A/N I'm introducing the main villain at the end of this chapter :D I hope you are enjoying this story so far and in this chapter I have some Jazz and Phoenix bonding time. Thank you for reading and please review! -AnAshBlackSword

Phoenix's POV

It was a school day and Phoenix was currently heading back from school. Although she was going to be quite late home and probably miss dinner, she was going to go to the forest. It had been a week since she had been taken back to the children's home and during that time, she regularly called and texted Jazz using the phone. She hadn't been back to the woods since meeting Jazz and she felt like going there today. She grinned as the phone vibrated in her pocket.

Message from Jazz: How was school?

She smiled and texted him back.

Boring as usual, how was base?

Message from Jazz: Boring as well. Hatchet knocked out the twins.

Which ones?

Message from Jazz: Chevy twins, they were fighting again.

No surprise there.

She noticed that she was almost at the tree again. Then she saw a holoform at the tree and knew instantly who it was.

"Jazz!" She ran over to him and pulled him into a hug. He was laughing. "Why didn't you tell me you would be here you slagger?" Phoenix had also picked up cybertronian curses from Jazz.

"Ah thought ah'd surprise ya." She grinned at him. "Ya wanna go somewhere?"

"Sure!" She was up for going anywhere. Literally anyway was better than here. They went to the car park where Jazz's alt mode was waiting. The holoform vanished and the door swung open on the passenger side. She climbed in, and the holoform reappeared in the driver's seat. Jazz scanned her to check her vitals. Her arm and ribs were healing well as were the various cuts and bruises. He noticed that she needed to refuel.

"Are ya hungry?" She rolled her eyes at him.

"I am starving. I don't eat school food because it's crap and the home food is even crappier."

"Do ya like…Italian food?" Jazz was curious about trying human food. They could have it, in small amounts.

"I don't know, I've never had good food before and I haven't eaten in a restaurant for years." Her foster homes had sucked at cooking. The meals were always microwaved. At the home, it was cook whatever rubbish they had in the cupboard or go without.

"Might as well try it then!" He said excitedly. She grinned, just as excited as he was. While they were driving, Jazz pulled her seat back so she could relax and switched the music to something he hoped she would like.

"Yeah! Skillet!" she fist pumped the air and then flopped back on the seat, wriggling around a bit. "Aaaah, this is so much comfier than the beds at the home." Phoenix noticed the car shaking a little.

"Tha' tickles!" Jazz said and she laughed again. Ticklish alien robot cars taking her to dinner? Yep, her world had officially gone crazy.

Jazz's POV

Jazz laughed as she squirmed against the seat. He was very ticklish, which was a fact many bots liked to tease the saboteur about although some had ended up welded to the ceiling of the ark when they had tried to tickle him. Needless to say, only Prowl had tried from then on. He mentally slapped himself for thinking about his brother.

|| Sideswipe to Jazz, where are you? || Jazz cursed as he received the comm.

|| ah'm just on a drive. Why? ||

|| Hatchet wants you. ||

|| Slag! Can ya do meh ah favour an' distract him? ||

|| Are you with the mini squishy? || Jazz debated whether to tell Sides. If he did then Sunny would know as well. Jazz decided he could trust the twins.

|| Yeah, please don' tell anyone 'cept Sunny. || He could almost hear Sides laughing.

|| I won't, but can I hold it sometime? ||

|| Yeah, ah guess ya can. ||

|| Okay. I'll distract him for you. I've been meaning to play a prank on him for some time anyway. See you later, Sideswipe out. ||

Jazz looked at Phoenix, who was oblivious to the conversation between him and Sides. He noticed that they were almost at the restaurant. He parked then opened the door for her.

"Here we are."

Phoenix's POV

Phoenix got quite nervous as they walked into the restaurant. It looked very posh and expensive and she'd never been anywhere half as nice as this place before. She hid her nervousness by mentally kicking herself. She'd faced bullies and home kids and assholes and freaking alien robots and she was nervous about a restaurant? Stupid. Jazz turned to her and offered his arm.

"There's nothin' to be scared 'bout."

"I am not scared." Jazz said nothing but Phoenix knew that he did not believe her. A smiling waitress came over and led them to a table, handing them the menu. Phoenix looked at it and burning with embarrassment, she realised that she didn't know what most of it was. She asked Jazz to describe the different foods to her and she ordered a very spicy pasta with meatballs. Jazz ordered the same thing as her as he wasn't really sure what anything tasted like.

When the food arrived, Phoenix took a bite out of it and her face lit up with pleasure.

"Mmm! This is the best thing I have ever tasted." Jazz looked at her brightly shining face.

"Ya should smile like tha' more often." She frowned in confusion.

"Smile like what?"

"Like ah sparklin' who just got candy." She flicked a bit of pasta at him and he chuckled. In all seriousness though, it was well worth leaving the base just to see her happy. She was just like a Cybertronian sparkling and Jazz remembered with fondness of the days before the war when he had worked with sparklings and younglings. It seemed that innocence was a trait all younglings shared, no matter what species. Phoenix grinned at Jazz as he tasted the spicy pasta.

"Do you like it?"

"Holy Primus! How do ya have so many flavours?!" She laughed at his face.

"I don't know really. Maybe it's because we grow our food? I guess you can't do that on Cybertron."

"This is amazin'!" After they had finished the meal, Jazz realised that he should probably take her back to the home and get back to base himself. He was reluctant to leave the small human, whom he now saw as a friend. Phoenix was also reluctant to go back, the home was lonely and cold at night, but she knew that Jazz should really get back to the base soon or risk having someone sent after him. She climbed into his alt mode.

"Ah enjoyed tha'."

"Me too."

"We should do tha' more often." Phoenix leaned back into the seat and shut her eyes, a soft smile on her face.

"We should."

Jazz's POV

Jazz's spark lit up again as she smiled again. It made her look younger and mentally, she was too old for her years. It sounded like she had never had a proper childhood. To Jazz, that was unacceptable. She had missed out on far too much and Jazz wanted to help her regain lost time and live properly for once. Maybe, he could even give her back the childhood she had missed.

"Do you have any family?" The sudden question startled him a little.

"Yeah, ah lost mah parents when ah was young, but ah have ah brother."

"What's he like?" Jazz found himself opening up and talking about Prowl. Something he had not done since Prowl had gone on that slagging mission to find Shockwave.

"Prowl was mah bestest friend. He was always there for meh an' he was the second in command of the Autobots. He's clever but bots call him ah tight-aft because he loves logic an' rules. He can seem cold sometimes, but he's funny and caring when ya get to know him." She smiled at him.

"Maybe you can introduce me someday."

"Ah'd like to do tha'." He didn't tell her that Prowl had been missing for over six vorns now and he hadn't felt anything from the bond since Prowl had left. Jazz realised that they had reached the street before the home so he opened his door and undid her seatbelt for her. "Here we are. Ah guess we should go."

"Probably." She didn't seem eager to leave either. "Thank you Jazz."

"It was mah pleasure Phoenix." He really didn't want her to go. He'd only known her a week but it felt like he was meeting Prowl all over again. Except the feelings were more like a creatorly protective feeling than a brotherly feeling. He wondered if it was a guardian bond, but that was impossible as Cybertronians couldn't bond with other species. The feeling was definitely there though.

"Are you okay?" Phoenix asked him.

"Yeah, ah'm just thinkin'."

"I'd better go."

"Yeah, ah'll text ya and see ya soon."

"Okay." She hugged his holoform before getting out the car and she walked in. The home would be locked and if she used the front door, there would be trouble. So she climbed the tree to the second floor corridor window which was always unlocked and entered the house.

Jazz used his infrared sensors to watch her and make sure she got in safely, the whole guardian bond thing going around in his mind. As far as he knew, only one mech would be able to help him with this and that would be Ironhide as he was the only mech with a guardian bond to Bumblebee and Arcee. There was no way in pit he was asking Ratchet. Speaking of that mech, hadn't he been wanted earlier? Cursing, he drove as fast as he could back to the base, hoping that Sideswipe's distraction had been a very good one or he was so slagged.

Shockwave's POV

Shockwave looked at the reports from Soundwave. He had asked Soundwave to locate the Autobot called Jazz. He wanted the mech brought to him as he had formed a very strong brother bond with the Autobot known as Prowl. He was interested in studying bonds between unrelated mechs and femmes and as he had one bond member captive, he only needed to obtain the other. However, he knew that Jazz would be hard to capture but this human femme might prove useful. If he took the femme then Jazz would try and rescue her and it would be easier to lure Jazz into a trap. Besides, he could do with a young human to study. He had some rather interesting experiments to test out on the humans and this one would do perfectly.

|| Shockwave to decepticons, obtain the human femme alive and bring it to me. ||