Jazz X Prowl - Tumblr Posts

AU August Fic 2

Artist’s Muse

The roof was slick and cold from the earlier frost.  Jazz had to watch his balance, even while using his magnets.  He slipped down into the wide gutter beneath his window and edged along it until he came to the farthest corner.  Beneath him, three hundred stories down, he could see bots buzzing home after a late evening.  He gazed at them, transfixed as he pulled his lyre from his subspace.

It was a thing of beauty.  Jazz ran his servo over the curve of the arm with its carved swirling details. Its origin was ugly and painful, but Jazz was helplessly in love with it anyway.  The artist who had created it, the musician who had played it before him…they were innocent.  This was a Strand lyre - he’d only ever made twelve of them - and it was an honor and a pleasure to play it.

His employer had four.  The other three were still pinned to the wall in the entryway like fragile dioflies, lighting up as the passing headlights shone through the window.

Across the road the balcony doors opened.  The warm yellow light sparkled differently through the moisture heavy air.  The doors closed and Jazz watched two servos appear on the railing, still heavily bandaged.

Jazz lifted the lyre and began to play.

The mech had been badly hurt.  Each night he slowly shuffled to the edge of the balcony as if he was crossing the Polyhex Plains.  Jazz tried not to imagine what injuries the bandages hid.  The only part they’d fully repaired had been his doorwings, shiny and new, glinting in the light.  Jazz had looked him up after the fourth night he’d watched him stumble out onto the balcony. 

Officer Prowl, on loan from Praxus.  He’d run back into a flaming shuttle again and again, according to the reports - a shuttle shot down on accident by Polyhex’s own turret guns.  Ha, ‘accident.’  Everyone knew who controlled those turrets and it wasn’t Polyhex.

The first night Jazz had come out onto the roof, it had been just to watch the cars.  He’d laid down to watch them, pretending it was the icy cold wind making his spark and frame ache.  It was only recently that he’d been brave enough to bring his lyre for company.  He was content at first just to feel the warmth of it in his subspace.  Then he’d pulled it out to cradle the beautiful instrument in his lap.  Then the call of the music had been too strong and he’d let the first haunting notes spiral out of his spark and into the world.

He kept returning.  Somehow, playing to the black sky and the echoing canyon of the skyscrapers had drained some of the poison.  It no longer hurt to look at the bots below.

He’d known he’d made a mistake minutes after he’d signed the contract.  He’d been hungry and tired, pushed past his limits.  He’d known that the ‘live-in musician’ contract was a sham.  Just like the turrets, Jazz only appeared to be in control.  Starvation for freedom, fuel for imprisonment.  He was never going to win.

Here at least, in the dark, with his silent audience, Jazz made the air dance on his command.  

He thought about the bots below, driving home to loved ones and the notes lifted up into happy, rose-red bubbles.

He thought about his audience’s injuries and the tempo slowed, the sounds deepening with sorrow and grief.

He thought about the will it must have taken to dive back into the flames, even as his paint burned, over and over again.  The notes came faster, overlaying each other in a messy melody.

He imagined his muse whole and healthy again.  He coaxed sweetened sounds from between his fingers, sending each note from the tip of his fingers out across the divide to stroke - gently! so gently - over his muse’s powerful, ravaged frame.

Across from him, the mech turned towards the music, unmoving, but clearly listening.  The shadows of his face made him look like carved crystal.  Those servos, strong and good, on the balcony edge…Jazz imagined them on his shoulders, stroking down his back.  He imagined taking them in his own and curling around them protectively.  The gentle twitching of his doorwing in the night, like an unknowing conductor, set Jazz’s spark aflame with want.  He couldn’t stop himself.

He sang.

The notes turned silky and smooth, like melted gold in his mouth as he did.  Not words, just notes and hums that twirled around the sound of his lyre in the night.  He poured everything into his voice - admiration, longing, desolation, joy, fragile hope - until his spark was empty and the space between the two of them was full.

The echos bounced back for an eternity before it was silent.  He would need to go in before anyone noticed he was missing.  Jazz took one more long look at his muse.

“Primus, mech, you’re beautiful,” he whispered to himself, setting his lyre down.  The mech across the road seemed to be looking right at him, if it weren’t for the bandages across his optics.  “Wish I could tell ya that.”

It made his servos ache, but he put his lyre away and crawled back towards the window.  He unlatched it and froze.

His…patron was standing there.  

“Sir -”

He was seized and pulled through.  As he was slammed into the wall, Jazz’s vision went white.

0-0-0

Prowl titled his helm - uselessly, his audio functions were still offline - and ‘listened’ harder.

“What do you think you were doing?  Out there with my property!”

“I wouldn’t have dropped it -!”

“That wasn’t what I was talking about.”

The faint sound of a servo striking a face.

“I bought myself a musician.  I spent a lot of money on it.  It is mine.”

“Yes sir.”

The window was pulled shut and his doorwings couldn’t sense through the thick walls.

Prowl turned and shuffled back towards his room, processor spinning.

At first, Prowl had thought his private serenade was another patient in the next wing.  The songs had started out so sad…  When they grew lighter and happier he’d thought the invisible musician was healing.

He’d asked about the wing across from his window yesterday and was informed that it was actually a high end recording studio.  That explained why the music went silent once the window closed.

This time, his singer had left the window open.  This time he knew why his singer’s songs had started out so sorrowful.

Prowl was not particularly gifted in any of the arts, but in his own field, he was something of a maestro.  The thunderous symphony that he would be bringing down, upon the mech that dared harm the one bright spot he’d found in his recovery, would give the critics something to write about.

AU August Fic 3

Country Side

“Prowl, this is what people do in the countryside,” Carrier explained.  “We visit our neighbors and exchange gossip.  That’s it.  So, unless you want to sit in this house and -”

“Yes, thank you.”  Prowl spun around and retreated back to the guest room.

“Ugh!” He saw Carrier throwing up his servos behind him, in the reflection of one of the many, many chrome decorations.

Prowl had been living with his Carrier for six months and he was already going mad.  If he had to recharge to the sound of scurrying turbofoxes and buzzing diodeflies for one more night, he’d bash his own helm in.

He’d been persuaded -threatened - to give up his small apartment in the city, right above the armory Enforcers’ armory after they had put him on indefinite leave.

He had heard of disgraced nobility being banished to the country for crimes that average bots would go to prison for.  As a child, every time they visited their country estate there was at least one “they’re staying with us while they sort all that mess out in Vos/Iacon/Polyhex” at every party.  His creators always made sure he was never left alone with them.

It had made watching those holiday specials where an overworked city bot learned all about the joys of simply country living awkward.  Strongarm and Ultra Magnus had devoured those quietly during every Lost Sparks Day season.

He had not expected to be sent to the country for protesting a training.

The “Frame Protection Act” was functionalist propaganda that would lead to more crime, more murders, and more suicides.  Prowl had run his tactical computer at its highest setting (and given himself a three day migraine) in order to get the most accurate predictions.

He has presented them at the beginning of the week and by the end he had been pseudo-fired and his carrier was sending for him.

He missed the clink of the armory guard cleaning the rail guns and the explosion when he accidentally shot a hole in the wall.

0-0-0

“There will be crystals - you like crystals!”

There will be people. I hate people.”

“One, that’s a lie, two, there will be far more crystals than people.  You don’t have to talk to them, just get a cube and wander the gardens.  You can pretend to be all mysterious-“

“I don’t- “

“- brood a bit and then we can go home.”

Prowl opened his mouth to argue and then the kitchen timer dinged.

“The jellies!”  Carrier tripped over the ornately carved floor - very old-credit country home chic - and raced towards the kitchen.

Prowl walked over and slumped onto the entryway couch.  He stared down at the floor.  Following the old style of interlocking squares, it was deeply and intricately carved.  The deeper the carving, the deeper the expensive flooring would have to be.  It was a tripping risk and very difficult and time consuming to clean.

It would be horrible for any bot who used wheels or had stilt legs instead of pedes.  Smaller bots - mini-bots, symbiotes, the microbots that lived in the Archives of Iacon - would need to be carried across most of it or their pedes would be stuck.

In the country, even the slagging floor was functionalist.

0-0-0

There was a knock on the door.  Prowl stood up.  Maybe it was a criminal come to murder him to get him out of the garden party.  That would be helpful.

Carrier was still packing up the jellies and their best high-grade into baskets because apparently just carrying them was a faux-pas.

He swung the door open.

“So sorry, but we’re about to leave - “

“I know.  I’m ya ride, sweetspark.”

The mech in front of him looked so out of place Prowl’s processor skirted the edge of a crash for a brief moment.

His paint was flat and stark.  There were no contrasting or complimenting flecks or glitter.  The black and white were generic.  He ran the blue and red as well and both came back as triple zero series paints - the basic colors every shop had for mixing custom colors.  Instead of making him look cheap, he looked clean and fresh.  His curves glinted in the fading afternoon light.  His curves -  He looked like poetry.  He sounded like poetry.  His visor was tinted blue - just blue.  It matched his optics.  His very pretty optics.

Prowl had been standing in the doorway for five kilks, just staring.  

“Hello,” he choked out, servo gripping the door tightly.  “Who are you?”

The mech put a servo on his hip and grinned.

“Me?  I’m Jazz, love.  Ya must be Prowl, down from Praxus for the season.”

“I - yes, I am Prowl.”  He fumbled for something cool or interesting to say - anything!  Bots this beautiful didn’t turn up on his doorstep very often - or ever - he needed to do something impressive.

His processor was blank.

“Heard - a little cyberhawk tol’ me - that ya opposed the Frame Protection Act.  Tha’ true?”

Prowl nodded.

“I - “

“Prowl!  Hurry and take this basket!  Our ride should be - oh, hello!”  Carrier was shoving a large silver woven basket into his arms, squeezing around him.  “You must be the singer everyone’s been talking about!  You’re staying at the Rubidium Cottage, yes?  I’m looking forward to your performance tomorrow night at Flashfire’s ball!”  He held out his servo and Jazz took it with a smile.

“That’ll be me,” Jazz said.  The grin he’d given Prowl was gone.  This smile looked…professional, false.  “I’m here to escort ya both to the party and carry anything ya need me ta.”

“Oh that’s perfect!  Prowl, you can go with Jazz and he can carry the Vosian Ale -” Carrier was shoving a similar sized basket into Jazz’s arms, “ - and I’ll stay here and put in another tray of baked jellies to replace the ones that burned!  I’ll see you both there!”

Then Carrier was gone and he was left standing across from a gorgeous mech holding a picnic basket.

“We’ll talk ‘n drive,” Jazz said, nodding his helm toward the path back to the main road.  “I wanna hear more about ya, Officer Prowl.”

0-0-0

“- and even if the statistics didn’t indicate it would be putting such a high number of sparklings and youngling at risk, the law is unethical.  It is dangerous.  It increases the pressure on non-standard frame types and prevents bots with standard frames from fully understanding the situation.  Without a solid grounding, bots will be more easily misled by outdated functionalist ideals and propaganda.”

Jazz had politely asked about Prowl’s thoughts on the new Act.  Prowl was halfway through his rant, complete with references.

They had only been driving for five minutes.

“Ah, but what about all the bots that the Act protects?” Jazz asked, his amusement coming through the comms clearly.  “We don’t want standard frame sparklings feeling guilty or having uncomfortable questions -”

“They didn’t!  They never have!  At no point has the Senate or any of the governors been able to produce ANY statistics on that nor were they able to prove that it was harmful.  The statistics - which educators have been collecting for four generations with double-blind studies and longitudinal studies - indicate that mixed frame type classrooms have lower instances of bullying, lower instances of depression, AND HIGHER SCORES!  They score HIGHER on the tests!  All of them!”

“Careful, sweetspark, ya wanna slow down on these country roads,” Jazz said, driving closer to push him away from a pothole in the middle. 

 Prowl slowed down.  

“I usually go to the Station racetrack when I’m angry,” he confessed.  “But there is nowhere out here to safely race.”  Well, maybe it was more than anger making his frame heat.

“Oh, there’s a couple a’ places.”

Prowl revved his engine.  “I said safe places.  I know all about those back country roads with their twists and hazards and mud.”

Jazz laughed.  Prowl would really like to keep making him laugh.  Possibly forever.

“And you?  What is your opinion on the Act?”  Prowl had a guess, but he was curious to hear what Jazz said.

He was silent for a moment as they drove.  Prowl took the time to admire the patterns the light cast on Jazz’s altmode as it cascaded through the aluminum trees’ branches.

“I look standard,” he said at last.  “I can pass.  But it ain’t right.  Don’ wan’ the non-standard bitlets ta be scared.  I wouldn’t trade my friends - the ones tha’ can’t pass - for the world.  Don’ wan’ some other bitlet missing out jus’ ‘cause the grown ups won’ teach ‘em right.”

They let the silence fall between them as they drove.

0-0-0

The party was just as horrible as Prowl had predicted.  Many bots who had questions about living in “the city” as if it was on the other side of the planet instead of two days drive.

Two other bots asked him about the Act - news traveled fast in the country where every day brought a new teatime visit and new gossip - but both regretted it.  They’d clearly been under the impression that Prowl was a poor youngling, misguided by the big city.  Neither of them lasted past the first three bullet points of his rant, quickly making excuses and hurrying away.

Prowl counted it as a win.  His Carrier at his side pretended not to hear any of it.

In such a small community, grievances cut more deeply.  Once he left, they would all politely pretend that he hadn’t verbally ripped those bots apart.  They would ask Carrier about him and pretend to be overjoyed at whatever news he gave.

Reason number 438 why he hated the country.

The only part he was enjoying - besides the crystal which were stunning - was watching Jazz move through the crowds.

They were all clustered on the tin grass lawn in front of the house.  To his left was the entrance to the formal gardens, but there were small sprays of crystal lining the walkway and the along the edges of the house.

Jazz fluttered from group to group, changing his manners with each one.  With the elderly group of bots sitting by the buffet table he was charming and gentile.  Every movement was grace.  He moved over to what his Carrier called “idiots with guns” and he stood straighter, laughed louder and more obnoxiously.  He touched the other bots more - slapped a squat femme on the shoulder and laughed at her joke - and stood closer.

With the sparklings he became a sparkling and it got Prowl right in the center of his spark.

Prowl stuffed more baked jellies into his mouth and pretended to be studying the large Malachite by the garden entrance so on one would try talking to him.

A little while later, Jazz sidled over, one servo cradling a cube, the other swinging freely instead of behind, held stiffly behind his back, as was proper.  He smiled at Prowl as he got closer.

“Hello, Jazz.”  Jazz stood next to him and surveyed the party.  He took a sip of the cube.

“Hey, so, ya wanna sneak off and make out in the gardens?”

It was said so casually that it took Prowl an extra .023 kliks to process it.

“Oh, Primus, yes,” he growled.  Jazz stifled a laugh, but his optics danced and flickered behind his visor.

“Awesome.  I’ll go ‘n make our excuses ta the host - can’t wait ta see how the peridot has grown, oh the rose quartz is so pretty, blah blah.  Be righ’ back.”  He handed Prowl his cube and made his way over to the largest gossiping group as quickly as he could without drawing attention.

Prowl lifted the cube to his mouth automatically and then stopped.  It wasn’t his.  But….

He took a sip anyway.  It felt more intimate than half the interfacing he’d done in the past ten vorns.  He caught Jazz looking back at him as he spoke, servos fluttering through the air as he explained their leaving to the host.

Jazz smirked.

Prowl’s chest heated as his spark spun faster.

AU August Fic 4

Dinosaurs

 It was all his stupid, thick-helmed patron’s fault.  Jazz could be sipping high-grade at camp, gossiping with the other researchers - but no.  

 “I pay the wages around here,” Jazz mimicked quietly. “This is my land.”  

 Idiot-Supreme must have heard, because there was a growl from somewhere behind him.

 “Shut up!  I’m not the one who turned on the creepy machine and landed us here.”

 Here being somewhere between the First Age of Iron and the Second Age of Energon.  A billion vorns before the first Cybetronian would walk the planet.  The hot spots had yet to coalesce into proper wells.  The many tiny, weak hot spots were instead pouring spark energy out randomly into the planet, creating life at random.  None of it very sentient.  Most of it very very large.

 THUMP -      CRASH    !

 One of the enormous Astatine trees crashed behind them.  Jazz clawed at the metal beneath him - soft and pliable because the gold content was higher and the tungsten from the 8121 meteor crash hadn’t happened yet - and pulled himself higher up the mountain side.  Behind him, Slag-for-a-processor did the same.

 None of the so-called ‘dinosaurs’ were bot-eaters, at least not according to all of their findings, but they were not careful where they put their pedes.  And they had so many of those.

 The ones they were racing up the mountains seemed to just casually wander from one side of the planet to the other, knocking everything down in their wake.  

 Eventually, Jazz was hoping, it would get too steep for them and they would have to turn back.  They didn’t seem to be actively chasing, just lumbering in the same direction.

 Jazz looked up.  He could see three enormous helms at the end of three enormous necks above him.  If Flitwire were here, she would be able to name the exact species and explain to him why they had such long necks.

 Unfortunately, Jazz’s area of study was ancient civilizations, not ancient creatures.

 “Ahh!”

 Jazz looked back.

 Prowl, patron of his dig, slag-processored tyrant, had started to slide down the side of the mountain.  Great!

 “Ya idiot!  Hang on!”

 “I - I can’t!”  He was scrabbling at the metal, but his servos just tore through the soft metal.

 “Hang - slaggit!”  Praxians didn’t have magnets.  Jazz doubled back..  Another crash.  Slaggit!

 Prowl’s pede had found purchase in a single lump of iron, lodged in the surface.  He was clinging to the mountain and shaking like a sparkling.  

 Seeing his nemesis with his optics wide and bright with terror was not as enjoyable as Jazz would have liked.

 Once they were side by side, Jazz pried one of Prowl’s servos loose and hooked it onto his shoulder.

 “Now the other one!” he shouted.  “I’ll get us up!”  Prowl stared at him for a moment and then slowly let go of the bent and torn ground and gripped Jazz’s shoulders.

 Jazz clawed his way back up.  The whimper as Prowl’s pede left the rock wasn’t enjoyable either.  Slaggit.

 0-0-0

 They reached a flat, punched-in part of the very steep mountain.  The long-necked creatures had long since turned to walk along the side rather than continue upwards, but Jazz wasn’t chancing it.

 The flat was occupied, but the small winged things didn’t seem dangerous.  

 “I don’t know what those are,” Prowl panted as he pulled himself over the edge.  Jazz was about to make a snarky comment - either about Prowl being so lazy that being carried up tired him out or about him not knowing everything - but then he turned and offered Jazz as servo.   Jazz took it automatically and Prowl pulled him up.

 The tiny flapping things were huddled on one side, staring at them with absolutely enormous optics.

 “Me neither.  Think they’ll eat us?”

 “They look like relatives of Tapejaridae, but with smaller helm-crests…”

 “Do Tape Jars eat bots?”

 “      Tapejaridae    ,” Prowl corrected with a frown.  “No, they did not.”  He tried to stand and crashed back down, scaring the Tape Jars.  They squeaked and piled on top of one another trying to get away.

 Jazz laid down.  Unless the Tape Jars were about to set upon him and start pulling the plating from his frame, he wasn’t moving.  They'd been running from those giants since they’d arrived.  Well, there had been a few minutes where Jazz had screamed a lot about how Astatine trees had been extinct for 500 million vorns.        Then    the titan sized pedes had come crashing through the branches.

 “Sshhhhh.”

 Jazz kept his optics firmly off.

 “It is alright.  I won’t harm you.”

 Not getting involved.  Laying right here.

 “You are very beautiful.”

 Ugh.

 “Prowl, why are you sweet talking the Tape Jars?”  Jazz tilted his helm back to watch Prowl inching forwards.  He sighed and turned over.  Nope, it looked just as stupid right side up.

 “Prowl.”

 “Shhhh.”  He held out a servo and one of the Tape Jars snapped at it before retreating into the pile fearfully.  “Shhhh.”  He laid a single digit on one helm and stroked.

 The little thing trilled and closed its optics.  The others turned to look at it curiously.  Prowl scratched gently at the little fin on the top of its helm and it trilled louder.

 Suddenly the Tape Jars were tumbling over each other to get Prowl to pet them.

 “Beautiful.”  Was that - could that be - was Prowl actually smiling?  He lifted one of them from the pile - to the loud annoyance of its friends - and cradled it.

 “Look!” he said, turning it towards Jazz.  It stared up at him. Prowl pointed.  “It had landing gear instead of pedes.  This might be some of the earliest examples of wheeled motion!  Most researchers believe that wheels arrived with the Seventh Age of Energon when cybertronians started to populate the planet and needed a quicker way to cross the barren plains - by then the forests had mostly died due to the Third Extinction Event - but there is a theory that wheels have existed much longer!  This is the discovery of a lifetime!”

 The discovery of a lifetime was content to lay on its back, wings akimbo, as Prowl prodded its tiny landing gear pedes.

 Jazz vaguely understood why scientists like Flitwire and - apparently - Prowl got excited about things like this.  He tried to compare it to discovering when bots first built shelters or how his fellow researchers had gotten into a fistfight at the last convention over which city had the oldest evidence of intentional art.  

 Just…these things happened at random.  Oooo - suddenly wings!   Random emergence of wheels!  How did that compare to the idea of bots just like them discovering music for the first time?  Or figuring out how to build the first two story building?

 The little Tape Jar was cute at least.  Jazz reached out and petted it.  It trilled.

 “How do ya know all that?” Jazz asked as the Tape Jar nuzzled his servo.  Prowl frowned and turned away from him, just slightly.

 “I am overseeing the dig.  I needed to know these things.”

 Now Jazz was confused.

 “No ya don’t.  None of the other landowners knew any of this.   They just asked if any of it was valuable or if we found any really spooky frame burials.”

 Prowl looked uncomfortable.  

 “I - “

 A Trill split the air.  A very      very    loud trill.

 They looked up.

 Circling above them was something that looked exactly like the Tape Jars but scaled up to about the size of a tankformer.

 “Is that gonna eat us?”

 “No.  But it might try to defend its young.”  In Prowl’s arms the little Tape Jar trilled up happily at its creator.

 “Do ya think it’ll like a nice scratch too?”

 “I do not think it will give us enough time to find out.  Up or down?”

 “Down.  Very down.  Now.”

 Prowl reluctantly set the bitlet down and they both raced toward the edge..

 The bitlet Tape Jar pulled itself towards them with its wings, rolling on its wheels.  The others behind it also started rolling forwards, complaining at their leaving.

 “Good bye,” Prowl said.  “Thank you for letting me see you!”

 “Hurry!”

 0-0-0

 They made it back down in the middle of the dark cycle.  

 They didn’t say anything.  Jazz was too tired and Prowl looked like he’d had to leave behind his best friend.

 In comparison to the bot he’d met at the dig site the first day - nosey, arrogant, easily offended - this version of Prowl was subdued and apparently soft for tiny dinosaurs.

 Jazz tried to start a few conversation, but they fizzled out until -

 “That is a      Arthropleura    .”

 “Huh?  A what?”  Prowl pointed.  Jazz squinted at the darkness.  The moving darkness.

 “Holy slag!” he      squeaked     yelled.  It looked like a transport train - it was nearly the size of a transport train - but with millions of tiny legs instead of wheels.  “Is that gonna eat us?”

 “Not unless we lay down and cover our frames in tin grass and crystals.  And wait.  It is not fast.”

 No it wasn’t.

 “That’s a really big bug.”

 “The largest of its kind ever.”  Prowl sounded almost wistful, like he wished the giant nightmare still existed.  At least one of them was having fun.

 “Well,” Jazz said, looking around, “we’re going to have to find some shelter then, ‘cause one of my plans was to just lay down and maybe use a leaf for a blanket.”

 “We should climb.  Many of these branches are large enough to serve as berths and if my dating of this place is correct, most flying dinosaurs have not yet colonized the trees.”

 “Less of a chance to get eaten.  Got it.  Can ya even climb a tree?”

 Prowl started to nod and then he looked at the closet one.  It was easily ten times as big around a shuttle and the lowest branch was still six stories tall.  There were not many servo or pede holds.

 “I may require some aid,” he said quietly.

 0-0-0

 They made it up into the tree without falling.  Slipping yes, falling no.

 The branch they’d picked was twice as wide as a berth.  Jazz made Prowl take the part closest to the trunk so that at least in one direction he wouldn’t roll off.

 It wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t the worst place he’d recharged.

 Prowl laid down and stared straight up without speaking.  The sky above them had so much neon that the color was an electric red.  It was strange and unsettling.

 Jazz settled down on his side to avoid looking at that sky, expecting to drop off immediately.

 He didn’t.

 He knew Prowl wasn’t recharging either.

 He laid there for half an hour before he got too bored.

 “Do you think they’ve noticed we’re gone yet?” he asked, not expecting an answer.

 “That depends," Prowl said, voice low and strained.  

 “Depends?”

 “If the machine creates a stable time loop or if it creates alternate realities.  Or if it is a dependent loop, in which case we have to be careful not to make any changes or else we might erase ourselves from existence.”

 “Erase ourselves?!”

 Prowl turned towards him.  Optics a dull golden.

 “Unlikely.  I believe this is a stable and probably a timed loop.  Depending on how the loop is powered we might very well wake up back in our own time, moments after we disappeared.”

 “Well…let’s hope it’s that one.”  Maybe he should have stayed quiet and pretended to recharge.

 “Either way,” Prowl continued, “we have gathered plenty of knowledge about how to survive here.  You have proven yourself capable of keeping us safe.  Tomorrow will be better.”

 The was oddly optimistic.

 “Ya did a good job, too,” Jazz offered.  “What with the Tape Jars and knowing what everything is.”

 Prowl was quiet for so long Jazz thought he’d fallen into recharge.  Then -

 “Thank you.  I apologize if I have angered you.  I know I was rude at the site and I have not been very patient.  And I should not have touched the time machine - not that we knew what it was.  I should have listened to you.”

 Jazz remembered shouting at him.        “Don’t touch that!  Ya got no idea what ya doing!  Go back ta ya castle and let us work!”  

 The apology was not as satisfying as he’d expected.

 “Why are you always at the site?  It’s hot and loud and dirty.   Ya don’ get ta do anything and everyone gets made at ya.”  That was not an exaggeration.  Jazz was only the most recent in a long line of scientists at the dig that had had to deal with Prowl bullying his way onto the site and into their work.

 Prowl shifted and then pulled his legs up to his chest.  He suddenly looked much younger.

 “I just -”  Prowl looked away.  “I just wanted to be part of something for once.  The enforcers let me complete basic training and I - stupid and      young    - thought it meant I would be one of them.  Instead, they wanted me to go into politics and push whatever agenda the Superintendent had.  When my creators told me about taking stewardship of our ancestral lands I thought I could      do    something.”  He shifted away from Jazz, curling inwards.  He gazed out at the strange sky beyond the branches  “I’ve been asking the site manager for weeks if I could come help.  I just want to      do    something.”  His voice faltered and he fell silent.

 Jazz stared at him.  

 “Nevermind.  We’ll figure out how to get back tomorrow and you can go back to digging and I’ll just -”

 Jazz put an awkward servo on Prowl’s shoulder.

 “Nah mech, nah.  Ya’ll come ta the dig wit’ me.  Flitwire’ll love havin’ another expert ta chatter at.”

 “I do not know how to -”

 “I’ll show ya.”

 Prowl lifted his servo and covered Jazz’s, pinning it to his shoulder like he didn’t want Jazz to let go.

 “Okay.”

AU August Fic 5

Sorry to spam you all with so many chapters!  I’m really behind and I want to get ahead for next week.

Teachers

Jazz got his fair share of odd students teaching music at the community center.  There was one femme that only came to the night classes, has no official address to send her certificate, and had stood uncomfortably close to him while he was demonstrating the harp for her.

Pretty certain he’d taught a sparkeater how to play “Over Vos’s Starry Hills” on the cyberviolin.

Other times it was people who had always wanted to play something and never had the time - everything from construction bots to rich business owners.  Bots that wanted to look more ‘accomplished’ or impress a new lover.  Bots that thought they’d be the next superstar.  He was sure he’d taught them all.

However, he had never - EVER - had a bot walk in, sit down, and claim that his Captain had ordered him to take a class and “re-engage with society.”

Prowl, it turned out, would be a lot of firsts for Jazz.

He was the first bot to mis-tune a cyberviolin so badly Jazz had been forced to stop the lesson and restring it.  

The first bot to declare that he couldn’t tell the difference between punk, folk, and pop.  He further compounded the insult by actually being unable to identify any of the songs by genre.  He’d just sat there, baffled, as Jazz tried to explain the difference between music genres.

He was the first bot to attend all of Jazz’s lectures - even the ones at other community centers.

He was the first to drop a lyre down a heating vent while trying to dry it off.  He was also the first to accidentally turn on the sprinkler systems by starting a small fire with said lyre.

He was the first bot to hear Jazz’s secret plan - hope? dream? - to become a proper musician when they’d both stayed late cleaning up the shattered glass from Prowl’s attempt at the turbotube.

He’d been the first bot to show up in Jazz’s hospital room after the accident, only later admitting he’d been listening to the enforcer’s radio off shift.

He’d been the first bot to ever bring him fuel while he was sick - a surprisingly delicious casserole he’d made himself.

He’d been the first bot to cause an evacuation of the community center when he’d set a second fire with the lyre.

He was not the first bot to kiss Jazz, but he was the first bot to kiss Jazz while they both had their servos stuck inside an accordion.

Sitting in the music room, processor hazy from the kiss, Prowl’s face so close to his…Jazz hoped there would be a lot more firsts to come.

Hopefully ones that didn’t involve that lyre.

AU August Fic 6

TW: death of a parent, grief

Fairies

“I’m…sorry.”  More energon bubbled from Prowl’s mouth.  “I do not want to leave you.”  

“Ya aint!”  Jazz got a better grip and pulled.  If he could just get to the Standing Crystals.  If he could just move faster.  His servo slipped in the energon that was pumping hot and thick from Prowl’s side.

“I…love you.”

“We’re stayin’ t’gether,” Jazz shouted back  He slipped and hit the ground hard.  Prowl screamed.  Jazz scrambled up to cradle Prowl’s helm.

“Ya ain’t dying,” he sobbed.  “I’m gonna fix it.”  Damn the Decepticons.  Damn the Council.  Damn them all.

0-0-0

Jazz’s creator only told him the story after Carrier had passed into the well when she too was about to step over that boundary.

“We wanted a bitlet so badly, brightspark.  Your carrier had lost all her family in the famine and we just wanted more.”  Creator had reached out and stroked Jazz’s helm.  “We wanted more to love.  We had so much inside us and nowhere for it to go.  We waited for Primus to bring us a newspark or to bring an orphaned bitlet into our lives.”  She offlined her optics at the memories.  Jazz stayed silent, holding her servo in a death grip.

“It never happened.  She went ta the standing crystals and…asked ‘em -”

“Carrier never asked for anything in her life.”

Creator laughed.  It was weak, so weak.

“Well, she tol’ me she stood outside the circle, burst inta tears, and tol’ the crystals the entire story - ‘bout losing her family, finding me after the shipwreck, wantin’ a sparkling - all while cryin’ an’ cursin’.”

“Tha’ sounds more like her.”  He could picture his petite - smaller than him even - carrier standing, fists clenched, tears streaming down her face, ranting about how she wanted a sparkling to an empty crystal grove.

“One ‘a the Clear Folk came out, transparent as glass, and spoke ta her.”

“Creator,” Jazz laughed, something rising in his spark that couldn’t possibly be fear.  He was never afraid.  Not him.  “Carrier had a lot ‘a stories -”

Creator gripped his servo tighter.  Her face was drawn and her optics dim, but her voice was as forceful as ever.

“Not a story, Jazzlet.  She saw them.  She said some ‘a them were filled with smoke or starlight or the glitter of the crystals, but they were the Clear Folk. They asked her what she wanted.  She tol’ them, “I want a bitlet.  Any bitlet.  I know your tricks.  I’ll take whatever you will give me.”  They asked wha’ she had ta trade.”  Creator laughed again, just as weak, but with a new ease in her optics.  “She yelled at ‘em that she’d just tol’ them a very good story and if tha’ wasn’t enough then they didn’t understand stories.”

Jazz laughed.  That was his Carrier.

“What did they say ta tha’?”

“That she was loud, even for a mortal.  They must have been in a good mood.  One of them walked up and laid a bundle in her arms.  It started to rain and I opened the door and saw her an’ you in her arms, looking out at the world, as perfect as any sparkling could be.”

“Wha’ wha’ do ya mean, Creator?  If this is a joke -”  It - Creator wasn’t like that, but being so close to - it could make bots act odd.  Maybe -

“They tol’ her there was a deal.  She’d get ta keep ya for one mortal life - your mortal life - and then ya would return ta them when it was over.”

“Creator…Creator, I ain’t one ‘a the Folk.  I’m jus’ me.”  Creator lifted her servo and stroked over his cheek. 

“You have never been “just” anything, Jazzlet.  You have made our lives worth living.  You were worth everything.  I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again…”  Her optics dimmed and her venting paused and then started, slower.  “The Clear Folk don’t have a need of the Well, but maybe we’ll see each other again.”

“Creator, this is jus’ a load of nonsense,” Jazz said, voice raising.  Was it not enough to lose them both?  Now he had to listen to this - to this -

“No bot had ever managed to out play ya, have they Jazzlet?  Never lost a bet either, have ya?  I’ve seen your songs bring the rains, bitlet.  I know what ya are and I’ve always loved ya.”  Creator pulled Jazz’s servo to her lips and kissed it.  “‘Fore I go, anything ya wanna tell ya Carrier?”

Jazz caught the sob with his teeth and forced it back.  He didn’t have time for that.

“Tell her I love her and I’ll always lover her and I WILL see ya both again.  I don’t care what ya say, I’ll find my way ta the Well if I have ta rip a fraggin’ hole in the Universe.”  He kissed his Creator’s cheek, tried to memorize the way it felt under his lips, the smell of her polish, the sound of her breathing.

“Ya just like her, Jazzlet.  I love ya.”  Creator smiled and her optics went dim.  Her vents stilled.

Jazz sat there, waiting.  Waiting for her to come back.  Waiting for her optics to shine again.  Waiting for one last goodbye.

It never came.

0-0-0

Jazz stumbled from the house.  He needed to call a priest - to call someone to help him with his Creator’s empty frame - to do so many things.

He kept walking until he reached the edge of their yard and the rickety steel fence Carrier had put up because Creator was afraid of the turbofoxes.  

He could always feel the barrier.  Even as a bitlet.  The clear division between Home-Safe-Protected and Outside-Danger-Others.  Now, he felt it fading.  The Outside was coming in - doctors, the priest, friends calling on him in his mourning.

There was danger tonight, to any bot standing on a barrier.  Just after a death, the helm of a household’s death, the shifting veils would be thin.

Jazz stood at the gate.  Nothing would come through that night.  Nothing would go through him.

Things were starting to make sense.  He didn’t want them to.

Jazz took a credit from his pocket.  One side displayed Cybertron, the other showed the constellations.  He flipped it.

“Sky!” he called as the coin bounced into his palm.  He looked down at the constellations.  He flipped it again, higher.

“Sky!”  The same.  He flipped it again.

“Sky!”  And again.

“Sky!”  And again and again.

“Sky!”

 “Sky!”

“Sky!”

0-0-0

The Crystals.  The tallest structures for miles.  The guardians and ghosts of his sparkling days.

“Almost there, Prowl.”

Prowl had fallen silent, but he was still there, he was still alive.

The Crystals where his Carrier had shouted and pleaded for him.

Jazz hooked his arms under Prowl’s and dragged him up the side of the hill, using the imperfections in the ground to steady himself and gain ground.

When he reached the top he didn’t bother to pause outside the circle.  

He was one of the Folk.  He controlled the weather with sound and song.  He had never been bested on the fiddle or the harp or thumping beat of the drum.  He won every bet, he couldn’t lose - he couldn’t lose.

This was his place and they couldn’t keep him out.

“He ain’t dying!” Jazz shouted to the empty circle.  “He ain’t!  Tell me what I have to give.”

Only silence.

“Tell me!”  He looked down at his - they were going to be bonded - he was going to ask Prowl to court -

“Please.”  He laid his helm against Prowl’s spark.  He would stay here, just like this until - he wouldn’t miss a second of whatever time Prowl had left - he would -

“You’ve grown.”

Jazz froze.  

“Your Carrier was much angrier.  She scared some of the younger Folk.”  A laugh.

Jazz looked up.

The femme in front of him was etherial.  Pearl yellow smoke shifted behind white optics, filling her frame.

“Please.  He’s…Prowl.  He’s everything.”

The femme knelt.  She titled her helm, watching him.

“What would you give for him?  Would you give your life?”

“Wha’d be the point?”  Jazz wiped his tear away angrily and met her optics.  “Either way we never see each other again.  Creator tol’ me the bargain.  One mortal life.  I jus’ wan’ ta be wit’ him.  For as long as I can.”

“To ask for a life is a very large request,” she said quietly.  “It is not easy.  We could not create a spark for your Carrier.  We could only give her one of ours.  A little Changling, optics not even online.  I don’t know if we could heal him.”

Jazz looked down at Prowl’s face, memorizing each part, every movement of his frame as he struggled to stay alive.

“If ya can’t save him, then at least let me tie our sparks together.  We were going to be courtmates.  Let me follow him to the Well when I die.  Please.”  The Well with Creator and Carrier.  Together.

The femme smiled.

“So you do not want your immortality?  You are one of the Clear Folk.  You will have all the powers of the Folk once you shed your mortal life.”

“I don’ wanna leave them.  Please.”  

She was smiling.  Why was she smiling?

“Well, if you don’t want it.  We’ll find a use for it.  Good bye, sparkling of the Folk.”

She laid a servo over his spark.

Jazz blacked out.

0-0-0

Jazz?

Ow.  Everything hurt.

Jazz?

Who was that?  Why couldn’t he hear right?

“Jazz?  Please.  Jazz, please answer me.”

Prowl?  Prowl!

Jazz online his optics to the most beautiful site in the world - Prowl’s face, framed by the dark start of a rainstorm.

“Prowl?”

“Jazz!”  He kissed him and pulled back.  “Jazz, I thought you had died!  You were so still.”

“You okay?” Jazz croaked.  Nothing was working right - his vocalizer, his audials, his servos.  

“I do not know where we are and my chest hurts and you were not responding - of course I am not okay!”  Was Prowl crying?  He was. 

“You - I - a lot happened.  Will ya bond wit’ me?”

Prowl stared at him.

“What - here?  Out here?  Now?”

“Yes!  I want to be with you forever, Prowl, ‘til the end of the whole slaggin’ universe.  Say ya’ll bond wit’ me.  We’ll court later.  Say ya want me.”

Rain hit Jazz’s cheek.  Prowl was frozen.

Pit-pat.  Pit-pat.

The rain was pinging off Prowl’s doorwings.

He nodded.

0-0-0

They were waiting for an evacuation shuttle.  Jazz wasn’t sure how he was going to explain how they’d got to his sparklinghood village when they’d been in the fighting in Vos a few hours earlier.

First, he would have to explain it all to Prowl.  His new bonded.  He looked down at their intertwined servos.

He wasn’t sure if it would matter.  If it was something he would ever be able to do again.  Had he lost his talents with his immortality?

Jazz reached into his subspace and pulled out a credit.  He tossed it in the air.

“Sky!”

AU August Fic 7

Fantasy Science

Jazz tucked the charm into Prowl’s box of datapads.  A whispered word and the charm sealed itself to the pads.  There, now they wouldn’t fall and break even if Prowl dropped the box.  Again.

He had always planned to tell Prowl.  Eventually.  Maybe.  If the war ended.

Except, now the war had ended and he was running out of excuses.  He was sure that Optimus had known since the start of the war - either his eerily good people-reading skills or the Matrix.  He was worried that some of his team had started to suspect towards the middle of the war when they were still centralized, running missions together.

Prowl, bless him, was so straightforward and rational that the idea of spells and magic had never crossed his mind in all the vorns they’d been together.

How did he think Jazz kept sneaking into Decepticon bases?  How did he think their own bases were protected?

0-0-0

“Hold all my appointments for the next hour.”

Prowl carefully closed his office door.  Having a glitch was painful, embarrassing, and inconvenient.  It did, however, give him a perfect excuse to turn off the lights and sit in his office for hours every week.

It also made the visions easier to play off.  After bots saw a real crash - complete with his limbs locking and his processor overheating - they tended to see everything as a crash.

Prowl settled himself in his desk chair and propped his pedes up.  He offlined his optics and waited for the vision to come - 

Energon on the ground - spilled cubes and loud music - a club

A small servo slipping in and out of subspaces -

An argument, a punch, a bouncer pulling them apart - 

Scrap.  Prowl sat up.  Petty theft?  Had the planet become so safe that his visions thought petty theft and a single punch in a bar were worth the helmache?

He rubbed the back of his helm where the pressure was the worst.  He wished Jazz were here to -

Jazz.  He would have to tell him eventually.  The war was over.  He wasn’t dealing with vision after vision, hitting him in the middle of meetings, in the middle of conversations, in the middle of…other activities.  He should tell Jazz.

Soft-sparked Jazz who had accepted Prowl’s glitch so completely that he’d never paused to ask questions like - why sometimes he had a full frame crash and why sometimes he only got a helmache.

How did Jazz think Prowl was managing to outmaneuver tactical teams with ten times his experience and double his staff?  His confidence in Prowl’s abilities was sweet, even if it exposed his blind spot.  He would have to tell him.

0-0-0

Three weeks later, Optimus Prime gave them both an opening by officially recognizing magic users and then casting a very strong spell of peace on the assembly so they could “process these changes without harming each other.”

It all worked out.

AU August Fic 8

Literal Hell

 “Okay.  So explain this ta me again.  Ya won’t go inta the Well ‘cause ya think ya could’ve done a better job of protecting a city.  An entire CITY.  From an ARMY.”

 “You are misunderstanding on purpose.  I said that I had made systematic mistakes that led to a fault in my methods.  This further led to a gap, a way for corruption to infiltrate the council which directly led to them allowing the Decepticons to target Praxus.”

 “...nope, still sounds insane, mech.  Besides, Primus told me, ya won the war.  Ya got revenge, ya kept it from ever happenin’ again.   It was unfortunate, that shuttle crash, but ya left behind a nice legacy and plenty of happy, safe bots ready to rebuild the planet.  It is now time ta reap your rewards in the Well.  Let’s go.”

 “No.”

 “Ugh…

 “The Pit was created to punish cybertronians that were not punished on Cybertron.  This is where I belong until I have suffered and repented.”

 “Mech, ya sittin’ in the Pit, scarin’ the scrap outta Unicron and all his little minions, and ya think YOU ARE the one that’s sufferin’ down here?  Primus sent me ‘cause he’s too afraid ta come himself.”

 “That is nonsense.  He can just come down here and talk to me reasonably -”

 “Prowler -”

 “Do not call me that.  I do not know you and I do not approve of nicknames.”

 “Yeah, yeah.  Prowlie, it’s no use lookin’ for divine forgiveness down here.  Primus never had ta forgive ya in the first place.”

 “...”

 “Prowl?”

 “It is not His forgiveness I seek.”  

 “...the other bots, the other Praxians don’ blame ya either.”

 “Not theirs either.”

 “Oh.”

 “So you see why I must remain.  It is not a matter of not wanting to be with them.  I could not spend eternity in the Well,      knowing    it was my fault and      knowing    they forgive me.  I - do not ask that of me.”

 “Okay.”

 “What are you doing?”

 “Sounds like it’ll take a long time.  I’ll sit wit’ ya.”

 “Why?”

 “‘Cause it’s a lot an’ ya don’ deserve ta be alone wit’ it all.”

 “...Thank you.”

AU August Fic 9

Coffee Shop

 A tall, dark, handsome mech walked into his shop late one night.

 Well, to be fair, he walked into the door and bounced off.  Then he smacked his helm on the menu board hanging over the self-serve counter.  But      eventually    he made it in.

 He shuffled up to the register and stared at Jazz with fuzzy, static filled optics.

 “What’ll you have?” Jazz said, quiet and gentle ‘cause the poor thing probably had a massive helmache.

 “Straight energon, one turbo shot, and your report on the Antigen case, that’ll be all Wheellock.”

 Jazz blinked.  The mech blinked.

 “I can do the energon, but I’m afraid I’m still writing that report, Sergeant.”

 “Captain,” the mech correctly absentmindedly, staring at Jazz.  “Did I - did I order energon?”

 Jazz nodded.  “Yep, but what I think you really need is recharge.”  The mech frowned.

 “I don’t have time for that.  I have to finish the Sparse Case and call Superintendent Bribery about the new hires.”

 “Do ya mean Superintendent Brakeline?”  Jazz kept his face very calm.  He’d been a bartender before he’d scraped up enough for his own energon cafe.  He’d heard everything.

 Still funny, though.

 “Yes, her.”  The Captain was starting to tilt slightly to one side.

 “Mech, I don’t think ya wanna be callin’ any important bots t’night.  Not until ya’ve got some recharge and two turbo shots.  Who can I call for ya?”

 The Captain just stared at him, still tilting slightly.  Jazz leaned across the counter and gently titled him back.

 “You want to call the Superintendent?” he asked, brow furrowed. “She’s not very nice.  I won’t let her talk to any of my sergeants after she made Chase cry.  I’ll call her for you, if you want.”

 “Actually I need to call Sergent Chase first.  Do you remember his comm code?”  The Captain recited it automatically.  Some skills transferred quite well from a bar to a cafe apparently.

 “Thanks.”

 :Hello hello!  Is this Sergeant Chase?:

 :This is Chase, who is this?:

 :Name’s Jazz.  Think I got one a’ ya Captains here tryin’ ta order energon with only half his processor online.:

 :Oh thank Primus you found him!  He was supposed to go home, but he keeps tricking the night officers into thinking he’s just coming on shift- where are you?  I’ll be right there.:

 Jazz pinged him his cafe’s address, but he felt bad for the guy.

 :Ya sound a little frazzled ya self.  If ya tell me where he lives, I’ll walk him there myself.  It’s no trouble.:

 There was a pause.

 :I’m afraid that is against policy.  I’ll be there in twenty-five minutes.  If you could make sure Captain Prowl stays there -:

 :I am not staying anywhere.:

 Jazz jumped.  Then snorted at the grumpy look on ‘Captain Prowl’s’ face.

 :Captain!: Sergeant Chase wailed.  :You’re not supposed to hack comms, remember?:

 :No.  I remember nothing of the sort.  I’m not staying here either.  I can take myself home.:

 :No you can’t.: Jazz and Chase said at the same time.  Jazz reached out and nudged Prowl upright again.

 “Mech,” Jazz said out loud, “Prowl, let me walk ya home.  It can’t be far.”

 Prowl frowned.

 “It’s that or you wait for your sergeant to come and walk you home,” he wheedled.  

 :Sergeant Chase, this mech is offering to walk me home.  This is a compromise.:

 :No, no no no, Prowl, we took a training on this!  Prowl -!:

 Prowl ended the comm and pushed himself away from the counter where he’d been slumping.

 :Sorry, mech,: Jazz told Chase.  :I’ll get him home and he’ll comm you there, alright?  Promise I’m not a serial killer.:

 :Oh, well if you      promise…    :  Chase was not happy about the situation, but he was 25 minutes away.  Jazz pinged him his ID code and ended the comm too.

 “Let’s go, Captain.  How far is your place?”

 “It is…that way.”  He pointed out the door.  “My address is…517 Carbon - no, no, that’s the station.  I live at 43 Whistle Street, 48th apartment.”

 “Awesome.”  Jazz slid over the counter and linked arms with Prowl.  “That’s not far.”  He steered him around the sign and through the open door without incident.

 “Lovely night,” Jazz said as they walked.  Prowl was mostly upright, only depending on Jazz for balance and directions.

 “Yes.  The stars are very bright without the clouds.”  Jazz looked up.  He was right.

 “Always loved the stars, myself.  Like music in the sky, little quarter notes scattering over it all.”  Ah, well, he was walking along a very quaint residential street with a cute mech on his arm, he could be a little sentimental.

 “They’ve always been guardians to me,” Prowl said, optics fixed on them.  Jazz navigated him around a pole.  “They watch from afar, making sure the planets have light even when it is dark.”

 He wasn’t the only one feeling poetic, apparently.  They walked in silence and then -

 “I want to be a star,” Prowl said.  “I want to give everyone the safety of a little light.”  He sounded so slagging sad.  A good enforcer, who would’ve thought.

 They arrived at his apartment building and Jazz was sad to see the walk ending.

 “This you, mech?” he asked, shaking him a little.  Prowl looked up.

 “This is my habsuite, yes.  Floor 48.”  He took an uneven step forwards and then turned around to face him again.  He put his servos on Jazz’s shoulders.

 “Thank you for walking me home.  I had a lovely time.”  Prowl leaned in and kissed Jazz sweetly.  “Comm me when you have another free evening.  Good night.”

 Prowl took five very unsteady steps and smacked into the door frame.  He cursed and put his servo on the pad and the door slid open.

 “Good night!” he called again, stumbling inside.

 Jazz waited on the sidewalk, staring up until he saw the lights on floor 48 come on.  He brushed his fingers over his lips.

AU August Fic 10

Space Academy

 Jazz stepped into the room with a datapad under his arm and a tightly controlled field.  He was looking forward to hearing these bots explain themselves.  He looked around at the seated bots - generals and sergeants and captains, all wearing their decals proudly.  None of them stood when he entered.

 So that was how it was going to be.

 “Hello,” he said, masking his accent, “My designation is Commander Jazz, 4th Legion, Special Operations and Internal Affairs.”

 The mech on his left stood and held out a servo.

 “I’m so glad you could come, Commander, but it’s really not serious enough to warrant Spec Ops or even the IA.  One of our newest recruits has been having some trouble adjusting to life in the service and -”

 “It was my understanding that he has been missing for six hours and none of you have been able to locate him,” Jazz interrupted him.   “And I will be deciding what is important enough for our attention, thank you.”  He released the mech’s servo and stared at him until he retook his seat.

 He turned back.  A few of them were leaning back in their chairs, casually, daring Jazz to say something.  Technically he was of equal or superior rank to all of them.  Jazz said nothing.  He was saving his anger for something more important than a bit of disrespect.

 “I’ve been reviewing the files you sent over,” he said, omitting the fact that Jazz had had to request them twice and then just hack the system and pull them himself.  “Tell me more about this, Cadet Prowl.” He lowered himself into the chair at the head of the table.

 “I’m his Sergeant,” the bot on the end said leaning forwards.   “Like we said, he was having some trouble adjusting.  We didn’t realize that he was so close to the edge.”  There was real regret in the mech’s voice.  “I’ve been out searching myself, but no bot knows the canyons like Prowl.”  

 “I agree,” said another bot, a femme with an ‘Educator’ decal.   “I used to catch him wandering away during our hikes.  He even drew his own maps with prediction software to anticipate how the rains would change the paths.  He went on makeup hikes in his spare time with other classes when he could.”

 “He wrote his own software?” Jazz asked, pretending he didn’t know.  “Sounds like he was adapting quite well to the base.”  Those were Optimus’s favorite words -  ‘quite well’ - when he knew someone was lying to his face.

 “Listen,” the Sergeant took control of the conversation again.   “No one is saying Cadet Prowl wasn’t smart.  It was everything else he struggled with, but I was trying with him.  He was a bit weird with the other cadets - always wanted to be with them, but never had anything to say.  Never talking about home with them or swapped stories or care packages.  

 “I’m not sure if he was cautious or a bit lazy.  Every time we did the obstacle course he would pause before each transition, looking around like he’d never seen any of it before.  It didn’t matter how much we made him re-do it, he took his time.

 “He was a bit of a whiner too - every little thing needed a visit to the medic or a pain patch.  He couldn’t stumble without it becoming a two day limp -”

 There!  Jazz interrupted him.

 “You believe he overreacts to pain?”

 The Sergeant shot Jazz a foul look, but it was the Quartermaster that spoke up.

 “Well, yeah,” the mech said, leaning his chair back on two legs, arms crossed over his chest.  “He’d be standing there, cool as cadmium, saying his pain was a six or a seven and wanting a patch.  Pft.  He needed to harden his plating if he was going to stay with the SA.”

 “He tripped one time and I had to tell him to get up.  He wanted to go to the medics,” the Sergeant put in.  “I made him walk it off and he was fine.”

 Jazz dug a claw into his thigh under the table to keep his temper.

 “And this has been consistent throughout his training?  Constant claims of being in pain that were dismissed by his superiors?”

 They shifted uneasily as he reframed it.

 “No,” the Sergeant said, slowly, thinking.  “After the first month he stopped.  He’d toughened up a bit too,” he put in quickly.   “The others said he used to have trouble recharging and that he’d complain of helmaches after class.  They said he stopped after that.”

 “What did his friends say?” Jazz asked, already knowing the answer. He leaned back and rested one elbow on the chair arm.  

 “Oh, he didn’t really socialize much.  Kept to himself,” the Sergeant said.

 “So, if something was wrong, say, something that would cause him to drive off in the middle of the day for no reason, who would he talk to?”

 The Sergeant opened his mouth automatically and then closed it. The teacher from before looked like she was trying to think of an answer.

 “So, what you are saying is that you had a young recruit who stopped telling you when he was in pain, had no friends or close companions, was recently reported to display signs of illness, and has now disappeared into the wilderness.  Is that correct?”  Still as a zero gravity oil pool.  Don’t let them see your next move.

 “Hey…” Dosage said at last.  “It’s not like we were yelling at him for it or anything. He was the one always wanting a pain patch for little things -”

 “Did you have him examined by a medic?”

 “Well, no, he looked fine -”

 “Then have you considered that he had a very high pain tolerance?  That believing his word was more important than “toughening” him up?”

 Uneasy shifting all around.

 “Listen,” one of the generals cut in, “I don’t know what it’s like at your fancy-dancy base, but we’re training soldiers here - “

 “Which part of training is this?  I must have been absent the day we did “runs off just before a deadly storm.”  Could you explain it to me?”

 The general coughed and grumbled, but didn’t answer.

 “Thank you all for meeting with me. I am going to locate Cadet Prowl and after he is found, I will continue my investigation.”  Jazz stood and left without waiting for a reply.

 He headed straight out the eterior door and made his way to the edge of the base where Prowl had last been seen.

 The sky above him was a thick, dusky purple.  Hopefully the rain would cool him enough by tomorrow.  He didn’t think he was ready to have a civil conversation yet.

 Prowl’s test scores were exceptional.  Jazz had sped-read his essay on ‘Improving the Space Academy’ on the flight out.  It was usually trite nonsense since it wasn’t technically part of the acceptance criteria.  

 Prowl’s was six times the required length and talked about everything from their diplomatic efforts to their colonization aims.  It was dry, but incredibly well researched and direct.  Jazz was going to hand it over to Optimus the moment he got back.  Optimus would use his superior people skills to get the ideas into the right servos.

 He’d written his own - very advanced - software and improved mapmaking for unstable regions across the board.

 His interview answers had been about improving lives and meeting new bots.  He’d rated “Working with my fellow cadets” as the number one thing he was looking forward to when entering the Space Academy.

 The medics had noted uneven layers throughout his frame - probably indicative of fuel shortages throughout his youth.  Not uncommon in sparklings from the poor cities.  Very uncommon in the rich distinct of Praxus that Prowl was from.

 They’d also noted an aversion to touch at the start of the exams.

 His family doctor had taken a very long time to transfer his files and when he did, the data clerk had made a note that some of the dates were wrong, as if the medic had added parts in later.

 These things painted a very clear pattern.

 Jazz longed to wrap up this dedicated, mistreated genius and bundle him back home to Optimus’s naive enthusiasm and Ironhide’s gentle experience.  

 Teetering on the edge of a war with Quintessa, struggling to handle a rising revolt, and this was how the Council was treating new recruits?

 Jazz transformed and gunned it.  He opened a comm as he drove.   Best to have all his targets lined up before he blew the place’s roof off.

 :Hey, Ratchet, I’m going to need a medic down here.  Can you send that sweet one, your assistant?  The one that couldn’t scare a sparkling?:

 :Do you mean First Aid?:

 :That the one so cute everyone wants to just pick him up and squeeze him?:

 :Pick him - Jazz, he is three times your size.:

 :Doesn’t mean I don’ wanna pick him up and hug him.  I got a mech runnin’ scared, probably suffered at home before joining the SA.   Probably not good with medics, authority, yelling, or criticism.  I need someone he’ll feel comfortable wit’:

 :Putting my “cute” soft-sparked apprentice on the plane now.:

 :Thanks, Ratch.:

 :Hmph.:

 Thunder shook the air.  Prowl had been out here alone - at this base alone - too long.

 Jazz was going to find him.

 0-0-0

 The rain was mostly solvent from the landlocked lakes, but it had mixed with Oil from the sea and the chemicals from the city had added small pockets of weak acid.

 It was cold, slick, and it stung.  Prowl curled himself up smaller into the shallow divot on the side of the cliff.

 His processor was racing, faster and faster, but it just kept circling back.

     Failure failure failure.  Weak.  Stupid.          Banished        .  

 It was over.  He needed to accept that it was over.  It was his own fault.  It was always      him    that was wrong.  The wide-opticked hope of his first week seemed vorns ago.  He’d been so      stupid….  

 0-0-0

 The datanet had      said    this was what he was supposed to do.  Multiple sites and a question on GlyphMe (using an untraceable account) had all assured him that he would be fine.  This was a normal thing to do.

 He approached the window with a small plaque that read “Non-medic dispensary.”  He had read in the pamphlet that he could request over-the-counter meds.  The datanet said that asking for a pain patch for a helmache was something all bots did.  No one would get mad at him.

 He stood and waited to be acknowledged by the mech - Quartermaster Dosage according to the sign.

 “Hello!  New cadet?” He was smiling.  He pointed to Prowl’s small rank decal that displayed the Youngling constellation.

 “Yes.”  Prowl clenched his fists and stilled his doorwings.  “I have a helmache and would like to request a pain patch.”  That was what the datanet had said to say.

 “Oh?  First day aches and pains, huh?  You’ll get used to it!   What kind do you need?”  He leaned on the counter.  Prowl blinked.

 “What kind?”  The datanet hadn’t said anything about different kinds!  The medics on television just slapped in whatever was in their subspace.

 “Well, yeah.  If you’re having a processor crash you’ll need something a bit stronger than a light patch.  But if I gave you a level 4 patch for an achy helm, you’d be passed out until next month!”  The Quartermaster laughed and Prowl smiled, pretending he understood.  “How bad is it, on a scale of 1 to 10?”

 “Uh…”

 Dose rolled his optics skyward.

 “One is you bump into a wall walking around the corner, 5 is getting your arm broken, and 10 is being thrown in a vat of acid.”

 Oh!  That made more sense.  He’d had his digits slammed in a door once.  The medic had spent forever setting them all.

 Prowl confidently pointed to 4.  This was easy.  He could do this.

 Only Dosage was frowning at him.

 “Cadet, if you were in that much pain you’d be on the floor and I’d be sending you to the medic.  Here’s a light pain patch.”  He thrust an individually wrapped patch at him.  “I know the classes are more than you’re used to, but you’re in the Space Academy now.  It’s time to grow up.  Drink more fuel and push through it.”

 Prowl took the patches.  His servo didn’t even shake.  He’d gotten it wrong again.

 The next time he waited until his helm was so bad his optics were cycling on and off.  They’d done the obstacle course three times and his processor wouldn’t stop analyzing each step, providing alternate approaches, insisting that he needed to bypass the obstacles because that was the most ‘logical’ route.  

 He said his pain was a three and received a single pain patch, only slightly stronger and a long lecture about not being a ‘whiner.’  

 The time after that he had fallen from the obstacle course - the damn obstacle course - and cracked his plating.  

 “Quartermaster Dosage?”  Prowl approached the dispensing window nervously.  He had a real injury this time.  His Sergeant had even said he should get a pain patch if it still hurt after the evening mess.

 “What can I do for - Cadet Prowl.”  He smiled - he always looked friendly, but -

 “Sir, my Sergeant said I should report to you for a pain patch for my arm.”  He held up the limb, timidly,  as proof.

 Dosage raised a brow.

 “Oh?  Why are you only coming now?”

 “He told me to wait until after dinner, in case it wasn’t anything serious.  May I - may I have a pain patch?”

 He waited, torn between hope and a gnawing fear that -

 Quartermaster Dosage vented loudly and let his field extend.  He was mildly annoyed and amused.

 “Listen, Cadet, if your Sergeant thought you were actually hurt, he’d have sent you right after you got that little ding.  What he wants you to do is tough it out and act like an SA Cadet.  Soldiers don’t run around asking for pain patches all the time.  When you’re out on the field, do you think the medic is going to waste a pain patch on your little nicks when she’s got bots leaking out?”  Dosage gave him a queer smile.  “You’re in the Space Academy now, youngling, it’s time you started acting like it.”

 “I -” Prowl started, not sure what to say.  Was he agreeing?  Was he going to explain how much it still      hurt    ?  Dosage didn’t give him time to speak.

 “Academy cadets are strong and resilient.  Now I know you probably have a pair of creators at home that worried over all your falls and scrapes - it’s what they do.”  He gave Prowl a mock scowl.   Prowl struggled to make sense of what he was saying.  “But you have to accept that being a soldier means pain.  It means getting hurt and not stopping.”

     “-we aren’t going to stop and rest, just because your legs hurt, Prowl.  You ruin everything.”  

 It was just like home.

 “I’ll give you a patch, because I can, but you don’t need it.”   Quartermaster Dosage turned around and started rummaging in the drawers.

 “I am sorry for bothering you, Quartermaster.  I won’t do it again.”  Prowl turned and walked away as swiftly as he could.  Dosage called after him.

 “Hey, hey!  Do you still want a patch?”

 Prowl never went back.

 0-0-0

 Jazz didn’t bother taking anyone with him.  He was faster than most of the bots on the base and, if their superiors were anything to go on, smarter too.

 He roared down the road, heading into the canyon as the rippling black clouds spread out across the sky ahead of him.

 0-0-0

 Prowl stood up on shaking legs.

 “Sir - Sergeant!  I think - I think something’s wrong.”  His hip joint was throbbing and his pede felt strangely numb.

 “Walk it off, cadet!  We don’t have time to kiss all your boo boos!”  

 The others were thundering past him, onto the next section of the obstacle course. Someone slammed hard into his side and sent him back down onto the unforgiving concrete.

 It felt like he was being electrocuted.  

 Everything went white and then black.  His audials turned off.  Then everything came back into focus.

 Someone was clapping in front of his face.

 “Get up!  Get up, cadet!”  The Sergeant.  His face was inches from Prowl’s curled up in a snarl just like -

 Carrier.

 Prowl got up, his frame numb.  He felt like he was floating above the ground.  He turned and followed the others.

 That night he laid in his bunk, a servo clamped tightly over his mouth as his leg spasmed and twitched.  

 For the first time, the place felt horribly, terrifyingly, like home.

 0-0-0

 Jazz knelt and turned up his sensors.  Yep, that was energon.   He pressed his fourth digit into the small spill and let his very tiny and very expensive spectrometer analyze the sample.

     High levels of chemicals associated with stress  

     Indications of a prolonged period of insufficient fueling  

     Not a single molecule of chemical pain blockers or stims.  

 He wasn’t surprised.  The military, even the Space Academy, had a bad habit of seeing any bot that didn’t conform as being an aberration.  They wouldn’t have known what to do with a young, freshly painted cadet that looked like a well cared for youngling new to his adult frame but acted like a returned prisoner of war.

 “Sorry, Prowler,” Jazz whispered, looking up to scan the road.  “Ya didn’ fail us, mech, we failed you.”

 Jazz was going to fix this.

 0-0-0

 Something was wrong.  

 It started during evening meal two weeks ago in the mess hall.   He’d taken a seat on the edge where it wouldn’t be as obvious that no one spoke to him.  He’d been sipping his bland energon when something in his chest twisted.  

 He barely made it out the door before purging everything he’d intaken for the day.

 The bots nearby had ridiculed him.

 “Can’t stomach the mess, recruit?  Go back to Carrier and Creator!”

 “Aw, want me to rub your back for you?”

 “Gross dude!”

 “Nice projection!”

 Prowl had stumbled back to the barracks and laid down.  He’d recharged in fits and starts until morning.  He skipped the morning fueling.

 He knew what wasting fuel at home got him.  He was terrified of what they would do to him here.

 Since that day he’d barely managed to keep anything down.  He sipped on the lowest grade fuel that had and waited for whatever was wrong with him to pass.  He didn’t dare go to the clinic again.  What if Dosage told his Sergeant?

 It didn’t pass.  It was one more thing - his hip that never stopped hurting, his helm that always seemed to ache now no matter how much he recharged, and now the never ending throb of hunger.

 0-0-0

 Prowl whimpered.  Was that - did he hear something?  The rain was      so    loud.

 0-0-0

 It hadn’t happened in any dramatic way.  Not on the hated obstacle course.  Not in one of the classes where his helm threatened to split in two.  Not in the mess hall where the other bots ignored him.

 They were clearing one of the fields that had been used for training earlier before the rains.  His Sergeant and the base Commander were talking on the edge of the field.  Two of the cadets were struggling to carry one of the long tunnels between them.

 Prowl was collecting the small magnets that marked the course.   He had to pause and vent slowly each time he bent down as his hip ached.  He caught sight of the pair out of the corner of his optics, saw their mouths move, and froze.

 “Those two look like they could use a servo.”

 “Nah, they’ll figure it out.”

 “And that one?  If he takes much longer to pick up the markers he’ll find himself putting them back for tomorrow.”

 “Yeah.  He needs some work.  That one’s not my best.”

 Those simple words.  

     “He needs some work.  That one’s not my best.”  

 Prowl hadn’t been meant to hear it.  His processor, that never shut down, never rested, had simply taken in the data and read his Sergeant’s lips and field.

     That one’s not my best.  

 Prowl was never going to be anyone’s anything, was he?  

 There was a roaring in his helm and he felt everything shattering - his helm, his frame, his sparkcase.

 “All right!”  His - no,      the    - Sergeant was shouting.  “Time to go back in!  I don’t want you whiners getting a rust infection from the rains!”

 “Aw, Serg, you      do    care about us!”

 “It would break my spark!” he answered.  His smile was wry, but real.  There was fondness there for the loud recruit.  Not for Prowl.

 Suddenly, he couldn’t.  He couldn’t face going back to those barracks and sitting in his bunk reading over the course material while the others laughed and joked.  He couldn’t sit there, worried about whatever was wrong with him, worried about hiding it.

 His -      the    , not his, never his,      the    - Sergeant called his name, but Prowl didn’t turn back.

 0-0-0-

 Jazz almost missed him.  The visibility was slag-awful and half the time he was relying more on his treads than his processor to keep him on the road.  

 The rain had only gotten worse.  Everytime he transformed to investigate something, he noticed little streaks where it had gotten through his paint and was starting on his plating.  It made him drive just that much quicker - Cadet Prowl had been out in it longer than him.

     Hold on, sweetspark.  

 Jazz spun around a corner and caught movement on the very edge of a scanner.  He slowed and transformed.  He stood, frozen in the middle of the road, extending his range.

 A twitch.  The barest hint of a spark signature.

 He leapt down from the road into the ditch and plunged through the undergrowth, following that signal.

 He finally got a visual on him as the ground started to climb.  A gray and black smudge against the side of the cliff, pressed tightly into a small creavass.  

 “Prowl?” he called softly, keeping his distance.  He could outrun the mech if he spooked, but Jazz was itching to get him under cover, cleaned up and warm.  Clearly Optimus was rubbing off on him.   Yeah, that was it.

 The smudge moved and a helm appeared, optics dull and flickering.

 “Oh,” the smudge said.  “I’m in trouble again, aren’t I?”  He started to droop away from the cliff, like a sticker peeling off in the wash racks, limp and uncoordinated.  “Sorry.”

 “Nothin’ ta be sorry for, mech.  Nah, I’m jus’ here ta get ya inside.  ‘S dangerous out here.”  Jazz stepped forwards, feeling the metal beneath him bend and crack, weakened by the acid.  He slid down into a ditch full of rain and dissolved slush.  

 They needed to get moving before the roads flooded.

 He slowed as he drew nearer, but Prowl barely acknowledged him. Instead he was staring down as his own servos, leaking dull colored energon from the joints. Jazz winced, imagining the rain slipping into those gashes.  Prowl’s face was completely blank.

 “Hey, hey mech.”  Jazz leaned over him, shielding as much of Prowl’s battered frame as he could with his own.  What he wouldn't give to be a giant like Ironhide at times like these.

 “Hello.”  Prowl’s voice was unnervingly calm.  “I’m not going back,” he said clearly.  He looked up at Jazz.  “I’m not.”

 Prowl’s field was drawn in far too tight for such a young bot, but at the word ‘back’ it lashed out and Jazz got a taste of Prowl’s emotions.

 It was lucky he was who he was, Optimus or Chromia would have been crying and raging, respectively.  Ironhide would’ve just picked him up and spent the evening using his superiors for target practice.  

 To Jazz, it was a familiar mixture of shame, despair, and spark-aching loneliness that came with being raised as a punching bag.

 “Ya don’ have ta go back, Prowl.  Ya comin’ wit’ me instead okay?  We’ll find ya a place where they’ll take care of ya.  Don’ worry.  Can ya stand?”

 Prowl contemplated the question before nodding.  Jazz helped him stand and then slotted himself under Prowl’s arm on his weak side.

 “Slow ‘n steady, mech.”  They took a few, faltering steps before they found a rhythm.  Jazz kept up a steady stream of - “keep going, doing good, I got ya” - as they walked.  He wasn’t expecting Prowl, who’s field was as weak and thin as light in a black hole, to join in.

 “Tore myself apart for them,” Prowl said, absently, after they had staggered their way up the side of the last ditch.  “I would have - would’ve kept doing it, too, if they’d loved me.”

 Jazz focused on taking each step, on keeping them from slipping.

 “Your creators?”  He felt Prowl’s helm nodding against his shoulder.

 “First them.  I tried to do everything they wanted me to, but I kept failing.  I studied and I went out for sports - I liked racing - and they were never happy.  Sometimes it would be fine for months - we were happy for almost a vorn, one time, when I was younger - and then I would mess up and they’d be mad again.

 “The datanet said - it said that they took everybody in the SA. It was where you were supposed to be part of something.  I read all the stories.  I just wanted to be part of it.  I thought, maybe, I could find bots that wouldn’t mind it if I messed up.  ‘S always my fault.”   Prowl’s careful speech was starting to slur.  “Tried not to whine, but then I couldn’t -” he trailed off and Jazz could feel his pedes start to drag.

 “Hey, heyheyhey - Prowler, Prowl-love, I need ya awake, okay?   We’re goin’ ta get ya warm and then I’ll take care of it all, okay?   Prowl?”

 “Okay,” came the whisper, Prowl’s helm tucked up against Jazz’s neck.

 0-0-0-

 “Would you like me to explain it using simple words?” Jazz asked, spreading his servos like a showman.  The bots gathered before him had lost much of their previous bravado and swagger.  They shifted and checked the time, instead of looking at him.  They slumped in their chairs or sat ramrod straight.

 It had been less than a day since he’d trudged into the camp with Prowl mostly unconscious, but he’d found the energy to finish his investigation.  A fury-fueled furnace burned short, but he didn’t need long.  It was not complicated.  

 “Four months ago, Cadet Prowl escaped from an abusive home and joined the Space Academy since he had no family, no money, and nowhere to go.  The SA prides itself on being a place where you can find a home and a family among other recruits.  

 “When he arrived he was told repeatedly that he was not in enough pain for a patch, despite being in, at times, extreme amounts due to an untreated glitch that the intake medics missed.  A glitch that would have been discovered if anyone had taken his claims of a helmache seriously.  

 “At one point, he -” Jazz found the Sergeant’s stricken optics, “I believe you said, ‘tripped’ and tore half the sensory relays free from his hip.  He was told to walk it off, and, since he had been told repeatedly that his pain was to be expected and that it wasn’t severe enough for medical intervention, he has been living with the slowly increasing damage of this untreated injury ever since.

 “Unaddressed anxiety and trauma had reduced his recharge significantly as he was trying to make friends and was told that he was being,” Jazz pretended to consult his datapad, “a ‘sucky little sparkling’ when he had nightmares.  His solution was to cease recharging because he didn’t think he had any other options.

 “The most recent change was first noticed by other cadets outside the mess hall.  His frame is rejecting fuel.  His glitch had reached such a severe level that his processor was having trouble maintaining all of his frame’s functions.  He has been starving himself for the past few weeks in order to avoid ‘wasting fuel’ as he put it.   Because he believed that fuel, to keep him alive, would be wasted.”

 Now, Jazz let the full force of his anger enter his field, let that expand, let every mech in the room know what their negligence had done.

 “A traumatized mech came to all of you repeatedly, asking for help and you disregarded him to the point that he did not think he was important enough to fuel.  To the point where he stopped coming to you with his needs.  To the point where he ran off into the canyon to avoid returning.”

 He looked around the room, making sure to meet each bot’s optics.

 “You have failed your duties in every way possible.”  Jazz sought the gaze of one bot in particular, remembering his words the day before:      a bit lazy, a bit of a whiner, a bit weird, but I was trying    .

 “I’ll - I’ll explain that it - that this wasn’t his fault.  That I didn't mean for him to -  I’ll apologize to him,” the Sergeant said, standing, his face horrified.

 Jazz stood as well and the room stilled.

 “No.”  It wasn’t what was best for Prowl.  If the Sergeant walked in and explained that he’d never      meant    to hurt Prowl, Prowl would forgive him.  He would find a way to twist everything until it was his fault again.  It wasn’t Prowl’s responsibility to make sure bots like the Sergeant could recharge peacefully at night.

 The Sergeant needed to apologize.  He needed to explain himself and feel as if he had fixed everything.  He wasn’t a bad bot.  He was probably beloved by his recruits.  Had probably changed their lives.   They probably told their friend and sparklings all about ‘their Sergeant’ and wrote him letters.  That didn’t mean he hadn’t done terrible damage to someone he was supposed to be nurturing and mentoring.

 “He doesn’t need your apology.  He doesn’t need you.  I’ve already arranged transport.  My team’s medic is on it and the custody will transfer to him once Prowl is in that plane.”  Jazz looked across the table and met the optics of every bot there.  “None of you will contact him.  None of you will speak to him before he boards.  A full investigation will be launched by the Internal Affairs.  I expect you to all comply.”

 No one moved.  

 He wasn't a “young upstart” now.  He wasn’t the annoying junior investigator anymore.  He was a threat.

 It was something he’d always been very comfortable being.  An easy role to slip into.  He wanted very much to carry out the threat he represented on Prowl’s behalf.

 Instead, he nodded at them all, gathered his things, and left.

 0-0-0

 On the plane - Skyfire, one of Jazz's friends from his Polyhex childhood - Prowl was gently strapped into one of the fold down berths. First Aid was curled up on the next berth, his helm just brushing Prowl’s whenever they hit a spot of turbulence, deep in recharge as well.

 Jazz remained on the floor beside them, Prowl’s servo in his.   He kept them both wrapped in his field, pressing affection and safety on them, until it felt like an overstretched cable.  He didn’t stop.   Prowl was still and quiet and free from nightmares.  He deserved a good rest for once in his life.  Jazz would be damned if he wasn’t going to give it to him.

AU August Fic 11

So, this isn’t exactly a ‘twisted’ fairy tale.  Most like a backwards one.

Twisted Fairy tale

Bang.  Bang.

Prowl rolled over and pulled the blanket over his helm.  The berth frame nudged him.

Bang.

Slaggit.  If someone was out in this sort of weather, it wasn't like he could just leave them.

“Let them in,” he said, drowsily.  “Close all the doors except the ones to the kitchen and the sitting room.”

Domain’s field warmed with excitement.

Of all the ancient manors he could have gotten stuck with, he managed to snag a three story, sparked house that loved company.

0-0-0

Jazz lifted his servo to knock again.  He wasn’t exactly sure if anyone lived in it - this stretch of road was lined with buildings from the Golden Age, long abandoned but too out of the way to bother pulling down.

He just wanted to make absolutely sure before he broke in.  Nothing like having an insane squatter - or worse, penniless heir - trying to ventilate his helm with an acid rifle.

The door swung open and Jazz jumped back.

There was no one there.

“Hello?”  Jazz inched in.  The room was dark, but he could make out the usual clutter of an entryway - side table, rickety bench with pede cleaning clothes, box of crystal gardening equipment.  It was also empty.

Okay, so, third option, potentially haunted house.  Did he chance it or try to find someplace less terrifying up the road?

The temperature was rapidly making the decision for him.

Jazz vented hot air over his plating and decided that today, fortune would favor the bold.

He hoped.

“‘M comin’ in!”

Jazz hopped over the threshold and waited for something to happen.

Nothing.

“I’m jus’ gonna warm up an’ wait out the storm!”  He called loudly as he walked further in.  The door in front of this and to list right were both locked, but the one on his left was left invitingly open.  The room beyond had a low, yellow glow, like from a -

“A heat-pit!” Jazz gasped and nearly tripped over the thick foam carpet as he raced towards it.

The heat-pit was set into the wall with a couch and a cushy chair set in front.  Jazz flopped down on the couch and sunk it.  

Primus, it was already warmed…

 Jazz rolled over onto his back and stared up at the dark blue ceiling.  It had fiber optic stars.  He glanced around the room from his new berth.  There were a lot of diagrams on the wall - a blaster, a energon press, a forcefield generator.  One table had a chemistry set on it and the pinboard above it had the words “Case File 221 - Solved” written on it in neat glyphs.  Strange room for such an old house.  A haunted old house.

“I can’ pay ya anything,” Jazz said to the ghost - ghosts? - as he pulled out his harp.  “I’m on my way ta Praxus ta see about signing on wit’ one a’ the big music labels.”  He couldn’t contain his smile.  “I can play ya a bit of music, though, if that’s ta ya likin’.”

He strummed through a few of his favorite melodies as the warmth soaked into every strut and cable.  He added his voice when it needed it and stayed silent when the notes were enough.

Eventually he grew clumsy with exhaustion and stopped.

“Sorry, ‘m a bit tired.”  He let his optics drift closed.  “Gotta say, ‘m a bit nervous ‘bout it all.”  He found himself explaining things to the ghost.  His sparkling days in poverty.  His music teacher’s help in getting him this chance.

“Bots say tha’ ya sell ya spark when ya sign on.  But I gotta.  Got a blank notarized datapad and everything!  I gotta sign on somewhere or it’ll all be for nothing…”  

In a few minutes he might wake up to find himself being eaten by a ghost or set upon by sparkeaters.  Until then, it was very comfortable.  He felt like he was being cupped in the servos of a kind giant, keeping him warm…

0-0-0

I refuse to acknowledge this, Prowl thought, offlining his optics and venting deeply.  I am not having an argument with my house.  My house is not winning.

Domain was refusing to open his bedroom door or his office door or any door.  Domain had in fact, closed all the doors in the house except for the ones that led to the sitting room and the kitchen.

From the unrepentant amusement in his field, Domain thought he was being very clever.

“I don’t need to speak with him,” Prowl argued, looking vaguely towards the center of the house where he knew Domain’s spark was.  “He can stay until the storm is over and then be on his way.  I left the kitchen open so he could fuel.  There is no reason -”

The floor started to rise.

“Wha - no!  Domain, we are not doing this again -!”  Prowl tried to grab for a doorway, but the floor was curling up at the edges, the frames recessing into the walls.

“Domain!  If you do this I won’t speak to you for -” Prowl yelled, knowing it was a useless threat.  Domain preferred to communicate with fields.  It was why they were such a good fit.

The end of the hallway lifted up towards the ceiling and suddenly Prowl was sliding.

“Scrap!”  His claws were useless as Domain tossed him this way and that, down towards the sitting room.

Down towards…company.

0-0-0

Jazz woke to a huge thump and a shout of “FRAG!” - 

-which was immediately reassuring, because he didn’t think sparkeaters knew a lot of cuss words.

On the floor, in the doorway, was a bot.

Jazz crawled to the end of the couch and peered over the armrest.

He was a Praxian, judging by the enormous doorwings.  A former Enforcer by the paint.  He had a temper given the running list of swear words.

Finally he managed to untangle himself and sit up.  He glared around the room until his optics hit Jazz.  Then he groaned.

Not a haunted house after all.  Jazz raised a tentative servo.

“Hi.  Thanks for letting me in this morning…?”

“That wasn’t me,” he mech grumbled, now getting to his feet, “that was Domain.”  He stepped back quickly and the door that was about to slam shut had to stop and swing open again.

“Domain?  That the name of ya ghost?”

“Ghost?”  His face wrinkled.  “What nonsense are you talking about.  Domain is my house.”

His - oh, that explained a lot actually.

“Hello, Domain!” Jazz said immediately, looking around the room.  “Thanks for letting me in!”

The door tried to nudge the mech out of the way, but he just wrapped his servo around the door frame where it would be squashed.  The door stopped.

“My name’s Jazz, what’s yours?” 

“Prowl.  Get out of my house.”

Friendly.

“Case ya haven’t noticed, it’s the storm of the vorn out there.”

Prowl closed his optics and vented slowly.  Jazz could practically say the mantra along with him it was so obvious.

“Fine.  When the storm is over - get out of my house.”

“What were you doing on the floor?”  Jazz ignored him.

“Domain wanted me to come down here and throw you out personally.” 

The door swung out again and this time it bumped him a bit harder.

“I’m a musician!” Jazz continued.  “What do you do?”

“I sometimes consult with bots about crime,” he said, staring over Jazz’s shoulder instead of meeting his optics.

“Cool.  So you’re an enforcer?  A consulting enforcer?”

“No.”

“You’ve got the Enforcer paint.”

“I was an enforcer.  Now I live here,” he answered shortly.

“Here?”

“Yes.”

Jazz raised his brows at that.  There was a story here, or maybe a song, and he was curious.

“So, ya don’ have ta answer if ya don’ wan’ ta, but…what’re ya doin’ all the way out here?  Amazingly pretty and useful sparked house, aside, I mean.”  The heat-pit glowed brighter.

Prowl crossed his arms and finally stepped out of the doorway.  The door immediately swung closed, like a sparkling trying to be sneaky.  Prowl turned to glare at it.

“I was banished from the city and from my family home,” he intoned, still glaring at the door.

“You were banished?”

“I committed several actions I have been told were faux pas,” Prowl said, starting to pace the room now, his doorwings gently rotating in smaller and smaller circles.

“Yeah?  I’ve made a few of those myself.  My family never banished me for it.”  That was actually really sad.  “What did you do?”

“First, I refused to allow our family company to donate money to what I was certain was a money laundering front.  It turned out the Happy Sparklings Foundation was a real thing.”  Jazz stared at him.

“Um, yeah, mech.  They have commercials all the time -?”

“Their premise is ridiculous and ineffective!  They ask for donations!  Do you know how unstable that is for a main income?  I offered them investing advice afterwards and they refused.”

“Well, it is a charity -”

“Second,” he continued, “I spurned the advances of my Captain’s creation.  He is a chronic underachiever with no drive and he is always in debt.  My Captain took issue with my phrases, apparently.”

Jazz found he was getting a good enough handle on the mech that he could well imagine what ‘phrases’ he’d used.

“Third, the misstep that led them to finally send me away - unfairly! - was when we all attended a function together.  I was against going from the start, but they convinced me.  I thought it would be a good opportunity to discuss some of the Sentinel Prime’s policies with him.  I managed to get close enough to speak to him and…”  Prowl grumbled softly and his doorwings flicked violently.  “The Prime said something that made me angry.  I have been told I’m not good at controlling my anger.”

“An’ ya yelled at him,” Jazz guessed.

“I threw something at him.”

“At the Prime?  What did ya throw?” 

“A bomb.”

Jazz tumbled off the couch.

“Mech why did ya have a BOMB at a gala?!”  He gaped at him from the floor, flailing as he tried to pull himself back up.

Prowl looked insulted, optics narrowed, mouth set firm.  “I wasn’t planning it!  The science team and I were recreating it because we were tracking a criminal!”

Jazz just stared at him.  He shifted.

“It was not a well thought out plan,” he admitted.

“What did he say?”

“What?”

“What did the Prime say that made you mad?” Jazz asked again, curious, as he settled back on the couch.

Prowl seemed to regain his earlier fury.

“I asked him when he was going to authorize more support for the Enforcers in the Undercity.  We’ve been trying to reduce the crime rate, but we need more than just enforcers.  I offered to send him my plans for it - increase the number of social workers first, to address the all the homeless sparklings and younglings, then contact the Adult Psychiatric Care Organization that is working out of Kaon, and finally, I requested a complete review of the city building plans to stop the substandard materials that are resulting in tunnel collapses.”

That…actually sounded like a good plan.  Better than Polyhex’s “Pave over it all and pretend nothing’s wrong” approach.

“What happened?”

“He said -” Prowl paused and his doorwings drooped, “he said that the only bots in the Undercity were there because they’d made the choice to be there and if they wanted safer housing they should just move.  Then he said that he would authorize another shipment of blasters and we could put officers in the field with less training if we were so desperate.  I think he was also going to say something about the next Superintentnet of Enforcers election but then I threw the bomb at him.”

“Tha’s rough, Prowler.  I like ya ideas.”

“You do?” he asked, optics widening.  “I mean,” he put the scowl back on, “they’re great ideas.  But, they’re what got me banished.  I came out here to be alone.  All by myself.”

“All by yourself with a sparked house?” Jazz asked, wryly.  The windows fluttered open and closed rapidly.  It sounded like laughter.  It felt like laughter.  Prowl glowered at no one.

“I didn’t set out - it just sort of happened.  Domain was for sale and the sellers didn’t realize he was sparked and so I got him for a steal and -”  Prowl stopped and narrowed his optics.  “You’re trying to get me off track.  I’m telling you that, when the storm is over, you will leave.”

“Will I?”

“Yes.  It’s the polite thing to do.  You are not wanted here.”

His voice tripped up on the word ‘wanted.’  And there - Jazz hid a smile - was his in.

He stretched out, throwing an arm over the back of the couch.  “I don’ know, mech,” Jazz said, feeling the floor vibrate with laughter.  “Your place likes me.  I might never leave.”

“Are you, are you threatening me?” Prowl gawked at him.

“Might be.”

Oh look!  He was glaring again!  This was fun.

“What do you want?”

“Want?”

“In exchange for leaving.  Tell me and I will give it to you, barring anything illegal.”

Hmph.  Rich coming from the mech that brought a bomb to a Primal Gala.

“Oh no, mech.  I ain’t stupid.  We’re gonna go inta a real contract.”  He pulled the datapad from his subspace.  Sure, landing a music contract would have been nice, but Jazz had an inkling that he’d enjoy this one more.  He laid it on the table.

Prowl walked over and knelt across from him.

“What are your terms?” he gritted out.

“I have one request.  You give me what I want and I’ll leave,” Jazz said, putting every atom of his frame into the effort of looking innocent.  All it got him was a scowl and a scoff.

“I am not that stupid.  You’ll ask for the house.  Well -”

“Well,” Jazz interrupted, “the house is sparked.  Can’t give away bots, Prowler.  No, what I want is a thing, under 20 credits, that won’t harm anyone to give me.  Now,” Jazz laid his servo on the pad and it received his signature, “are you going to take the deal or not?  We can keep arguing if you’d like -”

Prowl slammed his servo down as well and the pad dinged its acceptance.  

“Now tell me what you want,” he growled.

“What I want?”  Jazz grinned.  “I want the most beautiful crystal bloom from your garden.  The reddest, biggest, most perfect flower you can grow.”

Prowl sputtered.

“It - it is WINTER!  There aren’t any flowers!”

“Hmmm,” Jazz pretended to think again.  “Guess I’ll just wait here until the garden’s in bloom again.”

Prowl scowled and sat heavily on the chair.  The chair gently enfolded him, naked affection spreading out in the room.  It rather ruined the effect when your house tried to snuggle you in the middle of negotiations.

“I might eat you.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“I am extremely grumpy.”

“You don’t say.”

“The fuel is nothing fancy.  We get it piped in from the city.”

“Mech, I’ve lived on vending machine fuels for vorns.”

“I like to be alone a lot of the time.  You’ll get lonely.”

“I’ll invite some of my mates to come by once the worst of the storm is over.  Beachcomber would love to see the garden.”

There!  A twitch.

“It’s not much -”

“It looked like it’ll be gorgeous in the summer. It’s like a frozen summer now, I can’t imagine what it’ll look like in good light with all of its colors.”

It looked like Prowl had forgotten how to glare.  His face was smooth and his field was sprinkled with spots of actual pride.

0-0-0

Prowl tried to hide how much the compliment meant to him.  

“Well, I guess I have no choice -” he said finally, at a loss for anything else to say.  Jazz grinned at him and actually bounced off the couch.

“Excellent!  I’ll grab us some cubes from the kitchen!”  Jazz darted off like he owned the place.

“This is ridiculous,” Prowl grumbled.  He stood and walked to the heat-pit.  He gazed at the wall - all that separated him from Domain’s too-soft and too-big spark.

“Want to explain this sudden madness that has taken you over, hmm?” he asked.  “What exactly do you think is going to happen?”  He wasn’t expecting an answer.

“I waited,” Domain said, his voice shaking the walls.

Prowl knew what remained unsaid.

I waited for you.  

I was lonely.  You were lonely.

He put his servo against the wall and felt the living spark energy running through it.  Domain, the last of the bots that had once dotted the countryside, enclosing and protecting families of three dozens bots or more.  The last of the great titan’s sparklings.

Prowl sighed again and leaned his helm just above his servo.

“I guess I can deal with a couple of guests.  Especially if it makes you happy.”

“Jazz will make you happy,” Domain rumbled back and his field bloomed with hope and affection.

Prowl blushed.

“Maybe.”

AU August Fic 14

Food Trucks

Okay - okay!  This was perfect.  All Jazz had to do was step out and say “Oh!  You like Starlight’s bubbly energon too!  What’s your favorite flavor?” and start up a conversation.

If he could just get up enough courage to leave the back of the truck.

0-0-0

It had all started 5 vorns ago when Jazz, late of his Prime’s army, had been wandering from place to place.  His moods had been swift and volatile - they had not gained him any friends among his civilian neighbors.  He didn’t blame them.

If he’d had a nightmare in the barracks of their tiny ship, Ironhide’s armor would have easily deflected Jazz’s blades - made for close, personal, intricate work, not wild thrusting - and he would have held him until he woke up.  A civilian had no such ability and no experience with the kind of nightmare that came from being Optimus’s secret assassin.

Clerical work had sent him into a depression, desperate for contact with other bots.  Retail and ‘front of house’ work had contained too many triggers - too close, too loud, enemy? - and too many well meaning questions from those that recognized his military memorial etchings.

He’d been struggling with a stocking job - the best fit so far - when he’d started frequenting the group of fuel trucks that parked at the center of the small shopping plaza.

He’d made it a mission to sample each kind of fuel, even if he probably wouldn’t like it.  It was one of the things his therapist had recommended.  Small, achievable goals and rewards to give himself something to look forward to, while his emotions tried to sort themselves out.

Starlight’s Sparklers had been his first choice and he’d enjoyed the flavors, but they’d been very plain.  As he circled through the trucks he’d sipped a very - very - spicy blend that had given him an idea.  The next day he bought a quarter cube of the spicy fuel and a full cube of the lead-infused sparkling energon from Starlight.  He sat down at one of the small tables and drizzled some of the spicy blend into the bubbly.

It’d been perfect.

So he’d started experimenting.  After a while, the other customers noticed and asked him about it.  He’d told them the best combos he’d found and within a month he’d invented - by accident - his own secret menu.

He wasn’t a professional by any means, but he wasn’t afraid to try the very weird combinations and his dogged persistence at it often resulted in things like a triple gold shot, heavy neon mixer, and light solar blend.  The drink was named the Polyhex and wound up on menus all over the city. 

This had confused the trucks.  Yes, they were getting good business, but at the same time customers were most likely to order a half or quarter cube to mix instead of a full cube at full price.

After a few threats - quickly retracted when Jazz had a very pointed chat with them inside their own habsuites - and a lot of negotiating, Jazz became a freelance, consulting, mixologist.

0-0-0

It had started three weeks ago when Jazz, late for a consult, had bumped into a mech carrying a tray of cubes.

“Sorry!  Sorry!  Wasn’t lookin’ where I was goin’!”  He’d stared in dismay at the colorful slush on the ground - they’d been Starlight’s new frozen fuels.

“It is fine,” the mech had said, covered in the spill.

Jazz’s first thought was that the mech was very polite.  His second thought was that he should offer to clean the mech up himself.  With his mouth.

“Nah, mech, lemme buy you a new tray -”

“That won’t be necessary.  The drinks are on the company’s tab.  They won’t notice.”

Jazz’s third thought was to realize that the mech he’d slammed into was the Enforcer Captain from Praxus who was making waves in Iacon.  Those waves were reaching all the way to places like Kaon and Vos.

“Oh, but - “

“Please, don’t let me make you later than you already are,” the Enforcer insisted, fimly, but gently.  Jazz was in love.  Jazz was also late.

“Oh, right - slag.  Gotta go!”  

He’d been late, but that was okay, because it meant that he had an excuse to dawdle around and spy on his new subject of interest.

He was just as polite as before.  Always bought his patrol partners drinks.  Never yelled or threatened, even when the really stupid punks tried to goad him.

Jazz’s crush had grown.  

It was only a matter of time before the trucks noticed.

0-0-0

“Tell him,” Matty - Systematic, Matty for short - had said as she consulted Jazz on her high-grade night-cycle blends

“Just walk up and start the conversation!” Connie - Converter, Connie for short - had urged him as he consulted Jazz on his new sparkling friendly thermal blends.

“He’s gorgeous, if you don’t, I will,” Lex - Lexical, Lex for short - had threatened last time he’d ordered her turbo shots for a long night.

Jazz had been worn down all all sides until he’d found himself hiding inside Starlight’s fuel prep area, gathering courage.

“Ouch!”

“Oops, sorry,” Starlight lied, as if she wasn’t purposefully bashing him with the door to her additive’s cabinet.  “Maybe you should get out if you don’t like it.”

“I will!”

“He’s about to leave.”

“Frag!”  Panic provided the final burst of courage and Jazz threw the back doors open, stepped out, and slammed into Captain Prowl.

Oh, good.  He was staying on theme.

Caught between the panic, the embarrassment, the image of his crush dripping energon, and his  memorized script, Jazz screwed everything up.

“I AM SO SORRY YOU LIKE ENERGON!  WHAT FLAVOR ARE YOU!?” he screamed at Prowl at the top of his vocalizer.  

Prowl blinked.

Jazz froze and thought he was about to crash.

Starlight muttered, “You fragging idiot” and closed her back doors.

0-0-0

Five minutes later - once Starlight had refilled Prowl’s order and Connie had driven over to offer them both towels - Jazz tried again.

“I’m Jazz.  It’s good to meet you.  I’ve noticed you like Starlight’s Bubbly Energon,” he’d said very slowly and carefully, checking each word twice.

“Yes.  I do.”  Prowl’s helm was stained light pink from the energon.  Jazz made a mental note to tell Starlight they needed to reduce the coloring in that one.

“I was wondering what your favorite flavor was?”

“You…want to know my favorite flavor?” Prowl asked, confused.  Behind him, Jazz could see one of his partners - a tough looking femme with a patched optic - shaking her helm and covering her face with a servo.

“Yes?” 

“...why?”

“So I can buy it for you?” Jazz asked.  Prowl looked at him again, titling his helm.

“I already told you, the company -”

The femme it seemed had had enough.  She hauled herself up on the table and shouted:

“IT’S. A. DATE!  HE’S ASKING YOU ON A DATE!”

From points around the plaza - startling the uninvolved civilians - the trucks were giving their own opinions.

“He’s been pinning for you!”

“He memorized your order!”

“Half his new blends are named after you!”

“DATE HIM FOR PRIMUS’S SAKE SO HE’LL STOP MOPING!”

Starlight was especially vocal.

Jazz dragged his gaze up to meet Captain Prowl’s optics.

“Um, yeah, what they said.”

“A date?”

“Yes.”

“With you?”

“Probably.”

“Where?”

“Um…wherever?”

“Okay.  Here, tomorrow night?  They light up the fountains when it is dark.”

Jazz starred.

Someone honked loudly.  Jazz jumped.

“Oh, um, I mean, yes!  Yes, I’d love to go on a date with you tomorrow night. Here.”

Prowl nodded once, like he was setting a tactical assault into motion.

“Good.  It is decided.  My favorite flavor is the neon slush.”

AU August Fic 15

Hanahaki Disease

“Oh,” Prowl said, looking down at the petals hidden in his closed servo.  “I’m not dying.”

Jazz opened and closed his mouth.  He swiped at his optics beneath his visor.

“What?”

0-0-0

Most of the time being Crystal-touched didn’t interfere with his function.  A few days pruning one of his potted crystals or propagating some seeds was all he needed to review his connection.

However…

Prowl may have forgotten - or conveniently ignored - the fact that he wasn’t just part of the crystals, they were a part of him too.

As a sparkling it had happened more often - stronger emotions, less control - and more dramatically.

He’d grown roots when his Aunt had come to get him after his creators lost custody for living openly as neo-Crystalists.  

He’d sprouted thorns up and down his arms when a roommate at college hadn’t taken ‘no’ for an answer.

A terrible, terrible night when he’d been overcharged, alone, and frightened in a new city - pranked by his ‘partner’ on the force - the sidewalks had suddenly glowed with luminescent crystal moss.

Then, one day, he’d looked over at Jazz, his partner, and realized he was in love.

And promptly had to leave to spit out the fully formed crystal bud that had decided to burst up from his throat.

It had not gotten better.  If anything, now that he realized one of the many reasons he enjoyed working on paperwork late was that he and Jazz could sit, elbow to elbow, and chat without their coworkers chiming in, he found his powers manifesting more.

When they walked together, the cracks in the sidewalk started to shoot out tiny, delicate tendrils of Walking Crystal, the eternal city weed.

Jazz complemented Prowl’s new desk plant without realizing that the ebony grown was coming from Prowl’s own palm.

Prowl had to walk around to the other side of his building because the communal garden which had previously held his own small plot and a few random sparkling’s science projects, was now reaching the third floor and drawing attention.

The worst of it though, was that he kept coughing up those fragging flowers.

A potassium-pansy when Jazz complimented him.  A delicate spray of rose quartz when Jazz sent him a silly message after work.  An orange orchid fell into his palm as he stood in the corner at the Officer’s Ball and his spark ached, as Jazz took another beautiful dance partner that wasn’t Prowl.

He tried everything - pretending he wasn’t in love with Jazz, avoiding Jazz, trying to fall in love with other, less perfect people, and even calling his cousin, the only other crystal-touched he knew.

Smokescreen had just laughed and told Prowl to call him when he’d gotten his helm on straight and stopped being an idiot.

It had all come to a breaking point late after a particularly boring patrol.

Jazz had been unusually quiet and Prowl had asked him multiple times if he was okay.  Each time Jazz had summoned a smile or a wry grin for the space of a few minutes and brushed off the question.  Each time, Prowl had coughed quietly and tossed the petals discreetly behind them as they walked.

Prowl couldn't help but feel as if Jazz wanted to say something.  A few times he looked like he might, and then stopped himself.

“Prowl,” Jazz said suddenly, as they stepped back inside the brightly lit station, “I need to talk to you.  Now.  Will you come with me to the backroom?”  Then, without looking back, Jazz had booked it to the filing rooms.

Now Prowl was worried.  Jazz was careful to hide his accent around most bots - didn't want to deal with the prejudice of being a Poly, he’d said - but he never did it around Prowl.

Something was wrong.

When Prowl entered the narrow, dim filing room, Jazz was facing away from him, servos clenched into fists at his side.

“Close the door,” he said, his voice strained.

“Jazz?  Please tell me what’s wrong -”

He spun around.

“How - how dare you ask me that!” he shouted.

 Prowl’s mouth dropped open.  He took a step forward.

Jazz was crying.  The window light was casting strange shadows on his face, catching the glint of the tears whenever he moved his helm.

“How dare you act like - like everything is fine!  I’m your partner!  You should be telling me when something is wrong!”  

“Jazz, nothing is wro-”

His partner closed the distance so he could slam a heavy fist into Prowl’s chest, just above his spark.

“That’s slag!  I’m not an idiot!  Even the others have noticed!  I just -” 

Then something even more shocking than finding Jazz crying happened.

He wrapped his arms around Prowl and began to wail.

This was not something Prowl had any experience with.  He had probably been emotionally stunted by his rebellious youth and thus, had never had to deal with someone crying on him.

He wrapped his arms around Jazz cautiously, waiting for a rejection.  Instead, Jazz held him tighter.

They waited.

Eventually, Jazz’s sobbing lessened and he spoke.

“I jus’ wanna be there for ya, Prowler.  Whatever - whatever it is, I don’ want ya goin’ through it alone.”

“You are always there for me,” Prowl reassured him quickly.  This was going to be easy!

“Then why - then why didn’t ya tell me?”

“Tell you?”  Or not.

“‘Bout - ‘bout whatever’s wrong wit’ ya.  Don’ think I haven’t noticed ya runnin’ off and coughin’ and hidin’.  Whatever it is, Prowler, we’ll get through it.  I promise.”  He snuggled closer to Prowl which triggered -

“See?  I know something’s wrong.  An - an’ even if the medics can’t help - we’ll find something.  We can go ta my mate Ratchet!  He’s a miracle worker.  He can - “

Something clicked.

“Oh,” Prowl said, looking down at the petals hidden in his closed servo.  “I’m not dying.”

Jazz opened and closed his mouth.  He swiped at his optics beneath his visor.

“What?”

“I’m not sick - well, not like what you mean.”

“What?”  Now there was a note of anger in Jazz’s voice.

“I’m -” oh, this was harder to say than he’d thought.  Thank you lifetime of oppression.  “I’m crystal-touched.”

“Crystal - touched - like in the stories?”  Prowl nodded.  Jazz didn’t look too shocked, but the light coming from the window was fading.  Prowl wasn’t sure.

“But - why am I only noticin’ now?”

“I have been…you see, the crystals are part of me, just as I am -”

Jazz clamped a servo over Prowl’s mouth and glared at him.

“Tha’ sounds like ya tryin’ ta distract me and throw me off.  Why now, Prowl.”  He removed his servo and Prowl missed it immediately.

“I’m in love with you,” he said without thinking.

“You’re -”

“I’m in love with you - so in love that I keep trying to spit flowers at you and my garden is trying to take over my apartment building and I can’t walk past a single, tiny crystal seed without my spark throwing out so much love that it blooms into a three foot high tripping hazard in the middle of the street.”

“Prowl - I -”  Jazz lifted a servo and cupped Prowl’s face.  He leaned in.  Was he going to -?

He kissed him.  The world slid in and out of focus.  Prowl pulled back.  He had to tell Jazz everything - right now or he would burst.

“Jazz, I - oh scrap!”  Prowl leapt back.  Jazz stumbled and looked up at him.

“What?”  

Prowl pointed.

There, coming through the window, an overly enthusiastic riot of fushia Walking Crystal had broken in and was climbing down the wall, the individual growths surging forwards as they stood there watching.

“Oh,” Jazz said quietly.  “You really are…”

“I really am,” Prowl said, covering his optics with his servo.  Maybe if he just didn’t look, it would go away.

Jazz slid back into his arms.

“Well, at least it’s an improvement on the beige in here,” he said, resting his helm on Prowl’s shoulder.

AU August Fic 16

Psychological Horror (Fluffy version)

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Ah could hear ya thinkin’ it.  Loudly.”

“You’re going to have to come down sometime.”

“Not while meh magnets still work.”

“And what should I tell your coworkers when they come knocking on our door?  Big, tough, rock and roll star Jazz is afraid of -”

“Ah’m NOT afraid of it!”

“And yet you are on the ceiling.  Driven up there by a tiny glitchmouse.”

“Ah’m not scared of glitchmice!”

“Of course not.”

“Ah jus’ don’ like the idea of not knowin’ where it is.  Knowin’ it could run out any minute an’ -”

“Scurry over your pede?”

“An’ surprise me!  Ah don’ like surprises.”

“Are you going to recharge up there?  Or in the berth with me, your neglected bonded?”

“An’ risk it crawlin’ over mah face inna middle a’ the night?  Nope!”

“Well, that’s where I’ll be when if you change your - EEEEEK!”

AU August Fic 23

Infinity Loop

Notes: Not really an AU, but I couldn’t resist. Also, look!  It’s short!

Wheeljack was keeping a secret and Prowl and Jazz looked exhausted.

Ratchet knew he needed to investigate whatever insanity they’d concocted.  He knew that as their medic it was his job to be the hovering wrench that kept them from stupidly injuring themselves.

Any one of them he could handle, but to take on all three he was going to need help.  

He enlisted Optimus and Ironhide.  Ironhide because he was impervious to Jazz’s silver speech and half truths.  Optimus because Prowl, despite Prowl’s frequently loud disagreements, had never been able to lie to the Prime.

Every now and then he tried.  It was very entertaining.

He chose Wheeljack for himself because he knew all his friend’s little tells.  Plus, he was the only one on the ships (aside from Perceptor who would just join in the idiocy) that Wheeljack could techno-jargon into confusion.  Ratchet actually knew what a polyphasic interaction was.

So, Ratchet handed the medbay over to First Aid and cornered his friend in his lab one morning.

“Oh!  Hi Ratchet!” Wheeljack said, immediately stepping behind one of his workstations.  He was wearing his “I haven’t done anything wrong” smile which was a tell. He was also pulling out a cleaning cloth and polishing the table - another tell.

“How are you, Jackie?  Been doing anything illegal?”

The biggest tell was probably that Wheeljack took that moment to try and bolt for the door.

0-0-0

“Now,” said Ratchet, standing over a pinned Wheeljack, “Let’s try this again.  What’s been going on with you and Prowl and Jazz?”  He held up his portable tractor beam.

On the ground, Wheeljack wiggled and frowned and then started talking very fast.

“So I was running late on a lot of my experiments and I thought to myself, Hey!  What if I had extra time to work on all of them?  I know Optimus doesn’t like us messing with time travel and if someone walked in and there were four of me in the lab that would be bad.  Plus that weakens the fabric of reality and I don’t think I’d actually get anything done if there were four of me.  We’d all still want to work on each other’s projects.  

“So I thought - what about a time loop!  I was watching some of the human’s movies - Delorians are awesome! - and I found a couple where humans get stuck in time loops and they learn how to do things because the day keeps repeating so they have endless time to learn stuff!  So I set it up and -”

“And it went wrong,” Ratchet interrupted, sitting down heavily on a stool.  But Wheeljack was shaking his helm vigorously.

“Oh no!  I put in a bunch of failsafes!  It set it up for my lab only, for only an hour and I put in four different shut off points - even some alerts that I had to acknowledge or it would pull me out of the loop in case I got carried away and forgot the time!  I was very careful Ratchet!”

That actually was very careful for Wheeljack.

“So what went wrong?”  Silence.  “Jackie?”

“Jazz found out about it!” he whispered, looking around as if the spy himself would pop out of the vents.  “He made me explain how it worked and then he said that, as a member of the command staff, he needed to make sure it was safe!”  Wheeljack’s servos were going a mile a minute, like he was trying to wave away Ratchet’s anger, fins flashing through colors faster than a screensaver.

“And you bought that.”  This proved once again, that there a sliding scale with Innovative Genius and Common sense on either end.

“Everything was fine - he brought Prowl - and he asked to use it every other week so he and Prowl could get some paperwork done -”

“Oh Primus.”  Ratchet suddenly knew where this was going.

“And then I found out that they’d hijacked my safety measures and the loop was an infinity loop, where it just started itself over and over again.  They eventually managed to fix it, but um, they may have taken advantage of all that…uninterrupted time…”  Wheeljack’s fins were growing steadily pinker as he spoke.

“Yeah, I can’t imagine what those two newbonds would do with endless time on their servos.”

Wheeljack was looking very firmly at his twisting servos.  “Um, yeah.  I think that’s why they wanted it in the first place…”

Perfect.

0-0-0

“An’ then, then ‘e said,” Ironhide roared with laughter again.  Apparently Jazz had spared no detail when Ironhide had confronted him over drinks that afternoon.

Ratchet now knew far more about why they were both so tired than he really wanted to.

On the other servo, Optimus had said nothing since talking to Prowl.  Occasionally he opened his mouth, squeaked, and his field flared with mortification, but that was all.  He was so stiff, Beachcomber could use him for a surfboard.

Ratchet thought about throwing them both in the brig, but they only had one cell and he didn’t want to subject the guards to that.

AU August Fic 13

Reboot/Refresh

The enforcer burst into the salon like a full police raid and the technicians scattered.  He wore the official Enforcer paint and the decals - those would be a pain to scrub around if he was here for a full wash and wax - and like all enforcers, he wore a thunderous scowl.

Jazz sighed and stood up from the check-in counter.  It was late and he had a gig to get to in two hours because he was an idiot trying to work two jobs while studying for his PI license.

“Hello,” he droned, “welcome to Fix-it’s Fixes.  What can I help you with today?  Would you like to know our rates for a -”

“I want a full frame repaint,” he interrupted.  His voice was hoarse and low, less pushy enforcer looking for discounts and more exhausted bot after a long day.  

“Sorry, all full frame repaints need to be scheduled in advance.  We can give you a standard package this evening and tomorrow -”

“How long does it take?  To remove and repaint?” he interrupted again.  Jazz brightened his patented ‘dealing with afts’ smile.

“It would take a full two hours for us to paint and dry you and that’s not even considering the color and design consultation.”

“How long just for paint removal?”

Jazz blinked.

“Just under a half an hour, but if we don’t paint you, you’ll be walking around in your bare metal until tomorrow.”

Something complicated and familiar crossed over the Enforcer’s expression: shame, grief, a touch of anger.

“Then just take it off,” the enforcer said, stiffly.  “I’ll pay full price.  I need this paint off.”  

To his right, some of the technicians were stepping back out - most of them were cleaning up their workstations this late - and watching the pair of them surreptitiously.  

“Mech, I can’t advise that -”

“Then I will pay double.”

Oh, this was bad.  This was like that time four very overcharged bots came in and his supervisor made him give in to their demands of “neon flames and etchings all around!” and then they’d tried to sue.

“I don’t think -”

“If you don’t help me,” the Enforcer said, lowly, “then I am going to go buy one of those home-paint kits and melt half my plating off.  I am not good at this.  Please.”

The please got him.  Fraggit.

“Okay,” Jazz heard himself saying.  He saw Coppercoil out of the corner of his optic slamming her servo to her face.  Frankly, he agreed.

“I’ll take you back, it might take a moment for the paint blaster to turn back on, though.  Hey - Iridescent!  Take over here, okay?”  The mech nodded and the permanent halo of reflected rainbow light bobbed.

“This way.”  Jazz motioned the enforcer to follow him and slipped into the back.  He pointed to the lockers on one wall and then to a low bench in the middle of the room.

“You can put your stuff in there - mods, stickers, ornaments - and then have a seat on the bench.  I’m going to need to tape you up so the sand doesn’t get everywhere,” he said as he grabbed the spool of white electrical tape off the wall.

“Please be careful of my left doorwing, I smashed it last week and the welds are still setting.”  Jazz peered down at it and winced at the sloppy network of welds and staples.

“Ouch, what happened mech?”

“I was in Iacon when the Primal Ship was attacked.  I was treated in the tents before I continued my investigation and the gap between the field triage and being brought to the hospital allowed an infection to set in,” he intoned flatly, as if Jazz couldn’t see the scars from how many anti-vials had been slammed into his helm, probably in a desperate bid to keep him from overheating.

“Damn mech, that’s rough. You were investigating it?  I heard that -”  Jazz stopped and tried to remember.  “Oh, hey!”  Something clicked.  “I know you - you’re the bot they called Shadow, aren’t you?  You broke - Primus, so many cases.  You -”

Oh.

The mech kept his optics fixed on the lockers across from them.

“I was engaged upon the case investigating Lord Sentinel Primes’s murder.  When I declined their offer of an easy wrap-up I was demoted.  I resigned this morning.”

Jazz had read about it in the papers.  Officer Prowl accused of evidence tampering.  No one had believed it - it was too out of the blue, too convenient, and too neatly done.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure there is no love lost between you and the Enforcers.  We - they - are not well liked.”  Now there was a pressure pot fit to boil dry.

“Nah, too much corruption in Polyhex and nearly as much here in Praxus.  We all followed ya cases, though.  My twin - Ricochet - got caught up in the money laundering scheme a few years back.”  It was easier to talk about nowadays, with Ricochet working an honest job with Carrier to keep an eye on him.  “He talked about ya, said ya were a good one.”  He’d recounted a story of how Prowl had ripped into one of the officers for being rough with them and fired one on the spot for aiming a kick at Ricochet when he thought no one was looking.

“I am glad.”

Prowl still wasn’t looking at him, but the rigidity in his frame - so tight Jazz could see the stress fractures webbing out from his joints - lessened.

“Gonna start taping.  Let me know if I need to stop.”

If Jazz’s servos were a bit gentler than usual, Prowl didn’t notice.

0-0-0

Jazz gave him a wrap-around visor for his optics to keep them from getting scratched and led him into the sandblasting chamber.

“I’ll comm ya if ya need ta move or anything, okay?  Just stand wit’ ya arms out and I’ll operate the blaster.”

“Understood.”  Prowl appreciated the clear directions.  His helm had been elsewhere for the past week.  Today had been -

He put the visor on and held out his arms.  The grit of the sand was jarring, but at the same time, it felt good.  Like he was pulling off a mask he’d been wearing for too long.

With every pass of the sandblaster, Prowl relaxed.  He looked down to watch as the strips of gold peeled away from his chestplate and fell to the ground in ragged curls.

He’d been so certain that the strange pressure in his spark would be eased by becoming an Enforcer.  Finally somewhere for the love and the anger to go instead of spinning inside him.

He wanted - he wanted to wrap himself around everyone and keep them safe against his spark.  He’d thought that’s what enforcers did.

The intricate lines on his servos had been blasted away.  

He’d never write another report again.  Never search through the stacks for just the right file to solve a case.  He’d probably never see his coworkers again either.

He’d ripped his decal off after stepping out of the station for the last the time.

The last time.

The sandblaster softened the edges of the blank patch and then erased it all together.  

By the time his pedes were bare, gray metal, Prowl was well into a panic.

Not an enforcer.  If he wasn’t an enforcer, what was he?  What was he going to do?  He didn’t have a job anymore.  He had nowhere to belong now.

What was he going to do?

0-0-0

Jazz opened the door, and half caught the trembling mech.

“I gotcha, Prowler.  You’ll be alright.”  The plating against his chest was gritty with sand - he could feel it scratching his own paint away - but he just held him as tightly as he needed.

Eventually, Prowl pulled away.

“Thank you.  I will be on my way now.  According to the time, you’ve been closed for twenty minutes already -”  He took a step forwards and stopped when Jazz put a servo on his chest.

“It’s already late and I can’t let ya leave the store wit’ out somethin’.  Lemme give you a quick paint, mech.  You can come back for a polish tomorrow.”

“I do not even know what paint I would choose,” he argued.  “It’s not something I thought about in…forty-five vorns?  I think?”

“Do ya trust me?” Jazz asked, only half teasing.  He wanted to do something for this mech who had tried so hard to fix the system for all of them.

Prowl flinched.  “I trust no one,” he said lowly.  “But I doubt anything you do will harm me now.”  

Jazz heard the unsaid “nothing can harm me now” and winced.

“Don’t worry, mech.  I’ll take care of ya.”

Jazz picked up the sprayer and three cans of paint.

0-0-0

Prowl stared down at himself.

The colors had been switched around, the lines moved so they didn’t match the enforcer’s patterns anymore.  Jazz had pulled the black back and removed the accent colors.  Along each edge he had painted a swirling, spiky pattern, less like the ever popular (and overdone) flames and more like a thorny crystal vine.

It was small enough to be subtle, but not so small as to go unnoticed.  Jazz wanted him to have something he’d be proud to show off after having to give up his enforcer paint.

“It is…more than I could have hoped for,” Prowl said at last.

“I’m glad.”  Jazz smiled and leaned back, one servo on his hip.  “But ya gotta show it off, mech.  Wanna meet me for lunch tomorrow?  Burst-Over’s cafe on 2nd Street?”

Prowl looked up quickly, optics wide.

“I - “ he started.  Then he just nodded.  “I find myself at a loss and soon, with too much free time on my hands.”

“Oh?”  The inkling of an idea was twirling in the back of Jazz’s processor.  “Mech, have you ever considered private investigating?”

AU August Fic 21

Ghosts

Listen, this was not supposed to be 1,500 words of dystopian YA novel.  Yet here it is.

“Ugh.  Or-ion!  Come on!  Before they see us,” Ariel scolded as she slipped under the fence.

 “Maybe this isn’t such a good -” Dion started to say as he scooted under, folding down his smoke stacks.

 “It’s a great idea!”  Ariel put both servos on her hips and glared at them.  It was unsettlingly similar to the depiction of the Divine Weapon on the sides of the temple, one of the unknown Primes.  “We’ll finally get to do something fun!  Exams are over -”

 “Until we apply for Secondary Schools,” Orion Pax corrected as he carefully held the fence away from his shiny new paint.  Ariel had already scratched hers and Dion’s creators hadn’t bothered with the traditional re-paint after graduation.

 The other side of the fence looked surprisingly…normal.  Everyone had different reasons why the plains and forests outside the city were forbidden - wild mechanimals, rogue sentinel bots, sparkeaters.

 It was a bit dusty, Orion decided, a bit quieter.  It was mostly bare with a few shrubs and a few places where the heat of the core had burst up and buckled the surface metal.  Even that had cooled, leaving a lonely stretch of cold, dark land.  

 Ahead of them was the abandoned building they’d been wondering about since they had all been sparklings. Had it been a base for an army?  A prison?  A mad scientist’s lab?  When Ariel had suggested one more adventure before they split for secondary (Orion for Knowledge, Ariel for Military, and Dion for Construction of all things) none of them had had the spark to say no.

 It sounded like Dion was second guessing that idea.

 “I’m just saying,” he repeated, “that if we get eaten by a sparkeater my carrier is going to kill me.”  

 “That’ll save them the trouble then!” Ariel called back.  She was leading the way, darting from shrub to rock shelter, to hide from anyone monitoring the gate.  Dion and Orion Pax tried to copy her clever movements, which wasn’t easy to do, considering they were four times her size.

 After a few more ‘duck and covers’ they both just trailed behind her as she rolled and tumbled.

 Finally they reached the entrance.  Or where an entrance would have been if the roof hadn’t caved in.

 “I’ll go first!” Dion volunteered because he never turned away a chance to get dirty or injured by falling debris.

 Which explained the construction degree, now that Orion thought about it.

 Dion safely made it through and into the hallways and called the other two after them.

 It was…dark.  Quiet.  Orion found himself slowing his venting as he walked.

 It looked like it might have been a…bar?  There was a big room with chairs and tables and some sort of spigot?  Dion mentioned seeing something like it in one of their history texts.

 “Imagine,” Ariel said as she fiddled with it, “just drinking whatever energon came out of that.  It could be cut with dead bot’s energon or hydrogen dioxide!”

 Orion explored one of the rooms on the left and came back to tell them it looked like the school’s chemistry lab.

 “I think they mixed things into their energon!”

 “Oh, come on!” Dion ribbed him.  “No one would waste gold or lead or sulfur on flavoring their energon.  I bet this was a secret weapons facility!  They were probably building weapons and - and time vortexes!”

 “Pft.  I doubt it.”  Ariel was standing on the bar, trying to reach one of the ceiling panels.

 “I could be right!”

 “In your dreams!  You thought the noise outside your window was a sparkeater!”

 “I was 112!  How was I supposed to know what rain sounded like?”

 “I bet it’s an old mad scientist’s lab,” Ariel proclaimed, a look of giddy excitement crossing her face that Orion hadn’t seen since they were small.  “She was probably creating super soldiers against the government and they shut her down!”

 “That’s stupid!”

 “It is not!”

 “You said my idea was stuipd!”

 “Because it is.”

 “Hey!”  Orion cut them off.  “We’ll probably never know -”

 “We could just ask them!” Ariel interrupted him.  Orion looked over and caught her optics.  Oh, this was a plot, he could feel like.

 “Ask who?” he said carefully.  She reached into her newly created subspace and brandished a datapad with a peeling sticker that said “Ghost Chaser!” with the logo for the popular television show.

 “What,” he said flatly, “is that.”  She only smiled wider.

 “They use them on the show to talk to ghosts!  We can contact the ghosts of the bots who used to live here and ask them!”

 Dion walked over and pulled it out of her servos.

 “Hey that’s mine!”

 “How long have you been planning this, A?”  She snactched it back.

 “A while!  It’s not like it’ll hurt.  We’re already here.”  She looked over at Orion.

 “Set it up,” he said, “but we aren’t going to wait all night like they do in the shows.”

 0-0-0

 It did not take all night.  It did not even take twenty kliks.

 “Look look look!  It’s moving!”

 Indeed, the small red dot was moving across the glyphs.  Everytime it paused the device read the word allowed.

 “Can’t.”

 “Stop.”

 “Can’t.”

 “Stop.”

 “Can’t stop what?  Where you murdered?  Are you a murderer?”

 “Sh, don’t interrupt it!”

 “Can’t.”

 “Stop.”

 “The.”

 “Can’t.”

 “Stop.”

 “The.”

 “Music.”

 “Ba-da-dum.”

 “Ridiculous.”

 “WHAT?” Ariel screeched.  She leapt for the pad, but Orion hauled her back.  

 The static around his spark was starting to prickle uncomfortably.  Something was…strange.

 “Ridiculous.  I.  Am.  Ridiculous.  You.”

 “Yes.  You.  Are.  Ridiculous.”

 “No.  You.”

 “Not. I. Singing. To. Sparklings.”

 “I’m not a sparkling!” Dion said outraged before going very still.  He had just yelled at a ghost.  It was Ariel this time who pulled him back.  She had gone very still and very quiet.

 “Sparklings.  Not. Forever. But. Yes. Sparklings.  Go. Home.”

 “No.  Stay.  Don’t. Leave. Me. With Stick-in-the-slag.”

 The device was running words together as if they were being pressed too quickly for it to handle.

 “Your.  Bonded.”

 “Bonded-stick-in-the-slag.”

 “You.  Like.  Stick.”

 “Sparkling.  Audials.  Quiet.”

 “What was this place?” Orion asked, seeing as both his best friends were playing statues.  

 “Bar.  Home.  Bots. Come. Music.  Fuel.  Family.  Family-after-the-war.”

 “What war?”

 There was a pause and Orion was afraid the ghosts had left.

 “The.  Great.  War.  Autobots.  Decepticons.  Good.  Evil.  Both.  Study?”

 “I don’t understand.”

 “You.  Study.  Not.  Great. War.  What?”

 “Well,” Orion said slowly, “I’m studying knowledge right now.  The Great Kaon Archives have almost 1,000 datapads.  I’ll be allowed to start reading them after I pass my university exam.  We learn about how the government works, how it gives us fuel and shelter.”

 “We do math,” Dion finally chimed in.  “We have to use it to build new buildings since the acid rain eats at them.  We have to calculate our fuel usage everyday to add it to our tally.”

 “Tally.”

 “Yeah.  The government gives us fuel as sparklings and we have to pay it back when we’re grown up!  Everyone does.  My grand-creator is almost done paying off her sparkling fuel.  After that they’ll pay her in credits and then we can go on a trip or buy cool stuff!”

 “Query.  Tally.  How.  Much.”

 “Well,” Dion said, squinting his optics as he thought, “my fuel usage today was 400 credits.  When I get my first construction job I’ll be able to pay back about 700 credits a week.  As long as I don’t have any accidents and I keep my fuel usage low, I’ll be able to pay my debt off way before my grand-creator did.”  He smiled, but there was something…tight about it.

 “How. Keep.  Low.”

 “Recharge as soon as you get home from school,” Orion started to recite.  It was on every classroom wall and in every sparkling show.  “Don’t use the datanet for more than 20 minutes a week.  Stay close to home.  No comms unless it’s an emergency.”

 The device was silent.

 “This.  Is.  Tyranny.  This.  Is.  Sentinel.  Prime.  This.  Is.  Praxus.  This.  Is. WRONG.”

 “Mechs.  Femme.  Wrong.  Listen.  Keep.  Down.  Hold.  Down.  No.  Word.  No.  Word.”  

 The device started to shake.

 “On-Pr-E-Sh-N.”  The ghost was cycling through the words even faster and they started to run together.

 “O-Pr-E-Sh-N.”

 “O-Pr-E-Sh-o-N.”

 “OPPRESSION.”

 “What…does that mean?” Orion asked, something in his helm - or in his spark? - flinching at the word.

 “Word.  Means.  Keep.  You.  From.  Fighting.”

 “It doesn’t!”  Ariel argued, glaring at the device.  “I’m going to study military and I’ll be fighting to protect us from the invaders!”

 “Fight.  Government.”

 Ariel rolled her optics.  “Why would we fight the government?  That’s stupid.”

 “If.  Government. Wrong.  How.  Will.  You.  Fight.”

 “The government…can’t be wrong!”  But there was something in Ariel’s optics.  Something Orion thought he’d been seeing peek out for a while.

 Fear.  She clutched at the seat of her chair, servos clench so hard the color was fading.

 Beside her, Dion was looking down, his whole frame hunched and drawn in.

 There was something here - something they’d left him out of.  Why?

 “Fight.” 

 “What…have you guys been keeping from me?” Orion Pax asked, hoping they wouldn’t answer.

 “We…we found some stuff…” Dion mumbled.

 “What?”

 “Frames!”  Ariel finally shouted, leaping from her chair.  “We found dead frames in one of the building in 23 District.  That’s it!  We don’t know how they got there!”

 “Just…frames?  Laying around?”  That…the government said that they didn't have enough cybertronium.  That for every bot that died, their frame was recycled and that was why it was so hard to create new sparklings.  That was why they had fuel shortages.  If they were in the Government District…

 “You…you didn’t tell me?”

 “They were…Orion, they were the Kaon Archive Librarians.”  Ariel wouldn’t meet his optics.  He felt like his spark was disconnected from his frame.  His processor had stalled.

 “Or-Eye-N.”

 Orion turned to look at the device.

“Danger.  

AU August Fic 18

Choir

“Cease.  Laughing.”

Jazz laughed harder.

His parole officer had said Jazz “lacked humility and a sense of kinship with his fellow cybertronians.”  The suggestions of a choir had been to encourage his love of music and at the same time force him to conform to an ensemble.

What the parole officer had never understood was that, Jazz lacked a sense of kinship with the chronically middle class afts he worked dead end jobs for, the entitled upper management that spread like rust, and the starry eyed young enforcers that they sent after him every time he decided he’d had enough of working himself to death for minimum wage.

It hadn’t even been a very big fireball last time and they’d still thrown him in jail.  Though, offering to split the money with the judge if he let it slide probably had just as much to do with that.

Unfortunately for his parole officer’s plans, the choir were Jazz’s People.  Within a month, the Prime himself could have come down and the entire choir would swear on their sparks that Jazz had been with them at the time he was suspected of stealing that Senator’s chrome finish.

Today, he was even more grateful.  Today was a special day.

It wasn’t everyday you saw the stupid young officer that had arrested you dragged in by the chevron and told - ordered - like a youngling to apologize to the choir director for trying to arrest her for ‘noise ordiance’ inside of a temple.

Timber, the mildest spark Primus had ever framed, had said - with a very devious look in her optics - that he could apologize by singing with them every week for the next two months.

Officer Prowl had looked like he’d rather put his helm in a disk shredder.

Actually, if his Captain hadn’t been standing there, Jazz had a feeling he’d have given it a try to avoid the choir.

Jazz, being the kind and considerate and most importantly humble, bot that he was, offered the great Officer Prowl as seat next to him.  It had proven to be hours of good entertainment.

Prowl could not find the key if it was handed to him in an evidence bag.

Prowl murdered each note personally, as if they had wronged his family.

Prowl’s vocalizer had yet to settle on a register and so he kept booming from a typical tenor into full “STOP RIGHT THERE” baritone.

Prowl was currently holding the program datapad as if it was a live bomb.  He looked seconds away from chucking it and running.

“Cease!” Officer Prowl hissed again, turning the pad back and forth.  Jazz put a servo over his mouth and held it in for a moment.  Then the officer turned it upside down and Jazz lost it.

“Quit it before I arrest you!” 

“For what!  I’m allowed ta laugh!”

“Not at me!”  He sounded so much like a sparkling Jazz nearly toppled off his stool.  His fellow singers were trying to hold in their own giggles and were much more successful.  So successful that Prowl turned to one and asked in a low voice, if they knew what the datapad said.  

That was when the whole choir lost it.

That was when Jazz saw it.  A quickly fleeting flare in his field of pain - deep pain, that kind that took a lifetime to build - and the tremble of his servos.

Scrap.  Now it wasn’t as funny.  In some bizarre way having the whole choir laughing at him felt too much like being a thug with a crew and had never been Jazz’s style.  Scrap.

“Here.”  Jazz reached over and toggled the settings until the music was labeled - whole note, half note, quarter note) and the text was a bright red.  Prowl’s servos never released the pad, locked in place, but he allowed Jazz to invade his space enough to do it.

“Thank you,” he said stiffly.  The laughter was dying down now that Jazz wasn’t leading it.

“No problem.  Do you want a tip?”  Officer Prowl’s jaw was set hard and he refused to look at Jazz, but he nodded.

“Everyone here sucked their first time singing.  First you suck, then you get better.  I’m sure police work is different, but in music you just keep doing it over and over again until you get a little better at each part.”

“I have never…sucked…at anything in my entire career,” Officer Prowl said, a note of despair in his voice.  “I always practiced and studied so I wouldn’t have to.”

Jazz huffed a laugh and bumped Officer Prowl’s shoulder gently - like he would any of his friends.  He felt the flair in the officer’s field, but didn’t look into it - even a self righteous baby cop deserved a little consideration.

“I believe it.  For now, just focus on getting the words in the right places.  We’ll worry about everything else later.”

“Just the words.  I…can do that.”  

“‘Course you can, Officer Prowl.”  The choir was settling in for the practice now.  He darted a quick look at Jazz and his shoulders relaxed slightly.

“You can call me Prowl - but only if you want to.”

“Thanks, Prowler.”

“Prowl.”

“Got it.”

AU August Fic 26

This made me giggle.  Prowl, oblivious hero, Jazz, adoring fan

Paparazzi

Crash!

“Ohslag!  Don’t kill me!”

“Who are you?  Why are you here?  Were you sent by the MotorHelm family?”

“The - what the pit, mech!  I’m not an assassin - I’m a photographer!”

“...”

“Look, camera.  Journalist creds.  Please put the gun down.”

“Gathering blackmail?”

“No, Mr One-Track-Processor, gathering pictures.  I’m taking pictures of ya.  For the magazines!”

“Others have tried to discredit me before.  You will find nothing that -”

“Oh, jeez, ya really are as obsessed as they say.  No, afthealm, so the magazines can put your face on the front cover and run stories about all your heroic adventures.  We’re just trying ta make some credits.”

“...why?”

“‘Cause some of us have bills ta pay and fuel ta put on the table.”

“Why are they running stories about me?  I’ve been told real enforcers are boring.  Bots prefer those snappy, unrealistic ones in the holodramas.”

“...ya think you’re BORING?!”

“You are photographing me filling out an order form for more chairs -”

“What about all those orphans ya saved in Vos!?”

“I only noticed an inconsistency in their data management -”

“Ya grappling hooked ya way up ta the council chambers an’ accused the Secretary of Family Management of trafficking!  And the time ya prevented the explosion at the Moonbase factories -”

“Any other bot with functioning optics would have noticed the instruments were reading within the red levels - it’s even colored red on the dials -”

“-an’ how many woulda carried out the unconscious technicians?  Ya can’t deny the successful trial of the murderer Popwrench -”

“I merely arrested her, the trial was only a success because of the city lawyers and -”

“She organized a bomb threat, an invasion of the courtroom, AND SHE TURNED HER SERVOS INTO GUNS IN THE CELL!  Ya set up a barricade ta prevent the invasion, had the famous bomb tech Tailgate onsite, an’ personally jumped in front of one a’ the victim’s family members ta keep her from shootin’ them.  Hence the bandage still wrapped ‘round ya torso, mech.  Ya the biggest hero this city has got!”

“...”

“Ya my biggest hero at least.”

“oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh.’  Hol’ still an’ smile.”

Click.

AU August Fic 27

Adoptive Family

I tried to do something a little different here and I’m not sure if it worked how I wanted it to.

Warning: Discussions, but no depictions of terminating pregnancy, torture, trauma

Prowl was woken by the cry of a sparkling.  He pushed himself up and squinted at the door and the crack of light underneath.  Either he was waking up very late or someone had broken in and left a sparkling.

Again.

Prowl rolled off the cot with a thud.  Ow.  It wasn’t great for doorwings - too hard and too narrow.  He wasn’t going to waste credits on trying to fix it - it was supposed to be a temporary situation.

He wasn’t high on the list for housing with the New Cybertronian Restoration Act.  He technically could recharge in the backroom of his office - on the awful cot - and he had no dependents.  Prowl understood.  Still, it made it difficult at times to separate work and home when your home was your office.

Prowl opened the door ready for almost anything.

He was not ready for a mech, dinged and scratched to the pit, covered in uneven welds, with obvious spy mods running, holding one of the smallest sparklings Prowl had ever seen.

Prowl paused and pulled up his battle computer - something he hadn’t used since his days as an enforcer before the war.  He was going to need more than just his social service degrees to walk this path.

“Hello,” he said softly, servos soft and open, arms loose by his sides in plain view.  

The mech turned and looked him up and down, keeping the bitlet close to his chest and out of sight.

“‘M not that bad, mech,” he said with a tired grin.  “Ain’t gonna shoot ya.”

Prowl nodded, but didn’t change his posture.  Bots often thought they were in control, whether or not it was true.  He took two slow steps and sat down in his office chair so he wasn’t towering.

“I am Prowl, what help do you need?”

The mech laughed, harsh and loud.  His visor flashed and shorted out briefly.  Prowl caught sight of the mech’s optics - and pinged Rung to see if he was available today.

“Ya don’t pull any punches, do ya?  I’m here ta - ta - I read about ya in the papers on the shuttle here.  It says ya straight.  Helm of Protective Services, right?  I need - I read about ya instituting the new laws for fosters and the new support laws for families.  Sounded good mech, real good.  I thought, if I could trust anyone ta -”

As he spoke the mech’s optics darted around the room in a pattern - door, vents, backdoor, vents - over and over again.

As he spoke he stroked over the tiny helm resting against his torso.  There was a miniature yawn and the tiny open mouth revealed equally tiny fangs.

“I’m here ta - I’m - frag.”  There was no heat in the curse, just exhaustion.  Prowl decided it was safe to nudge him a bit.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning and work your way up to it?”  He knew why the mech was here.

“Yeah, yeah.  ‘M Jazz, well, I was Commander Jazz during the war.  Spec Ops Helm for most of it.  Tried to keep ourselves to ourselves and there weren’t much of us ta begin with.”  He shifted on the couch and tucked one leg under himself.  Good, he was prioritizing comfort over the ability to make a quick escape.  Prowl started writing his initial report for Rung.

“We were running a last mission, just me an’ a couple of the others.  Everyone who hadn’t already been called back.  It was a really weird mood, ya know?  We were so close ta the end, an’ so scared we wouldn’t make it - well.  Had a bit too much high grade and a bit too much thinkin’ and one thing led to another.  Nothing woulda come of it - wasn’t like that.”  His voice trailed off.  Had he wanted it to be like that?

Jazz shook himself slightly.  

“They were my friends and my bots and the people I was supposed ta take care of.  Mission went wrong and they got killed and I got caught.”  He looked up an waved a servo at Prowl.  “Wasn’t my first time gettin’ caught or hurt or anythin’ like that.  I got the training and the mods ta withstand a lot.  More ‘n any of them would have so…probably better they didn’t get caught.”

War logic, Optimus and Rung had called it.  Impossible situations that required a twisted logic to get through.

“So they go through all the regular stuff - guess it wouldn’t be regular to ya,” Jazz said and flashed a true smile at Prowl.  Prowl returned it.  Jazz’s voice was turning even and his frame was relaxing.  Going into ‘report mode’ most likely.  His servos never lost their gentle attention.

“Didn’t realize I was carrying until one a’ them wanted ta see my spark.  They liked that sort of thing - thought it ‘demoralized me’ and slag.  I tried to slam it open - show ‘em it didn’t matter ta me.  But I couldn’t.  Wouldn’t let me override it.  I got them…distracted, with something else and when I was alone I ran a diagnostic.

“Our high-grade night had been productive!”  He laughed and flashed a smile down at the sparkling.  “I tried ta reabsob the sparklet, but I was too weak.  My spark was startin’ ta destablize and without a medic, I couldn’t do anything.”  

Jazz fell silent and Prowl could see his processor running - trying to pull him back into the memory, trying to re-solve all the problems he’d gone through -

“That must have been frightening for you,” Prowl said.  Jazz jumped and looking around the room, his scan - door, vents, door, vents - starting up again.

“Yeah.  Knew none of my mechs had survived an’ no bot knew where I was.  Had ta get out before they found it, before it emerged and they could -”  He was venting faster now and Prowl scooted his chair slowly out from behind the desk, watching his reactions.

“Jazz, do you know where you are?” he asked, stopping just a klik away.

“Yeah,” he panted, “yeah, mech.  I’m here.  Jus’ rememberin’ it all.  So, ah” Jazz finally took one servo off his sparkling and rubbed it hard over the shoddy welds on his thigh.  “‘M here.  I got out - wasn’t easy, had ta weld myself back together after I got outta the chains -” that explained the welds on his joints, “- and got myself onto the plains ta hide while I waited for a shuttle.  I knew I didn’t have a lot of time or a lot of fuel ta spare.  I sped up the bitlet’s development as much as I could - probably why he’s so small - stealing fuel where I could.  Shuttle came to restock the Decepticons and it got me ta a neutral port.  Kept hopping shuttles until I made it back ta Autobot space.  He emerged in the cargo bay of the shuttle I was stowed away on just outside of Rings.”

Jazz swiped at his optics under his visor as he neared the end of his story and Prowl inched closer.

“I heard about ya and how ya keep things on the straight and narrow and knew I had ta bring ‘im ta ya.  Find him a good home, yeah?  He deserves it.”

Jazz’s voice broke and he curled around the sparkling.

A complicated situation like this needed a complicated solution.

Prowl loved complicated.

“Commander Jazz, may I ask you some questions?  I will respect whatever decision you make, but I would like more information.”  He was in front of the mech now, close enough to see the flicker in his visor and the grief in the optics behind it.

“I can’ have him, mech.  Not safe ta be around.  Barely - haven’t - recharged in weeks gettin’ him here.  I’m running a stabilizing program ta keep me from reactin’ too fast and hurtin’ him.  I can’t.”

“Would you want to keep and raise the sparkling if you could?”

There was a long silence.  Prowl focused on keeping his field calm and wide open.  No judgment, no rush.

Jazz nodded.

“I wanted ta…after the war, but -  Mech, I can’t.”

“Not right now, no.  I agree with your assessment.  You have just come out of a milinia long war, you were recently tortured, you are showing very obvious signs of PTSD and trauma responses.  At the moment you are not able to care for an infant and I - please don’t take this as an insult - am not sure you are fully capable of caring for yourself.

“However, these types of situations are what the foster care system is designed for.  If you do want to retain custody of the sparkling, we can place him in a foster home in the morning and you can stay in contact while you focus on getting yourself back to stable place.  Once everyone is in agreement that you are well and capable of caring for a sparkling, we will look at setting you up with resources and a new habsuite.”

Jazz was shaking his helm.

“Nah, mech.  This isn’t - I ain’t some civilian.  I knew what I was doin’ and it was stupid, gettin’ sparked up so close ta the end of the war.”  He was turning his face away now.

Powl rolled forwards until their knees bumped.

“Do you believe that emerging a sparkling was a punishment?” he asked, making Jazz’s helm jerk back up.

“Wha - no!  He’s - he’s a good bitlet.  It’s not his fault I was stupid -”

“Are you punishing yourself by giving him to us for adoption?”

“I - no?”  He seemed to shrink more, pressing into the softness of the couch.  “Maybe?”

Jazz hunched over. Then he leaned down and kissed the sparkling’s tiny helm.

“I don’t know.”

“May I hug you?” Prowl asked.  His battle computer suggested that Jazz found comfort in physical contact.

“Yeah,” Jazz croaked, looking up, his visor flickering off to reveal his optics.

Prowl shifted so his legs bracketed Jazz’s and pulled him forwards.  The mech trembled and Prowl squeezed him harder.

He used the sparkling words - it was amazing how well they still fit, even grown bots.

“You are not alone.  You don’t have to figure everything out.  Let me help.”

“Okay.”

The floodgates opened and Jazz collapsed into his arms.

0-0-0

With Jazz recharging in Prowl’s backroom cot, Prowl pulled a well-used sling from his subspace and settled the tiny - so tiny! - sparkling inside.  The bitlet yawned and curled against him.

Then Prowl sat down at his desk and started making calls.

He set up a wellness check with First Aid in the morning.

He found two fosters that could take the bitlet long term - and right here in the city.  He would decide which one with Jazz in the morning.

He made Jazz a set of appointments with Rung and set him up with some of the groups that met to talk about the war.  Ironhide led what he called a “hit ‘n talk” training which was very popular.

Commander Jazz had lost so much to this war.  He’d been alone.  It was about time he got pulled back into a family.

And wouldn’t you know it, Prowl’s theoretical new apartment building still had a few vacancies according to their datanet site.

AU August Fic 25

Mad Scientist

Most bots thought of science as chemicals in beakers or mad engineers building time dilation devices.

They all ignored the subtle science of cybertronian anatomy.  The danger in a well designed pede and the poetry of a perfectly sculpted bumper.

The perfectly sculpted bumper in front of him, put stars in Jazz’s optics.  It was a perfect mixture of sleek and tough, expertly designed to balance speed and ramming ability.  The curve alone!  

Jazz was not, however, blindsided by a perfect bumper to the point that he ignored the rest of the gorgeous, gorgeous anatomy.  

Where to start?  Top or bottom.  Heh, ‘bottom.’

The mech’s pedes were not pretty in the same way his bumper was, but the sheer craftsmanship that had gone into them was dazzling.  Jazz watched each tiny hydraulic cylinder compress as the mech shifted from pede to pede, the shaft pressing inwards with the weight and easing out as he lifted his pedes.  It must have been like walking on air.  The moving parts, spinning and pumping and cranking, were dizzying to watch.

As his optics moved upwards, Jazz could see the cables and sensors peeking out from behind the armor plating.  Each leg was thick - heavily armored and strung with thick and thin cables.  It allowed the mech the choice of powerful gross movement or delicate precision.  Jazz felt an ache in his digits - he wanted to stroke his servos over those smooth shinplates and up those round thighs…

His hips were very wide - perfect for resting weight on be it his own or a partner’s.  While the mech was in pursuit the hip joints would take the heavy pounding if he was running.  Whatever bumps weren’t compensated for by the hydraulic suspension in his pedes, would be evenly distributed over his hips to reduce vibration and damage to his torso and sparkcase.

It seemed wrong at first, for the waist to be so small and trim compared to the generousness of his legs and hips.  However, as Jazz stared looked he realized the narrow waist gave him nearly 180 degree bend and twist.  The armor around his central column was made up of many interlocking plates, creating a thick, but flexible shield.  Flexibility was always…good.

Jazz shifted and bit down hard on his thumb, trying not to imagine that flexibility too much.

His chest was broad and deep.  Jazz had heard him speak and it was like a rumble of thunder.  His shoulders obviously held a trio of missile each, if the lines in his plating was any indication.  Yet they were so smooth and polished, it seemed impossible that they could transform.  Jazz imagined the plating folding out like a flower as the weapons sprung forward, hot and charged and -

Oh, he might need to step outside.  Jazz tried to discreetly increase his fans and pressed his back against the coolness of the window behind him.

His chest was impressive, not counting that perfect, perfect bumper.

The helm was striking.  Plain white, rounded, with cheek guards.  A single adornment - a sharp, red chevron - was the only flash of color.

His face, well, Jazz had always had a thing for the stoic type.  Pale blue optics and a stern mouth.  A chin that looked like it had taken a few hits - which only intrigued Jazz more.

Behind him, held stiffly, were the ultimate temptations.  If rumors were true, those elegant, thick doorwings were sensor rich.  Jazz wanted to locate each sensor and give it the attention it deserved.  Preferably while the mech was pinned on his front -

“Thermal-Blend with sprinkles for Jazz!” called the barista.  

Jazz wasn’t sure if it was good or terrible timing.  He felt a step away from combusting and he had a feeling the crowded cafe would notice something like that.

He had to be careful in the colonies.  It wasn’t as easy to disappear.  He had to leave behind his old profession and his old skills.  Things like that wouldn’t go unnoticed here.  Such few bots made patterns easier to see.

“Sorry,” he mumbled as he bumped into someone, holding his cube close to his chest so it didn’t spill.  He looked up.

Oh.  He didn’t think he’d get to study the bumped up close.

“It is alright.  You are new to this colony?”  

Jazz nodded, trying to keep his optics fixed on the other mech’s instead of letting them slip down to -

“Just left Cybertron last week.  Thought it would be a good change.”

“It is.  I am Captain of the Enforcers here.  If you need anything, you only need to ask.”

An Enforcer. Of course he was.  Built for combat and pursuit.  Scrap.

“Thanks.  We’ll probably be seein’ a lot of each other,” Jazz said, before his processor caught up with him.  He wasn’t supposed to be taunting the enforcers!

“Oh?”  The enforcer tilted his lovely helm.  “What is your function?”

Jazz looked the mech up and down as his processor ran a mile a minute.  Well, he had said he was going to go straight once he got to the colonies…

“Scientist,” Jazz said, leaning back against the door frame.  “I’m a scientist.”