AN: Wow, wow, wow…. *blinks.* You're all so awesome; I just can't thank you enough for all of your support for the story. It has really kept me inspired and motivated.
To everyone who reviewed: Sergeant Duck, Independent.C., pl2363, Yami-Yugi3, Elita One, Blood Shifter2, PrancingTiger86, TammyCat, Mirage Shinkiro, cmdrtekk, xStarSaber, DitzyMusicLover, Jessie07, marleypup14, Gimme-Chan, Trickster91, and Ameri. Thanks. I know I keep going on and on about how much I appreciate it that you all take the time to review, but I really am grateful. You guys are the best.
Also a big thanks to everyone who read, favorited, or added this story to their alerts. Thank you so much.
And now we start to see Jazz's side of the situation. I must have rewritten this chapter three different times before I got anywhere close to what I wanted, and I'm still not sure whether I'm happy with it or not. *Shrugs* We'll just see how it goes I guess. Feel free to let me know what you think.
I was actually going to wait a few days to post this but I have a seven page paper to write and will be unavoidable busy for the next few days, but all the better for everyone I suppose.
So without further ado. Chapter eight.
Making Sense of the Illogical
Chapter Eight
Klick- About One Earth Second
Breem - 8.3 Earth minutes
Cycle-One Earth Hour
Joor – One Earth Day
Orn - About Two Earth Weeks
Vorn - About 83 Earth years
Jazz was normally a very outgoing mech. He loved being in the center of whatever happened to be going on at the moment. Jazz appreciated being around his fellow Autobots, sometimes to the extent that he himself instigated those parties that seemed to make Ratchet lose his (admittedly thin) temper.
That's not to say that he was irresponsible. Far from it actually, but he liked to occupy his processor with the fun things in life and that sometimes led to him putting off reports for a few cycles and confiscating the twin's latest batch of high-grade for mutual consumption by all Autobots present on the base.
Until lately that is, when Prowl had started to act as if he was the unmaker himself.
This kind of situation had never happened to Jazz before. Usually mechs were inviting him over for some company (unless they were a Decepticon, but that was a totally different situation again, usually), not taking off every slagging time he made an appearance!
It was getting on Jazz's last nerve.
He was a very emotionally centered mech by build and nature, calm and cool in all situations, even tempered by every mechs standards, but if Prowl continued to avoid him, he would have to resort to some very underhanded methods that he hadn't employed since the last time he had broken into Soundwave's quarters (a tricky feat in itself) to get the fragging mech to stay in one place.
As it was he was utilizing all of his various skills; tracking, spying, and computer hacking, just trying to keep track of the tactician.
If anyone was keeping a running total they would know that Jazz had tried and failed to meet up with the SIC six times already. Six!
Jazz threw his hands up into the air, thoroughly disgusted with the way that his latest meeting with Optimus had gone.
He had thought that going to Optimus would solve the problem.
Surely, he had reasoned, Prowl wouldn't refuse a request from the Prime himself.
But to a surprised Jazz's dismay he had not only declined a meeting with him again, but he had also refused to answer Optimus' query about why he was avoiding him.
Which meant that he was no closer to an answer than he had been two cycles ago when he had stormed into his commander's office, ranted for ten breems about Prowl and loudly demanded that Optimus fix the situation.
Jazz liked to think that he was an intelligent mech. Or at least that he was a mech with enough processing power to get by reasonably well in life and to be able to sort out all of the problems that it tended to throw at people, but Prowl had him, to put it bluntly, completely stumped.
Jazz began replaying the last couple orns in his head, trying to find any possible reason for Prowl's recent behavior.
He had first become aware of Prowl having a problem during their interrupted strategy meeting, and then the battle itself had happened.
He had woken up in the med. bay about an orn after the battle, Trailbreaker had come to see how he was, Prowl had shown up (interrupting one pit of a kissing session-Trailbreaker might not be a lot of things, but a good kisser he surely was) and then promptly fallen off-line (scaring him and Trailbreaker into near fits at the absolute suddenness of it) and Jazz hadn't seen the tactician since (though it wasn't for lack of trying).
What was puzzling Jazz the most however was why Prowl would start avoiding him.
As far as he was aware he and Prowl had been on very good terms (or so he had thought), at least until recently. There was just no logical reason for Prowl to suddenly start evading him like the tactician was currently doing.
Everybot knew that Prowl was all about logic, numbers, and self-control and what he was currently doing was about nothing like that at all.
It was also baffling how swiftly this had all come on.
It was like one breem Prowl was fine and the next, notably after he returned from his mission to destroy Megatron's base, Prowl was a whole new bot.
A whole new bot that took to avoiding Jazz with such firmness that some mechs were honestly considering the fact that Jazz might have done something extremely horrible to tick the tactician off.
But that couldn't be right. As far as Jazz was aware, he had done nothing.
Jazz stopped and looked at the wall, almost ready to laugh out of sheer nerves. He had just talked himself in circles.
Shaking his head, the saboteur resumed walking, still mulling over his Prowl problem and what he could do to figure out what the actual fragging problem was.
The real issue here, Jazz knew, was that he just didn't have enough information to form any sort of plan or conclusion.
And he hated it when he didn't have enough information. Lack of information got mechs killed more often than not.
So the only logical thing to do was get more information.
Squaring his shoulders and coming to an abrupt decision, Jazz changed direction, walking decisively toward the Control Center, prepared to stay there for the whole of Prowl's shift if he had to if it would force the bot to finally talk to him!
-TRANSFORMERS_TRANSFORMERS_TRANSFORMERS_TRANSFORME RS-
Jazz entered the room quietly, making sure to muffle his footsteps. Those few bots who looked his way quickly went back to their tasks after catching each other's optics and throwing subtle grins at each other.
Jazz acknowledged Blaster, who was stationed on communications and silently pleaded with him, asking him not to tell Prowl that he had entered the room. In response Blaster turned in his seat and went back to monitoring the Hub.
Wordlessly thanking the bots in the room (and making a mental note to invite them to his next party) he walked quietly up to the back of Prowl's seat.
It was always fun to assess bots.
Jazz got enjoyment out of trying to read a mechs body language. It was something that most mechs picked up after spending any significant amount of time in Special Ops. and it was turning out to be a particularly useful skill now because he could clearly see the tenseness in the position of Prowl's head and shoulders and how he set his doorwings.
And he was downright determined that he would get to the bottom of what was causing Prowl to be so stressed and edgy.
Resolute, Jazz walked around until he was directly in Prowl's line of sight. And to his (rapidly increasing) horror he could see Prowl's optics widen and could clearly hear the hitch in Prowl's intakes as the SIC drew in a shaky puff of air just at the mere sight of him.
It was significant though that that was all that happened. Prowl was a bot that prided himself on his self-control, but he now seemed to be too much in control of himself.
As if he was holding something back that would tear him apart if he let it.
And that couldn't be healthy Jazz decided.
So to that end he was bound and determined to figure out what was wrong with Prowl, even if he had to bug the SIC ceaselessly to do it.
Speaking of which…
Jazz brought his concentration back to the tactician and was astonished because one: Prowl hadn't acknowledged him yet (at least not out loud) and two: he had slipped out of his seat sometime in the last two klicks and was quickly heading for the door. Again!
Oh no you don't, Jazz thought mutinously while narrowing his optics.
"Prowl!" Jazz called out, stopping the tactician in his tracks.
Prowl froze for a moment, and then slowly turned to face Jazz, doorwings straight up in the air, quivering.
"Yes Jazz, did you need something?" Prowl asked in a flat, even tone.
Interesting, some small part of Jazz's processor noted, it seemed that Prowl couldn't look him in the optics.
"Yes!" Jazz growled out loud, marching up to the SIC until he was faceplate to faceplate with him.
"You!" And Jazz poked Prowl hard in the chestplate to emphasize his words.
And then to the astonishment of all those present, Prowl hastily backed up as if Jazz had just shot him through the spark and then turned around and actually ran to the entrance of the Command Center. It was as if he couldn't get away from Jazz fast enough.
Perplexed, Jazz could only stand there in the middle of the room, finger still outstretched as the doors swished closed behind the fleeing tactician.
The silence after Prowl left seemed to stretch on forever.
-TRANSFORMERS_TRANSFORMERS_TRANSFORMERS_TRANSFORME RS-
Leaving the Command Center, Jazz felt equal parts shock and discouragement.
He just couldn't figure it out. Why had Prowl run away from him? Why would the SIC do that?
It didn't make any sense. Prowl never ran away. It just wasn't in his nature.
At least Jazz had thought it wasn't. Until Prowl had done it to him. Jazz just couldn't make heads or tails of Prowl lately.
He just couldn't understand Prowl anymore.
Letting out an audible groan, Jazz shut down his current line of thought and entered the mess room, prepared to call his Prowl stalking quits for the joor.
Though it wasn't as if he knew where the tactician had gone anyway, and Red Alert certainly wasn't going to tell him (at least not after he had the last time the paranoid bot had caught him hacking into the security system).
Walking across the room and choosing not to pay attention to those bots that called out greetings, Jazz walked over to the energon dispenser and tried to ignore the nagging persistent feeling that he was missing a very important piece of information.
*Edited for content, grammar and spelling on June 14, 2013*-Reposted November 4, 2013*