Jazz walked out of the secretary's office, data pad in hand, feeling distinctly worked over. He scuffed his hand along his plating, feeling as though he had Buffer all over him, even though the secretary had never so much as run his EM field against Jazz's. Blech! He glanced in Prowl's direction, "I suppose that that answers the question about why Blacklist has his secretary so far away." He made the statement more of a question, testing a little bit.

Would Prowl answer him without his making it a direct question?

The hint of a vacant, almost shell-shocked look faded, becoming the neutral expression once more with the tiniest shift. Now that he was looking for them, Jazz was picking up on the tiniest shifts that showed that Prowl wasn't "just a preprogrammed" anything. It was intriguing in the extreme and made Jazz want to know more. "Secretary Buffer is recognized by most mechs to have an 'overwhelming' personality."

Jazz snorted. There were three things that he noticed right away that were off with that statement immediately. Prowl said it as though the overwhelming part had no effect on him when the crazy mech certainly did. Overwhelming was intonated as though the enforcer had no idea what it meant and was merely reciting a description that he had read. He also didn't identify who the "most mechs" were, which possibly meant that Buffer had the same effect on everyone, whether they were preprogrammed or not.

If he hadn't been paying attention the entire time, very very close attention, he wouldn't have caught any of those things and taken his sparkmate's words and face value... but Jazz's feeling that taking anything that Prowl said at face value was pure stupidity was simply growing stronger. In fact, having to rewrite everything that he ever knew about the preprogrammed mechs in society was making him angry with himself. He was supposed to be smarter than to take anything for granted.

He was Ops. And in Ops, letting prejudices and preconceptions color your thinking got you killed. And that meant that he was going to have to have a sit down with the only preprogrammed mech he already had within reach and figure out what the frag was going on. He felt like he was flying blind and he really didn't like the feeling. He didn't when he was on a mission and he didn't like it when he wasn't. He always had an action plan... except for when he didn't. Like now, when the floor made up of his comfortable presumptions had been ripped out from under him, sending him into free fall.

A tiny shift in Prowl's posture made Jazz realize that he was staring. No. He was glaring. At Prowl. Who, despite standing in an even more proper and stiff stance as a result of that tiny shift, seemed nervous.

Slag. That was not what he was going for at all.

Jazz sighed, "C'mon. Let's get outta here."

Prowl's red optics flickered, yet another tiny, niggling sign that told Jazz yet again that there was more going on behind the scenes than he was showing, "Sir."

What the frag am I going to do? Jazz agonized as he led Prowl away from the compound that the mech had belonged to, I didn't come to Praxus to pick up a sparkmate! Jazz glanced at Prowl, as the silent, stoic, gleaming white mech paced silently a step behind and to the side where, if Jazz had been Praxian, his wings would have had room for a threat display. For a Praxian, Jazz knew that it was a calculated, nonoffensive subordinate position that allowed Praxian superiors to ignore or call upon their subordinates at will.

It was also extremely defferential, as would only be expected from a preprogrammed mech. Preprogrammed mechs were, after all, not people. The only exception where a preprogrammed mech had any sort of authority was when said preprogrammed mech was doing what they had been programmed to do. In Prowl's case, that would be patroling, checking for law violations, investigating complaints, arresting criminals, and so on.

Preprogrammed mechs aren't people, they're tools. Tools that were made to look like people, tools made to mimic real mechs... That was what Jazz had believed. But he had been wrong. Dead wrong.

Jazz didn't like it.

Jazz kept a running commentary of curses in the back of his processor as the rest of his attention was focused on not twitching when he felt the sensation of yet another set of unfriendly optics falling on him. He hid a grimace. He wanted to get out of this place. Immediately.

Unfriendly, unfriendly, unfriendly... Jazz twigged to the red optics that were watching him from guard posts, in the halls, around corners, ...another unfriendly, and ooh, look, another unfriendly!

Yeah... This... might've been a mistake, Jazz thought as he added up the numbers and came up with not good, his finely honed and sharpened instincts prickling under the uncomfortable feeling of being visually dissected, Primus damn it.

Still. Doubting himself now was not going to get him anywhere but an in depth and personal lesson on what it would feel like to be turned into a pile scrap metal. Not fun.

Jazz tried to calm his paranoia, knowing that having something happen at that exact moment was highly unlikely, no matter how much this entire ordeal had frayed at his nerves. Something later? Of course, but not right then. That would be stupid, and even for all his misgivings about them, Jazz had never thought preprogrammed mechs to be stupid.

Jazz let out a mental sigh of relief when he saw the perpetually irritated mech who he was going to be passing by for the fourth time. Judging by the expression on his face, his day had only gone from bad to worse during the time Jazz had been inside the precinct. The grump glowered at Jazz, who gave a cheery grin he really didn't feel, at Prowl, and back at Jazz.

"This your Enforcer?" the grump grunted, and at Jazz's nod said, "I'm going to need proof of purchase."

Jazz twitched at the phrasing but held out the contract.

Grumpy peered at the contract, optics scanning the formal glyphs much, much faster than Jazz would expect, but then, everyone had to have something that made them better than other people.

"Everything seems in order," almost as quickly as Jazz had turned the contract over, the mech was handing it back with a nod, and tacked on a perfunctory, "Goodbye." I don't want to have to see your ugly mug around here again.

And that was that.

Jazz led Prowl out of precinct and into the rest of the city.