Camaraderie: The Secret-Keeper Part 2/4
Oct. 1st, 2013 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gilded_orchidTitle: Camaraderie: The Secret-Keeper: Part 2/4
Universe: Alignment/IDW AU, Camaraderie/Trinkets 'verse
Rating: PG-13, to be on the safe side
Characters: Jazz, Prowl, various Autobot Officers, Megatron.
Prompt: Stealing Secrets
Warning: woefully unbeta'd mentions of violence (semi-graphic), mentions of death, angst, bad bots doing bad things, explorations of sleep deprivation, sleep debt, and PTSD.
Notes: I've got to re-type everything of the next part because LJ is being crazy with the coding right now. I'll have it up ASAP. As for now, here's the first part.
breem: 8.3 minutes
cycle: 1 hour 15 minutes
joor: 6 hours
megacycle: 93 hours
deca-cycle: 3 weeks
quartex: 1 month
stellar cycle: 7.5 months
meta-cycle: 13 months
decivorn: 8.3 year
vorn: 83 years
Comm. ID protocol: Rank-Position-Name-Base
SOBO: Special Operations Black-ops Operator
TOBO: Tactical Operations Black-ops Orchestrator
Delta Green - Codename for Jazz's personal Ops Cell
Hightower - Codename for Prowl's personal tactical team
Eons across space and time, a human would one day question the concept of alien sub consciousness, and ponder if, indeed, Cybertronians dreamed. Said human would ask this of the Autobot theoretician Perceptor, and receive a mini-dissertation on the concept of metaphysical constructs and transitional memory flux, contrasting the standing theories with the Terran fields of Jungian psychology and neo-contemporary dream studies. This would lead to a highly abstract debate on the function of dreams, perceptional reality, and mental disorders.
Perceptor would consider it one of the more intriguing discussions ever held with an alien youth.
The human would go on to win two Nobel prizes over the next fifteen years for the resulting innovations in the treatment and study of mental disorders, primarily those related to autism and schizophrenia.
More immediately however, the human would wait until after the discussion was over and Perceptor busied himself with other work, then go ask Wheeljack. The engineer, who was usually too busy shattering scientific barriers to waste time with overly-detailed explanations—unless it was about astrophysical engineering (which was totally a legitimate field, thank you, and certainly not an “abuse of physics and good sense” that he and the gang at CERN had indulged in after too many drinks)—merely replied, “Yes, but it’s more akin to actual flashbacks than subconscious memory dumps...so no. Maybe. We could build something and run tests?” The offer was ultimately turned down, and the human left to go research on his own, taking the first steps towards a ground-breaking future.
If he'd had the forethought to know, he would have gone to Prowl with the question.
Prowl knew.
Prowl was an authority on dreams by sheer virtue of having endured so many of them.
Unlike other races they encountered, Cybertronians did not think dreams were to be considered good things. Dreaming meant the processor was stuck on a particular memory during the beginning stages of recharge, replaying it over and over again—it was a glorified processor loop. Processor loops weren't inherently dangerous--just annoying--but if a processor loop occurred during the beginning stages of recharge that usually led to an incomplete recharge cycle, and that was dangerous. An incomplete recharge cycle meant that the bot's CPU wasn't going to operate at full capabilities. It meant energy depletion, and thus lowered performance. Lowered performance meant increased chances of system glitches, and system glitches led to major processing malfunctions.
Like increased instances of “dreaming”, or full-blown flux-terrors. Flux-terrors were the absolute worst; a mech glitched while dreaming, and things like audio-visual hallucinations and recharge-debt were brought into play. Oft times the corrupted dream changed, growing more horrifyingly macabre or grotesque. The heightened state of anxiety insured that recharge wouldn’t occur, making the problems exponentially worse.
A Cybertronian started dreaming? They went to a medic before they wound up a glitch-ridden mess on the verge of a total system crash a few megacycles later.
Prowl experienced his first “dream” after the fall of Praxus.
It had been a very long decacycle for the Autobots; the battered and weary army was only just beginning to grasp the true extent of what had occurred. Praxus, despite Prowl's best efforts--in spite of everyone's best efforts--fell in a cataclysm of searing flame and caustic smoke. The city-state had been reduced to little more than a guttered wasteland and Optimus Prime, spark hurting and weary, didn’t even know where to begin.
None of them did, to be honest.
The question burdened Optimus. Did they see to the refugees first? There were so few of them (oh Primus, so very few) that it seemed feasible. But his Autobots had been dealt a harsh blow as well--there wasn't a one at Iacon Alpha Prime in particular that hadn't been affected personally, be it lost kin or an old friend, and the rest of his forces had been left reeling from the shock. He was their commander first and foremost...did he see to his army first? Their morale had died a horrible, screaming death somewhere between Menasor laying waste to the Assembly and Bruticus rampaging through the youth sector. The Neutrals who had done their best to avoid the war were panicked, and their main goal was now getting as far away from Cybertron as possible. Did he continue to shield and comfort them, or did he see to the war, leaving the Neutrals to their own devices and redouble his efforts to end it before Megatron struck again?
Was he a warrior or solace to a fractured and wounded populace?
Was there even an in-between to be found?
In the end, Optimus saw to the refugees and leaned on his officers to see to the war that would not go away simply because he was needed in a different capacity. It was extremely compassionate, but also very cruel in its own way—something he would later realize, and to his horror—because it left Prowl to pick up the slack.
Prowl, still reeling from the sheer magnitude of the quartex's events, was nothing if not dutiful however, and shouldered aside his personal grief and stress to see to Prime's orders.
The first reports had just begun to pass along through official channels, leaving Prowl to be immediately confronted with the magnitude of what Megatron had wrought.
There were still a few survivors unaccounted for, but by official counts scarcely more than four hundred sparks remained from what was once a teeming metropolis hosting almost a million beings. Of that number only one youngling remained, dug out by Ironhide from the wreckage of the Crystal Gardens before the acid rain began to fall.Twenty or so femmes survived, most of them members of the security forces from the outskirts of Praxus. They had been lucky; their rush to defend the city--and subsequent meeting with certain destruction--had been thwarted by the utter annihilation of the pass leading into the city center (and Bruticus' swathe of destruction). The rest are old mechs, far past their prime and more lore keeper than warrior.
Prowl rather wished the younger denizens of Praxus had thought to save themselves and sacrificed the elders, but he understood their logic even as he faulted them for it. It had been long expected that Megatron would spare no one, so the choice had been made to evacuate the city-state's elders so that if nothing else, at least the old traditions, the history and culture, would remain. The elders themselves had not been impressed with the decision, preferring to fight instead of being reduced to hiding away while their children took up Praxus’ defense, but found themselves nonetheless barricaded in the lower levels of the Academy by their self-appointed watchers.
Thus protected—no matter how they protested—, the elders instead saved as much as they could, transferring almost all of the city's vast historic records and databases to Iacon’s mainframe before they were herded through Cybertron's old passages and tunnels toward Iacon cycles before the Decepticons arrived, assuming there would not be much of anything left once the siege of Praxus ended.
Prowl didn't even need the reports to know the grim truth: there wasn’t.
The city would never recover from the loss; saving the elders was worthless without a younger generation to guide, and the nature of war--especially such a vicious, brutal one as this--would never allow for a safe repopulation effort.
The war had driven more than one species of mechanimal to extinction; it seemed that now it could claim an entire frame class as well.
It only grew worse as Prowl delved deeper into the reports and was presented with the sheer, cold fact that Praxus was the golden standard for atrocity.
Genocide? Check.
Mayhem? Check.
Carnage? There could be no other results with three gestalts rampaging through a city. Check.
Utter ruination? The black cloud shrouding the city was so thick neither Autobots nor Decepticons could claim a win from the engagement for simple fact that neither side could see well enough to assess the damage. Even the most generous estimates attached to the reports predicted at least three centuries before the deadly smoke dissipates. Conservative estimates were closer to seven or eight centuries, and almost a full millennia in Perceptor's case.
The one certainty was that no matter who was determined to have won the Siege of Praxus in the end, be it Autobots or Decepticons, Praxus had lost.
Prowl had lost. His one calling, his reason for sparking, and he had failed so. Very. Badly.
Jazz was gone, so he didn't even have that source of comfort; Prime's only order before turning over the war effort to Prowl was to send Jazz and his team to Darkmount to get as much information as they could before Megatron took out another city-state. The rest of the officers were spread thin, assigned their own duties by Prime, so Prowl was left alone to deal with the unrelenting influx of reports. It took him nearly the better part of the next megacycle to organize it all before he retired to his quarters, at the end of his proverbial rope and unable to take anymore.
His attempt at recharge began normally enough. He laid down on his berth, shut off his optics, and activated his recharge sequence. His higher functions shut off first—the battle computer, his tactical programs—followed by his weapon and combat sequences. The memory dump was next, and the larger files flashed through his processor as they were compressed and vaulted or deleted.
His meeting with Prime.
Saying goodbye to a visibly concerned Jazz.
Going through his reports.
The video footage of the youth sector attack salvaged by Red Alert.
The video footage of the youth sector attack salvaged by Red Alert.
The video footage of the youth sector attack salvaged by Red Alert...The video footage of the youth sector attack salvaged by Red Alert...The video footage of the youth sector attack salvaged by Red Alert…
Prowl “dreamed” that night-cycle of towering flames and a grey youngling’s doomed retreat into the Crystal Gardens.
Prowl, having achieved little more than the equivalent of a joor’s recharge, was weary. It felt as if the stress of all he had endured had taken its toll on his body during the night cycle; the hinges of his door panels ached terribly, and there was a dead weight across his plating that served only to amplify how horrible he felt. He had to use an extra ration to counter the effects of little-to-no recharge, and his processor’s boot-scan reported 98.9% operational integrity.
It was a poor start to the megacycle.
He should probably see Ratchet about the “dreams”, but as he made his way towards Iacon’s med-center, it became increasingly clear that it the medic’s hands were full. Mechs and femmes had been reduced to waiting outside the doors of the compound, the inside obviously packed with higher priority cases. Prowl glanced down toward the western end of the long corridor, where Grapple and Hoist had their own bay, and could make out a thick crowd of Praxian frames in various degrees of injury.
A sudden sense of fear and shame gripped his spark, and Prowl quickly whirled away—he didn’t want to see them; he couldn’t deal with the evidence of his failure so soon; not like this. Prowl quickly retreated back the way he came, almost colliding with First Aid in the process.
“Oh! I am so sorry, sir! Are you okay?”
Frag no. Prowl quashed the response, instead seizing upon the opportunity presented him—he didn’t honestly have time for the extensive tests and prodding he would endure if Ratchet found out he was dreaming, and he couldn’t deal with the crowd of refugees, so that wrote off Grapple or Hoist.
“I am…as well as can be expected, First Aid.”
That drew a sympathetic noise from Ratchet’s apprentice.
“Tell me…” Prowl glanced back at the crowd of Praxians, and had to suppress a shudder. “Do you have anything to help with fatigue?” First Aid followed his gaze, and his visor flashed as inspiration struck.
“Oh, you’re right! They’ve all been waiting so long, anything would help!” First Aid produced a hand full of vivid fuchsia micro-cubes.
Okay, that hadn’t been what he meant but still…stim-cubes. Enough for full quartex, at that. Too many for what he needed. “…First Aid, while I appreciate the gesture—“
“Oh, you’re right, sir! We’ll definitely need more than that. I’ll get Blades to take them more!”
Well, if First Aid was going to make it that easy…
“I’ll see to it, First Aid. You get back to Ratchet.”
The young apprentice shot him a grateful look as he dashed back towards Ratchet’s med-center.
Prowl commed Blades with the order and returned to his office, where he slipped most of them into his desk drawer before consuming one. It dissolved nearly instantly, and Prowl’s systems hummed as a surge of energy rushed through him. Feeling renewed, Prowl drew himself up and set to work.
He assigned Perceptor and Wheeljack the task of finding a way to break the acidic cloud resting over Praxus, approved Ratchet’s supply request and forwarded it to high-command so they could see about purchasing them, and turned to Kup and Ironhide’s status update of the Autobot forces.
A meeting request from Rung popped up to go over personnel updates. The psy-ops specialist normally assessed the mental status of potential Wreckers, but was currently pulling double duty alongside Smokescreen as a therapist not only for Iacon’s residents, but the traumatized refugees. He certainly hadn’t seen the legendary “Shimmer”, and Springer would probably shoot himself before asking Prowl to join the Wreckers, so it was no doubt an attempt of the mech to use the pretense to pick and prod at him about Praxus, asking all sorts of inane questions about how he felt then offering unsolicited advice that ultimately could be simplified to “extra therapy sessions”.
The psych team had wanted at the command staff for a long time.
Prowl rejected the meeting.
Prowl fought down the urge to groan as his data-pad chimed a message alert soon after. Sure enough, Smokescreen had followed up Rung’s rejected meeting with an offer of his own. Smokescreen was slightly better to deal with. The mech had been cross-trained between tactics and psych, and what he lacked in Rung’s persistence was made up with his ability to out-think everyone else or come at an issue sideways. Smokescreen’s saving grace was that he understood how all of the command staff worked, and knew when to push and when to leave be. Smokescreen only ever insisted on sessions when there was a legitimate problem that he saw, or on the rare occasions when Rung finally pushed at him enough to garner action. Both were equally plausible this time. Still, he had no time for it. Prowl’s door panels twitched in irritation as he ignored that message too, and turned his attention back to more important things, such as why fifteen members of Kup’s squadron and twelve of Ironhide’s had up and fled for the Neutral camps.
It made a sad sort of sense, to be fair. Iacon directly over-looked Praxus, and all it took was a glance to the eastern horizon to see the price of denying Megatron. The ensuing desertions were almost to be expected, in fact, but Prowl did not doubt that extreme violence would ensue should Ironhide encounter any of the deserters. Or Kup, for that matter.
Those reports were followed up with after-action reports from Ultra Magnus. Magnus had arrived as fast he could with his Wreckers, and together with the Dynobots had managed to force Bruticus to break apart into the more easily managed Combaticons. It was a successful effort--not enough to salvage any significant portion of the youth sector, a bitter part of him noted--and had resulted in the Combaticons being knocked out of commission for a considerable amount of time. It was unfortunate, though, that Ultra Magnus was so thorough with his report--vid captures, damage assessments...pictures...it all accompanied the report, which meant he was going to have to actually browse the material for any useful information.
Prowl reached for another stim-cube and sat it close by, knowing with a sudden cold certainty that he would be dreaming that night-cycle.
It was deep into the second deca-cycle after the fall of Praxus when Jazz's team returned from their mission, all accounted for and only minimal injuries amongst them. They remained collected and calm, as if there weren't seven different snipers aiming at their sparks, while Red Alert ran a deep scan over each of them with the base's sensors to verify their identity before allowing them access into the base proper.
Normally Prowl would meet him somewhere near the entrance, but this time Elita-One was waiting for him, arms crossed and a slight frown on her normally placid features.
"Jazz."
"'Elita. Scatter, mechs. We'll debrief later." Jazz waved off his team, and they did just that, leaving him and Elita-One alone in the hallway.
The rose-colored femme lightly scratched a dark patch of carbon scoring off of his arm plating, brushing it away with a negligent gesture before tucking her arm into his and gently tugging him deeper into the base.
"Anything interesting?" Elita asked, as casual as if she were inquiring about the weather and not a black-ops mission.
"Same old same, 'Lita." Jazz matched her tone for nonchalance, but he shot her a sideways look as if to say, "What the frag are you doing, femme?"
"Same old same, is it? We could probably use a bit of that around here at the moment, Prowl especially." Elita gave a thoughtful hum. "I wonder how he's doing?"
The question was deceptively casual, but set off alarms in Jazz's mind--Elita-One knew everything going on around her--if not from her own observation, then from information passed to her from her various cells; the femme had a network to rival his own, and he certainly wasn't fool enough to think that it excluded his own agents. If Elita didn't know, that meant it was a cause for concern. Especially when that source of confusion was Prowl.
Prowl had a strict schedule--at the officer's mess for his first ration of the day a cycle before he start of his shift, two cycles going through the base from end to end at the start of his duty shift so that the ranks could pull him aside if need be before he was drawn into more important work and couldn't be interrupted. The rest of the day was all meetings and planning sessions, with a few breems slotted for a mid-megacycle ration that he never got; Smokescreen or Ultra Magnus would bring it to him, (depending on who needed his immediate attention more). He then would stop work approximately a joor before the end of the megacycle, spend one cycle in the officer's lounge, and then retire to his quarters.
Prowl had held the same schedule for vorns, only deviating to deal with emergencies or the increasingly rare off-cycles he allotted himself.
"You don't know?" Jazz all but demanded.
Elita shrugged. "He's been very...elusive. Mirage might get jealous if it keeps up." Elita turned towards the long corridor that led towards Prowl's office, still maintaining her casual facade.
"Well, if it gets too bad Smokey can talk him down."
"Ah, but Smokey hasn't seen a single bolt off Prowl in over a quartex."
Jazz frowned. "I was talking about Mirage."
Elita nodded. "Be that as it may, I was talking about Prowl." Elita slipped free of Jazz's arm as they neared Prowl's door, and strode forward to the keypad, pressing the entry button.
A sharp chime sounded and the entry panel flashed red, denoting the rejection.
Jazz was struck by the sudden feeling that it was going to be a long megacycle.
"Might as well override it." He murmured, gesturing at the door pad.
Elita stepped aside, cordially waving him towards the door. "Be my guest."
Jazz quickly keyed in his override sequence, only to be rewarded with the same rejecting chime.
What. The. Frag.
Elita One met Jazz's incredulous outrage with a grim frown, all of her former pretense gone. "So it's all of us then. No one has been able to get in this office."
Oh, surely not... "He blocked Optimus?"
"He's still in Praxus, so no."
Well, at least Prowl wasn't indulging in full on treason. Good to know, that.
Elita sighed and gestured at the panel again. "Try using your other code."
Jazz frowned. "Other code?"
Elita just looked at him.
Making a mental note to change i, Jazz sighed and used the master override he'd crafted--how did Elita find out about that one--deciding then and there that he was going to make Prowl pay for this later.
A sharp chime, and rejecting flash of red light.
Taken aback, Jazz sent out a priority comm to Prowl.
::Outgoing transmission: Recipient CG-01-Prowl-IAP: Open the door ::
::Connection rejected::
::Outgoing transmission: Recipient CG-01-Prowl-IAP: Prowl. The door.::
::Connection rejected::
::Outgoing transmission: Priority 1: Recipient CG-01-Prowl-IAP: I can and will hack the damned thing.::
::Connection rejected::
::Outgoing transmission: Priority 1 - SOBO Delta-Green=Meister: Recipient TOBO Hightower=Barricade: Open the fragging door. This is ridiculous.::
::Connection rejected::
::Incoming transmission: User CG-01-Prowl-IAP: Accept::
::Connection accepted::
::CG-01-Prowl-IAP: Later. Now go away.::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: No. Open up::
::Connection terminated by CG-01-Prowl-IAP::
::Outgoing transmission: Recipient CG-01-Prowl-IAP: What the slag is wrong with you?!::
::Connection rejected: Fwd. Recipient COL-04-Red Alert-IAP::
Jazz felt more than saw a few of the cameras in the hall focus on him and Elita.
His patience, already worn thin after his extended mission, fizzled and something inside snapped. "Primus fraggit! Stop being a slagger and open the door!" The order was punctuated by him beating ferociously on the door, to no avail.
::Incoming transmission: COL-04-Red Alert-IAP::
::Connection accepted::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: Don't waste your time.::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: I swear, you'd better not be in on this Red!::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: Oh, please.::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: Sorry, Red. Look, will you just let me in?::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: I would, believe me, if only because this sort of behavior usually preludes a defection, but I used my security override with Elita One and Smokescreen two megacycles ago and nothing came of it. Well, Prowl actually threw them out then turned around and revoked my rank clearances.::
:: LG-02-Jazz-IAP: What!? Have they been reinstated?::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: Oh, yes. Elita--wait, hold on--::
::AC-00-Elita One-IAP has joined the conversation::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: As I was saying, Elita was good enough to reinstate my rank clearances immediately afterward.::
::AC-00-Elita One-IAP: Indeed. I take it Prowl ignored you too?::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: Something like that. I had to initiate an Ops connection just to get him to tell me to go away.::
::AC-00-Elita One-IAP: I'd hope he'd at least let you in. I swear to Primus, We should just have Ironhide or Wheeljack blow the door.::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: Too messy. I've had cameras trained on the door, but he's only come out twice in the last decacycle; once was to use the wash racks, the second was to get his ration. He overrode the door controls with his clearance so we couldn't get a monitor inside.::
::AC-00-Elita One IAP: He actually had quite the ration build up. That's what started all this, actually. While you were away, Ultra-Magnus let slip that Prowl was impossible to get a hold of. He got inside early last decacycle with one of Prowl's usual mid-cycle rations, but that was a good long while ago::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: Smokey have anything to say about this? I know Ratchet must have, if Prowl's been skipping rations::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: I suspect Ratchet isn't aware. Smokescreen is, but both he and Ratchet have been so preoccupied with the Praxus survivors they wouldn't have had opportunity to do anything about it. Actually, the earlier incident with Prowl was the most we'd seen of Smokescreen since...The Fall.::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: Oh, Primus. Smokey holding up okay?::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: I don’t think so, but Rung seems to be of a mind that he is after he browbeat the poor mech into a therapy session.::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: I swear, I'm shipping that nosy-bot off to the Orbital Hub one of these days.::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: We'd all be much obliged if you would. He's actually been logging complaints on all of us since...anyway, come up to security. The rest of this is better addressed in person, and I'm running on a skeletal staff as it is so I need to stay close. ::
::Connection terminated by COL-04-Red Alert IAP::
Elita and Jazz spared one last frustrated look at Prowl’s office door, and walked off to the elevator at the end of the hallway.
Jazz leaned back against the wall with a deep sigh as the lift began its descent into the lower levels of Iacon Alpha-Prime and the base’s security center. It had been an extremely long, difficult mission that had taxed he and his team, and his hope had been to simply make it back to base, debrief everyone, and take a moment to just tend to himself before he had to see to everyone else again.
He certainly hadn’t expected to deal with a budding crisis three breems after he arrived, and it was quickly sapping the last of his energy. Elita One shot him an assessing gaze as if she could read his thoughts, and after a brief moment passed him a cube of energon from her subspace.
He accepted it gratefully, and was pleasantly surprised by the bittersweet aroma of aluminum and a sharp, clean tang of nickel. It was a far cry from the standard rations they received, and better than some of the brews he’d tasted over the vorns.
“Firestar’s been experimenting again.” Elita smirked, anticipating his next question.
“I’m stealing that femme from you one of these megacycles.”
“I can hurt you.” Elita quipped as the doors slid open, revealing Red Alert’s domain. The wall of the circular room is covered in monitors, tracking everything from the civilian sectors to the base’s rec room and wash racks. The floor proper hosts nearly twenty stations, each of them wired into Iacon’s defense grid. Floating camera-drones whizzed through the open air space, watching the watchers, of which there were precious few. Normally the security center was a bustle of activity, but most of the security staff was with the Prime sorting the remains of Praxus or shoring up the defenses of other Autobot held cities lest disaster strike them as well.
Currently only ten bots were in the security center, each monitoring a different sector of Iacon, while various drones attended the automated defenses. High above it all—near to the ceiling, in fact—on a hovering platform Red Alert oversaw everything, his personal console drawing in and compiling information from every station.
Red Alert had taken the liberty of sending for Smokescreen and Wheeljack; the two mechs were waiting for them on a mini hover-lift that would take them up to Red Alert’s conference area, a docked platform extending from the walls.
Not for the first time, Jazz boggled at his friend’s insistence on unusual layouts, but had to appreciate the logic behind a set-up that would throw off any intruders or assassins.
“Jazz, you’re back!” Wheeljack’s helm-fins flashed a merry orange as the two clasped each other’s forearms in warm greeting. Wheeljack stepped aside and Jazz did a lingering once-over on Smokescreen, who was doing his best to appear normal, and utterly failing.
The mech’s door-panels visibly drooped, a tell-tale sign of depression and his normally roguish bearing had been replaced with something closer to a sag. Armor plating was dull and optics were dim; a sign of either malnourishment or stress. Red Alert and Elita One certainly hadn’t been complaining about Smokescreen not taking care of himself, so Jazz was fairly certain which one he was going with.
Not for the first time since Praxus fell, Jazz wished Megatron a lingering, painful death.
“Smokey, mech…”
Smokescreen held up a hand, forestalling Jazz’s words. “I know, Jazz. I will be fine, just…”
“You’re not there yet, I know. It took me a while too.”
Smokescreen startled, as if suddenly realizing that he wasn’t the only one to have faced the destruction of a city, or a home. He'd had to devote so much time and persepective to the more personal tragedy of Praxus that he really hadn't had time to reflect on anyone else. Jazz had lost Protihex, Wheeljack had lost Tarn, and Elita One, Ultra Magnus and Red Alert had seen Simfur captured, all despite each of their best efforts.
Jazz made a mental note to see about Smokey once the situation with Prowl was addressed. He clapped Smokescreen reassuringly on the shoulder as he and Elita stepped onto the lift, quirked a vague smile as the unusually solemn mech bumped against his arm in return and something akin to his old cheer overrode that bleak, weighty sadness in his optics. And if Elita One was leaning against Smokescreen’s other side radiating support and affection, well four grown bots on a lift made for a snug fit, and EM fields were bound to overlap.
Red Alert was waiting for them when the lift arrived at the platform, his own personal hover-lift docked at the table so that he could continue to monitor security. A camera drone hovered nearby, a long cable connecting it to Red Alert’s data pad as information was transferred over the hard-line connection.
Red Alert let them all take seats and get settled in before disconnecting from the camera drone and nudging it away to hover elsewhere. “I’m sure all of us have more immediate concerns, so we might as well cut to the chase.” One of Red Alert's miniature wall drones skittered up the wall and across the table, dragging a clear package of rust sticks--a favorite of Smokescreen--and deposited in front of the depressed Praxian. Red Alert studiously ignored the occurrence (as if he hadn't just transmitted an order to the drone to do so). "I've taken the time to compile all of our various encounters with Prowl, and when combined with his unusual activity, I've determined he's either defecting--and doing a damned poor job of it--" Red Alert held up a hand to forestall the sudden round of outraged protests. "It's too ludicrous to give thought, I know."
And it would have been the first thing Red would have worked to investigate then rule out.
"So what is it?"
"It's a 1080."
There was a horrified silence around the table, and it took all of Jazz's control not to leap out of his seat and take off for Prowl's office and blow the whole slagging wall out if he had to.
"Prowl's breaking."
Universe: Alignment/IDW AU, Camaraderie/Trinkets 'verse
Rating: PG-13, to be on the safe side
Characters: Jazz, Prowl, various Autobot Officers, Megatron.
Prompt: Stealing Secrets
Warning: woefully unbeta'd mentions of violence (semi-graphic), mentions of death, angst, bad bots doing bad things, explorations of sleep deprivation, sleep debt, and PTSD.
Notes: I've got to re-type everything of the next part because LJ is being crazy with the coding right now. I'll have it up ASAP. As for now, here's the first part.
breem: 8.3 minutes
cycle: 1 hour 15 minutes
joor: 6 hours
megacycle: 93 hours
deca-cycle: 3 weeks
quartex: 1 month
stellar cycle: 7.5 months
meta-cycle: 13 months
decivorn: 8.3 year
vorn: 83 years
Comm. ID protocol: Rank-Position-Name-Base
SOBO: Special Operations Black-ops Operator
TOBO: Tactical Operations Black-ops Orchestrator
Delta Green - Codename for Jazz's personal Ops Cell
Hightower - Codename for Prowl's personal tactical team
Eons across space and time, a human would one day question the concept of alien sub consciousness, and ponder if, indeed, Cybertronians dreamed. Said human would ask this of the Autobot theoretician Perceptor, and receive a mini-dissertation on the concept of metaphysical constructs and transitional memory flux, contrasting the standing theories with the Terran fields of Jungian psychology and neo-contemporary dream studies. This would lead to a highly abstract debate on the function of dreams, perceptional reality, and mental disorders.
Perceptor would consider it one of the more intriguing discussions ever held with an alien youth.
The human would go on to win two Nobel prizes over the next fifteen years for the resulting innovations in the treatment and study of mental disorders, primarily those related to autism and schizophrenia.
More immediately however, the human would wait until after the discussion was over and Perceptor busied himself with other work, then go ask Wheeljack. The engineer, who was usually too busy shattering scientific barriers to waste time with overly-detailed explanations—unless it was about astrophysical engineering (which was totally a legitimate field, thank you, and certainly not an “abuse of physics and good sense” that he and the gang at CERN had indulged in after too many drinks)—merely replied, “Yes, but it’s more akin to actual flashbacks than subconscious memory dumps...so no. Maybe. We could build something and run tests?” The offer was ultimately turned down, and the human left to go research on his own, taking the first steps towards a ground-breaking future.
If he'd had the forethought to know, he would have gone to Prowl with the question.
Prowl knew.
Prowl was an authority on dreams by sheer virtue of having endured so many of them.
Unlike other races they encountered, Cybertronians did not think dreams were to be considered good things. Dreaming meant the processor was stuck on a particular memory during the beginning stages of recharge, replaying it over and over again—it was a glorified processor loop. Processor loops weren't inherently dangerous--just annoying--but if a processor loop occurred during the beginning stages of recharge that usually led to an incomplete recharge cycle, and that was dangerous. An incomplete recharge cycle meant that the bot's CPU wasn't going to operate at full capabilities. It meant energy depletion, and thus lowered performance. Lowered performance meant increased chances of system glitches, and system glitches led to major processing malfunctions.
Like increased instances of “dreaming”, or full-blown flux-terrors. Flux-terrors were the absolute worst; a mech glitched while dreaming, and things like audio-visual hallucinations and recharge-debt were brought into play. Oft times the corrupted dream changed, growing more horrifyingly macabre or grotesque. The heightened state of anxiety insured that recharge wouldn’t occur, making the problems exponentially worse.
A Cybertronian started dreaming? They went to a medic before they wound up a glitch-ridden mess on the verge of a total system crash a few megacycles later.
Prowl experienced his first “dream” after the fall of Praxus.
It had been a very long decacycle for the Autobots; the battered and weary army was only just beginning to grasp the true extent of what had occurred. Praxus, despite Prowl's best efforts--in spite of everyone's best efforts--fell in a cataclysm of searing flame and caustic smoke. The city-state had been reduced to little more than a guttered wasteland and Optimus Prime, spark hurting and weary, didn’t even know where to begin.
None of them did, to be honest.
The question burdened Optimus. Did they see to the refugees first? There were so few of them (oh Primus, so very few) that it seemed feasible. But his Autobots had been dealt a harsh blow as well--there wasn't a one at Iacon Alpha Prime in particular that hadn't been affected personally, be it lost kin or an old friend, and the rest of his forces had been left reeling from the shock. He was their commander first and foremost...did he see to his army first? Their morale had died a horrible, screaming death somewhere between Menasor laying waste to the Assembly and Bruticus rampaging through the youth sector. The Neutrals who had done their best to avoid the war were panicked, and their main goal was now getting as far away from Cybertron as possible. Did he continue to shield and comfort them, or did he see to the war, leaving the Neutrals to their own devices and redouble his efforts to end it before Megatron struck again?
Was he a warrior or solace to a fractured and wounded populace?
Was there even an in-between to be found?
In the end, Optimus saw to the refugees and leaned on his officers to see to the war that would not go away simply because he was needed in a different capacity. It was extremely compassionate, but also very cruel in its own way—something he would later realize, and to his horror—because it left Prowl to pick up the slack.
Prowl, still reeling from the sheer magnitude of the quartex's events, was nothing if not dutiful however, and shouldered aside his personal grief and stress to see to Prime's orders.
The first reports had just begun to pass along through official channels, leaving Prowl to be immediately confronted with the magnitude of what Megatron had wrought.
There were still a few survivors unaccounted for, but by official counts scarcely more than four hundred sparks remained from what was once a teeming metropolis hosting almost a million beings. Of that number only one youngling remained, dug out by Ironhide from the wreckage of the Crystal Gardens before the acid rain began to fall.Twenty or so femmes survived, most of them members of the security forces from the outskirts of Praxus. They had been lucky; their rush to defend the city--and subsequent meeting with certain destruction--had been thwarted by the utter annihilation of the pass leading into the city center (and Bruticus' swathe of destruction). The rest are old mechs, far past their prime and more lore keeper than warrior.
Prowl rather wished the younger denizens of Praxus had thought to save themselves and sacrificed the elders, but he understood their logic even as he faulted them for it. It had been long expected that Megatron would spare no one, so the choice had been made to evacuate the city-state's elders so that if nothing else, at least the old traditions, the history and culture, would remain. The elders themselves had not been impressed with the decision, preferring to fight instead of being reduced to hiding away while their children took up Praxus’ defense, but found themselves nonetheless barricaded in the lower levels of the Academy by their self-appointed watchers.
Thus protected—no matter how they protested—, the elders instead saved as much as they could, transferring almost all of the city's vast historic records and databases to Iacon’s mainframe before they were herded through Cybertron's old passages and tunnels toward Iacon cycles before the Decepticons arrived, assuming there would not be much of anything left once the siege of Praxus ended.
Prowl didn't even need the reports to know the grim truth: there wasn’t.
The city would never recover from the loss; saving the elders was worthless without a younger generation to guide, and the nature of war--especially such a vicious, brutal one as this--would never allow for a safe repopulation effort.
The war had driven more than one species of mechanimal to extinction; it seemed that now it could claim an entire frame class as well.
It only grew worse as Prowl delved deeper into the reports and was presented with the sheer, cold fact that Praxus was the golden standard for atrocity.
Genocide? Check.
Mayhem? Check.
Carnage? There could be no other results with three gestalts rampaging through a city. Check.
Utter ruination? The black cloud shrouding the city was so thick neither Autobots nor Decepticons could claim a win from the engagement for simple fact that neither side could see well enough to assess the damage. Even the most generous estimates attached to the reports predicted at least three centuries before the deadly smoke dissipates. Conservative estimates were closer to seven or eight centuries, and almost a full millennia in Perceptor's case.
The one certainty was that no matter who was determined to have won the Siege of Praxus in the end, be it Autobots or Decepticons, Praxus had lost.
Prowl had lost. His one calling, his reason for sparking, and he had failed so. Very. Badly.
Jazz was gone, so he didn't even have that source of comfort; Prime's only order before turning over the war effort to Prowl was to send Jazz and his team to Darkmount to get as much information as they could before Megatron took out another city-state. The rest of the officers were spread thin, assigned their own duties by Prime, so Prowl was left alone to deal with the unrelenting influx of reports. It took him nearly the better part of the next megacycle to organize it all before he retired to his quarters, at the end of his proverbial rope and unable to take anymore.
His attempt at recharge began normally enough. He laid down on his berth, shut off his optics, and activated his recharge sequence. His higher functions shut off first—the battle computer, his tactical programs—followed by his weapon and combat sequences. The memory dump was next, and the larger files flashed through his processor as they were compressed and vaulted or deleted.
His meeting with Prime.
Saying goodbye to a visibly concerned Jazz.
Going through his reports.
The video footage of the youth sector attack salvaged by Red Alert.
The video footage of the youth sector attack salvaged by Red Alert.
The video footage of the youth sector attack salvaged by Red Alert...The video footage of the youth sector attack salvaged by Red Alert...The video footage of the youth sector attack salvaged by Red Alert…
Prowl “dreamed” that night-cycle of towering flames and a grey youngling’s doomed retreat into the Crystal Gardens.
Prowl, having achieved little more than the equivalent of a joor’s recharge, was weary. It felt as if the stress of all he had endured had taken its toll on his body during the night cycle; the hinges of his door panels ached terribly, and there was a dead weight across his plating that served only to amplify how horrible he felt. He had to use an extra ration to counter the effects of little-to-no recharge, and his processor’s boot-scan reported 98.9% operational integrity.
It was a poor start to the megacycle.
He should probably see Ratchet about the “dreams”, but as he made his way towards Iacon’s med-center, it became increasingly clear that it the medic’s hands were full. Mechs and femmes had been reduced to waiting outside the doors of the compound, the inside obviously packed with higher priority cases. Prowl glanced down toward the western end of the long corridor, where Grapple and Hoist had their own bay, and could make out a thick crowd of Praxian frames in various degrees of injury.
A sudden sense of fear and shame gripped his spark, and Prowl quickly whirled away—he didn’t want to see them; he couldn’t deal with the evidence of his failure so soon; not like this. Prowl quickly retreated back the way he came, almost colliding with First Aid in the process.
“Oh! I am so sorry, sir! Are you okay?”
Frag no. Prowl quashed the response, instead seizing upon the opportunity presented him—he didn’t honestly have time for the extensive tests and prodding he would endure if Ratchet found out he was dreaming, and he couldn’t deal with the crowd of refugees, so that wrote off Grapple or Hoist.
“I am…as well as can be expected, First Aid.”
That drew a sympathetic noise from Ratchet’s apprentice.
“Tell me…” Prowl glanced back at the crowd of Praxians, and had to suppress a shudder. “Do you have anything to help with fatigue?” First Aid followed his gaze, and his visor flashed as inspiration struck.
“Oh, you’re right! They’ve all been waiting so long, anything would help!” First Aid produced a hand full of vivid fuchsia micro-cubes.
Okay, that hadn’t been what he meant but still…stim-cubes. Enough for full quartex, at that. Too many for what he needed. “…First Aid, while I appreciate the gesture—“
“Oh, you’re right, sir! We’ll definitely need more than that. I’ll get Blades to take them more!”
Well, if First Aid was going to make it that easy…
“I’ll see to it, First Aid. You get back to Ratchet.”
The young apprentice shot him a grateful look as he dashed back towards Ratchet’s med-center.
Prowl commed Blades with the order and returned to his office, where he slipped most of them into his desk drawer before consuming one. It dissolved nearly instantly, and Prowl’s systems hummed as a surge of energy rushed through him. Feeling renewed, Prowl drew himself up and set to work.
He assigned Perceptor and Wheeljack the task of finding a way to break the acidic cloud resting over Praxus, approved Ratchet’s supply request and forwarded it to high-command so they could see about purchasing them, and turned to Kup and Ironhide’s status update of the Autobot forces.
A meeting request from Rung popped up to go over personnel updates. The psy-ops specialist normally assessed the mental status of potential Wreckers, but was currently pulling double duty alongside Smokescreen as a therapist not only for Iacon’s residents, but the traumatized refugees. He certainly hadn’t seen the legendary “Shimmer”, and Springer would probably shoot himself before asking Prowl to join the Wreckers, so it was no doubt an attempt of the mech to use the pretense to pick and prod at him about Praxus, asking all sorts of inane questions about how he felt then offering unsolicited advice that ultimately could be simplified to “extra therapy sessions”.
The psych team had wanted at the command staff for a long time.
Prowl rejected the meeting.
Prowl fought down the urge to groan as his data-pad chimed a message alert soon after. Sure enough, Smokescreen had followed up Rung’s rejected meeting with an offer of his own. Smokescreen was slightly better to deal with. The mech had been cross-trained between tactics and psych, and what he lacked in Rung’s persistence was made up with his ability to out-think everyone else or come at an issue sideways. Smokescreen’s saving grace was that he understood how all of the command staff worked, and knew when to push and when to leave be. Smokescreen only ever insisted on sessions when there was a legitimate problem that he saw, or on the rare occasions when Rung finally pushed at him enough to garner action. Both were equally plausible this time. Still, he had no time for it. Prowl’s door panels twitched in irritation as he ignored that message too, and turned his attention back to more important things, such as why fifteen members of Kup’s squadron and twelve of Ironhide’s had up and fled for the Neutral camps.
It made a sad sort of sense, to be fair. Iacon directly over-looked Praxus, and all it took was a glance to the eastern horizon to see the price of denying Megatron. The ensuing desertions were almost to be expected, in fact, but Prowl did not doubt that extreme violence would ensue should Ironhide encounter any of the deserters. Or Kup, for that matter.
Those reports were followed up with after-action reports from Ultra Magnus. Magnus had arrived as fast he could with his Wreckers, and together with the Dynobots had managed to force Bruticus to break apart into the more easily managed Combaticons. It was a successful effort--not enough to salvage any significant portion of the youth sector, a bitter part of him noted--and had resulted in the Combaticons being knocked out of commission for a considerable amount of time. It was unfortunate, though, that Ultra Magnus was so thorough with his report--vid captures, damage assessments...pictures...it all accompanied the report, which meant he was going to have to actually browse the material for any useful information.
Prowl reached for another stim-cube and sat it close by, knowing with a sudden cold certainty that he would be dreaming that night-cycle.
It was deep into the second deca-cycle after the fall of Praxus when Jazz's team returned from their mission, all accounted for and only minimal injuries amongst them. They remained collected and calm, as if there weren't seven different snipers aiming at their sparks, while Red Alert ran a deep scan over each of them with the base's sensors to verify their identity before allowing them access into the base proper.
Normally Prowl would meet him somewhere near the entrance, but this time Elita-One was waiting for him, arms crossed and a slight frown on her normally placid features.
"Jazz."
"'Elita. Scatter, mechs. We'll debrief later." Jazz waved off his team, and they did just that, leaving him and Elita-One alone in the hallway.
The rose-colored femme lightly scratched a dark patch of carbon scoring off of his arm plating, brushing it away with a negligent gesture before tucking her arm into his and gently tugging him deeper into the base.
"Anything interesting?" Elita asked, as casual as if she were inquiring about the weather and not a black-ops mission.
"Same old same, 'Lita." Jazz matched her tone for nonchalance, but he shot her a sideways look as if to say, "What the frag are you doing, femme?"
"Same old same, is it? We could probably use a bit of that around here at the moment, Prowl especially." Elita gave a thoughtful hum. "I wonder how he's doing?"
The question was deceptively casual, but set off alarms in Jazz's mind--Elita-One knew everything going on around her--if not from her own observation, then from information passed to her from her various cells; the femme had a network to rival his own, and he certainly wasn't fool enough to think that it excluded his own agents. If Elita didn't know, that meant it was a cause for concern. Especially when that source of confusion was Prowl.
Prowl had a strict schedule--at the officer's mess for his first ration of the day a cycle before he start of his shift, two cycles going through the base from end to end at the start of his duty shift so that the ranks could pull him aside if need be before he was drawn into more important work and couldn't be interrupted. The rest of the day was all meetings and planning sessions, with a few breems slotted for a mid-megacycle ration that he never got; Smokescreen or Ultra Magnus would bring it to him, (depending on who needed his immediate attention more). He then would stop work approximately a joor before the end of the megacycle, spend one cycle in the officer's lounge, and then retire to his quarters.
Prowl had held the same schedule for vorns, only deviating to deal with emergencies or the increasingly rare off-cycles he allotted himself.
"You don't know?" Jazz all but demanded.
Elita shrugged. "He's been very...elusive. Mirage might get jealous if it keeps up." Elita turned towards the long corridor that led towards Prowl's office, still maintaining her casual facade.
"Well, if it gets too bad Smokey can talk him down."
"Ah, but Smokey hasn't seen a single bolt off Prowl in over a quartex."
Jazz frowned. "I was talking about Mirage."
Elita nodded. "Be that as it may, I was talking about Prowl." Elita slipped free of Jazz's arm as they neared Prowl's door, and strode forward to the keypad, pressing the entry button.
A sharp chime sounded and the entry panel flashed red, denoting the rejection.
Jazz was struck by the sudden feeling that it was going to be a long megacycle.
"Might as well override it." He murmured, gesturing at the door pad.
Elita stepped aside, cordially waving him towards the door. "Be my guest."
Jazz quickly keyed in his override sequence, only to be rewarded with the same rejecting chime.
What. The. Frag.
Elita One met Jazz's incredulous outrage with a grim frown, all of her former pretense gone. "So it's all of us then. No one has been able to get in this office."
Oh, surely not... "He blocked Optimus?"
"He's still in Praxus, so no."
Well, at least Prowl wasn't indulging in full on treason. Good to know, that.
Elita sighed and gestured at the panel again. "Try using your other code."
Jazz frowned. "Other code?"
Elita just looked at him.
Making a mental note to change i, Jazz sighed and used the master override he'd crafted--how did Elita find out about that one--deciding then and there that he was going to make Prowl pay for this later.
A sharp chime, and rejecting flash of red light.
Taken aback, Jazz sent out a priority comm to Prowl.
::Outgoing transmission: Recipient CG-01-Prowl-IAP: Open the door ::
::Connection rejected::
::Outgoing transmission: Recipient CG-01-Prowl-IAP: Prowl. The door.::
::Connection rejected::
::Outgoing transmission: Priority 1: Recipient CG-01-Prowl-IAP: I can and will hack the damned thing.::
::Connection rejected::
::Outgoing transmission: Priority 1 - SOBO Delta-Green=Meister: Recipient TOBO Hightower=Barricade: Open the fragging door. This is ridiculous.::
::Connection rejected::
::Incoming transmission: User CG-01-Prowl-IAP: Accept::
::Connection accepted::
::CG-01-Prowl-IAP: Later. Now go away.::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: No. Open up::
::Connection terminated by CG-01-Prowl-IAP::
::Outgoing transmission: Recipient CG-01-Prowl-IAP: What the slag is wrong with you?!::
::Connection rejected: Fwd. Recipient COL-04-Red Alert-IAP::
Jazz felt more than saw a few of the cameras in the hall focus on him and Elita.
His patience, already worn thin after his extended mission, fizzled and something inside snapped. "Primus fraggit! Stop being a slagger and open the door!" The order was punctuated by him beating ferociously on the door, to no avail.
::Incoming transmission: COL-04-Red Alert-IAP::
::Connection accepted::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: Don't waste your time.::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: I swear, you'd better not be in on this Red!::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: Oh, please.::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: Sorry, Red. Look, will you just let me in?::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: I would, believe me, if only because this sort of behavior usually preludes a defection, but I used my security override with Elita One and Smokescreen two megacycles ago and nothing came of it. Well, Prowl actually threw them out then turned around and revoked my rank clearances.::
:: LG-02-Jazz-IAP: What!? Have they been reinstated?::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: Oh, yes. Elita--wait, hold on--::
::AC-00-Elita One-IAP has joined the conversation::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: As I was saying, Elita was good enough to reinstate my rank clearances immediately afterward.::
::AC-00-Elita One-IAP: Indeed. I take it Prowl ignored you too?::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: Something like that. I had to initiate an Ops connection just to get him to tell me to go away.::
::AC-00-Elita One-IAP: I'd hope he'd at least let you in. I swear to Primus, We should just have Ironhide or Wheeljack blow the door.::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: Too messy. I've had cameras trained on the door, but he's only come out twice in the last decacycle; once was to use the wash racks, the second was to get his ration. He overrode the door controls with his clearance so we couldn't get a monitor inside.::
::AC-00-Elita One IAP: He actually had quite the ration build up. That's what started all this, actually. While you were away, Ultra-Magnus let slip that Prowl was impossible to get a hold of. He got inside early last decacycle with one of Prowl's usual mid-cycle rations, but that was a good long while ago::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: Smokey have anything to say about this? I know Ratchet must have, if Prowl's been skipping rations::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: I suspect Ratchet isn't aware. Smokescreen is, but both he and Ratchet have been so preoccupied with the Praxus survivors they wouldn't have had opportunity to do anything about it. Actually, the earlier incident with Prowl was the most we'd seen of Smokescreen since...The Fall.::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: Oh, Primus. Smokey holding up okay?::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: I don’t think so, but Rung seems to be of a mind that he is after he browbeat the poor mech into a therapy session.::
::LG-02-Jazz-IAP: I swear, I'm shipping that nosy-bot off to the Orbital Hub one of these days.::
::COL-04-Red Alert-IAP: We'd all be much obliged if you would. He's actually been logging complaints on all of us since...anyway, come up to security. The rest of this is better addressed in person, and I'm running on a skeletal staff as it is so I need to stay close. ::
::Connection terminated by COL-04-Red Alert IAP::
Elita and Jazz spared one last frustrated look at Prowl’s office door, and walked off to the elevator at the end of the hallway.
Jazz leaned back against the wall with a deep sigh as the lift began its descent into the lower levels of Iacon Alpha-Prime and the base’s security center. It had been an extremely long, difficult mission that had taxed he and his team, and his hope had been to simply make it back to base, debrief everyone, and take a moment to just tend to himself before he had to see to everyone else again.
He certainly hadn’t expected to deal with a budding crisis three breems after he arrived, and it was quickly sapping the last of his energy. Elita One shot him an assessing gaze as if she could read his thoughts, and after a brief moment passed him a cube of energon from her subspace.
He accepted it gratefully, and was pleasantly surprised by the bittersweet aroma of aluminum and a sharp, clean tang of nickel. It was a far cry from the standard rations they received, and better than some of the brews he’d tasted over the vorns.
“Firestar’s been experimenting again.” Elita smirked, anticipating his next question.
“I’m stealing that femme from you one of these megacycles.”
“I can hurt you.” Elita quipped as the doors slid open, revealing Red Alert’s domain. The wall of the circular room is covered in monitors, tracking everything from the civilian sectors to the base’s rec room and wash racks. The floor proper hosts nearly twenty stations, each of them wired into Iacon’s defense grid. Floating camera-drones whizzed through the open air space, watching the watchers, of which there were precious few. Normally the security center was a bustle of activity, but most of the security staff was with the Prime sorting the remains of Praxus or shoring up the defenses of other Autobot held cities lest disaster strike them as well.
Currently only ten bots were in the security center, each monitoring a different sector of Iacon, while various drones attended the automated defenses. High above it all—near to the ceiling, in fact—on a hovering platform Red Alert oversaw everything, his personal console drawing in and compiling information from every station.
Red Alert had taken the liberty of sending for Smokescreen and Wheeljack; the two mechs were waiting for them on a mini hover-lift that would take them up to Red Alert’s conference area, a docked platform extending from the walls.
Not for the first time, Jazz boggled at his friend’s insistence on unusual layouts, but had to appreciate the logic behind a set-up that would throw off any intruders or assassins.
“Jazz, you’re back!” Wheeljack’s helm-fins flashed a merry orange as the two clasped each other’s forearms in warm greeting. Wheeljack stepped aside and Jazz did a lingering once-over on Smokescreen, who was doing his best to appear normal, and utterly failing.
The mech’s door-panels visibly drooped, a tell-tale sign of depression and his normally roguish bearing had been replaced with something closer to a sag. Armor plating was dull and optics were dim; a sign of either malnourishment or stress. Red Alert and Elita One certainly hadn’t been complaining about Smokescreen not taking care of himself, so Jazz was fairly certain which one he was going with.
Not for the first time since Praxus fell, Jazz wished Megatron a lingering, painful death.
“Smokey, mech…”
Smokescreen held up a hand, forestalling Jazz’s words. “I know, Jazz. I will be fine, just…”
“You’re not there yet, I know. It took me a while too.”
Smokescreen startled, as if suddenly realizing that he wasn’t the only one to have faced the destruction of a city, or a home. He'd had to devote so much time and persepective to the more personal tragedy of Praxus that he really hadn't had time to reflect on anyone else. Jazz had lost Protihex, Wheeljack had lost Tarn, and Elita One, Ultra Magnus and Red Alert had seen Simfur captured, all despite each of their best efforts.
Jazz made a mental note to see about Smokey once the situation with Prowl was addressed. He clapped Smokescreen reassuringly on the shoulder as he and Elita stepped onto the lift, quirked a vague smile as the unusually solemn mech bumped against his arm in return and something akin to his old cheer overrode that bleak, weighty sadness in his optics. And if Elita One was leaning against Smokescreen’s other side radiating support and affection, well four grown bots on a lift made for a snug fit, and EM fields were bound to overlap.
Red Alert was waiting for them when the lift arrived at the platform, his own personal hover-lift docked at the table so that he could continue to monitor security. A camera drone hovered nearby, a long cable connecting it to Red Alert’s data pad as information was transferred over the hard-line connection.
Red Alert let them all take seats and get settled in before disconnecting from the camera drone and nudging it away to hover elsewhere. “I’m sure all of us have more immediate concerns, so we might as well cut to the chase.” One of Red Alert's miniature wall drones skittered up the wall and across the table, dragging a clear package of rust sticks--a favorite of Smokescreen--and deposited in front of the depressed Praxian. Red Alert studiously ignored the occurrence (as if he hadn't just transmitted an order to the drone to do so). "I've taken the time to compile all of our various encounters with Prowl, and when combined with his unusual activity, I've determined he's either defecting--and doing a damned poor job of it--" Red Alert held up a hand to forestall the sudden round of outraged protests. "It's too ludicrous to give thought, I know."
And it would have been the first thing Red would have worked to investigate then rule out.
"So what is it?"
"It's a 1080."
There was a horrified silence around the table, and it took all of Jazz's control not to leap out of his seat and take off for Prowl's office and blow the whole slagging wall out if he had to.
"Prowl's breaking."
