shoots muse and leaves
So having insisted I edit this the muse decided to take a holiday on me, which I why this is late and probably naff. Most of the editing here is to smooth out the whole who's talking when issues that riddled the original.
Title: The Sins Of The Past.
Setting: G1h
Rating: NC-17 for the story, this chapter is a PG13 for special ops being special ops.
Characters: Jazz, Mirage, Bumblebee, ensemble and OC’s.
Warning: None really for this one.
Summary: No matter how far or fast you run you can’t leave your past behind. Jazz’s misdeeds have finally caught up with him and the price of absolution could be deadly.
Chapter 8: Mirage and Bumblebee remember the past and make promises of their own for the future.
--- Earth, five hours later ---
Mirage walked into the ops armoury with the weight of knowledge heavy on this CPU, he Blaster and Preceptor had found the ones responsible for this, and the whole picture had changed.
What to do now? That was the million-credit question; he stopped at the table where Bumblebee was slowly and methodically cleaning his favourite gun, he could hear the other mini-bots moving around deeper in the ammunition section, pulling up every last box of laser packs and solid rounds they could find. Bee looked up and set the magazine he’d been cleaning down.
“You found them.” Bumblebee made it a statement not a question; he knew how good a hunter Mirage was, and not just of turbo-foxes.
“Yes, and it’s dumped a new problem in our laps.” Mirage responded.
Bee’s raise optic ridge invited him to continue
“Higg Maldor.” The spy said coldly
The sharp shooter’s optics narrowed as he tried to place the name and then he exclaimed. “Priums on the rack! Scan! Jazz would never have gone after him alone, someone betrayed him. When I get my hands on the.” He stopped at the look on Mirage’s face. “You know who did it.”
“His old commander Sync, and inadvertently Prime and Prowl.” Mirage’s tone was still as cold as the void
Bee stared at him as if he’d just announced that Megatron had won the Nobel Peace Prize. “How? Why? When? Where? Are you sure?”
Mirage nodded his head slowly; he’d checked the data four times. I’m in dead trouble when we get Prime and Prowl back and they find out I hacked their private above top-secret files, he thought, but I had to know the truth.
Taking a deep chamber full of air Mirage said so softly that his words only reached Bumblebee’s audios “Jazz wasn’t really exiled, he was sent on a deep cover mission. Managed to pull it off in his usual spectacular style but then appears to have run in to Sync and gone after Maldor.” He looked down at the desk before continuing, “I did some digging and found that two Autobots left the original primary target in a big hurry, one positively identified as Commander Sync and the other a lowly dockworker allegedly named ‘Cron’. From the descriptions he was Jazz with a change of paint and some extra panels, he sent Prime and Prowl a message which bypassed all of Red’s security but it arrived scrambled.”
Bee was nodding, fitting this information into his own observation of the command team’s behaviour over the past months. “They got the wrong idea, went after him and turned up at the wrong time. He would have too busy looking out for them to watch his own back.”
Mirage nodded, neither Prime nor Prowl was exactly ops material so Jazz would have been too worried about them to think about the possibility of Sync jumping the line.
“It gets worse; I ran a check on the ice glitch that we saw shredding Jazz. Turns out she’s a name from Jazz’s past as well.” Mirage sighed, the idea of teammate betraying tem mate sat poorly with him.
“Let me guess,” Bee gave a resigned sigh, “his old ops team medic, Shrike?”
“Correct. I think I’ve found all of them working for Maldor in some capacity. None under their real names of course but all the holes are there, scout, medic, communications, demolition, sniper.” Mirage’s voice ran cold as he contemplated so many betrayals.
“We’re going up against a full team that’s jumped? Mirage that’s a bit of a tall order.” Bumblebee face was folded up into a worried frown
“That’s the question Bee, who do we go after? I doubt we can take them all.” Disappointment lurked in the corners of Mirage’s tone.
“Prowl’s gonna want Shrike’s spark chamber as a pencil holder, no question about it.” There was no doubt in Bumblebee’s voice as to the validity of the statement he’d just uttered.
Mirage nodded, once Prowl was free and had the medic in his sights, well he’d happily put money on the tactician taking her apart with his fingers.
Bumblebee continued thoughtfully “Once everybody here finds out who betrayed Jazz nothing in the universe is going to stop them hunting him down and, the twins do have something of a well deserved reputation.
Mirage couldn’t help but agree, that hunt would have no rules or limits and only one ending.
“You and I can settle up for Scan and Jazz if we take out Maldor. Between us, the guys and Prowl we should be able to take out all three targets.” Mirage paused then asked rather too brightly “How’s the packing?”
Bumblebee raised his hands skyward in a gesture of surrender, and said in an exasperated tone that carried a small tinge of fondness, “They’ve pulled every ammo box in existence down to Omega and every one has two spares of their usual weapon, which Hoist has gone over with a microscope, plus at least one knife, but I’d appreciate you taking a look at the selections, knives after all are more your thing than mine.”
Mirage nodded his agreement and moved to the case Bumblebee had indicated, opening it up he listened to the continuing packing saga.
“There are four pack to each of us, two close and two mid, according to Huffer ‘just in case’” the sharpshooter gave a deep sigh “ and I’ve never seen so much fuss over contact explosive, I did trying explaining that you had to stick a detonator into it before slapping it to make to explode but they weren’t listening. Thank Primus that the liquid burn comes heavily packed or they’d have frizzed out on me over moving that. As it was they had fits when I got the ‘krig’s out. Grapple dropped a few circuits when I gave them a demo of just how much punch they packed, I think he was thinking of what I could do to one of his beloved buildings.”
Bumblebee’s smile was an unpleasant sight as he concluded, “They all nearly off lined when I opened kit 357; obviously nobody told them that Autobot black ops had ‘interrogation’ equipment of its own. I gave them the standard speech about how tight the rules are, how there were strict limits on what we could do physically, and how we never hack a mech no matter what and so on. They swallowed it.” he gave a one shoulder shrug, “I think it helped that all the seals were still intact, they could see we’d never used any of it”
Mirage tried to swallow his own smile; it had gone just as he’d hopped. Bee had been too busy running round after his ‘help’ to brood and the others had been given something to occupy them for the same reason, just one last thing to get out of storage. He put the knife case on to the last cart to go down to Omega.
“Knife selection looks good, I’m going to tell them to get some recharge before they pack Omega so full he can’t get off the ground and then.” Mirage’s optics slid towards a door in the corner of the room.
Bumblebee followed his gaze and twisted his face up into an expression of distaste, “Yeah and then.”
The spy turned and wove his way deeper in the complex of rooms, following the sound of arguing mini-bots, truth be told he didn’t like the thought of having to load that box anymore than Bee did. It was just such a final act, one he’d performed for other agents he’d worked with, he just never though he’d be doing it for Jazz. If anything both he and Bee had assumed it would be Jazz doing it for them. He stopped in the doorway and looked at the busy, determined manner the ‘distraction six’, as he’d termed them in his own mind, now had. They’d even pulled together enough to be joking and twitting each other, not as much as usual but it was a start.
“You do realize that even Omega Supreme has an upper weight limit don’t you?” Mirage asked lounging against the door a small grin lurking around his mouth in deliberate homage to the memory of a long ago conversation between himself and Jazz over the same issue, “Get some recharge; you’ve done more than your share of work today, the rest of it’s up to us”
The mechs began to file out of the armoury headed for what ever recharge they could get.
“You will bring everyone home won’t you? I’m not sure we could stand loosing anyone else right now.” Hoist asked in a low worried voice as he paused in the doorway.
Mirage looked him firmly in the optics and said confidently “Everyone’s got a return ticket Hoist. Every Autobot, Aerialbot, Protectorbot and Dinobot on the planet is a member of special ops now and I’m not about to loose anyone else out of the department I’m temporarily joint head of.”
Hoist gave him the beginnings of an uncertain smile and left. Mirage turned and walked back to the main room where Bumblebee had now finished cleaning his rifle and was reassembling it, he was working by feel and instinct Mirage noted, lost in his thoughts. Deciding that they could both do with time to reflect on events and prepare mentally for what was coming he pulled out a large part of his personal array of knives and began to clean them.
An undetermined amount of time later he picked up the Autobot sized Katana that Jazz had brought back for him from a trip to Japan, as tradition, both human and Cybertronian, dictated the blade was kept razor sharp and he never replaced it in the scabbard without it drawing blood, or energon in his case.
The sword was beautiful and deadly, the handle was wrapped in blue and white cord and a row of tigers leapt and stalked down both sides of the blade, Jazz had done some calculations and worked out that according to the Chinese lunar calendar that the tiger was his birth sign, it had been a creation day gift. He remembered how delighted Jazz had been at his reaction when he’d opened the box, a melancholy smile drifted over his face, he’d made a point of learning how to use it according to the traditions of the people who’d created it, dragging a willing Jazz into his research then in to practise fights and finally down to the repair bay when he’d severed one of Jazz’s major energon lines trying to master a complicated pattern of strikes.
“I think it was the only time I’ve seen him taken completely by surprise. The look on his face when he got back down here and you dropped onto both knees and begged to be allowed to apologise with your life was just priceless.” Bumblebee’s voice broke the flow of his thoughts, “The first, last and only time I think I’ve ever seen him speechless.”
The half formed thoughts that had been swirling round Mirage’s CPU suddenly coalesced and he held out his left hand and ran the blade lightly over it, using just enough pressure to split the skin and draw energon.
Mirage intoned formally “In memory of Jazz, an honourable warrior, a noble leader and a generous friend. I swear an oath to give him a worthy burial and to bring everyone who goes with me back safely.”
He flipped the blade edge up, and without pause Bumblebee ran his hand over the sword shedding his own energon over the blade, in the same formal tone saying “So sworn and witnessed.”
Mirage stood and returned the sword to its sheath, Bee got to his feet and without further words they walked towards the corner storage bay. There were fewer boxes in here, each one on a shelf by itself. Bee reached out and ran a still leaking hand over a small wide one; Mirage placed his sliced hand flat on top of another longer but slimmer box.
They both came to a stop in front of a box that was as long and slim as the one Mirage had stopped by but this one was deeper, they both rested their hands on the lid for a moment, the significance of this act settling over them like a heavy cloak. Still in silence they pulled the box out of its resting place, Bumblebee took hold of the front and held it on his shoulders by the short poles that projected from the front so Mirage could get a firm grip on the ones at the back. With a slow and solemn step they left the special operations department and walked through the Ark and out into the crisp clean Washington night.
Having stowed the box in Omega’s observation deck, they stood in the dark looking up at the stars.
Bee pointed at one group of stars to the south just skimming the horizon, “The phoenix is rising. A good omen I think.”
Mirage nodded, yes maybe we can kindle a new flame from the ashes of Jazz’s death.
Title: The Sins Of The Past.
Setting: G1h
Rating: NC-17 for the story, this chapter is a PG13 for special ops being special ops.
Characters: Jazz, Mirage, Bumblebee, ensemble and OC’s.
Warning: None really for this one.
Summary: No matter how far or fast you run you can’t leave your past behind. Jazz’s misdeeds have finally caught up with him and the price of absolution could be deadly.
Chapter 8: Mirage and Bumblebee remember the past and make promises of their own for the future.
--- Earth, five hours later ---
Mirage walked into the ops armoury with the weight of knowledge heavy on this CPU, he Blaster and Preceptor had found the ones responsible for this, and the whole picture had changed.
What to do now? That was the million-credit question; he stopped at the table where Bumblebee was slowly and methodically cleaning his favourite gun, he could hear the other mini-bots moving around deeper in the ammunition section, pulling up every last box of laser packs and solid rounds they could find. Bee looked up and set the magazine he’d been cleaning down.
“You found them.” Bumblebee made it a statement not a question; he knew how good a hunter Mirage was, and not just of turbo-foxes.
“Yes, and it’s dumped a new problem in our laps.” Mirage responded.
Bee’s raise optic ridge invited him to continue
“Higg Maldor.” The spy said coldly
The sharp shooter’s optics narrowed as he tried to place the name and then he exclaimed. “Priums on the rack! Scan! Jazz would never have gone after him alone, someone betrayed him. When I get my hands on the.” He stopped at the look on Mirage’s face. “You know who did it.”
“His old commander Sync, and inadvertently Prime and Prowl.” Mirage’s tone was still as cold as the void
Bee stared at him as if he’d just announced that Megatron had won the Nobel Peace Prize. “How? Why? When? Where? Are you sure?”
Mirage nodded his head slowly; he’d checked the data four times. I’m in dead trouble when we get Prime and Prowl back and they find out I hacked their private above top-secret files, he thought, but I had to know the truth.
Taking a deep chamber full of air Mirage said so softly that his words only reached Bumblebee’s audios “Jazz wasn’t really exiled, he was sent on a deep cover mission. Managed to pull it off in his usual spectacular style but then appears to have run in to Sync and gone after Maldor.” He looked down at the desk before continuing, “I did some digging and found that two Autobots left the original primary target in a big hurry, one positively identified as Commander Sync and the other a lowly dockworker allegedly named ‘Cron’. From the descriptions he was Jazz with a change of paint and some extra panels, he sent Prime and Prowl a message which bypassed all of Red’s security but it arrived scrambled.”
Bee was nodding, fitting this information into his own observation of the command team’s behaviour over the past months. “They got the wrong idea, went after him and turned up at the wrong time. He would have too busy looking out for them to watch his own back.”
Mirage nodded, neither Prime nor Prowl was exactly ops material so Jazz would have been too worried about them to think about the possibility of Sync jumping the line.
“It gets worse; I ran a check on the ice glitch that we saw shredding Jazz. Turns out she’s a name from Jazz’s past as well.” Mirage sighed, the idea of teammate betraying tem mate sat poorly with him.
“Let me guess,” Bee gave a resigned sigh, “his old ops team medic, Shrike?”
“Correct. I think I’ve found all of them working for Maldor in some capacity. None under their real names of course but all the holes are there, scout, medic, communications, demolition, sniper.” Mirage’s voice ran cold as he contemplated so many betrayals.
“We’re going up against a full team that’s jumped? Mirage that’s a bit of a tall order.” Bumblebee face was folded up into a worried frown
“That’s the question Bee, who do we go after? I doubt we can take them all.” Disappointment lurked in the corners of Mirage’s tone.
“Prowl’s gonna want Shrike’s spark chamber as a pencil holder, no question about it.” There was no doubt in Bumblebee’s voice as to the validity of the statement he’d just uttered.
Mirage nodded, once Prowl was free and had the medic in his sights, well he’d happily put money on the tactician taking her apart with his fingers.
Bumblebee continued thoughtfully “Once everybody here finds out who betrayed Jazz nothing in the universe is going to stop them hunting him down and, the twins do have something of a well deserved reputation.
Mirage couldn’t help but agree, that hunt would have no rules or limits and only one ending.
“You and I can settle up for Scan and Jazz if we take out Maldor. Between us, the guys and Prowl we should be able to take out all three targets.” Mirage paused then asked rather too brightly “How’s the packing?”
Bumblebee raised his hands skyward in a gesture of surrender, and said in an exasperated tone that carried a small tinge of fondness, “They’ve pulled every ammo box in existence down to Omega and every one has two spares of their usual weapon, which Hoist has gone over with a microscope, plus at least one knife, but I’d appreciate you taking a look at the selections, knives after all are more your thing than mine.”
Mirage nodded his agreement and moved to the case Bumblebee had indicated, opening it up he listened to the continuing packing saga.
“There are four pack to each of us, two close and two mid, according to Huffer ‘just in case’” the sharpshooter gave a deep sigh “ and I’ve never seen so much fuss over contact explosive, I did trying explaining that you had to stick a detonator into it before slapping it to make to explode but they weren’t listening. Thank Primus that the liquid burn comes heavily packed or they’d have frizzed out on me over moving that. As it was they had fits when I got the ‘krig’s out. Grapple dropped a few circuits when I gave them a demo of just how much punch they packed, I think he was thinking of what I could do to one of his beloved buildings.”
Bumblebee’s smile was an unpleasant sight as he concluded, “They all nearly off lined when I opened kit 357; obviously nobody told them that Autobot black ops had ‘interrogation’ equipment of its own. I gave them the standard speech about how tight the rules are, how there were strict limits on what we could do physically, and how we never hack a mech no matter what and so on. They swallowed it.” he gave a one shoulder shrug, “I think it helped that all the seals were still intact, they could see we’d never used any of it”
Mirage tried to swallow his own smile; it had gone just as he’d hopped. Bee had been too busy running round after his ‘help’ to brood and the others had been given something to occupy them for the same reason, just one last thing to get out of storage. He put the knife case on to the last cart to go down to Omega.
“Knife selection looks good, I’m going to tell them to get some recharge before they pack Omega so full he can’t get off the ground and then.” Mirage’s optics slid towards a door in the corner of the room.
Bumblebee followed his gaze and twisted his face up into an expression of distaste, “Yeah and then.”
The spy turned and wove his way deeper in the complex of rooms, following the sound of arguing mini-bots, truth be told he didn’t like the thought of having to load that box anymore than Bee did. It was just such a final act, one he’d performed for other agents he’d worked with, he just never though he’d be doing it for Jazz. If anything both he and Bee had assumed it would be Jazz doing it for them. He stopped in the doorway and looked at the busy, determined manner the ‘distraction six’, as he’d termed them in his own mind, now had. They’d even pulled together enough to be joking and twitting each other, not as much as usual but it was a start.
“You do realize that even Omega Supreme has an upper weight limit don’t you?” Mirage asked lounging against the door a small grin lurking around his mouth in deliberate homage to the memory of a long ago conversation between himself and Jazz over the same issue, “Get some recharge; you’ve done more than your share of work today, the rest of it’s up to us”
The mechs began to file out of the armoury headed for what ever recharge they could get.
“You will bring everyone home won’t you? I’m not sure we could stand loosing anyone else right now.” Hoist asked in a low worried voice as he paused in the doorway.
Mirage looked him firmly in the optics and said confidently “Everyone’s got a return ticket Hoist. Every Autobot, Aerialbot, Protectorbot and Dinobot on the planet is a member of special ops now and I’m not about to loose anyone else out of the department I’m temporarily joint head of.”
Hoist gave him the beginnings of an uncertain smile and left. Mirage turned and walked back to the main room where Bumblebee had now finished cleaning his rifle and was reassembling it, he was working by feel and instinct Mirage noted, lost in his thoughts. Deciding that they could both do with time to reflect on events and prepare mentally for what was coming he pulled out a large part of his personal array of knives and began to clean them.
An undetermined amount of time later he picked up the Autobot sized Katana that Jazz had brought back for him from a trip to Japan, as tradition, both human and Cybertronian, dictated the blade was kept razor sharp and he never replaced it in the scabbard without it drawing blood, or energon in his case.
The sword was beautiful and deadly, the handle was wrapped in blue and white cord and a row of tigers leapt and stalked down both sides of the blade, Jazz had done some calculations and worked out that according to the Chinese lunar calendar that the tiger was his birth sign, it had been a creation day gift. He remembered how delighted Jazz had been at his reaction when he’d opened the box, a melancholy smile drifted over his face, he’d made a point of learning how to use it according to the traditions of the people who’d created it, dragging a willing Jazz into his research then in to practise fights and finally down to the repair bay when he’d severed one of Jazz’s major energon lines trying to master a complicated pattern of strikes.
“I think it was the only time I’ve seen him taken completely by surprise. The look on his face when he got back down here and you dropped onto both knees and begged to be allowed to apologise with your life was just priceless.” Bumblebee’s voice broke the flow of his thoughts, “The first, last and only time I think I’ve ever seen him speechless.”
The half formed thoughts that had been swirling round Mirage’s CPU suddenly coalesced and he held out his left hand and ran the blade lightly over it, using just enough pressure to split the skin and draw energon.
Mirage intoned formally “In memory of Jazz, an honourable warrior, a noble leader and a generous friend. I swear an oath to give him a worthy burial and to bring everyone who goes with me back safely.”
He flipped the blade edge up, and without pause Bumblebee ran his hand over the sword shedding his own energon over the blade, in the same formal tone saying “So sworn and witnessed.”
Mirage stood and returned the sword to its sheath, Bee got to his feet and without further words they walked towards the corner storage bay. There were fewer boxes in here, each one on a shelf by itself. Bee reached out and ran a still leaking hand over a small wide one; Mirage placed his sliced hand flat on top of another longer but slimmer box.
They both came to a stop in front of a box that was as long and slim as the one Mirage had stopped by but this one was deeper, they both rested their hands on the lid for a moment, the significance of this act settling over them like a heavy cloak. Still in silence they pulled the box out of its resting place, Bumblebee took hold of the front and held it on his shoulders by the short poles that projected from the front so Mirage could get a firm grip on the ones at the back. With a slow and solemn step they left the special operations department and walked through the Ark and out into the crisp clean Washington night.
Having stowed the box in Omega’s observation deck, they stood in the dark looking up at the stars.
Bee pointed at one group of stars to the south just skimming the horizon, “The phoenix is rising. A good omen I think.”
Mirage nodded, yes maybe we can kindle a new flame from the ashes of Jazz’s death.