Thirteen Days
Warning: Contains torture, insanity, deaths, and lots of angst.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Transformers. I'm just borrowing them for a bit to mess with their heads.
Author's Note: And now, actual Transformers! Featuring angsty!Prowl.
- Part 2 : Prowl -
Prowl knew something was wrong well before he'd reached Earth - before he'd even received Optimus' message. He could tell by the way his CPU suddenly, inexplicably, did a complete shut down and reboot, and how afterwards...nothing seemed quite right. His limbs seemed awkward, his vision washed out, his hearing dulled. His sensors seemed less precise, letting little things slip past them - and once he received Optimus' message and started heading towards Earth, it only got worse.
In the end, by the time Prowl landed on Earth, he didn't need to be told. Driving up to the Autobot base in his new beat-up looking mustang alt-form was really just to settle the formalities - they had to let him know Jazz was dead, he had to let them know he was resigning. No one on either side was surprised. Well, Ratchet seemed surprised that Prowl was even coherent.
"It's not every day one loses their bonded, Prowl." Ratchet said with a frown as he gave the tactician a final medical scan.
"And it's not every mech that has a logic processor so powerful it can override their basic functions if necessary." Prowl stated flatly. Ratchet conceded the point, and an hour later, Prowl walked out of the new Autobot base, transformed, set up jamming fields, and disappeared. The Autobots tried to track him for a few days, but even Hound had trouble keeping up with the tactician. They did their best, though, not only in case Decepticons attacked, but in case Prowl needed their support. Eventually, however, even Optimus had to concede that the Decepticons were unlikely to find him with his jamming fields at full strength, and Prowl himself seemed to be adjusting to life without his bonded as best he could. So the Autobots let him be, hoping that someday, he might return.
But the day the last Autobot stopped watched him, Prowl trans-scanned a new car, perversely seeking out one identical to the alt form of the now-dead Jazz, used his hologram to get himself situated in a used car lot, then went into almost complete stasis lock. He was only vaguely aware of eventually being purchased and driven off the lot, preferring to let his systems shut down slowly, one by one, until even with his jamming fields down, not even Ratchet would have been able to tell he was anything more than a normal car without doing a detailed inspection. Prowl might have spent the rest of his life like that, alive but not living, drifting in a blank void free of emotion and thought, free from the troubles of the universe.
If it hadn't been for the bullet that bounced off his windshield that night, in fact, he probably wouldn't have even noticed when his new 'owner' was kidnapped.
However, the shooter deffinately didn't have the best aim in the world, so when the young woman he and the others had been sent to kidnap started attacking them, using what looked like very rudimentary martial arts, his warning shot ended up accidentally hitting her car. Two things saved him from his superior's wrath - the fact that the shot had stopped the woman cold, and that the bullet had, amazingly, left only the tiniest chip on the car, then embedded itself in a nearby tree, where it could be pried out, and the hole it made charred, so no evidence was left when. if, the car was found.
Then it was a simply matter of pushing the woman's little convertible into the woods, covering it with branches, dirt and leaves, and leaving.
None of the men stuck around long enough to see the supposed Pontiac Solstice suddenly shake itself, the camouflage falling off of it, before it almost hesitantly started its engine and crept through the woods, back onto the road where the men had used a set of stolen police lights to pull the driver over. And none of them saw the car subsequently unfold into a giant metallic alien, who proceeded to stare down the highway in each direction for a moment before folding in on itself again and setting off down the highway...heading in the direction the new convoy of black SUVs and one fake police ghost car were going, and keeping just far enough back that they never even noticed it following them.
---
Hound was on guard outside the supposedly-deserted desert military base in Nevada, now home to the Autobots, when the car appeared on the horizon. He watched it approach warily - it gave off no Cybertronian signals, but he could tell even from this distance that it didn't have a driver. His unease only grew when he realized the make and model of the car was identical to Jazz's alt form, and he called Optimus and Ironhide on the comm system, thinking some poor new Autobot was going to need to be told to go trans-scan a new vehicle.
The car beat Optimus and Ironhide to the entrance of the base, pulling to an abrupt stop a good twenty feet away. There was a moment's pause, and then all at once, the jamming field the car had evidently had up collapsed, and it unfolding into a bipedal form. It only took Hound a moment to recognize the signature of the Cybertronian before him, and all he could do was gape as he realized the situation.
"Hound, what's -" Optimus didn't need to finish his question as he and Ironhide reached the entrance and saw the 'Bot before them. "Prowl?" Even though his sensors were telling him that this was, undoubtedly, the tactician, the disbelieving question still escaped.
"What do you know about a group of humans calling themselves Seven Hands?" Prowl grunted in reply. Optimus stared for a moment as his processor caught up.
"Ah - they're an illegal off-shoot of Sector Seven." Optimus said. Prowl looked at him blankly, and Optimus remembered that Prowl had only stuck around long enough after landing to hear the list of deaths and that the Allspark was destroyed. "Sector Seven was a government agency that was formed when the Allspark was discovered, and later began studying Megatron when the government had him moved from the arctic circle. They were dissolved after the battle in LA, but seven of the more important scientists and officers didn't want to give up on the project, and formed Seven Hands. The organization illegally stalks and studies Cybertronians on Earth, even going so far as to try and kidnap Hot Rod when he landed a few months ago so they could put him into stasis. We're working with the human government to track them down, but we haven't had much luck locating their headquarters." Prowl tilted his head to one side.
"They're in or around Austin, Texas." he said.
"How do you know that?" Optimus asked with surprise.
"That was the filed flight plan for the plane they got on at Boston International Airport." Prowl replied reasonably. Optimus and Ironhide exchanged glances.
"I think you'd better come inside, Prowl, and start this story from the beginning." Optimus said finally, stepping aside and motioning for Prowl to proceed him into the base. Prowl grunted, frowned, and then did as asked. He was silent as he went through the base, Optimus casually directing him, until he realized that instead of going to the operations center, Optimus was directing him towards the med bay. Prowl stopped and gave the Autobot leader a flat stare, but Optimus just smiled serenely and motioned for Prowl to continue. The tactician growled again, but continued, stalking into the med bay, completely surprising Ratchet, and hopping up onto one of the berths and lying down without needing to be told.
"Where did you come from?" Ratchet asked incredulously.
"Boston." Prowl replied truthfully. Ratchet stared at him for a moment, then looked helplessly towards Optimus, obviously confused.
"Just check him over, then both of you can come up to the operations center. We'll be waiting." Optimus said with an amused smiled, then left the med bay.
"Boston?" Ratchet asked Prowl after a moment, and the tactician nodded.
"Boston." he repeated, and Ratchet sighed before beginning his scans. A few minutes later, the medic had recovered enough to curse whatever human thought of using fossil fuels to power their vehicles, and threaten to reformat Prowl into a toaster if he ever let a human supply him with gasoline for energy ever again. Prowl ignored him, waiting impatiently until the medic was finished - save for the full systems flush he wanted to do - and then the two of them headed up to the operations center. Optimus and Ironhide were waiting in the large room, along with several more 'Bots and a handful of humans, who stood on the table in the center of the room, while the 'Bots had rough Cybertronian-sized chairs around the table that they were occupying.
Prowl recognized the other 'Bots as Bumblebee, Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, and Tracks, but the humans he didn't know until Ratchet sent him a data burst with their identities. There was Sergeant Robert Epps, Samuel Witwicky, Mikaela Banes, Maggie Madsen, and Miles Harris. Apparently all were well known to the Autobots, with only Miles Harris not having been involved in the battle that destroyed Megatron and the Allspark...and Jazz. Prowl didn't really care, so long as they didn't stop him from getting what he wanted - which was a location and a strike force. And permission to kill the fleshlings that kidnapped Ariel Barrett right next to him.
"Alright Prowl, let's hear about your encounter with Seven Hands." Optimus said once Ratchet had settled himself in one of the Autobot-sized chairs. Prowl considered his words for a moment, then opted not to reveal his near-stasis-lock for fear of getting hauled back to the med bay by Ratchet to 'have his CPU looked at'. To that end, he was lucky to have been able to piece together enough from his limited sensor logs so that he knew what had happened before he'd woken to full consciousness.
"I had acquired a human driver, Ariel Barrett, and we were leaving Boston three days ago when what we thought was a police car signalled for her to pull over. Ariel did so, but when she stopped, men in suits got out of the 'police' car and approached, telling her she was to come with them. She protested, they insisted, and one of them fired a shot that bounced off my windshield. Ariel stopped struggling after the shot was fired, and then men took her to their car, putting her in the back before pushing me off the road and attempting to hide me in the surrounding forest.
"Then they took off back towards Boston, being joined by several black SUVs no more than a mile down the road. Once it was safe, I followed them, and they proceeded to the Boston Airport, where they boarded a private plane with a filed flight path taking it to Austin, Texas. I had planned to head there myself, but as I drove, I did a little digging into their backgrounds and found that several of them were known to be part of an organization known as Seven Hands. I couldn't discover much about the organization, except that it knew about Cybertronians, so I decided to make a detour here, instead, in the hopes of finding out more about it before proceeding in retrieving Ariel." Prowl summarized succinctly.
"Do you know why they took this Ariel lady?" Sideswipe asked Prowl curiously in the silence that followed.
"They might have taken her because of her contact with him." the human named Maggie spoke up.
"Impossible." Prowl said dismissively.
"Not really, they already hold a grudge against those of us involved in the battle over the Allspark - hell, they've already kidnapped Miles once, and he wasn't even involved." Sam Witwicky said.
"There was no way for them to know who or what I was." Prowl stated with certainty.
"These guys are pretty sneaky, they might have -"
"There. Was. No. Way." Prowl stated firmly, interrupting the young human male as he tried to speak again.
"Well then why did they take her?" Sam Witwicky asked crossly.
"I don't know." Prowl said with a shrug.
"Then it could very well be because of her contact with you." the human pounced on Prowl's statement like a turbofox finally catching a long-elusive glitchmouse, and Prowl glared down at him. This was an irrelevant argument. What did it matter why they took Ariel? The point was that she had gone unwillingly, and needed to be rescued, and his voiced that out loud.
"I agree, Prowl - unfortunately, Texas is a big state, and they may have very well driven outside of it." Optimus said.
"Why fly to Austin, and not an airport closer to their ultimate destination, then?" Prowl replied promptly. "They weren't expecting to be followed, so there was no need for them to hide their tracks."
"Unless, of course, they were kidnapping her because of her contact with you, and so were expecting to be followed." Sam Witwicky pointed out. Prowl twitched.
"If they had known who and what I was, would they have bothered to shove me into the woods and try and camouflage me if they knew how ultimately futile it would be?" Prowl snapped.
"Yeah, about that - why did you let them take her in the first place? You could have prevented it if you transformed." Sam Witwicky asked, and Prowl just stared incredulously at the human, then at his fellow Autobots, but they looked as curious as the human. Prowl growled.
"It...took awhile for my systems to reboot. By the time I was in any condition to transform, they were driving away, and at that point, it might have caused more harm than good. Plus I had no idea at the time that they knew about Autobots." the tactician said, trying to put as much information after the revelation of his systems needing to reboot so that Ratchet would get distracted and forget about it. Unfortunately, it didn't work. Ratchet latched onto the comment right away.
"Why exactly did your systems need to reboot?" he asked, leaning forward, optics narrowing dangerously, and Prowl shifted uncomfortably. "Prowl..." the medic said warningly when Prowl didn't respond.
"Because I'd shut down 97.6 of them." Prowl snapped. There was silence among the Autobots as that sunk in. The humans were equally silent, but mostly out of confusion.
"You put yourself in fragging stasis lock?" Ratchet finally hissed.
"Yes." Prowl said with as much dignity as he could muster.
"Frag it, Prowl! Why didn't you just slagging drive yourself off a fragging cliff! It would have been just as fragging easy, and then you wouldn't have been a slagging wandering target for Decepticons to capture!" Ratchet ranted. "Primus, you could have just shut down in the slagging basement of this slagging base, if that's what you fragging wanted!"
"My jamming fields were still at full strength, the Decepticons would have never found me!" Prowl snapped.
"And what if the fields failed? You wouldn't have been conscious enough to notice, let alone fragging fix them! And furthermore, what if this Ariel woman had fragging crashed you? No human mechanic would be able to fix you properly, and you wouldn't have been fragging conscious enough to call for help. No, wait, that was the fragging point, wasn't it? Just avoid the pain, avoid dealing, avoid grieving, until you're crashed or get discarded as too old and some human ends up inadvertently killing you so you can go join the fragging Matrix with fragging Jazz!" Prowl didn't even try to stop himself from tackling Ratchet, cannon out and at the ready, but the medic was ready for him, and before the tactician could do more than growl and warm up his cannon, Ratchet sent an intense pulse into his CPU in the way only medics could, and Prowl slipped into unconsciousness.
The others in the conference room watched as Prowl suddenly tumbled to the side and Ratchet, still muttering angrily to himself, got up, hooked his hands under Prowl's arms, and dragged him off back to the med bay, looking, as Miles mused, like some demented metallic murderer dragging off the body of his latest victim. Once Ratchet could no longer be heard, Sam turned to Optimus.
"I'm sorry?" he said weakly.
"It's not your fault, Sam." Optimus said reassuringly. "Prowl is, for once in his long life, acting very illogically."
"Looks like Jazz wins that bet after all." Ironhide grunted, and Optimus gave the weapons specialist a look of sour amusement.
"Bet?" Sideswipe asked curiously. Optimus shifted, suddenly looking uncomfortable, but Ironhide grinned.
"Y'remember that stash of high-grade you gave Jazz right before we left Cybertron?" the weapons specialist said. "Well, about five vorns out, Jazz pulled it out and we all got a little over-energized. We started making bets about strange things. One was when Prowl would do something illogical. Jazz bet that it wouldn't happen until after he died, because the universe hated him that way."
"What did the rest of you bet?" Sideswipe asked, looking amused.
"Hmmm, Ratchet's was once he removed some of Prowl's logic chips - we told him that didn't really count, but that was all he came up with. I think I said Prowl would snap when the femmes finally stopped trying to lure him away from Jazz - the paranoia would do it. Optimus..." Ironhide trailed off as he saw the glare his leader was giving him. He gave Sideswipe a meaningful look instead - he'd share later.
"As fun as this is - Prowl was right about us needing to rescue this Ariel lady." Sergeant Epps piped up. "Sector Seven wasn't exactly known for being gentle, and Seven Hands has already shown itself to be worse. Since they couldn't have known they were being followed, unless they were being paranoid, they must have some sort of base around Austin. Since Prowl found their identities through our network, that means we can start watching the area, no matter how big it is. One of them, at the very least, is bound to show their face in order to get groceries."
"Of course. Prowl will want to assist, I'm sure, once he's escaped from Ratchet." Optimus said. "Ironhide, Sunstreaker, Sideswipe - would you go with him?"
"Glad to, Prime!" Sunstreaker said instantly, and Ironhide and Sideswipe's agreements quickly followed.
"Alright, I'll contact the right people, let them know what's up, and set up a place to meet them at once we can get down there." Epps said with a nod.
"Excellent." Optimus said, and Epps was already pulling out his cell phone while motioning for Tracks to help him down from the table. Optimus told Ironhide and the twins to go get ready for their trip, then dismissed everyone, heading for the med bay to make sure Ratchet didn't completely reprogram Prowl.
---
Prowl finally escaped Ratchet a day later, leaving the med bay under a hail of thrown tools and a stream of steady, vibrant threats about what Ratchet would do to the tactician if he ever did something so stupid ever again. Then it was Optimus' turn to corner the tactician and let him know exactly what he thought of Prowl doing that to himself. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, meanwhile, could be seen smirking wherever they went, smug now that it was Prowl getting in trouble with Optimus instead of them getting in trouble with Prowl. Prowl avoided them as much as possible until the next day, when the four Autobots heading to Austin set out.
They arrived in Austin a day later, and met up with the FBI agents stationed there. The agent in charge of the operation, Malcolm Bradburn, assigned one of his men to each of them, then sent them out to the most likely locations. The four Autobots saw more than their fair share of abandoned military bases, ghost towns, and mines than they ever wanted to see. Ironhide even uncovered a drug smugglers' hideout, which he then cheerfully helped the FBI take down, since he was 'in the area'.
In the end, it was in the early morning of their ninth day after their arrival in Austin, thirteen days after Ariel's kidnapping, when Sunstreaker sent a positive confirmation of known Seven Hands operatives smoking cigarettes outside a supposedly abandoned military research facility to the west of Austin. The three other Autobots converged on his position quickly, human agents who had also been out searching right behind them.
"That's definitely some sort of base for them." Agent Bradburn said, handing the binoculars off to one of his sub-ordinates. "So how do we want to go about this?"
"You're askin' us?" Ironhide asked with surprise.
"Well, I'm not exactly used to planning busts with four thirty-foot-high mechanical soldiers at my disposal, so I thought I might see if you had some input. Isn't he supposed to be a tactician, anyways?" Bradburn motioned to Prowl, who hadn't transformed like the twins and Ironhide, instead just sitting in his alt form, pointed towards the base. He didn't even acknowledge the agent's question, so Ironhide stepped in.
"True. Hey, Prowl! Y'got a plan cooking in that CPU of yours?" Ironhide asked. There was a pause, during which the weapons specialist wondered if the tactician was even going to answer.
"We go in, blow things up, and get Ariel." Prowl finally said calmly, and there was silence all around.
"That's it? What happened to all your masterful plans?" Sideswipe asked incredulously after a moment.
"Don't know. Kind of in a mood to just shoot things." the supposed tactician replied thoughtfully. "Besides, I don't recall you or your brother ever following my plans."
"Hey, we followed your plans! Until the Seekers showed up." Sunstreaker protested, and Prowl shifted on his wheels a bit, giving the impression of a 'see what I mean?' look.
"Alright, guess we'll just stick with a basic infiltration scenario, then." Bradburn said with a sigh. "You four...well, do whatever it is you do, just don't kill anyone. We want as many of them as possible alive."
"Not a problem - killing you fleshies makes a mess, anyways. Too many juicy bits squirting all over the place and needing to be washed off the paint job later." Sunstreaker remarked.
"Primus, Sunstreaker! That's disgusting!" Sideswipe told his twin with an expression of disgust.
"I know!" Sunstreaker said earnestly.
"I don't think I want to know how he knows that." Bradburn murmured, and Ironhide shook his head.
"No, y'don't. Suffice it to say there's a little less wildlife in the area the two of them landed in." the weapons specialist said. "How long will it take your guys to get ready?"
"A few hours - we've had equipment, men, and vehicles on standby ever since we started this search, and they're all already on the way." Bradburn replied. "We just have to wait until they get here, then suit up ourselves, and we'll be ready to go."
"Good." Ironhide said, eyeing Prowl, who he'd noticed had been creeping slowly closer to the research facility as they talked. "'Cuz I don't think Prowl's going to wait very long." Bradburn, glancing at the Pontiac Solstice, silently agreed.
- To be continued, with the thirteen days of Ariel's capture... -
