If there was one thing Jazz regretted about becoming Head of Special Operations, it was the paperwork.
It had never been his favourite aspect of the job and now he had at least ten times the amount that he'd had to do when he was just a field agent.
Honestly how anyone in command had time to breathe after they'd finished all their paperwork, was beyond him.
And in the time between Blackout's death and Jazz assuming command, the amount of overdue reports and mission briefs had piled up. Literally. Jazz couldn't even see out from behind the desk thanks to the mountain of datafiles stacked on top of it.
It was odd to be sitting on the other side of Blackout's old desk. But Jazz was going to have to start using eventually so he might as well get it over and done with.
Plus he could use a distraction after yesterday.
Jazz started with the simple stuff first. Catching up with status of the rest of Spec Ops, most of which he was already familiar with. Sliverstreak had recently been loaned to their MacCadams base. Hound was still tailing Lockdown. And of course Mirage had been called back from their mission early.
The only name that Jazz didn't recognise was Bluestreak, a sniper who's been tasked with the elimination of a Decepticon scientist. Judging by her appearance, this Bluestreak couldn't have been much older than Bumblebee. She must've joined the Autobots as soon as she had gotten her final upgrades. Jazz hoped the young bot could handle the mission they'd been given. It looked like the cons had been trying to create synthetic energon again. Unsurprisingly Optimus and Ratchet had voted against the mission, stating that the creation of synthetic energon would be beneficial to their species as a whole especially as they were rapidly running out of the real stuff. But they had been outvoted which Jazz couldn't but felt bad for agreeing with as leaving the Decepticons to create a potentially unlimited supply of fuel and power would practically guarantee the Autobots to loose the war, even if it could be detrimental to the survival of their race. Anyway, Jazz would find out soon enough as the bot was scheduled to be coming home soon.
After that, the reports got a lot more boring. Mostly just repeats of what they'd gone over in the few meetings he'd been too.
Jazz had always struggled with paying attention to anything written down. And he really didn't want his mind to wonder.
So he hooked the data pads up to his desk computer, configuring them with an app, that he was forever grateful to Blaster for making him long ago, that would read the reports out loud.
The voice was a bit robotic and would stumble over abbreviations or call signs but it did its job. And Jazz no longer wanted to bang his head into his desk.
It would still take a long time to get through all of the reports though, so Jazz caught up with the leg stretches he'd been neglecting to do before moving onto some training katas.
Six hours later Mirage would find him sitting upside-down on the couch, fiddling an old piece of scrap into the shape of a crystal-tree whilst a disembodied voice proclaimed the reasons why the twins were no longer allowed within one hundred meters of the med bay.
"Am I interrupting something?" Mirage asked with a raised optic ridge from where he stood in the doorway.
"Only the desire to offline myself from boredom." Jazz replied, putting the sculpture to one side before allowing himself to collapse off the sofa into a heap in the floor. "Have you come to put me out of my misery?"
"Unfortunately not. Our communications expert has been trying to call you for the past hour, so he sent me to check up on you."
"Everything okay?" Jazz asked, dragging himself off the floor and onto the chair behind his desk so that if someone barged in demanding their overdue paper work at least he'd have some sense of decorum.
"Yeah, Blaster was just wondering what day he should book a babysitter for Bumblebee's final upgrade party." Mirage said, crossing his legs as he sat down in the chair in front of him.
Jazz groaned, dropping his head onto the desk with a thunk. Between everything else that had happened, he hadn't had anytime to dedicate to keeping up team morale.
"Can't you plan the party for me mech?" Jazz asked, looking back up with his best cyper pup eyes.
"You do know that the last party I planned was a five course gala right?" Mirage replied.
"Just ask Blaster to sort out the basics and I'll add some special Jazz touches later!"
"I can ask."
"Thanks mech! If I don't get these reports done then Prowl might actually kill me!"
"I assume the mission was a success then?" Mirage deadpanned.
"Urghh no! I've tried everything! But the guy still hates my guts!" Which yeah Prowl was far from Jazz's favourite person either right now but even if he didn't like Prowl he still wanted the former enforcer to like him! Rung would probably have a field day psychoanalysing him if he ever bothered to show up for his long overdue psyche evaluation. But Jazz already knew what his problem was so there wasn't any point bothering the ship psychiatrist when there were other who needed their help more.
"Look sometimes people don't want to be your friend and most of the time it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. And you've just got to accept that." Mirage told him, the royal tone of indignance that he'd been raised to speak in failing to hide the hurt he'd been through.
Jazz winced with an apologetic smile. He should've realised this would be a bit of a soar subject for Mirage. When the former aristocrat first joined the Autobots there weren't too many rushing to be his friend and an outlier ability of turning invisible didn't exactly help to build trust either. It had gotten better now, mostly thanks to Jazz integrating him into parties and rec room drama. Now the only person who treated Mirage with an suspicion was Cliffjumper still didn't entirely trust him after the whole pretending to go traitor for a mission fiasco.
"Fair point. Doesn't mean he had to break my electro-base though."
"HE WHAT?!"
Jazz nearly jumped out of his seat at Mirage's reaction. His friend was always so composed, it was part of what made him such a great spy. Jazz could count on one hand the amount of time's he'd seen Mirage loose his cool. Well, he guessed it was on two hands now.
"That's not turning you down, that's being an arsehole." Mirage continued.
"Hey its no big deal. Its just a stupid instrument." Jazz shrugged attempting to act nonchalant. Which was pointless as Mirage was one of the few bots who knew him well enough to see through it.
The next thing he knew, Mirage was up on his feet and marching for the exit.
Jazz had to vault over his desk to catch up with him.
"Woah mech where do you think ya going?" Jazz asked, blocking the door.
"To give Prowl a piece of my mind." Mirage replied, that regal voice of his cold with anger.
Jazz let him pass, knowing that whilst if it came down to it, he could beat Mirage in a fight. But that even if he won that match that wouldn't stop the spy from tracking down his prey. Because if there was one thing that outweighed Mirage's strength of composure, it was his loyalty.
A/N: Yeah so I've switched Bluestreak's gender to a girl which as you can probably tell I've also done with some of the other characters. I just felt as if I had so few female characters in this story and I thought this would be a good way to add some more. But let me know how you guys feel about it! Xxxxxxx
