Camaraderie 3: The Secret-Keeper Part 3/4
Title: Camaraderie: The Secret-Keeper: Part 3/4
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, withdrawal and PTSD.
Notes: This has been a long time coming, I know, but between the holidays and an unexpected round of pneumonia, I'm just now getting this up. Thanks, surprise Winter Storm 2013. x__x There is one more part after this, and I'm giving it the once-over as I type. I should hopefully have that up by the end of the week at the latest. (No promises though, because RL loves to make a mockery of my posting intentions =__= ). Anyway, the end is nigh, one way or the other. Thanks for sticking with me, gang, and happy holidays and a happy new year!
The security access tunnels that ran above Prowl's office were not supposed to support the weight of anyone save for the lightest of drones or cassetticons--and thus the startling amount of turret drones wandering the access tunnels--but Jazz had managed to distribute his weight evenly enough by bracing himself from wall to wall that the tunnels were holding. It was hardly comfortable; in fact the feat was made possible only by straining his magnetic capabilities, but such was the sacrifice made for friends and family.
The officer cadre had no one to rely on except each other; there was a deep gulf between the command chain and the ranks that took the combined effort of he, Smokescreen and Blaster to even remotely bridge. A lot of it was due to their larger-than-life reputations, which were a necessity to maintain. It wasn't mere vanity, either. He'd seen a squadron on the verge of a panicked retreat suddenly snap to and stand ground long enough for reinforcements to arrive and turn the tides of a major skirmish, all because someone caught a glimpse of Ultra Magnus rolling out to the lines, and it had spread. Wheeljack had a cult (and it was a cult, no matter what he said to the contrary) that haunted the hallway outside of his wing with armfuls of little more than scrap and random weapon parts, hoping the engineer would work a miracle for them.
Wheeljack had confided in their group once that usually he just ended up strapping a bunch of explosive compounds to it and turning it into a makeshift bomb, or kept the scraps and gave them a spare weapon he had laying around. Sometimes--just sometimes--however, the right pieces of scrap and the right ammo yielded legendary results, like Cliffjumper's prized glass gas cannon (the remains of four different blasters and a vial swiped from Starscream's lab) or Elita-One's PathBlaster (a scrapped Decepticon War Machine and crystallized Destronium). And not to inflate his own ego, but he had it on good authority (hacked transmissions courtesy of Blaster) that the mere rumor of his presence was enough to send any one of Megatron's bases into high alert and leave hardened Decepticon warriors jumping at shadows.
Shattering that sort of faith would be detrimental to the Autobot cause, so they did everything to keep those images intact. That, in turn, meant that they had evolved their own nebulous web of confidence, support and warnings; they didn't have anyone else. The rank and file were out of the question, Prime had far too much to handle without adding their own issues to the stack, and most of them would rather submit to Vortex's tender mercies than deal with PsyOps; that group would go prying into the deepest part of their psyches, dutifully take notes on everything and turn it over to High Command. That sorry lot would take one look at the reports and use it as an opportunity to remove them from their posts and replace them with their own puppets; they had long wanted Optimus brought to heel, either willingly or by stalemate from their own appointed officers. It had taken Optimus using the Matrix itself to approve his current staff and beat High Command at their own game, but the first sign of weakness and they would remove them.
The prospect was entirely unacceptable.
So. PsyOps, no matter how much the division claimed to want to help, were the enemy. They'd become masters of dodging PsyOps misguided prying and High Command's machinations, and part of their success was attributed to the series of codes they'd developed. Some of them overlapped with PsyOps and medicals' codes: a 742 was a minor personality glitch, a 439 was mental fatigue, and so on. Some of them, however, were purely of their own design. 920 meant a ranking soldier or junior officer was on suicide watch, 855 meant someone was vulnerable to a particular lure--they'd had Smokescreen pegged with that one for vorns until the mech had managed to fully exorcise Swindle's influence--they had dozens of them, the private codes they used to keep an optic out for each other with, but the most frightening one they had was a 1080.
A 1080 meant a full psychotic break; the code was a rather morbid legacy of Perceptor's predecessor. Lodestone had never been one to handle stress well, and the pressure of counteracting Megatron's Robo-smasher had gotten to the mech. Unable to find anyway to counteract the reprogramming device and drowning under a rapidly closing deadline to figure it out as more and more of their bots went missing and then randomly showed up on the wrong side of the battlefield with a new purple decal, they'd long figured Lodestone was going to have an episode. They had all expected a rather impressive flare-up during an officer meeting, or maybe a pitched fit in the middle of his lab. Instead, two of Lodestone's best assistants--Catalycon and Flamewar--wound up taking a trip through the machine after their transport was captured, and ended up at Shockwave's side. That was enough to push Lodestone firmly over the edge, and the mech strode into the middle of the Perihex training grounds with a fully loaded gatling cannon and unloaded the clip--all 1,080 rounds--before someone finally took him out. They had never been more glad that Lodestone had always been an abysmal shot, but the assault had still cost them twelve good recruits.
And a friend and fellow officer. Despite his end, it didn't change what Lodestone had been. His tragedy, however, had driven home more than anything that they needed to watch for each other.
The problem with a psychotic break, though, was just how unpredictable they were. None of them were immune--all of them had been there at one point or another--because millennium of managing a desperately disadvantaged army during a brutal planetary civil war was not exactly conducive to mental stability. There was no standard trigger--anything could set someone off, the symptoms were wildly varied, and the results just as random; they'd seen deep depression, violent outbursts, delusions, hysteria and even full on psychosis. Smokescreen had devoted a lot of time to unifying a concrete symptom list, to little success. Still, a 1080 wasn't a code they threw around lightly--they dared not treat it with anything less than the gravity and quick intervention it deserved--so just the mere suggestion of tagging a psych profile with the code meant that the bot in question needed to get their slag together, and fast, before PsyOps intervened. Sometimes, however, the break occurred.
Jazz wasn't camped out in the restricted inner-access tunnels for slag and giggles, after all. There were rules, but then there were rules.
Rule one: If someone is breaking, don't wait for them to ask for help--take the initiative, because nine times out of ten, they can't--or won't--ask for help.
Smokescreen blamed himself the most for Prowl's state; the mech was his own brother, but he hadn't been there for him. It had taken a long time for them to convince the mech that it wasn't his fault--he might not have been there for Prowl, but he had been the primary source of therapy for a deeply traumatized refugee group--more so than any of the other PsyOps staff, who were all being utilized in the aftermath of Praxus--and this was on top of dealing with his own pain and rapidly mounting duties. Smokescreen hadn't had the time to hardly tend to himself in the aftermath, much less Prowl. Gone unspoken was the fact that Prowl hadn't exactly reached out for anyone in the first place, but all of them had thought it at one point or another.
But then, Prowl rarely did. Sadly, there was absolutely no surprise that Prowl hadn't reached out for anyone and just kept everything contained until he finally snapped from the strain of it. Prowl had been betrayed by both Sentinel and Starscream, had been targeted by high command's treachery and had been used callously by opportunistic rank-climbers within the army; the tactician had learned his lessons perhaps too well, and even amongst his closet allies and friends, the mech was loathe to reveal himself too readily. He would trust any of them with his life, his possessions, his duties; anything but his emotions.
Jazz frowned to himself, thinking about the many walls Prowl had erected over the orns. Only he and Smokescreen had any sort of ease getting past Prowl's defenses; the others could--which was more than anyone else could say--but they had to work for it. Prowl no doubt anticipated Smokescreen's impacted schedule and decided not to add more to the already massive load. Jazz tamped down on the sudden flare of irritation that he couldn't properly aim anywhere as he thought about how he'd been sent off on a mission fresh after Praxus, thus removing Prowl's only other support. He was simply too skilled to be kept out of play and had been tapped for a much more pressing assignment. He couldn't even blame Optimus.
They'd all been horrified to realize that Prowl hadn't been removed from active duty--or Smokescreen for that manner--but it was Elita who realized that Optimus didn't even know--he'd been out of Iacon since the start of the Decepticon assault. A bit of clever subterfuge on her part, and they were faced with the revelation that Optimus had assumed that both Prowl and Smokescreen had immediately removed themselves from active status and their duties spread amongst the rest of command, or to a temporary replacement appointed by High Command.
Ultra Magnus had been ready to reveal the entirety of the situation to Optimus then and there, until Red Alert rightly pointed out that doing so would see the news go straight to High Command, and there went all their positions by the end of things. Fear of High Command was what had led to the formation of Rule Two, and it was even more important than Rule One. Rule Two? You kept your vocalizer muted. A comrade's breaking stayed completely under wraps; if in public, you got them away immediately. If in private, you made sure it stayed that way. They didn't run their vocalizer about one of their own--not to PsyOps, not to outsiders, not even to Prime if it could be avoided--and they never mentioned it again once it was over. High Command especially never found out.
High command would love to have that kind of leverage over any of them, so here they were, hiding everything and taking matters into their own hands because Optimus remained ever so woefully blind to the machinations of that group and let them remain in control of the Autobots.
It was likely the primary reason Prowl hadn't excused himself from his duties--he wouldn't dare leave Optimus' orders to the whims of a puppet placed by High Command, and he wouldn't foist his own load onto the shoulders of his comrades. It honestly terrified Jazz when he thought about the sheer depths of Prowl's self-sacrificing tendencies. The ranks could accuse Prowl of being sparkless or too harsh all they wanted, but the truth remained: Prowl always--always--took the brunt of the weight before letting it trickle down the lines. If Prowl leaned, it was because he was faltering under a load that would crush anyone else. Jazz was very careful to ease as much off of Prowl's shoulders as he could without the mech noticing and putting up a fight, but this?
What a mess.
Primus bless Red Alert. Say what you would of the Security Director--and there was plenty, to be fair--but Red Alert was very careful of his friends. He had always been outcast and shunned--both for his glitch and for the lengths he sometimes was forced to go through to do his job--so friends were a rare luxury that he jealously guarded. Red Alert never made an overt show of it, but they all knew Red kept a close personal watch over them, fanatically cataloging every personality quirk, every trigger, every injury, every evaluation--official or otherwise--everything. Lodestone had been a friend...there would never be another Lodestone among them so long as Red still functioned.
Red Alert had already turned his focus onto Smokescreen and especially Prowl once the attacks began, and after...well. After Praxus, he had been especially diligent--especially once he discovered neither of them were moved from active duty. In Smokescreen's case, he'd been desperately needed for his skills, and the time with the Praxian refugees was a way for him to grieve and find a support group as well. They'd made sure Smokescreen'd been involved in nothing else besides that as best they could.
Prowl, though...Red Alert had been horrified when he'd realized that his salvaged video feeds from the Youth Sector attacks had been time-stamped with Prowl's ID code, and he'd immediately set Smokescreen (who'd already been suspicious of Prowl's emotional state anyway) and Ultra Magnus after Prowl. Ultra Magnus had shown up with a mid-cycle ration for Prowl, using that as a means to gain audience with the suddenly elusive tactician. Magnus had been...distraught...to find out that all of the Praxus reports had been going straight to Prowl's queue, and even more stricken by the physical signs of Prowl's emotional distress. Prowl's armor, normally well-kept if nothing else, had faded to a dull mockery of its usual standard, clear signs of exhaustion and low energon intake. Also unnerving were Prowl's optics, which were glowing an almost unnaturally bright blue. If a bot were far enough gone that their armor was dulling, the optics were usually darker as well. Prowl's optics were even brighter than normal, so whatever energy he was getting? It wasn't energon, that was for certain. He'd tried to coax Prowl out the office with no success whatsoever; in fact, Prowl had immediately taken control of the conversation and relentlessly forced things along until he was shooing Magnus--Magnus--out the door as if he were an errant rookie and not head of the Wreckers and a sub-commander of the entire Autobot Army.
Ultra Magnus had relayed the encounter to Red Alert, but his plans to attempt another intervention fell flat as he was summoned back to Praxus by Optimus to oversee the latest attempt to breach the vicious acid cloud surrounding Praxus. It was probably sheer luck that Magnus hadn't found the chance to corner Optimus and report Prowl's condition before the others had relayed the message for him to keep shut about it and let them take care of things, reminding him about Rule Two.
Wheeljack, with Red Alert and Elita's help, had managed to intercept a good deal of the incoming reports to his queue, and if Prowl noticed the mech kept quiet about it--the last thing he seemed to want was an out and out confrontation with the rest of them. Elita-One had found precious little time to confront Prowl either--she was acting in Prime's capacity with the High Council until her mate returned from Praxus, and the rest of their cadre was either in Praxus or out holding command of the remaining Autobot bases.
With things as they were, it looked like it was up to him to handle Prowl, which was a relief for everyone involved. Despite the complicated on-again-off-again nature of their relationship, it didn't change the fact that Jazz had a singular way of handling Prowl. Never was the mech so skillfully played as when it was Jazz at the lead.
Jazz enhanced the magnification settings of his visor until he could get a clear look at Prowl through the hidden peep hole he'd drilled long ago into the mech's ceiling, steeling himself for the worst as he contemplated Rule Three--a break wasn't pretty; don't let them hurt themselves, don't let them hurt others, don't hold anything against them, because it could just as easily be you to go next. This wasn't Prowl's first tangle with a break--he'd experienced one when Starscream had betrayed them and assassinated Sentinel Prime, but even that episode hadn't been anywhere near as bad as what the others had discovered this time.
Jazz would much rather have dealt with a paranoid and depressed Prowl, than the drone Prowl was slowly turning himself into.
The office was dimly lit--unusual for Prowl, who preferred bright lighting whenever possible, but Jazz could clearly make out what had alarmed Magnus so much about Prowl's condition. Prowl had always had subtle coloring, but what he was viewing was washed out; you didn't find colors that dingy outside of dying mechs, who's nano-chromites were usually the last things to go before permanent deactivation. Prowl's signature muted black was more gray than anything, and the white was equally drab; it looked as if the mech had gone for a roll in a mound of dust! The color had even bled from his chevron, the normally vibrant red glass faded to a dull maroon. The worst part was the glow coming from Prowl's optics; he couldn't see them perfectly from the angle he was at, but the bleak gloom of the office was enough that Jazz could make out the edges of sickly red glow--one that he was sadly very familiar with.
There was the answer to Magnus' question; stim-cubes.
A standard issued resource for Ops agents in the field, stim-cubes were a favored back-up plan for bots who had to operate on little to no recharge or fuel. They would give you a strong jolt of energy, but it was never meant to replace energon or charging; it was too harsh on the systems in mass quantities, and a massive pain to come down off of. He'd seen strung-out addicts weather withdrawal from the worst of illicit additives more gracefully than a bot coming down off a run of stim-cubes. Usually they were only used on extended missions by his field agents, or once in a very long while by the medics when stopping for energon wasn't feasible.
Jazz wanted to cringe as he did the math, and realized just how long Prowl had to have been on a stim run. Even if the mech had wanted to cut the intake and go back to energon cubes, the withdrawal would be vicious--auditory and visual hallucinations weren't uncommon in cases like Prowl's, and neither was nausea (caused by intakes sensitized to anything other than stims and thus rejecting it from a bot's system) or energon poisoning (caused by bots consuming too much energon in attempt to compensate for the sudden lack of energy). That also mean that Prowl would suffer processor aches and nervous twitches that would be strong enough to almost certainly make the most stalwart of bots reconsider coming down. Even worse, prolonged use of stim-cubes interrupted the recharge cycle once it was actually attempted, sometimes badly enough to cause dreams. If Prowl suspected any of that were likely, he would have simply cut his losses and continued taking them until he could stand down for a significant amount of time--long enough to work through the stim-crash.
Like he would ever have the time.
On top of that, prolonged use deadened most of the sensors in a mechs body to anything less than the most extreme triggers. He'd seen bots on a stim run take debilitating wounds and not falter in the slightest; it wasn't unusual for bots to simply leak out and deactivate from wounds they never even felt. Prowl had set himself up for a slagging brutal stim-crash, and his state was more than enough to bring to hand High Command's reason to remove Prowl from duty--and his position.
Which explained why he was haunting his office instead of going out and about; it was enough to alarm any bot in Iacon, and word would definitely make its way back to PsyOps, who would take one look at Prowl and declare him psychologically and medically unfit for duty.
They were going to have to find a way to deal with this without letting it get out--Prowl was going to have to come down off the stim run. Stim poisoning was possible, and a slagging nasty way to go; the mech had to be at least halfway there already, judging from his condition.
Oblivious to the scrutiny, Prowl continued to work at his desk. His movements were considerably less graceful than the norm, and at one point his helm dipped low, as if the stims were wearing off and forced stasis were eminent. Prowl's door panels flicked sharply in agitation as his helm snapped back up, and he pulled open the top drawer to reveal a miniature hoard of stim-cubes. Prowl reached for two--two--and quickly slammed them back with practiced ease, not so much as twitching as his optics--just recently void of that disturbing glow--flared with that horrid red glow once again.
Oh, Prowl. Primes and arbiters of grace be merciful... Jazz felt his spark twist in sympathetic pain and anxiety as he bore silent witness to Prowl's decline. He couldn't watch anymore; spark heavy, Jazz slowly worked his back up the shaft, set on returning to Red Alert to figure out their next move. Whatever it was, it needed to be soon.
"Oh for Primus' sake...where did he even get that many stims, anyway?" Elita hissed as she slammed her energon ration down. They'd all regrouped in Red Alert's security center, and had been none too pleased with Jazz's revelation.
"First Aid." Red Alert replied, looking up from the various feeds coming across his hover-lift's console.
"First Aid's normally smarter than that." Elita murmured.
"He is, but Prowl's gotten one over on bigger and better bots than a green med-intern; Aid never stood a chance. Anyway, I snuck a look at the supply logs on my way back here. He'd given a box of them to Prowl with intents for them to go to one of the refugee groups that Grapple and Hoist were handling. I'm guessing that box never made it to them, especially since Blades logged out another box right below that one." Jazz rubbed at his visor, torn between throttling Prowl or hugging him.
"That's going to be a mess come inventory..." Wheeljack sighed. Ratchet ran a tight ship when it came to supplies, and missing or misappropriated inventory was an extreme irritant for the medic. First Aid should have kept better track of the stims, but it wasn't exactly his fault that Prowl of all mechs decided to pull one over on him. Looked like he was going to have to run interference for the intern when inventory rolled around.
"That'll be a while, though, right?" Elita tapped a delicate finger on the edge of her datapad as she thought. It had to be at least another deca-cycle, maybe even two, before Ratchet or First Aid would have time to run inventory, considering they were all still dealing with the the massive influx of refugees. As it was, she had already arranged for a full restocking of the medical wing in anticipation of the increased supply consumption--Ratchet might put the inventory off even longer. The longer they had before Ratchet found out about Prowl's stunt, the better able they were to avoid Ratchet causing a scene before they could run damage control.
She voiced as much, to which Smokescreen shook his head, radiating frustration.
"If Prowl's been on a stim run that long, it's going to be at least a quartex before he's worked through the worst of the withdrawal, probably even longer. Even if we were lucky enough for Ratchet to skip inventory that long-and we aren’t-Prowl would need to see Ratchet just to make sure he hasn’t glitched himself. I know for a fact he hasn’t been recharging, and I’m almost positive he’s dealing with some manifestation of traumatic stress because all of the survivors have been, so odds are he’s probably dreaming. It would explain the lack of recharge, and also why he’s taking stims in the first place.”
Jazz buried his face in his palm. "Well frag. If you're right, then he's screwed. No recharge because of dreams means stims. Stim runs mean you have to deal with the withdrawal, which means more dreams. Which means no recharge."
"Which means more stims." Jazz shared a commiserating look with Smokescreen as they finished the progression together.
Which means that Prowl is a walking time-bomb," Wheeljack groused. "If he glitches out and pulls a Lodestone, we're going to have to put him down hard, and I don't know about the rest of you but I don't much fancy scrubbing tactician off the wall, so I say frag High Command and whoever else something has to say about it--get him to Ratchet by any means necessary!"
"That's a fantastic idea," Elita drawled, "but I'd like to keep Prowl, so maybe a different plan?"
"Are you serious, 'Lita? We aren't going to be able to cover this up unless Primus himself intervenes."
"Yes I'm serious! If you think High Command isn't going to jump on the opportunity to get one of us out of the picture--and especially Prowl--you're deluded."
Wheeljack's fins flashed a ruddy orange in frustration. "High Command can bite my shiny metal aft! How about we get Prowl fixed up and run damage control afterward? If High Command tries anything, Optimus can just overrule them."
"No, not really." Elita leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other as she scowled at one of the camera drones skittering up the wall next to her for lack of a better target. "High Command controls the army, not Optimus. It was a battle getting us all appointed in the first place, you know that! The last thing we need is to hand them the perfect excuse to remove Prowl"
"So what, you want to let him completely self-destruct because you're too worried about High Command?!"
"Can we not do this in front of them?" Red Alert hissed, gesturing at Smokescreen--who looked faintly ill--and Jazz (who honestly wasn't looking much better himself).
“Aw slag, Smokey buddy, you know I-" Wheeljack's fins flashed mournfully, the dingy blue-gray tone inidicative of the frustration and despair that he was feeling. "Frag it all." The engineer grumbled, slumping over and burying his head in his arms with a weary rev of his engines.
"I know, 'Jack." Smokescreen's reply was subdued as he stared down at the half-eaten pack of rust sticks before pushing them aside and excusing himself. "I need to get back to my office. I'll...frag, I'll check in later or something."
Elita waited until Smokescreen exited the security center, then smacked Wheeljack across the helm with an angry scowl. "Could you be anymore sparkless!?" She demanded, vibrant blue optics hot with irritation.
"Leave it be, 'Lita."Like it or not, 'Jack's got a good point. Something's got to give, and fast." Jazz sighed wearily, his visor dimming as he glanced down at the table. "Which means I'm just going to have to force the issue."
"What's your plan?" Red Alert demanded, not even deigning to look up from where he was patching into the feed to Smokescreen's office, determined to stave off any more "episodes" among their group. Jazz suddenly had the suspicion that Red Alert was going to be keeping close watch over all of them for the next few decacycles, whether they wanted him to or not.
Jazz slipped out of his and began to make his way towards the lift. "Well Red, I suppose I'm just going to go in there, grab the turbo-bull by the horns and go for a ride."
The assembled officers were quick to come to a conclusion on how that would go over, complete with mental imagery. An appalled silence lingered over the table for a long moment before Wheeljack finally broke it. "That's a stupid idea."
Jazz shrugged as he activated the lift controls. "If it's stupid but works, then it isn't stupid."
Elita-One, Red Alert and Wheeljack stared at Jazz's departing figure, then each other, that appalled silence back for round two.
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, withdrawal and PTSD.
Notes: This has been a long time coming, I know, but between the holidays and an unexpected round of pneumonia, I'm just now getting this up. Thanks, surprise Winter Storm 2013. x__x There is one more part after this, and I'm giving it the once-over as I type. I should hopefully have that up by the end of the week at the latest. (No promises though, because RL loves to make a mockery of my posting intentions =__= ). Anyway, the end is nigh, one way or the other. Thanks for sticking with me, gang, and happy holidays and a happy new year!
The security access tunnels that ran above Prowl's office were not supposed to support the weight of anyone save for the lightest of drones or cassetticons--and thus the startling amount of turret drones wandering the access tunnels--but Jazz had managed to distribute his weight evenly enough by bracing himself from wall to wall that the tunnels were holding. It was hardly comfortable; in fact the feat was made possible only by straining his magnetic capabilities, but such was the sacrifice made for friends and family.
The officer cadre had no one to rely on except each other; there was a deep gulf between the command chain and the ranks that took the combined effort of he, Smokescreen and Blaster to even remotely bridge. A lot of it was due to their larger-than-life reputations, which were a necessity to maintain. It wasn't mere vanity, either. He'd seen a squadron on the verge of a panicked retreat suddenly snap to and stand ground long enough for reinforcements to arrive and turn the tides of a major skirmish, all because someone caught a glimpse of Ultra Magnus rolling out to the lines, and it had spread. Wheeljack had a cult (and it was a cult, no matter what he said to the contrary) that haunted the hallway outside of his wing with armfuls of little more than scrap and random weapon parts, hoping the engineer would work a miracle for them.
Wheeljack had confided in their group once that usually he just ended up strapping a bunch of explosive compounds to it and turning it into a makeshift bomb, or kept the scraps and gave them a spare weapon he had laying around. Sometimes--just sometimes--however, the right pieces of scrap and the right ammo yielded legendary results, like Cliffjumper's prized glass gas cannon (the remains of four different blasters and a vial swiped from Starscream's lab) or Elita-One's PathBlaster (a scrapped Decepticon War Machine and crystallized Destronium). And not to inflate his own ego, but he had it on good authority (hacked transmissions courtesy of Blaster) that the mere rumor of his presence was enough to send any one of Megatron's bases into high alert and leave hardened Decepticon warriors jumping at shadows.
Shattering that sort of faith would be detrimental to the Autobot cause, so they did everything to keep those images intact. That, in turn, meant that they had evolved their own nebulous web of confidence, support and warnings; they didn't have anyone else. The rank and file were out of the question, Prime had far too much to handle without adding their own issues to the stack, and most of them would rather submit to Vortex's tender mercies than deal with PsyOps; that group would go prying into the deepest part of their psyches, dutifully take notes on everything and turn it over to High Command. That sorry lot would take one look at the reports and use it as an opportunity to remove them from their posts and replace them with their own puppets; they had long wanted Optimus brought to heel, either willingly or by stalemate from their own appointed officers. It had taken Optimus using the Matrix itself to approve his current staff and beat High Command at their own game, but the first sign of weakness and they would remove them.
The prospect was entirely unacceptable.
So. PsyOps, no matter how much the division claimed to want to help, were the enemy. They'd become masters of dodging PsyOps misguided prying and High Command's machinations, and part of their success was attributed to the series of codes they'd developed. Some of them overlapped with PsyOps and medicals' codes: a 742 was a minor personality glitch, a 439 was mental fatigue, and so on. Some of them, however, were purely of their own design. 920 meant a ranking soldier or junior officer was on suicide watch, 855 meant someone was vulnerable to a particular lure--they'd had Smokescreen pegged with that one for vorns until the mech had managed to fully exorcise Swindle's influence--they had dozens of them, the private codes they used to keep an optic out for each other with, but the most frightening one they had was a 1080.
A 1080 meant a full psychotic break; the code was a rather morbid legacy of Perceptor's predecessor. Lodestone had never been one to handle stress well, and the pressure of counteracting Megatron's Robo-smasher had gotten to the mech. Unable to find anyway to counteract the reprogramming device and drowning under a rapidly closing deadline to figure it out as more and more of their bots went missing and then randomly showed up on the wrong side of the battlefield with a new purple decal, they'd long figured Lodestone was going to have an episode. They had all expected a rather impressive flare-up during an officer meeting, or maybe a pitched fit in the middle of his lab. Instead, two of Lodestone's best assistants--Catalycon and Flamewar--wound up taking a trip through the machine after their transport was captured, and ended up at Shockwave's side. That was enough to push Lodestone firmly over the edge, and the mech strode into the middle of the Perihex training grounds with a fully loaded gatling cannon and unloaded the clip--all 1,080 rounds--before someone finally took him out. They had never been more glad that Lodestone had always been an abysmal shot, but the assault had still cost them twelve good recruits.
And a friend and fellow officer. Despite his end, it didn't change what Lodestone had been. His tragedy, however, had driven home more than anything that they needed to watch for each other.
The problem with a psychotic break, though, was just how unpredictable they were. None of them were immune--all of them had been there at one point or another--because millennium of managing a desperately disadvantaged army during a brutal planetary civil war was not exactly conducive to mental stability. There was no standard trigger--anything could set someone off, the symptoms were wildly varied, and the results just as random; they'd seen deep depression, violent outbursts, delusions, hysteria and even full on psychosis. Smokescreen had devoted a lot of time to unifying a concrete symptom list, to little success. Still, a 1080 wasn't a code they threw around lightly--they dared not treat it with anything less than the gravity and quick intervention it deserved--so just the mere suggestion of tagging a psych profile with the code meant that the bot in question needed to get their slag together, and fast, before PsyOps intervened. Sometimes, however, the break occurred.
Jazz wasn't camped out in the restricted inner-access tunnels for slag and giggles, after all. There were rules, but then there were rules.
Rule one: If someone is breaking, don't wait for them to ask for help--take the initiative, because nine times out of ten, they can't--or won't--ask for help.
Smokescreen blamed himself the most for Prowl's state; the mech was his own brother, but he hadn't been there for him. It had taken a long time for them to convince the mech that it wasn't his fault--he might not have been there for Prowl, but he had been the primary source of therapy for a deeply traumatized refugee group--more so than any of the other PsyOps staff, who were all being utilized in the aftermath of Praxus--and this was on top of dealing with his own pain and rapidly mounting duties. Smokescreen hadn't had the time to hardly tend to himself in the aftermath, much less Prowl. Gone unspoken was the fact that Prowl hadn't exactly reached out for anyone in the first place, but all of them had thought it at one point or another.
But then, Prowl rarely did. Sadly, there was absolutely no surprise that Prowl hadn't reached out for anyone and just kept everything contained until he finally snapped from the strain of it. Prowl had been betrayed by both Sentinel and Starscream, had been targeted by high command's treachery and had been used callously by opportunistic rank-climbers within the army; the tactician had learned his lessons perhaps too well, and even amongst his closet allies and friends, the mech was loathe to reveal himself too readily. He would trust any of them with his life, his possessions, his duties; anything but his emotions.
Jazz frowned to himself, thinking about the many walls Prowl had erected over the orns. Only he and Smokescreen had any sort of ease getting past Prowl's defenses; the others could--which was more than anyone else could say--but they had to work for it. Prowl no doubt anticipated Smokescreen's impacted schedule and decided not to add more to the already massive load. Jazz tamped down on the sudden flare of irritation that he couldn't properly aim anywhere as he thought about how he'd been sent off on a mission fresh after Praxus, thus removing Prowl's only other support. He was simply too skilled to be kept out of play and had been tapped for a much more pressing assignment. He couldn't even blame Optimus.
They'd all been horrified to realize that Prowl hadn't been removed from active duty--or Smokescreen for that manner--but it was Elita who realized that Optimus didn't even know--he'd been out of Iacon since the start of the Decepticon assault. A bit of clever subterfuge on her part, and they were faced with the revelation that Optimus had assumed that both Prowl and Smokescreen had immediately removed themselves from active status and their duties spread amongst the rest of command, or to a temporary replacement appointed by High Command.
Ultra Magnus had been ready to reveal the entirety of the situation to Optimus then and there, until Red Alert rightly pointed out that doing so would see the news go straight to High Command, and there went all their positions by the end of things. Fear of High Command was what had led to the formation of Rule Two, and it was even more important than Rule One. Rule Two? You kept your vocalizer muted. A comrade's breaking stayed completely under wraps; if in public, you got them away immediately. If in private, you made sure it stayed that way. They didn't run their vocalizer about one of their own--not to PsyOps, not to outsiders, not even to Prime if it could be avoided--and they never mentioned it again once it was over. High Command especially never found out.
High command would love to have that kind of leverage over any of them, so here they were, hiding everything and taking matters into their own hands because Optimus remained ever so woefully blind to the machinations of that group and let them remain in control of the Autobots.
It was likely the primary reason Prowl hadn't excused himself from his duties--he wouldn't dare leave Optimus' orders to the whims of a puppet placed by High Command, and he wouldn't foist his own load onto the shoulders of his comrades. It honestly terrified Jazz when he thought about the sheer depths of Prowl's self-sacrificing tendencies. The ranks could accuse Prowl of being sparkless or too harsh all they wanted, but the truth remained: Prowl always--always--took the brunt of the weight before letting it trickle down the lines. If Prowl leaned, it was because he was faltering under a load that would crush anyone else. Jazz was very careful to ease as much off of Prowl's shoulders as he could without the mech noticing and putting up a fight, but this?
What a mess.
Primus bless Red Alert. Say what you would of the Security Director--and there was plenty, to be fair--but Red Alert was very careful of his friends. He had always been outcast and shunned--both for his glitch and for the lengths he sometimes was forced to go through to do his job--so friends were a rare luxury that he jealously guarded. Red Alert never made an overt show of it, but they all knew Red kept a close personal watch over them, fanatically cataloging every personality quirk, every trigger, every injury, every evaluation--official or otherwise--everything. Lodestone had been a friend...there would never be another Lodestone among them so long as Red still functioned.
Red Alert had already turned his focus onto Smokescreen and especially Prowl once the attacks began, and after...well. After Praxus, he had been especially diligent--especially once he discovered neither of them were moved from active duty. In Smokescreen's case, he'd been desperately needed for his skills, and the time with the Praxian refugees was a way for him to grieve and find a support group as well. They'd made sure Smokescreen'd been involved in nothing else besides that as best they could.
Prowl, though...Red Alert had been horrified when he'd realized that his salvaged video feeds from the Youth Sector attacks had been time-stamped with Prowl's ID code, and he'd immediately set Smokescreen (who'd already been suspicious of Prowl's emotional state anyway) and Ultra Magnus after Prowl. Ultra Magnus had shown up with a mid-cycle ration for Prowl, using that as a means to gain audience with the suddenly elusive tactician. Magnus had been...distraught...to find out that all of the Praxus reports had been going straight to Prowl's queue, and even more stricken by the physical signs of Prowl's emotional distress. Prowl's armor, normally well-kept if nothing else, had faded to a dull mockery of its usual standard, clear signs of exhaustion and low energon intake. Also unnerving were Prowl's optics, which were glowing an almost unnaturally bright blue. If a bot were far enough gone that their armor was dulling, the optics were usually darker as well. Prowl's optics were even brighter than normal, so whatever energy he was getting? It wasn't energon, that was for certain. He'd tried to coax Prowl out the office with no success whatsoever; in fact, Prowl had immediately taken control of the conversation and relentlessly forced things along until he was shooing Magnus--Magnus--out the door as if he were an errant rookie and not head of the Wreckers and a sub-commander of the entire Autobot Army.
Ultra Magnus had relayed the encounter to Red Alert, but his plans to attempt another intervention fell flat as he was summoned back to Praxus by Optimus to oversee the latest attempt to breach the vicious acid cloud surrounding Praxus. It was probably sheer luck that Magnus hadn't found the chance to corner Optimus and report Prowl's condition before the others had relayed the message for him to keep shut about it and let them take care of things, reminding him about Rule Two.
Wheeljack, with Red Alert and Elita's help, had managed to intercept a good deal of the incoming reports to his queue, and if Prowl noticed the mech kept quiet about it--the last thing he seemed to want was an out and out confrontation with the rest of them. Elita-One had found precious little time to confront Prowl either--she was acting in Prime's capacity with the High Council until her mate returned from Praxus, and the rest of their cadre was either in Praxus or out holding command of the remaining Autobot bases.
With things as they were, it looked like it was up to him to handle Prowl, which was a relief for everyone involved. Despite the complicated on-again-off-again nature of their relationship, it didn't change the fact that Jazz had a singular way of handling Prowl. Never was the mech so skillfully played as when it was Jazz at the lead.
Jazz enhanced the magnification settings of his visor until he could get a clear look at Prowl through the hidden peep hole he'd drilled long ago into the mech's ceiling, steeling himself for the worst as he contemplated Rule Three--a break wasn't pretty; don't let them hurt themselves, don't let them hurt others, don't hold anything against them, because it could just as easily be you to go next. This wasn't Prowl's first tangle with a break--he'd experienced one when Starscream had betrayed them and assassinated Sentinel Prime, but even that episode hadn't been anywhere near as bad as what the others had discovered this time.
Jazz would much rather have dealt with a paranoid and depressed Prowl, than the drone Prowl was slowly turning himself into.
The office was dimly lit--unusual for Prowl, who preferred bright lighting whenever possible, but Jazz could clearly make out what had alarmed Magnus so much about Prowl's condition. Prowl had always had subtle coloring, but what he was viewing was washed out; you didn't find colors that dingy outside of dying mechs, who's nano-chromites were usually the last things to go before permanent deactivation. Prowl's signature muted black was more gray than anything, and the white was equally drab; it looked as if the mech had gone for a roll in a mound of dust! The color had even bled from his chevron, the normally vibrant red glass faded to a dull maroon. The worst part was the glow coming from Prowl's optics; he couldn't see them perfectly from the angle he was at, but the bleak gloom of the office was enough that Jazz could make out the edges of sickly red glow--one that he was sadly very familiar with.
There was the answer to Magnus' question; stim-cubes.
A standard issued resource for Ops agents in the field, stim-cubes were a favored back-up plan for bots who had to operate on little to no recharge or fuel. They would give you a strong jolt of energy, but it was never meant to replace energon or charging; it was too harsh on the systems in mass quantities, and a massive pain to come down off of. He'd seen strung-out addicts weather withdrawal from the worst of illicit additives more gracefully than a bot coming down off a run of stim-cubes. Usually they were only used on extended missions by his field agents, or once in a very long while by the medics when stopping for energon wasn't feasible.
Jazz wanted to cringe as he did the math, and realized just how long Prowl had to have been on a stim run. Even if the mech had wanted to cut the intake and go back to energon cubes, the withdrawal would be vicious--auditory and visual hallucinations weren't uncommon in cases like Prowl's, and neither was nausea (caused by intakes sensitized to anything other than stims and thus rejecting it from a bot's system) or energon poisoning (caused by bots consuming too much energon in attempt to compensate for the sudden lack of energy). That also mean that Prowl would suffer processor aches and nervous twitches that would be strong enough to almost certainly make the most stalwart of bots reconsider coming down. Even worse, prolonged use of stim-cubes interrupted the recharge cycle once it was actually attempted, sometimes badly enough to cause dreams. If Prowl suspected any of that were likely, he would have simply cut his losses and continued taking them until he could stand down for a significant amount of time--long enough to work through the stim-crash.
Like he would ever have the time.
On top of that, prolonged use deadened most of the sensors in a mechs body to anything less than the most extreme triggers. He'd seen bots on a stim run take debilitating wounds and not falter in the slightest; it wasn't unusual for bots to simply leak out and deactivate from wounds they never even felt. Prowl had set himself up for a slagging brutal stim-crash, and his state was more than enough to bring to hand High Command's reason to remove Prowl from duty--and his position.
Which explained why he was haunting his office instead of going out and about; it was enough to alarm any bot in Iacon, and word would definitely make its way back to PsyOps, who would take one look at Prowl and declare him psychologically and medically unfit for duty.
They were going to have to find a way to deal with this without letting it get out--Prowl was going to have to come down off the stim run. Stim poisoning was possible, and a slagging nasty way to go; the mech had to be at least halfway there already, judging from his condition.
Oblivious to the scrutiny, Prowl continued to work at his desk. His movements were considerably less graceful than the norm, and at one point his helm dipped low, as if the stims were wearing off and forced stasis were eminent. Prowl's door panels flicked sharply in agitation as his helm snapped back up, and he pulled open the top drawer to reveal a miniature hoard of stim-cubes. Prowl reached for two--two--and quickly slammed them back with practiced ease, not so much as twitching as his optics--just recently void of that disturbing glow--flared with that horrid red glow once again.
Oh, Prowl. Primes and arbiters of grace be merciful... Jazz felt his spark twist in sympathetic pain and anxiety as he bore silent witness to Prowl's decline. He couldn't watch anymore; spark heavy, Jazz slowly worked his back up the shaft, set on returning to Red Alert to figure out their next move. Whatever it was, it needed to be soon.
"Oh for Primus' sake...where did he even get that many stims, anyway?" Elita hissed as she slammed her energon ration down. They'd all regrouped in Red Alert's security center, and had been none too pleased with Jazz's revelation.
"First Aid." Red Alert replied, looking up from the various feeds coming across his hover-lift's console.
"First Aid's normally smarter than that." Elita murmured.
"He is, but Prowl's gotten one over on bigger and better bots than a green med-intern; Aid never stood a chance. Anyway, I snuck a look at the supply logs on my way back here. He'd given a box of them to Prowl with intents for them to go to one of the refugee groups that Grapple and Hoist were handling. I'm guessing that box never made it to them, especially since Blades logged out another box right below that one." Jazz rubbed at his visor, torn between throttling Prowl or hugging him.
"That's going to be a mess come inventory..." Wheeljack sighed. Ratchet ran a tight ship when it came to supplies, and missing or misappropriated inventory was an extreme irritant for the medic. First Aid should have kept better track of the stims, but it wasn't exactly his fault that Prowl of all mechs decided to pull one over on him. Looked like he was going to have to run interference for the intern when inventory rolled around.
"That'll be a while, though, right?" Elita tapped a delicate finger on the edge of her datapad as she thought. It had to be at least another deca-cycle, maybe even two, before Ratchet or First Aid would have time to run inventory, considering they were all still dealing with the the massive influx of refugees. As it was, she had already arranged for a full restocking of the medical wing in anticipation of the increased supply consumption--Ratchet might put the inventory off even longer. The longer they had before Ratchet found out about Prowl's stunt, the better able they were to avoid Ratchet causing a scene before they could run damage control.
She voiced as much, to which Smokescreen shook his head, radiating frustration.
"If Prowl's been on a stim run that long, it's going to be at least a quartex before he's worked through the worst of the withdrawal, probably even longer. Even if we were lucky enough for Ratchet to skip inventory that long-and we aren’t-Prowl would need to see Ratchet just to make sure he hasn’t glitched himself. I know for a fact he hasn’t been recharging, and I’m almost positive he’s dealing with some manifestation of traumatic stress because all of the survivors have been, so odds are he’s probably dreaming. It would explain the lack of recharge, and also why he’s taking stims in the first place.”
Jazz buried his face in his palm. "Well frag. If you're right, then he's screwed. No recharge because of dreams means stims. Stim runs mean you have to deal with the withdrawal, which means more dreams. Which means no recharge."
"Which means more stims." Jazz shared a commiserating look with Smokescreen as they finished the progression together.
Which means that Prowl is a walking time-bomb," Wheeljack groused. "If he glitches out and pulls a Lodestone, we're going to have to put him down hard, and I don't know about the rest of you but I don't much fancy scrubbing tactician off the wall, so I say frag High Command and whoever else something has to say about it--get him to Ratchet by any means necessary!"
"That's a fantastic idea," Elita drawled, "but I'd like to keep Prowl, so maybe a different plan?"
"Are you serious, 'Lita? We aren't going to be able to cover this up unless Primus himself intervenes."
"Yes I'm serious! If you think High Command isn't going to jump on the opportunity to get one of us out of the picture--and especially Prowl--you're deluded."
Wheeljack's fins flashed a ruddy orange in frustration. "High Command can bite my shiny metal aft! How about we get Prowl fixed up and run damage control afterward? If High Command tries anything, Optimus can just overrule them."
"No, not really." Elita leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other as she scowled at one of the camera drones skittering up the wall next to her for lack of a better target. "High Command controls the army, not Optimus. It was a battle getting us all appointed in the first place, you know that! The last thing we need is to hand them the perfect excuse to remove Prowl"
"So what, you want to let him completely self-destruct because you're too worried about High Command?!"
"Can we not do this in front of them?" Red Alert hissed, gesturing at Smokescreen--who looked faintly ill--and Jazz (who honestly wasn't looking much better himself).
“Aw slag, Smokey buddy, you know I-" Wheeljack's fins flashed mournfully, the dingy blue-gray tone inidicative of the frustration and despair that he was feeling. "Frag it all." The engineer grumbled, slumping over and burying his head in his arms with a weary rev of his engines.
"I know, 'Jack." Smokescreen's reply was subdued as he stared down at the half-eaten pack of rust sticks before pushing them aside and excusing himself. "I need to get back to my office. I'll...frag, I'll check in later or something."
Elita waited until Smokescreen exited the security center, then smacked Wheeljack across the helm with an angry scowl. "Could you be anymore sparkless!?" She demanded, vibrant blue optics hot with irritation.
"Leave it be, 'Lita."Like it or not, 'Jack's got a good point. Something's got to give, and fast." Jazz sighed wearily, his visor dimming as he glanced down at the table. "Which means I'm just going to have to force the issue."
"What's your plan?" Red Alert demanded, not even deigning to look up from where he was patching into the feed to Smokescreen's office, determined to stave off any more "episodes" among their group. Jazz suddenly had the suspicion that Red Alert was going to be keeping close watch over all of them for the next few decacycles, whether they wanted him to or not.
Jazz slipped out of his and began to make his way towards the lift. "Well Red, I suppose I'm just going to go in there, grab the turbo-bull by the horns and go for a ride."
The assembled officers were quick to come to a conclusion on how that would go over, complete with mental imagery. An appalled silence lingered over the table for a long moment before Wheeljack finally broke it. "That's a stupid idea."
Jazz shrugged as he activated the lift controls. "If it's stupid but works, then it isn't stupid."
Elita-One, Red Alert and Wheeljack stared at Jazz's departing figure, then each other, that appalled silence back for round two.