Chapter VII
. . .
"I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing."
-Socrates
. . .
Moonlight had caught himself looking into the reflective windows of almost every building they'd passed on the way to wherever it was Jazz was taking him. It was so odd, so satisfying, so much different he found it difficult to take in all at one time, the bright orange.
He'd never really been partial to any color but now? If anyone asked him what his favorite color was, he would have said obnoxiously bright, reflective, working orange.
However, no one was asking. No one cared. He found that fact easier to swallow now than he would have before the switch.
No one cares. How strange to think that not one bot on the entire planet cared about whether he lived or offlined.
How...freeing.
. . .
"Jazz is such a waste discharge hold, I thought. I don't think so now. He certainly treated me like he was one, but I realize that he was just a bot trying his best to do the assignment he was handed. His job and possibly his life depended on whether or not he brought in a criminal.
"Looking back, I'm grateful he didn't just haul my aft back to the High Council with a goodie basket. He had a gut feeling and went with it, despite the fact that I could have betrayed him or killed him or something. I don't know what I would've done if I'd been in a better state of mind. I was so tired."
"Missed you, sunshine. Where'd you go today? Kidnap anyone else?"
The other guy had been talking a lot these past few days. Moonlight couldn't bring himself to care.
"Shut the frag up," Jazz growled. He tossed a datapad into subspace and let himself faceplant onto the recharge station.
Moonlight felt half in recharge. He shook himself out of it, the voice retreating to a dark corner of his mind. "Sorry."
"No apologies. Get control of it, Moonlight."
"It's so nice to have someone calling me that," he remarked quietly. Jazz hadn't yet removed the nanobot trackers or the perimeter that set them off, but he'd allowed Moonlight certain privileges— acknowledging that his designation was Moonlight, for one. There was also access to the energy storage, certain parts of the Web, and no more electromagnetic cuffs, but being called Moonlight— that was by far his favorite.
. . .
[Excerpt from Witness Report #23b, recording 22:
"I've read a lot about human serial killers and somethin' they got in common with ours is they're always said to be 'quiet.' Creepy quiet. Can stare into the deepest depth of your spark kinda quiet. That's what comes to processor when I think of Moonlight.
"He was quiet, y'know? Ever since Ratch's, he was just...quiet. He seemed beaten. He was waiting to die just for a change of scenery because everywhere he went on Cybertron, he was a dead mech walking. He was just a scared kid. I gave 'im as much freedom as I could but I also couldn't let the little slagger have a chance at escape or discovery. It was more than my job was worth to lose him."]
. . .
It had only been several days after leaving the Rust Belt before Moonlight began receiving more impossible communications from some unknown source. They were just bits and pieces, a word there, a bit of static here. It wasn't much to go on. It didn't warrant telling Jazz, did it? It certainly didn't warrant jeopardizing his staying here.
He couldn't help but wonder if this breach meant that he could comm someone else, but when he tried it, he was met with error messages.
Which made it all the more mysterious to have comms from an unnamed source.
He'd had no luck trying to track it down. Jazz had taken away all his hacking privileges and forcing him to live as normal a life as he was able.
As normal as he could be on house arrest, at least.
Moonlight had seen no option but to make himself comfortable and take up a hobby— organizing. Jazz, an absolute mess of a genius, was the world's worst when it came to cleaning his own housing unit. Except for the files in his office. Jazz's office was immaculate. Moonlight was supposed to be locked out when Jazz wasn't home but that didn't stop him from picking locks. He couldn't leave the set perimeter if he wanted and his comm was forcibly disabled, so his ability to actually do anything with the information he discovered was seriously handicapped.
Jazz probably knew this. He more than likely did not care. He had only three rules for Moonlight's continued existence in his housing unit: "you break it, I'll break you," "you don't exist," and "don't answer the door." Moonlight was reminded of these every single time Jazz left for work.
There wasn't anything about being constructive, therefore, there was absolutely nothing wrong with cleaning, Moonlight told himself.
Except this was the thirty-seventh time he'd reorganized Jazz's kitchen.
. . .
"I mean, you can translate the word as 'kitchen.' It had all the elements of a human kitchen— a place to heat stuff, storage units for empty cubes and Energon, shelves full of extra add-ins like copper and gold and whatnot for flavor. Jazz also had an at-home...brewery? You know, like the thing you'd use to make high grade? Humans have a similar thing. I think they call the place where they do it a brewery. I think. Anyway. Jazz had one because he's a very classy mech.
"I took full advantage of it."
. . .
It was the beginning of another day as Jazz's terrible roommate and Moonlight felt something akin to contentment. He didn't recharge much since being back in civilization. No more than a few hours every couple solar cycles, which, compared to Jazz, was next to nothing. He was up before Jazz and didn't recharge until long after Jazz was.
Moonlight had a lot of free time.
. . .
"Third day. Jazz was beginning to trust me, I was beginning to feel better, I didn't look like a horrible monster, and I wasn't constantly starving. I was also surprised at the advancements Iacon had made technologically— middle class families were able to afford more kinds of luxuries, like running cleaner and more affordable Energon taps. The middle class felt richer and the richer were, I don't know, fine? Economically, Cybertron was doing well. I was doing well. Jazz was frustrated at the lack of information I had on the scientist, but other than that, he was okay. I enjoyed living in a regular housing unit."
. . .
"Jaaazz!" He hadn't had time to shut the door before he was greeted by an overly happy voice and a pair of arms coming toward him. "I'm so hap-hic-py to see youuu." Jazz pushed him out to arm's length. Moonlight's optics were unusually bright and he slurred his words.
"You're overcharged," he said.
"Isn't it -hic -great?" Moonlight grinned and held up a freshly made cube of high grade, which Jazz took and held out of reach.
"Nooo," Moonlight protested and his intake systems hiccuped again, reaching for the half filled cube.
Jazz took a sip and almost laughed at how concentrated it, well, wasn't. "How much have you had, skidmark?" It didn't take much force to lead the overcharged mech to a nearby chair. He tried to take it back, but Jazz held it out of reach.
Moonlight's optics crossed in thought. "Ahh. One."
"Sure," Jazz replied.
"Those -hic- aren't mine." He shook his helm and pointed. The brewing machine looked well used and the several used glass cubes on the counter beside it bore witness.
Jazz didn't believe a word. "Then whose are they?" he asked, setting them aside and beginning to mix up a sodium based drink to counteract the high grade.
"Ummmm...his?"
He turned suddenly to see a familiar face standing in his kitchen, behind the doorway so he hadn't been seen at first. Jazz was taken aback yet again by how quiet the archivist could be when he so chose. "Primus! Pax, you almost gave me a spark attack." He leaned up against the counter in relief.
Orion, at the very least, wasn't the worst Cybertronian to visit.
"Jazz," the librarian said. "We need to talk."
. . .
"Now, the feeling of lack of self preservation hadn't fully gone away. I was alive, yes, but that didn't mean I was committed to staying alive. It was Jazz's understanding that I had two personalities, me and the scientist both living in my processor with unequal control over our physical body. Had Jazz left his weapons outside of a locked safe, I probably wouldn't be here. It was his choices as a fellow Cybertronian that kept me alive and I am grateful for that.
"I gotta say, I enjoyed being kept prisoner. It was like I was his useless roommate that stole his energon and didn't pay rent. It was nice.
"It didn't last very long, of course, because—I think this is a human saying—I can't have nice things."
. . .
Through Moonlight's haze, he could tell Jazz and this scrawny red Pax mech were friends and Jazz had been expecting his visit for some time.
"I'm not going to ask about him," the mech gestured at Moonlight, overcharged at the table. "He was like that when I first came in."
"How did you get in?" Jazz asked, the thought just occurring to him.
"You hide the key in the same spot you did when we went to university together, Jazz," Pax said bluntly.
Behind his visor, Jazz gave a dramatic roll of his optics. Moonlight saw Pax smile, saying,"It's okay, old friend. It's lucky you did. I couldn't wait outside, I could have been seen." His demeanor changed into something more grim. "I don't have long before I have to be back. The High Council just gave Sentinel Prime full control of the military in order to prevent the newest fanatical sect from organizing. We don't have the funding or the resources for this. There's no way our current rate of spending is going to keep our people alive. Already, stores and plants are closing and workers are being moved from consumer manufacturing to military service jobs. Sentinel Prime is bringing about the end of the Silver Age and amassing way too much power than is safe for Cybertron. This is what we've been waiting to see. This is what we're trying to avoid."
It should be noted that the only reason Moonlight remembered any of this was because Pax had the most beautifully intense delicate blue optics and he couldn't help but listen to every word he said because, in his drunken stupor, his voice was every bit as beautiful as his optics. Jazz replied with something just as intense and complicated about impeaching the Prime and causing an uprising or something but Moonlight fell into recharge before understanding anything else, still facedown at the table.
. . .
["You're telling me that you missed out on one of the most important conversations of your life because you were overcharged?"]
"Yeah. That's the way my life seems to go more often than not. Luckily, Jazz filled me in later. Kind of."
. . .
His still foggy mind heard the goodbyes of the two friends and the closing of the front door. Jazz stormed into the guest room. Moonlight had no idea how he'd gotten there.
"Skidmark, you absolutely wasted, discharge-filled fragger, why did you not tell me someone was here?!" He didn't sound happy.
Moonlight's processor struggled to understand what was being said. Everything was too loud, too bright. He shut his optics against the grating light and the deafening sound of Jazz's pacing. "Orion wouldn't have come over something trivial. Just my luck political corruption would run its course and require action now. Of all the fragging times..." He kept going, but Moonlight disabled his audio receptors.
"Moonlight." Something grabbed his arm and pulled him unceremoniously off the berth. His audios reactivated with a vengeance and he instinctively curled into a ball. "Do you remember what you said to him? Do you even know what's going on at this exact moment?"
"Yes. No. Bits and pieces," Moonlight mumbled, processor reeling to remember something through the haze of high grade. He intensely regretted that.
Someone had left a waste bin beside the berth. Moonlight didn't understand why that was there (hadn't he put that in the kitchen where it was supposed to be?) until his tanks started to turn and he felt the need to empty their contents into the bin. (Oh.)
He sank down again to the floor, curling up again and feeling somewhat more sober. "Mmm, what?"
"Focus, rust patch. Librarian. Political corruption. Organized Crime. Do you not remember anything?"
"To be honest, just the mech with the pretty optics."
"'Just the mech with the pretty optics,' he says," Jazz mocked. He sighed and sat down on the berth next to the hungover mech and the trash can he was curled next to. "Useless." He put his head in his hands.
"That's a little harsh," Moonlight mumbled from the floor. "Politics wasn't my best subject, y'know."
"I know." Jazz had copies of his grades from every academic year.
He put down his hands to look at him and steeled himself.
"Moonlight, you have to leave."
. . .
"Completely unexpected. Secret agent idiot uproots my semi-stable living situation to bring me to his house, give me food, make me feel at home with his prickly demeanor and cutting remarks, adopt me as his terrible housekeeping roommate and then has the bolts to tell me to leave within ten nanoseconds of a visit from a friend.
"I mean, I knew from the outset it wasn't going to last but three solar cycles? That's really unfair.
"My life fraggin' sucked."
. . .
There was another knock at the door and Jazz walked out before Moonlight could respond. He didn't know if it was a surprise or not that he was leaving another sort-of place that had come to feel like home. Again.
He stayed on the floor a little longer in mild sadness before he heard sounds of a struggle in the next room. Oh, no, he thought. Not Jazz.
. . .
"I rose from the floor like a majestic, one legged miner without a balance algorithm. I fell, but I managed to crawl to the door in time to see yet another random-aft bot give Jazz a concussion and turn to look at me.
He was oddly familiar. I couldn't place where I'd seen him before, but I knew I had. Somewhere. I was still hungover, so anyone's guess was as good as mine."
. . .
"So this is where the great mastermind's been hiding, hmm?" A black and purple armored Seeker, taller, better armored, and much more intimidating than Moonlight, stood in the doorway. "With a new body, no less! Did you really think you could hide from Shockwave?"
. . .
i think we as a society can relate to socrates.
i try to keep these around 2500 words bc it gets tiring scrolling down through an infinitely long chapter. i'll try to make the next one longer so it flows better. his life is about to get even suckier aaahhhhhh im so excited
-tz