Author: gatekat and femme4jack on LJ
Pairing: Jazz/Optimus Prime
Rating: R for mech/mech
Codes: Slash, Dub-Con spark-merge
Summary: After millennia at war, the Autobots have finally captured one of Megatron's command officers. Yet the method of conversion could be arguably as Decepticon-esque as anything the saboteur-assassin has done in the name of his cause.
Notes:
~text~ hardline or spark merge
::text:: comm chatter
Claiming the Dark Singer 1
I online aching, but to little actual pain given I'm chained spread-eagle, suspended in a well-lit cell with transparent walls and nothing but me in it. Designed specifically after my last escape, I have to give them credit for learning. Or at least their SIC for it. Mech would have made a right fine Con.
Suitably brutal too. Have to respect anyone capable of making me scream. Capable of making me beg for them to stop. I can count on one hand the number of living mechs capable of it, and all but this one are my fellow officers.
The cell's well lit, open on all sides for my guards to see every movement, every twitch, offering no concealment even if they eventually unchain me, which isn't likely with my track record. They even stripped me down to my protoform as the interrogation went along.
"Go ahead and struggle, Con." A voice that makes me shiver as badly as Soundwave in one of his moods caresses my form, lighting sensors and specialized receivers all over my frame. I can't see him, he's behind me still, but there is no way I can forget the dull brown mismatch of parts that is the Autobot SIC and SpecOps commander.
"Back for more?" The raspy voice is barely recognizable to my own audios as mine. He made me scream, he made me beg, but he's mistaken if he thinks he's broken me. "I still won't tell you anything."
A low, resonant chuckle washes over my protoform skin, still sensitive at being exposed for the first time in longer than I can remember. I hear and then see him walking around my cell to look me in the faceplates.
"Oh, don't worry about that. I'm done with you," Eclipse, my counterpart here, tells me with a grin that is anything but reassuring. "You get to deal with Prime now. He's not nearly as kind as I am."
I'm not sure what expression I'm wearing, but he grins even more.
"I don't interrogate sparks. That's his specialty."
I am so fragged.
There isn't a mech functioning, not even Megatron, that can resist the Prime spark to spark.
"He's ready for you," the gruff voice announced as the bulky guardian entered Prime's private meditation chamber. It was a plain yet beautiful space of dark, polished obsidian walls lit by a small fixture of luminescent crystals in the corner.
"Yes, but am I ready for him? I hate this, 'Hide. This isn't why Primus gave me this gift." The voice from the kneeling mech almost sounded like the one he'd had while still the mechling called Orion.
"No, it aint, Optimus. But you know as well I as I do that you'll be saving a lot more sparks than just his by sorting out that black hole inside his chest."
"Perhaps," Prime said, standing and leaning down to rest his helm on that of the guardian who had once towered over him. "He may take just as many sparks if he comes over to our side."
"Con sparks, Prime, don't you forget that," Ironhide gripped his shoulders and looked up at his optics.
"They are still sparks, still children of Primus."
The special holding room fell silent when Optimus Prime walked in, flanked by Ironhide and three of the Blade Warrior cadre. Deep blue optics met nearly feral green ones no longer hidden by a visor.
Jazz's intakes shuttered to a stop as he got his first close, personal look at the mech who was the living form of their god.
"Hello, Jazz," Prime gave a gentle smile stepped into the cell. The distaste for what he was about to do was written obviously on his faceplates. There was no need for him to hide his weaknesses. Even knowing them, Jazz would have no ability to resist the spark that was about to merge with his own whether or not he was willing. There was no cruelty in his optics. Only nearly infinite sadness and regret.
"We can do this two ways," he continued softly in his deep baritone voice that all but physically caressed the naked protoform. "It can either be tremendously painful and potentially lethal for you if you fight, or you can welcome what I can give you and it will, at the very least, not hurt."
Fear was a rare experience for Jazz, but he knew it intimately enough to recognize the flutter in his spark and systems for what it was. It didn't stop his processors though, or his innate nature.
"Just what do ya plan ta do in the merge?" he attempted to keep the tremor from his voice. He was a Decepticon, but above that, he was a survivor. Whatever it took to see another orn, he'd do.
Prime gave a thin smile. "What you would expect. I need all of the information you have on Megatron and his faction. But I also am compelled by Primus to heal sparks that have been damaged by violence, loss, abuse and war. You know that the vast majority of my soldiers are not military mechs. They have neither the sparks nor the programming for the violence they commit, and it does great damage to them at the spark level. It even does damage to our military mechs because they are committing violence against their own brothers. I have yet to merge with spark that was not seriously injured. I can soothe those injuries, and heal many of them. If yours is able to be healed, you can find a place with us if you choose. There is a greater chance of my being able to do that without it being lethal for you if you don't fight it."
Green optics widened. Prime extinguishing his spark was not on his list of possible results. It took a moment longer for the rest of what wasn't expected to sink in.
"Heal?" Jazz focused on the mech, his traitorous spark already thrumming and eager to touch the Prime's. His protoform flushed with heat, at least as much as it was able with limited energon. "Who said I needed to be healed?" He felt obliged to demand, even knowing he was as damaged by his actions as Prime implied. But it was old damage, familiar, even a friend. It allowed him be numb to the suffering he caused on the occasions he didn't enjoy inflicting it.
If he didn't have that taste for violence and sadism anymore, he'd be useless to Megatron. What's worse, he'd be useless to his own secretive caste and he knew, personally and intimately, what that meant. It was a far worse fate than being useless to the Decepticon Lord.
Prime regarded Jazz closely, reaching out to gently stroke the recently tortured protoform, allowing his field to caress as well. The faint tremor of the physical form was nothing compared to the way the small mech's EM field latched on to his.
More than a little to Prime's surprise, it wasn't with ill-intent, anger, not even fear. It was raw desire, primal and as wild as the mech was purported to be.
"No one needs be healed. Not everyone wants to be. Before the war, I would never have forced the issue, now I can ill afford not to. Without it, you'll never know your true potential, know what you are capable of with a spark that is strong and whole and no longer in pain. You fear very little, Jazz. Are you truly afraid of facing who you are, and who you could be?"
Green optics narrowed. No, he wasn't afraid of that. He thrived on challenge, on the new and different. He was afraid of being rendered helpless with the 'damage' taken from him. It was his strength, that ability to not see people as people when he needed to, to take honest pleasure in their screams and drawing out their deaths as long as possible when necessary.
"What I could be sounds like a mewling pet at your feet, stripped of what makes me dangerous," Jazz hissed, furious at his own spark's continued betrayal of him as it pulsed for connection with Prime's own.
Prime actually laughed, his hand moving toward the exposed part of the 'Con's spark casing like a moth drawn to flame. He ran a single finger along one of the multifaceted edged. "You really think your spark would leave you weak, Jazz?"
"Yours would," he growled, arching into the touch with a low, strangled sound of want. "What else would you want a Decepticon for?"
"Would you like to find out?" the avatar of Primus asked in a voice that was pure seduction.
Prime's hand reached behind the exposed spark case and caressed the controls he could use to open it manually if needed. He allowed his own chest armor to slide apart and his unusually large casing to come forward and spiral open, bathing the black protoform in a rainbow of light. Jazz's optics following the movement of the Matrix of Leadership that automatically slid to the side, but was still fully visible, connected to the Prime's spark chamber by millions of microfilaments.
Whether the 'Con's spark casing opened on its own or because Prime forced it to would be known only to those about to merge.
"No!" Jazz squirmed as he cried out, voice sharp with the kind of fear that Eclipse couldn't spark in him but that gentle touch and voice tore from him.
Panic.
Pure, untempered, from deep down in code far older than the war or the insignia he now wore proudly.
"No," Jazz cried out again, nearly a sob, as his case spiraled open of its own accord, triggered by coding far deeper than any that wanted it closed. "No," he whispered, shuttering his optics tightly. Just as quickly as the fight began, it ended, leaving the minibot's protoform limp in the chains.
While no one else was close enough to feel it, Prime read the EM field tangled with his as easily as he read his own.
Surrender.
Absolute surrender.
Prime shuttered his optics for a nanoklik, overwhelmed with self-loathing that he would turn this gift of Primus into a means of breaking and turning his enemies.
He didn't want this, not when there was truly no choice on Jazz's part. Yet his own coding demanded that he put the needs of the many over the desires of a singular mech. He was now both the Lord Prime and the Lord High Protector of his people. He could ill afford to allow his personal distaste stop him from doing what he needed to do for the greater good.
As his coding demanded, he was overcome with love and desire for the spark that was reaching out to his despite itself. His own spark began to act outside of his conscious control, sending out tendrils in hundreds of shades and colors to wrap around the shimmering amethyst spark, pulling their coronas together.
"I'm sorry," he whispered just before he fully lost himself in the task at hand.
Information was surrendered with minimal resistance, even though every byte of it echoed with a very different kind of pain than Prime was accustomed to in these events. Jazz's spark turned against his processors, doing much of the work for the Prime, but also funneling all the core-deep reactions of a mech sparked and raised by SpecOps creators into their sub-culture and eventually into their ranks.
He watched, fascinated, as the Con's processors and protocols responded to being presented with a choice between the past and the future, and the smooth shift those protocols began to make in response.
What was the real surprise was to feel confirmation of what Prime had long suspected: this mech had served him well before the war.
Prime latched on to those memories. Jobs well done, lives saved, dangerous enemies subdued without anyone the wiser. He let his appreciation and approval wash through the spark connected to his own and felt the other mech shudder in a mixture of confusion, resentment and pleasure.
Jazz could see clearly that Prime's objection was not to SpecOps and the work they did. It was to having that work turned against the non-military and neutral segments of their population, against those whose functioning was every bit as precious to Prime, but whom Megatron did not deem worthy of life. Against neutrals who only wished to live their lives, survive, raise their sparklings. Against any who represented weakness to the former Lord High Protector.
~You can use your strength and skills in the service of freedom. Megatron says he wishes freedom, but he steals it from others at every turn. Yes, there will be limits, but far fewer than you would imagine.~
Jazz's response was not with words, but more memories, thousands of them, of what life was like on the streets all over Cybertron before the war. Not what the Prime saw, not even what the mechs he knew would see, but the core cause of the movement that Megatron had taken over. Though Jazz's clade had been operatives among the Towers elite, there were members of his caste in every segment of society, and his training included vorns among a clade who lived among the empties. His highly secretive caste had to be prepared to work within any segment of society without drawing attention to themselves.
~We failed them, so many of them,~ Jazz's mind-voice was soft, plaintive, directed at himself as well as Prime, and very much at the rest of the ruling class that had been quick to oppose the rebellion. ~Too many mechs, too little energon, too few controls on sparkling production. I lived there, knew them, and knew the other side as well, the nobility and ruling classes who will never care.~
Yet behind the accusation was another truth. One about the mech himself. He'd never questioned the violence, the torture, the pain he or his creators caused. He rarely thought about why, so long as he knew his job and was allowed to get results.
That those two reasons, the value of others and the complete lack of regard for them, existed side by side in the small mech's processors didn't seem to bother Jazz in the least. Yet the division, going back to Jazz's earliest vorns, was like a dark, painful chasm running through his spark. A chasm which left him unable to love or trust others at a spark-deep level, which stole from him some of the most intensely novel and joyful experiences he could have. It was a loneliness that was so old Jazz was not even aware of it. Prime saw plans Jazz had to defy Megatron and bond with his SIC, and knew even that would not have changed his sense of isolation. They were both of the same caste and had the same wounds.
Prime showed him the chasm, its edges painfully tattered, small parts of Jazz's spark falling into it to be extinguished into nothingness, slowly destroying the spark it ran through.
Jazz shuddered, a ragged moan of pleasure mixed with agony escaping his abused vocalizer.
~Primus sent me, knowing what I was to be,~ Jazz trembled against Prime's spark, both terrified and relieved at the truth of his existence out in the open. ~That I still care about anyone is my failing in the function I was sent to do.~
The statement was met only with compassion and acceptance that this was the truth as Jazz saw it.
Prime gently led him into other memories. Moments of compassion when he had put a mech out of his misery knowing full well that his creators expected the torture to last for orns. Times when he trusted his instincts that there was nothing of value worth breaking a given mech for. Memories of his time with the 'Cons of energon rations secretly given or damage repaired on a mech who needed it, using the very same skills that made him such an effective saboteur.
No matter how sadistic and self-serving Jazz was, a part of him always cared for others, even if caring simply meant offlining someone quickly whom he knew it would be useless to torture.
~Primus does not send sparks unless they want to come, Jazz. The compassionate part of your spark is every bit as real as the ruthless part. You would not have chosen to come with the intention of destroying you compassion. You likely saw that there was work that sometimes needed to be done, and that you were strong enough to do it, and compassionate enough not allow that violence to dominate you. It is in being taught not to value that part of your strength that you became damaged.~
~Does it really matter?~ Jazz suddenly asked him quietly. ~It's not like I'll ever be outside this cell again. Not alive at any rate. Even you must realize I'm not a mech you can turn loose.~
~It matters a great deal Jazz,~ the deep voice seemed to speak straight through his spark as Prime prepared to take the merge to the next level.
In place of an explanation, hope was shared. Hope so deep is shook the 'Con to his core. Images ghosted through him of himself a fully trusted part of a team that valued not only his skills, but also his character and compassion. Prime had spark deep hope for a functioning where love did not have to be concealed, where the contradictions of the spark were accepted as part of functioning rather than brutally repressed as weakness. Most of all he shared his hope that Jazz would freely choose to give his services to Prime and his cause, knowing that a decision to do so, seen at the spark level, would be trusted and honored.
Jazz was still for a very long moment. Thoughts came and went, but none seemed related to anything, much less the subject at hand.
~Why were they left to suffer?~ he finally asked quietly, his mind bringing up all those he had seen before the war that lacked hope, that broke the law because it was the only way to get enough energon to survive, the brutal treatment of the 'empties' that no one cared about. ~Why did you bring them when there were already too many?~
The grief in response to his question was spark deep. ~I didn't call them into functioning. I call only those who are Allspark-kindled. The vast majority of the empties are merge-kindled. I can feel them, am connected to them as I am with every spark. Despite what some of the priests and nobles have said, they are as much children of Primus as those from the Allspark.
~No matter what I argued, the senate held that providing energon to the empties would only encourage more breeding and exacerbate the problem. That is why I initially sided with Megatron when he came before the senate, advocated for the changes he asked for. It was only when he began to kill innocents, kill the very ones he had sworn to protect that I turned against him.~
Jazz went quiet for another long moment, Prime watching processors work that seemed to be made of a thousand smooth streams of fine oil, slipping into and out of each other, sometimes merging for good, other times splitting into a handful of shades to scatter about again.
Of all the minds he'd seen, it was one of the most intuitive, most fluid. His fascination eventually caught the mech's attention.
~It's that unusual?~ Jazz seemed to cock his head at Prime. Curious and slightly unguarded, yet with a deep sense of distrust just waiting for the merge to end before reasserting itself as best it could in the new environment. ~Hu. Must be an Ops thing.~
~I've merged with Ops mechs before,~ Prime shared several memories of those events. ~I've merged with Eclipse. He hasn't lost his strength in gaining a conscience. You are unique. I've never felt a processor like yours - one based so much on intuition rather than logic. Even our most lateral thinking engineers only mimic what I see in you. It is more a function of your spark than your coding.~
Prime felt his spark becoming impatient with the surface level of the merge. It began sending tendrils deep into the cracked and broken places in Jazz's spark - tendrils that were more connected with Primus than with the Prime himself.
He grasped the bound protoform tighter to himself with a moan. ~I can't hold back much longer. This must be done, Jazz, or you will never leave this room alive. Become more than the use others have for your sadism. There is so much more of you, so much more for you to experience. You ... your spark is even stronger than my brother's. What it could do if it were whole!~
~I won't fight you,~ Jazz's mind-voice was barely more than a whisper. Deathly afraid of what it would leave him like, but also prepared to take his own spark if he deemed the results not worth functioning under. Yet over it all was reflexive submission to the living god merging with him. He could deny the Prime nothing like this, and very little of him even wanted to try.
At that surrender Prime's spark no longer held back. The tendrils of Primus-gifted energy that were already wrapping, intertwining, and winding their way into the cracks and chasms of Jazz's spark physically pulled the amethyst light into his own, surrounding it completely. For a brief moment that seemed an eternity, Jazz was connected with his source, and could see his own spark through the eyes of his true creator, not simply the mechs who had paid to have him built.
Reflex from a long lifetime of improving his way through anything and everything recorded every detail, integrating it into his knowledge base before beginning to examine it. As his conscious awareness faded in an out, Jazz's sub-processors ran hot to take in the experience and analyze it, preparing the mech to make full use of it the moment he was coherent once more.
Both mechs drifted for a time in the comfortable loss of self-awareness as Prime's powerful spark physically repaired the other in a wash of warmth that infused Jazz's entire spark and frame - warmth that would have turned to hot agony had he resisted.
Their attention slowly turned to certain events in the saboteur's life that had been defining for him, especially early moving speeches from Megatron appealing to the best in the amethyst spark. Prime knew his brother had charisma, it was his spark-right, but it never stopped amazing him just how much the former Lord High Protector could influence mechs with his presence and voice alone.
~Same thing ya do too,~ Jazz murmured softly. ~Woulda joined ya if I'd heard ya first. Ya're both leaders sparked.~
Prime could see at the spark level that the words were true, at least at this moment. Jazz believed them.
~It isn't too late to join me now,~ Optimus said gently, full of the optimism and hope he was named for and the sense that it was never too late for a mech to start new. ~Though you are the highest ranking, you would not be the first that has changed sides and been fully accepted. Everyone in this army whose sparks I have touched understand that mechs can change and are not to be held hostage to their past by others or themselves. I can't promise that all will accept you, but many will if you make the effort to prove yourself.~
~I will think about it,~ Jazz promised. His memories flowed into the growing realization and numbness that had come as the very ones he had thought to help were first cast aside as useless impediments to Cybertronian greatness, or literally harvested for energon and parts to fuel the growing war machine. Their attention turned to an incident when Jazz had been ordered to torture a neutral in order to find the location of their main haven for sparklings.
Megatron had no more use for the naturally sparked than the nobility and senate had before. He wanted to control who was made, to make sure they were warriors rather than the weak.
Everything that stood in his way, whether the nobility, the senate, or the empties who had been oppressed by both were labeled as a weakness and blight upon their kind.
Jazz's only choice had been to become far more numb than he'd ever been before.
Through it all, the small mech faced his past, his choices, with regret but without guilt. He'd done his best at the time and it seemed hardcoded into him not to linger on the past once a lesson was leaned.
Prime was only distantly aware of what his spark was singing about, only that the merge lasted longer than usual, longer than the damage would have implied. All he could do was watch in rapt fascination as Jazz's mental processes flowed. He could almost follow it, or parts of it, as strands of thought gathered and wove together. Beyond active thought, he could still feel Jazz capable of casual disregard for life. Experience told the Prime that was inherent in his function even more than it was for warriors.
More memories flickered about, transitioning faster than Prime could follow, but he felt it the moment the lesson brewing registered in Jazz's consciousness. Felt, rather than understood it was going to be a fundamental moment for the mech, even though the conscious processors refused to act on the new insights yet.
When overload washed through them both, signaling the completion of Prime's work on the spark that was inside his own, it was gentle, like overflowing liquid rather than a torrent of pleasure bordering on pain.
Prime had little doubt that Jazz wanted something more. He slowly separated his spark from the smaller mech's, far more pleased than he had even anticipated with the results of the merge. The fact that the former 'Con (for he would never be allowed back among their ranks now) had embraced the changes without noticeable fighting was far more than Prime had expected. More than he'd even dared hope for from a ranking enemy officer.
Leaving Jazz's thoughts and spark free from his influence, he began to run his fingers along the slender lines and curves of the bare protoform, its living liquid metal visually reacting to each touch with a quiver or ripple of movement. It was as though his hands were trying to sooth the pain inflicted on that same protoform by his own officer with a tenderness that Jazz would never have expected from the enemy commander, or even his own comrades.
It made his intakes hitch as he pressed into the contact, his optics dim as he struggled to focus. Reflex made him try to move, to return the touch, only to remind him that he was still very much immobile.
It took three tries to reboot his vocalizer, and another tense effort to get something other than needy moans to come out.
"L-like all your lovers bound?" Jazz quipped, or at least that was the intent as he squirmed and pressed into the touch of those powerful hands. His sensor net was on fire in the very best way, memory cores failing to recall the last time anyone had taken this kind of care with him when there would be no reciprocating. Some lovers would, but there was always the implication that he'd return the favor, even if not that night.
Optimus did not bother to answer. He was not interested in a verbal exchange of wit, nor was he sure why he was compelled to give this particular memory for Jazz to keep in mind as he contemplated his future.
He simply hummed deep in his systems and let the vibrations travel through the protoform whose weight he was now supporting. The energon bonds lengthened automatically as he lowered Jazz to straddle his lap. He curled forward and traced the exposed part of the Decepticon's spark casing with his glossa while his fingers explored the malleable black protoform metal on his back, playing with the contractions and expansions of the semi-solid living, growing material that was the basic building block of everything that made up a mech's frame that wasn't a mod. Jazz had some of the most fascinating protoform material that he had ever touched, and he felt that he could continue stroking him forever.
Soft sounds of pleasure, confusion and desire filtered to his audios as the charge began to build with earnest in the saboteur's protoform. There may have been words among them, but they didn't sound like anything that was meant to be language by the time Prime heard them.
It was only a few more moments, less than a breem, and the living metal under Prime's fingers tensed, rippling as the charge exploded outward in an overload that caused Jazz to scream and arch his spark chamber closer to Prime's.
Prime did not dare order him unbound, though he wished he could. His spark-level desire for the mech surpassed anything he'd experienced in a healing merge, whether consensual or not. He was disturbed with himself for bringing Jazz to overload without any word of permission.
And he still didn't let go until he had settled the small mech into what seemed a more comfortable position. The bonds would hold him, as would the cell. Eclipse made sure of that.
"I will come speak with you again soon, Jazz," he said quietly as he stood, his bulk dwarfing the minibot now lying dazed and relaxed on the floor.
A hum, an almost-reply, came from the mech's vocalizer, but before Prime could contemplate much more his optics landed on his SIC and the smirk there. It wasn't his usual one either, but a look that promised there was much mischief coming and Eclipse wasn't going to do a thing to stop it.
Prime raised an optic ridge at the mech who deliberately made himself look like an empty. He stepped out of the cell, motioning Eclipse to follow.
"I'm certain he can be turned," he said, with no other explanation of his behavior. "He is convinced that had he heard me first, he would have chosen our cause. His greatest fear is being rendered useless by the compassion innate to him. Perhaps you can help convince him otherwise, though compassion isn't your strong suit."
"I'll give it a try. I can speak to his function here at any rate," Eclipse promised. "Though you'd convert him faster than anything else. Mech wants you, bad."
"I have no qualms with continuing that strategy," Prime said with a wry grin. "The feeling is disturbingly mutual. I was not anticipating it. I thought he was going to fight me."
"So did I," the SIC admitted grimily. "He showed every sign of being one who'd extinguish before submitting. I can't say he's the first who's reacted like that to you, but it's unusual for his age and function. We aren't the most respectful mechs out there."
"How well did you know him before the war?" Optimus asked, unapologetically treading into the secret SpecOps world that most politicians had wanted to know little or nothing about so long as it kept them safe.
"Not at all," Eclipse admitted with a small shake of his head and ripple of armor. "Infiltrators, the line he comes from, and spies rarely mixed company. I'm familiar with him more by reputation."
Prime gave a brief nod of understanding. "He was more than a little surprised that he responded the way that he did. He felt betrayed by his own spark. No more torture. I have all the information we need. When do you think it will be safe to have him unbound?"
Even as Prime spoke, he offered a cable to Eclipse to he could share what needed to be acted on immediately.The head of Special Operations made am acknowledge sound before falling silent for a moment, assimilating the data, and then unplugging.
"With you, anytime you want him," Eclipse decided with a knowing smirk towards his leader, then turned serious. "In general, when he agrees he's no longer a Decepticon without you around."
Optimus chuckled and nodded to his SIC, not bothering to hide the gleam in his optics as he contemplated giving that protoform an oilbath in his own quarters as a reward for good behavior.
"I'm off to recharge. Alert me if anything changes. I will visit with him again before the orn is out. Schedule a briefing for executive officers at the end of 2nd watch so we can go through the information I gleaned from his spark and processors and prioritize. In the meantime, see if any of the agents whose identities I just gave you remain among us. He is certain that most would have broken cover to escape as soon as their alarms that he was being spark-interrogated."
"Of course," Eclipse nodded again. "Do you want their designations and faces made public, or just my crew hunting them?"
"Keep it quiet, and bring them in alive if possible. They are more loyal to Jazz than they are to Megatron. If he turns, many of them will turn with him."
The Head of SpecOps felt his engine rev sharply in anticipation of such a coup. "Yes sir. We'll find them. Or he will. Is there anything else?"
"Not for now. I will see you at the briefing, or before if needed. Good work, Eclipse. I did not foresee the day we would actually capture and keep this mech."
Giving a nod, Prime exited to go find his berth after what had been an exhausting, but highly satisfying merge.
"I didn't either," the Ops mech murmured and turned to return to the special holding room and cell. Was it possible this was a Jazz-way of defecting? The reaction to Prime was well off anything anticipated. His subdued behavior since also unusual. Three times he'd seen Jazz captured and twice the mech had escaped. But this time, for all the preparations, Eclipse couldn't shake the feeling that his prisoner was still here because Jazz wanted to be here.
He wondered if Jazz knew that was what he wanted?
Chasing that thought away, he turned to the business at hand. After sending out a series of highly encrypted orders involving Jazz's agents, he reentered the cell and simply watched the armorless mech sitting on the floor, his knees pulled to his chest and arms around them, protecting his spark chamber as best he could. Despite all appearances, he was not in recharge.
"Well, that didn't go the way I expected it to," Eclipse finally commented wryly.
"Makes three of us," Jazz responded, not bothering to look up or power his optics. It was his voice that was truly unusual; at least for the arrogant mech who even when begging for mercy was defiant. Something had shattered deep inside the mech's code, something that Jazz was still trying to work out.
"I know you have a lot to process right now. If you have any questions about functioning in SpecOps as an Autobot, I will answer them as honestly as I can." Eclipse made the offer easily, as though he were offering to teach a new mech how to operate the energon dispenser rather than speaking with his Decepticon counterpart.
Jazz did look up this time, though his optics appeared to remain off, his expression an unreadable mess of emotions.
"You'd expect me to take down my old crew," Jazz's voice was quiet, uneasy, but preparing to come to terms with the idea.
"Yes, or turn them if you can," he answered easily. "I would imagine at least some of them are more loyal to you than they are to their faction."
The small mech chuckled humorously. "All of them, if I did my job right. Same as you. Though some hate you mechs more than they're loyal to me." His optics went down again, focused on the floor. "Not sure how many you could actually control. We're all Cons for a reason, ya know. Not much on the whole painless punishment scene."
"Like the painless punishment I gave you?" the brown mech gave a wicked grin. "I won't need to control them if you can. I could care less if they want to be Autobots. I only care that they stop working for Megatron. If there is any idealism left in any of 'em, they know that he has betrayed your cause. 'Sides, I make a lousy Autobot, and you know it. There's far more diversity in this faction than you may credit us for."
Jazz mulled that over for a bit, long enough for Eclipse to turn to leave.
"Out of the war's good enough?" Jazz's voice was barely audible, but Eclipse knew he was working out just how many of his agents would have to die to get himself out of the cell.
Eclipse paused as though contacting Prime, but he didn't really need to. He already knew the answer.
"So long as you can ensure that they really are out. Any continued involvement would be on you."
Jazz made an affirmative noise and fell silent, focused inside his own processors once more.
