Darkened: The hermit in the wilds (6/7)
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
We now bring you to part six. Where there is lots of world building and mentions of stuff I really need to write.
The hermit in the wilds
It was an orn before Prowl attempted to initiate a conversation between himself and Jazz. Zoom-Zoom had settled into recharge but the tactician remained online, watching Jazz with careful optics until the ninjabot finally grunted in irritation. “What?”
Prowl hesitated only for a moment. The question that he wanted to ask was not relevant for who he was now but for the enforcer-that-was. Still, he was curious. “You are a senior member in the Corps,” he stated.
“Yes, what of it?” the cyber-ninja replied shortly.
“Did you know Lockdown?”
Jazz’s head popped up as he stared down at the Autobot. “Yes,” he answered steadily. “Yes, I did. I knew him very well.” The ninjabot paused and studied Prowl for a moment before sudden realisation occurred to him. “You want to know why he killed Yoketron.”
Prowl gave a minute nod as a myriad of damaged memory files played themselves out in his processor. Lockdown’s betrayal had been something the enforcer was incapable of resolving. He’d mentored Prowl alongside Yoketron and whilst he’d made no secret of his resentment for the aged cyber-ninja, the enforcer hadn’t realised how deep that anger ran until it was far too late. No matter how badly Lockdown acted out towards Yoketron, the senior ninjabot merely accepted it and Prowl had come to believe Lockdown was harmless in his anger. In the dark orns after Yoketron’s death, the enforcer had wondered for a very long time if the senior cyber-ninja had actually allowed Lockdown to kill him.
A very dark smile graced Jazz’s faceplates. “It was probably for the same reason I want your spark extinguished.”
Prowl curled his hands into fists as he turned his helm away. Another step in the wrong direction. He was in a very dangerous position right now; that he could recognise. But he would not allow the slight against his master go without protest. “Yoketron was-”
Jazz held up a hand to forestall his words. “War is an ugly thing, Autobot. Mechs end up doing a lot of things that they wouldn’t do under normal circumstances, things that are necessary, vitally necessary but horrifying and wrong all the same. Some mechs get over it….others don’t. Yoketron made some tough choices a very long time ago that proved vital at the time. I’m not saying that what he did was right but without them we wouldn’t have pulled through. The mechs under his command however suffered greatly for it. Lockdown wasn’t the same afterwards and he never forgave Yoketron for what he did. He was constantly making attempts of Yoketron’s life.”
“Why didn’t the Corps stop him?” Prowl frowned at him.
“Yoketron refused to let the Corps to interfere. It was something that needed to be sorted out between them and he was right. It wasn’t any of our business,” Jazz said callously.
Prowl stiffened as anger -faint, muted anger but anger nonetheless- began to build in his frame. “That lack of interference cost Yoketron’s life,” he snapped coldly.
The ninjabot shrugged at him. “And if Lockdown so much as possessed the inclinations, he could have had Yoketron convicted for war crimes and had him executed. He had the evidence after all. The history texts would all have you believe we won our freedom from the Quintessons without the use of underhanded tactics. That we fought a clean war. I can tell you we didn’t and at times we were every bit as cruel and sparkless as our former masters. Most of the Corps’ founding members had been involved with the rebellion. They knew what Yoketron had done, understood that he didn’t have a choice about it, understood that Lockdown had a genuine grievance against him and respected that the two wanted to take care of it by themselves.” Jazz paused and took in the tension in Prowl’s frame. “Let it go, mech. It had nothing to do with you and it’s finally over. That was a tragedy everyone knew was coming.”
Prowl shook his head in refusal. It was very much his business; Yoketron had been his master, his teacher in so many different ways. And, in his own way, so had Lockdown. The surly bounty hunter had taken a twisted delight in teaching the enforcer-that-was about the dark underbelly of society, the things that Yoketron would have never shown him or couldn’t. Yoketron had allowed it, citing a need to broaden Prowl’s view on the world. The two had been cornerstones upon on which his life had been built. Even now, when only echoes of that lifetime remained to him, they still held a strong impression on him.
He clenched his hands helplessly. Before his emotions, anger, grief and a deep aching loneliness, could build up in his frame, his defunct processor core purged them, lacking the necessary neural codes to sustain them. He relaxed somewhat.
Jazz watched him for a moment, visor glinting as he considered something. “How did Vibes take it?”
Prowl jerked his helm and stared at Jazz. His optics dimmed momentarily as he recalled Vibes’ warm and friendly attitude, such a strong contrast to Lockdown’s surly countenance. The three ninjabots had been bond-brothers almost, though it went without saying their friendship had been destroyed with Lockdown’s betrayal.
“You do not know,” he stated lowly.
The silver cyber-ninja sighed with slight exasperation. “That’s why I’m asking. Been out of touch with the rest of the Corps -the rest of Cybertron actually- for a long time. I only knew Yoketron died because of my spark link with him.”
Prowl frowned at him. “How did you know Lockdown had been the one to kill him?” he challenged.
“Because you were asking about him and you looked like you were contemplating murder.”
The tactician found this highly unlikely, given how crippled his emotional coding was. “I was not.”
“Uh-huh. Well, it was the only way I could see Yoketron dying and the only reason you would ask me about him. You didn’t deny it, so I was right. Anyway, how did Vibes take it?”
Prowl shifted and drew in on himself. “He left.” He fought down hard to prevent any memories of that time from arising. Reeling from Yoketron’s murder, Lockdown’s betrayal and then Vibes, his brother from the Corps, gone, the enforcer-that-was had been plunged into a very lonely existence and, for the first time in his life, had thrown himself completely into his work. That had been the start of a very self-destructive habit, one that had not made it through the Fall of Praxus.
Jazz’s optics widened in surprise behind his visor. “He did what?”
“He swore to see Lockdown’s spark extinguished and chased him off Cybertron. I have not heard from him since…though he did send occasional pings back through the infonet to confirm that he was still online. He stopped with Praxus’s fall though and I do not know if he survived, if the distance from being off-planet saved him from succumbing to the mass genocide.”
The silver ninjabot almost cast him a sympathetic look but diverted his faceplates into a grimace. “Slaggit, what a waste of three perfectly useful members of the Corps. Well done Lockdown. Well done indeed. Stupid fragger.”
“I was under the impression you did not care for Yoketron’s passing,” Prowl replied coolly.
Jazz leant back against a boulder and waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, I care. I care for all of them, so I find it a lil difficult to hold their actions against each other.” He gave Prowl a mirthless smile and mimicked Yoketron’s voice; “Why, young Autobot, holding onto negativity is not the cyber-ninja way. You must learn to let go of such petty emotions and free yourself of such concerns.”
The tactician’s optics widened in disbelief at the mockery and a short lived burst of anger flickered through his frame. Before he could speak, Jazz frowned and shook his helm. “Slag. I’m sorry. That was going too far. I…I would like to claim that I’m not normally like this but I’m afraid that when it comes to my past and what happened during the war with the Quintessons, it’s still a very sore subject. Makes me downright mean. Yoketron was a good mech and a good friend. He had such a quality about him, he felt pure, like he could do no wrong. But he had his flaws too and…I guess I feel let down whenever I remember that. But listen to me making excuses for myself. I’m sorry, alright?”
Prowl drew back on himself and watched Jazz with darkened optics. “It does not matter,” he said brusquely. He had no wish to continue this conversation, did not want to hear about that his master had made mistakes. The processor ghost that lived inside his helm was right, leaving the past alone would be best.
“Are you telling me that or are you trying to convince yourself that?” Jazz wondered.
“It mattered to someone who I am not.” And Prowl’s voice was cold enough to freeze coolant now as his emotional codes shut off.
The silver cyber-ninja tilted his helm and stared unerringly at the Autobot. “I think that you are not as removed from that mech as you believe. It bothers you on some level…even if that level is a few hundred steps beneath what a regular mech would feel.”
Prowl did not deign to respond. Of course, emotions still flickered in his frame; he had not been completely stripped of them. But they were dulled and muted and left him deeply exhausted if he tried to feel them fully.
Without a word, he locked down his frame and sent himself into recharge.
Jazz raised an optic at the Autobot’s retreat but settled back to keep watch. The conversation had been…enlightening. He had been missing out on things; he knew that, by living out here in the wilds. That Lockdown and Yoketron had finally resolved the fight that had been brewing between them had not been a surprise, nor was the outcome. But, Vibes, leaving? The number of active cyber-ninja had slowly been dwindling and they couldn’t afford to lose any more of their number.
Not to mention….there was still the investigation that Vibes had been carrying out. A case that had gone nowhere for so many vorns. The same number of vorns that Jazz had been living out here in the wilds.
Counter-Shift’s murder.
Jazz stared at the Autobot that lay close-by. Would Counter-Shift have mourned Yoketron? It was tempting to think that he wouldn’t but Jazz knew his former partner had felt something, respect, maybe for the deceased cyber-ninja. He’d been a deeply conflicted mech, irrevocably broken by his time in Quintesson hands. His own emotional capacity was nearly as stunted as this new mech only a short distance away.
A flash of regret twinged through the silver mech’s frame. What would it have been like, to have known Prowl with all his emotional coding in place? Would he have been this subdued, quiet? It would be easy to think the mech passive but having seen the wreckage Prowl had made of the Decepticons that had tried to hack him, Jazz knew this was not the case. There was determination in his core; a mech didn’t live through a mass genocide that had done its best to take him with it without a very strong will to survive.
It did not matter. They would reach Iacon soon and then Jazz would be on his way and he would not see the Autobot again. And hopefully the mech would be killed on a cold, distant battlefield somewhere, spend a long enough time in the Well so as to lose all coherency and then Counter-Shift would truly be gone forever. Then he could finally close this chapter of his life and move on.
If only things were so simple, Jazz.
The silver cyber-ninja kept his attention firmly on their surroundings and determinedly ignored his spectral visitor.
This was going to be a long night.
“I’ve met pirates that give warmer welcome parties than this,” Jazz remarked blandly.
His tone was deceptively mildly, given the amount of weapons pointed at his faceplates. Despite this, Prowl did not doubt that the cyber-ninja was perfectly capable of defending himself and holding his own long enough to make an escape if he so wished. He wasn’t so sure about Zoom-Zoom, but the apprentice was doing an impressive job of glaring down at the Autobots without even running his vocaliser.
“Perhaps if you hadn’t insisted that we break into Iacon as opposed to simply requesting entry, they would not be so upset,” Prowl observed neutrally.
The silver ninjabt gave him a sharp grin. “Where’s the challenge in that? Needed to see if my skills were still up to the job.”
“Well, they clearly aren’t,” Ironhide gave a warning rumble.
A flash of recognition flitted across Jazz’s face as he took in the old weapon specialist’s spark signature. “Of course they are,” he replied with mock offence. “It’s Prowl’s clumsiness that tripped the alarms. But to be fair to him, he does have leg struts that were meant for a mini-bot’s frame and that they’ve managed to make it this far is a minor miracle.”
Ironhide gave a warning rev and Jazz wisely subsided. “Who are they?” Ironhide demanded.
Prowl slowly made his way out of the circle of guns. “A pair of neutrals who rescued me from Decepticon capture.”
The answer relaxed the Autobots somewhat and guns were slowly lowered though the guards remained on alert. “Brawn, Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, Trailbreaker? Take them to the brig,” Ironhide instructed. “How many Decepticons did they rescue you from?”
“Six.”
Tension stole back into the Autobot ranks as they revaluated the small, unassuming mechs. “Keep a very close watch on them,” the Guardmech insisted. “We’ll figure out what to do with them once Prowl is repaired and debriefed.”
“You could just let us go,” Jazz suggested.
Ironhide gave him a grim smile. “You’ll excuse us if we don’t believe you did this out of the kindness of your spark. For all we know Prowl could have been reprogrammed by your fine selves and this is an infiltration attempt. Once we can verify your story, we’ll see what we’ll do from there.”
The silver ninjabot demeanor drastically darkened, though whether because it was Ironhide had unerringly come so close to the truth or because he was being denied freedom was debatable. “For the record? You cannot hold us here. Well, me here. I’m not really sure about Zoom-Zoom.”
“Hey!” the apprentice protested.
“Put them in separate high security cells,” the weapon specialist ordered, “And make sure you cuff them.”
“Well, now you’re just making things challenging.”
Ironhide waved them away and turned to Prowl. “Let’s get you to Ratchet,” he said with a satisfied smirk. “He is going to love what you’ve done to your frame.”
Zoom-Zoom glared at the wall of his cell, as if he could see his master several cells down. “Why Zoom-Zoom, don’t talk back to me! You really need to learn when to shut your vocaliser! Stop talking Zoom-Zoom, this situation really doesn’t need your comments!” he snarked. “Good going master. Thanks for making everything so much worse.”
Sunstreaker shifted to glare at the mini-bot with one optic. “Shut up.”
“Excuse me! He’s the one who’s always telling me off and then in the one situation where I actually behave myself, he’s the one who acts up and gets us thrown into the max security cells! And, seriously? The energon cuffs? Overkill!” Zoom-Zoom gave a tug to prove his point. His wrists and pedes were both bound together and the movement of his frame severely restricted.
“Did you really take down six Decepticons?” Sideswipe wondered curiously.
“Well. Actually. There were six but Prowl fried two of them when they tried to hack him and the third one ran off. We only had the three to take care of and they were all distracted with the whole comrades are dying from a hack thing.”
At this, the Autobots guards relaxed slightly. “Well, any mech with a decent amount of combat training could have done that,” Sideswipe scoffed. “So, what’s your story? I thought neutrals didn’t care about the war. What made you decide to rescue you a bot?”
“Story? There is no story. My master’s a glitching idiot, that’s the story,” Zoom-Zoom snarled.
Sunstreaker and Sideswipe turned their attention down the hallway to the other cell, only to discover that while they had been listening to Zoom-Zoom, Brawn and Trailbreaker had somehow ended up on the inside of the cell, offline. The silver inmate was nowhere in sight. “You have got to be slagging joking,” Sideswipe exvented incredulously.
An astrosecond later, there was a soft tap at his neck then his processor exploded with pain and he slumped offline. Sunstreaker whirled around and out of Zoom-Zoom’s reach…into an empty patch of space that wasn’t actually empty. With a soft cry, he collapsed to the ground just as Jazz dropped the hologram that had concealed him.
“You could have got them both,” Jazz noted.
Zoom-Zoom growled at him; dropping the electro-shocker the Autobots hadn’t found when they’d searched him, and finally tugged off the cuffs. “I couldn’t get these off fast enough. Are you going to let me out?”
The ninjabot gave him a deadpan look. “Only if you really are as slow as I sometimes think you are.”
His apprentice sneered as he slid up to the lock. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”
Jazz settled against the cell and waited with a sigh.
Ratchet had not been impressed with the state Prowl had returned to him. He’d taken one look the tactician and then immediately offlined his patient without a word.
“That bad, huh?” Ironhide asked, leaning against the med-bay wall.
“How the slag did he make his way back here without dying?” was Ratchet’s caustic response. “And for the love of Primus, who thought it would be a good idea to rework mini-bot parts to fit him? These were ready to snap with the slightest bit of force. I want that mech’s helm mounted on my med-bay’s wall.”
Ironhide winced and straightened. “Well, they’re down in the high security cells if you really want to do some helm hunting.”
“Oh?” Ratchet pinged Wheeljack a list of replacement parts he would need then began to set up a life support. There was a lot of Prowl’s frame that had sustained structural damage which he was going to have to completely remove.
“Yeah. Prowl says they’re neutrals but I’m not really sure about that. The silver one’s dangerous, I can tell. When Prowl’s online, have him deep-scanned for reprogramming.”
Ratchet turned and gave Ironhide an incredulous stare. “You do know we’re talking about Prowl, right? The mech has a fractured processor. I can barely do anything to his mind as it is and he hasn’t been away for long enough to any mech to accomplish any sort of comprehensive mind jacking.”
The weapon specialist’s optics dimmed in recollection. “Call it hunch, Ratchet. I think I might know who one of Prowl’s rescuers is. And if he is who I think he is he could probably do something.”
“I would like to meet this mech,” Ratchet huffed, turning away. “Who do you think he is, anyway?”
Ironhide leant back against the wall. “A ghost,” he answered, turning off his optics. “A ghost.”
“Well, aren’t we feeling ambiguous and ancient today,” Ratchet grunted as he attended to his patient.
The other Autobot ignored him and Ratchet scowled as he began to disconnect Prowl’s pain relays. The mech was a complete mess. It was a pity that unlike any other mech, Prowl was entirely unmoved in the face of Ratchet’s rage otherwise Ratchet would have been composing a very fine rant inside his processor.
An alarm sounded and Ratchet jerked his helm up with a curse. -Alert, alert! All Autobots, we have two prisoners that have escaped from the high security cells. Repeat, two prisoners have escaped. They are armed and dangerous.-
The medic turned and stared at Ironhide, who hadn’t even stirred at the announcement. “You don’t seem very surprised,” he accused.
The light came on in one optic as Ironhide tilted his helm slightly to look at him. “To be honest, I didn’t think we’d be able to hold him for very long.” He shrugged dismissively. “They won’t find him.”
“Hmph.” Ratchet turned back to his work. “You weren’t joking about him being a ghost.”
Ironhide turned off his optics as he lost himself in a swirl of memories that weren’t his own.
The End.
For now.
Part Seven
A/N: If you're finish this wondering what's up with Ironhide here, have a read of The Beginning: Ironhide
On another note, I'm currently pondering a name for a side series about Jazz. Does anyone have suggestions and/or prompts for things they want to see in it? In further proof of my derpness and inability to write sequentially, the first scene that I have written up for it is the Jazz-gets-torn-into-two bit from the 2007 movie. Which is the last part of it. You can read it here
Wondering where the slag you are chronologically? Check out the timeline
Table of contents
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
We now bring you to part six. Where there is lots of world building and mentions of stuff I really need to write.
The hermit in the wilds
It was an orn before Prowl attempted to initiate a conversation between himself and Jazz. Zoom-Zoom had settled into recharge but the tactician remained online, watching Jazz with careful optics until the ninjabot finally grunted in irritation. “What?”
Prowl hesitated only for a moment. The question that he wanted to ask was not relevant for who he was now but for the enforcer-that-was. Still, he was curious. “You are a senior member in the Corps,” he stated.
“Yes, what of it?” the cyber-ninja replied shortly.
“Did you know Lockdown?”
Jazz’s head popped up as he stared down at the Autobot. “Yes,” he answered steadily. “Yes, I did. I knew him very well.” The ninjabot paused and studied Prowl for a moment before sudden realisation occurred to him. “You want to know why he killed Yoketron.”
Prowl gave a minute nod as a myriad of damaged memory files played themselves out in his processor. Lockdown’s betrayal had been something the enforcer was incapable of resolving. He’d mentored Prowl alongside Yoketron and whilst he’d made no secret of his resentment for the aged cyber-ninja, the enforcer hadn’t realised how deep that anger ran until it was far too late. No matter how badly Lockdown acted out towards Yoketron, the senior ninjabot merely accepted it and Prowl had come to believe Lockdown was harmless in his anger. In the dark orns after Yoketron’s death, the enforcer had wondered for a very long time if the senior cyber-ninja had actually allowed Lockdown to kill him.
A very dark smile graced Jazz’s faceplates. “It was probably for the same reason I want your spark extinguished.”
Prowl curled his hands into fists as he turned his helm away. Another step in the wrong direction. He was in a very dangerous position right now; that he could recognise. But he would not allow the slight against his master go without protest. “Yoketron was-”
Jazz held up a hand to forestall his words. “War is an ugly thing, Autobot. Mechs end up doing a lot of things that they wouldn’t do under normal circumstances, things that are necessary, vitally necessary but horrifying and wrong all the same. Some mechs get over it….others don’t. Yoketron made some tough choices a very long time ago that proved vital at the time. I’m not saying that what he did was right but without them we wouldn’t have pulled through. The mechs under his command however suffered greatly for it. Lockdown wasn’t the same afterwards and he never forgave Yoketron for what he did. He was constantly making attempts of Yoketron’s life.”
“Why didn’t the Corps stop him?” Prowl frowned at him.
“Yoketron refused to let the Corps to interfere. It was something that needed to be sorted out between them and he was right. It wasn’t any of our business,” Jazz said callously.
Prowl stiffened as anger -faint, muted anger but anger nonetheless- began to build in his frame. “That lack of interference cost Yoketron’s life,” he snapped coldly.
The ninjabot shrugged at him. “And if Lockdown so much as possessed the inclinations, he could have had Yoketron convicted for war crimes and had him executed. He had the evidence after all. The history texts would all have you believe we won our freedom from the Quintessons without the use of underhanded tactics. That we fought a clean war. I can tell you we didn’t and at times we were every bit as cruel and sparkless as our former masters. Most of the Corps’ founding members had been involved with the rebellion. They knew what Yoketron had done, understood that he didn’t have a choice about it, understood that Lockdown had a genuine grievance against him and respected that the two wanted to take care of it by themselves.” Jazz paused and took in the tension in Prowl’s frame. “Let it go, mech. It had nothing to do with you and it’s finally over. That was a tragedy everyone knew was coming.”
Prowl shook his head in refusal. It was very much his business; Yoketron had been his master, his teacher in so many different ways. And, in his own way, so had Lockdown. The surly bounty hunter had taken a twisted delight in teaching the enforcer-that-was about the dark underbelly of society, the things that Yoketron would have never shown him or couldn’t. Yoketron had allowed it, citing a need to broaden Prowl’s view on the world. The two had been cornerstones upon on which his life had been built. Even now, when only echoes of that lifetime remained to him, they still held a strong impression on him.
He clenched his hands helplessly. Before his emotions, anger, grief and a deep aching loneliness, could build up in his frame, his defunct processor core purged them, lacking the necessary neural codes to sustain them. He relaxed somewhat.
Jazz watched him for a moment, visor glinting as he considered something. “How did Vibes take it?”
Prowl jerked his helm and stared at Jazz. His optics dimmed momentarily as he recalled Vibes’ warm and friendly attitude, such a strong contrast to Lockdown’s surly countenance. The three ninjabots had been bond-brothers almost, though it went without saying their friendship had been destroyed with Lockdown’s betrayal.
“You do not know,” he stated lowly.
The silver cyber-ninja sighed with slight exasperation. “That’s why I’m asking. Been out of touch with the rest of the Corps -the rest of Cybertron actually- for a long time. I only knew Yoketron died because of my spark link with him.”
Prowl frowned at him. “How did you know Lockdown had been the one to kill him?” he challenged.
“Because you were asking about him and you looked like you were contemplating murder.”
The tactician found this highly unlikely, given how crippled his emotional coding was. “I was not.”
“Uh-huh. Well, it was the only way I could see Yoketron dying and the only reason you would ask me about him. You didn’t deny it, so I was right. Anyway, how did Vibes take it?”
Prowl shifted and drew in on himself. “He left.” He fought down hard to prevent any memories of that time from arising. Reeling from Yoketron’s murder, Lockdown’s betrayal and then Vibes, his brother from the Corps, gone, the enforcer-that-was had been plunged into a very lonely existence and, for the first time in his life, had thrown himself completely into his work. That had been the start of a very self-destructive habit, one that had not made it through the Fall of Praxus.
Jazz’s optics widened in surprise behind his visor. “He did what?”
“He swore to see Lockdown’s spark extinguished and chased him off Cybertron. I have not heard from him since…though he did send occasional pings back through the infonet to confirm that he was still online. He stopped with Praxus’s fall though and I do not know if he survived, if the distance from being off-planet saved him from succumbing to the mass genocide.”
The silver ninjabot almost cast him a sympathetic look but diverted his faceplates into a grimace. “Slaggit, what a waste of three perfectly useful members of the Corps. Well done Lockdown. Well done indeed. Stupid fragger.”
“I was under the impression you did not care for Yoketron’s passing,” Prowl replied coolly.
Jazz leant back against a boulder and waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, I care. I care for all of them, so I find it a lil difficult to hold their actions against each other.” He gave Prowl a mirthless smile and mimicked Yoketron’s voice; “Why, young Autobot, holding onto negativity is not the cyber-ninja way. You must learn to let go of such petty emotions and free yourself of such concerns.”
The tactician’s optics widened in disbelief at the mockery and a short lived burst of anger flickered through his frame. Before he could speak, Jazz frowned and shook his helm. “Slag. I’m sorry. That was going too far. I…I would like to claim that I’m not normally like this but I’m afraid that when it comes to my past and what happened during the war with the Quintessons, it’s still a very sore subject. Makes me downright mean. Yoketron was a good mech and a good friend. He had such a quality about him, he felt pure, like he could do no wrong. But he had his flaws too and…I guess I feel let down whenever I remember that. But listen to me making excuses for myself. I’m sorry, alright?”
Prowl drew back on himself and watched Jazz with darkened optics. “It does not matter,” he said brusquely. He had no wish to continue this conversation, did not want to hear about that his master had made mistakes. The processor ghost that lived inside his helm was right, leaving the past alone would be best.
“Are you telling me that or are you trying to convince yourself that?” Jazz wondered.
“It mattered to someone who I am not.” And Prowl’s voice was cold enough to freeze coolant now as his emotional codes shut off.
The silver cyber-ninja tilted his helm and stared unerringly at the Autobot. “I think that you are not as removed from that mech as you believe. It bothers you on some level…even if that level is a few hundred steps beneath what a regular mech would feel.”
Prowl did not deign to respond. Of course, emotions still flickered in his frame; he had not been completely stripped of them. But they were dulled and muted and left him deeply exhausted if he tried to feel them fully.
Without a word, he locked down his frame and sent himself into recharge.
Jazz raised an optic at the Autobot’s retreat but settled back to keep watch. The conversation had been…enlightening. He had been missing out on things; he knew that, by living out here in the wilds. That Lockdown and Yoketron had finally resolved the fight that had been brewing between them had not been a surprise, nor was the outcome. But, Vibes, leaving? The number of active cyber-ninja had slowly been dwindling and they couldn’t afford to lose any more of their number.
Not to mention….there was still the investigation that Vibes had been carrying out. A case that had gone nowhere for so many vorns. The same number of vorns that Jazz had been living out here in the wilds.
Counter-Shift’s murder.
Jazz stared at the Autobot that lay close-by. Would Counter-Shift have mourned Yoketron? It was tempting to think that he wouldn’t but Jazz knew his former partner had felt something, respect, maybe for the deceased cyber-ninja. He’d been a deeply conflicted mech, irrevocably broken by his time in Quintesson hands. His own emotional capacity was nearly as stunted as this new mech only a short distance away.
A flash of regret twinged through the silver mech’s frame. What would it have been like, to have known Prowl with all his emotional coding in place? Would he have been this subdued, quiet? It would be easy to think the mech passive but having seen the wreckage Prowl had made of the Decepticons that had tried to hack him, Jazz knew this was not the case. There was determination in his core; a mech didn’t live through a mass genocide that had done its best to take him with it without a very strong will to survive.
It did not matter. They would reach Iacon soon and then Jazz would be on his way and he would not see the Autobot again. And hopefully the mech would be killed on a cold, distant battlefield somewhere, spend a long enough time in the Well so as to lose all coherency and then Counter-Shift would truly be gone forever. Then he could finally close this chapter of his life and move on.
If only things were so simple, Jazz.
The silver cyber-ninja kept his attention firmly on their surroundings and determinedly ignored his spectral visitor.
This was going to be a long night.
“I’ve met pirates that give warmer welcome parties than this,” Jazz remarked blandly.
His tone was deceptively mildly, given the amount of weapons pointed at his faceplates. Despite this, Prowl did not doubt that the cyber-ninja was perfectly capable of defending himself and holding his own long enough to make an escape if he so wished. He wasn’t so sure about Zoom-Zoom, but the apprentice was doing an impressive job of glaring down at the Autobots without even running his vocaliser.
“Perhaps if you hadn’t insisted that we break into Iacon as opposed to simply requesting entry, they would not be so upset,” Prowl observed neutrally.
The silver ninjabt gave him a sharp grin. “Where’s the challenge in that? Needed to see if my skills were still up to the job.”
“Well, they clearly aren’t,” Ironhide gave a warning rumble.
A flash of recognition flitted across Jazz’s face as he took in the old weapon specialist’s spark signature. “Of course they are,” he replied with mock offence. “It’s Prowl’s clumsiness that tripped the alarms. But to be fair to him, he does have leg struts that were meant for a mini-bot’s frame and that they’ve managed to make it this far is a minor miracle.”
Ironhide gave a warning rev and Jazz wisely subsided. “Who are they?” Ironhide demanded.
Prowl slowly made his way out of the circle of guns. “A pair of neutrals who rescued me from Decepticon capture.”
The answer relaxed the Autobots somewhat and guns were slowly lowered though the guards remained on alert. “Brawn, Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, Trailbreaker? Take them to the brig,” Ironhide instructed. “How many Decepticons did they rescue you from?”
“Six.”
Tension stole back into the Autobot ranks as they revaluated the small, unassuming mechs. “Keep a very close watch on them,” the Guardmech insisted. “We’ll figure out what to do with them once Prowl is repaired and debriefed.”
“You could just let us go,” Jazz suggested.
Ironhide gave him a grim smile. “You’ll excuse us if we don’t believe you did this out of the kindness of your spark. For all we know Prowl could have been reprogrammed by your fine selves and this is an infiltration attempt. Once we can verify your story, we’ll see what we’ll do from there.”
The silver ninjabot demeanor drastically darkened, though whether because it was Ironhide had unerringly come so close to the truth or because he was being denied freedom was debatable. “For the record? You cannot hold us here. Well, me here. I’m not really sure about Zoom-Zoom.”
“Hey!” the apprentice protested.
“Put them in separate high security cells,” the weapon specialist ordered, “And make sure you cuff them.”
“Well, now you’re just making things challenging.”
Ironhide waved them away and turned to Prowl. “Let’s get you to Ratchet,” he said with a satisfied smirk. “He is going to love what you’ve done to your frame.”
Zoom-Zoom glared at the wall of his cell, as if he could see his master several cells down. “Why Zoom-Zoom, don’t talk back to me! You really need to learn when to shut your vocaliser! Stop talking Zoom-Zoom, this situation really doesn’t need your comments!” he snarked. “Good going master. Thanks for making everything so much worse.”
Sunstreaker shifted to glare at the mini-bot with one optic. “Shut up.”
“Excuse me! He’s the one who’s always telling me off and then in the one situation where I actually behave myself, he’s the one who acts up and gets us thrown into the max security cells! And, seriously? The energon cuffs? Overkill!” Zoom-Zoom gave a tug to prove his point. His wrists and pedes were both bound together and the movement of his frame severely restricted.
“Did you really take down six Decepticons?” Sideswipe wondered curiously.
“Well. Actually. There were six but Prowl fried two of them when they tried to hack him and the third one ran off. We only had the three to take care of and they were all distracted with the whole comrades are dying from a hack thing.”
At this, the Autobots guards relaxed slightly. “Well, any mech with a decent amount of combat training could have done that,” Sideswipe scoffed. “So, what’s your story? I thought neutrals didn’t care about the war. What made you decide to rescue you a bot?”
“Story? There is no story. My master’s a glitching idiot, that’s the story,” Zoom-Zoom snarled.
Sunstreaker and Sideswipe turned their attention down the hallway to the other cell, only to discover that while they had been listening to Zoom-Zoom, Brawn and Trailbreaker had somehow ended up on the inside of the cell, offline. The silver inmate was nowhere in sight. “You have got to be slagging joking,” Sideswipe exvented incredulously.
An astrosecond later, there was a soft tap at his neck then his processor exploded with pain and he slumped offline. Sunstreaker whirled around and out of Zoom-Zoom’s reach…into an empty patch of space that wasn’t actually empty. With a soft cry, he collapsed to the ground just as Jazz dropped the hologram that had concealed him.
“You could have got them both,” Jazz noted.
Zoom-Zoom growled at him; dropping the electro-shocker the Autobots hadn’t found when they’d searched him, and finally tugged off the cuffs. “I couldn’t get these off fast enough. Are you going to let me out?”
The ninjabot gave him a deadpan look. “Only if you really are as slow as I sometimes think you are.”
His apprentice sneered as he slid up to the lock. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”
Jazz settled against the cell and waited with a sigh.
Ratchet had not been impressed with the state Prowl had returned to him. He’d taken one look the tactician and then immediately offlined his patient without a word.
“That bad, huh?” Ironhide asked, leaning against the med-bay wall.
“How the slag did he make his way back here without dying?” was Ratchet’s caustic response. “And for the love of Primus, who thought it would be a good idea to rework mini-bot parts to fit him? These were ready to snap with the slightest bit of force. I want that mech’s helm mounted on my med-bay’s wall.”
Ironhide winced and straightened. “Well, they’re down in the high security cells if you really want to do some helm hunting.”
“Oh?” Ratchet pinged Wheeljack a list of replacement parts he would need then began to set up a life support. There was a lot of Prowl’s frame that had sustained structural damage which he was going to have to completely remove.
“Yeah. Prowl says they’re neutrals but I’m not really sure about that. The silver one’s dangerous, I can tell. When Prowl’s online, have him deep-scanned for reprogramming.”
Ratchet turned and gave Ironhide an incredulous stare. “You do know we’re talking about Prowl, right? The mech has a fractured processor. I can barely do anything to his mind as it is and he hasn’t been away for long enough to any mech to accomplish any sort of comprehensive mind jacking.”
The weapon specialist’s optics dimmed in recollection. “Call it hunch, Ratchet. I think I might know who one of Prowl’s rescuers is. And if he is who I think he is he could probably do something.”
“I would like to meet this mech,” Ratchet huffed, turning away. “Who do you think he is, anyway?”
Ironhide leant back against the wall. “A ghost,” he answered, turning off his optics. “A ghost.”
“Well, aren’t we feeling ambiguous and ancient today,” Ratchet grunted as he attended to his patient.
The other Autobot ignored him and Ratchet scowled as he began to disconnect Prowl’s pain relays. The mech was a complete mess. It was a pity that unlike any other mech, Prowl was entirely unmoved in the face of Ratchet’s rage otherwise Ratchet would have been composing a very fine rant inside his processor.
An alarm sounded and Ratchet jerked his helm up with a curse. -Alert, alert! All Autobots, we have two prisoners that have escaped from the high security cells. Repeat, two prisoners have escaped. They are armed and dangerous.-
The medic turned and stared at Ironhide, who hadn’t even stirred at the announcement. “You don’t seem very surprised,” he accused.
The light came on in one optic as Ironhide tilted his helm slightly to look at him. “To be honest, I didn’t think we’d be able to hold him for very long.” He shrugged dismissively. “They won’t find him.”
“Hmph.” Ratchet turned back to his work. “You weren’t joking about him being a ghost.”
Ironhide turned off his optics as he lost himself in a swirl of memories that weren’t his own.
The End.
For now.
Part Seven
A/N: If you're finish this wondering what's up with Ironhide here, have a read of The Beginning: Ironhide
On another note, I'm currently pondering a name for a side series about Jazz. Does anyone have suggestions and/or prompts for things they want to see in it? In further proof of my derpness and inability to write sequentially, the first scene that I have written up for it is the Jazz-gets-torn-into-two bit from the 2007 movie. Which is the last part of it. You can read it here
Wondering where the slag you are chronologically? Check out the timeline
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