Coming to Terms

by Bibliotecaria.D

The Decepticons decide to do their part to cement the fragile peace. Now the Autobots have to come to terms with culture clash, interfacing kinks, and rubber chickens. Jazz can only hope these things aren't somehow connected.

23. Pt 23 Bonus Scene Pt 17

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. 23

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Not every meeting ended up with Jazz in Wheeljack's lap, but his vote was for the trend to continue.

"How about here?" He delicately traced the bare edge of one finger around the seals of the engineer's windshield. "Is that good?"

Wheeljack happily pushed into his touch and nodded. "Really good. Harder?"

Harder it was. Jazz flattened his hands against Wheeljack's chest and used the leverage to firmly drag his thumbs where his finger had just traced. "Yeah?" There was a loud engine rev. "Yeah." He committed that to memory and moved on searching for more spots to make his friend and fellow officer squirm. Except for the reasons behind it and the fact that they were in public, this was actually a lot of fun. The publicity made him feel rebellious, in fact, and the Jazzmeister didn't back down from a challenge like that. Onward ho!

It wasn't that he'd never run his hands over somebody before, but this wasn't a lead into the mental exercise of cable interfacing. This was a systematic search for physical hotspots as an exercise unto itself, and it was kind of fascinating. The crude pleasure of hands and mouth -

Back that thought up. Ah, no. That wasn't right in any way, shape, or form.

Jazz snagged the thought and picked it apart. Connecting the concept of crudity to this pleasure because it came from touch instead of a cable now struck him as odd, which was progress. He could see the problem, even if he couldn't quite fit his head around why it was a problem yet.

The connection traced back to a conflict between social protocols: threat assessment still registered the other Autobots' reactions as negative, thus influencing his causation model to urge a defensive reaction. The link to crudity evaded him, but at least the causation equation balanced. His processor consciously studied the data, and self-modification kicked in to rewrite the illogic while he tried to find the source of the lurking unease.

Was this shameful? No. Was physical stimulation somehow inferior and primitive compared to hardline connection? Wait, why the frag was there even a comparison? He'd used foreplay plenty of times before. It'd just never gone further than ensuring interest before tonight. That did not mean touch was somehow lesser than cable interfacing.

Information assessment was having fits. His adaptive program protocols reached fingers toward social data filed so old and deep it was practically part of his CPU's interior architecture. There was machine code around threat assessment's social subprogram set that relied on the supposed 'facts' now being called into question. Self-modification would reroute the conflicts eventually, but that relied on time. It was trying to skip that step at the moment, and he had to keep suppressing it.

His social protocols were badly out of line with current events, and self-modification wanted to change All The Things. Right away. That would be a bad idea. He didn't have the most stolid of sparks, but Jazz didn't want to have Ratchet monitoring him like the medic was watching Prowl.

There was still a cable draped across the table from Prowl's wrist to a hookup on Ratchet's side, even as the Chief Medical Officer worked on Red Alert. That impromptu surgery right here at the meeting table was also a good cautionary example, by the way. Mechs could crash and burn from messing with their coding too much. Ratchet only had Red Alert's helm open to replace a fried circuit breaker, but the timing was more than coincidence. The concern of it happening to others at the table was legitimate.

Half the officers at this table right here and now had information-dependant CPU models, as opposed to knowledge models like Ironhide or Ratchet. Information models initially prioritized acquisition and organization over usage and application, in short. They were meant to find, sort, and understand enough information to run an entire war. Usage came only after that, which was why every one of the realizations slamming into the cadre over the past two days had been disrupting those models. Put a stumbling block in the basic information sublevels that acquisition and categorization were based off of, and their minds reeled as bypasses and fix-its were rushed into place. Secondary priorities couldn't kick into working order until those primary steps were fulfilled or worked around. It was why Optimus Prime wasn't nearly at risk of crashing as Prowl was. The Prime's processors were prioritized differently, meant to handle information handed to him by his subordinates ready for him to use.

Logically, Jazz knew that the rest of the Autobots weren't going to be as heavily affected as Prowl and Red Alert were. Most of the faction didn't have processors weighted into this kind of dependence by skewed priority lists. The majority of the Autobots weren't specialists, obviously. Confusion, refusal, and even shock could be expected, but collapse wouldn't be a risk for most mechs below certain ranks or outside of a few military divisions. Jazz had gotten hammered by things tonight, and it was hard to keep in mind that most of the Autobots weren't going to look at what he'd learned and feel the same resounding core-shaking shock.

His difficulty keeping that in mind came from how intensely personal this change was. The social data changing in his cortex substructure had been ingrained code-deep over millions of years. Jazz's head hurt, and he was having a hard time keeping a wider perspective on just how much or how little this might rock the rest of the faction. Right now, he had to focus on the rest of the officer cadre - and himself. He had a custom processor, painstakingly added onto from different models throughout the war, but he was riding the edge of what he could handle. Changing his mind's substructure this quickly could very well kill him, he was so information-dependent. The saboteur kept a log of suggested changes from self-modification but only approved the ones that could be changed back easily. Just in case things went bad and he crashed, he wanted Ratchet to be able to shift him back to normal.

What did get approved was still enough to give him a different perspective on sitting in Wheeljack's lap. Applying acquired information in real time.

Wheeljack, of course, had his own self-modification running right here along with him, and he seemed to be enjoying the application just as much. The inventor had a particularly mischievous light to his vocal indicators. The pleasure of hands and mouth had gone from being a secret naughty shame their subprocessors vaguely disapproved of, to a joyful exploration. In public, in all seriousness, but still in fun. Jazz and Wheeljack could make good fun out of anything, together or separate. A mere audience would not deter them.

It was riling Jazz up a little, to be honest. Having Prime look at them that way made him want to try things. Simple things. Complicated things. Hands-in-places, make-Optimus-moan type of things. That randy subprocessor wanted to put its backlog of ideas into action. It seemed to have caught on to exhibitionism, big time.

Later. For now, he had his hands full of Wheeljack. "How much of this is what I'm doing, and how much is psychological?"

"Good question. I'm leaning toward - ooo. I like that. Do that some more." Jazz grinned and increased pressure to massage the lower corners of the side sets of windows. Wheeljack shrugged his shoulders back and moved his arms to give the smaller Autobot more room. It was immediately taken advantage of, and the inventor hummed approval as his lapful of Jazz curled closer. It made his vocal indicators fluctuate in a rainbow rarely seen outside his lab. "Mm. Thanks. Uh…right, I think a large portion of it is psychological. I have sensors there, but even dialed up out of normal range consciously, I don't think I'd be getting this kind of feedback unless my processors were turned on to what you were doing."

"Turned on, huh? Yeah, I can get that. The difference between a normal touch an' interest in the intent behind that touch?" Blaster mused from the end of the table. "Mental switch. I dig it."

Jazz almost reached out to poke him for the sheer sake of weird. He was straddling Wheeljack's lap at the meeting table, and there was Blaster staring into space an arm's-length away like nothing was happening. Wheeljack chuckled quietly, and Blaster still didn't notice.

"Foreplay's good for getting attention and sayin' let's get it on. Tactile 'facing instead of jacking in just keeps that energy going. Turn me on, baby." The boombox Autobot sighed and leaned forward to set his chin in his hands, tilting his head in an absent dodge of one of Jazz's doors. His optics gazed almost directly at the two mechs beside him without really seeing what Jazz was now doing to Wheeljack's throat. "See, I can groove to the idea. Makes sense. If Eject smacks my aft, I'm not gonna do nothin' but jump a little. It'd be confusing, see? All the sensors fire, but he's my Cassette. Wrong reaction goes off in my CPU for anything like 'facing."

An absent frown darkened his face as he finished the thought, "But…if Soundwave smacks my aft, we're gonna tango, and not in a good way. Don't care what his intent is; it's gonna feel like an attack." The frown deepened, and his optics came back from wherever his mind had sent them looking. He glanced at Jazz and didn't even remark on how the saboteur had jumped the table to sit on top of Wheeljack. Then again, he hadn't appeared to notice it happen in the first place. Maybe he thought it was too late to comment, or perhaps he was thinking of more important things at the moment. "It's gonna take a lot longer than this to get my social protocols right-way up on him. Not just him, but - well, he an' I aren't doing too shabby just takin' shifts in the same room. Anything more's gonna get tricky real fast." He shook his head. "We aren't the only ones, folks."

The console screen inset in the table in front of the Comm. Officer scrolled as he made a note. Jazz couldn't read it from where he'd tucked his head to make Wheeljack's engine thrum, but it was probably about addressing the problem. It was a problem. If the Autobots' processors never made a link to a Decepticon's touch as non-hostile and, in reality, meant to provoke the opposite reaction altogether, this courtship attempt could turn into a series of fights. The entire peace process would end up going nowhere if the Autobots couldn't overturn the part of threat assessment interpreting 'Decepticon contact' as 'shoot everything and let Primus sort them out.'

Like Blaster said: working in the same room with a bitter rival and enemy was progress. For some of them, abiding by the uneasy peace via total avoidance of Decepticon contact was the best they could do at this point.

Jazz had been wrestling his own combat protocols down every time Starscream touched him. He'd been actively forcing himself into being receptive to other reactions, which was fortunate. If he'd gone with his first reaction, the Air Commander would have gotten a punch instead of permission. Starscream was lucky that Jazz was fully capable of flirting on the battlefield, or the courtship proposal would have gone straight into the smelter.

Or maybe not. Starscream could seduce a wall.

Either way, Jazz had reacted with - well, with arousal instead of anger. That was difficult to admit even to himself, but it put him ahead of the game. He was naturally more flexible than most mechs could be. Starscream might have counted on that fact. He still hadn't gotten a clear answer as to why the Air Commander had chosen to court him, and he wouldn't dismiss Starscream being cunning enough to recognize that Jazz would see what was being offered and try his hand at the game. Adaptation came far easier to him than, say, Cliffjumper.

Cliffjumper was going to have problems. Tolerating a Decepticon touching him would be pushing it, for Cliffjumper. The volatile red Minibot stayed near unofficial Autobot HQ here in Vos because even he knew that his reflexes were the wrong type. Negotiations and trigger-happy did not mix well together. Even so, Jazz had been somewhat impressed that Cliffjumper had been managing to strangle down the urge to shoot first. After millions of years of war, giving the benefit of doubt was a decent level of progress for the little spitfire mech.

Reacting with arousal? That wasn't likely, not anytime soon. Nuts and bolts, reacting with confusion would be a massive step forward for him!

The Autobots needed to talk about this. Not just relating to the Decepticons' proposals, specifically. In general, the Autobots were coming up ignorant in an area where ignorance was rather alarming. They needed to talk about the proposals because they needed to understand their own reactions. They had to find information because there was a yawning gap of knowledge they were only now aware of, and they were wandering along the edge.

The Decepticons were openly sexual, so much so that their approach to interfacing was foreign. The Autobots had always known it, but the standard response to spotting two Decepticons going at it had always been disgust. Watching was perverse. Reacting instead of flat-out recoiling was just as disgusting.

Now the Autobots had to stop and think about why.

Being confronted by the blatantly sexual way the Decepticons approached each other left the Autobots floundering and somewhat offended. Being approached by that barefaced sexuality was inspiring unreasonable panic. Thinking through that was proving difficult, and that still didn't solve the problem of how to field advances from Decepticons. Or each other, actually. Anything but hardline interfacing had such a stigma of strange attached to it that the Autobots needed coaching in how to handle the basics.

Combining that ignorance with threat assessment's tendency to evaluate every touch as hostile immediately tuned their sensor networks to combat protocols. They were keyed to violence instead of something more heated. Under that combination, even recognizable flirting was going to become an obstacle course. One full of tripwires that would blow the whole planet back into war if somebody didn't suss out a map, soon. The first time a Decepticon less suave than Starscream hit on a nervous Autobot might be the last time.

The Decepticons had held meetings over anticipating potential Autobot backlash already. Of course, they apparently knew as little about Autobot lifestyle as the Autobots knew about theirs, but the attempt had been made. It was the Autobots' turn for classes. 'Tactile Turn On 101': correct identification of intent and appropriate processor response.

The officer cadre would die of embarrassment yet, because they were the default teachers. Also the student body. Cue the coughing and uncomfortable fixation on nearby walls.

Maybe not all of them would expire. Wheeljack was all about exploring new territory, as the hands stroking up Jazz's thighs attested to, and Blaster was clearly planning out his own adventures in non-hardline interfacing.

"Some mechs," the boombox thought out loud, chin in his hands and optics focused on the air over the table. "Frag, I get a smack from them, I'm gonna wag my skidplate for another."

Wheeljack laughed even as Ironhide sputtered from across the table. That wasn't new; Ironhide had been sputtering since Wheeljack's cheery question about when experimentation would be authorized. Jazz had promptly taken the engineer up on the offer. To the soundtrack of Ironhide failing to say a coherent word, the saboteur had hoisted himself up onto the table and crawled over to lean into a lingering kiss.

His lips had slid over the surface of Wheeljack's face mask to plant a trail of small kisses along the horizontal joins where the mask's blast vents opened. Wheeljack had felt up his bumper in turn. That'd led to pouring himself into the mech's lap for some serious making out. It'd seemed like a good idea, since the rest of the officers were busy poring over his briefing packet.

The sputtering had continued off and on while he and Wheeljack fooled around. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was better than the Wrath of Morally Offended Autobot Officer descending upon them. That'd started up once or twice from Prowl's direction, only to be silenced as thought caught up to code-level instinct. The Executive Officer had started to speak up, twitched slightly as self-modification program protocols woke, and then gone very quiet and alert as it went to work. Now he was ignoring the show happening one seat over in favor of staring intently at the ceiling.

Amazing how immensely fascinating the walls had become lately.

Ironhide had been heading off similar gut-deep reaction, only without the attempt to stare down parts of the room. The Weapons Specialist took a more head-on route whenever possible, and he wasn't going to displace his discomfort. Prowl sorted out his code gradually by backtracking the initial error warning and following every conclusion to ensure its logic. Ironhide kept provoking the error warnings until he got results.

The urge to interfere was rooted firmly into their subconscious instincts, and that unnerved them all. Since when had the Autobot officer cadre become the Ethics Enforcers? About the Cause, certainly. The officers were definitely held to a standard above the rest in order to serve as examples for the rank and file, but - interfacing? Really? There was no official code of conduct for interfacing, and even if there was, it wasn't written anywhere in the regulations that officers interfered in Autobots' personal affairs. Yet even the Prime admitted to bending a look of disapproval upon mechs who were too open about their, ah, private time. Talking about it was considered inappropriate enough, but getting too touchy in public could scandalize a whole base!

In the Autobots, what happened in the berth stayed behind closed doors. Anything else was unofficially disapproved of by official people. It had nothing to do with the Cause, but yet the officers unofficially policed it. It was a messed up system, especially when the mechs in this room realized how long it'd been in place, and how long they'd been blind to the circular error it was based on.

So Ironhide's spluttering was an improvement. It was a sign of automatic reaction cut-off. It meant he was thinking about what his social protocols urged.

"Alright over there?" Jazz asked softly, twisting around to look across the table.

"Working on it," Ironhide ground back at him. Blue optics lit, took in where Jazz's hands were, and shut off right away. The old red fighter had taken the battle to his coding, where he seemed to be yanking out any social protocol without a solid foundation backing it. He uncrossed and crossed his arms again. "No? Not yet. Maybe. It's - " His optics turned on to look again, then turn away to the floor. "I'm workin' on it. I know why we gotta talk about this junk - stuff - difference." The verbal stumble got an impatient shrug before Ironhide moved on. "I'm just not sure I want t' watch it happen right in front of me."

"A good point," Wheeljack murmured, sliding his thumbs over a headlight as Jazz turned back toward him. He took advantage of the twist to lower his face to the smaller Autobot's hood and nuzzle the '4' decal, scraping the top edge of his mask along it. "Forcing us to be spectators is an unsettling idea. There's acceptance of an idea, but then there's respect for our fellow mechs."

Jazz arched as hot air vented forcefully against his hood. His mouth opened, showing the pleasure he hadn't been able to display before all of Vos, and Wheeljack purred his engine. Fingers stole up to rub at blue lines, and the saboteur moaned in the back of his throat. There was absolutely no reason for different colors of his paint job, of all things, to be any more sensitive than the rest of him!

He wasn't the only one noticing that fact. Wheeljack's attention caused a strange reaction in those paying attention to what was actually happening instead of shriveling with embarrassment over it happening publicly.

Blaster finally focused on what was happening right to his left, and he smirked a little at how Jazz squirmed. "Gotta be a psychological difference," he concluded, resetting his optics decisively. "No way 'Cracker could like getting minced on the battlefield, but he was definitely into whatever the slag you two did to him tonight. The difference ain't so much different injuries as the circumstances. It's how you got to him."

Optimus and Ironhide made the exact same fizzling sound, and Prowl hissed a virulent curse at the ceiling he studied so closely. Ratchet's hands paused. The medic reset his optics once before resuming work. Blaster's smirk was pained but trying for normal as his optics lit near-white for a second and faded back to regular blue.

Jazz's own social protocols spat up nonsense errors as he dug into their causation models for why he felt embarrassed. He and Starscream had fragged Thundercracker nearly to pieces between them tonight, and there was no shame in talking about that right now. This was a necessary conversation. The shame kept returning, however, and it was easy to see that he wasn't the only one failing to boot it out.

Talking about the night's events was important to this briefing and the Autobots in general, so why did threat assessment keep insisting he was under attack every time someone brought it up directly? This sourceless sense of fear needed to go away fast.

For now, he could at least join Blaster in pretending to be unaffected. "So what you're telling me is that this," Jazz walked his fingers up to drum across one vocal indicator, "isn't actually all that, hmm. Nice? Pleasurable?" It dipped under the pressure instead of pushing into it, so he stroked the line where it joined Wheeljack's helm instead. "Aww, so much for me being proud of myself for makin' mechs scream." Well, one mech. Maybe interfacing didn't have a 'One size fits all' Jazz.

"Remember that I've got partitions for my sensor network," Wheeljack warned the saboteur. He turned his head, mask still pressed to Jazz's hood and optics twinkling. "It gives me a buffer against pain when I need it, but I've a better outside view of my own network reactions than most mechs. I can turn the sensitivity up or down with a certain degree of freedom that internal access gateways typically block for main processors."

Jazz frowned, as he always did when this came up. "I still want those." Most of SpecOps did. Medical kept denying them.

"I'm not hearing this," Ratchet groused. "I'm not. Don't tell me you're abusing those partitions for this, of anything!"

Wheeljack tossed his head up to clear Jazz's hands away and tipped his head to the side to peer around the saboteur. He flashed a smirking light pattern at the medic bent over Red Alert. "Okay, I won't tell you." There was a frustrated skreel of metal as Ratchet's axles tried to turn against the brakes. The light pattern picked up as Wheeljack's amusement grew. "You're the one who installed them, you know."

"Because you consistently blow yourself up!" Despite his ire, Ratchet didn't turn from his work. "It's not supposed to be something you use every time you feel like it! That's how major system damage happens. First it's ignoring something minor so you can hobble to a medic, and soon enough it turns into ignoring warning signs because you can. Then it's the smelter for you because that kind of thing builds up into major injuries you can't even feel!"

It was a well-worn rant from the Chief Medical Officer. From anyone in the Medical Division, really. Medics knew better than anyone what a danger sensor-data partitions could be to a mech, and they weren't shy about giving their opinions over in the medbay. Jazz could recite the words to this rant by memory.

Wheeljack good-naturedly let his friend run out of steam before asking, "Are you done?"

"Tell me you're not using the partitions to analyze tactile interfacing."

"I'm not using partitions to analyze tactile interfacing," was dutifully recited.

"Are you lying to me?"

"Depends. Are you 'not hearing' me?"

Suspicious blue optics eyed the innocently pale vocal indicators on the other side of the table. "…yes."

"Lies everywhere."

"Argh." Wheeljack gave the medic his best earnest look of inquiry, and Ratchet hunched over his work. "Nothing. I said nothing." The look wormed under his plating almost visibly. Armor clamped down tight but couldn't shut the engineer out. A snarl from Ratchet's engine answered when the look needled a response from him at last. "Can't you see I'm busy?!"

Blaster and Jazz sniggered. Ratchet stubbornly 'didn't hear' them. Wheeljack just shook his head and went back to the real subject.

"Anyway, other mechs - ones without partitions, that is," unhappy ambulance grumbles belied Ratchet's deafness, "aren't going to be as aware of, umm, desire of the mind affecting actual sensor activation feedback. I can see how the read-outs are staying the same as they travel my sensor network." The inventor leaned forward to nuzzle against one of Jazz's helm projections. "It's when they reach my processor that they are interpreted differently than normal. I can suppress or deny them access where they pass the partition while most mechs can't, however. It's letting me analyze my processor's reactions instead of just feeling the results."

The saboteur in his lap curled slightly to tuck his head down for easier access, and that put his bumper flush to Wheeljack's chest. The inventor's high-performance engine could out-speed even his own, and armor vibrated as their engines ran up against one another. The buzzing vibration ran down his back and tuned his sensor network up a notch. It felt very nice indeed. "All that to say..?"

Wheeljack obligingly revved his engine and clicked the blast filters in his mask across the tip of the closest helm projection. "All that to say that most of the pleasure originates in our processors. Other than intentionally activating them in atypical sequences under deliberately applied pressure, it's the same sensor-data transmission. A caress," he demonstrated, much to Jazz's delight, "activates the same sensors as a less seductive touch, but your processor interprets the data differently."

He made a thoughtful sound while the black-and-white mech under his hands parsed that into useable information. "You know, I don't think there are many sensors on our networks that are keyed to feeling pleasure without the addition of mental stimulation."

"There are some," Ratchet huffed, cutting off the question before Jazz even opened his mouth. "It's possible to overload someone with involuntary pleasure. A force download or tampered cable connection makes it relatively simple to force interface compliance, but it's just as possible to ramp up the right sensors until the rest of the network is triggered into reacting how you want. It's just not easy, so - ah, yes. Well." His sirens flashed without sound for a second. "All that is to say that the mind's involvement makes it far more likely to achieve overload."

"If you want it, you're gonna get it," Blaster summed up. He cheerfully zoomed in on the tinge of fluster that'd broken Ratchet's professional cool. "Like you and a certain couple o' construction vehicles, huh?"

Ratchet shot him a mildly annoyed look, then lowered his optics as the embarrassment simmered. "Ahem. Fine. Yes. If Mixmaster and Bonecrusher hadn't appealed to me strongly enough sexually to turn off my combat protocols, I'd have felt extremely uncomfortable - "

"Possibly like an itch," Wheeljack interrupted. "An itch that unwanted molestation can't scratch."

"Yes, thank you, because I needed a definition for that," Ratchet snapped. He shook himself in almost a spasm and looked up from Red Alert's open helm in order to glare. "I have been interrogated by Vortex before, you know. I have intimate knowledge of what that feels like!"

Even Prowl looked flummoxed as that sank in. Not that Ratchet had been interrogated by Vortex before - that was old news - but at the medic's defensive, disgusted tone over it.

An unpleasant moment of realization rippled around the whole table. Most of them had been captured on Earth at one point or another. Even if their value as hostages had kept the Decepticons from killing them or time had prevented actual imprisonment, Vortex had gotten his hands on them for on-site interrogations. Force-downloads always stood out as the most traumatizing part of the physical violence visited upon prisoners, but now the officers were looking back at their interrogations realizing what had flown completely over their heads at the time. Comprehension sank in at long last about what Vortex had been attempting to do.

"I am suddenly finding certain memories of our time on Earth more disturbing than I previously believed," Prowl said in a very level voice. He turned his head, moving like his neck pained him, to look at Jazz. "Has there been any indication of how coerced consent is viewed by the Decepticons?"

Jazz swallowed, mouth parched as if his oral fluids had mysteriously dried up, and he clung to Wheeljack as his mind reeled. "I don't - give me a klik, here."

The arms around him tightened without even the smallest hint of desire, downshifting from interfacing to cuddling without skipping a beat. Blaster caught the tip of one door as it flicked over the table and reached under it to press the palm of his hand flat across the speaker. It was a small comfort, but a needed one. The smaller Autobot buried his helm under Wheeljack's chin and shut off his visor, letting himself soak up the contact. He'd endured more than his fair share of interrogations throughout the war. Threat assessment was highlighting a large chunk of physical threat analysis for revision, and Wheeljack held him close as whole vorns tagged in his memory shifted around. New information always caused quick evaluations of past incidents, but this...

His databank archives were going to be a disorganized mess of tags before the night was over. He'd have to make new tags. They weren't going to be nice tags to make.

"The fragger must have been really trying hard to work me up," Ratchet said as the medic bent back to tweaking a wire. "He asked me if I wanted to frag at least fourteen times in the space of a cycle. It was so strange because he kept touching me while he was jacked in, but he kept asking as if he wanted me to say yes." Say yes to interfacing even as the Combaticon interrogator had hardline raped him, he meant. That was the only way the Autobots really interpreted the word 'interface'. Asking to frag at the same time as Vortex forced a once-sided frag would have been odd, yes.

"If he was trying to prime my body to where I'd give in and agreed to a tactile 'face, he failed." A look of revulsion washed over Ratchet's face for a split second before the professional mask rose again. "He sure tried, though. But without my mind aligned with the sensor feedback, the fondling was just…creepy." He shook his shoulders as if shrugging off the remembered feel of crawling 'copter hands, then snorted and repeated, "Itch I can't scratch," under his breath like it was a curse.

An aggravated sigh abruptly came from the head of the table, and Optimus Prime unfolded his arms. He laid one hand on Red Alert's shoulder, which was greeted with a pained grimace that looked nothing like the reassuring smile the Security Director was probably aiming for. "I wish 'no' to mean 'no,' but I feel as if Vortex's…actions on Earth illustrate a gray area of interpretation on what the Decepticons believe is consent." His own shoulders went down as Ratchet glanced up at him before returning to work on Red Alert. "If it is the words being said that are important, rather than the manner in which those words are obtained - yes, I can see how that may yet be a problem. So far, Megatron has not done anything to me physically without some form of agreement beforehand. That is," he hesitated on the wording, but for once the officers didn't immediately pounce on the hint of what the Decepticon leader was up to in those closed meetings, "he has asked my permission in a suitably not-asking manner."

They all caught the wry humor there. Well, it was nice to know that the world as they knew it was still normal enough that Megatron couched requests in demands. What those requests were, on the other hand, made all the difference.

"However," the Prime continued in a concerned voice that frowned where his masked face couldn't show it, "I have felt somewhat obligated by duty to allow some, ah, actions I am not comfortable with. My discomfort has grown by how close he - ah, whenever he - " His voice dropped to an irritated mutter, "This isn't becoming any easier to say out loud." The big red-and-blue mech resettled in his seat, an embarrassed shifting his size did nothing to hide, and they gaped at him with varying expressions of dumbfounded surprise as he managed to finish. "By how close he has. Has brought me. To, ah. Overload."

His optics held a strange sense of accomplishment when he got the words out. Jazz knew that feeling: speaking up despite how his social protocols were wrongfully screaming at him to just not say it, be quiet, stop stop stop. He felt absurdly proud of his leader for talking despite the audible struggle to get the words out.

A click of a vocalizer resetting, a deep in-vent, and then their Prime shook the embarrassment off visibly. "My reaction toward it makes more sense, now, as does his frustration when I've refused to allow the…courtship," they were all still applying that word tentatively, because it was so strange, "to continue past a certain point. I've had the thought that my refusal's hampered communication, but I haven't been able to, ah." The embarrassment tried to swamp him again, but he sat straight and admitted to his own shortcoming with the courage he was famous for. Jazz really had to admire that. "I haven't been able to broach the subject myself. I...wouldn't have even known how. Megatron may have tried, but I must confess that I have been the one to change subjects when it seemed the topic might be brought out into the open."

He sighed quietly, looking slightly discouraged by what he was saying. "This misunderstanding between our factions - our cultures - is impeding swifter progress of the treaty process."

"However," the dimmed blue optics brightened as Optimus smiled through his voice, "some of what has been taking me aback about Megatron's approach to negotiations may, in reality, be a reassurance. Past negotiated cease-fires included none of these 'contract' complications, which may indicate a degree of dedication on the Decepticons' part that we haven't seen before. Commitment through individual contracts could seal the peace treaty on a personal level among the Decepticon officers." His vocalizer coughed through a short reset. "If nothing else, understanding the process will at least enable better communication about current negotiation attempts. Megatron and I have - we have discussed the terms of the treaty, but part of this version of negotiation seems to involve weakening my conviction through," he gave an unclear gesture, "physical persuasion. The discussion stalls out temporarily when my discomfort ends the, er. Persuasion, as it were."

"That's attempting agreement under duress," Prowl said on automatic. His hands flew over the console screen as he hurried jotted down notes. "We will need to go over the treaty terms with consideration to your physical and mental state of being at the time of negotiation, now."

Ironhide sat up in a hurry, face set in a severely unhappy frown that shook him out of the disbelieving stare the officers were giving their commander. "And what the frag? Frag, no. Prime! He ain't using duty to clang your plating!"

It was a denial of reality, because Optimus flinched and looked away.

Another stir went around the table. That wasn't right. Shock gave way to an array of expressions, from Blaster's perplexed smile to Red Alert's subdued scowl.

"You should not be pressured by your position to concede," Prowl's face went briefly disconcerted, "er, physical favors. That is coercion."

"Hold up," Jazz said, leaning back in Wheeljack's lap in order to prop his elbows behind himself on the table. "I'm not saying you're wrong, but I gotta step in. I'm playin' rep for the 'Cons here because somebody has to. Two things, mechs." He held up two fingers and counted off the first. "We were alright with Screamer being forced into a contract against his will. If contract negotiations are about courtships for, uh, various kinds of relationships, then how's that different for him? He's made it pretty slagging clear that he doesn't want to be involved with me because of personal and officiate reasons, but we didn't give a scrap. Pit, we're exploiting it for our own reasons, now."

He pointed his finger down the table before flipping his wrist in a questioning gesture. "Megatron's making his officers come courting in the name of peace, but it's not the same to call our officers up to the plate? We're holdin' ourselves up above the 'Cons on this one. Why?"

"We're not doing anything less than they're offering?" Wheeljacked asked, intrigued. His arms stayed loosely wrapped around the smaller Autobot, hands on Jazz's back. "Huh. True. They're not even going after the rank and file, if what Starscream told you is correct: it's the Decepticon officers negotiating directly with us, their counterparts. So..." When Jazz twisted to face him again, the inventor looked like he'd been handed a puzzle. A social one, true, but Wheeljack did love to solve things. "That is interesting. Why are we afraid to trade ourselves in return for their commitment? Trading the few for the good of the many seems tactically sound."

Ah, the magic words. The whole table automatically turned to their tactician.

"It is not a fair trade if it is something that requires vast concessions on our part," Prowl pointed out. He raised a hand as if to mark a scoreboard in midair, or write out an unequal equation. "This is abnormal for us. Whether or not our perception of the…approach to interfacing is correct, the fact remains that we are the ones being required to change. To accept the Decepticons' courtship, we must play their game by their rules. That is a burden of responsibility placing us at the disadvantage, and that is tactically unsound."

The Autobot Second was too dignified to sneer, but it was heavily implied when he turned his words from Wheeljack to Jazz. "I would acknowledge Starscream's unwilling compliance if it were not evidently an obligation of rank within the wider culture of his faction to interface in order to secure political and interpersonal hierarchy. It is his duty, not an unnatural requirement outside the realm of our own cultural norms!"

Jazz opened his mouth. After a moment, he closed it again in a flat, troubled frown. Wheeljack's hands kneaded the small of his back, but he glanced at the inventor's quizzical expression and shook his head. There was a taint in among Prowl's words, an idea threaded amidst the truth that left a rotted taste in his mouth. He just couldn't quite articulate what it was that soured what otherwise seemed like reasonable piece of logic.

It was apparently part of a Decepticon officer's job to negotiate using interfacing. That was part of military culture, if contracting determined rank. Tactile interfacing was part of the negotiation process that determined the Decepticon social structure. Prowl was merely pointing out that, in his optics, there was no cause for sympathy toward mechs who engaged in contractual interfacing as a matter of duty, even if Megatron made them court Autobots instead of fellow 'Cons.

But…that was like an Iacon noble forcibly interfacing a courtesan. It was the courtesan's job to interface with clients. That didn't make it any more right for the purchaser to hold the courtesan down and take the goods, so to speak. Megatron was selling his mechs like a peace-pushing pimp, and Prowl was disregarding any denial by the Decepticon officers because they were 'courtesans' by trade.

Just because the...profession of a mech implied interfacing was habitual, that didn't make consent any less important! Orders from Megatron did not mean that the Autobots were permitted to force a frag. That was taking advantage of a threat issued by someone else. Prowl had just said it: using a mech's position to coerce physical favors was wrong.

Yet somehow, when applied to a Decepticon, nobody spoke up to protest.

A muddle of conflicting feelings and social protocols stole the words he needed, and Jazz didn't know how to speak up. Plus there was a niggling thought staying just out of reach that circled back to his original point: it was duty for the Decepticons, but somehow not for the Autobots. They were holding themselves above the Decepticons, and that sat wrong with him.

He put his head down and tucked his helm under Wheeljack's chin while the debate continued down the table without him. There was something about Prowl's argument he had to dig out, had to frame in a way that the others understood. Changing their current mindset on interfacing practices had somehow switched from being what they should do for their own sakes, into being something imposed on them by the Decepticons. How had that happened? Prowl had framed his argument inside that mindset, and that bothered Jazz in a way he couldn't quite grasp yet.

Primus, he needed a good, long defrag cycle. Ratchet's patch-job wasn't hacking it right now.

While Jazz fought his aching processors, Prime blew a breath out his vents. He leaned forward to set an elbow on the table and rub his hand under the brim of his helm as he responded to Prowl. "That follows my reasoning, for the most part, but I felt the peace process important enough to give Megatron the lead on this." He let his hand fall and nodded to both Wheeljack and Prowl. "That's why I agreed to his proposal without bringing it up with you, my friends. My initial protest - well, Megatron said it best." Grave blue optics looked at each of his officers. "I'm willing to sacrifice my body for the Autobots in battle, but not in peace?"

"That's not the same!" Ironhide shook his head, and Prowl was right there with him. The Executive Officer's face didn't display anger the way Ironhide's did, but the stiff angle he held his doors at demonstrated his righteous indignation at the idea of Megatron manipulating the Prime by the Matrix-Bearer's sense of duty.

"How?" that same Prime asked them. "Is it morally offensive to barter my body?"

Whoa, now that was a weird concept to get a handle on. Jazz wasn't the only one blinking rapidly through reset. It's what they had been talking about, but phrased that way, it shook them up.

"Is it so different than battle?" Optimus asked before anyone could interrupt. "The humans have a saying: 'Make love, not war.' Both involve a bodily clash, objectively speaking. The humans held one concept as ethically superior, however, and it's the one that doesn't involve mechs dying under my command!"

"Hey, now." Blaster lifted his hands like he was warding off the Prime's sudden rise in volume. Optimus always got more passionate when reminded of those who'd died under his orders, and the Comm. Officer sat back under the naked blast of emotion. "I'm not sayin' what's wrong or right, here! I'm just thinkin' that forcin' us to pair off and fuck for peace is a bit much!"

"Freeeet!" someone chirruped as vocalizers fizzled around the table. It wasn't the most eloquent response, but it served. Jazz's optical sensors tried to cross behind his visor, which was impossible but was certainly what it felt like.

"Crude," Ratchet muttered. "Crude, but to the point."

"Bluntly put, but I agree," the Prime said a touch sharply. "Force is not something I will condone. I made the choice to permit Megatron to…court me. He may have manipulated me, but I accepted his proposal knowing that it, whatever it might have been, was still better than continuing our Great War. I would rather be pressured into using my body as a tool of peace rather than be forced to use it as a weapon of war. But that is a choice I made for myself, knowing what pressure was being put upon me and knowing, as well, that Megatron was committing his body as collateral. At the time I accepted his proposition, I assumed it was a personal deal between the two of us. Now that I know the…the larger picture, and the errant reasoning behind my underlying discomfort, I will approach this courtship more reasonably." His optics flickered uncertainly before they hardened to determined blue. "That does not mean that I will allow anyone to be coerced into any act they do not fully agree with!"

"Oh, for Primus' sake," Ratchet sighed, but he didn't bother speaking up. "Can you not see the hypocrisy of that statement?"

"He never can," Ironhide said back. "Glitching, self-sacrificing, blind martyr."

Optimus drew himself up and tried to stare down his two insubordinate officers, which probably would have worked better if they were paying attention to him instead of trading exasperated looks with each other. "The burden of duty lies far more upon me than - "

"Pfffft," three-fourths the table said in unison. Red Alert didn't join in, but that was because Ratchet had his head open for surgery, not because he wouldn't have chimed in otherwise.

When it looked like the Prime was going to launch into a speech anyway, the Security Director managed a muffled, "Piffle."

Optimus glanced at him, hesitated, but reluctantly deflated.

Jazz's semi-formed thoughts reached some sort of breaking point, and he found himself swinging a leg over Wheejack's lap to face Blaster even as he waved his hands at the room in general. "I'm not buyin' it. Blaster!" The Communications Officer jumped in his chair as the saboteur smacked one hand down on the table and pointed the other straight at him. "Rewind a second, here. Slagging Pit you're not saying it's right or wrong. Whaddya think you just did? Mech, take a look at your phrasing! You're saying it's wrong without actually saying it's wrong, but that's still saying it's wrong!"

"Whoa!" Blaster reared back, hands up in surrender and defense, but he looked totally confused by the smaller Autobot's frustrated anger. Instead of fastening on Prime's self-sacrifice, he was coming after the communication specialist for a passing comment? "Hey, put the brakes on! I didn't mean anything!"

"That doesn't - " Jazz sucked in a deep in-vent and forced his fans to slow. It hadn't been intentional. Blaster was a good mech; ignorance had been speaking, not malice. "Whether or not you meant it, picture how that's gonna come across to a Decepticons who does believe that 'fucking for peace' is the right solution. How you meant it isn't going to change how he hears an Autobot spitting on his - his, frag, I don't know." He flicked his doors as he tried to explain what he felt so strongly it stung his fuel pump. "Culture. Lifestyle. Choices."

Blaster's hands slowly lowered as that sank in. "But, I mean…I don't have to agree with it. Sure, if they want to do their," his hands rolled over each other, trying to convey all that Decepticon weirdness, "thing. Cool, go do it. I'm down with the 'Cons fragging each other halfway to Kaon, but - "

"But I don't particularly wanna see it," Ironhide cut in, almost glaring at the saboteur still perched in Wheeljack's lap. "Allow it, yeah. Talk about it - hmmph. If I gotta. I know why, an' I'll…deal with it. 'Cause I should. But that don't mean I have to put out, and we shouldn't have t' put up with the 'Cons' version of decency instead of ours!"

Prowl sat straighter, if that was at all possible. His impassive, unemotional default mask didn't falter, but the officers at the table knew him too well to not see the tiny hints of relief. He practically lit up with it as someone stumbled across the words to put this mess into the right context for him. "That's exactly my point. Why should we? Some discussion, of course, is reasonable, but we have been discussing this as if the only option we have is adopting their standards. There is a sense that the Decepticons' way is correct and our own wrong. I do not agree with that. We have our own standards. How much can we compromise before we are wholesale adopting Decepticon values out of a false sense of progress while dismissing our own because we are afraid of offending someone? There is acknowledgement, and then there is blindly glorifying a different culture over our own!"

"That is not what we are doing," Prime disagreed sternly even as Ironhide nodded and Blaster made a thoughtful noise.

"We're trying to meet the 'Cons halfway," Wheeljack protested.

"It is not, as I said," Prowl repeated coldly, "meeting halfway if we are the ones changing our very coding. They are changing nothing. They are offering nothing but what they claim to offer each other normally. We are the ones expected to bend to their societal norms."

"Have we asked them to change anything for us in return?" Ratchet asked quietly. "So far, it's been a few ventures into aggressively coaxing us to join in, not us asking them to do anything."

Jazz spoke at the same time, "Believe me, they've changed their normal courtship practices already!" He couldn't erase what he'd seen of Soundwave's courtship proposal from his mind.

"Ratchet is right. Your judgment of the situation may be hasty and based on only what we have encountered so far." Optimus met Prowl's optics before nodding to his Third, who had his back to him. Jazz was glaring at the tabletop as the argument circled. "To be fair, Jazz, your experience tonight cannot be considered typical of Decepticon customs. I sincerely doubt normal courtship goes to such," he paused to choose a tactful word, "extremes."

"Blending in was more important than testing give on boundaries," the small Autobot said in a flat voice, still facing away. "Smelt me if they didn't allow for me being an Autobot anyway. Whatever 'normal' courtships are like, the 'Cons are still givin' us leeway to be stupid aftheads." A blurt of sound that wanted to be a laugh escaped Blaster's mouth, and Jazz cracked a grin at him. "It's what I felt like tonight, y'know? Only time Acid Storm got fed up with me being an ignorant slagger was when I got judgmental first. Screamer's all but said the proposals are being supervised, so they know we're different. My thinking's that they want us to participate, but that doesn't necessarily mean we gotta do it like they do. We're making peace up; why the frag can't we write some new rules while we're at it?"

That got a nod from the Prime. "Megatron has been similarly…accommodating for my inexperience." Optimus got a few interested looks for that, but he was regarding Jazz curiously when the saboteur did one of those improbable twists that would dislocate a less flexible mech's backstruts. Wheeljack chuckled as Jazz put his elbows on the table and looked back at their Prime. "We've never explicitly spoken of it, but your report on Acid Storm's reactions make sense of some of Megatron's stranger mannerisms. I've been unable to interpret them on my own. It would not surprise me if he is completely different when approaching one of his own mechs." The rough rumble of a semi-truck's engine started, and Optimus' optics suggested a hidden smile. "It makes me wonder what he is like when being courted or courting a potential officer instead of a potential ally."

Hellooooo, mental images. Ironhide spluttered. Ratchet laughed out loud, then pretended complete concentration on the inside of Red Alert's open helm. Prowl coughed, choking on whatever he'd been about to say.

"The Decepticons do not have the right to impose their interfacing preferences on us," the Autobot Second said when he recovered, and his engine growled under his voice as he stubbornly returned to his point. "Would you have allowed Megatron to molest anyone else, Prime, or is it merely acceptable because you believe the alternative is war?"

That got a flash of conflicted blue optics, and the Prime glanced away.

"If this were a matter of establishing a physical connection to accompany the treaty, then I would expect it to be approached in a manner befitting the seriousness of the topic," Prowl went on.

"How is this any less serious than their usual approach to each other - " Jazz started, but Prowl rode right over him.

"Instead, what I am seeing is a campaign of misinformation - have you any proof beyond what you personally have gathered?" he demanded when Jazz started to interrupt him in turn.

The saboteur's visor narrowed at him, but Jazz kept his silence. He let Wheeljack rearrange him to sit more comfortably facing the table this time as Prowl said his piece.

"From the perspective of my function," the tactician stressed, reminding everyone there that he was the one meant to connect the wider picture and draw a plan from it, "it seems as if the Decepticons are seeking to destabilize us through an admittedly brilliant stab at our social structure. Making the officers the target of the Decepticons' perversions is upsetting us, and making us the perpetrators of it within our own ranks is serving quite well at turning us on one another. Perhaps the information is correct. Perhaps the blatant rutting among the Decepticons is meant to convey more than a lack of self-control and lowered morals - "

"Now see here!" Wheeljack abruptly sat forward, and Jazz 'oof'ed as his bumper rammed into the table-edge before he could lift it out of the way. The inventor gave him a quick glance of apology. "Sorry. But I can't let that slide," he said, addressing Prowl again. "That, right there, attempts to make me ashamed of having my arms where they are right now. Do you see that? Do you see what a slippery slope that is?"

The officers looked at him. That was, they looked at the mech in his lap.

Jazz blinked back at them, refusing to let himself feel defensive over the fact that he was sitting in Wheeljack's lap. Nothing had changed about that, at least, and the tightness in his ventilation system eased a bit as someone found words for what had been bothering him. Even if Prowl had a point about being wary over Decepticon-derived information, Wheeljack was making his own point.

"You're extrapolating from a faulty basis when speaking on this subject, Prowl. That needs to change. I can't, in good conscience, let what I've learned today go just because the Decepticons might be trying to use it against us." The inventor set his chin on Jazz's shoulder tire and looked around the table from there without a hint of embarrassment. That impressed the smaller Autobot.

Then again, Wheeljack had come into officer cadre meetings still smoking from an explosion, and he'd been totally unruffled by that. He'd only stopped talking when his upholstery started smoldering again. Well, okay, when Red Alert had hit him with a blast of fire suppressant. Cuddling someone in his lap probably didn't even register on the 'Weird Stuff I've Done In Meetings' scale for the engineer.

"Regardless of how we fell over finding out about it, our views on interfacing are screwed up, and fixing that isn't a concession to anybody but our own ethics. You can't count that as - as - " Wheeljack shook his head, momentarily at a loss. "As anything to do with these courtships, really, except as an issue that should be addressed. It's not a plot, or a ploy, or anything to do with Decepticons. This is our own bad scrap to recycle. The 'Cons might have brought it to light, but there is an error in my social protocols, and that can't be swept back out of the base just because it's awkward and we don't want to deal with it!"

Prowl's doors hiked up at the unspoken accusation that he was suggesting exactly that. "I did not meant that we should ignore whatever errors of logic we discover after checking the facts," he said stiffly. "What I do not want to see happen is a premature or unfounded change in our perception of the Decepticons based off of information given to us by them."

Or based off of the observations of one spy who could have, however unlikely it was, walked into a meticulously scripted performance by the Vosian Decepticons. That kind of elaborate mind-frag wasn't something that could be put past Starscream, the canny schemer. Jazz grit his teeth on the urge to defend his findings because Prowl was doing precisely what the Head of Tactical was supposed to do. As the Head of Special Ops, he could readily agree with tearing apart his debriefing this way, and he could see that both Ironhide and Optimus Prime had shelved their own personal opinions in order to listen to Prowl doing his job.

"What I am watching happen is a valid push for change," the tactician nodded to Wheeljack respectfully, if a tad frigidly, "be taken advantage of. The Decepticons are using our morals to push us where they want: into accepting that public displays of…excessively sexual activities," this time, Prowl nodded to Ironhide, who nodded back in agreement, "are normal, and that we are fundamentally wrong if we don't comply with their version of interfacing. They are pushing us from the idea of forming social bonds through interfacing and replacing it with the version they practice. Whether or not tactile interfacing is wrong or right, there is nothing wrong with what we already practice. It has created an atmosphere of mutual responsibility and trust in our faction. There is no reason that we must change that, as has been urged through this courtship idea."

With a huff, his doors lowered back into a steadier position as Prowl flattened his hands on the table. "There have been legitimate points raised by Jazz's briefing. I do not deny that. I am simply calling for temperance on how we react to it. Jazz," Second and Third exchanged guarded looks, "has accepted the mission to infiltrate and therefore understand the Decepticon viewpoint, but it makes him all the more susceptible to misinformation. Until his reports are verified, we must use caution in what we internalize as facts, especially on a subject as sensitive as this one."

A murmur of half-sparked dissent and reluctant agreement rippled up one side of the table and back down the other. Even Jazz shrugged under Prowl's cold gaze. Taking the mission had put him in the position where the deeper he went, the more unreliable he became in the logical mind of Prowl's tactical processor. That was inevitable. It was a fact of life when one was a Special Operations agent. And Prowl was right in that Jazz's information should be double-checked.

However, there were some things that just weren't right. Information assessment had been running in the back of his mind, as it always did, but he'd turned it upon his fellow officers because he'd been trying to pinpoint the errors in his social protocols. Prowl's words had set off an alert, because the tactician wasn't reacting according to threat assessment's revised social predictions.

"I'm operatin' off of maybes and guesswork," Jazz allowed, "but you're reacting instead of thinking, Prowler."

"It is always wise to urge caution," Optimus said in a soothing tone. "This is a time-sensitive problem - "

For once, Prowl spoke over his commander. "How so?" he snapped directly at Jazz, and the Prime shut up out of surprise.

Jazz stretched his arms up and curved back, settling his doors against Wheeljack's chest comfortably even as his smile grew edges. "Run an analysis of what your tactical processor's working off whenever the word 'interface' comes up. Betcha it auto-tags the regs as logical base for your social protocols - or, slag if I know, but I gotta hunch it's the Enforcer Code, probably. You were in a lot longer than I was."

Ratchet reset his optics, suddenly looking up from his work to stare across the table at the Autobot Second. "Huh. That…would explain the ease in which you've adapted. You haven't." Prowl shook his head, but his optics were disturbed and his mouth pinched into a strange shape as he ran the analysis. "Self-defense is likely. Even probable, now that I think about it. Your tactical suite runs deep enough to be considered an essential part of the hardware running three-fourths of your standard programs. If you've reached your limits for self-modification, it could be rejecting anything that causes inherent contradictions between your accepted reality and new information."

"What it sounds like from where I'm sittin'," Jazz said, "is that where we're all getting slapped upside the head with faulty causation models, your subprocessors are clinging to how the Senate saw Vos."

That got a reaction. Optics darkening slowly, Prowl twitched and glared icily at the other black-and-white mech. "I am fully capable of recognizing the possible issues we have overlooked in our own ranks. I am already dubious of accepting consent as a reality within the Decepticon ranks, much less a contract-based society based on tactile interfacing. Recognizing problems within our own society does not mean I must promote this supposed Vosian culture as equal or above our own. I refuse to believe that we should allow the Decepticons to paw us because they say it should be acceptable!"

Optimus had a hand over his optics as he tried to think. "I would hardly expect Megatron to allow me equal access through a hardline connection without some form of communication beforehand. Until Starscream's proposal, I thought of the, ah, hands-on approach he'd taken as a type of physical outlet, redirecting our history of combat into something more acceptable for a new-found peace. A way to forge a connection between us made of more than mere words."

"Even that stands out to me as manipulation instead of an attempt to create a political relationship. What proof do we have that hardline interfacing ever happens among Decepticons?" Prowl spread his hands as he asked, looking to them for evidence. "We know the Decepticons do not trust each other enough for that. It is sensible that they are leery of us because of how easily we exchange our cables, but this idea of hands-on courtship and negotiation is something new. It is a planned feeding of information to us, but the question is whether it is meant to restart the war through digging a Pit of falsehoods at our feet - or is it meant to paint the Decepticons in a coat of the merely misunderstood? It's possible they plan on taking advantage of the confusion in our ranks without restarting the war."

"I think it's a little late to try and convince the rest of the galaxy that this whole war was a big misunderstanding," Optimus said dryly.

"No," Wheeljack said, "but shorter-lived races might believe it if the 'Cons keep up the act long enough. Off-world socio-political leverage combined with financial advantages from sympathetic trade agreements could put us in a tricky spot a couple thousand years from now." Jazz's armor vibrated gently as the inventor's engine gave a thoughtful hum. "There are other ways to take over a planet than violence."

"Third option, don't forget. They might be honestly tellin' the truth. Cosmos' reaction sure seems to back it up," Blaster offered. "Mech knew what was goin' down up there."

"Yes." There was a disturbing flare of hunger in Prowl's optics that Jazz recognized. The Prowl-vampire hungered to suck information from Cosmos' mind. "He will be extensively debriefed. In the meantime, I protest discussing this issue within the mindset that the Decepticons have any right to upset our ranks or destroy of our social norms by approaching us this way. I will also state irrevocably that Megatron does not have the right to force your participation, no matter our current or future viewpoints on interfacing!"

The Prime leaned away from the finger being pointed at him.

"So you're alright with them chasing our tailpipes so long as it's hardline?" Jazz asked sharply. Something slotted into place among the chaotic clamor of his thoughts. "Answer me this, guys." He looked specifically at Prowl and Ironhide, since Ratchet was keeping his head down and Blaster seemed to be sorting something out in his head at the moment. "If the Decepticons were discreetly looking to hook up with us," he included them all with a wave of his hand, "in hardline interfaces to make the treaty more concrete through inter-factional relationships - "

"That is still coercion," Prowl insisted.

Ironhide stood abruptly to start pacing. Ratchet immediately kicked the empty chair out of the way and took its place to get another angle into Red Alert's helm, but the old red mech didn't seem to care that he'd been displaced. "Nah, I see where you're goin' with this. I get it." The old red mech uncrossed and crossed his arms again. "I'm picturin' it, an' you're right. I don't see it as a threat until I throw out a scenario where a 'Con touches me in public. Even that, I'd say it's modesty, but slag me for scrap if I don't get the same reaction from my protocol's if I picture it in private."

"Tactile interfacing is being picked up by threat assessment as a risk?" Prime asked no one. He leaned back as he ran his own scenarios, optics locked on the ceiling. "I - yes, true. Had Megatron asked for a hardline connection, I would have been startled but more accepting of the idea than this…courtship procedure."

He was running on observations and what he knew of his fellow officers, but that was apparently enough. Jazz felt reckless and utterly alive in a way he rarely did off the field of battle. He was closing in on a target. "I don't know, but here's what I think's still slipping by us: our perception of hardline versus tactile interfacing hasn't changed since the Enforcer Code was written. Frag, probably before then! Somebody had to believe it in order to write it, after all."

"This is sidelining the real issues by talking about interfacing again," Prowl started, and Jazz stuck his tongue out at him.

"Bolt it, Prowler. With all due respect, your perspective's just as compromised as mine right now. You spin your back-up plans over there while I lay out what needs to be known right now!" The Head of Special Operations cut the Head of Tactical off at the knees, and their commander's raised hand backed him up. Optimus didn't usually support insubordination, but his Second and Third didn't normally start pulling rank on each other unless it was important. Jazz had no idea how dangerous he looked at that moment, curled forward onto the table and smiling that half-mad smile of the Unmaker's Advocate, but Wheeljack pressed back into the chair as if to escape him.

The Prime held up his hand to silence Prowl and gave his spy and saboteur his full attention.

"Rewind this conversation, mechs," Jazz ordered. "The assumption I'm running headfirst into is that tactile and hardline interfacing are inherently unequal. Stop me if this doesn't sound familiar," he said half as an aside to Blaster, "but which do you think is a shallow connection? Tactile. No emotional depth? Tactile. No commitment? Tactile. Perverted? Tactile. Filthy lust and base desires? Tactile." That knife-edge smile turned on the rest of the table. "Now take a look at our attachment to hardline 'facing." His visor went wide and angelic, and a lovely, sweet smile took the place of the hardness of before. "Deep and complicated, forever and pure!"

Prowl's optics reset twice in a row when the patently false look of innocence turned on him. "…yes, I can agree with that." A slow downturn worked its way across his mouth. It seemed to take real effort to admit, "I suppose there are faults in that, however..?"

A bark of laughter answered him, but it wasn't amused. "Even before firewallin' everything to the Pit and back became the norm, iron ore and scrapyards to that! Sure, the potential for more is there, but most of the time until you get to know a mech, hardline connection's got as much commitment as it takes to make an access gateway. I do it for duty when I gotta check my operatives in, so how's that different than how we look at social fragging over in the 'Con ranks? How the slag is that 'pure'?" He plowed on through the beginnings of an indignant comment from Ironhide. "But that isn't my point! My point is that we're takin' the perspective that tactile 'facing and everything related to it is lesser. Like we're offering more, right? Like we're the ones losing out on this deal instead of us, y'know, offering the same blasted thing back at the 'Cons. They think we're crazy for cabling in on a whim; we think they're disgusting because they touch just as casually." He shook his head in a violent side-to-side motion as it hit him just how insane their separate takes on interfacing looked when lined up alongside each other. The parallels were frightening for how strong the attached opinions about them were.

"There's these opinions that go back far as I can remember, all the way before the Enforcer Code gave me the right to arrest anyone caught being 'indecent' in public or my instructors warned me that warbuilds are inherently dangerous, like they're not mechs like you an' me. And those opinions are rearing their ugly old heads here again." He stabbed his finger at the table for emphasis as he gave the silent prejudices a voice. "What we're sayin' right now is that the Decepticons aren't as committed, because everyone knows that tactile don't mean scrap. We're sayin' it's not important that the 'Con officers are putting themselves on the table, because everyone knows that tactile is sick and wrong and they probably can't feel any emotional connection anyway, because everyone knows they're less than we are, so them doing it for duty isn't as important as us doing the exact same thing. Except we're doing it by hardline, so naturally it's more innocent."

"Slippery slope," Wheeljack said as he sat forward again to wrap his arms securely around the saboteur's waist.

Jazz glanced back at him. "Yep. It's coercion if Megatron does it to Optimus, but who cares if Megatron makes Starscream do it? Everyone knows it's duty to hardline your own mechs, but the idea of 'facing them without cables suddenly turns it lewd and crude and just plain rude - but frag, everyone knows that's what the Decepticons are like, so of course the idea of forcing them to offer the equivalent doesn't matter as much to us. It doesn't register as an equal trade, because we automatically shunt it aside as a poorer trade."

"Anyone else gettin' real confused about where this conversation's goin'?" Blaster asked plaintively.

Ratchet flung a quick scan in the Comm. Officer's direction. "I need to set up a monitor?" He was already keeping a very close optic Prowl, who was sitting ramrod straight.

"No - I. No." Blaster didn't look happy, but he managed a crooked smile for the medic. "Just venting out loud. I've got so many criss-crossed lines of thought running that I'm just waiting to hit a snag. That whole line of questioning," he said with a pained look to Jazz, "feels like I'm falling down a hole I never noticed under my feet."

"Hardline interfacing is not the same level of commitment as tactile," Prowl said, ignoring anything else. "We cannot demand that Autobots submit themselves to the Decepticons for - "

"Why is it submission?" Prime asked, suddenly curious.

At the same time, Jazz laughed recklessly. "Why do you say that it's not the same level of commitment? Give me a real reason, Prowl! Something besides your social protocols dead-ending in the Enforcer Code, because that's not a reason. That's 'I think this because this tells me that's what I should think, therefore I think it.' Is it somehow a greater calling to offer cables instead of our bodies? Oh, please." Jazz grinned like dragging these questions to light was all a game. "We send soldiers into battle for reasons we sometimes don't even explain. Here, we're not asking the grunts to go out and die for a distraction; we're asking the officers on both sides to commit their bodies equally, fully informed. No matter their personal feelings, they're probably gonna see it as a good deal in order to finally end the war, right? That's why the Decepticons have come courting, yeah? It's better than the alternative."

From behind Optimus, Ironhide's engine rumbled in reluctant amusement. "Pit if I don't agree with that. Might not like it, but I'd let a 'Con court me over restartin' the war."

"Megatron's forcing them to court us, not fight us, so you tell me why our bodies are somehow magically more sacred when we meet them outside of combat." The black-and-white spy threw his hands up. "It's like - hey, interfacing's involved. There goes the neighborhood."

"It's…" Prowl reset his optics quickly and started again. "A mech's body is his own - "

"Except when we're telling him to fling it in front of weapons'-fire or report for a debriefing via a cable uplink."

"It's morally repugnant - "

"To shoot each other, too. Next?"

"It's more personal!"

"Prowl, I've been elbow deep in Thundercracker's guts five times in the last six million years. That doesn't count the several thousand times I've shot him, but yeah. Elbow-deep. He screamed then, too, but somehow it's making him like it that flips the switch in our heads from 'necessity of war' to 'Primus take the wheel, I'm gonna faint'?" The Autobot officer cadre's smiling demon shook his head, and his grin took on a hard, pained sincerity. "It's more personal to me, all of sudden, to kill somebody than kiss him. We're okay with hardline 'facing. We're okay with murdering each other. But put more than our minds or our slagging fists together, and it's the end of the world as we know it."

"And you know what?" He slid out of Wheeljack's lap to stand and glare at Prowl. Not because Prowl deserved his ire, but because he was shaking with reaction to his own words, and he needed an outlet for that pent-up emotion. "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."

Because it was about time they'd realized everything they'd known was wrong.

Prowl's engine turned over, growling angrily as the tactician met Jazz's narrowed blue visor. That engine hiccupped once, twice - and Ratchet dove over the table as Prowl crumpled off his chair.

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End Pt. 23

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[A/N:Okay, lots and lots of stuff being talked about in this part. It got so dense that I'm cutting the part in half here to give people some time to digest what the Autobots are bringing up in their own minds. The flow and tumble of conversation is hard to follow, sometimes, when a group of people get together to talk about this stuff. Thanks to NK, LadyDragon76, and Shibara for their feedback that helped me edit. And most definitely thank you to Raditz Wyvern, who commissioned me to finish editing this chapter and write the next chapter. Someone wanted to read this story enough that I was commissioned to drop everything and write. Realizing that amazes me.]

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Bonus Scene!

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[Commissioned as a snippet for DeathComes4U by ZOMGitsalaura, a bonus scene immediately after the close of Pt. 17.]

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Thundercracker froze, cracked optics wide and arms suddenly limp in their bonds as shock stole what little strength alarm had given him. Soundwave advanced across the arena, and the downed Seeker gaped as he approached.

Starscream took a step back from his ex-wingmate, drawing the Autobot away with him. Jazz did his level best to cover his own shock and gracefully follow the pull. The hand in the crook of Starscream's arm felt detached, almost numb. He wasn't sure it belonged to him anymore, especially not with the way Starscream's own battered hand covered it. When he glanced sidelong at it, the way the energon-stained fingers laid over his own looked intimate. Possessive.

No wonder the crowd was watching and commenting so excitedly.

It served his purposes, however, so Jazz allowed Starscream to subtly guide him with the flare of his wing and nudge of the closest arm, feet stepping within a comfort zone they'd both thoroughly danced through back at the combined-faction headquarters. From the outside, it likely looked like they turned in concert to face Soundwave. They both knew how to play to an image, and right now the united front they presented to the crowd was that of Emirate and courted, murderous backstabbing hate transmuted into compatible contract. Oh, they knew their roles in this new Cybertron.

The ceasefire called for peace, and Jazz had slapped a bandage over a potential breach tonight. Now they would play nice for the crowd.

The mech coming toward them wasn't fooled, but Jazz had no intention of giving away any information Soundwave didn't already know. Some of it had to have been obvious, but the Decepticon Comm. Officer wasn't omniscient.

He slammed his scramblers up and rolled his head back to smile up at Soundwave as he and Starscream came to a stop as if on cue. The best defense wasn't always an offense, but striking first in this situation seemed best. "Soundwave!" He let his voice carry and added a dollop of manic cheer. "Fancy meeting you here."

The Air Commander's arm shifted, and the hand on his hand stroked the back. The gliding touch had all the idle pride of a warrior admiring his best weapon, and all the intent purpose of a hunter holding back his most savage cyberhound. "Down, intended," Starscream whispered, well aware that the mech in front of them could hear every word. "He's not your rival. Not like he was," he added pointedly.

"Well, then. I like him better already." Jazz let his smile widen, unconsciously falling into line as if they'd rehearsed this. Second and Third, standing side by side, and despite the damage done by Starscream's hands tonight, nobody could tell which of the mechs standing there was the more dangerous at that moment. Starscream's manipulations had taken a physical turn, but Jazz looked completely untouched for all energon that should stain his hands. Starscream's possessive hold on the Autobot's hand held a kind of pride to it, as if restraining the smaller mech from turning on a new victim.

Soundwave's visor darkened, acknowledgement and wariness. The Jazzmeister had always been a formidable opponent behind the scenes, but the Autobots' most talented saboteur was out in full force tonight. Somehow, seeing the blue visor out of the shadows made the cold gaze of a killer charming. To see Jazz standing relaxed at Starscream's side was likely sending alarm bells ringing in Soundwave's helm.

What Jazz wouldn't give to know how much the blue communication specialist knew about how fragile this united front was.

"Autobot Jazz," Soundwave said, monotone flatter than ever. "Air Commander. Contract: released?"

"Broken," Starscream returned, amusement clipped short. "He's not one of the Armada. If you want him, he's yours." The Autobot at his side snorted and muttered something about being welcome to him, and Starscream stroked the hand in the crook of his arm again. "You might want to refuel him if you intend to seek permission to court tonight. It seems my intended," his hand tightened, "uses his gifts hard."

Jazz smirked. "What's the point of a fray-toy if you don't test it out?" He couldn't believe he said it even as it popped out, but it was worth it for the wave of laughter through the crowd and Soundwave's blank stare. How much was acting, and how much was genuinely Jazz? Let the slagger chew on that.

After a moment, the bulkier Decepticon inclined his head to Starscream without acknowledging Jazz's comment. "Advice appreciated."

Ignore him? So not wise. Jazz's giddy thoughts fastened on an idea, and he went for it.

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End Bonus Scene!

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