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Jazz hadn’t been allowed to see him, after Unicron... vanished, or turned into a black hole, or whatever the frag it was that had happened. Nobody was giving him a straight answer, and he got the feeling it was because nobody knew the answer. Except for maybe Arcee, but Jazz wasn’t half stupid enough to try squeezing energon from that particular stone. With Soundwave in... whatever state he was in, and Cosmos and Laserbeak in critical condition, he only had Buzzsaw, Rumble, and Frenzy to hang out with. Consequences of spending the past however the frag many years it had been doing his level best to keep out of everyone’s business, he supposed. Now that he wanted to be in the know, nobody was left who cared to get him there.
“We got incoming!” Buzzsaw squawked, diving down out of the sky to alight on Jazz’s shoulder.
“What kind of incoming?” Jazz asked, looking from the beastformer to the gobsmacked twins.
“Incoming who’s gonna get punched in the slagging face!” Frenzy yelled, charging out the doorway of the ruined house they’d been hanging out in, just outside of what people were already calling Little Cybertron. Rumble followed on his heels, shouting obscenities and threats of violence that would’ve made any Wrecker proud.
“Hostiles?” he asked, getting up and reaching for his blaster, only to pause when Buzzsaw shook his helm.
“Friendlies. We didn’t part on the best of terms, though.”
“Oooo-kay.” Jazz frowned, stepping over the lowest point of the crumbling wall and heading down the road. Unsurprisingly, there was a dust cloud writhing in the middle of the path which was approximately the size of three cassettes. Slightly more surprisingly, a fourth cassette stood at the side of the road with a bored expression, leaning on a hovercraft that Jazz had a bad feeling had been repurposed as a coffin. “What’s going on here?” he asked, and the green and gold cassette straightened up, primly straightening his facial insignia.
“Hello Jazz. We were told we could find the rest of Soundwave’s brood loitering around with you. I’m glad to see our old contacts are still reliable.”
“Our?” Jazz raised an optic ridge.
“Ah, right. You never did see me in this form.” he pulled a displeased face, split tail swishing behind him in clear agitation. “I am Dominus Ambus of Tagon Heights. The appearance in which you knew me, when we both worked for Prowl, was an outer shell I wore to more easily integrate into Iaconian society.”
Well, that explained why the facial insignia was familiar. “We thought you died.” he said after a moment. “After we got the G9 report there was word about a new Vos. Prowl wrote you off.”
“Well, the full story is rather complicated, and unfortunately quite sordid.” Dominus’s tails flicked in irritation again. “But, part of it involved Soundwave reformatting me into a triple changer. Mech, mechanimal, and cassette.”
“And I’m guessing whoever’s in that dust ball is another one of Soundwave’s cassettes I never heard of?” he inclined his helm at the obscured brawl. Dominus sighed.
“That would be Rodimus, yes.” Dominus nodded, and Jazz remembered with a start that Hot Rod had been one of Soundwave's, once upon a time. The pint-sized Prime was so determinedly self-sufficient, it was easy to forget he hadn't always been that way. “His crew rescued me from the DJD, and we lost Ravage that same mega-cycle.”
Jazz winced. That was rough. From the amount of yelling and punching sounds coming out of the dust brawl though, Jazz had a feeling Roddy was coping just fine, and he doubted Dominus and Ravage had ever been particularly close. “Well, you found us.” Jazz gestured as himself and Buzzsaw. “Soundwave and Laserbeak are both in the hospital, I got them to promise they’d comm me when Laserbeak is stable enough for visiting.”
“Wait, Laserbeak is in the hospital?” Rodimus asked, the dust cloud finally settling to reveal the little Prime had caught both the terror twins in helmlocks, one under each arm. How a mech as powerful as Rodimus could pull off the wide optics and trembling lip so well, Jazz had no idea. He knew for a fact that Rodimus could probably kill all of them here in a minute flat, given motivation, and yet the kicked turbopup look still tugged at his spark.
“One of these days, you have got to teach me that.” he sighed. “Yeah, she’s in the hospital. I bet I can get the receptionists to let you two in, since you only just got here.”
“And I’ll let the rest of you in the window.” Rodimus nodded, releasing the twins, who looked at him, then each other, and seemed to come to some silent agreement because they grabbed him by the shoulders, spun him around, and hooked their arms under his to march him back down the road.
“Do I even want to know?” he asked Buzzsaw.
“Probably not.”
“Alright.”
---
As Jazz had expected, the receptionist folded like cheap foil under the force of Rodimus’s kicked turbopup optics. Nobody even questioned the crate floating along at Dominus’s side, and they were literally at the door of Soundwave’s room when he finally clicked on why. Attention deflectors. Good ones, too. He had seen Dominus leaning on it when he walked up, a direct interaction which couldn’t be deflected, but none of the staff so much as glanced at it.
“Soundwave!” Rodimus cried, and Jazz did a double take. The frame in the far berth was still Cosmos, but Laserbeak was no longer spread out on a too-big berth all alone. Someone had brought Soundwave in, and carefully laid Laserbeak out over his dock cover. It almost looked like they were just recharging, carrier and cassette taking a well-deserved break after saving the world.
“I’ll get the window.” Dominus said, gesturing the crate over to Soundwave’s berthside and walking over to unlatch and open the window. Buzzsaw flew up with a cable Dominus tied to the near leg of Cosmos’s berth, and a moment later the whole squad was here. Except for Ravage, but through the whole war Jazz had only known one mech with high end attention deflectors who’d fit in a box that small.
“What’s wrong with him?” Hot Rod asked the terror twins as they climbed up on Soundwave’s other side.
“We don’t know.” Jazz said, before the cassettes could start spinning their wild theories. “He did... something, when Unicron was attacking. Used his telepathy and the Enigma of Combination together, according to the Aerialbots. He’s been unresponsive since.” he sat himself down next to Rodimus and took one of Soundwave’s hands.
Rodimus gave him a suspicious look, but only for a moment before turning his attention back to Soundwave. Soundwave who, if Jazz wasn’t mistaken, he’d never actually replaced as his carrier. Hot Rod had never joined Blaster’s team, for whatever reason, and unless Jazz’s memory was seriously faulty that meant Hot Rod still had a spark connection to Soundwave.
Wait, spark connection... the Enigma... “Dominus, what did you say happened to Ravage again?” he asked, casting a critical optic over the floating box.
“The DJD happened. Specifically, Tarn.” Dominus scowled.
“He ripped him in half.” Rodimus said, curling closer to Soundwave. “Did it with his bare hands. I felt it, felt him fade after, too.”
“Wait.” Buzzsaw stood taller where he was perched on Jazz’s shoulder. “Felt him fade, or felt him die?”
“Fade, die, what’s the difference?” Rodimus snapped. “He’s gone, Buzz. You don’t just survive getting ripped in half!”
“Roddy.” Jazz reached out to grab the little Autobot’s shoulder. “Roddy, nobody’s given that box a first glance since we walked in the door, let alone a second.”
“And?” he frowned.
“And attention deflectors like Ravage's are internally powered.”
Rodimus gasped, flailing off the berth as Buzzsaw dropped from Jazz’s shoulder to land on Dominus and peck him sharply. “You dummy!” he squawked as Rodimus ripped the crate open. “You of all of us should know beastformers aren’t so easy to kill!”
Sure enough, Ravage’s plating was still matte black and dark metallic grey. At least on his front half. His back half had gone the flat grey of dead metal, because Rodimus hadn’t been exaggerating in the slightest. Ravage had literally been ripped in half. Jazz lifted the live half of the cougaraider-cassette out of his crate, and settled him on Soundwave’s abdomen. Rodimus reclaimed his position tucked up against Soundwave’s left side, and Jazz took his hand again, squeezing tight and praying to Primus that he was right.
Soundwave had cast his spark and processor out to the universe as a whole, when he channelled the Enigma through himself. Or himself through the enigma, the Aerialbots hadn’t been able to describe what happened very well. Regardless, Soundwave had thrown his self to the winds, using it to bind them all together for that brief, shining moment. And he’d not moved since, as if his Self was still out there, untethered. If anything could bring him back, it would be the cassettes he’d bound to himself, their sparks and processors linked to his own.
Laserbeak alone, barely holding on herself, hadn’t been enough. Rumble and Frenzy and Buzzsaw hadn’t been enough, hadn’t been focused enough. Three more cassettes, three more sparks and processors reaching for Soundwave’s, all of them clustered around his waiting frame... “Please.” Jazz whispered, optics sliding shut as he squeezed Soundwave’s hand tight. “Come back, Soundwave.”
“Please come back.” Rodimus begged, sounding far more pitiful and vulnerable than Jazz would ever have expected of a deadly, dangerous, Matrix-touched Prime. Rumble and Frenzy and Buzzsaw added their own pleas, even Dominus whispered it, though Jazz got the sense he wanted Soundwave to return for everyone else’s sake rather than his own. For a long moment nothing happened, the room silent save for the sound of their vents.
Then Soundwave’s fingers tightened around Jazz’s, and in the instant before he groaned every conscious cassette went nuts. Laserbeak roused enough to trill happily, Rodimus and the twins shouted with joy, Buzzsaw screeched, someone jabbed Ravage directly in the raw end of his spinal strut and the beastformer woke from whatever self-preservation stasis he’d been in with a yowl of pain. Even Dominus startled, his plating fluffing up.
“Hospitals: not an appropriate location for rowdy celebration.” he chastised, and Jazz laughed as the twins and Rodimus started tripping over their own and each other’s words trying to explain. Jazz found the button to page a nurse, though he was sure someone was already on the way with the racket Ravage was making, and sat back to watch Soundwave try to calm his gaggle of cassettes.
:: Presence of Autobot Jazz: Unexpected.:: Soundwave commed him, radiating fond amusement.
::Nowhere I’d rather be, doll.:: he smiled, twisting his hand to slot their fingers together.