summary: 2007movieverse: jazz assumed that if he ever was caught, he'd be killed. to his credit, if anyone else had caught him, he would have been. pre-earth
disclaimer: neither of them would fit into my dorm room.
warnings: transformer cussing
note: something kinda important to make clear -- this has nothing to do with replacement: roads at all and here scorponok is a fully independent 'bot, not a drone of any sort.
Encounter
Every culture probably has some saying or cliche regarding the negative consequences of making assumptions.
Jazz assumed that if he got caught, he'd be killed.
To his credit, if anyone else had caught him, he would have been.
Scorponok was not particularly enthused with the Decepticon cause. He'd been created a Decepticon, so that was what he was. He was an infiltrator, an assassin, an ambush attacker. He was good at it. He would never, ever shirk and would die before failing.
The Autobot that occasionally wandered around the halls of the Decepticon base, however, was Soundwave's problem as far as the scorpion-bot was concerned.
That didn't mean Scorponok didn't watch the Autobot (though not all the time -- the Autobot was as good at his job as Scorponok was at his, perhaps better). And assassin to assassin, he had to admit he liked what he saw.
888
Autobot High Command didn't order mechs to go on suicidal missions and he'd almost turned down this one. Almost. But that thing had to be destroyed, or at least rendered useless and all the data pertaining to the thing needed to be deleted. And Jazz was the only saboteur to ever have snuck past Soudwave and get out alive.
He could have still turned it down, but that just meant some other Special Ops specialist would have volunteered, Mirage maybe. Whoever it was though, more than likely wouldn't have the familiarity with the anti-telepath protocols that Jazz did. Whoever it was definitely wouldn't have his familiarity with dodging Soudwave's security and his troop of micro-bots.
And if whoever it was had died on the mission because of that, Jazz would have never been able to forgive himself.
He still hated it.
Something about this base gave him the creepy-crawlies. The base mind you, not anything having to do with Soudwave -- whatever it was happened even if Soundwave and his freakshow were on the other side of the slagging planet, and didn't happen if he was infiltrating a different base Soundwave happened to be at.
A familiar feeling communications jamming field went up and a Decepticon sentry to the south sent up a flare. Seeker trines launched. A moment later the air filled with the sounds of a full-scale battle taking place on the other side of the base. That was his cue. Jazz sprinted through a corridor of sensor blindness, past sentry stations that had been abandoned for the fighting. He hacked the door and made sure the the telepath hadn't done anything but change the keycodes since the last time he was here. He had, and Jazz was exposed in the doorway for longer than he liked while he worked through the extra layers of security. The creepy feeling began making his armor itch just as soon as he entered the base.
He was in though, and hadn't been seen. He couldn't afford to dawdle, though. The other Autobots would buy him as much time as possible, but they weren't going to stick around to take extreme losses over a diversion. And the first thing Soundwave would do when the battle was over was do a sweep to make sure no one had gotten in during the confusion.
Habit and caution kept him off the cameras as he made his way to the labs. The security room might not still be manned, depending on who was on duty there when everything went to the Pit outside, but he couldn't be sure. Primus and luck was with him and at least one scientist had rushed out to the battle without signing out of his computer terminal. He didn't have to spend even more time hacking into the computer before planting Red Alert's little data worm. Nasty little thing would even attack a mech's systems if he hooked into the computer, though not fatally. He went searching for the thing he'd been sent here to destroy.
Wheeljack had told him the official name of the the thing, but Jazz hadn't bothered to remember the technical term. He called the Latest Nasty Thing I Gotta Blow Up. There wasn't really any point in him calling it anything else, much less the protometric-whatever-tron. There were times Jazz would swear Wheeljack and Perceptor had a competition going. What he did remember from Wheeljack's briefing, was the thing's schematics. It wasn't too hard to find, smack dab in the middle of a workspace shared by multiple scientists.
The itchy armor feeling he was used to, yet far from comfortable with, had intensified during his search and he wanted nothing more than to get fragging out of here. Quickly and efficiently, he planted his shaped charges where they'd do the most damage to the thing's structural integrity. He was about to arm them when the scrape of the grate over the entrance to the maintenance crawl way opening made him whirl around, arming weapons.
Four red optics glowed at him from the now open crawl way, most of the'Con still hidden. Jazz could see cannons and legs -- some sort of arthropod shaped critter-'Con. The cannons whirred to life as silently as Jazz's own weapons -- an infiltrator.
Jazz knew he was going to die. The critter-'Con had chosen his spot well -- Jazz wasn't going to get a clean shot, and he'd probably already commed Soundwave. But it was no in his nature to just give up.
Whirling around again, Jazz armed the bombs and took off running without even bothering to shoot at the critter. It was time to make like Starscream outnumbered and get the frag out of here.
The corridor outside the lab was still empty, but the sounds of the battle were gone. Frag. That meant that everybot not injured would be hunting him. He paused at an intersection to compare his copy of the base's layout to his location. He was not going to make this easy for the fraggers.
A blip showed up on his message cue. Suspiciously, he scanned it. A simple text message, over an Autobot frequency, encrypted in a recently cracked Deception code. Maybe Soundwave wanted to gloat. Or more likely Frenzy or Rumble wanted to gloat.
He chose a direction, avoiding cameras -- no need to make this any easier for them, right? -- and idly opened the message. If it was Soundwave, it might buy time to play along.
It wasn't Soundwave. Or Rumble. Or Frenzy. In fact, Jazz couldn't definitely say who it was, he hadn't left any sort of personality in the words.
"They've begun their sweep. Ravage was injured and the 'bot covering his quadrant isn't being as efficient. North/west. Buzzsaw and Lazorbeak are circling outside -- if you exit through one of the loading bays, you'll be able to see them before they can see you. The seekers are mostly in the repair bay, and the ones that aren't haven't returned yet."
It wasn't signed. Or it was -- just with a constellation pictograph rather than a designation.
Trap, was Jazz's first thought. But, was his second, as he dodged out of the sight of a mech with rotors, which way was the trap -- which way did th'Con expect him to jump?
The bombs in the lab went off and a moment later that alarms around the base also went off. The sounds of hurried footfalls filled the corridors and Jazz ducked into a scant hiding spot. When the corridor was once again empty, he made a decision and bolted. Toward one of the north-east loading bays.
Jazz ran. The cameras didn't matter now, getting the Pit out of here did. Though he was still careful to duck away from mechs as getting into a fight now would absolutely ruin any chance he still had.
Whoever had been sweeping Ravage's quadrant really hadn't been efficient -- the doors were still unlocked. Ravage always made sure the possible intruder couldn't get into the places he'd already swept. But the cleared area was empty of any 'Cons and a breem later he crouched in the doorway of one of the loading bays.
The silver bot watched Buzzsaw and Laserbeak for as long as he dared, memorizing their search pattern. He was vaguely disturbed that the message had not only be not a trap, but also not full of misinformation. When he was sure he'd get by without being noticed, Jazz transformed and took off. The creepy, armor-itch feeling didn't leave him until he was almost back to Autobot base.
Weird. Weird. Weird. This whole mission had been weird.
Hopefully Prowl's logic center wouldn't crash when he reported. Jazz needed to figure out the weird and Prowl'd be able to help. Maybe. Hopefully.
888
Scorponok had been waiting, buried where he could sense anyone who came out of the north-east loading bays. This was his assigned search area but he hadn't bothered reporting the escaping mech. Still he used his sensitive vibro-sensors to keep track of the Autobot until he was well out of Soundwave's search radius. He was...pleased, he supposed, the Autobot had gotten away. He was even more pleased that the Autobot had used the information he'd given him.
He'd just betrayed the Decepticons, but couldn't bring himself to care. The likes of Soundwave didn't deserve to catch that infiltrator.
Still underground, Scorponok dimmed two optics in thought. If this continued, it would be tricky. Already it was tricky.
Much later, the call to abandon the search sounded. Scorponok copied all his thoughts and memories of the silver intruder to an inactive storage disk and deleted the originals before reporting to be debriefed. Soundwave liked to go over everything personally and it would disastrous if the telepath got even a hint of his thoughts.
The last thought to be copied and deleted was a sort of vague wondering what would happen next time. If there was a next time.
fini
note: had to write it. the two of them have been playing tag in my head since i wrote "currents". grr. besides, once the first draft of this was completed, my replacement'verse muses miraculously became somewhat more cooperative. slaggers.
i have no idea if this will ever go anywhere. probably not. right now i don't have any ideas for a "next time". all i know is that the my versions of them get along far too well considering their circumstances. and scorponok refused to explain exactly why he was doing this. if this goes anywhere, it might come up later, but as i said right now it's not going anywhere.