobs of panic. The shadow outside of the cell finally moved again, stepping in front of the bars to look in at the figure bolted to the wall.

Her form was sleek, that of a two wheeler, or perhaps a four wheeler on the smaller side. Her shoulders jutted out in sloping armor that tapered down towards her elbows into a sharp point. The arms themselves were broad at the joint, sloping gracefully to small hands that seemed to be very dexterous, possibly a medic's hands due to the number of joints and the style of fingertips. Legs were elongated, almost disproportional to the rest of her frame. Her knees and calf's being thicker due to a wheel behind each, the leg jutting down to small pointed feet that accounted for the earlier tapping.

Smooth armor was streaked in patterns of mint green and white, that had possibly once looked quite nice ages ago, but now was dingy and scuffed over time. The metal itself that shown beneath this damage was in good condition, frame healthy and in fighting shape. The only flaws being the shredded paint that was torn away in long smears, echo's of battles long past. But what survived this tarnishing, was the medics icon that was blazoned upon her shoulder. Even though half was rubbed raw to metal, the partial icon was recognizable. She had lifted her nimble hand, placing it upon the bars with a sort of refinement to it that was odd.

But for all of her grace, all of her perceived elegance, there was fierceness behind her blue optics, the colors laced with a thin ring of lime that accented the iris plate. This fierce gaze locked onto Wheeljack's, judging silently, the look itself possibly able to bore into ones very spark with their intensity. Her lips were pressed into a thin line, displeased, not to thrilled with what was happening. To accent this, her fingers curled about the bar, tightening some with a soft whir.

There was a scramble then, feet almost sliding across the ground at how hard they were trying to propel themselves and grasp for friction. The Medic barely had a moment to start to turn to look down the hall, before a second form rammed into her in a near full body tackle. This mech was wiry built, much leaner, but also much taller than the medic. His frame rammed into her, but it was not a true tackle, it was not mean to harm. Instead, lengthy oversized arms had coiled about her in a protective cage, a broad paneled foot swinging ahead of the momentum, to slam it down, so that the duo didn’t fall to the ground and instead slid a short distance to the side from momentum.

The individual was donned in bright shades of purple and silver that smeared across the angular and wiry frame. He was comparable to a spider in a way, even more so when he moved with the flinching lurches. If the struts in his protoform were shrunk? He would be about the size of any other average bot, but this elongation just made him... bizzare... It was apparent though he was built for speed. Lines etched into his frame, some for function of being streamlined, others from debris sheering paint off as they went past.

What had occurred in those split moments, was this new figure clutching onto the medic protectively, one hand clasped behind the back of her head with a palm that was harboring one too many fingers. Wide blue optics latched onto Wheeljack, as he looked mixed between terror and anger, trying to cradle the female. It was as if he expected the shackled Mech to be a true threat still to their one and only medic.

"What are you doing with him ALONE Mercury!?"

Suddenly a palm swung up to bash him in the face, the medic slipping free easily in a twisting motion to land upon her feet. She looked riled up, frustrated, lifting her left hand to make sure Fallstreak didn’t injure her from it being wrenched off the bars at such speeds. She spoke with determination and clarity, almost mathematically with a touch of annoyance.

"I can handle myself. You do..."

She eyed Wheeljack's predicament.

"...copious restraints... so I see no reason I could not observe."

"Observe!?"

A strained whine slipped out, the mech lifting his hands to drag down his face where the paint had been rubbed away many vorns prior. He looked overworked, tired, and just hanging on by threads, though much of it was a hell made of his own paranoia. But mistrust, being prepared, and planning ahead, were what kept you alive in this place.

"Yes, I believe he is waking up, if he isn't already."

Her hand flicked out dismissively towards their prisoner, as if he were a thing rather than a person yet. She wanted to learn more, she wanted facts before she made judgment. For now? He was just a thing, not worth any time until he proved he even had cognitive abilities. Then he would move up one rung of the ladder, with many more hurdles to pass over.

"What are you even doing here? I thought you and the other two were speaking."

"Cobalt sent me to check in on the restraints... really, I think he wanted a private word with Harvest... you.... you know... how... he can... get..."

The last few words had stuttered and dropped off, as if he was terrified the massive mech down the hall would overhear, the armor on his upper torso rattling a moment. As such, he wrapped his hands about the bars, glaring in. The fact she said he was waking up? Was not lost to the paranoid fool, his head dipping and raising, as if needing the motion to plan his facial features into 3D in his mind, looking for any signs of life.

"...I don't like this..."

[Deleted]

The restraints, of all things, are what grounds him when he wakes.

His processor aches and it's a fight to get himself conscious again. His mind is much clearer now then when it was when he'd offlined without warning. His memory core appears stable -for the moment- no memory files about to overwhelm and swamp his processor till he can't tell the past from the present.

Engineer Wheeljack of Crystal City has never had the dubious pleasure of waking up shackled. Wheeljack, the Wrecker, on the other servo, has done it enough times that he doesn't even need to online his optics to know that he's been captured. The distinction is what allows him break through the lingering delirium and remember a bit about who he is -for now that is.

His name is Wheeljack. He's an Autobot. A Wrecker.

...Cybertron was great once. Then the caste system was instated and one miner dared to rebel and question his place in society.

...Then he incited a war that consumed the planet...

Autobots.

Decepticons.

There was an engineer once who lived in a city made of crystals. Then war came and instead of building better machines to help people or even to protect them, he started building better weapons to kill them.

And when sitting on the sidelines wasn't good enough, he went forth the frontlines and started killing people with his own servos until they were stained blue with energon and the pile of corpses behind him never stopped growing.

He was good at what he did, but he didn’t know how to take orders very well. Then he caught the attention of a unit that didn't always play by the rules and took the jobs that no other Autobots could.

Wreckers don't call for backup, they call for clean up.

Wreck and rule.

Till all are one.

-Except-

Not really. There's too much energon on his servos, too many Autobots and Wreckers that faded out whilst he watched, for it to ever be enough.

Till all Decepticons are dead.

It feels right, the vague impressions of self that build in his processor. Familiar, like the rest of him is just around the corner and Wheeljack only has to peek around to find it. He's in no hurry, the pieces will fall into place when they're meant to and something tells him that there's a lifetime of memories that he'd rather not remember. That doesn't mean he can just ignore what's going on inside his helm. There's something not right with his processor and he runs a diagnostic scan to figure out just what is the problem. It doesn't take long to find the culprit.

His memory core.

The pathways to it have been shredded. The precious datafiles -his memories, everything, every event that made him him- aren't neatly stored inside, they've been ripped apart and scattered throughout the rest of his processor, where they most certainly do not belong. No wonder reality had spun so easily from his grasp standing in the wreckage of his home city. It'll take precious little to make him hallucinate the past again. The slightest misstep and the wrong neural pathway would light up, memory data embedded in it to make him trip harder than that time Whirl got into the energon and laced it with Primus knows what.

...Whirl...?

Who the slag is Whirl?

Wheeljack is seized by the sudden impression that this is important, that the name belongs to someone important to him. His own lack of knowledge makes him flinch when the search through his processor for anything related to that one name reveals nothing. What he does receive instead is a massive spike in pain in his helm and the general impression that prodding at his mind is just asking for trouble. The quick search had revealed nothing...but he's been fortunate that he hasn't brushed past any of those damaged pathways.

Right here and now, there's nothing can do to help fix his processor. The files are still tagged with meta data -timestamps, dates, locations, people- it's possible when he's got the time and is somewhere safe to ride out the flashbacks, he can start to unscramble his processor and re-index them in his memory core. It's highly likely that it'll be incomplete, that some files would be corrupted beyond recovery or missing completely but the situation is not unsalvageable.

So he turns his attention outwards. He hasn't moved since he'd onlined, he remains sprawled in the hold of the restraints. Wheeljack gets a feel for just where each and every one of them are and part of him is amused by just how many they'd seen fit to bind him with. His captors had been zealous, some might say overly so but the Decepticons have never been able to hold him for long. Maybe they've finally started to wise up and learn from their mistakes.

Wheeljack can hear voices in the distance. Some mechs sounded kinda panicky. Loud too. The poor grunts had probably just figured out who they'd stashed in their holding cell.

Good. Frightened grunts are stupid grunts. They make more mistakes and could be intimidated into doing things his way.

Heh. Those Decepticons sure sound freaked out.

A pair of footsteps click-clack softly towards him. They sound pretty light, the mech moving around probably didn't have a lot of armour or bulk. They then stop and wait as the argument continues on, gaining volume. Then another pair starts moving, sounds like mech number two is in a bit of a hurry. There's the clang of metallic bodies colliding then the newcomer -it had to be him, he was one of the voices from before- started berating the other mech.

At first, it sounded like typical Decepticon byplay, what are you doing, rawr, I'm an angry Decepticon, blah, blah, blah. Then one mech hit the other, Wheeljack couldn’t tell who but yep, how typically Decepticon.

-Something about the sound makes him remember a large green mech who amicably slapped Wheeljack's shoulder once and nearly toppled him. Then they jumped out a burning airship plunging towards the ground, somehow survived the fall and then went on to decimate an enemy outpost-

The first Con spoke up, berating mech number two and snapping Wheeljack out of the flashback. Unusual to hear such concern from a pair of grunts but Wheeljack didn't fool himself that all Decepticons were sparkless monsters. Just the majority of them. Ninety nine percent of them.

Nope. All of them.

It's kinda annoying that their voices had cut in like that. He'd been so close...the big green mech had been someone important, but this time he doesn't even have a name. Just the vague sense of fondness and affection...then an aching loneliness and small threads of guilt and betrayal.

Still. Unimportant right now. Wheeljack has bigger problems to worry about. Like the two Decepticons standing somewhere nearby, one of which is certain that he is no longer partying in the realms of unconsciousness. So he figures he's got nothing to lose if he stops pretending he's in recharge. He's been quiet for long enough anyway. It is time now to figure just where he is and how he is going to get out.

Electric blue optics flick on dimly and the room -cell- Wheeljack is imprisoned in comes into blurry view. It's not much, looks like just about every other hellhole he's been imprisoned in. And that's enough to-

"C'mon Jackie, time to tell these Cons what we think of their hospitality. With our fists."

Big, green, important and yet frustratingly lacking a name grins at him. He's standing by the door, a servo swapped out for a wrecking ball -they were Wreckers -brothers- once- and ready to smash his way out. It's like being back in Crystal City, watching Botanica go past. Wheeljack can't tell which way is up, it feels real...but even Con grunts would surely notice the menacing Autobot right in front of them, waiting to smash their faces in with glee. He can see the pair just lurking beyond the twisted bars blocking the cell, pressed up against the rebars looking in and talking about him.

Decepticons are stupid, Wheeljack tells himself and the statement carries the weight of total certainty and long experience. The moment one of them steps inside the cell, they're a dead mech, if Big and Green is real. He stirs, helm lolling from the side till he lifts it up and leans it back against the wall. Wheeljack gives the pair a once over, they're quite cosy where they are and staring him like he's the four headed star of the Polyhexian glitchshow. Instinct has his retractable battle-mask sliding up-or it would if he actually had a battle-mask-

Did he? He'd been so certain and the protocols are there for one in his processor. But it's gone, like it was never there, just an imagined figment from a dream. If his servos were free, he could reach up and check for himself, feel the jagged edges that remained instead, the receptors there long burnt out.

Oddly enough, his captors appear to be wearing the Autobrand. But that didn't make sense, because in the world that Wheeljack lives -remembers and just barely- real Autobots didn't imprison fellow Autobots. They also didn't torture them because what else could this be? Wheeljack can barely remember his own designation, he's been pretty much bolted to the wall and his frame been used to test the sharpness of someone's knives. Maybe this was some sort of psychological attack on him.

Which makes him scoff to himself because really-

-they'd been supplying a Decepticon outpost up north of Altikex with Autobot weaponry. In return, the attacks on the DKL23 base were suspiciously light, with only the occasional casualty. It had been going on for forty eight vorns before someone noticed the missing supplies and put it all together.

That's when they called the Wreckers in.

Whole lotta energon was spilt that cycle-

-it wouldn't be the first time he's killed mechs carrying the Autobrand.

"There a question you mechs were trying to ask me?" he calls out, voice confident and helm high because frag, he's Wheeljack and he doesn't break for any mech, rather he's the one that does the breaking. And the slicing. And the smashing. "I don't think I heard you properly the first time. Why don't you try again?"

He focuses on Thin and Purple and the last couple of words Purple had rattled off before Wheeljack had decided to drop the pretending-to-be-in-recharge act. "Really? You're not enjoying this? Because I'm about to have the time of my life once I get out of here."

Big and Green grins at him. "Yeah, you tell 'em how it is, Jackie."