A Decepticon goes in for a job interview, and nobody is telling the truth. But who doesn't tell a few white lies now and then?
Title: White Lies
Warning: Yet another AU where the Decepticons didn't win the war. There were no last stands. There were no martyrs or hidden rebel cells. There was only defeat and trying to live in the aftermath. Possible dubcon situations. Obviously, the D.J.D. reveal in MTMTE futzed everything in this fic up, so as of 9/14/16 I'm taking down the parts to edit and rewrite to align with canon. Also in the hopes of continuing past where the divergence stopped me.
Rating: PG-13
Continuity: More Than Meets The Eye AU, G1 influence.
Characters: Decepticon Justice Division, Jazz, Swerve, Pharma.
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.
Motivation (Prompt): There was a beautiful picture by FelixFellow, and then I had an idea. It mutated. TwistyRocks got me to write the first part, just to see what happened. Due to the need to write poverty-level Cybertron, I had to make up monetary amounts less than a shanix.
Shanix
hanix (half a shanix)
quanix (quarter shanix)
einix (eighth of a shanix)
nix (eight to an einix, sixteen to a quanix, 32 to a hanix, 64 to a shanix)
[* * * * *]
Pt. 1: Desperate times call for desperate measures.
[* * * * *]
"Well, spin my tires and call me a Praxian. If it ain't Tarn." Charismatic and charming as only a born killer could be, Jazz flashed his notoriously cheerful, sinister smile, and Tarn's whole world froze. "You wanna explain why the head of the Decepticon Justice Division's standing in front of me?"
Targeting systems spun up on automatic, but fast on the heels of murderous hate ran suppression programming. Kaon had chipped the whole unit, painstakingly installing the software in each of them. The chips couldn't stop actual action, but the point was to buy time. The tiny devices disrupted instinctive violence, hopefully only burning out after suppressing reaction long enough for rational thought to catch up and begin disarming tempers and weapons systems on its own. Hitting first and thinking later was a luxury of war, and the war was over.
The chips were training wheels to reteach them how to avoid confrontation, regain control, and back off. Calming down and keeping their heads cool under pressure had to become second nature, as it had been for them back before the war brought out the resentment and aggression buried in the lower classes As it had to be again, now that they'd been put back in their place.
Tarn fought to unclench his fists and relax his treads. Jazz, like him, could make a threat out of the most genial of statements, but the Autobot could back those threats up. Tarn couldn't. Not anymore. He might be the larger mech here, but he wouldn't bet on Jazz being unarmed, and the law would certainly slam down full-force on Tarn's head even if he won the fight. He couldn't afford to draw attention like that. His unit couldn't afford the attention.
Vent in, vent out, and submit.
He forced himself to step forward with his employment application extended, voice low instead of a purred threat. "I'm not the head of the D.J.D.," he said, omitting the '…anymore' they both knew belonged at the end of the statement. Keeping the bitterness out of his voice hurt his throat. Humility tasted worse than the dreg-swill that was all Tesarus and Helex's combined wages could afford to buy. "I'm just a mech looking for work. I was told there might be a job here for me."
Specifically for him, and Tarn cursed Soundwave's round-about method of informing him of it. There hadn't been much information to go on, just an address and a snippet of text on why Tarn would be the best candidate to apply, and it wasn't as though he really had the time or resources anymore to research a job tip. Wasn't that the point of Soundwave sending him here? Tarn's unit had nothing left, and he was desperate enough to apply for the job despite recognizing the address.
This area rode the edge of squalor: sublevel eight in the down-east quadrant of Iacon, close enough to the new Senate Pavilion to count as fashionably slumming instead of as a slum. Maccadam's Old Oil House was within driving distance, which made sense of what he'd heard of this club. Supposedly, it was Blurr's new venture, a more nightclub side of his popular low-key bar. Tarn had taken one look at the neon travesty calling itself a club and known exactly what it was, no matter what the advertisements and the bright sign claimed, and yet he'd still work here if they would stoop to hiring a Decepticon.
The fact he'd knocked on the door told everything there was to know about the Justice Division's financial situation. He simply wished Soundwave had included even a hint of warning before one of the few in either faction who knew his life and history, who recognized him despite the changes to his face and frame, opened the door to smile as though Tarn had spared him the effort of tracking him down. The mark had delivered himself to the assassin. How convenient.
Jazz leaned in the doorway and didn't move. He could stay there all night, his cocksure smile told Tarn, but the way he watched Tarn belied the casual pose. The Autobot saboteur was alert and ready to finish whatever fight the tankformer started.
Tarn waited under that scrutiny, offering no threat whatsoever. The only thing he offered was the job application in his hand. He had nowhere else to go. He needed this job. On this post-war Cybertron, economic depression wasn't what kept him from finding work. Employment was easy enough to find if a mech had been on the winning side.
Long story short, the Decepticons hadn't won.
Short story slightly longer, Optimus Prime had utilized loyalty and resources better than Megatron had. The first five cities fell to the Decepticons. The Battle of Sherma Bridge happened. After that, however, the war went rapidly downhill as Shockwave and Overlord turned traitor, perhaps one because of the other, but nobody would ever know. They'd died or been quietly disposed of before any questions could be asked, although how one disposed of Overlord quietly was a mystery. A somewhat frightening one, at that.
Black Shadow followed in Overlord's traitorous footsteps in exchange for amnesty. His defection had been highly publicized, as he took an entire unit of Decepticons with him when he decided to fight for the winning side, i.e. the side that paid better. They destroyed a Warworld just to prove the deal sealed once the check cleared, and then the Autobots had their own supersoldier-led mercenary company willing to decimate armies.
Things had been sliding downward for the Decepticons prior to that, but losing one of their top officers and two Warrior Elite to the Autobots snapped the support beams. People got reckless. Too many chances on the battlefield caused casualties or capture instead of victory. Starscream took a shot in the back by his own trine. Thundercracker escaped in the chaos and went missing, presumably off-planet or dead. Far too many of the officers either followed his example - out of honor or treachery hardly mattered - or ended up following Starscream's.
Everything built to an inevitable crescendo, a last confrontation where Decepticons and Autobots clashed but were there as witnesses rather than combatants. They watched Megatron meet Optimus Prime in battle one last time, and only one could stand. One had to fall.
It wasn't the Prime.
The Empire died with Megatron. Its death throes could have stretched out agonizingly long, tearing Cybertron apart further as diehard Decepticons fought to the bitter end, but Soundwave evaluated the situation. He apparently decided the odds were against him and quietly disappeared into Cybertron's vast underground. His complex communication network, stabilizing influence, and vast database of information vanished overnight. His desertion rang the faction's death knell.
Without Soundwave holding the Decepticons together behind the scenes, no one among the Decepticons could amass enough power to take leadership, but it was more than simply a loss of leadership. People were tired of fighting, and winning no longer seemed possible. Megatron had been their motivation, and Soundwave had been their organization. Losing both of them lost the Decepticons the war long before it was officially over.
When the Autobots brought the hammer down in an offensive push to retake lost ground, that was it. The Decepticons retreated, confused and devastated, too concerned with infighting to unite against the Autobots storming their defenses. Whole outposts began surrendering. Darkmount, last stronghold of the faction, lasted a siege of six months before finally opening her gates to the Prime's negotiator. The terms of surrender were harsh but fair considering the alternative was outright execution.
That was the end of the war story.
Therein began the actual tale, because life didn't stop after the war did. The tattered remnants of the Senate weren't inclined to be merciful, nor were the neutrals who hadn't taken sides. Those still outnumbered Autobots and Decepticons alike. They resented both factions, but at least the Autobots were considered heroes.
Optimus Prime fought to keep the bedraggled Decepticon ranks from permanent incarceration or sentences of hard labor. As hard as he fought, however, he couldn't prevent the Brand Law from passing. He believed in equality, but most of Cybertron had been too ravaged by civil war to extend forgiveness to the faction blamed for destroying its cities and people.
Truth be told, the Autobot ranks put a lot of pressure on him to let the law pass. The Autobots kept their emblems as signs of pride and heroism, wearing it in honor of those who died to keep Cybertron free from Megatron's tyranny. It was a mark of defiance, as well. They had been the ones to fight, not the neutrals. The neutrals had fled, and the Autobots tended to boast loudest around the neutrals who complained the loudest. Yeah, well, how much of a planet would the neutrals have had to come back to if the Autobots hadn't won it back, huh?
By the Brand Law, former freedom fighters, revolutionaries, or whatever label they'd called themselves weren't allowed to remove their badges. Their wartime loyalties followed them into the aftermath. The Autobot registry was publicly posted as a hero's rolecall, and Autobots nodded to each other wherever they met in recognition of shared history.
On the other hand, the Decepticon emblem became a mark of the losing side, punishment via a permanent sign of shame. Their registry was a public list of criminals, compiled from the surrendered ranks and soldiers brought in by bounty hunters, starvation, or despair. It made getting a job after the war difficult. Even if an employer was willing to overlook a purple brand, there was the issue of altmodes and armament.
Tarn considered it a minor triumph amidst total defeat that the Functionalist Council had lost so much power. With the Senate reduced to an advising body to the Prime, prejudice lingered but job mobility was marginally easier than it had been before the war. The problem was that the lower classes had started the war without money and hadn't gotten any richer while fighting. They'd spent all their money on upgrades to adapt their altmodes to war, and on post-war Cybertron, those who couldn't buy a downgrade found their applications rejected by anything but the most menial of jobs.
Nobody wanted to hire soldiers. Doubly so if the soldiers wore a purple badge.
Even if a Decepticon managed to find a job, holding onto it didn't necessarily follow. The Constructicons, as talented as they were now notorious, had been harassed out of a series of construction projects by Autobots and vengeful neutrals. The Constructicons themselves kept their heads down and endured the abuse, but their contractors couldn't handle the negative press. As soon as they were hired, they were fired. The Office of the Prime had finally intervened, likely at a petition from the Constructicons after their last legal battle over retaining the architectural designs from their brief periods of employment. The combiner team now worked directly for the government. Mechs still protested outside of their worksites.
Most of the Decepticons didn't have the option of petitioning for government intervention. The former Decepticon Justice Division certainly didn't. They were lucky to have evaded war crime trials, honestly. The things they'd done to fellow Decepticons would have gotten anyone else thrown into prison for the rest of their natural lives. Their actions escaped notice only through some truly fortunate timing.
The D.J.D. had only briefly been an actual unit. The five soldiers hand-picked to fill the roster had served as Megatron's secret police for years already, but they had finally been scheduled to emerge from the shadows as the faction's visible, violent means of internal justice. Due to the sudden downturn in the war effort, however, the formal ceremony had been postponed. Then Megatron fell, and it was canceled.
More accurately, it was forgotten in the chaos. Which was good, as Kaon had done everything he could to erase the fact that the unit existed. He'd spent the frantic hours leading to Darkmount's surrender deleting personnel files and editing entries, burying everything he could hack into. The tenuous connection between the new Decepticon Justice Division and past broadcasts showing what happened to those who defied Megatron's rule was carefully pared away through planted hints here, a name dropped there. Other loyalists, different Decepticons, past histories that never existed but could stand up to passing scrutiny; Kaon had made the unit disappear into plain sight.
Rumors about Megatron's secret police had featured fearsome, nameless mechs. Word had begun to spread as the upcoming announcement leaked, but the Decepticon ranks in general had nothing concrete to go on. The List executions had always been ugly, grainy vidfiles that obscured the mechs doing the torturing. Despite the sting to their loyalty and pride, the D.J.D. were grateful for that anonymity now. It allowed them to fade away without having ever truly emerged into the spotlight.
As for those Decepticons who knew about them - surviving witnesses, subordinates, or soldiers from former units - the unit had taken what steps they could.
Megatron had renamed his five most loyal followers after the first fallen cities but hadn't lived long enough to formally announce the change. They had registered under those names with the new Autobot-led government. It was the sole protection their Lord could give them on this new Cybertron, and that shelter, frail as it was, was needed. It allowed them to survive in this post-war world.
Once Tarn had been talked into it, of course. Kaon, Vos, Helex, and Tesarus had pulled together as a unit to determinedly badger him into reluctant agreement. He hadn't wanted to surrender. Lord Megatron had been defeated. He'd planned to honor his Lord in a last blaze of glory, dying a true believer in the Cause, but his unit was more practical than him. They were less inclined to poetic soliloquy and drama. Survival was a humiliating option, but it made sense to them.
"Do you want us to die?" Helex had demanded harshly in the dark corner of Darkmount they'd dragged Tarn to. "You suicide by Autobot, and everybody's going to wonder why. You're too well-known to go out quietly, and we don't deserve to die just 'cause you can't process reality!"
Ouch. Blunt but true. Spelling it out made it clear he'd been taking the easy way out. Tarn had been the one to look away, unable to answer with anything rational and unable to keep up the pretense now that Helex had ripped it away.
He hadn't wanted to face the aftermath. Fine. But duty of care to his unit, officially recognized or not, meant he had to tighten his bolts and do it anyway. That was part of being a Decepticon officer, even that was synonymous with 'disgraced loser' these days.
So he'd done what he had to ensure their survival. He'd quietly sent Kaon to erase their existence from Darkmount's computers. He'd just as quietly rid the unit of a rather incriminating memento, shutting Kaon's favored Pet into Helex's smelter while the blind mech was absent. Kaon still hadn't forgiven Tarn that, but getting rid of Vos' predecessor had to be done before the Autobots discovered what had become of their undercover agent. Besides, none of them had had time for grudges since Darkmount. Lingering resentment aside, Kaon had no choice but to rely on Tarn and vice versa.
The D.J.D. had paid a heavy price to fit in among the common genericons. Vos had slipped away on the night of Darkmount's surrender to one of the battleground scavengers, trading the unit's pooled shanix for salvaged corpse-parts to modify their more recognizable features. The last of their funds paid a bribe to one of the butchers the Medic Corps. had kicked out of their ranks, and Tesarus' optics had become a distinctive but completely new X-shaped structure. Vos' mask welded on as if it wasn't designed to come off. Kaon flinched and yelped his way through crude surgery to remove the restraints from his altmode. Tarn's striking altmode kibble tucked in, the treads doubling up on his shoulders to make him broader and, in his opinion, giving him the appearance of a brute-force grunt.
Since the point was to remove him as far as possible from the elegant, genteel countenance he'd cultured as Commandant of the Grindcore prison, he counted it a success. He hated the changes, but they allowed him to blend into the general population. Any surviving Autobot P.O.W.s would have recognized him by the graceful drape of his treads. Now he could shrug off accusations by pointing out that obviously he had the same altmode but of course he couldn't be Commandant Glitch, the Commandant had died, didn't everyone know that? Went down with Megatron, he'd heard. Anyway, Tarn hadn't even been stationed near Grindcore, and look, he had a markedly different silhouette, see that? Just a case of mistaken identification! It happened in big cities, no big deal, have a nice day.
His mask didn't help him keep a low profile, but he didn't dare take it off. Revealing his face was more of a risk than mere unwanted attention, hostile though it often was. The Senate had taken Damus' face away via empurata, and Lobe had reversed the process on Glitch. Glitch had then died, according to the personnel files Kaon had doctored, but Tarn was well-aware of how flimsy that cover story was. Any cause for investigation would be damning, and the sight of a dead mech out on the streets would definitely make someone curious. The people he'd turned his back on to take up the Decepticon Cause would hunt him down relentlessly if they knew Damus, a.k.a. Glitch, a.k.a. Tarn was still alive.
Hence the mask.
However, wearing a giant Decepticon emblem as a mask had done him no favors whatsoever in this post-war world. Decepticons carried a stigma after the war, one that they couldn't shed. The Brand Law marked them visibly, and the faction registry was the first thing employers checked in a standard background check. The average Decepticon in Iacon couldn't keep a job to save his life, much less support himself on what pittance he might earn from short-term employment. It was the dead-end situation filling the government-subsidized slums of Iacon to the brim with desperate people.
Despite the odds, Tesarus and Helex had managed to find work at a recycling plant on the edge of the city. On busy cycles they could handle enough garbage to scrape by. The unit drank dreg-swill and the two titans were always exhausted, but it was better than unemployment, as Tarn could attest from personal experience. Holding onto a job had become a nightmare of constant failure.
It'd been three weeks, two days, and ten hours since he'd been fired from his last position for 'intimidating other workers.' Sounded fairly scary and Decepticon-y, right? Too bad it hadn't been what he'd wanted at all. In fact, it was pretty much the exact opposite of what he'd been trying for. He'd accomplished this frightening act simply by standing up too quickly. Because he was kind of big. And he loomed. After years as an officer, he exuded authority, too. It just happened.
Intimidation wasn't something he had to try to do. Trying not to do it took effort.
Besides, being smaller and inherently nicer didn't equate to job security. After all, it'd been three weeks, five days, and six hours since Kaon had failed a job evaluation, and Kaon was tall but not necessarily intimidating within his job field. Electricians and communication specialists came covered in strange electrical mods. The dismissal had cited his missing optics as the reason for 'deemed unsuitable for this position; let go with regret.'
It was a transparent excuse. The connection company had changed the position requirements once customers in the upper levels complained about a Decepticon doing work on their buildings. It was so blatantly unfair that a discrimination lawsuit should have been filed, but it wasn't a threat the company took seriously. Why should it? Kaon couldn't possibly afford a lawyer, and even if he could, no reputable lawyer would take a Decepticon client.
Both he and Tarn had swallowed their pride and appealed the dismissals in person, humbly requesting meetings with management in a last-ditch attempt to show they were willing to do anything to keep their jobs.
Tarn didn't have any more luck with his appeal than Kaon did. "It's not just your aggression toward your coworkers," his supervisor had explained, looking nervously at the desk in front of him instead of at Tarn's stark purple mask. "You're just...out of place at a call center, don't you think? You're just not, uh. I mean." He made an awkward gesture at in the cannons that, stripped to the bare mechanisms, still lay down Tarn's forearm.
A central part of his altmode, he couldn't remove them for long without consequences. Even politely pointed anywhere but at the people around him, they were so blasted present.
"You're just not fitting into the image we like to project," the mech had finished after dithering for a while.
Tarn had refrained from explaining, yet again, that he hadn't been aggressive, or that call centers like this were known by their customer service audio commcalls, not vidcalls. There had been no point in degrading himself any lower. The decision had already been made. He'd nodded silent acceptance and left to pack up his cubicle, noting the call center as yet another failure.
Like Kaon, he had a track record that showed a slow downward spiral into drudge labor. Length of employment - pitifully short - as well as reason for employment termination were permanently entered on his job record, readily available on the public datanet. Every dismissal meant the next job could pay him less, if he was considered at all. Every reason listed meant his next manager would be ready to assume the worst from the very beginning, and he couldn't blame them. His job history read like a criminal record.
'Intimidating other workers.' i.e., existing with intent to work.
'Suspected of petty theft.' Eh-heh…yeah, that one had an explanation, but not one he'd wanted to give his employer at the time.
'Promoted threatening atmosphere.' In other words, polite small-talk with his coworkers hadn't gone over so well.
'Uncooperative with authority figures.' Teach him to volunteer a suggestion in person ever again.
Almost everything on the list had been unintentional, if not a total fabrication of his coworkers' imaginations. Thankfully, the one dismissal he'd actually earned hadn't ended in prosecution. Being labeled a suspected thief was bad enough; getting arrested for stealing office supplies would have been mortifying. The theft itself wasn't something Tarn was proud of, but it'd been necessary. The entire unit had been out of work that week. Selling bits and pieces of office equipment had kept their tanks from draining dry until Helex and Tesarus got the recycling job.
He never told the others where he'd found money. He didn't want them viewing him in that sort of light. They were his unit. He'd sacrifice his pride for them if they were out of sight, but he'd smelt himself to maintain the sad illusion of command when standing in front of them.
All of which brought him here tonight, hoping for a job. Any job. The D.J.D. needed money badly, and for more than just escaping their current financial sinkhole. Kaon had somehow transferred all of Forestock's science degrees to Vos' personnel file, giving him enough pre-existing education to teach in the newly re-opened Academies. However, nobody would fund a Decepticon scientist, not anytime soon, and a science professor who couldn't get grants taught for free. On the other hand, linguistics professors specializing in Primal Vernacular were scarce enough that he could easily pick up classes and extracurricular work. If, that was, he got the teaching certification required to apply for faculty jobs at the Academies. Meaning that he had to pay the fee to take the test.
Vos was back at the apartment now, studying NeoCybex against every purist line of code he ran. He was a bundle of raw nerves cramming for the test in another language. Helex and Tesarus both worked double shifts today. They couldn't take any more shifts without collapsing, but they were doing the best they could to bring in even a fraction more shanix. Kaon was out scrounging the neighborhood two sublevels up for recyclables to sell. He'd said this morning he had a lead on a temp job fixing someone's home office network reception, but Tarn was glad the mech had gotten out of the apartment at all. Kaon had become increasingly depressed by their situation, and anything that stirred his listlessness was an improvement.
Tarn himself hadn't told anyone where he was heading today. All he'd said was that Soundwave might have found him employment. Emphasis on the 'might,' so as to avoid getting anyone's hopes up. A lot of employment opportunities hadn't panned out.
But he kept applying. He'd beg, borrow, or steal the credits to buy Vos' entry into the teaching examination, if that's what it'd take.
It might. He was outside a nightclub that was likely no more than a front for a house of ill-repute, holding his application out to an Autobot who ground his pride under one wheel simply by standing there. As neutral as he could force himself, he met Jazz's visor. "I was told there was a job waiting for me here," he repeated when Jazz did nothing.
He hadn't been told what kind of job, but he knew. He'd never quite sunk this low before the war, but times changed. Not liking it wasn't an excuse for not applying. Except for the overuse of neon, at least the place looked clean. And Blurr hadn't maligned the Maccadam Old Oil House trademark too badly since taking over. Any nightclub spin-off had to have some sort of class. Right?
Jazz pushed off the door frame and swept a look over him, deliberate as a weapons-check. "Yeah. Yeah, seems we got a contact in common." Tarn stiffened, trying not to betray his surprise. A former Autobot officer kept contact with Soundwave?! "I put out a call for a 'Con who could fit in, but I gotta admit you aren't what I expected to turn up."
Shock and unease went down hard, but he swallowed them. Now was not the time to wonder what games Soundwave played. Lord Megatron's former right hand lurked in the shadows of Cybertron, relying on connections and debts owed to stay out of prison. Right now Tarn couldn't figure out if he owed the communication specialist anything for the unsigned message directing him here. Every cable in his body was tensed in expectation of the trap springing shut.
Working his mouth for a moment, he picked his words carefully. "Ah. Regardless of what you were...led to expect, I'm here now, if you are hiring." He hesitated. "What position is open, if I might ask?"
All he could think of was the cryptic message saying his 'conversational style and interest in current affairs' would be beneficial in getting the job. Damus had educated himself as much as he could before and after empurata, and Senator Shockwave had crammed him full of high society etiquette along with further education. Even after joining the Decepticons, he'd kept the flowery speech patterns he knew sometimes grated on the lower class. In a club like this, he couldn't imagine an innocent reason for good manners and poise. Speaking above his station had once ended in the Senate amputating his face and hands, after all.
Deadly calm, Jazz considered him and his question before granting an answer. "Hosts. We're hiring hosts."
Tarn hated to think what that was a euphemism for. He didn't want to dwell on it. He was here. He needed the job. Mechs had endured worse. It was legal work. It had to pay better than petty theft.
One side of that blue visor narrowed, as if Jazz were weighing pros and cons. "Y'are here, I suppose. You planning on causing any trouble?"
He shook his head silently.
"Y'think you'd be any good at it?"
What kind of question was that? Honestly, how hard could it be? Wait, no, he didn't want to think about that, either. "It would help if I knew the job requirements," Tarn said quietly, but he couldn't meet the Autobot's level gaze. Did they really have to talk about this out on the street? He thought that keeping this private was kind of the point of having a club for it.
Jazz gave him one more assessing look that said the Autobot knew what exactly Tarn had been, what exactly he was still capable of, and what exactly that was worth in the wake of defeat. "Alright. Come in and talk to th' boss." He flashed a smile when Tarn blinked at him in dull surprise. "I'm not in charge of hiring. I'm just filtering out the bad cases before they get to the bar. It's up to Swerve t'decide if you'll bring the customers in or not."
Oh, scrap, this hadn't even been the job interview? Who was Swerve? Frag, he didn't have a single file on any Autobot named Swerve! Was he Blurr's best friend, club manager, or just a bartender? Was he part owner? Full owner? That would explain the name of the club; he'd thought Off Track referred to Blurr's racing fame, but apparently it was a play on whatever Swerve was famous for. Tarn wasn't sure what that was, but it had to be somewhat important. The mech was obviously in charge of hiring club hosts, if nothing else.
A wash of anxiety flooded down Tarn's backstruts. Suddenly, moving this into the privacy of the club before opening hours seemed like a very bad idea.
But it was this or unemployment.
Tarn braced himself for the worst and followed Jazz inside.
[* * * * *]
[ A/N:First part for TwistyRocks! Thank you!]