Title: Wake up Call - Ch 4
Universe: G1
Characters: Jazz/Prowl
Rating: NC 17
Warnings: Death, Mutilation, Mind fuckery, Dark fic, references to interfacing, language.
Disclaimer: I claim nothing but my own poor writing and ideas
seriously eats my formatting. I have no clue how to fix this without html-ing the whole thing, and that is NOT something I am willing to take hours out of my day to do. If it bothers you, because it sure as heck bothers me, please read over at my livejournal. Link is in my profile.
Chapter 4
Ratchet had never seen Jazz so off balance.
He was very visibly trembling, something that he'd never seen happen before, and there were tears, TEARS silently running down his face.
Over Soundwave of all mecha.
"Jazz, please! You have to talk to me, tell me something about this! I know you see a connection, I KNOW you do. Good mecha are dying left and right and in order to stop the one doing this we need all the information we can get! Please Jazz."
Jazz shifted from pede to pede, optics never leaving the mutilated mockery of mouthplates carved into the battlemask Soundwave wore.
"Ah used ta know 'em. All of'm."
Ratchet sighed and rocked back on his heels.
"So I've gathered Jazz. Is there any other connection? How or where do you know them from?"
Jazz shifted again, his EM field flaring with embarrassment, annoyance and no small amount of guilt.
Ratchet paid close attention; it wasn't often that Jazz forgot himself enough to let his emotions into his EM field like that.
"Back on Cybertron ah had a different job. Ah took contracts from all these mecha."
He visibly gathered himself.
"Soundwave was… Soundwave had one o' my biggest contracts. Before the raids hit ah was in wit'm near to every day."
Ratchet paused to re-examine the body. It did show more than the usual amount of damage, though he'd originally thought it was because Soundwave was much too strong to be taken down without a spectacular fight.
The carved glyphs were all there, though more voluminous and crowded on the navy and white plating, and the exposed interface array was more of a mess than normal.
The spike had been torn off, like the others, but Jazz could see the twisted end of the plating protruding from Soundwave's valve.
The energon stains made it more than clear what had happened.
It took all of Jazz's formidable will power not to look away. Soundwave hadn't deserved this, he'd been loyal to Megatron, sure, but all in the name of family.
Megatron had given him the out he needed from the city. Provided him with energon and a place to recharge where no one else could and it had bought him the most loyal soldier anyone could ask for.
Privately, Jazz always wondered what would have happened if they'd gotten him out first. Soundwave had been so much more than what mecha saw now, he'd been a loving creator to his cassettes, a well-respected member of the community and had, after a fashion, become one of Jazz's only friends.
One couldn't afford to have friends, not in his previous line of work, not really now. Prowl was the only one who really saw past the mech 'Jazz' was. That was why Jazz allowed himself this one thing, why Jazz allowed himself to feel back.
He felt his resolve harden against the mecha responsible. He would kill them and give Soundwave the burial that he knew Soundwave deserved.
Ratchet was unaware of the specific thoughts running through Jazz's mind, but the changing expressions mixed with the wildy fluctuating EM field told him that Soundwave was more than just a contract.
Prowl entered the Medbay later that same day, waiting patiently until Ratchet was finished with whatever he was doing before following him to the morgue.
He shut the door behind him and stood by as Ratchet uncovered Soundwave.
"How may I assist you Ratchet. You know that we all have already seen the body, of course."
Ratchet gestured to the uncovered interface array.
"I didn't show you all this part; I fleshed out a hunch before calling you here. Look."
Prowl walked over and glanced down, taking in the end of the torn plating protruding from the tightly closed valve, before canting his head to the side.
"Have you removed this yet to look at it?"
Ratchet shook his head.
"I haven't moved or removed anything."
There was a strange look on Prowl's face as he looked at Ratchet.
"You may wish to examine the valve carefully, it seems to me that going through all the trouble to keep the spike within the valve means whoever did it wanted something kept inside."
Ratchet gave Prowl a carefully considering look before transforming his hands and carefully extracting the mangled spike from Soundwave's valve and looked at it carefully, turning it around in the stark light.
The spike itself was covered with the glyph for 'suffering', the swirls and lines of the word clearly carved with great care, and Ratchet set it on a tray to look at later.
He lit up a finger and looked inside the ruined valve, carefully probing and maneuvering the torn mesh until he could see something close to the end of the valve. Turning a finger into grippers he gently grasped the small square object and pulled it out into the light.
"A data chip?"
Prowl moved next to Ratchet to look at the energon coated chip.
"You will want to be very careful with that, Ratchet. We don't know what is on it, nor if it is encrypted with a virus. Please take every precaution before trying to open that information."
Ratchet only nodded peripherally, his attention fully focused on cleaning the sensitive components of the hardware. He muttered a vague goodbye when Prowl left, completely missing the look on the second in command's face.
The meeting was an odd mix of euphoria and trepidation.
Ratchet had commed Optimus, thrilled to have been able to decrypt and restore the data on the chip in such a short amount of time. It had been, he said, only a personal data chip. Nothing that could be considered helpful for the war, since most of it took place during the Golden Age of Cybertron, but was definitely compiled from more than one mecha's memory banks.
So they sat in the meeting room and Ratchet inserted the chip into a holographic projector.
In an instant, the space above the table was filled with the sights and sounds of a high class party. The point of view shifting and moving as the mech moved through the crowd before stopping and talking to an attractive silver mech.
Within moments, it was clear that the silver mech was an elite consort. Not just a pleasure bot, but a trophy companion who catered to the highest bidder for the night.
The scene shifted to another party and the angles made it clear that this was from a different mech, but the same silver mech was again the target of the memory.
And so it went. Literally hundreds of scenes from various memory banks that all featured the same silver consort as the main focus. After the first few Ratchet simply sped through the rest, sound fading out as they watched the quickly flickering images.
When it was finally done they all sat back, except Jazz.
"Where'd yah get this, Ratch?"
Ratchet slipped the chip from the projector and into a small case.
"The chip was at the back of Soundwave's valve. Our murderer must have placed it in there before they shoved the spike in and closed the panel. I don't recognize many of the mecha at these parties, so I can't help identify the city, but you can all see that each memory file clearly is focused on that consort. I can only assume this means something, otherwise why would it be left for us to find?"
It was, strangely enough, Perceptor who spoke up next.
"I recognize him, that consort. He was at a few of the parties that I attended for Science Counsel Awardees. I myself purchased time with him on a few occasions. He was, quite frankly, the best there was. Very physically attractive, intelligent and knowledgeable on a vast range of subjects and fiercely attentive to his favored patron of the evening; there were more than a few mecha who sought him out repeatedly, but he was very selective in his clientele."
Optimus leaned forward.
"So is it possible that this… consort is the killer? That he is taking some sort of revenge on mecha from this point in his past?"
Jazz shoved backward from the table, chair clattering to the floor as he stood up.
"Aint no way that consort is th' killer. No way."
Everyone looked at Jazz in surprise. The Ops Commander rarely let his emotions create an outburst like this, and over a consort?
"Ah know 'im. 'E aint a killer no more'n Prime was a pleasure bot. Aint no way."
Jazz was shaking, his accent quickly falling into barely understandable, and moving agitatedly across the floor.
"If anythin', yah lookin' at some'n tha' 'E refused. Some'n 'E didn't consort wit'."
It was Ratchet who had the missing information, so it was naturally Ratchet who put it together first.
"It was YOU!"
Heads whipped to the master spy still pacing the floor.
"You were that consort!"
Jazz exploded into motion, shoving the other mecha aside and bolting out the door without a backward glance.
A bemused Prowl looked at the gob smacked expressions on the other's faces.
"Perhaps, Ratchet, you should have talked to Jazz before exposing his past to everyone."
With that, he walked out after his lover.
It was dark in his room as the mecha responsible for the day's events lay on his berth.
He idly stroked a hand over the hip of his lover, a shushing noise coming out when the other stirred, and contemplated the different visages of Jazz.
The black and white that he was now was fine enough, attractive enough, he supposed. It was a more practical form, as necessitated by the war, but still pleasing enough to the eye.
The silver form from the Golden Age though, that was pure artistry. The form had been breathtakingly beautiful, all smooth lines and curves that were designed to turn heads and keep them turned.
He had been merely a watcher at those parties, not a participant, and therefore had been completely out of an elite consort's league. Not that he would have had enough credits to purchase even the smallest amount of time anyway; his meager wages had barely paid for his one room apartment and pit poor quality energon. There was never enough left over for pleasantries, not when maintenance and repairs were always needed for a worker such as he had been.
It didn't matter now anyway. He had shelter, energon and power and NOTHING would be able to take it away from him
His smirk turned from mildly unpleasant into a cruel smile. Soundwave had been the first of the last, the highest of the high falling to the depths of the pit.
'He won't come around here anymore.'