Takes place a month or so after the events of Friendship Like Phosphorus. Jordan, Katie, and Armonie all live together in Jordan's house while Katie's is being rebuilt.
Katie herself will not feature too much in this story as this is primarily bonding between Jordan and Armonie (and Mutt). They hadn't really gotten around too much to get to know the person they had worked to save.
Armonie didn't like going to the base, Mutt even more so so the both of them tended to stay as far away as possible. The very few times that they had traveled back, it hadn't ended well so it was entirely understandable.
But that didn't mean that the government didn't try to drag them in by bribery or threats. It seemed that humans with such knowledge simply shouldn't be left to roam the world. Armonie was the closest thing on Earth to a cybernetic being and even the few paltry scans that the Autobots were able to run on her gave them very little information due to the "blockers" installed beneath the thin plating of her false limbs.
Even with the...odd kind of security and secrecy at the NEST base, word traveled fast. It seemed that every soldier on base knew about her prosthetics and the "docking" implant in her skull that allowed her to "connect" to her Rogue companion. Whenever she walked on base, they stopped to stare and whisper.
Armonie was simply...strange and so was the Rogue that followed her like a shadow. He alone made the others uneasy, blindly following her around the base. No other Autobot could do that, not without moving their alternate forms. And no other Autobot would choose an animal as their hardlight projection…
So Armonie and Mutt studiously avoided the base and Jordan couldn't blame them one bit. Jack could treat her prosthetics if there were issues and if any of the other Rogues got injured, he could fix them as well.
That was another thing. Because they needed labels, the base humans gave them one. The Rogue Hunters. The Rogue Autobots. The Rogues.
Personally, Jordan thought it suited them. None of them wanted to be called Autobots; not anymore. Obeying orders would have resulted in death and destruction...well, more than they caused during their hunt.
From the way Armonie practically kicked open the door, the visit to the base had gone poorly. Mutt stalked around the corner first and Jordan looked over, no longer wary around him. His chosen shape today wasn't the Irish wolfhound he had been favoring since the end of their hunt. In fact, Jordan was fairly certain it wasn't really an animal that existed in either his or Armonie's imagination.
"The cabinets are new," she reminded him, ignoring the dark look he shot her. He shook out his sloped shoulders, making the bony quills perched there rattle eerily. "But maybe if you scratch them up we can get Jack to re-stain them. I'm not sure I like the colors."
Mutt gave an eerie, wailing bark and flopped down on the kitchen tile with a tired groan. "It was terrible," he admitted to her, surprising her with his candor. While he had warmed up to her somewhat, he still rarely spoke and even then it had to be prodded out of him; it was a good day when he gave her a nod in greeting.
"Want me to put out a bowl of stew?" Jordan asked as she cut her sandwich in half. "I didn't hear Army come through…"
There was a hiss and a rattle as Mutt raised his head. "She's stuck in the doorway. Recalibrating," he told her as he let his big head flop back down. "Something hot," he added in response to her first question.
Jordan opened the large refrigerator and dug around for the leftovers. Between Jazz and Armonie, they were never lacking in food. "There's some curry, too," she added around the door.
"Stew," Mutt said, turning into Hot Rod for a moment as he peered around one wing of the door. Jordan obligingly released it and stepped aside so he could have more room. "Stew," he repeated with a nod and handed Jordan the container; evidently he wasn't about to heat it up.
Shaking her head at him as his form rippled back into a four-legged one, she dumped the entire sloppy mess of it into a saucepan and began heating it on the stove. To her initial frustration, neither Armonie nor Jazz seemed to believe in microwaves; Katie had given her a long-suffering just deal with it kind of look when she had hesitantly mentioned it. But she was used to it now, and warming things like stew on the stove at least made it easier to heat evenly even if it dirtied more dishes.
Mutt nudged her hip with his hyena-like face and she accepted the bowl he offered in his jaws. "They asked us questions," he told her, again surprising her with his willingness to talk. Perhaps it was because Armonie was "recalibrating" and couldn't pet him. Seeing the fearsome fangs that peeked out from his lips, Jordan wasn't sure if she had the courage to do so.
"They're too curious for their own good," Jordan muttered. "Humans are like that."
The holoform nudged her again, wiggling his blocky head between her hip and the stove and she peeked down under her arm to look down at his beady eyes. "You're not," he said when she met his eyes. "You don't ask us."
"Armonie already gave me the bare-bones," she told him. "And you're both still hurting. Why would I drag it all up?"
"We'd tell you," Armonie said from behind her and Jordan jumped, nearly spilling the saucepan. "If...if you asked."
Jordan glanced over at her. For once Armonie looked almost human rather than a statue of a beautiful woman; her eyes were red and puffy as if she had been crying and her lips and hands twitched with residual emotion. "For now we'll settle with you venting to me," she said firmly, stirring the stew one final time before pouring a portion into the bowl and turning off the stove. "Then, if we're both - well, all three of us - are up to it, we can have story time."
"Four," Kent added, appearing behind her.
She took a deep, fortifying breath and didn't even pretend to hide how she had reached for the hot saucepan as a weapon. "Stop doing that," she snapped at him. For the past few days he had been popping up behind her when she least expected it. Even though more than a month had passed since the Hunt, she was still on edge, still jumpy, and his constant surprises were only making it worse.
"Sorry," Kent said the way he did every time. Unrepentant bastard.
Jordan hip-checked him out of her way and looped an arm around Armonie's lower back. She led the other woman to the dining room table, complete with a gorgeous hand-carved table made by Jack. Without looking, she knew that Mutt, rather than Kent, brought her sandwich plate after them.
The two women sat in comfortable silence, eating their meals. Kent moved to sit beside Jordan but at her glare took a spot two seats down; Mutt flopped under the table, stretching out so that his hind legs were tangled with Jordan's socked feet and his head and front paws were on Armonie's. It was surprisingly domestic and no one spoke as the women ate.
Done, Armonie put her spoon down with a final clack! and looked at Jordan until she met her eyes. There was a challenge in there. "Tit for tat," Armonie said, tipping her chin upwards. "Story for a story."
Jordan tapped a finger to the scar on her skull, not visible to Armonie due to their positions. "Mine is a little less...difficult to tell."
"Fine," Armonie said with a teasing grin. "If I tell you our story, you tell me yours and you cook dinner for a week."
"She can't cook," Kent reminded them dryly from where he sat. "That's not a very good deal."
Armonie shot him a look. "Cleaning, then?"
"Whatever payment you want," Jordan told her, reaching across the table to tangle their fingers together. Armonie's prosthetic fingers felt almost real against her own, the only difference being in the almost-too-tight grip when Armonie responded. "If you want to get it off your chest, I'll listen."
Armonie gulped and looked away, for once looking bashful. "I need a drink."
"More than enough of of that here," Kent muttered, standing and returning quickly with a bottle of Jordan's good whiskey and two glasses.
Beneath the table, Mutt huffed. "I can tell that Dan keeps you around for your sunny disposition," he said dryly, a little muffled by the table. "And the lovely things you say of her."
Prowl shot him an unimpressed look as he poured their drinks and the women disentangled their hands in favor of wrapping them around their glasses. They sat in silence for a while. Jordan munched on the chips still lingering on her plate and seeing Armonie glance at them, she went to the kitchen to get the rest of the bag and a jar of dip that Jazz had been experimenting with. They shared the snack between them quietly, Jordan occasionally sipping from her drink.
"I don't know where to begin," Armonie admitted at last.
"Wherever and whenever you want," Jordan told her, reaching over to pat her prosthetic wrist.
Armonie sat, rolling her thoughts around in her mouth. "Monday," she said suddenly. "It was on a Monday."
"Mondays are the worst," Mutt said from under the table.
Jordan gave a shy, hesitant smile. "Nothing good happens on a Monday."
Under the table, Mutt wiggled, kicking her ankles as his paws slipped on the tile. "Well," Armonie said, sounding almost bashful. The hand not cradling her whiskey ducked under the table to scratch Mutt's cheek like one would do to an affectionate dog. "I met Mutt, here, on a Monday."
"That's a good thing?" Jordan teased and Armonie's face brightened; she threw her head back and laughed. Mutt wiggled so he could poke his head above the table and shoot her a betrayed look.
Armonie wrapped an arm around his big head and sipped from the whiskey. "Maybe not," she agreed. "But we're stuck with each other, I think. We've been through a lot together."
"I'm sure," Jordan agreed.
They edged around the subject of Armonie's story for a while longer, patting Mutt's head where it rested against her ribs. She took a drink of the whiskey and hummed. "This is good."
Jordan gave her a self-deprecating smirk and raised her glass in a mocking toast; Armonie made a face. "Don't," Jordan told her when she opened her mouth. "It's fine." Jordan didn't throw the rest of the whiskey back, knowing that with what she already knew of Armonie's past, she'll be wanting to do that later. And she wanted to be aware enough to hear Armonie's story if she was comfortable enough to share the "unedited" version.
From her subspace pocket, Armonie pulled out her wallet; from there she produced a well-worn photo which she pushed gently across the table toward Jordan. There was a man with his arm wrapped around a younger Armonie's waist and two teenagers standing in front of them. The boy and girl, who didn't look to be much older than 14, tentatively held hands like two siblings being forced to do so. The girl had pink and blue streaks in her hair, making the gentle waves look more like cotton candy than hair; the boy wore soccer gear, like he had just come from a game or practice.
"Agostino and I met...in college," Armonie said. "Well, he was in college; I was doing my military service. We dated for a bit, much to the...concern of my family." There was more there that Armonie chose to gloss over; Jordan ignored it and looked at the picture in her hands. Perhaps grief and the hunt for vengeance had aged the woman across from her. In the picture she looked to be closer to Jordan's age; the woman that sat across from her now seemed older, tougher, now. "We married when I was 20 and we had Amina and Angelo a year later. Twins, if you didn't notice."
Jordan chuckled. "Never would have guessed," she teased. "How old?"
"Fifteen, about to turn sixteen," Armonie said, carefully brushing her fingers over the photo when Jordan handed it back. "Amina was the sporty one; Angelo was the artsy one. It drove Agostino mad to know that his daughter, not his son was better at sports."
She couldn't help it; Jordan snorted into her drink. "Dad was the same," she admitted when Armonie looked up. "Wanted a son, got a daughter. He had been so sure and was crushed when they handed him a pink blanket, not a blue. 'S why my name's 'Jordan' - androgyny was the best way to get him to accept it."
Armonie nodded. "With Angelo and Amina, Agostino could at least pretend that one was the other. That was one of the only reasons he was angry that I let Amina dye her hair." She bared her teeth in a grin. "As you already know, I'm not very...merciful." Jordan gave her another mocking toast and finished off her whiskey. Kent immediately reached over and refilled the glass, ignoring the glare she gave him for it. "So I took Amina with me running, let Angelo sleep. I knew that both of us would have loved the look on Agostino's face when she proved them wrong. She had...she had the same fire in her that I did."
"What fire," Mutt said against Armonie's chest. "What aim! She threw a rock at one of my optic sensors when we first met."
They trailed off into comfortable silence. Armonie threw the whiskey back without a wince at the burn, not that Jordan had expected to see one. At Jordan's glare, Kent rolled his eyes and refilled Armonie's glass. This time she sipped half the glass and put it down. She licked her lips. "I suppose that's a good place as any to start."
The questioning that Mutt and Armonie are referring to is also mentioned in the chapter "Walk Instead of Run" from Compass. Given all of her "modifications" and the purposefully vague answers she gives in order to hide what really happened and who was involved, she tends to get more questions than most. In the name of curiosity (scientific, military, human nature) many of those questions are hurtful and the hardships she faced and still faces are completely overlooked.