Y'know, I remember a long time back that someone told me that the Prowl I wrote isn't really the strategic thinking Prowl we all know and my rendition was borderline OOC… and that's because this is pre-war. ;) He grows into the regular self we know about now cuz character development or whatever.
Chapter XXVIII
SEVENTY YEARS LATER
Prowl moved the hax piece from the lower level up to the middle board. He turned the platforms around to move the secondary color, then the tertiary. He played without the presence of the A.I. to hone his own skills. Besides, he hated playing hax against the computers. And online multiplayer seemed to pair him with the worst kinds of people, winner or loser.
He needed to center himself, so he played hax against his own mind, splitting the board between three players. His current case involved a combiner unit, a trio, two of them missing, the remaining one losing her mind. She could not sense the other two, so they were immediately assumed dead. Her only lucid statement so far was that she knew they were not dead. They shared sparks; she would know if they were dead, but for some reason she did not know why she could not find them. They were alive, yes, she knew at least that much. Prowl assumed the two were taken off-Grid. He remembered the sensations of disconnection once crossing the barrier. Could that severance go as far as to block such an intimate signal as conjoined sparks?
Player Two's arsenal lost to Player One. The red pieces were eradicated from the hax board. One and Three were left. Prowl squinted. Umbrashard was so insistent that her partners simply vanished. There was no sign of them anywhere. They were not traveling, there were no transactions anywhere on the globe from a Gloam or Trailblaze. Security cameras in their residence building showed the three bots coming home to their apartment at night. None of them seemed intoxicated. Nothing happened until ten hours later when Umbrashard was running out of the door, rushing downstairs. Prowl followed the feed to see her downstairs at the service desk, frantic, asking if any of her neighbors had seen her partners.
He grinned, amused at the impossible thought that crossed his mind just then: Portals to other dimensions. A rift in the apartment. He was reading too much fiction lately. Imagine Gloam and Trailblaze wandering a different Cybertron, just as lost and psychotic as Umbrashard was becoming with disorientation.
His grin dropped. Was it possible…?
Stop that. Teleportation exists, yes, but within its own reality, not as roads across dimensions.
…Right?
Multiverse theory.
The hax board blared at him. Player Three's sentry piece was not meant to move that way. This was a strike. Player Three would have to forfeit their next turn. Player One could move twice. Prowl clicked his glossa against his denta, disappointed at himself for getting so distracted with wild thoughts that he could not move a simple piece properly. He gave Player One quite the advantage. This game would be won in four or five more turns.
"Did you really just move a cog like it was a sentry?"
The amount of force that went into snapping his head towards the window stressed a cord. He hopped up, reactively turning one of his arms into a blaster pistol and the other keeping that arm steady. The mech at his window held up both hands in surrender and smiled.
It had only been seven decades, but he had thought, logically, that he would never see him again. The mech pressed the ends of his digits beneath the glass. The panel would not slide. He looked at Prowl, visor gleaming. He brought two straight digits up to his face, then jerked them to an angle. The officer heard a click. The mech at the window pressed against the glass panel and slid it upwards.
"Jazz?"
"Don't get too excited, I'm nowhere near as good as the Ghost with this telekinetic stuff." He crawled inside, making sure not to scrape himself against the frame. "I think I pulled somethin' near my processor just for that trick. Dammit, why didn't I just ask like a normal person?"
As soon as the white mech had closed the glass window and initiated the lock, Prowl's weapon shifted back into a servo and he came forward to embrace him tightly. They both stumbled for stability. Jazz returned the hug, pulling himself up to the officer, the latter hunching for the cyber-ninja. Their mouths locked. Neither of them had any coherency or strategy to their motions. They were fighting to stay upright in this wild form of passion. They broke the kiss to breathe cool air back into their systems, but even still they had felt the urge to taste each other. Jazz sucked and Prowl bit. Jazz made a sultry chuckle, helping Prowl feel like he was doing something right. The white mech pushed on the other's chest, giving them an inch of separation.
"Calm down there, hotrod," Jazz sighed. "It's been a while. We've got catching up to do first." He looked at the nearly-finished game on the low table. "Wipe the board, I'll play ya. Been practicing my skills with the Ghost."
"Deyyan, you mean." Prowl reluctantly let go of Jazz, going to sit at the table to clear the board and start over with two players.
Jazz took slow steps forward. "He told you his name?"
"In a dream. A rather detailed dream." Once the pieces shimmered into existence, he looked up at Jazz. "Did he not tell you?"
"No, no, he told me too. A couple hours after you left, he told me his story. It was a dream for me, too. I can't imagine sitting there and listening to all that in one take."
Prowl mentally ran through a timeline of what he was doing a few hours after he left the dojo. He was either just getting to the hospital for the operation or he was in recharge. Did the Ghost present the dream to both him and Jazz simultaneously? The ninja squat to the ground and sat on his legs. The how did not seem important to Prowl any more.
"Guests first."
"Aw, how sweet of you."
"Warfare rules?"
"Oh, slag, now we're talkin' sexy. Can I spec stealth?"
"You go spy, I'll go programmer."
"Sounds like a dope challenge."
The game was adjusted to warfare mode, which was a customizable format for players who craved a challenge. They used small, tilted screens at the base of their boards to hide their moves this time now that they had more mechanics to work with. Jazz made a quick decision. Prowl moved a piece. They kept a rhythm going to get pieces scattered and set up for later strategies. Jazz activated his spy commander's passive to give the teams their stealth and Prowl's programmer went to work equipping his units with stealth detectors that operated with their attack radius. They started to slow down as Prowl began the conversation.
"There's something important you need to know."
"That sentence sounds like a friendship killer."
The larger mech stopped for a moment to consider his options on whether to sacrifice a lowly thief to snatch Jazz's hostage on the far side of the board, hope it survived the traps that he knew were there, only for it to be taken by the sniper he knew was nearby as a guard; or go hand-to-hand between their bombers. Other options were to spread his forces more, or use a swap. Swaps could only be used once every three or five moves, depending on the mode of the game, and they could only be used between cogs, the lowest pawns of the game, and another specialized unit. He decided to swap the nearest cog at the sniper with a sentry. The sentry's longer attack range took out the sniper.
"I take that back—that there is the friendship killer," Jazz chuckled. "Knew I should've been moving that sniper around."
"The DGS is offering you full citizenship."
"Is it because of the Shockblast stuff?"
"They're baffled by your solo infiltration. I didn't say anything, but I suspect they probed my memories to learn about the dojo."
"That case made you hella paranoid, you know."
"Keeps me alert and focused."
"What happened to Shockblast, anyway?"
"If this were another type of society, he would be dead already."
"Stripped of form?"
"And a life sentence."
Jazz lowered his head, imaging what life must be like to continue living as a solitary spark with no frame and no freedom.
"The big boys won't make an offer like this unless they wanted something from me."
"They want to make you an agent."
"There it is. See? I knew it."
Jazz used a bomber to take out two of Prowl's pieces at once, and it disappeared back into stealth.
"Do they want me to go through boot camp first?"
"I didn't ask. This is your status they're considering, after all."
"Hell, you didn't think to come tell me?"
"You had to focus on your training." He relocated a cog. "I assume they'll take you through education so you can learn the system. You have no records of primary education and I'm sure they won't keep it that way. Then you'll move on to secondary to learn your job."
"We managed to bring down Shockblast's show without a warrant. Ain't that outside the system?"
"Enforcement is allowed to enter residences and offices without warrants if there are criminals in hiding who may flee, if there is suspected evidence that must be procured immediately, if evidence is clearly visible, or if the time it takes to retrieve a warrant would lead to loss of evidence or putting public safety in jeopardy." Prowl had a scout roaming along the edge to look like it was heading for another level when he was really just using its larger detection range to discover that an aerial unit was hanging out on the same level his hostage was. "You had a credible reason to enter Shockblast's facility without a warrant because thousands of lives were in danger."
"Landlord calls the cops on me: Warrant or no? I mean, I rent the place, but the landlord owns it, right?" Jazz's bomber resurfaced to get rid of the stationary sentry and thief near his hostage.
"Warrant. You have rights as a tenant."
"Domestic violence heard?"
"No warrant. It's an emergency situation and the abused must be protected."
"What if there was no actual domestic violence happening?"
"If the officer can reasonably suspect domestic violence, they may enter, but of course it's standard to knock first to announce their presence. No one answers, they will radio for backup and attempt to enter the residence."
"Now what if the cop was supposed to get a warrant but still finds illegal stuff in the home?"
"Exclusionary rule. Any substance or object obtained during an illegal search or seizure will be suppressed and ignored."
"You sound like you're drilling this in front of an instructor." Jazz used the small touchscreen at the base of the board to hide that he was transferring another hidden piece. He didn't know Prowl had already located that unit with a scout and had his programmer keep a lock on it since it was a tricky piece. It was making its way towards his hostage.
"I've vocally repeated these laws enough times and have been in plenty of search and seizures. I'm aware and experienced when it comes to the law."
"So, should I be studying these rules?"
"I'm unfamiliar with how the DGS operates, but I'll assume that the training I went through is considered a standard and basic level of law enforcement education. Maybe when you get to become an agent, they'll tell you which parts don't apply to you any longer."
Prowl took a chance and set his commander to work with his spread scouts to increase their attack–sensory radius in order to figure out where Jazz's hidden pieces were at the risk of forfeiting advancing movement. He located four more. He fixated a sniper and took out the hidden cog that nestled close to his bomber to avoid the ninja switching pieces to take it out. Jazz sucked on his denta.
"Frag you, how'd you know that was there?"
"Radial increase."
Jazz's optics swept the board to judge where Prowl's pieces were in accordance to his own and mentally went over how far their stealth-breakers could reach now that Prowl's programmer handed his units an upgrade to their range for this turn. He realized Prowl had spread them out in a way that anticipated Jazz to move some of his units against the edge of the boards. "Oh, you're such a prick. Frag your programmer's RNG."
"RNG? The game's randomizer had nothing to do with it. You happened to put your pawns in the wrong places."
"Please tell me the DGS offered you an agent position too, you sadistic aft. Your strategy's a lot better than it was a century ago."
"I'm now one of the detectives at the station. Surge is trying to tailor me to become lead, so he's giving me the difficult cases. And besides, you never got to see my warfare hax strategies. We played base."
"To think you were just a street cop when we met."
"And I assumed you were a murderous dancer."
"Now look at us."
"Yes, you're actually a skillful murderous dancer."
"Cyber-ninja. Get it right."
"The moves are graceful enough to be considered a dance."
"I… think that sounded like a compliment. Whatever. I'm putting that annoying scout of yours in time out. I see you; you're using him to scan the boards."
One of Jazz's hidden pieces jumped Prowl's from a level below and the unit dissolved into pixels. The officer took a guess where the stealthy pawn went and ordered his bomber to chuck its only projectile. The bomb missed. Jazz smiled. The officer knew that the area of effect of the grenade should have taken out the piece. The only explanation was that the spy commander's evasion chance, amplified by Prowl's decision to pick programmer, saved it. Prowl ordered his remaining forces to drop sensors. Those spots would detect the hidden enemies within a five-block radius but now his pieces would not have the advantage of mobile stealth-breakers. At least his opponent was not allowed to see them. He set his interrogator to work harder on defecting his hostage. By the next move, one of Jazz's aerial units, the one Prowl had a lock on, moved into the space and had to choose between getting the hostage or killing the interrogator. He chose to move in for the hostage.
"Suck on that one!" Jazz exclaimed, throwing up his hands.
Prowl grinned.
The aerial, hostage, and interrogator disappeared.
"Wait a—" Jazz leaned forward, looking at his personal screen for the report. "Did your trap go off?"
"You had good intentions. The aerial has mobility and high dodge, but no other special skills. If the randomizer benefitted you and your aerial avoided the trap, you would've gotten your weapons specialist."
"The hostage was a specialist?!" Jazz sank, whining. "Primus frag this RNG…! There goes my damn attack buff."
"Think you'll take the DGS's offer?"
"Gimme a second while I mourn the loss of a pixel soldier, a'ight?"
Hostages could be assigned roles at the beginning of the game, determined by the opponent who held them. Prowl picked weapons specialist in hopes his interrogator would successfully defect them to his side by the end of the game and he would gain an attack bonus at the last round between the commanders. The opponent had a chance to steal it from them. The interrogator's room was rigged with traps so that if anything went wrong within its range then everyone lost the buffs provided by each unit in the area, whatever they happened to be, that would count towards the endgame. If Jazz had sent in his thief instead, he would have avoided the traps and everyone kept their bonuses, and Jazz gaining another with the addition of the hostage.
Prowl could sense that this choice was a plot to get him to bring his guard down. He studied the board. A dropped sensor picked up on one of Jazz's cogs just outside the trap's area of effect. The aerials had the longest attack range in the game. It was set up so that Jazz could have easily taken out the interrogator, trap becoming disabled at the unit's death since there would be no enemy in range, and the hostage would have run to the cog for safety to grant Jazz their endgame attack bonus. But, at the last moment, Jazz decided to send the aerial on a suicide mission, either hoping the unit's fifty percent dodge chance—augmented to seventy-five with the spy's passive evasion chance—could save itself, the hostage, and the avoid interrogator, all at once, or annihilate them all within the trap. It was a risky and somewhat heartless move.
"Alright, alright, serious face…" Jazz huffed. "It's really tempting. But I'm not going to teach anyone my skills. Teaching's not really my thing and this fighting style is too dangerous for anyone who doesn't understand it and doesn't feel like understanding it. It's the Ghost's culture, y'know? All that's left of his people. You saw that dream—he's the last of them."
"Make your intentions clear so you'll have room to negotiate."
"There ain't gonna be much of a negotiation. I either get what I want or I bounce. I'll be their little shadow operative or whatever, but I won't tell anyone about the dojo, not without my sensei's permission. I'll be betraying him if I did."
"Understood." Prowl looked over the board to think over his strategy. Things were going his way. He told his programmer to start using more resources towards a project using the bomber's code. The stealth-breakers' radius was reduced to three blocks. He moved a cog upstairs to keep up the bluff that his forces still held their sensors. He just needed to hold out for ten moves.
Prowl moved his bomber down a level as bait. Jazz fell for it and sniped it.
"How are they, anyway?" asked Prowl. "Is Revamp a good batchmate?"
"Batchmate would mean we're at the same level, which we're not," Jazz explained. "He's still kohai to me."
"Consider me informed."
"He's pretty decent. He learned real fast that he can't really trick me with his clone skills when there's only three people on the property. He's good with attacks, but kinda lacks in defense. Makes him a wild sparring buddy.
"A year after we got the place fixed up, we jumped in and out of the Grid to find more recruits to remake Yoketron's little paradise. We found five so far. One of them is an Animox still looking for Arthropod. First thing I do if I end up becoming a DGS agent is using resources to find that psycho doc and help her out."
"Sounds noble. I'm sure she'll appreciate it."
"Promised her I'd find him. I like keeping promises."
They locked optics for a moment, sharing warm smiles between them. Prowl noticed Jazz had forgotten the game for a moment. He seemed to be moving pieces to get them further from Prowl's, unaware he was stepping into stealth-breakers. Prowl refrained from taking out any that were too far from any unit's range to use them to his advantage later. More than half the pieces from both sides were gone and it was getting tougher to hold his bluff.
"Showdown?" Jazz asked.
"Sure," he said with a passive shrug. Five more turns and the game would be his. He just needed to wait.
The levels disappeared. Holographic bodies of Prowl and Jazz's commanders faced off. Spy against programmer. The number of units destroyed and the specializations and amount of those still active determined the commanders' situation. Jazz still had his hostage, and his interrogator managed to successfully defect them. They were a fortifier. Jazz expected to get an armor buff to his commander's health for ten percent, but for some reason the commander was at three percent less than it should have been.
"Wait a second, is this rigged?" Jazz pondered allowed. "Where's this armor buff supposed to be?"
"My interrogator was a firewall hacker."
The cyber-ninja deflated flat to the floor. "Of course it fraggin' was."
Interrogators, like hostages, could be assigned different roles determined by the player who owned them. Jazz picked sky force in order to get the aerials that could avoid most attacks, avoid detection through long-range attack, and could move more spaces in a single turn, hoping it would save the hostage on Prowl's side of the board. Prowl picked firewall hacking. The firewall hacker sapped at the opponent's commander behind the scenes over time, little by little, until their armor was broken to around twenty percent integrity.
"Now I'm glad I got that interrogator when I did," Jazz thought allowed.
"So, destroying the interrogator was on purpose." Prowl said it as a statement of observation, not a question.
The cyber-ninja simply grinned.
Jazz still had a winning chance at face value. Specializing his teams for stealth still allowed a minor attack bonus, even without the annihilated hostage. With the current pieces he still held, he could output enough damage towards Prowl's commander that the broken armor would not matter. Prowl's commander sat there with base buffs. Even if Jazz's interrogator had failed to bring the hostage to his side, Jazz's attack bonus from his active units would narrowly win him the game.
"Nothin' personal, sugar rims," Jazz said.
"I know. It's just a game."
The turn-based system began automatically. The opponents just had to sit and wait to see if their previous decisions and sacrifices would benefit them in the end. No other moves could be made. Jazz sat with a smile. Prowl kept an optic on the programmer's project, waiting for it to take effect.
The digitized body of Jazz's commander began to break apart and shatter. The ninja reeled back.
"Hold up, what?" His commander lost so much of its health that one more turn would kill it. "No, no, what in the Pit?"
"Match."
Jazz's commander turned into dust. Prowl leaned on the table with his chin in his hands, grinning.
"Quit smuggin'!" Jazz pointed an accusatory digit at the officer as he read the report on the screen. "How the hell did your programmer get a hold of a bomb code? I sniped that bomber!"
"Unless I ordered it to begin the operation right before you killed it."
The programmer was Prowl's favorite when it came to warfare mode, so long as it was used correctly. Most people he went against who used a programmer outfitted the commander's abilities to dispatch viruses to the other team or turn the other's upgrade against them. Prowl's style for the programmer was to exploit the other's upgrade and utilize his own team's strengths, which was something good anticipators could pull off. When the time was right, he told the programmer to use his bomber's specialty to design a tactical nuke. If he had timed it wrong and the programmer finished the project before the showdown round, he would have been forced to use it on the board and wiped out both teams. Hostages would escape to hand over their bonuses and force the board into the commander showdown without active unit buffs. Only what the hostages brought and whatever strategy was being pulled ahead of time, like Prowl's hacker applying armor sapping, would have an effect if the detonation had wiped the levels. With the program finished within the showdown, the nuke took into account how many units were active, pulled it into a number, applied both commanders' advantages and disadvantages, and used that to determine how much health to take out of the enemy commander. The more pieces on the board, the bigger the effect. That was why Prowl decided to keep the pieces dancing when he could see some of Jazz's hidden units within the stealth-breakers' sensors, to amplify the nuke's damage.
"You are one ruthless son of a glitch!" Jazz screeched once Prowl was finished explaining his tactics. "I was wondering what and where the heck your programmer's project was after all this time! People are always too scared to code break the bomber. I'm thirty colors of impressed! Where was that last time we played?"
"I was gauging you last time. You feinted and made sacrifices and made it look like you were making mistakes. And I noticed you play exactly how you fight. Stealth, sticking to the corners, increased mobility. No one goes for that kind of tactic, so I see why you'd think that would work on me."
"No one ever picks spy, that's what throws them off!"
"No one ever utilizes spy properly, that's why they don't pick it and that's why they don't know how to play around it."
Jazz pressed a button on the side of the projector board to turn it off and shoved it to the side of the table. He stretched himself across the surface, laying on his front. Prowl leaned backwards, back against the edge of his couch, forcing Jazz to crawl some more to get closer. The white mech reached an arm out, grabbing Prowl's chin.
"Winner earns a prize, don't he?" the ninja purred. Prowl stretched, relaxing his arms on the couch to lounge on the floor. Jazz had to inch closer. He twisted and rolled to get off of the table, making himself perpendicular to lay across his lover. He slipped a hand between the other's legs as one of Prowl's hands dropped to feel up the white mech's aft.
"I might be the champion of the game," the officer said with a cocky grin, "but we both know who the master of the bedroom is."
He didn't realize he had said that out loud until he was halfway through with the sentence and it had been too late to back out of it. It was meant to be a thought. After seeing Jazz lose his concentration and hear him laugh, he was glad of his slip. The white mech dropped his head onto Prowl's thigh.
"Seventy years, Prowl!" he snickered, then enunciated his words to battle his giggles. "I have been gone se-ven-ty damn years—you had seventy years to think of a good pickup line for this overdue foreplay! You pick 'master of the bedroom'! I oughtta…." He trailed off. He was sniggering too much to think of a proper insult.
"You'll what?" the officer prodded, moving his hand lower to rub a digit over Jazz's interface panel. The mech below him squirmed and his giggles tried to fade into moans, but the audio mixture sounded more like whining. His back flexed to arch into the touch. "Finish your sentence. What will you do to me?"
xXx
Alright, fine, you guys deserve a smut chapter, gawsh. I'll be spending the next two weeks making sure it's ready.
This is probably my most heavily edited chapter of the whole fic. I'll just note that I did not come up with hax, and I forget who did. I don't think anything was really explained about it beyond 3-D chess, so I just kicked my B.S. skills into overdrive to give it more flavor. I honestly didn't think I'd write four pages worth of a game that doesn't exist with made-up rules I kept adding on to as I kept writing. I'm no game designer so there's probably a bunch of balance issues, ehehe…. TLDR of the mess below; spit-balled ideas on how warfare mode works.
I think of warfare hax like how some game classes are designed: easy to play but easy to fuck up if you don't know how to actually play it. Programmer's more about exploiting weaknesses and using your own team (Prowl using the programmer's "code break" to pick a currently active piece to design a project against the enemy), and spy's about evasion and chance (which tends to work for Jazz except in this case lol). There're probably other commanders with neat gimmicks, like medic gets health bonuses and chance buffs and resuscitation; biochemist for infecting the enemy forces, which bleeds into the commander to put debuffs on them throughout the showdown. Tyrant's all about direct attack, which is probably scary but also likely hard to play since matches aren't decided at the beginning stages and isn't as manipulative as the others. Mercenary, taking elements from other commanders but at a much smaller scale so it doesn't seem overpowered (and like spy doesn't get picked that often because pieces end up with random abilities that you have to keep track of, like you had scooped them from a trail mix of the other commander builds).
Each has a condition to go with them should you choose them, like if your opponent picked spy then you get the stealth detectors; if they picked programmer then your randomizer chance for any specialty you have is increased—spy's evasion from ten percent to twenty-five for Jazz and Prowl's match, chemist's damage over time debuff during showdown is slightly increased, tyrant can break armor down during showdown; just stuff to work against the programmer if you can't anticipate. I like the idea of the medic getting a diagnostic ability if the other is a biochemist to get rid of hidden diseases on pieces and it leads to an annoying game of the medic reviving pieces only for the chemist to plant a disease on them and the medic keeps trying to pass out its immunity vaccines to avoid disease, cures going off with the diagnoses, chemist kills off the immune piece only for the medic to revive them again and waits to be able to vaccinate again…. It's an enraging table-flip sort of match that lasts far too long.
As for nitpicking interrogators, pick a commander and you get two specific choices to apply to the interrogator based off that commander (Prowl's firewall hacker is specific to programmer, Jazz's sky command is specific to spy to get around the stealth detectors). Hostages can just be freely randomized buffs (that a biochemist can totally infect to give the opponent commander a very small, extra disadvantage if they're rescued because biowarfare is just absolute sadism). But this is just me spit-balling. I don't know the programmer's specific projects in relation to each piece, I don't know every commander's interrogator, I don't have a clue what other types of hostages there can be, blah blah blah. I'm pretty sure someone with actual development experience reading this can balance this out better but I just did this so Prowl could beat Jazz at "hax with chocolate syrup and cherries" and ended up creating a an entirely different game than what hax was probably originally supposed to be.
There's probably a meme in the hax community about a "pacifist commander" but no one's sure at all how something like that could win and that's what makes it a joke.
