Sparkless, they called him.
Intolerant and vicious.
Sly.
The sinister mastermind behind the Autobot war effort, he wasn't their only strategist, but he was the best and his handiwork well known. His maneuvers were the ones that carved away at Megatron's infrastructure with ruthless precision. Bases, energon mines, safe-houses, sympathetic camps; he allowed Megatron nothing. What he could not take, he destroyed; what he could not destroy he isolated and slowly, cruelly drained away. Megatron might make pretensions of being unaffected to his own troops, but the truth remained; he taught the once noble-sparked Enforcer hate, and had been gifted terror in return.
Prowl.
The elusive bogeyman of the Autobot army that no assassin could reach, no tempter could corrupt, and whose own comrades viewed with a mixture of awe—for what he had done—and apprehension—for what was yet capable of.
Prowl is relentless, snatching up every victory he can and making every defeat too costly to be anything but pyrrhic for their foes. The Autobots know that if vendetta alone could win a war, then their XO's cold brilliance and expertly applied malice would quickly see the Decepticons' every trace scoured clean from the galaxy.
He is, however, mortal. Prowl is not perfect, is not infallible, and when tactics fail and the tides of war shift once more against them and morale falters, he sets loose his greatest trump:
Jazz.
Jazz, who defies all logic and forces the impossible to materialize. It is Jazz who meets his weary gaze and reassures him that the end is not upon them, who then disappears for deca-cycles on end with nary a trace. During his absence arise escalating reports of chaos and panic within Decepticon ranks. Dangerous mechs—mechs whose mere existence hampers Autobots efforts and drag down mission successes and life expectancies—suddenly turn up in pieces (if ever again), forever removed from Prowl's battle equations. Scrapped plans become workable, lost territory becomes recoverable, tactical reports lose the grim overtone. Vital information, schematics, battle plans, base locations; close guarded secrets are pried from Decepticon hands and planted in security networks just in the nick of time. Prisoners are released and sent back to the safety of Autobot held territories.
Red Alert shores up defenses, passes along the pertinent information to the right bots. Security is a reality instead of a fragile illusion, and they all rest easier. Strongholds go up in flames, supply lines are broken and Autobot stores are suddenly replenished and bolstered. Ratchet can make repairs, not just keep his patients functioning. Rations are no longer restricted—there is enough energon to go around, enough to stock up on. Wheeljack and Perceptor return to their primary functions instead of focusing on thwarting impending starvation. Morale rises as the havoc in the Decepticon ranks goes unchecked, and suddenly Jazz appears at Prowl's side, or in the midst of a celebration feeding the cheer and excitement as if he had never been gone.
Prowl presses the advantage as long as possible, scenting energon and going in for the kill quick enough to rival the sharkticons he no doubt shares coding with.
Megatron has openly accused Prime more than once of leashing a sociopath to his will, but glass houses and all that. Besides, Prowl holds no illusions about himself. He may be a pitiless, spiteful, and all together malevolent piece of work, but he's no sociopath. He'll leave that to the likes of Slag and Sunstreaker.
Rung would beg to differ.
The mech worked up a very damning psych profile enumerating Prowl's poorer qualities to present to Prime, but Jazz promptly claimed it and redacted almost the entirety of the evaluation. The Ops Director then encrypted the report to an almost unnecessary extent and buried it deep in the Black Archives—the Covert Operations Classified Vaults—where even his fellow officers don't have clearance access. Rung actually found the brass bearings to confront Jazz about it, and while he expected an argument (because Jazz is quite capable of contrariness for its own sake when it comes to members of Psy-Ops), the mech merely kicked back in his office chair and assured him that he didn't have to worry; he would be the first to plant a blade in Prowl's spark the moment the tactician strayed too far out of hand.
The exchange proved intensely horrifying for Rung, who later raised the issue with Prowl himself. The revelation only earned him a nonchalant hitch of the tactician's door panels and a quip that if Jazz ever decided to kill him—and actually succeeded—he'd deserve it entirely.
Rung realized at that moment that there was something dark and perplexingly intricate at work betwixt the two, but he really didn't want to know. Best to leave Prowl and Jazz to Prowl and Jazz, and keep well away from it. It was a lesson that most Autobots ended up taking to spark; reasoning that anyone foolhardy enough to stir up that particular cyber-hornet's nest deserved whatever they got.
The Decepticons, however, weren't quite so intelligent.
They are unable to kill Prowl, unable to turn him and absolutely could not let him continue to grind his heel into their collective backs.
The inkling of an idea finds its way to Starscream, who never could resist an opportunity to seize glory. They needed a trump to play of their very own and so watch the tactician closely. Prowl plotting with Jazz, Prowl fighting with Jazz, Prowl and Jazz antagonizing each other just because they can…Prowl. Jazz. The Autobots love their gossip, and speculation goes own about the two; are they together? Are they not? Are they together and going to kill each other anyway?
It is, Starscream muses, entirely too familiar a situation. And much like the familiar situation he will not contemplate, for all they bicker and infuriate the other, Prowl and Jazz are a formidable team when they are on the same page. If nothing else, Ravage's reconnaissance is thorough, and the tactician doesn't bother to hide where he spends his charge cycles anyway. They can't get to Prowl anyway, so he decides that Jazz is an exploitable weakness.
Besides, taking Jazz out of the equation would go over just as well as slowing down Prowl and—if he's lucky—net him two annoyances for the price of one. The move at any degree of success would catapult him far past Soundwave and (more importantly) Shockwave in the eternal power play that was Decepticon command. Though he hated to contemplate failure, however, one of the saboteur's known tricks was letting himself get captured and then tearing a base apart from the inside out.
It would either succeed spectacularly, or backfire spectacularly, but he'd always been a gambler at spark. And a cheating one, at that. It's easy enough to pull aside a team or two of Vehicons and set up his own special mission—capture the Autobot Jazz, and hold him in one of Shockwave's bases (because of if the saboteur indeed got loose and decided to wreak havoc, he'd much prefer it be one of Shockwave's bases than one of his own). Starscream can take over from there.
It takes them five separate attempts, and costs them a total of 27 operatives before Jazz is "safely contained". Prime's Lieutenant-Commander had never gone quietly into anything, and he was hardly going to change that for his own kidnapping.
Many things Jazz is; weak had never, would never be one of them.
It almost isn't worth the effort, but this is Prime's spymaster and an elite officer and the prize is too good for Starscream to pass up. Truly, Jazz is an avatar of raw possibility; all sorts of options open up now that he has the saboteur in hand. They can interrogate and kill him, or maybe interrogate him and send him through the Robo-Smasher and put him to work for their side. They could even interrogate him and then use the promise of his safe return to gain all sorts of concessions from the Autobots. At the very least, they can just kill him; removing Jazz from play would be a crippling blow to the Autobots and especially Prowl if his sources are at all accurate. At worst, Jazz gets loose, tears apart one of Shockwave's bases and then gets taken down trying to escape Decepticon territory. The possibilities that arise are just endless!
The sedatives wear off quickly enough, and when Jazz finally comes around (or at least decides to stop faking it because he's been aware for the last three joors) they insinuate as much, only to be rewarded with their captive outright laughing in their faces. It isn't even sardonic laughter or a desperate bluff; this is genuine hysterical amusement, as if Jazz has heard the funniest joke of his life. The smarter Decepticons begin to consider the possibility that perhaps he has, and the joke is on them. Starscream cleans up all evidence of his involvement, orders them to keep the prisoner sedated until he comms in with orders, and heads back to Vos (just in case).
There are five defections that cycle. Autobot Jazz, or winding up on the List and taking one's chances with avoiding the Decepticon Justice Division? There are better odds with the DJD. More afraid of the prisoner now that he's within their walls, the mech's in command begin to argue what to do with the saboteur. Starscream is still enroute to Vos and won't have any orders on how to proceed until then, and the saboteur metabolizes the sedatives at a horrifying rate—if at all, because some of the guards swear that he's never been entirely unaware since they first nabbed him.
Prowl receives the news exactly two meta-cycles later in the middle of reviewing plans to reinforce Tyger Pax with Smokescreen and Trailbreaker. Prowl is manipulating the 3D-display of the city-state's primary defense grid, while Smokescreen and Trailbreaker are focusing on the outlying settlements and nearby energon mine.
The door opens to his office with a quiet swish, and a sorely abused excuse for a Vehicon is shoved through the door with enough force to send him sprawling out on the floor at Prowl's feet. There is a long silence, punctuated by the hiss and crackle of exposed and severed circuitry, the stutter of failing systems. A datapad is embedded edge first into one of his optics, one wing is completely ripped out of joint and missing it's top half, and a knife is just barely off center from the mech's spark chamber—completely incapacitated, not killed. Someone was pulling their blows, apparently. After almost a full breem of staring dispassionately down at the broken Vehicon, Prowl looks back at his door where Red Alert and Ironhide are waiting patiently for his acknowledgement.
"As doormats go, I've seen better."
Red Alert rewards the bit of sarcasm with the barest twitch of a smile, while Ironhide huff's a quiet laugh before gesturing at their captive. "Well, we kinda had to force information outta this one, and Jazz didn't exactly leave this one in the best of shape to begin with. You can take it up with him if we ever get him back."
A very sinister chill seems to permeate the room courtesy of Prowl, who scowls down at the would-be kidnapper. His cycle just took a turn for the worse. "Smokescreen, Trailbreaker. We'll finish up later."
The two crisply vacate the office, and Red Alert watches them go. "I should hope you two know better, but say nothing to no one."
"Sir."
Prowl is silent for a long moment after his subordinates are gone, annoyance plain on his face. "How long?"
"Two megacycles or less."
"He left a message." Red Alert offers up helpfully, gesturing at the datapad that is still embedded in the mess of a Decepticon on the floor.
"Hmph." Prowl plant's his foot down in the middle of the Vehicon's back, crushing even more brittle armor pieces as he braces himself and pulls out the datapad, shaking it clean of energon and broken bits of optical glass.
{Hey, Prowl. So yeah…7 to 1 is rotten odds. Will be late for the meeting. P.S. – Didn't wanna go no way, so it all kinda works out, dig?}
You. Idiot.
Prowl switches the datapad off and stares down at the twitching prisoner. "No other survivors? Anyone else left at all?"
"Just the one." Red Alert replies.
"Were you able to get anything out of him?"
"Nothing worthwhile. This one is just a peon." Red Alert grumbles, rather put out with the whole situation. Peon or no, that wasn't to say he hadn't pulled every last shred of information out of the poor slagger; procedure was procedure, after all.
"You'd think Jazz would be considerate enough to leave one that might actually be of use." Prowl mutters, as if all of this was somehow orchestrated by the saboteur simply to ruin his cycle—and it very well could have been; when it came to torqueing him off, he wouldn't put a thing past Jazz.
"You'd think Jazz would be considerate enough not to get caught anyway." Ironhide counters, beginning to feel the inklings of worry for his younger comrade-in-arms. Ironhide had never had the tolerance for the game Jazz liked to play, preferring to tackle his problems head than engage in cloak-and-dagger nonsense that left your allies just as of-foot as the enemy.
"No... no, he let himself be taken in this most recent attempt. Wherever he is now is right where he wants to be." Red Alert insists, sure that more is going on than what they've been presented. The Decepticons have been trying to take down Jazz with a vengeance these last few stellar-cycles, to the point that it was almost a joke amongst the command chain. (Prowl had actually confessed a bit of personal relief about the whole thing; no Decepticon tried that hard to kill a bot unless they were on the straight and narrow). No one had actually expected them to actually succeed, however.
To be fair, Jazz had pulled similar stunts in the past; Ironhide had to concede the point. But still…"What makes you so sure of that?"
"Oh, please! Do you honestly think a team of Decepticon grunts managed to subdue one of the most dangerous bots in this organization and cart him off to Primus only knows where against his will?" Red Alert snaps, almost insulted for Jazz. "Besides, he's one of the few remaining Tekkaido masters on Cybertron. It would take better than a squad of Vehicons to bring him down."
Prowl cringes internally at the reminder, still remembering the last time he and Jazz had wound up going at it. He'd been certain his door wing would never be the same again. "If Jazz put up an actual fight, it would have been messier. And noisier."
"Well, slag. This busts a hole in the cycle." Ironhide mutters.
"True enough. Call a command meeting—we need to get controls on this, stat. And get this sorry heap of scrap", Prowl kicks at the crumpled Vehicon with a sneer, "to medical."
The Vehicon, not entirely unaware but smart enough to stay quiet and not protest his treatment, can't help the slight relaxation of his limbs. It doesn't escape Prowl's notice, however, and he swears silently to himself that the next time he lays optics on Jazz, he's throttling the saboteur then and there for putting him in this ridiculous situation. No other Director had been insane enough to essentially weaponize getting captured. "Tell Ratchet there's those spare parts he needed."
Red Alert follows Prowl's gaze to the Vehicon, who shudders as spark-deep fear returns, and quirks an optical ridge. There's no reply from Prowl, who's now glowering at his desk. It's only because he just realized he's going to have to be the one to explain this to Prime, but no need to disabuse anyone else of their notions; fear has always been a good motivator for their prisoners, and Decepticons have a seemingly endless supply of horror stories about Prowl.
The Vehicon looks a little more relieved when he is removed from Prowl's presence and towards the more comforting terror that medical represents.
One cycle later
Jazz deposited the rapidly greying frame of the second prison guard into one of the nearby chutes to join his companion and pulled up a map of the base that he'd hacked from the base's systems. This had worked out even better than he though—the fools had taken him to one of Shockwave's bases. Oh, the mech in question wasn't in residence—there'd been some panic about what to do with a high-ranking prisoner if the base's commander wasn't around after Starscream had disappeared, and Shockwave's name had come up to many times for him to not be running the show. He had no idea what that mech was up to, but he figured he had another three or four joors before Starscream checked back in, and then maybe another cycle on top of things before he realized things had gone wrong and tipped Shockwave off anyway.
Besides, the stagnant weight of despair and the vaguely haunted looks of those Decepticons were familiar enough in that they only showed up when Shockwave was around and tampering with all creation. The mad scientist was the last person he wanted to tangle with if he could help it, but getting into one of his stronghold's when the mech wasn't there had been one of his hopes and dreams for a long time. There was a plethora of information that could be turned against the Decepticons if they could just get their hands on it, but it was normally far too dangerous to even attempt.
He could almost hear Prowl telling him to get his aft back to base, but he wasn't about to let the opportunity pass; Prowl had refused every one of his attempts to stage an Op on one of Shockwave's bases because he considered each base nothing more than a baited trap—now he was here, in the middle of one of Shockwave's bases and no one capable of putting up more than a token resistance against him if it came to that.
Jazz took a moment to re-activate his beacons and sent an update to his status. Another moment, and his new mission was logged in Teletran.
"No, there's been no contact from the Decepticons yet." Blaster answered Optimus' silent query.
"There likely won't be for a few more mega-cycles; they'll try to soften him up first, see what kind of information they'll get from him. If this isn't one of his brilliant plans to infiltrate one of the better protected bases." Prowl glanced over at the conspicuously empty chair in between Red Alert and Blaster, and pushed down another surge of irritation. That idiot had better have been legitimately captured; bad enough he had to waste all of his time spark-sitting Ops because only a fool would leave that Division to their own devices (cleaned up reputation or not), but he also had the unpleasant task of deciding what they would—or wouldn't—trade for Jazz's return.
Nobody had appreciated his statement that they couldn't afford whatever Jazz would cost them in trade; he wasn't trying to be cruel, and it wasn't about the…complicated…nature of their association, no matter what Wheeljack said (and he had, at great length). The Decepticons had to know that Jazz was a very valuable cog in the Autobot machine, and they could ask for anything in trade; if Prime caved and traded for his officer, then the Decepticons would only be emboldened and attempt the stunt again. If they didn't trade, then they were out one Ops Director, and while it would be a hard loss that Prowl would make them suffer for every single cycle, they could replace Jazz and eventually recover. It was easier and safer to consider Jazz lost and try to recover as best they could.
Optimus frowned to himself as he mused over the predicament. "I see and acknowledge your point, Prowl, but Jazz is dangerous in their hands. If he—"Optimus broke off as Blaster and Red Alert both stiffened in surprise, then relief.
"Prime, Jazz's beacon just went active, and he's roaming loose!"
"Thank the Matrix." Optimus sagged in relief.
"Roaming loose where!?" Prowl demanded, favoring irritation over relief at Jazz's apparent well-being.
[Well…it looks like I got caught up in one of Starscream's backwards aft power plays and ended up at one of Shockwave's secret bases…at least, that's who's logged as the main mech in charge. And I mean, there's enough affront to life, dignity, and the natural order of things that it can't be anyone else but.]
Blaster leaned back from the center of the table, where he'd quickly patched in Jazz's comm signal. Elita-One looked especially irritated at that—she'd been personally gunning for the scientist for a long time, and the war for Cybertron had almost become the background to their own private vendetta. She'd hoped their last tangle would have left him knocked out of the game longer than it seemed to have lasted.
"Jazz, what's your status?" Ratchet asked, obviously wondering just how much of the saboteur he'd be putting back together.
[Sittin' pretty, Ratchet. 'figured it would be downright rude of me to not let the 'Cons bring me in for a visit, since they kept askin' so nicely. They didn't get to do much more than a bit of posturing and grand-standing before I got loose, though. I don't think I'll be getting too many other invitations to play, sadly. They can't keep up with my kinda party.]
"Jazz, Unicron couldn't keep up with your kind of party!" Elita One murmured fondly.
[I do it with style, 'Lita, I do it with style.]
"Will you be needing extraction? Where are you?" Ultra Magnus asked, glad to know things weren't quite as dire as they'd originally thought, but still preferring to have Jazz back in Iacon proper as soon as possible.
[Ah, like I said, one of Shockwave's bases.]
"That's not an answer, Colonel." Prowl glared at the communications module in lieu of an actual annoying piece of scrap Autobot who was hiding things from him again.
[The answer's classified, Prowl.]
Prowl whipped a glare at Red Alert and Blaster who were in the process of masking Jazz's beacon. Jazz might outrank them now, but this was still his organization to run. "Where is he? And that's an order!"
[Oh, lay off of Red Alert and Blaster, for frag's sake. Tarn, Prowl. I'm in Tarn.]
"…how, pray tell, did you end up halfway across the planet in the middle of Decepticon territory?!" Prowl's door wing's began to twitch as his temper began to slip.
[Uh, probably because I went through a ground-bridge?] Jazz's voice was a study in sarcasm.
"Get out of there now." Prowl demanded.
[Negative on that one.]
He was going to murder Jazz if he ever set optics on him again…
"It wasn't a suggestion, Jazz."
[It's not an option, Prowl.]
"Really." Prowl's voice was flat with skepticism.
[Well, seeing as I'm staring at a pretty little computer that could patch me directly into Darkmount's systems? Yeah, not an option. I'm running an Op. I've got about three joors before I won't be able to safely contact y'all for a while, so it'll have to be run completely Black.]
"The pit you are! Or do you not think that's a trap?!"
[Everything Ops does involves traps. Look, Shockwave isn't here now, and we'll never get a shot at this again so easily. We can't afford to pass this up.]
Prime sighed. "We can't afford to lose you, either. Are you sure it's worth it, and that you can even get back out?"
[All of Starscream and Shockwave's projects are stored in Darkmount, not to mention a millennia's worth of tactical plans and ops missions. If I even get a fraction of that information, it's worth it.]
"…run your Op, Jazz, but be. careful."
"I'll work on getting you an opening for a ground-bridge if you can clear the base." Wheeljack added.
[Well, that's that, then. See y'all on the flip-side.]
Prowl glared at nothing in particular after Jazz dropped the connection, once again forced into the position of playing catch up with the mech's latest scheme and hoping that it didn't backfire in all their faces.
"—And then he left, sir. We haven't received any kinds of orders from Starscream since, and the Autobot is loose."
If Shockwave had the capacity—or the inclination—he would have buried his face in his hands. Starscream. It was easy to see the shape of his designs, and it all boiled down to yet another attempt at discrediting him. Still, the plan was roughshod and ill thought, relying too much on circumstance. Hardly logical. Unfortunately, he could not afford to have Jazz loose in his base.
"Captain, you have 10 breems to remove yourself and any others from my base before it is destroyed. I suggest you move quickly. We will discuss just who you are and aren't to take orders from when you return to my Tower." Shockwave ended the transmission, hardly affected by his subordinate's look of terror as he activated his base's kill switch.
At least he would be able to report the loss of Autobot Jazz to Megatron…Shockwave savored that thought as he brought up the remote access to the base's speaker system in order to relay his tidings to the pestilent saboteur.
There was never such a thing as an easy Op, especially one that was being run completely Black, but Jazz prided himself at being the best. It was a glorified In-and-Out, a recon mission, for Primus' sake! All he had to do was wander a base without getting caught, download the contents from one of their systems and upload it to Teletran's database, then get out. It was a rookie assignment, and the only reason anyone (Prowl, mainly) opposed it was because the lab in question belonged to Shockwave. Anything of Shockwave's warranted extreme caution just by virtue of belonging to the most amoral and sinister mech to walk Cybertron since The Fallen.
Jazz hadn't had a single qualm about going forward with his impromptu mission. What he had not expected, however, was to suddenly be confronted with his own looming mortality after accessing the base's main computer. He'd been in narrow scrapes, close calls and "tricky spots"—Ratchets code for "fragged to the Pit and back'—but this was a new one. Jazz just stared at the console, an odd numbness settling over him.
He'd never actually been dead before.
As far as sadistic deathtraps went, Shockwave had outdone himself. Eight vials of Cosmic Rust were rigged to shatter when the download was stopped, so there was no disconnecting from systems and cutting his losses; in for a credit, in for a Shanix. Even if he survived the rust, the base was still sitting over a smelting pools, revealed in a foundation-breaking blast, courtesy of the bombs the mech had buried in the base's foundation. It was actually ruined so badly that the base was slowly sliding into the smelting pit anyway, and with the emergency shielding already ruined in the first flare, the next smelting blast was going to flood the command center with acidic lava. Shockwave's message had explained in great detail what he could expect, after all. Simply put?
He was fragged.
Jazz stared down at the console for a long moment watching the download. If he was going to die, it sure as frag wouldn't be for nothing. Codes, experiment records, personal logs, everything would be transmitted over when his window opened up again. Unbidden, the words of his own trainer, Repro, rose to the forefront of his mind.
Listen up, Rookie. There is one special mission out there for all of us. The last mission. The one that ends you. You won't know it's the last one until you're standing in the thick of it and everything's gone to the Pit, but when it comes-and it will- finish the objective for Primus' sake. Don't give the 'Cons, the pleasure of taking you out without making them hurt for it.
Unable to do much else for the time being, Jazz slumped down into a nearby chair and stared at the progression bar, the slowly increasing green bar a macabre doom ticker. This was not the end he'd ever wanted, or even expected. Every Ops agent prayed that their final mission was a sudden end-shot through the spark or blown the frag up. Even death by interrogation was preferable to the long deactivations-the drawn out affairs where you were simply out of time and had no other recourse but to sit tight and wait for the inevitable, like he was going to have to do.
That was the end that Ops dreaded-just a bot, Primus, and time slipping away in agonizingly long astroseconds.
The worst were what was known in Ops as the Weepers-and-Breakers; bots who'd come up hard against the inevitable and just slagging lose it. Those were the poor sparks who suddenly had nothing else to do but stare at their entire existence under a critical optic and find it wanting. They went from remorseful to angry to depressed and just all over the emotional map, and they were slagging loud about it; couldn't be consoled, didn't want to talk to anyone. They just fell to pieces as time ran out on them, and frag there was nothing worse than listening to someone hasten on to their end before they were ready and be utterly incapable of doing anything about it. Blaster had been stuck on comms with a Weeper-and-Breaker once, and after time had finally run out the mech had promptly crawled into a bottle of ultra-grade and didn't come up until the next duty-cycle.
The Sentimentalists were slightly better to deal with-more in control but still just depressing as all slag. Those were the ones who opened up comms to say one last goodbye to their Touchstones, or just chatter away with whoever was on the line, anything to not go alone. Those type Jazz had always thought to be cruel, in their own way. No one wanted to go alone, but for frag's sake, why would you make your touchstone or some poor comms grunt listen to you fade away? All it did was make them feel even worse about things and wind up with some sort of complex that would take PsyOps orns to clear up, and Primus forbid if the touchstones were the vengeful sort because then there was the additional concern of those particular spark-thirsty nearest and dearest getting a posse together and looking for trouble with whatever Decepticons they came across. Usually it didn't do a thing but make for even more dead Autobots.
Of them all, the ones who seemed to handle thing the best were what his trainer had called the Businessmechs-the ones who refused to let the realization it was the Last Mission stop them from their goals. They got the mission done, and if they had a bit more time on their hands they got real creative about finding other ways to stick it to the 'Cons before their clock ran out. Reckless hack jobs into next-level databases that they wouldn't otherwise go near for fear of their defenses that resulted in some of the most treasured pieces of intel Ops had ever gotten their hands on were a fan-favorite. A few more enterprising sparks had remotely crashed mainframes where other Ops or battles were going on, helping their fellow Autobots along as much as they could.
One of his own agents had done so just a few vorns ago; Ace had realized it was her Last, and trapped in an orbital station with no chance of escape, rescue or emergency provisions had instead run a planet-wide scan for the nearest Decepticon base under assault, and remote-hacked its mainframe and crashed it. Weapons systems, comm lines, defense grids; all of it went down. The built in viruses and firewalls had fried the poor femme's processor to the Pit and back again, instantly killing her-which might have been her goal after all-but those systems had gone down nonetheless, plunging the Decepticon tactical machine into utter chaos long enough for Prowl to take a losing battle and turn it into a major upset that had netted them a slew of ranking prisoners, the long-missing Apex Armor, and one of the last untainted energon wells on Cybertron.
He'd personally thrown her every medal he could, and Prowl had even posthumously jumped her up two grades to officer rank as well. It wouldn't do Ace any good, but Jazz had been able to look her youngling in the optic and tell the bitlet that his mother was a slagging hero in front of the afts who liked to look down on Ops and not feel like a lying piece of slag.
Jazz stared at the green bar a while longer, and came to his decision. He would transmit the data, talk to Elita-One or Red Alert long enough to pass on orders and wrap up loose ends, and then he was cutting comm lines and hacking the Nemesis.
The Nemesis was the hack to end all hacks-no one had succeeded. Ever. The ship was sparked first and foremost, and Orbital Station or rebuilt Decepticon Flagship, Trypticon had never been anything but an unholy terror in the first place. Transformation might be a thing of the past, but the processor behind the monster was just as dangerous as ever. Every would-be hacker had gotten their processors shredded just breems into the job, and after the fifth bot had been fatally crashed in the attempt, brass had stepped in and said no more. Jazz would have been the sixth, otherwise. Still, he'd been good enough-and his predecessors thorough enough-that between all of the compiled data Jazz had worked out how to get in and grab whatever he needed. He'd just never worked out how to get back out again without being taken down either. Worry about that was a moot point now, but just thinking about all the havoc Prowl would create with the contents of Trypticon's databanks at hand would be enough to send his spark sweetly on to the Well with little fuss.
Prowl.
Primes and arbiters of grace preserve him, how was he supposed to handle that. On the one hand, he halfway hated the fragger and suspected that the mech would be dancing through the halls of Iacon as soon as he got the news. On the other, he was fairly sure he almost liked the stupid aft, and Prowl felt the same way about him; for all they antagonized each other, they kept gravitating back to the other time and again, and Jazz had been looking forward to figuring "them" out one cycle or another. So much for that, now. The wasted opportunity roiled bitterly in his spark.
He was going to haunt the raw slag out of Shockwave first opportunity he got, so help him Primus…
A chime alerted him to the communications window being open again, affording about 30 minutes before the electro-magnetic storms surrounding Tarn knocked out their communications link-up once more. Frag. Here he went…
Autobot Jazz, reporting in."
There was a burst of static-Blaster scrubbing the comm lines and making sure they were tightly encrypted-then Red Alert's voice echoed through the security office, chasing away the cloying silence.
[Red Alert. I hear you, Jazz.]
"Hey, Red." Jazz immediately winced when his voice came out softer than the norm, and everything he'd prepared slipped right out of his head. It was followed immediately by a moment of horror as he realized that this was probably how all the weepers and sentimentalists got started. Jazz crushed down on it ruthlessly, determined to at least go out on his own terms, and that did not involve emotional hysterics.
[What's wrong?] Red Alert, however, had ferreted out Autobot traitors and Decepticon spies with as little prompting as a bot speaking out of their normal cadence, and he'd had a long, long time to become accustomed to Jazz's nuances. He'd heard it in his voice instantly.
Jazz mentally kicked himself a time or seven before answering. "Look...I'm bouncing the download now. You recording?" Don't do this to them. Don't do this to yourself. The silent mantra was enough to keep him sounding normal, at least.
There was a long pause, rife with suspicion, but Red Alert operated on the principle of one thing at a time, and knew how to prioritize. Mission first, always. [Go ahead, Jazz.]
Jazz watched the file lists scroll through, large packets of data being bounced off of multiple satellites before finally being intercepted and compiled by the Orbital Hub high up in the outer atmosphere and then being transmitted back down to Iacon. Shockwave might have finally caught him out, but the blow to the Decepticon forces that stolen information would cause would be more than worth it.
The instant the first package was successfully transmitted and compiled, Red Alert pounced like a starving turbo-fox. [Jazz, what in Primus' name is wrong!?] He demanded, and Jazz could practically feel the mech's sensor horns buzzing in agitation. [You're stressed far more than normal for this sort of thing.]
"I'm well aware of that." Jazz muttered, casting a baleful glare around the command center as if he could somehow force Shockwave to appear and literally hate the mech to death.
[What don't I know?] Red Alert asked, point blank. The Security Director knew when to let a mech talk, and when to cut to the chase, and for an odd moment, Jazz felt an odd kinship with the scores of mecha that Red Alert had interrogated in his time. Had that one Vehicon he left behind been put through the ringer like this?
"Listen...Red...I'm pretty well fragged down here. Tag my mission 183."
A muttered curse filtered through the line—Blaster?-and then it was shunted over to one of the brass' secure conference channels. Only the id markers for Jazz, Red Alert, and Blaster were present. Thank Primus! The last thing he needed was to drag the whole chain into this sorry affair. Prime must have dispersed everyone after the meeting.
[Alright Jazzmeister, on a scale of one to "Go get Prowl", how fragged are we talking?] The new channel secured and much more clear than the scrambled one that had originally been generated, Blaster took control of the discussion from Red Alert, who was busy doing Primus only knew what. Probably parsing through all the available schematics and tactical readouts he had been transmitted over during the first contact window.
Go get Prowl?! Horror went for another ride through Jazz's circuits, and the saboteur was grateful no one was there to see the panicked flare of his visor. "Frag no, don't get Prowl!"
There was a startled silence at his vehement protest, and then Red Alert's no-nonsense voice came over the line. [Tell us exactly what happened, Jazz.]
"Shockwave rigged up the base with kill switches to prevent anyone from retrieving any kind of information. He also had the base's foundation wired up with explosives and set to crumble the moment anyone hacked the system. Tore open a pretty big hole to an underground smelting pool."
[Primus. Forget the rest of the data, Jazz. Just get out of there.]
Jazz sighed, sincerely dreading the next part of the conversation. "Negative."
[The slag do you mean "negative"!?] Blaster demanded. [You're sitting right on top of a smelting pool! The data's not worth it, so get out now! Red, scrub the mission.]
Jazz braced himself for the fallout. "Don't bother. I'm not going anywhere before the next smelting flare anyway."
Red Alert was the first to find their speech protocols. [Okay, Jazz. What kind of shape is the base in? How's the emergency shielding? How about the—]
"Red, don't. The base is holed in a few dozen places, and whatever emergency shielding is left is long depleted. Most of it got taken out in the initial explosion and flare-up. That's not the main problem; someone managed to get in touch with Shockwave before I could tamp down on all the communications, and he remotely triggered the base's kill switch. The console in his command center is rigged up with vials of Cosmic Rust that activated once I initiated the download. The moment I try to exit the system, they're going to shatter and I'm going to take the blast full on."
There was a cold silence and then, [Son. Of. A. Glitch.]
Jazz laughed out loud, a dark and bitter thing that he clamped down on quickly before it morphed into something a bit more hysterical than cynical. "Yeah. Shockwave left one Pit of a welcoming gift." Jazz shook his head resignedly, easily able to picture the stricken expressions on his friends' faces. "Look, you know the kinds of missions I take; it was only a matter of time before I hit one that hit me back. It's a fact of life in Ops."
A grim silence fell over the line, but in the background he could hear Red Alert start yelling instructions for a Priority One extraction, his voice fading as he moved away. "No!" Jazz barked at them, "There's no point in sending anybody else out here—Shockwave turned this whole place into a murder hole! Even if a team managed to survive getting in, they sure as scrap won't be getting out. There's only about five joors before the next smelter blast; I'll be slagged long before a team can even get here. It was a set-up from the start, and I should have gotten out when I could. We all knew this was a bad idea, anyway. Tag the 183."
[Frag.] Blaster muttered as Jazz transmitted the Ops code that tagged an agent as down.
There wasn't an immediate answer after that from Security or Communications Director, so Jazz pressed ahead. "Look, I got all the data downloaded before things went to Pit. I'm going to tight beam the next…'
[I don't care about the fragging data, Jazz!] Red Alert snapped.
"Hey! I'm dying for this fragging data…" Jazz stopped, forcing himself to calm down. There was no way in the Pit his last words to Red Alert would be in anger. Not to any of his cadre. Jazz's engine rumbled softly as he sighed and started again. "Red…I'm sorry, Number One. I know it's not how it was supposed to go, but done is done. Tomorrow I'll be gone but you all will still have a war to wage and missions to run. There's enough data here for y'all to run roughshod all over the Decepticons for the next millennia. Elita and Magnus can drive the 'Cons out of Simfur with what's in that first data packet alone. Let me do this."
There was a long silence, enough to make Jazz worry that something else had gone wrong, and that he'd lost the comms window somehow, or that Red had frozen up.
"Red? Blaster?" Jazz finally called into that eerie silence.
[I. am going. to kill you.]
Ah, bolts. Red Alert and Blast had apparently cleared out the security center and left him to Prowl's tender mercies, non-existent as they were.
"Hey, Prowl. I think Shockwave has that well in hand...claw...gun thing…already."
An ugly snarl erupted from Prowl's vocalizer, and Jazz fell silent, not entirely certain that Prowl wouldn't just climb through the nearest monitor and commence to throttling him then and there. The few mechs left in the control center jumped at the sound, more than a little uneasy at the violent intent their commander was broadcasting.
Ah, so there it was. After countless millennia, he had finally managed to go and get Prowl completely and utterly fragged off—well past the levels he'd been at when first informed of his promotion to Ops Director—and all it took was his imminent deactivation. Figured. He'd always known somehow that a truly angry Prowl would be the last thing he ever saw.
Jazz spared a moment to contemplate going ahead and self-terminating, just so he wouldn't have to deal with the fifty different levels of slag Prowl was likely about to put him through. A bot's last experience in life shouldn't be getting ripped a new one by a prickly strategist with poor social skills.
[Do you think this is humorous!?]
"Well, I'm sure as slag not laughing right now, Prowl, so no."
[What is the situation?]
"Fragged over?"
[JAZZ!]
Jazz cringed, then sighed. "Look, I'm going to eat about eight vials worth of Cosmic Rust when this download finishes in about….twenty breems. With that much on me, I wouldn't survive long enough to make it back to base, even if I were inclined to turn into a walking plague and infect everyone around me. Even if I managed to avoid the Rust—and I won't, mind you—there's still the matter of the impending flare up from the smelting pit Shockwave's kill-switch ripped open. The shielding's not going to hold, and I can't get out fast enough."
[Negative. You're getting out.]
Jazz stared at his comm incredulously. "You're deluded."
[No, I am seriously torqued off, Jazz. THIS is why I don't approve Ops into Shockwave's bases! They're suicide missions!]
Jazz huffed in frustration. "I didn't expect to wind up in Tarn, Prowl. I let them nab me because it would be easier to work from the inside than to bother infiltrating!"
Prowl's voice was an icy hiss over the comm. [You best believe we'll be discussing that particular habit of yours, as well!]
"Look, as much as I'd love spending my last moments getting lectured by you, time is of the essence here, seeing as I'm busy turning the tides of the war for you. Enjoy the parting gift and get the frag off my line. I've got things to wrap up."
[Jazz…you don't honestly think I'm wasting my time up here to let you die, do you?]
"Nah…just kinda figured you wanted to get your last measure of plating off my aft before I checked out."
[ARE YOU CAPABLE OF TAKING ANYTHING SERIOUSLY!?]
"If you were expecting solemn drama and some aft-backwards noble display, you're sadly fracking mistaken!"
[Primus fraggit, Jazz….]
"Look, I screwed up bad, Prowl. At least let me get this done so that it's not entirely worthless?"
Prowl's voice came again and if Jazz was expecting a little sympathy, it wasn't coming from that corner.
[Suck it up! You got yourself into this, you're going to do whatever it takes to get yourself out, is that clear Jazz?]
Jazz couldn't keep down his startled laugh. It had been a very long, long time since anyone had seen vestiges of the one-time Lord Marshall of Praxus, but apparently Prowl could still ride aft with the best of the Autobot's drill instructors.
"Gonna brow-beat me into staying alive, Prowl?"
[If I must, you stupid-aft saboteur.]
Jazz snapped off a jaunty salute, even though Prowl couldn't see it. "Copy that, Commander Prowl, sir!'
[Good, Colonel.] Prowl murmured over the line, and Jazz could hear the soft smile in his voice that would have been almost undetectable to anyone else.
The brief moment of levity passed, and Jazz stared at the green status bar that crept steadily along.
"Prowl?"
[Yes, Jazz?]
"So…time's winding down. Gonna say goodbye?"
[I'll pass, thank you. I plan on beating some sense back into that chaotic cesspool you call a processor when you return; I can't do that if you die on me—and that's an order, Jazz.]
"You and your precious orders…you could just admit you'd miss me."
[Only because I'd be stuck dealing with that wretched hive you call an Ops division. I expect you back here to take control of these louts before the next duty cycle starts.]
"Slagger!" Prowl won another small laugh from Jazz before he fell quiet again. "So…what's this madness you're up to?"
[How are you attached to the console?]
"Transfer cable in my wrist."
[Right or left?]
"Right."
[What hand is your grappling hook on?]
"Left."
[Is it stationary?]
"Nah. I can switch it over easily enough."
[Good.]
"What are you thinking?"
[You're going to take the blast full on your right hand when that transfer ends, remove it and then replace it with the hook.]
Jazz balked. "I thought we were busy not killing me!?"
Prowl sighed. [Only when you get back. The intent right now is to take the blast on your hand and then remove it before the infection spreads. Once you remove the infection, you're going to replace your hand with the hook and we'll take things from there.]
"That's a horrible idea."
[Do you want to die?]
"Okay, that's not even fair."
[I honestly don't care what you think right now, you idiot. You're going to do what I tell you, and then you're going to answer to me for this stupidity when you get back. Anything else you have to say between now and then is entirely inconsequential.]
"Primus, you're a prick."
[Just for that, I'm sending Ratchet with the extraction team.]
"Extraction team?!" Ratchet?! Prowl wouldn't have to lift a finger, because Ratchet would do the killing for him.
[The storms are too dangerous for a ground bridge right now. When you clear the base, you're going to head for the Underlevels and work your way to the Tarn/Vos border. I'll have a team waiting to escort you back to Iacon.]
"Okay, even if I miraculously survive all this—and my chances are shot, for the record—sending an extraction team out here is too dangerous. I won't allow it!"
[You don't get a say-so in this, Jazz.]
"The Pit I don't! Nobody else is going to pay for my mistake—"
[You slagging well owe it to us to try, Jazz!]
87%. This was madness. "So I'm supposed to chop my hand off, throw on my grappling hook, and what? Work my way out of the base?"
[Red gave me the schematics you transmitted earlier; I have a plan.]
"I see that, fragger." Jazz wished he'd been able to put a bit more vitriol into his words, but he just didn't have it in him, to be honest. Stubborn aft strategist… "Look…if anybody else dies because of me, I'm skipping out on the Well and haunting you until the end of your days. Just so we're clear and all."
There was a dry chuckle. [Implausible as it is, if that occurs I'll refrain from organizing an exorcism.]
Jazz produced the one of the many energy-daggers he kept on his person. "I don't like this plan."
[I really don't care. The prospect of finding your replacement, vetting them, and then adjusting to whatever breed of insanity is infesting them is too taxing for my processors. You're going to survive, even if I have to drag your worthless spark out of the Well itself.]
"Gee, thanks. You sure know how to warm a bot's spark."
[I assure you, it's the last thing on my mind.] Prowl snapped, though it was lacking in any real heat. [Get ready.]
Jazz braced himself as the status bar crept nearer to the end.
[On 3?]
"2."
[1.]
"Goodbye, Prowl."
[Not today.]
Jazz didn't hear him over the sharp tinkle of shattered glass as the download ended. On sheer reflex, he dropped down low and to the right, angling as much of himself away from the infectious radius as possible. Primus, this had better work! He could already feel the rust eating at his fingers and palm.
It burned.