First moves
It was about an hour before sunset and Jazz's preparations were almost complete. His usually crisp colours had been muted and overlaid by a matt layer of mottled dark browns and dark tans to better conceal him among the rocks, and a special polarising attachment had been clipped over his visor to prevent his optic glow from alerting Deck to his presence.
There was just one thing left to do, and it was frighteningly easy.
Jazz reached back into the recesses of his mind and drew out the old mannerisms, the old way of walking, of holding his shoulders in a deceptively relaxed stance, the optics behind his visor hard and narrow. And along with the expression came the cold detachment that his previous occupation had drummed into him.
He hated it, the return to the old self, but it was the quickest way that he knew to get the clinical calm and impassiveness that this particular situation needed. He couldn't afford to hesitate if he wanted to live. Jazz stood and looked into the dark glass of a deactivated screen, seeing his features unnaturally twisted by the old grim set of his jaw. He really hated this, but if he were to have a chance of surviving tonight, he needed to be able to pull the trigger when the moment called.
0o0o0
The sunset that night was an ominous one, the red sun lowering in a dirty haze of orange-tinted clouds that hung low over the horizon and painting the landscape with a wash of red light.
Jazz had seated himself at a vantage point near the Ark's access road, one of his rifles laid across his knees while he watched the last stragglers hurry into the safety of the base. Grimlock was last, herding his Dinobots before him. He paused beside the seated officer, expression and body language unreadable. "You hunt." The T-rex stated bluntly. Jazz replied with a single nod. Grimlock clapped one hand on the formerly black and white shoulder, then strode inside, the blast door sealing shut behind him.
"Optimus to Jazz. We've finished locking down the base. Matrix be with you."
"Copy that. Jazz out." The Porsche replied, severing the link and shutting down his radio to prevent any surprise calls. The sun had completely set by now, with only a few traces of colour still staining the cloud. Jazz sighed and looked up at the dark sky. "Primus, I don't know if you're listening, but I'd really 'preciate it if you'd watch my back on this one. I'm gonna need it."
A glint of reflected light caught his attention, the object dropping out of the clouds and vanishing behind a mesa a few miles away from the base. Jazz got up and clicked the safety off his rifle. Deck had just arrived. The game was on.
0o0o0
The light had fully died by the time Jazz had walked to the landing site. Luckily there was no moon tonight, making things just a bit easier for him.
Jazz slunk through the network of canyons and ravines, grateful for the detailed maps that Hound had made of the area around the base. At the moment, he was at a disadvantage. He had no clue where Deck was or how he thought, whether he was logical and rational, completely crazy, or somewhere in-between.
But there was one advantage that Jazz had- he knew the area, and he knew how to use it. For eight solid weeks after re-activating, Jazz spent almost all his spare time outside, re-learning how to walk silently, hide his tracks and follow other's and use the landscape to his advantage. Deck had none of that knowledge.
A scrape of twigs against metal echoed up from the bottom of a branching ravine below him. Jazz carefully negotiated a steep slope leading down to it and crouched halfway down it with barely a whisper of sound. Unlike some of his fellows he hadn't had the advantage of starting out with professionally tuned systems and top of the line parts. He'd learned how to sneak around the hard way, through long hours of practise and with the incentive of knowing that if he was heard, he'd be dead. Even now, with proper maintenance and quality replacement parts, he would deliberately un-tune some of his joints to make sure that he wouldn't fall into the trap of relying on his body to stay silent when it should. Jazz swept his optics across the area, searching for the deranged officer, when he heard an all too familiar voice.