Rewind



Did You Know that Rewind...
 * Is the undisputed Autobot trivia master?
 * Can store more data than even a floppy disk, whether in robot mode or mighty microcassette mode?
 * Isn't terribly selective with the data he stores, gathering up every tidbit of information he can find until it gives him a splitting electronic headache?
 * Can unleash the light from his internal data storage matrix to become a blinding beacon?
 * Would never lose on Jeopardy!, but isn't always able to remember the useful things he knows until it's too late?
 * Can tell you useful facts about New Jersey (both of them)?

Fiction
Rewind is extremely old: he can remember when Cybertron switched to the New Calendar, and predates the rise of the Functionists and their Grand Cybertron Taxonomy. Within the new caste structure the Functionists imposed upon Cybertronian society, Rewind's memory stick alternate made saw him labelled as a member of the Disposable class, who were little better than slaves. Fortunately, Rewind was lucky enough to wind up working as a data receptacle for Dominus Ambus, who treated him with respect and eventually became his friend, even fighting for civil rights for the Disposable class. Seeking a cure for the disease Cybercrosis, Dominus departed Cybertron to search for Luna 1, and Rewind accompanied him; their quest ended in failure, and when they returned to their homeworld, they discovered a civil war had broken out in their absence. Rewind joined the Autobot faction, but the war soon became a distant second concern for him when Dominus mysteriously disappeared. Rewind began a lifelong search for his friend, but when no sign that he still lived could be found, the archivist eventually started investigating the Relinquishment Clinics, thinking that his friend may have committed suicide, and at he could at least gain some measure of peace by learning his fate. It was while visiting such a clinic, where he was confronted with failure yet again, that Rewind was approached by Chromedome, another Autobot waiting to die who had found something inside himself touched by Rewind's anguish. Together, the pair gave each other a reason to live and began a relationship that lasted for millions of years, but Rewind never stopped searching for Dominus. With a camera mounted to his head at all times to record anything and everything around him, Rewind even began to plumb seedier and seedier depths, procuring footage of deaths of all kinds, in hopes of one day finding something that would reveal Dominus's fate to him. Despite being named Rewind's Conjunx Endura, Chromedome resigned himself to the fact he would only ever be the second most important person in Rewind's life.

Rewind was among the Autobots stationed at the Kimia Facility at the time of the Chaos event, and escaped an attack by Cyclonus and the Sweeps by fleeing in an escape pod with several other survivors. Kings Returning to Cybertron, he was tasked with putting his mastery of language to use translating the inscription found within the Matrix of Leadership, but even he struggled with it. When it was deduced that the Matrix contained a map believed to lead to the long-lost Knights of Cybertron, Rewind elected to join Rodimus's crew aboard the Lost Light in following the map. On the craft's launch day, Rewind purchased some more death footage from Swindle before joining Chromedome and Ratchet in crossing the Mitteous Plateau to the ship, causing some grumbling from his partner that they were being forced to walk because of Rewind's non-mobile alternate mode. How to Say Goodbye and Mean It Upon launch, a malfunction of the Lost Light's quantum generators damaged the ship and hurled it into deep space; once the ship was set down on a planetoid, Rewind helped Chromedome and Hoist recover the damaged Cyclonus, who had been clinging to the hull. Returning to the ship, they met with Swerve and Tailgate, and then witnessed a battle between the newly-arrived amnesiac Skids and a group of mysterious robots, which Rewind gleefully recorded.

No sooner was the Lost Light airborne again than Rewind was called upon to help investigate the death of Shock, identifying the murder as the work of a Sparkeater. The Chaos of Warm Things Rodimus later called Rewind up to give Tailgate a history lesson about the war: having been in stasis throughout the conflict, Tailgate had decided that he wanted to be a Decepticon, but a super-compressed summary of the villains' actions during the war beamed straight into his head by Rewind quickly disabused him of the notion.

When Red Alert discovered the footage Rewind had bought from Swindle and brought on board, he dubbed them "snuff movies" and punished the little 'bot by having him replace rivets on the ship's hull. He was soon joined in his task by Swerve, and the pair were then pressed into action when Fortress Maximus took Rung and Whirl hostage. Rewind projected footage of Max's torture at the hands of Overlord at Garrus-9 through a window from outside in order to distract him, while Swerve took a shot at him, but wound up grievously wounding Rung instead.

Against Rewind's wishes, Chromedome had begun using his mnemosurgery skills again, resulting in him reliving the experience of Skyfall's death. After helping calm his partner, Rewind accompanied him to Tailgate's Autobot Initiation Ceremony, during which Rodimus was seized by a strange compulsion and drew some ancient Cybertronian on Tailgate's chest, which Rewind translated as "let me out". Shortly after, Rewind was among those teleported to the planet Theophany by the Galactic Council to investigate the abandoned Crystal City. Beneath the city, they found a Metrotitan, whose psychic emanations were revealed as the cause of Rodimus's trance; the words, Cyclonus explained, were a plea from the titan that actually said "set me free". When the Autobots shrank the titan so it could teleport away, it sent them back to their ship and quantum-jumped them out of the Council's reach.

With Rung's body repaired after the hostage ordeal, Rewind determined to heal his comatose mind by gathering together a group of other Transformers to tell stories of their shared experiences that would notionally help Rung's unresponsive mind form connections. The first two attempts didn't work out, An Intimate Beheading so for the third try, Rewind got Chromedome, Ratchet, Skids, Drift and Whirl to help him tell a story about events set during the Clampdown. Post Hoc The story didn't appear to be having any effect, Patternism but Rewind was determined to keep going, having discovered that Rung was strangely ubiquitous in Cybertronian history, having been presented for virtually ever major event in the planet's span. In the end, it was not the story, but Skids's deliberate mispronunciation of the psychiatrist's name that awoke him. ewind took part in an attack on a Decepticon battalion on Temptoria, which kicked off with an argument between him and Chromedome, as he had previously promised his partner that he would not put himself in danger in this manner any more. The argument was cut off when Whirl dragged Rewind away to take footage of him during the attack; while Whirl and Cyclonus took care of the combat end of the mission, Rewind and Tailgate explored the Decepticon base and discovered the villains were using pink alchemy to drain energon from the natives. A bomb was wired to the chamber, so Rewind helped Tailgate to defuse it, but when the process went wrong, he wound up locked in the bomb chamber with Cyclonus. The larger 'bot shielded Rewind from the explosion, but the archivist was still badly damaged, and would have died had not Whirl (secretly responsible for locking them in as part of a deluded attempt to kill Cyclonus) volunteered to take part in jumpstarting his spark. After the crew and Rewind had recovered from the battle of Temptoria, Rewind was one of those invited with Swerve and his "gang" to the tourist planet of Hedonia for a night of R& R. Rewind was one of the group who had the opportunity to scout the organics-only bar using his holomatter avatar, a 20-something human called, appropriately, Joe Human. While Swerve babysat a drunken Ultra Magnus, Rewind joined the others in the gift shop. Rewind suggested to them that if they were already in trouble with Ultra Magnus, they might as well get into some serious trouble by searching for the "dark secret" of Hedonia. He later convinced Rung not to buy any Hedonian tourist memory sticks, as he was recording his own version.

Rung bought an Ark-1 model instead, which led Rewind to an impromptu showing of some ancient footage of the real Ark-1's opening ceremony. Before he could roll footage, an apparently drunk Cyclonus flew into a rage. With only twenty minutes to spare, Rewind helped the others to get a comatose Ultra Magnus back to the shuttle.

Unknown to Rewind, Chromedome was busy interfacing with the secret Decepticon prisoner, Overlord, who would later use Chromedome's memories to escape from his slow-cell prison. Rewind suspected something was going on, and visited Brainstorm to relay some of his suspicions. At that moment, Overlord killed Pipes and the Lost Light was alerted to their emergency.

He followed the rest of the crew to find Overlord crippled by Trepan's Trigger, the mnemonic process Chromedome had installed in the Phase-Sixer as a failsafe. Rewind felt betrayed by Chromedome's return to mnemosurgery, a dangerous practice which Chromedome had previously promised Rewind he would no longer do. (Remembrance_Day) Rewind angrily told Chromedome that they would talk later, but the chance never came. When Fortress Maximus managed to put Overlord back into the slow cell, the doors had been wedged open by one of Drift's swords. The only way to close the cell was for Rewind to get into the cell and remove the sword from the inside.

As the ejection countdown began, Rewind apologised to a distraught Chromedome for things not working out. As the cell fell away from the ship, Rewind turned to find Overlord looming over him. What was said between to two is not known as Chromedome, only too aware of Overlord's depravity, rushed to blow up the ejected cell rather than leave Rewind to a sadist's mercy...

Later, a small red-tinted camera-unit floating in space was all that remained of Rewind, next to a fully intact and not-quite-dead Overlord.

Unknown to Chromedome, Rewind had the foresight to compose a message to his partner and eject it from the cell prior to the door's closing. After his in absentia funeral, Rewind's data-slug gave a grieving Chromedome a final message through a series of edited clips, finishing with the words I Love You.