Camaraderie: The Secret-Keeper: 1/4
Title: Camaraderie: The Secret-Keeper: Part 1/4
Universe: Alignment/IDW AU, Camaraderie/Trinkets 'verse
Rating: PG-13, to be on the safe side
Characters: Jazz, Prowl, various Autobot Officers, Megatron.
Prompt: Red glow reflected in your eyes
Warning: woefully unbeta'd mentions of violence (semi-graphic), mentions of death, angst, bad bots doing bad things, destruction of office furniture.
Notes: My muse betrayed me and took the nice sensible plot idea I had and scattered into the four winds. I...I don't even know what happened here with this one. It was supposed to fall into the Trinkets/Camaraderie 'verse but...yeah...*Warily pokes at fic with stick*
Word Count: 2,854
It was a popular myth that every Cybertronian could trace lineage back to one of the Thirteen, and the denizens of Protihex had long revered Solus Prime, more so than any other Prime and maybe even Primus Himself. Protihexans were artists, but Solus Prime had been a weaponsmith, and Protihexans had never let a skill set go unused. Oh, they would dress it up and incorporate inspired traces of elegance and flair to such an extent that it became Art, but at the end of the megacycle a sword was a sword, no matter the quality of the scroll-work on the hilt or the stylized engraving along the blade. If they had manifested any trace of Solus’ legacy the Decepticons’ difficulty in taking Protihex was understandable.
Those bots had endured longer than anyone expected, but Protihex had been taken. Protihex had fallen. Megatron razed Protihex, grinding the city of artisans and musicians beneath his heel. The Temple of the Primes, the Grand Harmonic Spire, the High Gallery, eons of Art and culture…all destroyed, the dust and rubble coating the few refugees that had escaped the merciless rampage of three Decepticon gestalts loosed upon a civilian populace.
Uraya fell next, overrun during the regions’ 30 meta-cycle long dark period by Shockwave’s drones and Insecticon swarms. Even if they retook Uraya, the city was uninhabitable; the drones were too dangerous for anything less than a full military incursion-which they couldn’t spare-and the Insecticons had consumed most of the buildings, leaving behind infested ruins and technorganic waste.
Neither of the sister-cities were his main target, but they had long stood between Megatron and Praxus, and Prowl had kept a special watch over the city, seeing doom hovering over its barricaded walls.
The problem, however, had been that Prowl didn't know when Megatron would strike; only that he would. All of Cybertron knew Megatron despised Praxus and would make an example of the city-state.
But the when? That question plagued them all.
The warlord switched between cycles of straightforward carnage and truly sinister plotting; Optimus’ fear was that Megatron would wait for them to fall into complacency and strike, while Prowl’s was that Megatron would hold off until the Autobots were spread too far to mount an effective resistance and then strike.
Ratchet voices the true horror, however: If destruction was Uraya and Protihex’s fate-cities that were merely in the way and not a target-what will Megatron do to Praxus?
Prowl isn't even sure if Megatron will leave anyone alive, and it chills his spark.
Praxus and Iacon are all that remain of the Torus states now, and it is where Prowl convinces Prime to place the two primary bases, saturating that area with the bulk of Autobot troops. He spends the next three vorns trying to stave off the inevitable with barely anything to work with-The Decepticons have been playing their cards close to his chest again-and Megatron?
Megatron harries them.
He strikes Simfur first. The All Spark has long since been relocated, and all that remains are scattered refugee camps and leftover energon stores.
Six hospitals.
Four temples.
The largest youngling center on the planet.
What occurs will later be remembered as one of the worst war crimes in the entirety of the Great War.
It is an outrage! Simfur is not a military target, they did everything to ensure it didn't become a military target! Simfur holds no particular danger to Megatron, but he strikes because it is convenient and non-combatants don’t deserve the resources they've been hoarding from the rest of the planet. He strikes because it will draw Autobot forces away from Iacon and Praxus.
Mostly, Megatron strikes because it will hurt.
Word reaches them of the attack, and Prowl feels something cold grip around his spark as he reviews the situation. It would be so easy, so very easy, to hold back the best troops to guard the two cities closest to his spark, but he won’t. He can’t; the Enforcer decals he still wears aren't merely for show, and he didn't earn the trust of two primes by making the easy choices. Optimus Prime expects him to hold Cybertron’s best interest above all else, and Prowl has never betrayed that expectation.
He sends them Elita-One; the femme commander excels at guerrilla tactics, especially in urban environs. Elita had been running an impressively effective resistance against Shockwave’s incursion into Altihex, enough that the femme commander had been made a priority target equal to Optimus. Shockwave had turned all of his processing power towards capturing the femmes, but had disappeared during one of Elita’s maneuvers in Altihex, hopefully deactivated in the explosion that claimed his primary laboratory.
Unfortunately, it had also claimed a number of her femmes in her personal cell and she needed reinforcements. Badly. She’d returned to Iacon to regroup and pick replacements for her cell, and Prowl had planned to shift her over to Praxus; Praxus held a large concentration of femmes, ones that would make Elita’s job easier because of the city-state’s mandatory term of military duty and cultural emphasis on martial pursuits.
Elita would have been a valuable asset in protecting Praxus; Shockwave-if he was still alive-would be incredibly reluctant to move against the city by ground; Elita-One had enough of a reputation for wreaking utter havoc on ground forces that Megatron would turn to an aerial assault, and Praxus’ anti-air defenses were such that Starscream would never accept the monumental casualties his fliers would take.
All moot now, because the femme commander is needed elsewhere.
Jazz is with him when he asks Elita-One if she is willing to take her cell to Simfur; it turns out to be a mere formality because Elita is already prepping her group to deploy. He runs through some last minute plans with her while Jazz slips a few extra surprise packages into their ship’s hold and takes a moment to playfully announce that Moonracer will always be one of his bots, even if she’s running with Elita’s group now. He and Elita deliberately not notice the Ops director slip Greenlight a mission chip and a highly illegal restraining bolt with a pointed glance at Airachnid’s back when the femme turns to pin her calculating gaze on Moonracer.
A few joors later, and Jazz is explaining the source of some of Iacon’s more debilitating security leaks while he revisits some of the more viable plans he has stored for defending Praxus, shifting troop numbers and damage predictions (Praxus will pull through, but it’s going to take some doing, and the south sector will probably never be the same again). It hurts-he can feel something inside himself twist and pierce his spark as he shifts resources away to account for Elita’s absence from Praxus’ allotted defense, but when Jazz’s vibrant blue gaze meets his own, the mech does him the courtesy of not noticing the purplish tint in his own optics.
When Jazz casually swipes ones of his data pads and begins to input his own touches on the tactical plan as he continues his rant about untrustworthy femmes (and Airachnid in particular), Prowl feels a bit of the weight ease off his spark.
Megatron strikes Tyger Pax next.
It, at least, is a military target. It houses the remnants of the High Council; those too stubborn or too stupid to seek the safety of Iacon like those who now comprise Autobot High Command. Along with them are the last of the planets security forces and the Elite Guard. There are also the refugees from Simfur and the last remaining Neutral camp still on the planet.
The councilors hold out for a few decacycles, but the populace is all too aware of the example Simfur was intended to be. When Megatron announces leniency will be shown to those who take the Decepticon brand willingly and rise up in arms against the Neutrals and Autobot sympathizers who obviously don’t care about anything except saving their own plating brutal uprising erupts in the streets.
Tyger Pax might have held out against a Decepticon siege; it cannot handle internal strife and a siege. They demand help of Optimus Prime.
He can hardly voice his own opinion-that the councilors created their own problem by refusing to seek the safety of Iacon and don’t deserve the help now that Megatron has turned his eye towards Tyger Pax. It was one of the first cities evacuated, after all.
He instead slots Wheeljack and his squadron for the task before Prime even has to ask, is hardly surprised when Ratchet decides to accompany him, and just sighs with resignation when the Protectobots follow after because of course they would.
Prowl can only envision the entirety of the north sector of Praxus in ruins as he removes three more of his key players from the Praxus equation and notes five of his eleven viable plans as untenable.
Frustration and anger born of fear for his home war inside of him as he feels all of his efforts slip away; Megatron is methodically forcing the Autobots to spread, to break the tight defensive bubble they’d created as they slowly pushed outward to reclaim Cybertron back from his grasp. Megatron is stripping defenses away from Praxus, is forcing the issue, and Prowl knows he is, but he can’t stop it. Not without sinking to Megatron’s level or worse.
His rigid control breaks, and had he been a slower mech, Jazz would have been flattened by the desk Prowl flung across his office when he opens the door. Jazz merely steps over the broken piece of furniture and holds up a cube of energon with a wry look.
Jazz helpfully picks up the scattered data pads while Prowl drinks, then wanders off to track down a new desk (and update the tally Rewind has been keeping in the enlisted wash racks of destroyed desks).
One new desk later, Prowl is reorganizing his data pads and finds a transfer assignment for Grimlock and his team buried in the middle of his stack of plans. When asked, Jazz shrugs and points out that Grimlock has been going out of his way to torque off Prime lately, and it might be best to separate the two for an orn or two. Besides, you can’t run the Prime out of Iacon, and Praxus is close enough the team can still be utilized if necessary.
Prowl doesn’t point out that the only contention between Grimlock and Optimus lately is the argument over “who punched Megatron hardest that one time back in Altihex” that surfaces whenever the two get into the high grade together--and that is more often than most suspect. He just wraps his arms tighter around Jazz after their duty cycles are complete and lets the gratitude in his EM field do the talking for him.
Megatron hits Nova Cronum next. It is far too close to home, a dangerous push into Autobot borders. The city is Cybertron’s cradle of intellect, home to the best minds on Cybertron, many of them dedicated to furthering the Autobot cause. Megatron takes no prisoners, killing anyone who doesn’t immediately defect.
It is a move that cannot go ignored, and even worse, Ultra Magnus-now a duly appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accords-cannot abide the gross violations of the treaty’s terms. The Wreckers go with him. Jetfire is also compelled to go; Nova Cronum is a surrogate home to him, after all. The Aerialbots go with Jetfire.
Optimus sympathizes, but Nova Cronum is home to the Chamber of the Ancients. He is Prime; he has to go.
The bleak certainty of failure settles over his shoulders as Praxus is left barely defended in a feint that they can’t afford to ignore. The city is exposed, and Megatron will strike.
Prowl flips his desk, but finds little comfort in the action.
The hole he punches through his wall offers even less.
He does it again, on the off chance the second time is the charm.
It isn't.
Neither is the third.
A black palm catches the fourth swing, and his optics flare red as he whirls on-Jazz!
The saboteur gently curls his fingers over Prowl’s, entwines them as the tactician slowly relaxes his arm and they are left holding hands. The mech doesn't need to say anything, just stares up at him, visor dim with remembered frustrations from his inability to save Protihex. Jazz has always had a gift for words, but he is a virtuoso of silence.
The stress and emotional drain get to him, and Prowl sinks to his knees and rests his aching helm against Jazz’s legs, spinning scenario after scenario, rejecting it, and spinning another, refusing to give up so easily. He has the best tactical processor in the army, possibly of all the planet; there is logically no way for every analysis to end with the fall of Praxus. He just isn't trying hard enough; he’s missing something! Start over, look again.
There has to be a way; he is Praxus’ Chief Enforcer-their best defense! For millennia he has been sworn to keep it safe, and he has.
He will!
He must.
He runs thousands of variables deep into the night cycles. Jazz stays the whole time, a calming hand emitting gentle magnetic pulses through his helm, staving off the crash Prowl is adamantly working himself towards.
Despite Jazz's efforts otherwise, Prowl finally crashes himself on the 15,067th scenario.
Megatron strikes four meta-cycles later.
If the warlord had expected a quick Decepticon rout, he was mistaken. The Praxians fought hard and long, remembering the sacrifices of the sister-cities that had tried to protect them. Reinforcements swarm from across Cybertron as fast as they can, but it is not enough to turn the tide, merely hold off the inevitable.
There is no mistaking the vicious cunning behind Praxus’ defense stratagem; Prowl has decided that if Megatron wants Praxus, he will pay so dearly in the attempt for it that it would be better to not try at all. The Praxians not able to escape agree, and fight all the stronger for it.
What none of them expect, however, is for Megatron to set fire to the city’s energon pipes-energon is too scarce, too valuable, but Megatron does just that. The warlord has decided that If Praxus wants to play a war of attrition, then he’ll make sure nobody has anything left.
The explosions are horrific, shattering glass as far Nova Cronum and sending tremors across the planet as far as Kaon itself.
The flames burn white over much of the city, such is the heat generated from the pipeline blast, permanently scarring parts of the ground to such an extent that it will never recover. Megatron promised to reduce the city to ashes, but most of Praxus melts, and it is a ghastly, miserable spectacle.
The release of so many chemicals triggers an acid rain that reacts with the burning energon, producing an almost solid wall of caustic smoke that does not lift, but seems to sustain itself in a gruesome reaction. Screams can be heard for almost a decacycles after the initial explosion from within the city, and weapons fire is a constant staccato above the crackling inferno.
In the end, despite all of Prowl’s efforts, Praxus doesn’t just fall, it burns, and Jazz has to drag the mech away from the war-zone before coding gets the better of him and the mech actually tries to cross the smoke barrier to enter what is left of Praxus; there are cleaner ways to commit suicide.
For a long time, Prowl is silent, watching the flames climb higher and higher into the unnatural night. Jazz is hard pressed to tell if the red glow in Prowl’s optics is just a reflection-a trick of the light from the fire that is consuming Praxus-or a tangible manifestation of the dangerous molten rage inside him that might come exploding outward at the least provocation. He never thought he’d see the day that he’d be grateful for what befell Protihex, but here he is.
“…they’ll pay….I’ll kill them all for this…I swear I’ll kill them…”
Prowl’s voice is a dark growl that startles Jazz with the sheer hatred imbued in it, and the mech’s EM field is ragged and roiling with incandescent rage and murderous intent. Prowl is a mech pushed past all control, driven to the brink and hurled over it; smart bots flee a mech like that, give him a wide space to boil through his more dangerous emotions.
Jazz is one of the smartest.
He is also one of the most loyal.
There is nothing to be said, not within that cruel here-and-now, so Jazz stands silent at Prowl’s side as Praxus blazes, a steadying hand pressed between the mech’s door panels as those normally pure blue optics glow a nightmarish red and a white fist clenches in rage, clenches so tight his claws break through dermal plating and energon leaks out, falling to the battle-scorched ground in a relentless, implacable
drip…
drip…
drip…