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. 27
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Ironhide disconnected.
The access gate went dormant, the port latchkeys spiraled open to release the jack they held, and Ironhide drew his jack out of the back of Jazz's neck. A dozen security checks immediately ran on both sides of the closed connection, scanning firewall integrity and download caches for viruses. Nothing showed up. Jazz hadn't expected anything on his end other than the expected warning pop-ups informing him what information archives had been rifled through.
In turn, he hadn't had more than a trickle of access to Ironhide, as to be expected in an interface lacking a reciprocal cable. What he'd sensed had been filtered through heavy isolation protocols keeping him out of his handler's mind. That left him in the dark as to what Ironhide had found.
Moment of truth. Jazz lifted his head, visor seeking judgment in blue optics.
They held no expression whatsoever as the Weapon Specialist coiled and stowed his cable. He took his time. Once it was put away, he shut the storage hatch and only then cocked his head to regard the smaller Autobot.
Jazz's vents closed. Okay, now was the moment of truth.
Forearm weaponry whirr-clicked, and the saboteur nearly shied away in skittish caution as Ironhide raised one hand toward him. Here it was; he'd been compromised by that fragging backstabbing Seeker, and now he had to be taken down for his own good. The first shot of the next battle had been fired. The war went on -
Uh, please stand by for more information.
"Ironhide?" This was not what he expected. Marched at gunpoint, maybe, but not poked in the shoulder until he turned around, and then poked between the doors until he walked. "Hey, what - " Poke. "C'mon." Poke poke. "What're you doing?"
Doors waggled in protest as he resisted the prodding, but he didn't dare turn and confront the mech. He wasn't sure if he was prisoner or peer at the moment. Fingers tapped on his windshield before Ironhide's palm settled on the glass and shoved. The mech had Grade A shoves, applicable to herding grouchy Dinobots or bodyguarding self-sacrificing Primes alike. Jazz's heels scooted across the floor. Any more force, and he'd leave skidmarks.
"Alright already! I'm going, I'm going." Poke poke prod. "Yes, okay, I get it." Poke.
Grumbling the whole way, the smaller Autobot let himself be shoved back toward the table. The hand on his altmode's roof steered him around his chair when they got there, and it pushed down. Jazz dropped into the seat and peered over his shoulder. He'd sat where directed. Now what? Judgment before everyone?
A big hand patted him on the helm before turning his head forward and letting go. The Weapon Specialist took up guard behind him. Jazz twisted to give him a quizzical look, but the hand returned. Thumb and middle finger delicately trapped one sensor-dense helm projection in their grasp and used it to turn him facing forward again like a teacher twisting a brat's ear. 'Pay attention to the meeting, kid.'
Jazz, of course, didn't take the treatment quietly. "Owww." Whining, he kinked his neck up to keep pressure off his antenna. 'Nooo, I don't wanna be an officer! I wanna infiltrate the Decepticons and blow things up!' Ironhide's fingers dug in and lifted a bit to shake him. Stern teacher didn't like bratty behavior, which only made the brat-saboteur fuss more. "Don't pinch! Ow, ow, stoppit!"
It didn't hurt that much, not when he could easily dial down the receptors for his scanner suites, but the fussing got Ironhide to frown in that way he did when hiding a smile. Guards didn't smile over prisoner antics.
That wasn't spoken confirmation, but the deep tension coiling Jazz's cables into knots relaxed one right after another. Far inside his chassis, a cascading subsonic clicking could be heard as tiny moving parts resumed normal functions. Tightened tank gaskets opened, skreeling softly. His fuel pump rate steadied out, and transformation joints gave a quiet hiss of hydraulic pressure easing. Stress bled off his body in a wave of released electricity as threat assessment dialed systems back from high alert.
None of which could be felt or heard from further than an arm's length away. The wriggling and complaining hid any hint that he'd been dead-center in Ironhide's targeting sights. The mechs prepared to take him down saw it anyway. Blaster and Optimus Prime stood down without showing how close they'd been to activating their own weaponry, and the Prime's optics crinkled in a smile at the same time Blaster snickered.
The cadre stopped what they were doing to watch Jazz bat uselessly at Ironhide's hand. Red Alert's disapproval radiated from the stiff set of his shoulders. Across the table from the Security Director, Prowl's lips tightened fractionally, and the tactician turned back to work. Dual waves of wordless reproof washed through the room. This was no time for play.
Therefore, it was the perfect time for play. Everyone in this room had been keyed up for far too long, and Jazz was the unofficial Autobot morale officer. Secondary function: activate!
Jazz whined some more. He whined at Blaster for help, but the carrier mech golf clapped for Ironhide. Ironhide sniggered at the genteel applause and shook Jazz some more. Whining at Red Alert got him a lack of help somehow flavored strongly by the opinion that the impromptu discipline was well-deserved. A cold glare from Prowl ended the appeal for aid before it began, and Jazz redirected to whimper at Ratchet instead. How the medic managed to roll his optics in response was a mystery. Prime shook his head at him, still smiling.
Finally, Jazz stopped whining and just sulked. Fine. He'd be a good Third-in-Command. He'd sit here and pay attention to the meeting like every other boring officer here. Would that satisfy the meanie holding him captive?
Ironhide gave him one more shake before releasing his sensitive equipment, and he winced. "Now I know what the humans mean when they say someone has 'em by the short hairs," he said in a resentful mutter as he rubbed his abused helm projection. He promptly had to fend off Ironhide's hand when the older mech barked a laugh and pinched his fingers in mock threat. "Ah-ah! No. You stop that. Shoo!"
"You do not have any hair, much less any of a shorter length. Why would - oh, I see." Prowl cut himself off before anyone had to explain the idiom to him, but it was too late.
Jazz collapsed onto the table to giggle into his forearms. Ironhide's hand lay warm and reassuring between his helm projections, vibrating in time with the loud guffaws behind him. Blaster's brighter, higher laughter wove through theirs, underscored by Red Alert's exasperated grumbling. Ratchet's laughter had an edge of hysteria, perhaps because Optimus Prime sat beside him staring at the ceiling as if it held the answers to life, the universe, and everything. Their leader was Not Laughing so loud he shook in contained amusement.
Prowl reset his optics and his vocalizer twice in quick succession as he caught on, but the expected frown faded into a contemplative look. One side of his mouth quirked up as he watched the laughter die down. When he struck, it was with the swift precision one would expect of a master tactician. "I have to disagree, Jazz. I believe the 'short hairs' are what Ratchet will have the Constructicons by."
A low sputter of semi-truck engines signaled the end of their Prime's ability to deal. Dignified leader or not, he folded his arms and brought a hand up to shield his optics. It failed to hide how they glittered laughing blue, overflowing with mischief. "Better than a parking brake," came from under that hand, and Jazz hiccupped as a surprised gasp in through his vents met a burst of shocked laughter coming out.
That was too much. He wheezed into his arms while Ironhide roared helplessly, big hands falling to his shoulders to squeeze in shared mirth. Blaster seemed in danger of falling off his seat. Even Prowl's optics widened, although his expression stayed near deadpan.
Evidently, Ratchet was picturing the same thing they were. The medic threw himself back in his seat and make a winding gesture, rolling his wrists. His grin twitched, the laughter hitching his vents struggling to escape his control, but he kept his voice fairly level as he said, "C'mere, fraggers. We need to chat."
He looked pleased when their esteemed commander flailed his free hand at him, the sputtering laughter of his engine making wide shoulders shake. One of Prowl's optic ridges went up in speculation at the flicker of Optimus' headlights, and his head tilted forward in an attempt to see under the Prime's cupped hand. It clamped down over blue optics to hide their betraying expressiveness from sight. Prowl peered closer. Ratchet leaned in on the other side, grinning, and Optimus flailed at his too-curious friends again as his engine gave away just how hard he was laughing.
Blaster laughed harder and much louder, dignity tossed aside. He said something about, "Save a shuttle, ride a chemist," but Red Alert drowned him out with a strident demand for whatever script the trio across the table had come up with.
The Security Director's patience had come to an end. They were up to something. He could tell. Prowl and Prime were scheming. That was almost as bad as whenever Prowl and Jazz plotted. He demanded an update on their nefarious doings right now!
Someday, the mech would catch on to the way they hung around him whenever they surrendered their respective plots and schemes over to his tender mercies. Tactical and Special Operations might cause mischief and mayhem in their own ways, but Security did contingency planning. It sounded like a curse when Jazz said it and a sigh of relief when Prowl did.
If there was any justice in the afterlife, the Pit had a special place reserved just for Security mechs. The opposing faction's tacticians and operatives had certainly sworn to send them there post-haste if they ever got their hands on the gearheads, anyway. Jazz had often wished fire and smelting upon whomever did Red Alert's job over in the Decepticons. Nobody could match the Lamborghini, but…frag. Security mechs. Contingency planning. Ugh.
Cue agents shuddering in collective horror, visions of compromised missions haunting their recharge.
Boogeyman to Decepticons, bane of existence to the SpecOps Division, asset to Tactical. Red Alert could pull apart anything they gave him, find the weak spots, and nail planks of backup plans and reinforcements in place.
An unholy gleam entered his optics when commander and Second-in-Command shared the current scheme, but the scolding began immediately. "How did you expect this to pass? No. No, rewrite this, I won't have it!" Quick fingers flicked over the table's inbuilt console screen as he sent open windows across to be reviewed. "This gives away our position on the subject. Phrase it in neutral terms."
Prowl accepted the windows with a tap of his fingers on console but said, "Keep in mind that it is an outline to be worked from during the actual conversation, Red Alert."
"Which makes a neutral starting point even more important! They'll seize any opportunity to take the lead in the conversation, and exposing our opinions invites questioning into the motives behind them. Rewrite it."
An excellent point, and one Jazz noted for his own use. Prowl simply inclined his head in acceptance of the scolding. "Very well." Optimus Prime rumbled low beside Ratchet as they leaned in to read the screen in front of him when he started making changes.
The scraping whirr of overworked fans and quiet conversation filled the room as the humorous interlude closed. Business resumed. They were calmer for it, pump rates reduced by a few beats and minds refocused after the short respite. Information assessment subprocessors kicked it over to threat assessment, which passed approval for Jazz's secondary function to deactivate. The danger had passed.
Morale wasn't just about lifting everyone's spirits into a more upbeat attitude when they were down. Sometimes it was about anticipating the build-up of tension and making sure it didn't reach the breaking point. Ironhide's hands slid around to sit on Jazz's shoulder tires as the smaller Autobot sat back, duty fulfilled, and they watched their fellow officers conspire the way the Autobots generally watched the Dinobots charge into a fight: somebody was going to get an aft-kicking, and thank Primus it wasn't them.
It was a strangely satisfying scene.
"'Cons aren't gonna know what hit 'em."
One side of Jazz's mouth stretched in a lopsided grin. "Nah, they will. We're going to be so open, just the most open of open communication happening, here. It'll be all the worse that way." Seeing the artillery incoming before it blew their plans open would inspire a flurry of panic, with any luck. The Autobots wanted to see how the contracts worked, and the point of this was to study how the Decepticons reacted.
That didn't mean he wasn't above enjoying some petty revenge, however. Maybe that was why he felt a tad smug watching the others plot. He did so hope that Starscream lost his cool seeing these weird courtship rules turned around on him like one of Megatron's grandiose weapons gone wrong, back on Earth. Serve the slagging Seeker right. The Autobots were going to be nice, polite, and ruthless while smacking the Decepticons right between the optics, and Jazz wanted to see Starscream's know-it-all mask shatter.
Across the table, Wheeljack emerged from the strange Twilight Zone of science enough to finally notice that things had happened here in the real world. The engineer looked up from his work and glanced about, cataloguing the differences. Everyone had shifted around. Blaster had been abandoned by Red Alert, who'd gone around to the other side of the table. The boombox was now drifting down the table to join the group not blatantly up to mischief and mayhem.
Wheeljack reset his optics at that bunch before moving on, and his optics caught on Jazz. Specifically, he saw the red mech looming behind him like a sentry. Audio indicators flashed a dim inquisitive pattern, a discreet 'Should I be worried?' Jazz shrugged, which probably was less helpful than Wheeljack wished.
However, Ratchet let rip a cackle worthy of the Wicked Witch of the West, and that distracted the inventor. His helm whipped around. The group down the table from him had rearranged to allow Red Alert at the consoles they were using, and the Security Director had both hands flat on the table, framing something on the screen for the others to read. Whatever it was, it had the Prime's optics sparkling and Ratchet doing a credible imitation of someone out for Toto's blood. A faint smile teased over Prowl's lips as he read. It was not a sight for the weak of spark.
"I didn't do it," swore Jazz when the engineer looked back to him, accusation clear.
"I didn't do it either," said Wheeljack. It came out thoughtful, if not a little wary. So much for the usual suspects.
The meeting wasn't in Kansas anymore, he could tell. The plan had swept them clean away, and they were officially somewhere in Oz. Nobody knew the Chief Medical Officer like Wheeljack did; they'd been friends for ages. Wheeljack knew things had gotten weird: right now his friend was having far too much fun. Instead of retreating into the medbay in a cloud of cranky refusal to play along, Ratchet was sitting there rubbing his hands together. The medic only got that into things when the choice became giving up entirely or working with the weirdness.
But when Ratchet played along, he played to win. The only way to deal with strange happenings was to one-up the strangeness. His mad cackling would alarm anyone who knew he wasn't being serious. The overdone evil act was a platoon of flying monkeys away from going completely over the top. Swoop would do. After years of rolling with the chaos of Earth, the pterodactyl would hop into the role without even blinking.
For that matter, any Autobot who'd been on the Ark mission would join up without questioning what was going on. They'd learned that when the slag hit the fan, fighting the flow didn't work half as well as riding it. That was why most of the Earth Autobot crew had ended up as the diplomatic team, even those who weren't specialists. They were a working team that knew how to handle random craziness. Earth had strained their self-modification program protocols, but stretching the limits of their ability to adapt had given them flexibility even the surviving war-veteran Cybertronians lacked.
It'd become a point of pride. "I've seen stranger!" cried the mechs from Earth, whatever the oddness they were called in on.
That battlecry had been in full effect tonight. The Autobots on the network earlier had charged in, ready to save the day despite not knowing what was going on. Having a script for what they were acting out wasn't required; they could ad-lib. For that matter, Jazz owed Mirage a commendation for how he'd walked in on the hallway debacle between him and Starscream. Instead of shutting down the show, his operative had gracefully played off whatever slivers of information he'd put together on his own. Sunstreaker deserved even more credit for following the spy's lead. Blind faith and good acting alone had kept the duo from causing a scene.
More of a scene. A worse scene than he and Starscream had caused on their own, after everyone got out of their way.
Actually, thinking back on it, events might have taken a far different turn if Mirage and Sunstreaker had separated them. The ceasefire might not have been put in such peril, at the price of Jazz almost certainly missing out on the showdown in Tarn. Which might not have happened at all, if the tension in the hallway had stopped at a purely sexual level. Hmm. Well, nothing gained by thinking about might-have-beens. What was done was done. Mirage and Sunstreaker had played along, as Jazz would have expected of any Autobot who'd faced down the strangeness of Earth.
Really, in context of the stuff that had happened on Earth, seeing the Decepticon Air Commander and Autobot Head of SpecOps locked in an intimate embrace wasn't all that weird. They'd probably seen worse. Mirage had regularly spied in the Decepticon underwater base, and Jazz had read his reports. The hallway incident likely registered as a solid six on the spy's personal Scale of Ridiculous. Sunstreaker was a frontliner, so he probably rated it at an eight or nine. It definitely didn't score into Purple Griffin territory.
It took a peculiar mindset to deal with events that went that far. Flat refusal to recognize anything as too bizarre to be unreal gave those mechs a matter-of-fact perspective on things that had the rest of the Autobots gaping. Their CPUs threatened to crash, blotting out what was in front of their optics, but some mechs could take anything they saw in stride and adapt to it. It was a skill most of the Earth crews in both factions had picked up. The Dinobots excelled at it. The Aerialbots weren't far behind. The Stunticons had a natural talent at causing the insanity in the first place, to the point they didn't even seem to notice mind-boggling weirdness as out of the ordinary.
The infamous Giant Purple Griffin had been one of Megatron's more brilliant weapons intended to take advantage of that inability to deal with things seemingly too strange to be real. It had been met by blank stares by the Autobot officer cadre. They'd had no idea how to respond.
Fireflight, on the other hand, had taken one look at the screen and quoted out of nowhere, "I gotta tell ya, from up here the local flora and fauna are quite remarkable." Because, obviously, the only sensible solution to the absurdity had been to call upon the A-Team.
It worked. Instead of freezing up from the bombardment of incongruous events, flat acceptance that this was the new normal balanced them. Adapting let them react. Backwards as it seemed, joining the ongoing nonsense somehow worked.
Once upon Planet Earth, Laserbeak had gotten into the Ark. There had been no way - no way - the Cassetticon could have gotten past Jazz and Blaster's joint efforts. While Jazz and Blaster had stood there in speechless, indignant stillness, literally unable to process what they were seeing because they knew it couldn't be happening, Red Alert had looked at Laserbeak, accepted that countermeasures had failed against all logic, and moved on to dealing with the situation as it was instead of how reason told him it should be. He'd picked up a giant flyswatter and chased Laserbeak from the Ark.
It didn't matter how crazy things got. The Autobots of Earth armed themselves with basketballs, laserpointers, and flyswatters alongside the standard weaponry. They'd been fully immersed in Oz on Earth, and there wasn't anything on Cybertron that could scare them anymore. Bring on the Yellow Brick Road. They'd hit it accelerating on all four wheels.
From the warm rumbling in Optimus' direction and Prowl's suppressed smile, they were careening down it at well above the speed limit.
Ironhide shook his head when Wheeljack gave him an accusing look. Nope, he hadn't done it, either. Jazz directed a suspicious stare of his own at Blaster, but the boombox concentrated on shining his halo. He'd sat back down in his seat, and now he poured on the meltingly innocent expression. Who, him? Why suspect him? He'd done nothing. There were no troublemakers down here at the end of the table. Only Saint Blaster sat here. Behold his innocence.
Wheeljack's vents huffed, scoffing at the same moment Jazz's did.
They looked at each other in mild surprise, then glanced to the side as one. Blaster pumped the holy light of innocence up a notch. They looked back to each other. After a moment of mutual blinking back and forth, Jazz raised both shoulders in a baffled shrug. Nobody here but acolytes to Saint Blaster the Innocent; move along, move along.
Amused, Wheeljack shook his head at him before diving back into his work. He was oblivious to the world again within a klik.
Jazz grinned ruefully. "Sooooo," he drew out as he tipped his helm back. The top thunked under Ironhide's bumper, and he looked up, barely able to see his handler peering down at him over the van grill and windshield in the way. "I'm clean?"
A snort of vents clearing answered the baby blue visored version of Blaster's innocent look. One big hand came down to cover it and push his head down to face forward again. "Nobody's tampered with you."
"Praise Primus on a pogo stick."
Nobody looked up at the fervent gratitude, however oddly it was phrased. Neither Ironhide nor Jazz had raised their voices beyond a level conversational volume, and the rest of the table was occupied. Optimus Prime had temporarily taken center stage in the scheming at the head of the table, while Red Alert supervised and Prowl looked skeptical. Ratchet broke into another witch's cackle. Wheeljack was buried in science, icon dancing about the communication network like a hyperactive ping-pong ball.
That's how Ironhide and Jazz wanted it to stay. This was a minor security issue. No need for alarm, and no one else needed to be involved if it cleared up as easily as a verification scan. An operative's handler was meant to take care of such things, after all.
Blaster leaned in to make sure, however. He'd heard everything they had said earlier, and he hadn't called anyone else's attention to it because the first action Jazz had taken was the correct one for an agent suspecting he'd been compromised. Ironhide would have taken the next step in security measures if those suspicions had turned out to be correct. Still, it was best that Saint Blaster take a holiday, leaving Blaster the Communication Officer to double check that the the situation was under control. "We cool, mechs?"
The hand resting on Jazz's helm ruffled his sensor projections, and his engine made little complaining sputters as he batted at it. "Timestamp checks out," he confirmed. "We're good." Debatably so, as that left a whole new problem to deal with.
Ironhide spread his fingers to grip the top of the black helm, rattling it back and forth as if answers would pop out an audio if he shook hard enough. He said, "Far as I can tell, only mech t' go in there's the mech who's supposed to. Leave's the obvious question, though." That big hand pulled the smaller Autobot's helm back, and the stern frown of a Weapon Specialist taking someone to task was turned on him. Even upside-down, it looked more troubled than angered. "Why're you IDing as one of them, now?"
Relief weakened his struts to rubber for a brief instant. What was that saying about how almost only mattered in horseshoes? Being fairly certain and having definitive confirmation were completely different things when it came to explosives and Special Operations agents, and for much the same reason. Hearing Ironhide actually say the words out loud erased lingering doubt. He hadn't been tampered with.
Jazz dimmed his visor and took the time to pull in a deep breath. Fresh air flushed his ventilation system of stale fear, and he reveled in the luxury of having the confidence in his surroundings to feel safe. This was what it felt like to trust. If not himself, then he trusted his handler to have him under control. He was in good company, and that meant he could let his guard drop.
The hand on his helm supported it as the tensile cables in his neck relaxed, and a lazy smile stretched his cheeks at Ironhide's puzzled look. A touch confused, but not alarmed. Trusting comrades-in-arms was something the Decepticons would never understand, not with their terms and conditions for every relationship.
So why was he identifying as a Vosian, now, if he wasn't a Decepticon? "Not sure," he said as he cycled the air out. "Have some theories, but I hadn't gotten past the shock factor to start thinkin' yet."
"What's your gut feeling?" Blaster asked.
Time to start throwing the theories out in hopes of hitting something. "I'm mainly pinning it on turning this into an op outta nowhere. I'm assemblin' a deep-cover profile based on the me Screamer's already seen and interacted with. I gotta be officer and operative. Can't change too much, or it'll start to show in how our 'Bots react to me. Threat assessment's spittin' up warnings against taking off the mission profile in case of observation, even here at the base. I gotta play both sides of thi, anytime and any place. The closer I keep this profile to real, the less likely I'm gonna get caught slippin' up during the peace talks." He frowned, vaguely discomfited by this train of thought. "I gotta be a Vosian right there with everything else I am, everywhere."
Ironhide's thumbs slid along his forehelm while the red mech mulled that over. "Infiltratin' them out in the open, as one of us. Gonna be a long-term run, here." Jazz straddling the faction lines during the entire length of the peace negotiations painted a precarious picture. He was their best saboteur, one of their best undercover agents, but this operation was right out in the open where the risk of someone exposing his cover personae only increased as he built it up. It had to fit over his real personality like a paintjob instead of fake armor welded over on his real plating. Nothing false, just new colors. "Could be seein' why that flipped your baseline into playin' one of them for real."
Jazz saw it, too. He dug, following the path of rifled files that Ironhide had already searched through. "Could be. From what I can tell…" What he found tightened his lips into something less a frown and more a disturbed, unhappy non-expression. "Yeah. I might've jumped the gun on this one. Root profile looks like it's integrating in line with mission priorities." Playing his cards this close to his chest meant showing the same game face to everyone, even his allies. He wasn't compromised; he was just undercover, still. Even here, even now.
That didn't explain why he hadn't known about it. That bothered him.
A thoughtful hum came from Blaster's direction. "Right hand ain't talkin' to your left hand, or did the string get cut between the cans?"
His fans stuttered an incredulous laugh. "Cutting you outta the loop on this is a Bad Idea, capital letters included and extra emphasis on the bad. Whatever's up in here," he tapped the side of his head as he rolled his helm to the side to look at the Comm. Officer, "I want everybody in this room in on it." Outside of this room, only Jazz the agent could be out and about, but playing it this close to real put him in a particularly dangerous situation.
It took more effort to ease his doors down this time, and Jazz bent his head forward to stare at the tabletop. Running deep cover on his main personality profile shoveled major responsibility onto his shoulders. He had to keep the act and the real mech separate even though his base profile might start adopting more and more foreign elements to further his disguise. Worse than that, he'd witnessed firsthand how charming and persuasive Starscream could be. The Seeker could turn Autobot agents, given the opportunity, and Jazz would be right there beside him playing a Vosian for a long, long time if this mission panned out the way it was supposed to. Oof.
A thumb rubbed one helm projection, steady pressure against the sensitive receptors as Ironhide stood like a rock-solid support behind him. It soothed some of the worries that had jumped to mind. Jazz wasn't in this alone. There would be one safe place where he could remember who he really was, and a group of officers who'd help remind him who he was. Success would mean the ceasefire became an actual treaty, and if he had to be the last undercover agent in a dead war, then it would be worth any sacrifice, even that of his self.
Mind elsewhere, Jazz leaned into Ironhide's hand and sighed. "I'm not intentionally keeping myself or any of you in the dark. It could be as simple as needing t' power down and get a real defrag going. Internal communication between my processors's gone straight to the Pit. I can see it now that I'm paying attention." Some of his subprocessors were still lagging from pulling up tags for the debriefing packets, and that had been over a cycle ago. The sheer amount of files being shuffled about and re-evaluated were bogging him down as background programs pulled processing power.
As alarming as not remembering the change was, the frustrating fact could be that the edit notice had been buried in among the hundreds of files already pinging updates at information and threat assessment. One of his subprocessors had probably approved it without drawing conscious thought to it, just like any non-vital decision made under the surface of his mind while he was busy. More important things had been happening at the time, or so information assessment had decided for him.
Frag, he hated getting overwhelmed. It happened infrequently enough that he didn't recognize the signs before they hit him like this. Too many things to do, too many threads of information to follow. He was only one mech, after all. It didn't help that this fit none of the situations he knew to watch out for. Eons of war, and navigating the rush of information generated by the peace process was what swamped him.
Leaving him with a profile slot full of Vos. "Should ya change it back?" Ironhide asked. The question came out unsure, as well it should.
A change made based off of subconscious cues could be consciously fought, but not without possible backlash. Mind and spark might fall out of sync. This was a relatively minor change, unlikely to cause a crash, but any type of base information change needed some serious thought applied to the cause of the shift. It was the kind of thing that mechs learned to pay attention to before a minor subconscious change became a major conscious decision down the road somewhere.
After all, changing his city of origin might someday mean that he'd change allegiance to it as well. Considering how strongly Vosians seemed to feel about their city-state, that wasn't such a farfetched future. Deeply rooted ties could put him in conflict with the Autobot Cause.
Jazz shimmied his shoulders, shrugging off the chill that suddenly ran down his backstruts. His doors flexed up and down as he worked himself down into his chair, arms crossing over his bumper once he was comfortable. "I don't know if that's a good idea. There's nothin' to change it back to," he said, pushing the words out slowly. "Slot's been empty since before I got promoted. Not even my personnel file's got my city of origin in it anymore." He should know. He'd tracked down and erased every copy out there.
Blaster frowned at that, but Ironhide shrugged. Higher level operatives tended to delete any information that could be used to create accurate psychological profiles. It was standard practice, and an ongoing battle between Security and SpecOps. Jazz's back-ups had his agents' full files, but he kept those under such heavy encryption even he had trouble accessing them. Red Alert staged occasional raids into SpecOps' secure files trying to get them. That gave the division good practice in case of hostile hacking, but there were times Jazz wanted to strangle Security mechs with their own professed concern for plugging leaks. Exposing his agents' backgrounds was a security leak. The more personal details they could filter out of their personnel files and base profiles, the more realistic their cover profiles were. Manufactured out of thin air, a cover looked solid as the real thing when there were no incriminating facts hidden underneath.
"I'm gettin' the idea that the slot filled because of the city itself." The saboteur's fingers tapped restless patterns on his sides. Explaining what the back of his mind had cooked up meant taking it out into the light to study, and what a strange twist of thought it looked like out in the open. "Turn my axles if Screamer isn't right. Vos had - has? - somethin' only a couple of the other major cities had. The more I think about it, the more it stands out. Picture goin' undercover." One hand untucked to splay in front of him, opening up an imaginary mission profile. "I slide most cities into that slot, and it's adjust an accent here, know a few details there, and memorize a factory address. Here's where I used to hang out, here's where I used to work." He clapped his hands together. "Boom. I pass."
Blaster cocked his head, optics distant as he thought that over. "Yeah. Yeah, know whatcha mean."
"Right. But there's a couple places I can't claim I come from without changin' it up. Saying I'm Praxian takes a cargoload more to pass. I've done it, mechs. I know." He'd hated it. He'd done it because he had to, but he and Prowl had been at odds for deca-cycles afterward. Each time he got back, his core programming had rejected the stiff regulations and internal policing of Praxus, and he'd been a jittery, juvenile prankster until the purge completed. Forcing himself to adhere to a Praxian's strict lifestyle brought out the opposite in him once he was free of it.
He managed the missions because he was a professional, but the mission profiles had itched in the mechanisms over his spark like a rust infection. His base profile came in at right angles to most of the assumed changes. Conversely, that was why his Praxian cover had been one of his best. None of the Decepticons had anticipated a spark like his being able to warp that far under the mental shift required to pass as a Praxian.
"Passing as an Iaconian…" He grimaced. "I've done it. I've got zilch common ground with the upper class there, but I've filled in as the help before. Mirage gets called in for the snob-ops." Lower class servants were easy to mimic, but the servile ever-present awareness of status or lack thereof repulsed him. Passing as a noble had been harder yet. He could borrow some of the pretentious mannerisms of the noblemechs, but Iacon had been a world in and of itself. His Iaconian cover profiles had been uneasy fits at best.
"Dunno if there's an oven out there big enough to bake me some of that upper crust," Blaster muttered. "But I get what you're saying. I'm trying to wrap my head around claiming to be from the Vos jet set, and I got a fat lot of nothing."
"Flyers," Ironhide said. "'Cons. Flying 'Cons." It sounded almost questioning.
Jazz gestured at nothing, helpless. Look at all the things he knew. "Don't look at me."
Blaster nodded. "Flyers and 'Cons, and that's about it for me, too. Nothing about accent or rules or hobbies or anything but flying. Flyer and Decepticons. I could either infiltrate that with my optics off - or blow it 'cause I'm blind to what it takes to be one of them."
"Huh," all three of them said, stumped.
Jazz pored over their lack of information versus the bucket of it he'd been doused in tonight. "So I'm finding it'll take more to pass as Vosian than I thought, and all these things I'm learnin' aren't…bad. I mean, other than the obvious, I'm agreeing with a lot of what I heard. How likely is it that this's a case of my mind fillin' a void?" The obvious part being, of course, the fact that this city-state structure talked up at him belonged wholesale to the Decepticons.
Beyond that, however, the culture he'd tripped over tonight was difficult to argue against, much less outright disagree with. If his profile's open slot had scooped up the first decent fit his mind found, he'd rest easier. A search program that had found a compatible fill for an open spot, nothing more or less significant? He could work with that. He'd intentionally left the slot open for the course of the war, but his self-modification program protocols hadn't been tweaked past trying to occasionally fill it.
Ironhide drummed his fingers on the black helm under his hand when it turned, Jazz looking up at him for an opinion. "Nah. You've used your home as your cover 'fore this. It didn't auto-fill your base profile."
The Weapon Specialist was squinting into the middle distance, so he didn't see the momentary stillness that froze the expressive blue visor turned up toward him. That line of thought depended on Jazz being compatible with his city-state of origin, now didn't it?
"It's not this mess of politics an' culture an' slag," the red mech said, shaking his head. Waving a hand to dismiss Jazz's suggestion, he moved from the spot behind the black-and-white Autobot and pulled out his own chair. He sat down in a creak of old joints and dry gears and leaned an elbow on the table to face the other two officers. "Might seem like ya understand Vos, but that's surface agreement. Slot wouldn't fill just 'cause you like a few ideas." He pointed at Jazz, optics narrow. "You're not one to go off half-cocked. It's coincidence that the timing fits like a nut and bolt, nothin' more. Check things over after a good long defrag, and grease me if it ain't your subprocessors paintin' you up pretty for the flyboys."
Filling a root profile slot for purposes of camouflage alone sounded crazy, tampering with his base personality in order to pass as someone he was but wasn't. It was risky as assigning a top officer a covert mission right under Starscream's nosecone.
In that light, it was probable. Jazz prodded at the theory looking for the weak point, but it felt solid. It was entirely possible, if eerily convenient, that his subprocessors were making him look like a Vosian for the duration of the mission.
It seemed impossibly simple. Too simple.
Then again, it really would be that simple if the city resonated with his core.
Ironhide's assurance came up against the instinctive distrust of an experienced infiltrator, and he wondered. Too simple, too easy, but convenient enough to use for now. Threat assessment took his caution and made a note. A slight shift in beliefs could change allegiances, and stable footing could turn to treacherous ground. The biggest threats were the hidden ones, especially the ones masquerading as something benign.
In his own mind, Jazz suspected himself.
"So, what now?" One hand wavered mid-air, indecisive, and Blaster followed that by leaning forward to open both hands at Jazz. "How should we play it? If this is just part of your cover, we got it. No problemo." When the smaller Autobot avoided his optics, he laid his hands flat on the table. "Hey, keep it cool, cat. It's going to rattle our cages having a wolf in the fold, but that ain't all bad. Sure, you and Prowler will snap and bite at each other, but we got this. Cover is cover, and he'll keep it in mind. 'Sides, somebody with an inside perspective might be a good thing, y'know? Steal a look in their minds."
"See what th' Decepicreeps want us to think?" Ironhide mused. "Could work."
Blaster's grin was sharp. "Sheepicrons got themselves a wolf-shaped blind. Use him to see what they want to show us, and use him to show them what we want 'em to see."
"Baa baa," Ironhide drawled, a sly smile blooming to match Blaster's.
"Whoa, hold on, here. I don't want to be some kinda," Jazz cut himself off, lowered his voice, and spelled it out, "e-x-p-e-r-i-m-e-n-t."
The three Autobots automatically glanced across the table. Wheeljack continued chortling quietly to himself. Windows flashed on his console screen and lit his face from below in an unnerving fashion. He looked like a mad scientist at work. His favorite word hadn't caught his attention, thank Primus.
Regardless, they drew closer together in a defensive herd against any predatory science that might try to pick off a stray. A familiar scent was on the nonexistent breeze. Science was nigh. They could all but hear it stalking them. They were armed, dangerous, and would flee like spooked rookies the nanoklik Wheeljack asked for volunteers to test whatever he was working on.
"No, we can use this," Blaster said out of the side of his mouth. His optics stayed on Wheeljack. "Prowler's got to take things slow for his own sake, but you know how he is. Even if he agreed with an ideal Decepticon Frag-U-topia - "
"Never thinkin' of it as anything else from now on."
The Comm. Officer exchanged smirks with Ironhide before they both went back to watching Wheeljack warily. "Prowl's a stick-in-the-mud on a good day when it comes to this kinda stuff. He'd slam on the brakes no matter if he believed the info or not, so this'll work out fine. We got advocates for the extremes. You pedal-to-the-metal pro-Vos and knowin' it," he pointed at Jazz, then at Prowl, "and him anti-'Con and dragging his heels."
Jazz narrowed his visor, the glass sliding into a dark band that only lightened a few shades as he thought. "Don't think I'm gonna go that far with the Vos thing, Blaster." He hoped not, anyway. Running a hand under his chin, he rubbed the knuckles of his forefinger along his jaw. They felt like they always had. Had anything really changed? Could he be sure? He could become his greatest enemy, and he'd think it was his own idea the whole time.
But Blaster was right. "It wouldn't be the first time we've been on different sides of an issue," he agreed eventually, hesitating over the words. "I'm just not quite sold on it. We start a fight that goes too far, and we'll be at each other's fuel lines before anybody else can - "
"Eureka!" Wheeljack shouted, rocketing upright in his chair, arm thrust up.
"Fire in the hole!" Ironhide bellowed, and the command staff hit the floor in vertical three-car pile-ups a split second later. Optimus Prime lunged over the table in an impressive leap to take shelter on the other side, back braced against a chair.
"I've got it!" Wheeljack's hand fell from pointing at the ceiling, and he blinked around the abruptly deserted table. "I've…uh…was it something I said?"
"No, no, of course not." Every inch their dignified leader, the Prime straightened from his reflexive crouch up to his full height and dusted himself off casually. "I'd like a word with you, Ironhide." As if that were what he'd suddenly relocated for.
The old red mech took his extended hand, and Optimus heaved him to his feet. "Sure, Prime." Like nothing at all had just happened, they turned their backs to the table and began talking in low voices.
Leaving Wheeljack blinking at their backs. He looked to the side at the group of mechs piled on the floor right as Prowl sat up with every scrap of dignity not currently being used by Optimus Prime. "I fell down," the tactician said curtly. "My knee joint stuck."
Freed from Prowl's weight, Ratchet sat up in a disgruntled rev of engines. "Fixed it."
Wheeljack stared. He blinked. A confused series of clicks came from his vocalizer. He didn't seem to know how to respond to the blatant lies.
Blaster's hand came into sight over the edge of the table. "I found Waldo!"
"He's a security risk!" Red Alert's helm projections popped up over on the other side, and suspicious blue optics glowered. "No one has ever informed me how they keep losing him. Where was he? Has he been debriefed and cleared to be in this meeting?"
"Oops, lost him again."
"Blaster! That's not funny!"
Jazz rolled out from under the table on Wheeljack's side and sat up to rest his elbow in the inventor's lap as Blaster and Red Alert bickered. By the time they were done arguing about whether or not Waldo was a Decepticon spy, they'd have smoothed over the part where they'd have to awkwardly explain why exactly they'd ducked under cover for no good reason. Wheeljack didn't even have his toolset out anymore. He wasn't that hazardous.
The walking danger zone looked down at the black-and-white mech in his lap a bit mournfully. "What's your excuse?"
He propped his chin on his hands and smiled upward. "Ironhide and Blaster landed on top of me."
Wheeljack looked at the two Autobots and their larger frametypes. Jazz was many things, but big he was not. "Good excuse."
"I thought so. Whatcha got?"
Just like that, the inventor went back to vibrating with excitement. "The highgrade Starscream gave you came from a batch made within the last deci-vorn." One side of Jazz's visor went up in question as to why that was significant, but Wheeljack clamped a hand on his forearm like he'd shake the excitement into the smaller mech. "It's fresh, Jazz! Very fine quality, really a decent gift under any circumstance," he mused, speculation taking him off on a tangent. "Someone's got a sophisticated refinery set up to produce something like that. It isn't crude-compressed midgrade energon. It's filtered and distilled, the very highest grade. This is someone with actual equipment turning midgrade into highgrade like we used to have. Kind of a nice sentiment offering something like it as a gift during the peace process. I wonder if he was inviting you to drink it with him?"
"I don't know," Jazz said, patient but pointed. "Why would it matter? It's just highgrade, even if it's the good stuff. Why's it got your tires spinning? Is it poisoned?" That had been why he'd turned it over to Wheeljack in the first place. He'd hoped otherwise, but considering how hostile things had gotten, it wouldn't have surprised him if the tests came back positive. It only counted as hostile action if Starscream force-fed it to him, after all. Drinking it without testing beforehand counted as an act of stupidity, not war.
Audio indicators flickered bright denial when Wheeljack shook his head, however. "No! I took a sample and sent it to Perceptor for analysis, and it came back clean. He noted the age, and that's what made me think to look at the composition." He said it as if that one word revealed everything.
It revealed nothing. Jazz looked up at him blankly. "And?"
If he could have, Wheeljack would have grinned. "I pinged the composition analysis off Swerve and Perceptor, even Brainstorm, and they all agreed. There are trace elements of Rutherfordium and Francium. I almost couldn't catch samples of them. They decayed during the refinement process, although the brewer obviously went through a lot of effort to preserve them, presumably as a rare flavoring." He tapped a finger on his chin, speculating out loud. "Probably either to impress if it was given as a gift - it really is a neat trick, so well done to him on that because I am thoroughly impressed - or drive up the price if the batch was meant to be sold. As soon as I opened the cube, the preservation statis-lock broke and decay resumed. The elements hit their half-life only a klik or two after I ran the analysis. Swerve's fascinated. He wants the whole cube to study, if you'll let him have it."
Most of that had been gibberish to him, but Jazz got the feeling it was important somehow. "Why's he so interested?" he asked.
"He's a metallurgist and, well, an amateur brewer in his own right. He wants to test the highgrade for both professions." Slightly more somber, the engineer looked down at Jazz. "Those elements aren't found on Cybertron, Jazz. I used the Earth names for them because we don't have our own names for them. Of all the elements we've discovered, some of them have been unique to planets other than our own. Earth had a handful of elements we hadn't seen yet, and those are two of them."
He had to think about that for a moment before he understood, and his visor widened when he did. "The Decepticons left Earth over two deci-vorns ago. Where'd they get it?"
"Exactly my question."
"You said the batch was made within the last deci-vorn," Ratchet said as he sat down in the chair next to them. Prowl stopped beside him. "Is it possible that the elements could have stayed intact in statis this long?"
Wheeljack shook his head. "Statis technology has short and long-term effects we can measure. That's how Perceptor could tell how long about this batch was cubed. There was discernible decay based on the quality of the energon grade. The midgrade it started out as must have been shipped in statis to begin with, and the refining process had to have been a tricky process, trying to distill the energy without lifting the statis completely. Whomever it is who made the batch has to have some specialized tech-skills to build a distillery like that." Ratchet looked interested - of course he was, the party ambulance - but Prowl's doors twitched impatiently. Wheeljack moved on. "So, no. Not a chance."
"Swindle has likely been importing illegal goods from Earth. He could have smuggled it," Prowl suggested, but by his frown, he already knew the answer.
"It'd take better statis technology than smugglers have to keep these elements intact to the point they'd still be detectable now." Wheeljack glanced at Jazz before looking back to Prowl. "Starscream got that cube from somebody who distilled it from midgrade made on Earth. Recently."
"That ain't good," Blaster said. Sometime during Wheeljack's explanation, the carrier mech had sat down in his seat again. Ironhide and Optimus Prime had come around the table to stand near him as well. The Weapons Specialist leaned his hip against the table, and Blaster leaned forward to see around him. "You absolutely, positively sure on this?"
"No," Wheeljack said. "It's possible that the Decepticons found another source. Not likely, but possible. The bad news is that highgrade's pretty much pure energy, and concentrating the energy burnt off most of the defining characteristics of the midgrade it was distilled from. I can't tell you if those two elements came from Earth or not."
Prowl's doors were high and tight. "The good news?"
Wheeljack's fans flipped on and off in a quick buzz. "We can't pinpoint the two rarer elements as being from Earth on their own, but we can analyze the rest of the cube as a whole. Earth has a fairly unique elemental make-up. With the right equipment, we can theoretically reconstruct the original midgrade's molecular composition, and that should tell us whether or not the midgrade came from Earth. Well," he shrugged, "or Earth's solar system, I suppose. I doubt the Decepticons could have set up energon production under the Earth Defense's watch, but it's not any less likely than shipping it directly from Earth."
Silence filled the room as the officers absorbed that. On Earth or not, the implications of the Decepticons having access to Earth without their knowledge carried ugly connotations.
Optimus Prime broke the silence at last. "What equipment do you need?"
"Perceptor is assembling it now, but this isn't his specialty. I've sent Slingshot out to deliver part of the sample to Swerve to see what he can do with it, but what we really need is a master chemist." The inventor tilted his head to the side and flickered his audio indicators at his best friend, optics dancing. "And it just so happens we know of one, hmm? One who's maybe going to want a certain concession we aren't inclined to hand over without seeing what he's willing to offer us."
Ratchet stared. He reset his optics when the hint got through, and a scowl pulled at his mouth. "Buying my favors?"
"More like auctioning them off," Wheeljack said cheerfully.
"It could work," Prowl said. "We have what they want, and setting a price they can pay will test how willing they are to negotiate over their…courtships."
Ratchet's lips pressed into a thin line. The medic looked distinctly peeved at being discussed like a commodity. "What happened to just informing them they can't have what they wanted and seeing what they did?"
"They did not have anything we wanted. Now they do. If they meet the price, it will not harm our position for you to accept suite from all the Constructicons instead of merely two."
"For frag's sake, just slap a 'For Sale' sign in my window and be done with it." Prowl looked down at him, unimpressed by his ire, and Ratchet threw his hands up. "Staple a price tag to my aft while you're at it!"
Wheeljack hurried to assure him that, "We won't sell you cheap. Bargain bin chemical analysis won't help us any."
"Oh, well, thank you. I feel so much better." The sarcasm was strong with this one.
"You're welcome."
Jazz hunched over Wheeljack's lap and stage-whispered to Blaster, "I'd like to open the bidding at three test tubes…"
"Will you shut up!" Ratchet swatted at the mech sitting on the floor before folding his arms and harrumphing in moody acceptance. The scowl on his face hid amusement, but like the Pit would he show it openly. "Fine. Sell me off like an old jalopy. Nobody wants to buy this rusted body of mine anyway."
"Ratchet," Optimus Prime said, gentle and grave, "we need to know where that energon came from. But if you truly find this unacceptable, my friend, we will find another way. Perceptor and Swerve will provide us with an answer." Perhaps not a reliable one, but Optimus' optics were kind. He understood Ratchet's protests.
The medic looked at him for a long while. When he looked away, he could meet no one's optics. His voice fell to the gruff tone of someone flustered and trying not to show it, but everyone pretended not to notice. "Call Mixmaster. Let's get this over with."
[* * * * *]
End Pt. 27
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[ A/N:Thank you, DeathComes4U!]