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The sound of heels clanking against metal floors was all that could be heard through the eerie silent halls. A blur of a teenager girl raced by, leaving tear drops flying behind her. Haunting whispers licked at her ears, teasing and tormenting her to run even faster down the oddly deserted tunnel of metal.
Static images flashed before her eyes before disappearing, as if they were ghosts, forcing the teen to shut her eyes so tight that her head began to throb in pain. Even with her vision gone, the teen ran faster, her legs burning with the fire of pain as her muscles worked beyond their limit to run from her assailant.
In his quarters, the Saboteur Jazz was sitting at his desk as he scrolled through mountains of data pads. Energon stock-piles, medical inventory from Ratchet, shift schedules, patrol reports and human government reports; Jazz was renowned for his patience but even that was starting to wear thin, how he was beginning to miss and sympathize with his old friend Prowl.
Thank Primus for music. A grin broke out on Jazz’s lip components before he carelessly threw the data pad onto his cluttered work area, the blue screen going dark and the Cybertronion text fading. He leaned back in his chair with a slight creak and threw up his peds onto his desk, crossing them at the ankle joints. With a stretch he placed his arms behind his head and threaded his clawed digits together.
However, before he could flip on his internal broadcasting radio, his finely tuned audio sensors picked something up in the distant. His audio scanners broke down the sounds individual and re-pieced them back together in a microsecond report of what his audios were picking up: the crashing of a cheap human material called plastic onto the concentrated human steel that made up the base’s floor paneling.
Someone with a light body mass was running down this hallway with human heels on, and running very fast.
Within microseconds the lieutenant was on his peds and standing in his quarter’s doorway. With a swivel of his helm to the right, Jazz easily spotted who was making the noise.
The human female known as Mikaela was running towards him, his audios could now pick up her labored breathing while the scanners in his visor perceived that her eyes were shut tightly as a clear substance that his scanners’ identified as tears leaked from the corners of the shut lids.
Jazz’s natural concern and curiosity provoked him to take his next course of action which involved gently grabbing the obviously distressed female into his clawed servos. Despite her feet leaving the ground, her legs continuously pumped in the running motion and if the circumstance had been in a lighter mood, the saboteur would have found the action amusing.
When her mental processing speed caught up with her physical, her legs stopped pumping and her body went rigid. Jazz could feel how hard her heart was pounding from the vibrations going through the digit that was securely wrapped under her protruding mammary glands.
He activated the magnetic field in his digits and set the vibration level to the lowest setting. Within microseconds, he could feel the girl’s heart rate decreasing as the massaging effects soothed the pain that his scanner’s located in her cranium, thighs and calves.
When she finally opened her blue eyes, he cut off the magnetic field and for a split moment he swore he saw something akin to disappointment flash across her hazy eyes, in which he had to resist the urge for his lip component’s to conform into a cocky grin. However, time seemed to catch up to her and the tanned skin of her face began to take on a slightly dusty pink tinge.
“Jazz?” The hesitation in her voice was something Jazz found almost, adorable, as Bluestreak would have put it.
“Hey, lil’ lady,” he failed to hide the grin this time as the dusty pink became more pronounced.
“I’m sorry,” he watched her look up and down the hall. “Did I disturb you?”
“Nah,” a voice in the back of his processor that sounded suspiciously like Prowl’s retorted; Jazz, you have an exceedingly large stack of reports to go over. “I was just relaxin’. Jazz! “I was concerned when I saw ya cryin’ as ya were runnin’. Everythin’ alright?”
She bowed her head and her voice only came out as a soft whisper but Jazz could tell there was pain flowing through this human at an alarming rate. “I just, had to get away.”
She offered no more and Jazz didn’t except any. He knew from his social observations of the soldiers and other human allies on base that humans had the same emotional fragility that Autobots did. When she was comfortable and ready, she would tell him what had caused such an immediate frenzy.
“Why don’t ya come in an’ take a load off as ya humans say.” When she looked like she was about to protest he added, “I insist.”
“Alright,” she nodded her head. “I suppose I could use a bit of a rest.”
Jazz turned and sauntered back into his room as his doors closed behind him. He gingerly placed Mikaela on his desk and kept his servo behind her as she struggled slightly from the sudden weight on her legs. When he was determined she could stand without falling, he began to make his way to his berth to grab a human pillow Samuel had left on an occasion when he and Bumblebee had visited the saboteur.
“Just relaxing?” He heard her tease from the desk. He didn’t have to be in visual range to know that she was smirking with her hands on her hips. He turned around, the small pillow resting in the middle of his servo with the other gently scratching the back of his helm in mock embarrassment.
“Ya caught me.”
Her blue eyes lit up and a giggle poured from between her lips. He let the pillow slide from his servo next to her and she seemed to understand the message. She ripped the heels from her feet, Jazz noting that she almost snapped the straps off in an attempt to get them off faster. She threw them over the edge of his desk in what seemed as a metaphorical attempt to rid herself of some of her pain. She positioned herself cross-legged on the soft white fabric and seemed to be much more at ease then she had been moment ago out in the hallway, like his quarter’s was a shield to whatever was causing her discomfort.
Silence engulfed the small space, Jazz trying to find a conversation starter to make the teen more at home. However, for once in his extended lifecycle, Jazz was at a loss for what to say. Primus seemed to intervene as he watched her reach for something small and rectangular that was being slightly obscured by a data pad.
“Is this a…Apple IPod Touch?”
“Yah, Sam got it for me. Your government wouldn’t let me download any music onto th’ base’s computer system.” He left out the part that Optimus and the other mechs on base had not exactly taken a liking to the earth music he generally listened to. According to Ratchet, metal music was not beneficial for the audios.
“Do you mind?” She lifted the device slightly indicating she wanted to scroll through his music selection.
“Go ahead.” He was about to sit down when once again it seems Primus was intervening for his amusement.
“You have a lot of dance music on here.”
She had probably meant for it to be a simple comment, however, the lieutenant figured out the perfect way to help Mikaela feel comfortable enough to tell him what she was currently keeping under guard and chains. “It’s ‘cause I dance.”
Her finger froze over the screen and she whipped her head up to his visor. “Seriously?”
Jazz nodded his helm as a charming smile spread across his faceplate. If there was one thing he loved, it was the feeling of freedom and joy one got when they danced and since the Great War, freedom and happiness was a combination that was rare to come by.
A sly smirk spread on the teenager’s face before she scrolled into his Dance playlist and hit shuffle. She set down the music device, placed her hand behind her with her palms flat on the metal, spread her legs out in front of her and just before the instrumental music poured from the speaker, challenged Jazz straight on. “Let’s see what you got.”
Without hesitation Jazz began to move himself to the Latin music that poured from the speaker, his dance moves in perfect sync with the beat. At first he kept his optics trained on his human companion though his visor hid his staring well. If her large, surprised, blue eyes were anything to indicate, he was greatly impressing her with the flexibility he had. After a few more songs, Jazz began to find he was concentrating less on Mikaela and more on the feeling his movements invoked in his spark.
To say Mikaela was impressed at how fluidly Jazz danced to human music would be like saying Ratchet was only slightly irritated when Skids and Mudflap messed with his medical equipment. The mechanic in her briefly wondered how a mechanical being had some much flexibility and ease.
Her arms were beginning to get sore from their stretched position behind her and decided to bring them to rest at her sides. However, she realized too late that her hand had landed on the IPod and the upbeat percussion changed into a silky and soft piano. Her hand retracted as if burned and heightened her gaze back the dancing mech only to have her heart stop.
His visor was gone and in their stead were a pair of stunning blue optics. Naturally they were the same colored optics all the Autobots she had met had, but because she was staring at them for the first time in such an intimate setting, she felt as if those blue orbs were piercing her body, mind and soul, like they had been secretly working behind the visor the whole time to try and discover what had brought her here in the first place.
He slowly extended his servo towards her, never breaking the silent gaze they held between their eyes. “Mikaela Banes; would ya do me th’ honor of havin’ this dance with me?”
The teen couldn’t speak, the nervous lump in her throat silencing any words her brain came up with. She slowly nodded her head in an affirmative gesture, her body working by its own accord as it righted her from the cold metal of the desk to the surprisingly warm metal of his digits.
He delicately picked her up; taking such care to position her made the teen feel fragile but the feeling of concern and compassion that was indicated by the gesture made her feel more loved and safe than she had in a very long time. One servo came up underneath her rear as a chair while the other servo gently draped over her body as she was intimately pushed to his chest over his pulsing spark.
She could feel the warmth of the metal on her the skin of her face and hands. She curled herself closer to the life-force, feeling drawn to its gentle but immense power. As the warmth of his spark and the security she felt in Jazz’s servos, the teen felt her eyelids drooping in a haze.
As she slipped deeper into the pleasurable daze, she began to realize that she could trust Jazz. He would not mock her for being weak and fragile. He had seen death and destruction for longer than she would care to admit. He would understand. If nothing else could convince her, the simple act of being there for her despite having much work to do, she owed him at least an explanation as gratitude if nothing else.
“I have been having nightmare ever since Mission City.” She confided without warning.
Jazz’s gaze descended on his dance partner and stared at her despite her head being turned away from him. In the back of his processor he noted that the song had changed to an orchestra weighing heavily on violins. He felt compelled to rub her back with his digit but feared the sharpness of his claws would rip her delicate coverings. Instead, he began to gently sway to the new song, holding her a little tighter to him so she wouldn’t lose the heat from his spark.
“What happens in them?”
Mikaela was slightly taken back by the deep concern that laced his normal confident tone, almost like he done this before. She shuddered not wanting to revel what she had been so desperately trying to run away from. She just wanted to get away, but how long could she run before it finally caught up with her?
“They’re usually just recounts of what happened; the gun firing, the innocent people slaughtered, Sam running towards that building with the Cube under his arms and Decepticons behind him, pulling Bumblebee from the battle safely.” She opened her eyes, no longer worried about the tears that streaked her face and turned her face upwards the mech offering her nothing but concern and safety. “The worst ones are when the events change, Optimus not being able to catch Sam, the Decepticons killing Ironhide, Bumblebee, Ratchet, you.” She began to choke up but she was determined to get this out in the open in hopes that she could somehow heal and move on. “I watch helplessly as Megatron killed Optimus, turning Earth’s machines against us and destroying us or worse, enslaving us.”
By now, Mikaela didn’t care that she was sobbing like a child, that her nose was getting runny and that she was hyperventilating. She had gotten through it and Jazz just kept swaying, his optics looking down at her with understanding and sympathy. She couldn’t have gone to her parents; they wouldn’t understand, or to Sam, Bumblebee or the soldiers; she didn’t want them to see the strong and brave girl they had seen of the battlefield weep pathetically, and she knew she couldn’t go to any of the other Autobots because she feared they would see her as weak as they had stood strong against things much worse then this for a much longer period of time.
Here was Jazz though, not mocking her for her disgusting appearance or tell her to get over it like she feared the Autobots would do. With her wound so open and raw, she automatically snuggled back onto the metal above his spark, offering nothing but warmth and comfort in for her healing stage. He just continued to sway around the room with her, holding her like she was the only thing that mattered to him in this moment.
Jazz didn’t speak, with experience he knew he didn’t have to. All he had to do was show in a physical manner that he understood and that he cared. This time as she snuggled into his chest, he noticed she made the notion of having herself face him this time; her eyes were getting droopy as she fought against the warm lull into rest that his spark produced.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” A lazy but genuine smile curled her lips upwards as she watched him through half-closed eyes.
A charming smile complimented hers. “Ya caught me, again.” His faceplate grew more serious. “A young comrade of mine was th’ sole survivor when his home city on Cybertron was destroyed by Decepticreeps. Bluestreak witnessed it all an’ with th’ memories and survivor’s guilt, he began ta talk non-stop ta help fill the void an’ keep th’ memories away. However, he was plagued with horrible recollections of what he saw when he went into recharge. I used ta help him though it when his bunkmate Hound and mentor Prowl were away on missions.”
He watched as a few lone tears fell from her eyes, tears that were shed in sadness and sympathy for a mech she didn’t know. That was one thing Jazz admired when it came to certain humans, their ability to be sympathetic and concerned for someone they barely knew. To the Decepticons and even to a few Autobots, they would see that as a weakness but Jazz only saw it as a strength.
“Did you give him private dance sessions too?”
A chuckle rumbled through his chest at the familiar teasing tone of the brunette. “Nah, lil’ lady, those are only for ya.”
He watched as a smile danced across her face and her lids fully close, finally succumbing to the peaceful sleep his warmth was pulling her into. He stopped swaying until his scanner’s indicated the presence of rapid, low-voltage EEGs that were the effect of REM sleep.
He slowly walked back towards his desk, slowly removing the servo blanketing the girl’s body, he noticed the slight shiver her body gave when he did do, and gingerly used a claw to push the Stop button. He sat down in his chair, cursing under his vents as the creaks it gave off seemed louder than ever before. He positioned himself in his original relaxed position and used the angle to keep Mikaela on his chest. He draped one servo overtop of her body, grinning to himself at the way she snuggled into him, and used his other to grab the data pad he had been looking over beforehand. Just before the data pad booted up, he looked at the darkened screen on the Apple IPod to the girl gently snoring on his chestplates. The saboteur smiled before he looked down at the medical supply inventory Ratchet had delivered as he realized that the power of music was not only for freedom and joy, but for healing as well.