He Who Catches the Sun
"So what did you do before the war?" Jazz asked, curious. He had never heard anything about what the TIC had been before the war, unlike every other mech on the base. It was rather odd, because even though no one knew what Jazz had been, there was still rumors that flew back and forth. Not hearing anything was suspicious.
Prowl frowned at him, but it wasn't a "get out of my office, miscreant" frown so Jazz waited. "I was not anything, Jazz."
Jazz waited for an elaboration but quickly realized that there wasn't one forthcoming and threw his hands up, "You had to have been something! You can't have just appeared out of thin air."
"In a manner of speaking, I did, in fact, 'appear out of thin air' as you said, Jazz," Prowl said, his optics shutting off as he devoted more of his processing power to his work.
"Uh huh, and you did thisナ how?" Jazz drawled, leaning forward to the point of almost touching Prowl.
Prowl's optics lit and he stared at Jazz, "It is quite simple. I am the end product of a rigorous personality reassignment and was then redesignated as Prowl when the reassignment was completed."
Jazz gaped. He had heard of things like that happening but he had never met one before. Or at least he hadn't thought he hadナ but then he hadn't expected endlessly rule abiding Prowl to have been deemed such an irredeemable loss to society that he had had that done to him. Not even Sunstreaker, psychotic berserker that he was, would have been put up for personality reassignment, even if he had the wartime personality that he had cultivated back then. "That'sナ" dizzying. "What the pit did you do?"
"It is not so much anything that I did so much as what I was that led to my personality reassignment," Prowl said dispassionately. He looked away, and picked up visual pad and flipped through several secure feeds before making a notation and switching it off and setting it aside. "I glitched too often and my creators could not handle the care that my overly sensitive existence required. When my upgrades did not lead to better tolerance of stressors they gave me to the evaluation board."
"That's it?" Jazz choked, outraged, "You glitched?" How could anyone do that to their creation? He knew that his own would have never done anything of the sort.
Prowl gave Jazz a quizzical look, "Of course. I could not function productively in society. They were well within their rights to do what they did. It was the proper thing to do."
Jazz could see in that look that Prowl saw nothing wrong with what he was saying but Jazz was just struggling with the fact that they could do something like that to Prowl. Trying for nonchalant, Jazz tried to not appear as disturbed as he was, "So what was your designation before?"
Prowl seemed to trying to figure out his angle before he gave one of his minimalistic shrugs, "I was called Suncatcher."
Jazz forced his jaw to stay shut. He recognized that designation. This was going to be a conversation of revelations. Suncatcher had been a critically acclaimed artist that had been as popular with the critics as the general public and just as elusive. Jazz knew that Sunstreaker's designation had been a play off of Suncatcher's and the vain mech looked up to Suncatcher with almost worshipful reverence. The problem wasナ Suncatcher had been listed as dead.
Jazz looked at Prowl with fresh vision, wondering how Prowl and the mysterious Suncatcher, the mysterious, apparently glitched Suncatcher, could be the same mech. The problem was that he had no frame of reference.
"Do you still paint?" Jazz had to ask.
"No," Prowl's head tilted, "How did you know that I painted?"
"How did Iナ" Jazz rasped, "You're famous, Prowl. Pit. Sunstreaker named himself after you."
"Ahナ" Prowl looked uncomfortable, nearly ready to start backing away, "I can no longer do artwork of any kind, Jazz. And I sincerely doubt I am the mech you are thinking of."
"No," Jazz said, "I'm pretty sure I have the right mech." Jazz grabbed Prowl's arm and began tugging the mech along, "We need to talk to Optimus."
Prowl followed along behind Jazz mostly to indulge the higher ranking officer than in belief that Jazz was right. Jazz barged right into a meeting with the humans, "Prime!"
Optimus looked up and saw Jazz "dragging" an uncomfortable looking Prowl behind him. "Yes, Jazz?"
"You know Suncatcher, right?"
"The artist?" Optimus asked, puzzled.
"I found out what happened to him," Jazz growled and nudged Prowl forward a few steps.
Optimus looked between his two officers, one radiating tightly contained fury, the other as uncomfortable as he ever got. "I believe he was listed as deceased."
"He isn't dead, Prime."
"He is," Prowl interrupted, frowning down at Jazz, "and I don't see why you are making such a big deal out of this."
Optimus frowned even as Prowl began denying it and dismissed himself from the meeting and shut off the communications equipment, leaving only the soldiers that were in charge of controlling them.
"No, he isn't," Jazz told him, "He had a personality reassignment." He pointed a claw at the TIC, "Meet Prowl, formerly Suncatcher."
Optimus stared at his TIC, "Is this true?"
Prowl stood straighter, "Yes sir. Though I do believe that I am being mistaken me for someone else. I was never famous, and what artworks I finished were not fit for public viewing. Most I simply abandoned because they were not good enough."
"So sure about that, are you?" Jazz asked.
"Of course," Prowl said.
"Could you show us what some of them looked like?" Prime interrupted, seeing that this wouldn't go anywhere if the two were left to argue it out themselves.
A lost expression appeared on Prowl's face. "ナOf course, sir." He pulled a pad that neither of the officers had seen before, an artist's pad similar to the kind that Sunstreaker had dragged around with him the entire war. It wasn't as high quality though and extremely worn, but the holographic function worked as well as, or perhaps even better, than the more expensive version.
The first thing that appeared was a work of art that anyone with even a passing familiarity with art would have recognized, but Prowl quickly switched to a different projection. Stopping him, Prime held up a hand, "Wait, what was the first one? Is that one of yours?"
Prowl switched the projection back, grudgingly, "Yes, sir. An unfinished piece. It was destroyed before I had the opportunity to finish it."
Optimus exchanged glances with Jazz who had a helpless, enraged expression on his face. "Unfinished?"
Prowl was becoming suspicious, "Yes. A great many of my pieces were destroyed in an accident."
Optimus shook his head at Jazz, "Can you show us some of the others?" That such a famous piece was considered unfinished by its creatorナ
"Of course," Prowl showed a number of projections, each of them either all too familiar to the mechs, or in the style that had been quintessential Suncatcher. Eventually, it was too much for Optimus to take and he placed his large hand over Prowl's claws.
"Enough, Prowl," Optimus said sadly, "Enough." He pressed the pad to Prowl's chest plates and pulled his TIC into an embrace. "You are Suncatcher. No matter how or why you came to be Prowl, you are still Suncatcher, and a great many mourned when they heard the news of your death. That artナ we know it all as the work of a great artist."
"Impossible," Prowl denied.
"It's true," Jazz shook his head.
"Thenナ if I wasナ famous like you say I amナ" Prowl asked, "ナThen why?"
Why would his creators have his personality reassigned? Why would they hide that Suncatcher was famous from him? Why would they tell him that his art was destroyed?
"I don't know, Prowl," Optimus told him, "It shouldn't have happened."
Prowl made a choking sound that was the sign of an imminent meltdown and tried to back away. Familiar with the signs, Optimus held on, knowing what would happen next. He didn't let go of Prowl until he felt the mech's body lock up. When he supported Prowl, Optimus looked down at his TIC's unlit optics sadly.
Jazz turned away with a soft sound of rage? Grief? Disgust? Whatever it was, Optimus couldn't decipher it. "He told me that believed that his creators were entirely in the right doing what they did to him. His creators! It's not right, Prime. They took everything that he was away from him and he thinks it was because he had a glitch." Jazz glared at the far wall, "I don't think that he even knows if he is able to paint. He said he couldn't anymore, at least."
"We will have to see, Jazz," Optimus said sadly, picking up Prowl and cradling him in his arms, "but we can at least be thankful that so many important relics of our kind were preserved."
"Thankful?" Jazz spat, then seemed to draw in on himself, "ナI wasn't expecting this. I was just wondering what Prowl had done before the war. And then he goes and tells me that he had a personality reassignment of all thingsナ" The SIC seemed dazed. "It just seems so unreal."
"We will fix this," Optimus said. He didn't know how, but they would.
