I'm not reposting all the warnings. If you didn't read them in Pt. 1, then on your head be it.
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Pt. 13
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The answer to Starscream's question ended up being more complicated than just screwing in a lightbulb. First the Decepticons had to find the slagging floodlights, two of whom had transformed and stumped off into the city as soon as they decided they weren't needed anymore. The other four were being stubborn about working without all their components present. Once the other two mechs were herded back to the arena, they still cited that these were poor working conditions, and anyway they really weren't comfortable with what was going on. They'd really rather just go back to the barracks. Thanks so much for the invitation, it'd been interesting, but they wanted to go home now.
Jazz only knew this because, A. Starscream's response to their blathering had been given in the upper ranges of his vocalizer, at decibels that would send dogs barking and make human ears bleed. B. Gossip spread by word-of-mouth through the audience like wildfire. The unit clustered on the tier beneath Jazz weren't exactly trying to keep secrets while they yammered at each other. C. Acid Storm's calm and considered response to Starscream stomping off in disgust was to call for volunteers from the gossip-happy audience. Volunteers to, in his words, "Persuade our friends that staying is worth their time."
The six Decepticons with floodlight transformations stood pinned under the mass stare that call created. Despite their faces being 90% bulb, stunned petro-rabbits had similar expressions. Also more of a chance of getting away. The tall, lanky mechs stood stupefied, all gangly arms, minimal armor, and sturdy struts exposed by that lack of armor. They were made of rebar angles and shiny glass.
Hands shot up all over the arena.
So it became less a question of 'How many Decepticons does it take to screw in a lightbulb?' and more of 'How many Decepticons does it take to screw a lightbulb?'
Needless to say, all six floodlights were back in operation. Even if the sixth flashed fitfully because there were a couple of unsated flyers leaning against him doing erotic things to his support poles.
Jazz was beginning to think Acid Storm was better at interpersonal squabbles than Special Operations had ever given him credit for.
He was also well beyond thinking unmentionable things about Decepticon interfacing habits. The light-mechs had been tackled like interfacing were a spectator sport, which didn't seem far off from what the Autobots had observed in the Decepticon ranks throughout the war. The floodlights hadn't just caved in once the shock wore off. One of them had been, in fact, on top of three flyers. None of said flyers had seemed about to object. Audience participation had been loudly encouraged, but half the crowd hadn't even been paying attention to the highly public event. Knock Out had occasionally looked up from his work long enough to yell suggestions when things got rowdy. Skywarp had wandered over once and done commentary, a la Latin American football announcers. 'Goooooooooal!'
To be honest, it'd been kind of hot. But Jazz was never going to admit that.
He'd been too busy with other issues to spend time gawping at the show, anyway. Starscream was on the far end of the arena being choosy about what whip he wanted to use. Half a dozen noncommissioned officers had converged on him the moment he announced his intentions, offering a wide selection that made Jazz's tanks curdle. The nearest Decepticons in the tiers craned their necks and shouted their opinions. Starscream catered to their enthusiasm. Ever the crowd-pleaser, he held up each whip and pretend to rate them by applause. It was enough to make Jazz sick.
The Autobots had some of those whips. This was war; as much as Jazz wanted to think that violence wasn't the answer, at times it had to be. He'd done interrogations before. Sometimes, he'd even done discipline on the most out-of-control of the Autobots. When Jazz had to do it, it was discipline for those too far gone in war to be brought back by anything else. Those Autobots were always carefully marked for special watch by Security. Sadly, about half of them ended up traitors, criminals, or suicides. Violence did not solve violence.
Ratchet still sought sanctuary in his office whenever the medic had to deliver what the files officially called a 'psychological stabilization.' When Ratchet had to wield a whip, it was a psychological necessity in the name of treating a patient. It still wasn't pleasant. War didn't give emotionally damaged mechs time to heal. It only made things worse. Sometimes the only outlet was physical pain. Sometimes it was necessary, but Jazz could only be glad that Ratchet didn't let First Aid be involved in that part of Medical. It was one duty the Chief Medical Officer utterly refused to allow First Aid to take a turn at, resident medic in practice or not. Better to let a medical professional administer the needed pain than have mechs inflict it on themselves away from someone present specifically to offer caring and as much understanding as possible. But…First Aid cared too much. The Protectobot medic had a bad habit of not partitioning professional and personal life.
Jazz was so, so glad First Aid was far away from here. If someone had to be here, Jazz would rather it be him, and him alone. No other Autobots should have to witness this. He was having a tough enough time even with his SpecOps partitions up to feed everything through threat assessment for information tagging first. Starscream fussing over the whip selection was a horrible drama by itself, but then he noticed Thundercracker watching in repulsed fascination. The blue Seeker had been staring as Knock Out worked on him, and Starscream's smile was nasty. Cunning, and dreadfully nasty.
The Air Commander waved the whip he was currently holding at the crowd. "I don't know if I like this one. What do you think?" A rousing cheer informed him that they did, indeed, like that whip. He tapped his chin thoughtfully with it, faking some overdone pondering. "Maybe I should test it, first. Who should I test it on?" He looked around in innocent inquiry. "Does someone here need to be whipped?"
Suddenly, the arena was a giant shouting match.
"He's not seriously going to beat someone just as a test, is he?" Jazz asked around an enormous, choking clog of disbelief. Flyers were pushing and shoving all over the arena, and what he couldn't believe was that they were all competing to present their unit's candidate to the Air Commander. The candidates themselves were yelling protests and trying to get away, but that wasn't stopping Starscream from inspecting all the choices presented to him.
Acid Storm gave him a perfectly blank look. "Of course he is."
The audience dissolved into booing and hooted approval when Starscream selected a small teal flyer from mid-tier. The unfortunate mech had double-hinged wings on his legs that were flapping frantically as he twisted loose and tried to get into the air. The whole tier clustered around him when he managed a short launch, and ten pairs of hands grabbed him, dragging him back down. Laughter rippled through the crowd. Still struggling, he was passed over the audience's heads with hands roving over his frame as they passed him on: groping and restraining him in one.
Starscream limped over as the teal mech was dumped onto the rust of the arena floor. The poor little flyer scrambled up off his face only to find an active electro-whip limned in sinister pink in front of his optics. It slid under his chin. He froze, red optics pale with shock and fear, and slowly followed the whip's nudging until he was looking up at the Air Commander.
Who was smiling sadistically like a purring cat gnawing on a still-living mouse. "On your knees, soldier."
The Decepticon couldn't get into position fast enough.
Starscream circled the kneeling flyer in a lazy inspection. The smaller Decepticon knelt in a prisoner's pose: hands behind his helm with the fingers laced together, and knees braced a shoulder-width apart. Three flexible flanges of metal flared a brighter pink as they came down on his back: crack! The flyer jerked and grunted. Jazz was vaguely grateful that he couldn't see his face, but the audience on that side of the arena certainly seemed to enjoy his expression. The lash fell again: crack! Another grunt. The tracks left behind were singed black against bright teal. Where one track had been hit twice, a grey trickle of smoke could be seen under the floodlights. Starscream tilted his head, smirking in Thundercracker's direction as he repositioned himself and deliberately struck downward this time, straight across the wide wings laid flat on the ground.
The crack was underlined by a pained yelp this time.
"This's barbaric." Jazz folded his arms tightly because otherwise he wasn't sure he'd be able to keep from reaching for his gun. "That mech didn't do anything!"
"So?" Acid Storm asked. He wasn't even watching the beating. The green Seeker watched Jazz's face twitch in time with the rhythmic lashes, and he drew just a little closer. The urge to exploit an Autobot's weakness must have been high. Jazz shifted his feet into a better position, just in case.
Despite the casual way he'd shifted his weight, the slight motion didn't go unnoticed. Acid Rain glanced down at his feet before easing back a tad. This was just a conversation, right? 'No pressure, Autobot.'
Ha. Yeah, right.
"So what did he do?" The black-and-white mech made a half-frustrated gesture before tucking his arms close again.
"Why would it matter if he did anything?" Jazz's visor popped wide, and Acid Storm shook his head. "You don't get it, do you? Look, that's the Air Commander. The Second-in-Command of the Decepticons. Our Emirate. Do you think those are empty titles? He says 'Jump,' and we don't come down until he says so."
"No," Jazz shook his head, just not understanding as what he was seeing and everything the Autobots stood for clashed in his head, "that's not the same. How is this military?" The whip cracked again, and Thundercracker was utterly still under Knock Out's hands as he watched. "Yeah, okay, I can - understand punishing Thundercracker. I'm not happy about it," understatement of the vorn, "but I get why it's happening. But explain this to me!" He pointed at the teal flyer now screaming through clenched teeth as the lash went after his wing-hinges. "Random selection is okay?! What if you're next? How do you know what's safe or who's going to get beaten to slag for kicks, if this is how the Decepticons always are?"
His frustration seemed to catch Acid Storm by surprise. The Rainmaker blinked through reset as if not trusting his optics. Jazz continued to scowl furiously at him. "…huh. You're really just not…" He had to stop, thoughts colliding behind his optics and a weird look of confusion sprouting from the clash. "I…think I'm not qualified to explain this to you. It's just," he waved one hand helplessly at nothing, then more specifically at the teal flyer now crying out with each new stripe burnt into his wings, "we know what's going on. I mean, you know - okay, so you don't know, but you know how there are things that happen in your - your - frag, I don't know." His hands clutched air, trying to find the right words. "I guess in your officer cadre, maybe? Oh, I know!" He brightened, seeming to hit on an idea. "The new-sparks! The baby jets! Their officer's a newbie, right?" Jazz jerked a nod. "Right, and when he joined your cadre, did he get why you did everything? There's always that what-the-slag? thing that makes perfect sense to you, but nobody else gets because you've been on the inside the whole time."
Skepticism boiled over. "Oh, come on," the saboteur scoffed, hard and angry, "You can't tell me this is an inside joke!" Another crack, and the audience was idly applauding Starscream's technique as a true scream split the air.
Acid Storm blinked again. Nope, the Autobot was still pissed. "Well, not a joke, but it's just," the uncertain hand motions were back, sculpting unfathomable Decepticon ideas in the air. The Rainmaker opened one hand at Jazz, waving at the arena floor with the other. "It's just something we know about."
"It's horrible!"
"No, it's not! Wait," that was revised hurriedly, "right, it sort of is. But it's not like you think!"
The screaming only made Jazz's flat look of unamusement even more forbidding.
"Ugh." Acid Storm put one hand to his helm as if trying to find a way to explain this was driving him to defragment. "I'm…guessing you want to go down there and stop this."
"Yes." The word was clipped. It didn't hint at Jazz's fraying self-control, but it held all the frosty cool of a mech capable of heading Special Operations.
Acid Storm's optics slid sideways, wide and wary. "Ooookay. Uh. Well, you could, but you do know what would happen?"
"They'd kill me." Stark truth. An interfering Autobot in the middle of 600 or more Decepticons? The odds weren't good, peace negotiations or not.
"In all probability, yes. But the one who'd try first is that mech right there." Acid Storm's finger stabbed in the direction of the little teal flyer.
Jazz's face said it all for him: 'The Decepticons hate us that much?' What hope could there be for peace if saving a mech from unfair punishment earned nothing but hatred?
Acid Storm shook his head. Explaining Decepticon thought processes had obviously failed. "Just…trust me, alright? Just watch."
Again, Jazz's face spoke volumes. Trust a Decepticon?
The Rainmaker looked between him and the whipping. "Give it two kliks. Five, max."
"…fine."
The small grounder refolded his arms twice as tightly, armor clamped close and rigid. Acid Storm eyed him the way he'd eye a ticking explosive, but the cloud-mottled green Seeker gingerly settled beside him again. The screams continued. The Autobot blew hot air out, unhappy to be watching a mech in pain, but what was really upsetting him was the audience. Six hundred+ Decepticons were in the tiers, talking and watching and making bets, and it rubbed him the wrong way how totally relaxed they were. It wasn't right. Worse, it didn't make sense!
They'd just watched - even participated in - a unit throwing one of their own out there to be beaten to screaming. A haze of smoke was wafting up from the little teal flyer, but Starscream didn't seem to care. The crowd didn't seem to care. Skywarp had at least reacted to Thundercracker flinging himself into combat, even if he hadn't stopped Starscream from pounding the blue Seeker into scrap metal. Sure, the little teal mech's unit-mates were watching in obvious interest, but even to Jazz's experienced glance, there wasn't a protest present. Body language was attentive, not reluctant or resentful. They'd actively thrown him to torture for no discernible reason, and they were just watching?
For as random as the flyer's selection had been, nobody seemed concerned for their own sakes. If it were true that any one of them could be next, why wasn't there tension in the crowd? The assembled Vosians should be more worried about saving their own wings. Weirder yet, the other mechs who had been 'volunteered' didn't seem nervous. Their units and friends had just tried to get them beaten, but when Jazz located a few standing in the crowd, well, it was weird. Very weird. The teal flyer was screaming under the whip, yet the expressions Jazz saw were hard to define. Not sympathy, or empathy. Definitely not pity or compassion. Some lust, yes, but there was something more laced through it all.
He was getting the disturbing feeling that he was missing something important, here. Because the closest emotion he could pin down was something that might be, could have been, but sort of resembled…envy.
Starscream eventually relented. He tossed the whip aside to one of the noncom officers, who caught it deftly, and returned his attention to the kneeling flyer. "Not bad."
He reached out, tracing a few of the black streaks of scorch marks. The teal mech warbled a strange sound of not-just-pain that had Jazz completely puzzled. The smaller Decepticon arched up into Starscream's scientific prodding, and the Air Commander absently pushed him down like someone would push an overeager pet. The flyer sat back on his thrusters again obediently, but even from this far away, Jazz could see him quivering in a way he most certainly had not been during the actual whipping. Acid Storm gave the Autobot beside him a meaningful look, but Jazz still just didn't get it.
"Not bad at all." The Seeker straightened up and dusted off his hands, nodding to himself. "Dismissed, soldier."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," could be barely heard about the ambient noise, and the teal mech climbed painfully to his feet. He looked a mess. The black marks showed up in terrible swathes of melted burns against brightly-colored plating.
Acid Storm nudged him with an elbow, but Jazz was already paying close attention.
Not as close as the tiers in front of the little flyer. Those mechs were practically breathless in anticipation. Starscream had gone over to the cluster of noncoms, uninterested in the aftermath, but all optics were locked on the beaten mech. Who swayed in place, and Jazz wished he could see his face. The mech's helm turned, surveying the tense rows of fellow flyers watching him like he was the last cube of highgrade at a party. He took a staggering series of steps out of the main arena floor, toward the first tier of observers. His helm turned the other direction. From Jazz's perspective, it looked like he was searching the mechs before him for…something. What?
Finally, he raised an arm and pointed once, twice, three times. The audience tensed, three mechs' optics in particular gaining a sudden gleam of lottery-winning lucky. Fans buzzed. Starscream looked over and seemed unaccountably amused by the byplay. Arm still outstretched, the teal mech flipped his wrist and curled his index finger in a coy Come Hither gesture.
The selected mechs practically dove off the tiers to obey.
Jazz did not get Decepticons. At all. Especially when Starscream strode out of the group of noncom officers with a different whip, testing it against his hand as he walked. "Who's next?"
Pandemonium ensued.
"There. See?" Acid Storm said, satisfied, and he seemed a bit surprised when the blue visor turned up to him looked even more confused than before. At least the anger had evaporated. "…you don't. You don't?"
"I really don't," Jazz agreed somewhat helplessly. He pointed at the large red shuttleformer being currently pulled onto the arena floor by his legs. There were fourteen mechs involved, at seven per leg. The poor mech's fingers were making sckreeeep noises as they were pulled through the rust, and two more audience members leapt down to good-naturedly pick his fingers loose when he got a grip. They had to sidestep the writhing dogpile of happy 'Cons on top of the former test subject. "They don't want to be whipped!"
There was a lack of conviction in that statement. Acid Storm smiled, but the way he smiled made Jazz think of basket-cases and putting up with them. "Of course not. Pain hurts," he informed the Autobot, who gave him a disgruntled glower for that mastery of the obvious. "No, seriously. It does. Even if somebody liked getting hurt, it'd be asking for trouble to admit to it. Every time there's a fight, both sides would claim the other mech 'wanted it'." Yeah, Jazz could see how that would be a nightmare dispute to mediate, violent Decepticon disciplinary tactics or not. "Frag, that'd mess the system up something awful." The Rainmaker grimaced, just imagining it. "Giving a mech what he wants would end in both mechs on report: one for damaging another soldier, and the other for inciting violence. The repair bays would throw them both in a smelter."
"Why would someone want pain?" Jazz asked, low and serious as he turned that idea over in his head. He could think of reasons, but this didn't seem to be matching up with stopgap mental health methodology the Autobots had been forced to come up with during the war. None of Ratchet's patients had ever been happy that they'd needed pain.
Acid Storm gave him a funny look, like he'd just asked a drone the meaning of life. "Because that's just how some mechs are wired, I guess. I don't know. Why do you like what you like?"
It seemed like an honestly puzzled question, and that nagging feeling prodded Jazz again. The real meaning of this conversation was passing him by. "I don't like pain," he said firmly. The crowd applauded as the pile of mechs overloaded down below, hands in each other's armor seams and the teal flyer shrieking an extremely pleased high note as two pairs of hands dug into his whip-scored wings.
"Neither do I," the Rainmaker replied, "but there are times when it still good, you know?" He took one look at Jazz's incomprehension and covered his face with one hand. If Jazz didn't know any better, he'd say he'd managed to embarrass the Seeker. "I can't believe I'm having this discussion with an Autobot."
"I can't believe I'm watching this!" Jazz's gesture took in the idly chatting crowd, the yelping shuttleformer now being flogged, and the teal flyer being helped to his feet by two adoring mechs. The third mech was still sprawled on the ground recovering. Jazz really could not believe he'd just witnessed, er, whatever that'd been.
Acid Storm looked. He looked back at the Autobot standing beside him. It was like they were firing conversational salvos at completely different targets. "I…" He shook his head, and for all that he was sneaky underhanded officer who'd led the Armada for four million years, Jazz could read nothing off him but bafflement. He gave the small saboteur an unconsciously blank look of helpless frustration. "I don't even know where to start. Can't you just - wait? The Air Commander's better at explaining this stuff…"
Oh, Jazz was sure he was. But conversations with Starscream never went according to plan, and he couldn't afford to wait for an opportunity that might never come. "Try me."
Face? Meet palm.
Acid Storm slowly let his hand slid down his face, wiping away indecision. "Right. Fine. I'm not into pain. Like I said, it hurts." He gave Jazz a peeved look when the Autobot saluted Cybertron's newest Captain Obvious. "Oh, shut up. What I mean is that even though I don't like pain, there are times when I can see the appeal. I mean, I don't like to be held down and beaten," the shuttleformer shrieked, "but - alright, my armor's made to repel acid rain, but it doesn't protect me once it's breeched. Which, in combat, happens. More than I'd like but less than you would, I'm sure." Jazz shrugged acknowledgement when the Rainmaker wryly nodded to him. Autobot, after all. "Thing is, post-combat, I usually don't even register in the repair bay queue for a cycle or two. Damage isn't turn-on for me, but the feel of rain inside me is..." His optics took on a distant look. "…hard to describe. It stings and corrodes and it's wet in a way that lubricant or fuel can't feel like. And it's fragging hot. Primus, I can't even tell you how hot it gets me."
Jazz could believe that, however unbelievable it seemed. Acid Storm was alarmingly tranced-out as he tried to describe the sensation, and Jazz could only stare. "It's like - like feeling what I can bring down on everyone's heads, deep down in my chassis, and Primus that's a good pain." He shuddered, coming back to the real world but smiling just a touch lustfully. His fans had kicked on sometime during his daydream, and he sighed hot air. "I could 'face someone right now, in fact." His optics lingered on the Autobot, who made a face back on him.
It wouldn't be diplomatic to say how strange he found Acid Storm's revelation. He could almost wrap his mind around it, but it still didn't make sense. "That isn't the same thing," he said instead, pointing at the shuttleformer being helped to his feet by a laughing group of mechs down in the area. By the color-markers on their forearms, they seemed to be his unit-mates. "He didn't want to be whipped like that."
"I don't want to have my armor breeched, either," the green Seeker said mildly as the shuttleformer transformed with some difficulty, landing in his altmode at the edge of the arena floor. "That doesn't mean I don't enjoy the aftermath sometimes."
Black scorch marks criss-crossed the shuttle's hull. His unit-mates checked him over as if they were about to take off on a mission, but their hands were exploring in an entire unprofessional manner. Transport shuttle, Jazz noted, flicking through his files to match altmode with a designation. The red shuttle's unit milled about outside his hull until the hatch opened and they could stream inside in a disordered chaos of multicolored wings. The hatch resealed, and the group's noisy laughter cut off.
"That isn't the same thing," Jazz insisted. 'Loadbearer,' his files dug up. 'Delta-class transportation, speed rating: 4. Intelligence…'
He scrolled through the file, but it was a standard information packet on any Decepticon soldier. No indication of undue conflict with his unit or commander that could have caused them to drag him down to be beaten. Nothing worth noting on his state of mind, although admittedly, the rank and file of the Armada didn't get as detailed files as the officers.
Down in the arena, Loadbearer rocked back and forth. Just enough to be noticeable.
"No, but I'm not into pain," Acid Storm was saying. "And I'm not into being watched, either." He gave one of the flyers up on the platform with them a meaningful look. "I like to be the one watching."
The soldier had unbroken the unspoken rule on the platform: don't pay attention to the Autobot in their midst. He snapped his optics back down to the arena floor, but now his unit-mates were giving Acid Storm inquiring looks. The corner of his mouth lifted, and they grinned. The spying mech was suddenly pulled into the middle of the unit, and fans began humming.
Jazz was definitely Not Looking. He focused determinedly on Acid Storm, ignoring the steady drone of a powerful flight engine purring on. "You're saying that those mechs," he waved down into the arena, where Starscream was snapping another whip in preparation while a third 'volunteer' sullenly shook himself loose of his unit's hands, "are enjoying this. How can you possibly claim that? Nobody screams in pain when they're enjoying something!"
The sulking mech stomped through the crowd, visibly seething but apparently defiant enough to prefer walking over being manhandled into position. He met Starscream's amused look with a borderline-disrespectful scowl, turned his back, and plopped to his knees. The move had no grace. He radiated resentment as he glared up at his unit, and he made no sound whatsoever when the first lash fell. Crack!
"That is not enjoyment," Jazz pointed out. 'Riprazor. Frontliner. Lengthy disciplinary record on file.' This beating at least made a twisted kind of sense.
"No," Acid Storm agreed. "But it's a classic example of trying to preserve dignity." The mech's hands were fisted on his thighs, and his glare intensified with every whipstrike. His unit was starting to look nervous. "Ten to one he's going to 'face his unit into the ground as soon as the Air Commander's finished with him," he offered casually, and Jazz just gave him a disgusted look. The acid-green Seeker's hands rose in surrender. "O…kay. Right. No betting. Well." He looked back to the show. "He's not enjoying the beating. Slag, I don't know of anyone who really likes getting the metal stripped off them except - heh." He shook his head. "No, I do. There are some mechs who like pain. They don't admit it because, like I said, it could cause problems, but that's the kind of preferences that you find out about when you work with a mech enough. And, well, I think the war's gone on long enough for mechs to know their unit's preferences inside and out by now."
Jazz didn't quite believe him, but he was getting the feeling he didn't dare disbelieve him, either. This was a Decepticon thing. But it sounded vaguely familiar, like he should be recognizing bits and pieces of what Acid Storm was saying.
He wanted to cover his visor with his hands. His processors were spinning too fast, and the heat was making his helm projections ache as the sensors ran through too many refresh cycles in too short a time. There was an edge-of-knowledge feeling nibbling at the fringes of his thoughts, but his processors weren't making the connection. Jazz was a master of making quick decisions based off of tidbits of data and working with information pried out of nooks, crannies, and reluctant informants. Acid Storm wasn't precisely reluctant. Actually, he seemed to be doing his level best to explain - for Decepticons, at least - the obvious.
It was incredibly frustrating.
"I'm not doing a good job at this, am I?" The Rainmaker seemed dismayed by his failure.
"Just…" The Autobot succumbed to the urge to rub one sensor-horn, trying to soothe it. His other hand made little circles in the air. "Tell me what I'm seeing, right there." The flyer under the lash had started flinching with each crack, but he still stubbornly refused to cry out. "All I see is a mech being tortured for the sick entertainment of a crowd which apparently likes to see pain be inflicted on the undeserving."
When the Seeker didn't start talking after a klik of silence, Jazz looked up.
Acid Storm's face was a priceless picture. It could be framed as art. Title of 'Rainmaker Handed a Bucketful of Misunderstandings.'
"…what'd I say?" the saboteur asked, more resigned than wary. He hadn't gotten as far as he had by not recognizing when he'd stuck his foot in it.
Acid Storm slowly shook his head. "What didn't you say?" he asked back, and his expression slid into something less WHAT. No. and more I Don't Even. "I…can't you just wait for Starscream to explain this?" His optics looked slightly hunted. "Please?"
That look was one Jazz's operative training picked up on. Even in this situation, going in for the kill was automatic. "No. You're here. I'm here. Explain this!" Uh…less of an order would probably be wise. Autobot and Decepticon, here. "Please," he tacked on for politeness' sake. And for the sake of diplomacy: "For the purpose of ending our Great War."
The Rainmaker turned wide optics on him, somewhere between astounded at his audacity and offended by the order. Rapid thought caught up to him a moment later - hello? Autobot officer present, still capable of making Very Big Trouble? Megatron most unhappy? - and he slumped. "Frag my life," he muttered.
Informant pinned. Time to make it easier for him to blurt out any and all information. Jazz offered equally helpless hands in a companionable shrug, suddenly just another mech sympathizing with the Decepticon's headache. It would be so easy to tell this little black-and-white mech all his problems, right? "I know what you mean." He smiled self-deprecatingly. "Except that I don't know what you mean, so would you mind explaining it? Again?"
That earned him a surly look. "Nobody," Acid Storm bit out, "is being tortured."
Jazz looked down at the way Starscream was walking around the kneeling mech, trying to decide on the next place to whip. "Really."
"Really." Acid Storm's mouth tightened. "I know you Autobots probably think a whip is horrible, terrible, and the end of the world," Jazz tilted his visor at him; exaggeration much? "but we're warbuilds. The whip is a disciplinary tool, not a torture tool. If I wanted to torture someone, I'd get out the electrodes and drainers. 40,000 volts of electricity or some starvation? That's torture!"
It dawned on the Autobot that Acid Storm actually seemed kind of offended. He took a half-step back from the larger mech, just in case, but the Rainmaker was getting too into his rant to notice.
"How weak do you think we are? We're designed to be sent into battle, not fall into statis lock because somebody beats us a few times with an electro-whip!"
"That's not 'a few times'," Jazz put in cautiously, nodding down into the arena. Starscream had finally wrung an honest cry from the flyer, and the audience was applauding.
Acid Storm flung his hands up in exasperation. "It's surface damage. Sure, it hurts, but that's because we have pain sensors. It's not going to send him offline!" He gave Jazz a suddenly shrewd look. "You're a spy. How are Decepticons executed?"
He didn't want to admit to how much information Autobot spies had really gathered, but Jazz could offer something in return for Acid Storm's spill of information. "A shot to the head or spark," he said, reaching for neutrality. "When it's not straight execution, there've been reports of disabling motor functions and opening major fuel lines. Shockwave's notorious for sending mechs to the smelter pits alive." A sickening practice that had haunted the Autobot rebel cells on Cybertron.
But Shockwave's subcommander was nodding, seemingly satisfied by his boss' work. "Now that's real torture," he said approvingly. "Melting Autobots alive has been our best - ah." Oops. "Sorry." He glanced aside, to the other side of the platform where the unit was still molesting their nosy soldier, as if hoping it would distract the Autobot from his faux pas. It failed. The Autobot's steely gaze was attempting to bore a hole in the side of his head. "I've seen mechs beaten to death, but it takes a really long time. Usually armor plates are stripped off to expose vital systems before the beating starts, and that's a torture of prolonged execution. And it's not that common." He fidgeted. The glare hadn't faltered, despite the attempt to shift back to topic. "Look, I said I was sorry for bringing it up, but I can't change the past!"
"You don't have to sound quite so pleased about it," Jazz spat, but his ire was subsiding. Getting angry over war history could be a full-time occupation. They were relearning patience and toleration, but the greatest roadblock on the path to peace was forgiveness. Or at least forgetfulness. "You can't tell me an electro-whip isn't tool of torture. It's been used in interrogation - "
Acid Storm snorted through his intakes, deliberately interrupting him. "Most Autobots aren't warbuilds," he said dismissively. "Of course we use it on you."
"I meant we've used it," Jazz snapped back, and Acid Storm winced a little at the pointed use of past tense.
"Ah…yeah." The Rainmaker shook his wings as if to resettle them. "Not all Decepticons are warbuilds, you know. Besides," he risked a glance at the Autobot, "an Autobot beating a Decepticon for information is more likely a psychological tool than physical torture. It's pounding in that there's no escape, and worse could be done. Held helpless and drilled for information while someone disciplines you - "
"That's kind of hot," a flyer walking behind them said, then did a doubletake as he registered just whose conversation he'd commented on. "Uh. Sorry, sir. I, uh, didn't mean to, uh, interrupt." The two officers turned and glared in equal measure. "Or, um, overhear?" Embarrassment for his own stupidity and panic for torqueing Acid Storm flashed over the unfortunate Decepticon's face. "I didn't hear anything important, I swear!"
"Don't you have somewhere to be?" the Rainmaker snarled. "Like fetching me your ration of energon, for instance."
The poor mech gave his superior officer the same look petro-rabbits gave turbo-foxes when cornered. "Yes, sir, right away, sir!" He turned on a thruster and fled.
"I did not just hear that," Jazz said flatly. "He did not just say that."
"He did." The interruption had broken the tension, at least, and Acid Storm gave him a cheeky grin. "What, nobody in the Autobots has a power kink?"
That stuttered through Jazz's head, trying to make connections and just failing. "What do you mean?" he asked, and the question came out weak.
The Rainmaker actually laughed, he was so incredulous. "You're telling me nobody in your whole faction wants to be tied up or ordered around?"
Jazz knew his jaw was dropping, but he just couldn't stop it. Gravity had sheer ridiculous deviancy helping it at the moment. "I…don't get it."
His disconcertment seemed to entertain Acid Storm, anyway. "This is so weird!" he chuckled, and shook his head, optics lighting brightly with the kind of glee Jazz was used to seeing from Skywarp. Who, thank Primus, was still occupied on the arena floor instead of up on the platform making Jazz's reality any stranger. "Lemme give you an example. You know Sunstorm's a few files short of a full download, right?"
"Right," the Autobot drew out guardedly. "He thinks he's a prophet of Primus."
"Or something," Acid Storm agreed. "Chosen, avatar, hand-puppet, I don't know what all." His hands upturned, asking for help from on high dealing with the mech. "All I know is that one day Shockwave foisted this religion-crazy clone off on me to deal with, and frag if anyone else wanted to contract with him. I had to find someone able to contain him, and nobody knew where to even start. I mean, it's bad enough he bleeds electromagnetic radiation when his control slips." He paused. "Or when he's angry." Another pause. "Or most of the time, really. But that was kind of the problem. At least with a transfer, I could have asked his last unit what gets his engines going and built on that, but Sunstorm was just too new. Nobody had a slagging clue what he liked, and none of us could get close enough to find out. But!" He held up a hand in a 'wait for it' gesture when Jazz seemed about to interrupt. "Shockwave had an idea. Your Prime's the Matrix-Bearer, right? That's sort of the Grand High Poohbah of Primus on Cybertron."
"Stop using Earth terms you don't understand."
Acid Storm deflated a little. "I thought I got that one right."
"You did." Jazz gave him a quelling look. "But it's still wrong." Equating Optimus Prime with a Flintstones' character could never be right. Cartoon titles just weren't serious enough. Although it did serve to show just how far Earth popular culture had weaseled through even the Decepticon ranks.
"Uh…okay." Confusion flickered briefly across the Rainmaker's face before it was dismissed in favor of continued mockery of Sunstorm. Intel had indicated the other two Rainmakers didn't particularly like their third wingmate, but Jazz was getting the first-hand account. It was fascinating, in a train-wreck kind of way. "Anyway. So Shockwave put together a sound-splice of Prime's voice."
"Oh, rust me." The Autobot put his head in his hands, giving in. The dignity of his rank lost out before the need to hide his face right now. Just - wow. The things he was learning about the Decepticons. "Let me guess: it said something like, 'Work yourself to overload'."
The Rainmaker positively sparkled with mirth. Apparently, embarrassing the Autobot was his new favorite game. "Close. It just said, 'Overload now'." He shook his head. "Bolt-head overloaded on the spot. Strangest thing I've ever seen." But funny, if his continued silly grin was anything to go by. "Turns out Sunstorm has an authority kink a kil wide. Once we knew that, Slipstream had him on his knees so fast I never even saw the negotiations." The silly grin got wider when slack-jaw disease revisited Jazz. The smaller mech's visor appeared over his hands like a shocked blue dawn, and the mottled-green Seeker grinned back at it. "Slipstream's got the other end of the powerplay fetish. She likes to give the orders. And be prayed to and served and worshiped, since that's apparently what Sunstorm's really into." The grin was attempting to take over Acid Storm's head. "You Autobots ever want to infiltrate something, break into his quarters. He rebuilt it into a shrine."
Jazz didn't want to know. He really didn't. But he did. "What's your part of the trine-contract?" he asked, unable to stop himself.
The grin turned sly and dark. "Oh, I don't have a power kink. Like I said, I like to watch." The Autobot's blue visor was wide and pale, staring up at the Seeker like he was picturing things little innocent Autobots usually didn't. Right then, Jazz looked nothing like the war-hardened Head of Special Operations. Which only loosened Acid Storm's tongue further. "I have the wingleader role, but Sunstorm's contract to me is like Skywarp's is to Thundercracker: I have control over him, not the other way around. Slipstream's the one who keeps him in line. She's the reason we don't have a violent maniac loose in the barracks preaching," his pitch changed to a mocking tone, "Primus' holy scripture."
"She doesn't control him on the battlefield, apparently." 'Violent maniac' sounded about right. Sunstorm was a Seeker nobody wanted to see let loose on the battlefield. The klik he joined the Rainmaker in battle instead of seeding the clouds for acid rain, even the Decepticons ran for cover. He targeted Autobots first, but he didn't seem to mind if his own side got in the way.
"Not my fault 'Autobots are heathens'," Acid Storm's voice kept the mocking imitation of Sunstorm's battle cry. "The ceasefire's really had him riled because, well, Matrix-Bearer or Vos?" He raised two hands and weighed the separate issues. "How can he choose? I'm surprised he got his head sorted enough to challenge today. Slipstream's been just waiting for him to start petitioning to be your Prime's first religious acolyte."
Well, there was one more thing to warn the other Autobots about. Rumor had it that temples were starting up again, but the central focus of those who worshiped Primus was the Matrix. How long before religion started to become an issue in the peace process? That could complicate things fast.
Jazz forcibly dragged the conversation back on topic. "That." He pointed at the mech proudly staggering to his feet, refusing all aid. Starscream dug hard fingers into a particularly deep scoring, and the mech arched in pain - but didn't scream. The Air Commander looked impressed and said something too low to be heard where Jazz stood. "That is still torture."
"No." Acid Storm hesitated. "Maybe? Hold on." He turned and waited until the flyer standing just out of audio-range anxiously offered him four cubes of standard ration-grade. The Rainmaker immediately handed them to Jazz, who fumbled for a split second in surprise. "You," Acid Storm said to the flyer. "Cynokline, correct? 85th Division, 4th Wing." Poor Cynokline hunched his shoulders guiltily and nodded. He looked like he expected to be written up on report for interrupting earlier, but Acid Storm just nodded back. "What do you like in the berth?" The flyer's orange optics widened into saucers of shock. His superior officer frowned. "What's your favorite way to interface?"
"Don't make him answer that!" Jazz hissed, appalled, straightening up from putting the cubes down like someone had goosed him.
Acid Storm gave him a puzzled glance. "What? Why not?"
"Altmode," Cynokline said excitedly, and his fans kicked on with a loud whirrrrrr. "Grounded, and locked into my altmode."
The green Seeker's attention returned to him. "What if I punched a chain through your wings and chained you down into the middle of the Tower runway where everyone could see you, then 'faced you?"
Sunstorm seeing the holy light of Primus looked less enlightened than the Decepticon standing before Acid Storm. "Guh."
"It'd hurt," Acid Storm warned him solemnly. Jazz's composure gave up the ghost, and he just stared at the two Decepticons. "Six or seven chains per wing. Medical will pitch a royal fit afterward for the way I'd tear into your sensor network doing it." The Rainmaker reached out and ran an assessing hand down the swept-back wings adorning the Cynokline's upper arms. "I'd want them fastened around each major support strut, and winched down so tight your transformation hinges bent. It'd take at least a cycle to set up properly, and by then half the Tower garrison would be out watching you cry and squirm as the chain hooks tear through your plating." Fans were burring with the strain, they were spinning so fast. When Jazz glanced down, he saw that the grinding sound was indeed the soldier's turbines turning against the ground. Acid Storm drew closer, hand closing around one wingtip and voice lowering to an intimate whisper. "Maybe I'd bring the Autobot along. Let him do the chaining. Have him ask you all kinds of…questions."
His tone made the word dirty and suggestive, and Jazz was shocked further when the flyer's mask quivered. It was the same quiver Prime's mask gave when interface cables clicked home, and that was just wrong.
"Would you like that?" Acid Storm whispered, and Cynokline nearly gave himself whiplash, he nodded so quickly.
"Yessir!" Orange optics were almost reverent, now, wide and wildly aroused.
Acid Storm drew back, satisfied. "Good. Be on the Tower runway," his optics went absent, checking schedules, "two duty shifts from now." His optics refocused. "Bring the chains." Speechless, Cynokline darted a hopeful look at the small Autobot. Acid Storm smirked. "I said 'maybe,' didn't I?"
"Yessir!" The soldier turned, then stumbled over his own thrusters as he whipped back around to clumsily salute. "Thank you, sir!" He turned again and ran off.
"There." Acid Storm looked down at the Autobot gaping after the flyer and nodded smartly. "You tell me: torture or pleasure?"
Jazz forced a blink, tearing his visor away and making his jaw function again. "You're…you're really going to..?"
"Sure. It'll be fun." A wink flashed. "Want to help make his vorn?"
"No."
"Aw, come on, for peace? Just show up for a while and ask a few questions like, 'Do you like it when I put my fingers up your - '"
"No!"
"He'll be so disappointed." Acid Storm sounded disappointed himself.
"I can't believe you," Jazz said, but there was no force behind the despairing mutter. The saboteur shook his head and tried to analyze what he'd just witnessed. "You're going to put holes in another mech for fun, and he's going to let you."
"That…wasn't the point of that," the Rainmaker said, and Jazz had the abrupt feeling that they were misfiring words again. Acid Storm seemed taken aback. "He doesn't want me to hurt him any more than that soldier," he indicated the newest test 'volunteer' trying to stay still under the lash, "wants to be beaten. But I know that he does want to be locked into his altmode and grounded, so I know he likes it when he can't stop his 'facing partner. I just," the vividly green Seeker opened his hands, trying to explain, "expanded on that from the comment he made before. And now I know that he does want to be watched, and he really likes being helpless. Throwing in you asking him questions was just a whim, but apparently he's got more than a bit of a power kink." That seemed to be all the explanation he could manage for that, and he seemed puzzled when Jazz just continued to look at him. "We're warbuilds. We're built for combat. We tend to like power games."
He gave the Autobot a look that asked for understanding. "The chains were just to prove to you that pain's a…way to get what he wants? A means to an end. I mean, I'll enjoy watching him overload over and over again while I work on him, and he'll enjoy having everyone's attention on him. The chains are, um, props. They'll hurt, but he's going to love it so much he won't care. It's like," his hands sawed air, taking the concept to pieces as he tried to explain, "the airshows in Vos. Orns and orns of showing off, or watching everybody else show off. Stunt flying and trick shots and parade formations, and mechs used to push themselves to malfunction. It wasn't because they wanted to crash or hurt themselves by doing too much. They just wanted to make sure they were the ones everyone watched."
The flyer Starscream was beating screamed, and it was an peculiarly elated sound for how piteous the mech looked kneeling in the rust. Acid Storm's oddly-pleading look only intensified. "I'm not going to do anything he won't want, Jazz. Starscream - the Air Commander - he'd never hold me down and whip me unless it was punishment, because I'm not into that. I like to watch, not...that." He nodded into the arena. "I hate being restrained, even if it's by a superior officer. The only mech I've ever really had an authority kink for was Lord Megatron, and I think everybody's got that one." He shivered, happily imagining big black hands pinning him to the berth and ordering him to overload.
Jazz could see him imagining it. It was embarrassing.
"You're telling me," he said slowly, because Primus alive this was the last conversation he ever wanted to have with anyone, much less a Decepticon, "that those mechs down there…want to be hurt. Because of the attention."
One red optic squinted, trying to parse the sentence correctly. "…yes. In a way. I don't know if some of them actually like the pain or not, but their units would know. And they'd never admit it to an outsider, because it'd be an exploitable weakness."
Oi, this was hurting his head. Badly. Yet it was starting to make a bizarre sort of sense at the very fringes of thought where he couldn't quite see it. "Instead, their units throw them out into an arena to be whipped," Jazz said, wiping a hand down his face, "because then it doesn't look like they want it. And even if they don't want the pain, they want everyone to be looking at them."
Acid Storm hesitated, thinking that over. "Basically, yes?"
"You don't sound very certain."
"I really don't think you understand what's going on here," the Decepticon said, and that helpless note was back in his voice. "I'm not explaining this right or something." And by 'something,' it was heavily implied that Jazz was being denser than lead. Were all Autobots like this? "Look, you're right," he said finally, giving up on that line of thought. "Most of them don't like getting beaten. But the ones who do are getting whipped by our Air Commander, so nobody's getting brought up on charges. They win. The ones who don't likely are going to get the best interfacing of their lives after the beating, because they're so revved up on attention or power kinks or - or, I don't even know. Pride, I suppose, for not being a weakling in front of everyone and making too much of a fuss under the lash."
Starscream had another whip in hand, this one long and overcharged, and he was taking his time selecting the next 'volunteer.' Jazz looked down at him, at the audience clamoring for his attention, and the saboteur could almost get it. He could almost understand, because the arrogant slagger grandstanding down below was the last Emirate of Vos, the Second-in-Command of the Decepticons, and the Air Commander. It was hard to find a more powerful mech in the optics of the Decepticons gathered here.
The idea of fetishisizing rank snagged something at the back of his databanks, and Jazz let it mull.
There were so many information threads criss-crossing his cortex now that his threat assessment and information processors were passing things back and forth depending on what he was looking at. Which, at the moment, was two flyers at his feet. One had the other pressed against the rough wall of rubble that formed the platform base; the pinned flyer only struggled to get closer. They were both groping each other intently, and it was so strange. Not just the way they were doing it public, but how easily they were pulling gasps and moans out of each other. He could theoretically do the same, but the sheer amount of experience every mech here apparently had flustered him.
Jazz averted his visor, embarrassed, and his gaze landed squarely on two of the unit sharing the platform with him. A large red flyer with yellow pinstripes on his heel-thrusters had a relatively tiny Seeker facedown in the rust as he systematically worked over the mech's blue-and-black wings. The smaller Decepticon squeaked and bucked, subsiding with a groan when the red flyer reared up only enough to rap him sharply between the wings. The Autobot watching them had to freeze his face to stop from reacting. The groaning continued, taking on a blissful overtone as the larger 'Con reduced the Seeker to squirming. The wriggling pushed up into the hands dominating him, however, and Jazz had no idea why. He just didn't get it.
Tactile interfacing was so different than hardline, and he was entirely out of his depth trying to talk about it. Hardline cabling was all about equality. It was about synchronizing data streams until there was no rank or war or anything but two mechs deeply meshed together below the level of conscious thought. It was like linking two widely unequal computers: the access ports buffered data flow until neither computer could have more or less access and therefore have a stronger/weaker presence in the interface. Firewalls could partition off entire processors and data archives, but not reduce the exchange rate.
It was always possible to tamper with that by disabling cables or tampering with the interface docks. Force-downloads were done that way, hooking up one-sided so there was no interface, only access. It was an awful way to twist something that should be wonderful into mindrape.
Wasn't that the main concern he held?
"What if they don't want it?" he asked quietly, turning his visor back to watching Starscream's newest victim almost get loose before he was tossed into the arena. The groaning to one side sounded happy, but who was he to judge that? He was a SpecOps operative. He knew all about feigning reactions to fool someone. "There's physical restraint as well as coercion by rank and peer pressure going on down there. What if that mech you're going to chain down doesn't dare say no to you?"
There was a moment of silence. Jazz raised his visor, and there was that weird feeling again. This felt like playing a game of Battleship, only they were using two entirely separate pegboards. Instead of hitting the Decepticon's conversation-submarine, every guess was a miss.
"I don't think I understand," Acid Storm said, and his face had taken an atypical look of worry. "Why would Cynokline do that?"
Miss. "You're his superior officer. You could abuse your power over him if he denied you."
The look deepened. "…what?"
Miss again. The Autobot and the Decepticon just stood there, looking at each other. Were they even playing the same boardgame? The way this conversation was going, Jazz had the instructions to CandyLand and Acid Storm was going by the rules of Monopoly.
Down in the arena, Starscream had the soldier flat on his face as the whip snapped out. The mech jerked and grunted under the lash. Skywarp sauntered away from watching his wingleader play and headed over toward his ex-wingmate. His smile was most unpleasant.
Knock Out had almost finished sealing up the torn rebar in Thundercracker's chest, but the blue Seeker wasn't even paying attention to the medic molesting him in the name of 'repairs'. He stared instead at the whipping, mesmerized and wings twitching in time with every crack. The two soldiers designated to bind him had hauled him back to sit on his thrusters once Knock Out had pulled out enough melted slag in his left leg to allow the knee joint to bend. He probably wouldn't be able to straighten it again, and there was definitely no way that sitting on his shredded turbine could be anything but painful, but that hardly mattered right now. He hadn't been positioned for comfort. They'd forced his wings back and up, shoving a bar horizontally beneath the leading edges. His wrists were cuffed across his lower torso in front of him, but his elbows were bent back around the bar behind him. Not only had it let them secure his arms, but it arched his back slightly while making him tip forward to keep from dislocating his upper wing-hinges.
It was an effective way of disabling transformation and flight. Incidentally, it also exposed his back to whatever his captors wished.
Skywarp stood watching Knock Out 'work' for a klik before him shoving him out of the way. Thundercracker's functional optic snapped toward him, and the unpleasant smile became quite wicked.
"How does Cynokline know you won't make him 'face with you?" Jazz asked, and his voice had gone quieter yet.
From the look on Acid Storm's face, not only had the saboteur's salvo missed the boats and pegboard, he'd also missed the table and possibly fired in the wrong direction entirely. "What are you talking about? No, wait," he held up a hand and shook his head, "I get what you're saying, but, I mean…why would I do that?" The Autobot's blue visor blinked, but the Rainmaker looked even more confused than Jazz. "Why would I want to frag someone who didn't want me?"
Skywarp spoke to the tied Seeker, who seemed to shrink into himself a bit. Thundercracker dipped his chin in a resigned nod and shifted about. The upper half of his left pelvic join was a blasted ruin of half-melted slag, but he managed to muscle his knees apart. Skywarp used a foot to nudge the closest knee, demanding it spread further, and the bound mech had no choice but to comply.
Jazz gave Acid Storm an openly doubtful look. "You must be joking."
Acid Storm's optics narrowed, and he looked a little ill. "What…what exactly happened while you were on Earth? I know Vortex is a sick freak, but he was under two layers of lockdown, wasn't he?" The Seeker's nausea seemed to grow when Jazz's face went blank. "That newbie truckformer in the Menasor gestalt didn't get someone, did he? I heard he's rough, but, well, nobody said anything about being forced."
Someone had let Jazz loose on the BattleShip board with a rowboat and a pingpong ball gun. He was woefully underequipped for this conversation. "Uh…no, not that I know of."
"Then who?" It really seemed to be bothering Acid Storm. His wings were steadily hiking higher as he became more agitated. "Was it Vortex? What did he do?"
Wait, what? "Vortex force-downloaded anyone captured long enough for it," Jazz said slowly, wondering if he was being played for a fool.
That was dismissed with a wave of a hand. "Of course he did. He's an interrogator; it's his job. But he's not supposed to be able to unlock his interface cables for anything less than an official interrogation. Only his commander and the Constructicons have the codes for that." Acid Storm flicked an uneasy glance over the small Autobot as if checking for damage. "He…he didn't..?"
"Are we talking about the same thing?" Jazz ventured carefully. "Rape?"
Even the word made the Decepticon's unease spike. "Yes. Was it the truck? Uh, what's his name, Motorfaster?"
"Motormaster." A shake of the head, and Jazz blinked his optical and audio systems through a full reset. Threat assessment was trying without much success to figure out where and when the conversation had left an area he understood. This was CandyLand vs. Monopoly, alright. "Nobody was raped on Earth!"
"Then what..?" Confusion had returned full-force, and Acid Storm's flaps and slats were going through their extensions as he gave the Autobot a puzzled glare. "I don't understand. Where do you get off calling the Decepticons rapists?"
Jazz drew himself up, fiercely indignant. What the frag did he mean -
A subprocessor kicked him in the back of the cortex. It rewound the conversation a bit, and suddenly, the saboteur's self-righteous outrage burnt itself out in a puff of realization.
- oh.
Huh. He kind of had.
And the longer he thought about it, the more illogical that statement became. Because that same subprocessor that'd stopped him was speed-searching incident report in a quest to back up a conclusion that seemed obvious. Obvious, but yet it was failing to turn up one specific keyword. The Ark crew had spent over 50 years on Earth - over half a vorn with the best and worst of the Decepticon forces - and the keyword search found evidence of threats, harassment, torture, force-downloads for information, and even some groping and verbal intent. What it didn't find was that one keyword. 'Rape' was distinctly missing.
His subprocessor began decompressing archived reports from before the Ark launched, but Jazz had a tank-sinking feeling it wasn't going to find that missing word. Had he jumped to a conclusion with no evidence to support it? How had that happened?
Okay, it wasn't proof, but there was one thing that'd contributed. He could at least bring it up while the search continued running on his archives. "Skywarp keeps threatening the Aerialbots - " Jazz started, and Acid Storm's engine growled.
"Skywarp!" he bellowed.
The purple-and-black Seeker had just settled to one knee between Thundercracker's spread thighs, and he almost fell over when Acid Storm shouted his name. "What?!" he yelled back, righting himself. Thundercracker kept his head turned away from the platform, apparently too humiliated to even look up at either Acid Storm or Jazz.
"Are you still trine-contracted to the Air Commander?!"
"Yeah! Why?!"
"Nevermind!" Acid Storm turned, disgusted, back to Jazz. "Let me fill you in on Skywarp's contract, Autobot. He's got no concept of boundaries, so Starscream bargained hard to control him as much as possible. His contract explicitly states he can't frag around outside the trine without prior approval. If he's been 'facing the baby jets, tell me now, and Starscream will have him out so fast his wings'll lose paint." He waited. Jazz stared. "Well?" More staring. Skywarp had a Starscream chastity belt? "Has he ever done more than talk?" the green Seeker probed impatiently. "I don't mean a little roughing up. Has he ever assaulted an Autobot sexually?"
The subprocessor pinged search completion. The keyword still hadn't turned up. "No," Jazz said, soft and disbelieving. His spark squeezed uncomfortably in his chest, and it was becoming hard to keep his vents open. His systems were heading toward total upset. This…this was wrong.
This was a common assumption, and it was wrong.
Dear Primus. Jazz had no clue how he himself had come to believe what the reports were failing to support. The Autobots assumed that the Decepticons grabbed and took whoever they wanted, yet there were no incident reports saying they took Autobots, who were the biggest, most obviously vulnerable targets available in war. He was the Head of Special Operations, one of the largest sources of vital information for the Autobot faction as a whole, and he'd held onto a wrong conclusion the entirety of the war. The whole war, he'd been analyzing everything his agents and operatives gave him about Decepticons personnel and practices through the assumption that the weak had no protection. That they were exploited in every way possible, and only stayed in the faction out of fear or fanaticism.
He'd despised the Decepticons for how they treated each other, and…and he'd looked upon the courtship proposition as highly suspicious because the Decepticons were deplorable for what they did to each other. How could contract negotiations be taken seriously if it happened among Decepticons? Everyone knew what Decepticons were like. Everyone knew. Right?
The assumption was that the Decepticons had a rape culture. Nothing could be sacred, and nothing was safe.
Looking out over the arena, the inside of Jazz's head suddenly felt wodgy as that assumption began to overturn. The Autobots knew nothing.
Starscream was standing over his latest test subject, saying something that had the nearest tiers applauding. The mech at his feet was marked in stripes of burnt black, but he was also nodding eagerly. Skywarp was kneeling between Thundercracker's legs, and two fingers were stroking into the hip joints. The blue Seeker was beginning to writhe, just slightly. Skywarp was paying ardent attention to everything but the panel exposed by Thundercracker's spread knees. That panel usually was held between a mech's thighs, under constant shifting pressure as the hip joints moved, but now it was open to nothing but air. Skywarp stroked around and under and over it, but didn't touch it. The plating between Jazz's legs ached to watch.
He still didn't understand what he was watching, but he did understand that he didn't understand. And that knowledge was frightening.
"What, just because we're warbuilds we're a bunch of rapists?" Acid Storm was saying bitterly, and the saboteur couldn't even say that bitterness was misdirected. "This is the same slagging waste scrap the Senators used to spout when they set up that Pit-slag Enforcer Code in Vos. We are not dumb beasts killing each other for fun, fraggit!"
A harsh sound of compacted hate grated through the air, and the Rainmaker looked like he wanted to hit someone with the hand he raised. "Every one of those mechs," his finger stabbed air, pointing toward Starscream's testing area, "every single one has been in constant comm. contact with his unit. I know. I have the override codes, and I've been tracking the network. If things had gone too far, somebody would have said something to me, and I would have said something to Starscream. We know what 'no' means, Autobot." He made the faction sound like a curse. "Do you have any idea what kind of damage Decepticons could do if someone tried rape in the ranks? It's not like anyone could claim the victim wanted it, and a rapist would have to kill his victim to keep charges from being brought against him. I don't care what rank he had; I'd execute the slagger myself if the charge were valid!"
The black-and-white grounder couldn't meet the glare trying to incinerate him on the spot. "We talk about what we like. Can you say the same?" The mottled-green Seeker glowered resentfully, and once again, Jazz was struck speechless. "I got the briefing on Autobot 'facing practices, and I couldn't make wings or tainfins of it. You don't ask permission. You don't negotiate. You don't discuss what's allowed or not allowed. You don't even talk directly to someone you'd like to frag. You sputtered like a flooded engine when I asked Cynokline about what he liked in the berth! What, do Autobots never talk about interfacing? Do you just sneak around and swap cables like you're ashamed of it? How do you control that slag? What if someone gets hurt? How can you tell who's at fault for that if nobody said anything before fragging?!"
"It's not like that," Jazz said hoarsely, but for the life of him, he couldn't find a way to explain what came so naturally in the Autobot ranks. The sense of companionship, of belonging, of knowing that no matter the military rank, they were all equal…
He was beginning to sympathize with Acid Storm's earlier problem explaining things.
"No?" Now the Rainmaker was the ruthless one, pressuring for answers as his informant fidgeted uncomfortably. "So what do you like, Jazz? Do you like to be held down? Do you like to be watched?" His smile was hard and cold as the Autobot took a step back, visor wide. "Does spinning your tires in rootmode make you hot, or do you like to race in your altmode until winner takes all? Can I cop a feel - ?"
"No!" Jazz blurted, taking another step backward when the Rainmaker actually raised a hand. His feet landed in a combat-ready stance, and although his voice wasn't exactly steady, it was more demand than panic. "Don't touch me!"
The Decepticon stopped dead, and Jazz suffered sudden vertigo as he remembered another Decepticon stopping like a thrown switch. And two Constructicons protesting that they'd asked permission, of course they'd asked permission, as if it'd never occurred to them that consent were something optional. Starscream's face when he'd thought Ratchet hadn't been given a choice.
Oh, Primus. By all that was holy, Primus, help him understand this situation, because Jazz could feel something teetering on the edge of falling, and he was very afraid it was peace.
Acid Storm's intakes reversed and blew impotent rage out. He turned abruptly to the side and scanned the nearest group of flyers. "You!" he pointed at a soldier, who jumped in shock at being singled out. "Get over here!"
"Sir?" The Decepticon grunt scuttled over, glancing at the Autobot nervously before focusing on his superior officer.
"Describe how your wingmates like to interface," Acid Storm ordered grimly, and Jazz's systems hiccupped in chagrin.
The mech gave Jazz another glance, this time more wary than nervous. It only served to remind the Autobot that he was an intruder here. "Sir, with all due respect, that's confidential information."
"You're not filing a blasted report with the Prime himself," the Rainmaker snapped. "Giving away one wing's personal preferences will not weaken the whole Armada. Now talk!"
"Yessir!" The flyer clicked to attention. "Echozone likes to be chased. The better the hunt, the better the 'facing. He doesn't like to be hurt, but he likes to be cornered. Usually, we manage to get him cornered in our quarters so we have a berth, but he kind of enjoys 'facing where someone could find us. Haven't been caught yet, sir, so I don't know if he actually wants to be watched or not. We've got a clause in the contract covering default assumption of blame, though, so me and Downdraft are waiting to try it when Echozone's got some credits saved up. We've got a unit commander - Air On? Know him? Yeah. He's kinda a stuck gear about you-bust-it, you-buy-it for the common room furniture, and me 'n' Downdraft got plans for the table."
"Downdraft's shyer but touchier. He likes to be polished until he overloads…"
No wonder Jazz had never heard anything about supposedly common interfacing practices, if that's how the information was handled. Verbal confidential information, exchanged freely among fragging buddies? Contract negotiations done between overloads? Special Operations collected Decepticon gossip for relevant war information. Dirty talk about interfacing habits hadn't qualified.
Hideously uncomfortable with the topic or not, Jazz attentively took notes.
Below in the arena, someone was screaming again. Skywarp had his head bent forward, murmuring into Thundercracker's audio as the blue Seeker's hips twisted, trying to follow the teasing fingers touching everywhere but one that one exposed area. That made Jazz's thighs clamp together and his tank churn, but by the time the soldier finished reporting, the Autobot's head was reeling anyway.
It wasn't just the massive amount of detailed information. The astonishing part was that this was clearly a report that had been made before. The wingmates had specific codes for interfacing in and out of their trine, letting each other know what should be said or done at any point in time. That was part of their contract. That had been negotiated and renegotiated as the trine was transferred from unit to unit. And this was information that had been reported, clearly and concisely, in a matter-of-fact voice that had Jazz embarrassed for being embarrassed.
He honestly could not remember the last time he'd asked his partner flat-out, "Do you want to cross cables?" Part of it was because the Ark crew knew each other so well that a certain turn of phrase or gesture meant the same thing, but…at the same time, he had to take a step back and look at his embarrassment objectively. The idea of asking - no euphemisms, no interpreting coquettish behavior, no trying to slip it in under a sexy touch, no guessing at the real meaning of a sidelong look - had his fuel pump skipping with pure unease. Bluntly asking seemed rude, which was utterly bizarre in and of itself. Asking consent couldn't be wrong. It wasn't always right, but it was never wrong.
Jazz numbly stood there listening to a soldier - a Decepticon soldier! - laying out the foundations for a whole society based on consent, and his spark hurt.
He needed to talk to the other Autobots. This needed to be explained to everyone, like whoa. The Autobots had been playing BattleShip by the rules of CandyLand, but the Decepticons had been outside wondering what was with the boardgames. And somebody, hopefully somebody better with words, needed to explain Autobot interfacing practices to the Decepticons in turn.
When Acid Storm dismissed the flyer and turned his anger back on the Autobot, he seemed surprised by the almost apologetic cast to the blue visor. "Do I need to call someone else over here?" the Rainmaker asked stiffly, every bit a Decepticon officer nursing wounded pride.
"No, thank you," Jazz said quietly. "I get the point, I think." Although he wasn't really sure of that, but by Ironhide's ammo stash, he was going to try until he did. He was the Head of Special Operations. It was his job to collect accurate information. This had been a huge blindspot for the Autobots for the course of an entire war. Seeing things correctly had to begin here and now.
Jazz's gaze drifted toward Starscream's distant form, and under the hurt, under the embarrassment and confusion, his spark still gave a giddy swirl. If the Decepticons put that much time and effort into negotiating tactile interfacing, what were they putting into negotiating contracts? If everything in Decepticon culture was based on asking permission and never assuming consent, what did that say about the peace treaty?
Maybe it was time the Autobots started listening to their terms.
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End Pt. 13
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iA/N: Thank you for the reviews./i