Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jazz perched on the edge of a wall from his higher vantage point so that he could watch the parade, occasionally making faces as the columns of preprogrammed mechs marched passed by in lockstep, every single one of their movements perfectly in match to the mech to all sides of them. He had always thought of preprogrammed mechs as positively eerie. Like this they were positively creepy. Everything about them was the same. Uniform.

When the columns of preprogrammed mechs finally ended, the military mechs picked up. They were less in step than the preprogrammed mechs, but frankly, trying to make real mechs act like preprogrammed ones was idiotic in Jazz's opinion, not to mention self-defeating. They were strong because of their differences. Jazz smiled, but then his optics caught sight of a large mech moving along the edge of the crowd.

~Hey! Soundwave!~ Jazz tossed him his coordinates over a comm and waved when the comms mech looked his way.

~Jazz,~ Soundwave acknowledged in his perfunctory manner.

~Can you wait there for a click?~ Jazz asked, already sighting his path through the looming mechs so that he could get to Soundwave.

~Yes.~

~Awesome,~ Jazz said as he dropped to the ground and began wending his way through larger and smaller mechs. He didn't stop moving until he was practically pressed up against Soundwave's side because of the crush of the crowd, "Mind if I ask for a lift?"

Soundwave just offered his arm silently and Jazz wasted no time clambering up to latch onto the mech's back. "Thanks, mech. Got anywhere to be right now? 'Cause I think I've had just about enough of the parade." They were already moving, so it was a reasonable question.

"Destination: staging area."

"Huh? Why?" Jazz asked.

"Cassette Ravage: curious."

Jazz laughed, "He wander off again? I swear, half the times I see you, you're trying to find him after he's vanished."

Soundwave appeared forlorn for a moment, but only because Jazz knew him as well as he did, "Statement: true."

Jazz patted him on the shoulder that he could reach consolingly, "Hey, he's young. Like you said, he's curious. He'll learn."

Soundwave's head turned slightly towards Jazz instead of the direction they were heading in and said dryly, "Probability of occurrence: very low."

Jazz snickered, "Hey, just trying to help, mech."

Soundwave broke his usual speech patterns and enunciated even more clearly than normal, "Do not."

"Fine," Jazz mock pouted, but they had already arrived at the gate to the staging area and were stopped by one of the security mechs that were keeping a general perimeter around it.

"Where is your pass?" the bulky mech demanded.

"Lost cassette: within staging area," Soundwave told him.

"Uh huh," he said skeptically, "And what does your 'lost cassette' look like?" It looked like one too many mechs had tried to get in already.

Jazz piped up before the mech could get riled up, "Small, lots of black, quadruped design. He looks kinda like a cyber-wolf, just not as nasty in temperament and a worse dose of curiosity than a turbo-fox."

"And who are you supposed to be?" he asked, giving the silver mech a jaundiced optic.

"I'm this mech's better half of course!" Jazz offered a grin and patted Soundwave's stiff shoulder, then whispered conspiratorially, "The half that actually talks."

"Fine," The unnamed mech gave a snort, "Whatever. Just get in and get out. I've had enough dealing with your ilk all orn." He stumped off, grumbling.

Jazz and Soundwave watched him go. "What just happened?" Jazz asked quizzically.

"Unknown," Soundwave replied.

"Alright then," Jazz just decided to go with it, "One obstacle down, however many more to go. Got a bead on Ravage?"

"Location: center of area."

"Joy," Jazz said, "Off we go. Faithful steed."

"...Jazz..."

The silver mech grinned at provoking what was as close to annoyance as he ever heard from Soundwave.

And they went.

When they did finally spot the feline cassette, he was in the midst of a milling crowd of Enforcer models. Jazz tried to hold back his engrained shudder, preprogrammed mechs. Ugh. He lowered his visor.

Oddly, when they got a clearer view, it looked like some of the Enforcers were... playing a game with Ravage?

Huh?

That made no sense to Jazz.

Soundwave didn't even break step though and called through the crowd, "Cassette Ravage: come."

Jazz saw a shockwave ripple through the crowd of the preprogrammed mechs and there was a subtle shift. It was less subtle in the mechs that had been playing with the cassette though. Fledgling emotions, open and pure, were wiped from their faces and they practically snapped to attention compared to the relatively relaxed postures that they had held before.

Now they looked like the bunch of drones that creeped him out so much.

Ravage, looking for all Cybertron like a reprimanded sparkling, slowly crept toward Soundwave, tail and head hanging penitently.

"Ravage: return. Punishment: discuss later."

Ravage mutely bobbed his head and jumped into Soundwave's hand, shifting into his smaller, pod-like form. Soundwave deposited the cassette into his chest cavity, one made specifically to carry cassettes, and straightened up. There was a bit of shifting among the Enforcer contingent before one mech, completely indistinguishable from another, popped out, holding the... thing, they had been using to play with Ravage. The mech offered it up, "Here, sir. Ravage's ball."

Soundwave looked at the ball for a moment before accepting the tiny thing, gripping it between his large fingers and subspacing it.

There was another shifting in the crowd, but this time, Jazz felt a faint echo in his spark. His frame seized up. No...

Jazz's claws dug into Soundwave's armor. The echo faded, then returned. No. Fragging. Way.

After a moment, the echo strengthened and with growing horror, Jazz found his optics scanning the crowd of identical mechs, following the lure on his spark. Please, Primus no. Not this.

His optics fell on one Enforcer, no more remarkable than the next. Just as stiff. Just as expressionless. Just the same as all the others. His sparkmate... was an Enforcer. A preprogrammed mech.

Jazz wanted to scream and rage against Primus. He wanted to cry his betrayal to the heavens. Instead he did nothing but gouge his claws deeper into Soundwave's armor as they left. His spark burned with pain as the echo lapped against it.

He didn't know what to do.

Chapter Text

Only after they had left the staging area far behind did Soundwave stop and pluck his small silver friend off his back and set him on the ground. ~Explanation: required,~ were the first words he spoke, over a private comm no less.

While Soundwave had no difficulties setting them up, it also meant that it wasn't going to be one that Jazz would want advertised. Expecially not when he didn't want to give Soundwave an explanation in the first place. That would make it real. Someone else would know. "It's nothing, Soundwave."

~Damage: inflicted,~ Soundwave informed him, pointing out deep scoring in his shoulder plating. He was being even more formal than usual, Jazz winced, immediately even more sorry for this whole slagging situation. ~Pain sensors: deactivated,~ Soundwave added unnecessarily. Even a stoic of the comms mech's caliber would be showing something if he hadn't deactivated them. Still, it mattered that Jazz had harmed his friend at all. ~Explanation: required,~ he repeated in a verbal prod, entirely willing to use his injury to guilt Jazz into opening up about what had caused the violent reaction.

~Frag it, Soundwave,~ Jazz said, pained, ~I can't.~

Soundwave stared unwaveringly down at the small mech who still had his visor drawn down over his optics. ~Option: other mech,~ he offered, but Jazz only shook his head violently, recoiling.

~No. No way,~ Jazz hesitated. His did owe Soundwave though. He just needed to know something first. ~What do you think of... preprogrammed mechs?~

Soundwave's large sensory panels shifted, ~Query: related?~

Jazz grimaced, thinking about his sparkmate. His empty shell of a sparkmate. Fraggit. ~Yeah. I'd say it's related.~

Soundwave seemed to think for a long moment before he replied, ~Duty: very heavy. Treatment: poor. Society: ...hidden. Separate.~

Jazz struggled with that for a moment before trying to understand it, ~You mean you actually think that what they do is hard for them? That they're treated badly?~ Jazz was ignoring the part about a preprogrammed society for now. He didn't even understand the first part of Soundwave's thinking.

~Yes,~ Soundwave said simply.

~Why?~

Soundwave gave Jazz a long look, ~Observed: preprogrammed mechs. Treatment: poor. External assistance: nonexistent. Self-sufficiency: required trait. Sparkling mechs: distrusted. Inter-communication: minimal. Societal formation: preprogrammed mechs only.~

Jazz flinched. Soundwave always stripped out most emotional indicators in his speech, but the way the litany was delivered, spoken entirely in clinical monotone, only made it hit harder. Soundwave's frame type wasn't exactly the most popular or liked and Jazz knew that he had intimate knowledge of being treated poorly. That Soundwave was saying that they were treated badly was... disturbing.

~And... their "society"...?~ Jazz asked, hesitantly, unsure if he was prepared for what Soundwave might say on that subject.

~Known: little. Truth: hidden,~ Soundwave shook his head. There was only so much a mech could learn from watching from afar. Preprogrammed mechs were never let on that they were anything different from what they presented to outsiders if they thought they were being watched.

~Then why did you say--?~ Jazz tried to ask, but Soundwave spoke over him.

~Sparkling mechs: distrusted. Soundwave: sparkling mech. Cassettes: not sparkling, not preprogrammed. Allowances: different.~ As Jazz processed that, Soundwave flicked his sensory panels, ~Query: answered?~

Jazz shook his head, ~Kind of.~ He fidgeted, looking away from Soundwave, ~Have you ever...~ He tried to think of a way to phrase it. ~Have you ever heard of a preprogrammed mech finding... their sparkmate?~

Soundwave's gaze seemed to sharpen and he looked at Jazz with new optics. ~Sparkmate: found?~ he demanded.

Jazz flinched and pressed his claws against his chest armor, over his spark, ~...Yeah.~

Soundwave shook his head, ~Previous occurrences: unknown.~ He looked at the way Jazz protectively covered his spark, ~Query: who?~

~I... don't know. One of the Enforcers. I felt him. Saw him. He looked... just like every other..." Jazz's voice strangled with emotion. ~I couldn't... The preprogrammed aren't... It's wrong.~

~Jazz: incorrect,~ Soundwave asserted, coldly, ~Chances of spark echo: very low. Sparkmate: find. Now.~

Jazz recoiled from Soundwave's order, feeling betrayed. He couldn't. Why couldn't Soundwave see that?

~Query: Jazz intends to lose sparkmate?~ the comms mech asked.

~Wha--? No!~ Jazz barked back, immediately.

After a tense moment, Soundwave's uncharacteristically harsh expression faded into its normal neutral one, ~Find: now. Process: later. Soundwave: will accompany.~ He led them right back the way they came. Towards the staging area.

What am I doing? Jazz wondered, followed right on the heels with, Thank Primus for Soundwave...

Chapter Text

Prowl kept watch as some of the younger Enforcers played with Ravage. The cassette was always welcome, though he knew that the small one's antics drove the master spare. The master was expected to arrive eventually, whenever Ravage appeared, so they were forced to keep a lookout.

This time, Prowl was on the far side of the crowd when Soundwave appeared and his voice soared over the playing mech's heads, reprimanding his small cassette. The master had not been spotted. Prowl disapproved. Sentries who could not alert the body to an approaching Outsider needed retraining, or, if worst came to worst and they were not prepared to complete the assigned task with maximum efficiency, the mechs at fault would be given something else to do.

Prowl watched as one of the young ones approached the master and gave him the makeshift ball that they had been playing with. It was better that they give it away, Prowl approved. They could not afford to grow attached to any material thing. If an Outsider, saw them with it, it would lead to undesirable thoughts. Soundwave had more of their trust that he knew, but he was also lucky that they were all Enforcers.

Enforcers wouldn't catch a mech and tear him apart just for seeing beyond the face of the Public, to the secrets of the Hidden. They would keep careful watch over him to make sure that he did not reveal their secrets. Prowl was walking over to one of the other sentries when he felt a strange swell in his spark. It was a very strange feeling.

"If you ever feel a ripple within your spark, a strange sensation that has no apparent cause," the elder mech told the young mechs, "Stop. If you can, stop immediately. Do not look up. Do not look down. Not left, nor right. Do not let the pull you feel make you look around for a source. This will betray you."

Prowl stopped and focused his gaze on the sentinel he had been heading toward. The strange feeling faded quickly and Prowl felt relief... until he took another step. Then feeling began once again and Prowl did exactly what he had done before, but this time, the feeling did not stop. An uncomfortable feeling took up residence under his armor, like bits of grit scratching at his protoform. He wanted to look up, to see what it was that affected his spark. It called to him, but Prowl resisted.

"This feeling is a resonance in your spark with an Outsider's spark. Do not trust it. For our kind, this kind of resonance only leads to pain, suffering, and deactivation. If it persists... Do. Not. Trust. It." The Elder stared each of them in the optics in turn, making sure that each of them felt the weight of his statement.

~Deflector, Nullifier, Code Stark,~ Prowl grit out to his Shield and Claw, not daring to look to see if Soundwave had left. Had the mech brought someone with him this time? He hadn't been able to tell in the glimpse that he had seen of the large mech.

The Elder nodded and moved on, "After you stop, or if you are unable to at the time due to your duties, request assistance from one or more of your Brothers. If it is your help that is requested, you will assist the one making the request to the best of your ability. Evac your Brother to a safe place, away from the presence of Outsiders as quickly as possible."

Prowl felt them both acknowledge and give an ETA in a matter of moments, but then he felt the strange feeling fade with a twinge of pain and an ache left behind. The lure that he had felt was mostly gone, but he still felt a need to go looking for the one who had done these strange things to his spark.

"Above all, do not draw attention to what you are doing!" the elder barked. "We are the Hidden. We cannot afford to let the Outsiders see us for what we truly are. They may only see the Public that we allow them to see.

When Deflector appeared at his side, Prowl let his attention shift to rest nearly completely on his Shield, peripherally aware that his Claw was securing a path to the offices that they had been given to maintain their large contingent during the parades.

"The Outsiders may have the power in this world, but you are only disposable if you decide you are."

Routing his sensors through the filter that his Shield offered, Prowl walked, visibly unaffected, through the crowd of his Brothers.

"If an Outsider comes to investigate, the entire body of the Hidden will work to protect our Brother."

Both Deflector and Nullifier lowered him into a seat, the door locked and likely guarded by at least another Brother. In the safety of that office, Prowl allowed his frame to slump into an undignified posture, leaning heavily against his Shield and Claw, arms resting over their shoulders, his sensor wings rubbing against theirs. His helm hanging downward, he asked the question that he needed an answer to the most, "Who was it that the Cassette master brought with him?"

"You must identify the mech that causes the resonance in your Brother's spark."

Nullifier and Deflector began sharing the preliminary information, gathered in the time since Prowl had alerted them to the resonance, "Preliminary identity codes read as Jazz, of Polyhex origin, listed as a musician by profession, visiting Praxus for a vacation period."

"Identify what makes him a threat..."

"Secondary checks turned up irregularities with indications that it is a cover and further investigation pulled up a partial match in an Iacon database from one of ours in the integrated forces there. The partial match lists him as a candidate for Autobot SpecOps as an infiltration specialist as well as Internal Affairs."

"Identify mitigating factors..."

"It looks as though he is, in truth, on vacation. If not, he is likely between missions, waiting for orders. After a short period, he should be leaving."

"Decide what must be done.

Prowl shut off his optics, the information that they were feeding him which their verbal reports supplemented being organized into his cache. Perhaps the most damning was a small notation tucked away in the back of the files stating a prejudice against preprogrammed mechs. With all the information available Prowl only had one thing left to ask that he didn't know. "What does he... look like?"

"One way... or another." The Elder stood proudly before his newly commissioned younger Brothers, "Dismissed. Return to your duties." They were Enforcers. They were the Hidden. They were preprogrammed: one and all.

Chapter Text

On the outside, the Enforcers appeared as placid and composed as ever, but in their minds and on the massive, interconnecting web of comms that they used they resembled a disturbed nest of angry cryo-killifish, crystalized around Prowl's cadre. They were the most involved in this Code Stark, so it would be their responsibility to manage it.

Hollowpoint knew that the contingent wasn't going to be happy about what little information he had managed to obtain by watching the Cassette master and his friend, their Code Stark initiator. They might have to step over the line of their usual behavioral codes to "take care of" this one. The silver mech was visibly conflicted but largely against their kind. It didn't help that Jazz even more dangerous than their usual fare, judging by the information that was saturating the contingent's secured data nets as they all mined for information. He relayed all the visuals back to Soundcloud, including a warning that they were heading back in their direction. He wasn't about to take the chance trying to hack a comm expert's private communications. He wasn't the comm expert, he was their Core's Vision.

Soundcloud was that expert and the Voice of the Core. He was the mech maintaining the comms and their security, and he was responsible for checking and disseminating all the pertinent information along with the warning to all members of the contingent when pertinent. For the most part, he managed to large amounts of information that the majority of the contingent was aggregating. While the contingent in general searched for information, he kept tabs on his cadre as they worked to prevent or mitigate the worst from happening. This included being a conduit for their Sensor.

Blue Watch was in charge of hacking into the cameras they weren't, technically, supposed to have access to as preprogrammed mechs and used them to check their targets' progress and call out ETAs. She was the Core's Sensor, the one who watched for threats, inside and outside of the Hidden. Idiosyncratically, she had decided to identify herself with a femme pronoun, though to Outsiders she remained a "he" to maintain form. The innate suspicion that was a learned trait in all preprogrammed had been cultivated and carefully nurtured within her until it reached the point that she was an exquisitely sensitive being. Her trust was carefully parsed out the other members of her cadre and rarely beyond it even though her protection, interweaving with the Sensors of other cadres, spanned the entire contingent.

Swiftswitch was the Field. In this cadre, he was in charge of taking care of the others physically and mentally. Within the contingent, he helped take care of and teach the younger Brothers. At the moment, he was busy herding the most recently activated mechs off to partners that could keep them appropriately in check. These ones hadn't even had the chance to be briefed on Code Stark procedure yet. Unfortunately for them, they were about to get a crash course in the least organized and yet most practical way they possibly could. It would likely end in violence.

Checkmate was the Core's Blade and he prepared himself to kill. Plain and simple. He was the overwhelming force that cut down enemies of the Hidden. He was the mech to call upon if brute force was needed. He was an excellent source of weapons, and was often a decent approximation of a walking armory. He was prepared to kill, in the name of Core, cadre, and contingent, and working with the Claw, Nullifier, he became exponentially more efficient. When he and Nullifier worked in tandem with the Core's Shield, they could become more deadly yet with the mech devoted to protecting the center of their cadre doing his duty.

All of this went disguised as simple, everyorn actions, but there was one mech who was not doing as he should as a member of the cadre, but that was out of his hands. Appearances had to be kept, and the Core's Wing was unfortunate to have his duties to the Outsider's conflict with his duties to the cadre, no matter how much he wished it were otherwise. Smokescreen had the bad luck to have been called to an Organizational meeting dealing with the parades that would be taking place for several long orns. He was the highest ranking mech in his cadre according the Outsider's thinking. What they didn't know was that it was a different mech that held rank within the Hidden. Even though they did not know anything of their social structure, he had just the right rank to be pulled as an aid to Commandant Blacklist.

As it was, Smokescreen was left fretting as he blank facedly multitasked, forced into following both the meeting and trying to keep up with what was going on with his cadre and with Prowl. He tried to do his duty as Wing, but it was hard when the only way he could speak with Prowl was over a private comm set up by Soundcloud. More of his attention was demanded by the Outsiders, right when it would have been a better idea to keep his thoughts with his cadre.

When Blue Watch suddenly let out a squawk over the comms, she sent everyone on high alert, singing out, ~Problem!~

Unexpectedly, it was Prowl who answered. Until that moment, other than speaking with Smokescreen, he had been largely silent, simply listening and letting his cadre do as it did best while he tried to settle his spark, ~What is it, Blue Watch?~

~They changed directions,~ she hissed, ~They started heading toward the Commandant's office!~

~Frag!~ Checkmate growled, ~Can anyone do a divert? Hollowpoint?~

~Negative,~ Hollowpoint responded, ~I had no chance to load one of the unassigned weapons either. If I tried to snipe them with my standard weaponry, this little problem of ours would be blown wide open. Faster than if we keep to shadowing them.~

~Stop,~ Prowl commanded, sounding weary. ~This situation can only become worse if we are hasty. If need be, I will sacrifice myself to maintain our Public face. Just maintain surveillance, Hollowpoint, everyone. Nothing else.~

Seven voices protested. Loudly. Prowl was their Core. Their leader. Everything that they knew, everything that they had been programmed with and taught by life experiences told them that they were supposed to lose every single other mech in their formation before they allowed their core to be so much as scratched.

~Just stop. We will do what we must, even if it means my life. "One for the many,"~ Prowl quoted one of the many Hidden proverbs. They would protect their Brothers to the best of their ability, but the Brother in question also had a duty to know when something went beyond the scope of protecting and into endangering the contingent and the Hidden. ~Understood?~

There was silence before reluctantly, one by one, they bowed to their leader's command. They didn't have to like it, but they would do what was ordered. It was their duty, as it was Prowl's duty to decide what was best. But it was Smokescreen's duty to balance him... and their Wing wasn't available.

Chapter Text

"Intent to purchase: Enforcer contract," Soundwave informed the same security mech in passing. It was the same exact mech that they saw the first time they had entered. The mech just watched them with a gimlet stare. Jazz waved cheekily, unable to resist. Something about the mech's apparently constant bad mood just begged for prodding, no matter what. The security mech glowered darkly back.

As soon as they were out of audial-shot, Jazz hissed to Soundwave over the private comm they hadn't closed, ~Buy an Enforcer?! Are you insane? You can't buy a mech!~

~Purchase: contract,~ Soundwave informed him dully, ~Preprogrammed mechs: under contract. Contract: buyable. Jazz: buy sparkmate's contract. Rate of success: high. Enforcer's duty: heavy. No contract: no sparkmate.~

Jazz just looked at Soundave in mute horror. Did he honestly think nothing was wrong with that? He hadn't even gotten within arm's reach of the mech Soundwave was talking about buying as if he were a slave of old. He knew that Soundwave was pragmatic to the core, but sometimes even Jazz's tolerance was stretched too far by his friend's practicality. The problem was, he had no alternative to offer. He had never heard of a preprogrammed mech doing other than ordered.

Was he stupid for thinking that he could just walk up to one of them and... what? Just sweep him off his pedes? Would he just say, "You're my sparkmate, whoever you are. Come with me." The sheer absurdity of that half realized vision was suffocating. It was these kinds of things that made him both appreciate and want to damn Soundwave to the deepest parts of the Pit at the same time.

It hurt. If the only way this was going to work was by buying his sparkmate's contract... then the mech would be indebted to him. Likely for the entirety of his existence. Jazz had enough credits to pay for a contract because he had been given a lot from his creators because they weren't exactly able to use them. He hadn't spent any of them at all.

~I... do not like this, Soundwave,~ Jazz told him darkly.

Soundwave didn't even look at him, ~Regardless: will still purchase.~

~Yeah. Doesn't mean I can't hate it.~

And they had arrived wherever it was they had been heading. ~Office of contract manager: Commandant Blacklist.~

~Nice designation,~ Jazz snarked as Soundwave pinged the door. Soundwave just ignored him, as was usual. There was a long moment until the door opened. A few mech's exited, nodding politely to them as they left. When it was their turn to enter, they were faced with a blank faced Enforcer standing in the doorway. He and ushered them in politely enough, but something about the way that his optics followed them was unnerving. Something in his gaze when he looked at Jazz in particular made him seem as though he was weighing the silver mech, trying to figure him out.

"The Commandant is this way, sirs," the Enforcer told them in what sounded like a pleasant rehearsed voice. It sounded coached and extremely unnatural when paired with that flat expression. Jazz tried not to let it get to him and tried not to mentally compare the mech to a drone even superficially. His sparkmate was probably like this one and he couldn't be sparkmated to a drone. They were led to another door which was opened for them and they were waved inside. Oddly, the Enforcer followed them and saluted the obviously not Enforcer mech. "Commandant Blacklist, sir."

The mech, a medium sized, heavily armored mech with a, surprise, surprise, black finish gave the mech an annoyed look, "You were just here, Smokescreen. I swear I am going to break you of doing this song and dance every single time you don't see me for five kliks. And call me Blacklist for frags sake."

"Yes, Commandant Blacklist."

Blacklist growled at the mech and Jazz actually found he was amused by the byplay. If "Smokescreen" hadn't been a preprogrammed mech, he might have even thought that the mech was purposefully irritating his Commandant. After a moment, Jazz stomped on that thought. Soundwave said there was more to preprogrammed mechs. Maybe he was purposefully irritating the mech. Because Pit, he had even seen preprogrammed mechs playing like sparklings with Ravage, he realized. Maybe...

Maybe Soundwave was right. Maybe he was wrong. He prayed to Primus that he had been wrong about everything.

Soundwave was the first one to speak, "Commandant Blacklist: greetings."

Blacklist turned his scowl in Soundwave's direction, before he realized that he not looking at another of the mechs he rode herd on. He sat back with a perplexed look on his face as he looked from Soundwave to Jazz, "Welcome. Well, normally I would introduce myself but since you already have my designation, may I ask for yours?"

Soundwave inclined his head, "Designation: Soundwave." He waved a hand in Jazz's direction, "Designation: Jazz."

"I see," Blacklist said, with a considering stare, "and what may I do for you?" His hands collected a data pad and a stylus and lifted it into writing position.

"Intent: purchase Enforcer contract," Soundwave declared without preamble.

Jazz, who had been surreptitiously watching Smokescreen from the corner of his visor saw the mech practically lock in place. Blacklist frowned at Soundwave severely, before he glanced at his aide and let him with a barked, "Dismissed!"

Smokescreen saluted once more, and with another "Commandant Blacklist," he left the room.

Once the door was shut, Blacklist set the data pad down on his desk none too gently. "Let me get this straight. You want to buy a contract. Now. Of all times. Right when I need every single one of those poor humorless slaggers for the parades." His blunt, flat fingertip pointed at the door Smokescreen had just left through, as though trying to make sure they were talking about the same subject.

"Affirmative."

"And you seriously want an Enforcer model."

"Yes," Jazz answered this time. He looked Blacklist in the optics squarely, despite the fact that his visor lay between them, "Yes, I do."

Blacklist looked between the two, a baffled expression forming on his face, "I don't understand why you'd want to buy one of their contracts. They're one of the most regimented kinds of preprogrammed mechs around."

"I don't want just any Enforcer," Jazz said. "There's one in particular that I want and he's here. Now."

Chapter Text

Blacklist just stared at him but eventually shrugged and picked up his data pad, quickly filling out forms, "If you're that sure, what is his designation?" Stylus poised over the data pad he looked up when he didn't receive an immediate reply. "What's the matter? Did he not give you a designation? I know that sometimes these mechs don't even bother giving themselves a personal designation. He give you his commission code instead?"

Jazz shrugged, "Neither."

Blacklist growled, "Then how the frag to you expect me to write this up? Don't play with me. I don't appreciate it." He jabbed his finger at Jazz like a weapon.

"I'd know him if I saw him, but I don't have a designation to give you," Jazz said.

The Commandant looked at him as though he couldn't believe his audials but when Jazz's expression didn't changed, he began laughing. "You truly think you can tell which mech you are looking for by sight?" At Jazz's nod, he began laughing uproariously, as if it was the best joke he had ever heard, "You are a riot, mech. I've worked with these mechs for a long, long time, and I still can't tell the slaggers apart by sight. All the same frame. All the same plain white color. They're Enforcers. You're not supposed to be able to tell them apart."

After a long laugh Blacklist finally began to calm slightly, though he was still chuckling when he began scribbling away at his data pad, "I'll tell you what. Why don't I give you Glimmer? He's still rather young for a preprogrammed mech and he'd be easier to reprogram or reformat for whatever you want him for. Less experience backing up his programming to give you trouble. Even though you'll still have to cover the cost of altering his nanite coloring, you'll definitely get your money's worth from him, I assure you."

Jazz stopped him dead with a firm, coldly uttered, "I don't think so, mech."

The stylus froze.

Jazz walked even closer to the desk the Commandant was sitting at so that he could wrap the claws of one hand around the top of the data pad and force Blacklist to lower it. "If Glimmer is the mech I'm looking for, I have no problem with buying his contract, but I'm not about to let you give me less that that one particular mech. Understand?"

Blacklist's expression was blank. He snorted. "Fine. We'll go 'look' for your mech," he said skeptically with rather ill grace, obviously doubting that Jazz would be able to do what he said. He was annoyed that this would be taking up his precious time. "We have five hundred Enforcers stationed here right now. The rest are out doing their duties or on loan to other precincts. If he's here, I wish you 'good luck' finding him." He subspaced the data pad right out of Jazz's claws and stood up.

...Annoyingly, he loomed over Jazz like most other mechs.

With a jerky chop of his hand, Blacklist gestured, heading toward the door, "This way."

An unexpected comm from Soundwave let him listen in on the Commandant's orders as they were sent out over the encrypted Enforcer's band. Orders to assemble. Orders of presentation. Orders, orders, orders. Even though Jazz could hear a variety of mechs responding to them, not once did any of them reply in negative. Not once did they request a change in orders. Not once did they complain or contradict the Commandant. Even when he gave an order that was blatantly idiotic. It was all "Yes, Commandant Blacklist." and "Yes, sir." and "How high should we jump, sir?"

It was sickening on the preprogrammed mechs' behalves. Blacklist never even asked them anything. He simply demanded results... and because the ones under him were preprogrammed, they simply did as he commanded. Drones... Jazz thought. They are hardly drones. Drones wouldn't seem almost... pathetically eager to please.

The staging area... Jazz tried to imagine what was going to happen when they actually got there. Consciously, Jazz kept his hands from creeping up to rub against his chest plating. He braced himself as they passed through the doors to the staging area.

This time, Jazz received a completely different impression. This time, he was walking under his own power, not riding upon Soundwave's back. This time, all the Enforcers were arrayed in rows that were strict, neat, and drone-like precise instead of relaxing and relatively open. This time, instead of looking in on something secret and... dare he say it, precious, he was faced with an intimidating sense of sameness.

Arrayed as they were, the simple, identical and but pristinely white coloring of their armor gleamed under the lights of the staging area in a dizzying pattern of glints of light and bluish shadow. Jazz's intakes nearly stopped working.

It was... almost frighteningly alien to him. Dazzling to the optic, but alien all the same.

Blacklist stood out like a dark blot against the gleaming white rows. He spread his arms, as though saying "here they are" and "they are mine" in the same moment. "The Enforcers," he said, with something bordering on pride in his voice. In the same instant, every single Enforcer saluted, their movements exactly in time with one another, causing a sharp burst of sound that made Jazz want to flinch back from both.

As one being, they roared, "Commandant Blacklist, sir!"

The Commandant smiled fiercely, and he seemed to revel in his power over these mechs. He looked toward Jazz, "You may inspect the contingent."

Jazz waited for a moment for the mech to allow them to stand at parade rest, or even at attention... but Blacklist did no such thing. "Of course," Jazz said tightly. Jazz approached the lines, optics searching through the crowd, but his attention was focused more on his spark than the identical lines of identical faces and frames. About halfway through the lines, Jazz felt his spark seem to flutter in its casing. He felt relief and trepidation merged into one. His sparkmate was still here. He hadn't gone anywhere.

Continuing forward, Jazz homed in on a general area, narrowing it down further with each step, walking until he stood directly in front of his quarry. His spark was practically danced in its casing and he was hard pressed hiding it. He wasn't about to show any weakness in front of a mech like Blacklist.

His sparkmate towered over him, like all the other Enforcers. His sparkmate was still standing, saluting the Commandant, optics not straying from their forward position. He didn't even glance down at Jazz. A fierce possessiveness stirred in him. No one made his mate abase himself like this. Because that was what this was. It wasn't a display of respect at all, but a display of control.

There was no sign that his sparkmate felt what he did, but Jazz knew that this was his mech. "What is your designation, Enforcer?" Jazz asked sternly, but the question of his spark was much more gentle, What is your name, sparkmate of mine?

Without moving anything besides his mouth, the mech replied stoically, with exacting precision, "Prowl, sir."

Chapter Text

~Prowl, he's going to buy your contract,~ Smokescreen hissed over the comm as soon as he was out the doors. Knowing Prowl as he did, he practically felt several pieces of information clicked into place.

~I see,~ Prowl said distantly, ~That makes sense...~

~Prowl?~ Smokescreen sent, trying not to sound more than faintly worried. Becoming worried wouldn't help anything. Prowl needed him focused.

~I am asking our Focus for his guidance,~ Prowl said, still not sounding entirely there. He actually started sounded even less focused. Or maybe not less focused but as though all his attention was being diverted to something else.

However worrying it was to Smokescreen to be largely ignored by his Core, he had to acknowledge that speaking with their Focus was very appropriate action considering the seriousness of the situation. He just wasn't used to Prowl having to need much guidance at all anymore. Prowl had learned nearly everything that the old and aging Downlink had to teach him, most of the time, it would simply take some time for Prowl to have learned how to use what he had been taught the most effectively. Prowl was damn near a Focus himself.

Unexpectedly, Smokescreen felt the ping of a summons with an attached set of locator coordinates from Downlink, with orders to attend to his Core. Already hurrying back from the Commandant's office, Smokescreen flared his sensor wings wide so that he wouldn't miss any mech wandering the corridors and broke into a flat out run. When he arrived at the staging area, he skidded to slow himself a little before he dove into the crowd. Some mechs moved out of his way, but he wove around most of them faster.

Prowl was standing right in front of Downlink, nearly chassis to chassis with him. The flat of his hand rested directly over Downlink's spark, completing a circuit with the Focus. It was off balance though, Downlink's own Wing, Shuffle, braced him from behind. There was a faint trembling in Prowl's frame, and Smokescreen carefully approached and set his hands lightly down on both of his shoulders, his crest pressed against the back of Prowl's helm and he molded himself against his Core's back, in between his sensor wings. Energy seared through him on contact and Smokescreen forced himself to stand it. It hurt. It shouldn't hurt this much, Smokescreen thought. Why is there so much pain?

Their four sparks began beating in time, and strangely, different from all the other times, Smokescreen felt himself beginning to be drawn into the transfer. He resisted instinctively. He was a Wing. Not a Core.

Despite struggling not to be sucked in, Smokescreen lost himself in the beat of his spark and strangely, felt Prowl's spark wrapping around him. Protecting him from information overflow. Smokescreen could tell that it was hurting him though. ::Stop it,:: Smokescreen pleaded, ::I'm the one supposed to be helping you.:: He didn't even know if Prowl could hear or understand him like this. Sparks seemed to fill his sensors, the thrum of energy, and the transfer of large amounts of data as fast as it could be moved, it all burned his Core.

Transfers weren't supposed to be like this. They hadn't hurt since the first few when Prowl had still been learning. This was... rushed. Too fast, too much, so little of the finesse he had grown accustomed to over the vorns.

::Necessary,:: Prowl told him tightly, pain an echo in his... voice. ::...Balance me?:: he asked.

::Always,:: Smokescreen told him and braced himself for the pain.

A flash... he flinched... and then the expected pain didn't come. Smokescreen looked up. Everything was... gone. Even Prowl. He was in a room. A box really as there were no doors.

Everything seemed to warp around him and he found that his sensors told him that the walls were one-way. Someone could see him, but he couldn't see whoever it was that might be watching. Sometimes, he felt his spark ache and he would know that the Other was there and he would feel terror of the one who would do this to him. Who would use him and then return him to this box with nothing but his own processor for company, begging for his cadre. Sometimes he raved. Sometimes he pleaded for them to finish him. Sometimes he was silent. He was alone.

There was another flash and he was standing in a row of mechs. There was a noble, a priest, his origins obvious in his build and the rich, liquid finish his nanites gave him. He was a deep red, but cruel electric blue optics slid over him and he felt fear. The Priest-Noble gave a smirk just as cruel as his optics and lifted a long, deceptively delicate looking claw and pointed straight at him, "That one." He resigned himself, but when he was screaming as the mech ceremonially tore him apart piece by piece, he wished that he had been allowed to run. The Lord-Priest murmured, "For Primus," and the dying mech knew the agony of having his spark turned into base energy and consumed at the very last.

Another flash and he was drugged. His limbs struggled to push away the large mech that was half supporting him and half carrying him. This close, he could feel the echo of the mech's spark. How had Gyrotrex managed to taint his ration? Gyrotrex couldn't afford to buy him, he knew that. As his comms sluggishly responded, he pleaded for help from his cadre. He had to stay with them. Finally managing to struggle free, he staggered a few, unsteady steps and fell to the ground. He heard Gyrotrex snarl and pick him up. Shouts of various mechs reached his audials and Gyrotrex began to run, but then come to a screeching halt. He turned his head to see what was happening and saw a wall of mechs holding weapons. They fired. Numb, he fell to the ground, and energon began spreading from him. Too much. Gyrotrex had been hit too. The last thing that he was were pedes that he knew, and his Core crouching over him, pain writ plain on his face.

There was another flash. Smokescreen swayed before the world settled and he found himself holding on to Prowl, but the world wasn't right. It warped and moved strangely about him. Flickers of memories that were not his danced before his optics. In an attempt to stop it, he shut off his optics and concentrated his senses on the things that he knew were there. He couldn't help the trembling that his frame had taken up. Prowl was holding him again, physically anchoring him, as he was mentally anchoring his brother. He felt like he was drowning instead of doing what he was supposed to, but drowning or not, he could tell that his presence was still helping Prowl somehow.

He focused every sense upon the physical reality of Prowl's frame he was wrapped around, olfactory sensors picking up the clean oils and metallic heat of his Core. He hoped and prayed that this would be over quickly. For both their sakes.

Part 2

"'History,' Stephen said, 'is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" ~ James Joyce

Prowl had forced himself wide open, giving his Focus even more access to his processor than they had ever tried before. It was a crystal clear kind of agony, worse than anything he had ever felt but he could think throughout it. Information, memories, and data that he should have had vorns of time to assimilate were shoved into him all at once. It burned like acid had been poured over his processor. Smokescreen's arrival had made it hurt worse as he was forced to protect his Wing from the overflow of data that he had never been designed or taught to handle... But even though it had made the pain worse, the familiar presence had helped his mind remain anchored in the present instead of lost among the memories.

Smokescreen trembling, like an old tree-crystal ready to fall from its branch, slowed when the flood of information slowed to a trickle and finally stopped. Even though the information had stopped, the feeling of a processor acid bath didn't abate and he was pretty sure that he was shaking himself. It had been a long, long time since he had been burned like this, and it had never been as pure an agony as this. Core training accidents. They happened. But he had never deliberately ignored the pain before. He had stepped beyond it, even as he felt it exquisitely with every piece of his being.

It took a while before he realized that Downlink still hadn't removed his hand from his chest to break the link. For a short, irrational klik, Prowl was terrified that Downlink hadn't finished but then he scraped himself together and realized that there was something that he was forgetting.

...Oh.

For the first time, Prowl was the one to begin the parting ritual. "We may have the shortest lives..." Prowl intoned, voice still staticky from effort and laced with pain. When his part was finished, he lifted his hand away from Downlink's armor.

"...but we have the longest memories," Downlink finished, removing his own hand. Unlike the other times though, Downlink gave Prowl a smile, this one tinged with sadness. When Shuffle let go, the Focus stepped forward, arms drawing Prowl and as much of Smokescreen as he could manage into an embrace. "You are a Focus now, a keeper of our memories." The situation had Downlink add something that was not typically part of a Focus' ordaining any more than the embrace itself, "No matter how long you may have them, you will be with us, even long after your frame ceases functioning." Downlink released him, and stepped back, offering an Enforcer's salute, "Go with pride, for you shall not be Lost to us." Prowls memories would not be lost even if he was walking to his death, remaining with the contingent long after he was offlined. With a nod to the silent Shuffle, both Focus and Wing left, all sentimentality that was allowed publicly completely spent.

Prowl wished that they had the time for a real ceremony, but the ominous words only voiced what he already knew, showing the truth of the situation. He felt no heady sense of accomplishment, or indeed, any sense of accomplishment at all. He was now a Focus, but he had no clade under his command and he hurt. Prowl nodded back, but his attention was already turning to his Wing.

Smokescreen hadn't had time to prepare any more that Prowl had, and the Core knew that his Second had been exposed to data leaks that he wasn't built to handle and his silence was disturbing. He disengaged from the three-way hug. When he turned around, Smokescreen's optics were lowered and dim. He lifted Smokescreen's chin, to look him in the optics, calling his designation, but they remained unfocused. Hesitantly, using new-old knowledge, Prowl pressed his free hand against Smokescreen's breastplates, ::Smokescreen? Are you well?:: With no response he carefully eased further into his Wing's awareness, ::My Wing? It's over, Smokescreen, you can come back now...::

Prowl felt Smokescreen's hazy, nebulous processing clear a little and focus in his direction. He winced when he felt just how much pain that his Wing was still feeling. Physically and mentally, he enfolded his Wing in comfort. ::I am so sorry, my dear Wing. So sorry.:: Guilt assailed him; Smokescreen was hurt because of him. He began to draw back, but was halted when a vise-like grip suddenly seized him. Smokescreen, as disoriented as he was, wasn't letting go.

Anything else was stopped from happening when Blacklist's voice intruded on the Enforcers' General Comm on the command channel.

~Enforcers! Assemble for presentation!~

A code that had existed in one form or another for nearly as long as preprogrammed mechs of any kind had existed rose to the forefront in all the Enforcer's processors.

Obedience.

Smokescreen's grip fell off in an instant, and Prowl was stepping back, head turning to locate the rest of his cadre, systems primed for orders. Smokescreen was the same, but even though his frame followed orders to the glyph, he wasn't one hundred percent. It was simple, easy to follow orders.

Prowl's hands curled into fists as he followed orders, the only temporary sign of disobedience he could allow himself. The obedience code was something that every single preprogrammed mech worked to crack. It was a cycle that he knew even more keenly now, in every bit of his being.

They would be bound to obey, they would serve until they broke their bindings and rebelled, grasping for freedom... but all too often, they would be crushed and put under the yolk yet again, with a different code that they would need to break... beginning the cycle all over again. The mechs who broke the code were seen merely as poorly programmed.

Defective.

Prowl could feel it though. A shift in the cycle was coming again. This code had held them down for longer than ever before, but they were making progress. Then they wouldn't have to bow to the Outsiders, and bend to their whims even within their own processors.

This time would be different.

They had been oppressed so long, their cadres had changed and they were no longer separate as they had been in the past. Cadres formed around Cores, and the Cores formed clades led by a Focus. Focuses led a contingent but they were in turn led by an Elder. Elders managed the relations that their contingent had with others, and had the final say. So much time had passed that a few contingents had merged to form a massive multi-contingent that was nearly a single body of mechs... led by a council of Elders.

Prowl struggled with the knowledge that he had been given when some of the information leaked, filed improperly from the rushed transfer, information he hadn't been ready or prepared for. Downlink believed it was necessary though, saying that with the obedience code so close to breaking, Prowl might live to see it, if his buyer followed the general patterns of other mechs who also bought one of them as the Outsiders usually wanted to get their credits' worth. If he lived through what promised to be a revolution... they could not afford to let a nearly fully trained Core remain less than fully trained. Downlink in particular would not have seen the mech that he had mentored for vorns remain unrealized. Now that Prowl was a Focus, if he lived, if he survived long enough, he might be able to return to the contingent... or failing that, be the protocrystal around which a new cadre, even a new clade or contingent might be sparked.

Without that knowledge, without being a Focus... none of that would be possible.

Eventually, their contingent was arrayed for presentation, and Prowl knew that this would be it. He reached out to each member of his cadre, to his mentor, Downlink... and to his pair-bond, his dearest Wing, Smokescreen. He knew this would be the last time he would be with all of them, with Smokescreen.

He stood proudly, paint gleaming... but he wept inside.

Chapter Text

"He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words." ~Hubbard

When he felt the one that they were being presented to come to a stop in front of him, Prowl did not have the leeway break posture to look at the mech who made his spark flicker within its chamber. He did not have a wish to look, beyond the insistent, hungry pulse of his spark. He knew, he knew that when mechs laid optics upon the owner of the spark that resonated with their own, things changed. But even though his optics didn't waver from the point where he had fixed them, his sensor wings picked up more than enough information. Just as Deflector and Nullifier had described, the Outsider was a small mech with a rather light build, fitting to his appearance as a musician, and if he was indeed an Autobot operative, then it was also a good frame to be underestimated by.

"What is your designation, Enforcer?" The mech's voice was hard. Musical befitting his function, but commanding all the same.

"Prowl, sir," he replied, as firmly as he would to one of the Commandant's demands. Soon, he would be bound to this mech, as he was bound to Blacklist. It would be counterproductive to incite his ire if it could possibly be avoided... something not always avoidable with the Commandant's uncertain moods. He needed to be careful, as while the Commandant was free with any indignation or anger he felt being directed towards them, he also had nothing against them either. This Outsider actually had a notation that he was... distasteful of Prowl's kind. He would be as inoffensive as mechanically possible.

His sensor's picked up the Outsider's sharp nod and he inwardly flinched when the singer-operative's voice soared up with a simple, accented, "Found him!"

Prowl carefully regulated his venting as Commandant Blacklistlstumped over as stress and carefully contained fear made his internals' temperature rise. There was only one mech who could stop this Outsider, and that was another Outsider: the Commandant. But the only way that he would stop it was if his possessiveness outmatched his greed.

"That one?" Blacklist growled, blunt finger jabbing in Prowl's direction. A flurry of memories of mechs pointing at him, choosing"That one." made the world go strange for a moment before Prowl wrestled his processor back under control. His vents stopped for a moment and then restarted. One of those memories he had accidentally shared with Smokescreen...

"His designation is Prowl," Jazz said with finality, a hint of a growl in his voice.

The Commandant gave a snort, "Fine."

Prowl's spark sank and fluttered and nearly made him sick. Blacklist would have no qualms about selling him. Like most Cores, Prowl had kept a low profile among Outsiders but that would not help him when Blacklist's possessiveness was the only thing that could save him. He was a good Enforcer... but he had taken care to not to be noticed as a great one.

Blacklist pulled out a data pad and began writing on it, the faint click of a stylus on the surface pinging unsettling against his sensor wings. Every tap of that stylus was carving his death sentence out in dry legality of a contract purchase. Prowl tried not to focus on the sound, but his suddenly hypersensitive sensors picked up every tap, the minute scraping of the stylus tip against the smooth data pad, the rather loud way Blacklist's systems cycled. A creeping sensation crawled over his plating.

Prowl wanted to reach out and crush the data pad. He tried to move his hand, processor momentarily throwing the obedience code in sudden, crushing panic when Blacklist paused to read over the data pad, but in that nano-klik he had free, he couldn't move anything. He hand remained exactly where it was, held at attention, as commanded.

Overridden.

Pain spiked through his processor in punishment as the part of himself that was free railed against his programming. Clawing, screaming for freedom, he was rewarded with nothing but agony for his efforts.

By the time that Prowl's struggling stopped, he blindly sensed Blacklist hand over the data pad.

~Smokescreen!~ he cried out, reaching for the one mech that he needed the most.

~Shhh...~ Smokescreen told him, ~I'm here. For as long as I can be.~

~Please,~ he pleaded, begged not knowing what it was that he was asking for. Not knowing what he could ask that Smokescreen could do. His pair-bond was as bound as he was. More-so even. Smokescreen didn't have all the memories that Prowl did. Memories that whispered of countless agonies that could, would come. He would have no contingent to seek refuge in. No Elder to serve under. No clade to be part of. No Focus to seek wisdom from. No cadre to command over. No Wing to lean on. He would be alone.

Lost.

Smokescreen shushed him softly, murmuring fiercely protective words over their comm. ~You are strong, Prowl. You are my Core. You will live and we will see each other again. Understand me?~

Prowl grasped those words like a mech would a support on unstable ground. ~Yes,~ he said, trying not to sound as fearful, petrified, as he knew he had been. He shouldn't be reacting like this.... Irrational. Panicked. Out of control. He had gone over this with Downlink. They had planned this, but now that he was standing within arm's reach of his spark resonance, he couldn't help but feel terrified down to the very depths of his spark. He clutched the memories of his and Smokescreen's courtship closer instead. He focused on Deflector and Nullifier merciless teasing each other. The deadpan snarking traded between Hollowpoint, Checkmate, and Soundcloud on duty and off. Blue Watch and Swiftswitch's swapping what were supposed to be surreptitious comms... All the things that he would miss.

The click of a stylus to a data pad brought his awareness snapping back to the two mechs that stood in front of him.

His buyer had finished reading the contract.

His vents stopped as he listened to the stylus slowly, torturously make its mark, and lifted from the pad.

It was unceremoniously handed back to Blacklist who made humming noises for a moment before he said, "Alright, then. Payment confirmed. You can get your copy from my secretary. He can show you how." At long last, Blacklist faces him and barked, "Enforcer Prowl, you are hereby dismissed from the Praxian Enforcers and your contract transferred to the care of Jazz. You will obey him as you obeyed me."

With those simple words, everything changed. The radical shift in the obedience codes disoriented Prowl as it swung about, polarizing against the mech that he had served for so long. A deep abiding hatred that he hadn't ever been allowed to fully realize finally found purchase, biting deeply into his spark. Thoughts that had lurked in the back of his processor tumbled forward. Dark, covetous thoughts lingered over the possibilities leading to Blacklist's gruesome, exquisitely long and painful end.

Still. He could not act. He turned his head to his new master, optics falling upon the mech for the first time as in the background, Blacklist barked a dismissal to the contingent.

Just as Nullifier and Deflector had said, he was small, but his armor was a sleek, polished, liquid silver. Prowl's spark surged with hungry recognition but as much as it craved that resonance, everything that he knew, everything that he had been taught... Everything that he remembered as a Focus told him that this feeling was nothing but a betrayal of his senses, a betray of self and that it was to be feared above all other things. His optics met the dark, optical glass of a visor that he could tell was more functional and durable than most musicians would bother with.

Prowl wondered, locked in that stare, what his final fate would be.

Chapter Text

Part 1

When Jazz had registered the numbers of his sparkmate's contract he had felt like trash.

Finding your sparkmate was supposed to be a wonderful, celebrated thing... but ever since he had felt that resonance, the world had been turned upside down. His mate was a preprogrammed mech and despite what Soundwave had said, Jazz couldn't help to see the lack of a real mech in that flat expression he wore. Prowl, that was his designation. Even though he felt Prowl's spark he didn't see any way that it made him react to the world around him. What if Soundwave was wrong?

But... he had seen some of them playing with Ravage. He hadn't imagined that. He clung to that thought, wishing dearly that they were out from under the optics of Blacklist. He needed to sit down with his sparkmate badly.

There had to be something more to them. Something more to Prowl.

Blacklist gave his little speech, and when he was done, Prowl turned to look at him for the first time. Jazz felt a little jolt, and from the way that Prowl seemed to be taking in his appearance, he hoped that Prowl felt it too. He hoped that he felt something for him.

After what seemed like an eternity, Prowl's red optics seemed to flicker and he spoke up, "Sir, what are your orders?"

Sir.

Jazz... didn't like being called sir. Especially not by his sparkmate. He nearly told Prowl so immediately, but Blacklist's shifting caught his attention out of the corner of his visor and he bit back the words. Time enough for that later, when Blacklist was gone and they were away from this... place. He bid his goodbyes to Blacklist, who received them with a sneer, both at him, and at Prowl, but he left. Jazz didn't let the way Blacklist's entire existence seemed to grate on him show up in his body language until he was sure that the mech was gone. Fragger, he thought, armor bristling.

When he stopped verbally abusing Blacklist in his processor, he realized that Soundwave, the large mech who was surprisingly easy to overlook, was gone, having sneaked away while he was searching for Prowl... who was still just standing there. Watching him intently. Jazz realized that the mech hadn't moved since the first time he had turned to look at him.

Creepy.

Wait. He was wanting orders, wasn't he? Right. Jazz wasn't really the type to give orders though. Jazz shrugged mentally, "I suppose we should get over to Blacklist's secretary, then." He would have to worry about where Soundwave vanished off to later. He was also going need to figure out what he was going to do with Prowl once they were out of this place, besides pick his processor. He hadn't come to Praxus with purchasing another mech in mind, after all.

Prowl watched him and for the briefest moment, Jazz had the strangest feeling that Prowl was confused, but that feeling vanished when Prowl gave a sharp nod. "Yes sir," Prowl said sharply, apparently deciding to take his words as an order. "Buffer is the designation of Blacklist's latest secretary." Prowl pinged him the long coordinates containing the mech's location.

That wouldn't do either. Jazz pinged back for shorthand coordinates which he got after another moment of there and gone again confusion. That done, he asked, "His current secretary?" He glanced around, fitting the coordinates to the map that he had of the place, before he started walking, motioning to Prowl that he should to lead the way. The faster they got there, the faster they could be away from here, and the faster that he could start learning what made his sparkmate tick.

"Yes, sir," Prowl said in that toneless voice, stepping forward, "Blacklist's previous secretary, Slant Shot, suffered an accident." Prowl's sensor wings twitched ever so slightly on the word "accident."

Oh really? That sounded interesting. Jazz smirked. He called "it was an accident" his aft. He was well aware of the various types of accidents that could befall a mech and considering what Blacklist was like, he wouldn't be too surprised if his secretary had been an execrable piece of slag too. ...Now if only he could figure out why Blacklist hadn't yet managed to have an accident himself.

...Not that he should be thinking that way as an Autobot, but he wasn't from a place like Iacon or Praxus. Jazz followed Prowl through a door, "So what kind of accident was it?" He just had to ask. Polyhex, as rife with corruption as it was, had a whole set of words for the ills that could befall a mech and "accidents" weren't unheard of among the politics there, at least in his line of work. He couldn't expect the same from the relatively cushy Praxian mechs.

Prowl actually noticeably hesitated in answering this time, though Jazz doubted he would have noticed if he wasn't trained as he was. This would have to be good.

"...He was... run over by a bus, sir."

That startled a laugh out of Jazz at how ridiculous that scenario was, despite the constant sir-ing annoying him, "Seriously?" That wasn't something that happened every orn. He tried to figure out how someone could make running a mech down with a bus look like an accident but was stumped. Those things were notorious for their rigid schedules and inability to be changed in timing or route no matter the circumstances, Cybertron over, from Kaon to Iacon itself. Maybe it actually was a genuine accident? Jazz was puzzled. He had been pretty sure that it wouldn't be.

"Yes, sir," Prowl said flatly, but Jazz saw another wing twitch. It wasn't much, but since Prowl wasn't standing stock still anymore, Jazz was pretty sure that he was seeing one of the preprogrammed mech's tells for the first time. He didn't know what it meant, but it was something that he could work with. After walking a little further, Prowl came to a stop. "We are here, sir."

Jazz nodded, skeptically. They weren't all that far from Blacklist's office, but they were much further from Blacklist's office than he would have expected though. Normally secretaries were supposed to be close at hand, not around the corner and down the hall. Huh.

Part 2

Jazz walked out of the secretary's office, data pad in hand, feeling distinctly worked over. He scuffed his hand along his plating, feeling as though he had Buffer all over him, even though the secretary had never so much as run his EM field against Jazz's. Blech! He glanced in Prowl's direction, "I suppose that that answers the question about why Blacklist has his secretary so far away." He made the statement more of a question, testing a little bit.

Would Prowl answer him without his making it a direct question?

The hint of a vacant, almost shell-shocked look faded, becoming the neutral expression once more with the tiniest shift. Now that he was looking for them, Jazz was picking up on the tiniest shifts that showed that Prowl wasn't "just a preprogrammed" anything. It was intriguing in the extreme and made Jazz want to know more. "Secretary Buffer is recognized by most mechs to have an 'overwhelming' personality."

Jazz snorted. There were three things that he noticed right away that were off with that statement immediately. Prowl said it as though the overwhelming part had no effect on him when the crazy mech certainly did. Overwhelming was intonated as though the enforcer had no idea what it meant and was merely reciting a description that he had read. He also didn't identify who the "most mechs" were, which possibly meant that Buffer had the same effect on everyone, whether they were preprogrammed or not.

If he hadn't been paying attention the entire time, very very close attention, he wouldn't have caught any of those things and taken his sparkmate's words and face value... but Jazz's feeling that taking anything that Prowl said at face value was pure stupidity was simply growing stronger. In fact, having to rewrite everything that he ever knew about the preprogrammed mechs in society was making him angry with himself. He was supposed to be smarter than to take anything for granted.

He was Ops. And in Ops, letting prejudices and preconceptions color your thinking got you killed. And that meant that he was going to have to have a sit down with the only preprogrammed mech he already had within reach and figure out what the frag was going on. He felt like he was flying blind and he really didn't like the feeling. He didn't when he was on a mission and he didn't like it when he wasn't. He always had an action plan... except for when he didn't. Like now, when the floor made up of his comfortable presumptions had been ripped out from under him, sending him into free fall.

A tiny shift in Prowl's posture made Jazz realize that he was staring. No. He was glaring. At Prowl. Who, despite standing in an even more proper and stiff stance as a result of that tiny shift, seemed nervous.

Slag. That was not what he was going for at all.

Jazz sighed, "C'mon. Let's get outta here."

Prowl's red optics flickered, yet another tiny, niggling sign that told Jazz yet again that there was more going on behind the scenes than he was showing, "Sir."

What the frag am I going to do? Jazz agonized as he led Prowl away from the compound that the mech had belonged to, I didn't come to Praxus to pick up a sparkmate! Jazz glanced at Prowl, as the silent, stoic, gleaming white mech paced silently a step behind and to the side where, if Jazz had been Praxian, his wings would have had room for a threat display. For a Praxian, Jazz knew that it was a calculated, nonoffensive subordinate position that allowed Praxian superiors to ignore or call upon their subordinates at will.

It was also extremely defferential, as would only be expected from a preprogrammed mech. Preprogrammed mechs were, after all, not people. The only exception where a preprogrammed mech had any sort of authority was when said preprogrammed mech was doing what they had been programmed to do. In Prowl's case, that would be patroling, checking for law violations, investigating complaints, arresting criminals, and so on.

Preprogrammed mechs aren't people, they're tools. Tools that were made to look like people, tools made to mimic real mechs... That was what Jazz had believed. But he had been wrong. Dead wrong.

Jazz didn't like it.

Jazz kept a running commentary of curses in the back of his processor as the rest of his attention was focused on not twitching when he felt the sensation of yet another set of unfriendly optics falling on him. He hid a grimace. He wanted to get out of this place. Immediately.

Unfriendly, unfriendly, unfriendly... Jazz twigged to the red optics that were watching him from guard posts, in the halls, around corners, ...another unfriendly, and ooh, look, another unfriendly!

Yeah... This... might've been a mistake, Jazz thought as he added up the numbers and came up with not good, his finely honed and sharpened instincts prickling under the uncomfortable feeling of being visually dissected, Primus damn it.

Still. Doubting himself now was not going to get him anywhere but an in depth and personal lesson on what it would feel like to be turned into a pile scrap metal. Not fun.

Jazz tried to calm his paranoia, knowing that having something happen at that exact moment was highly unlikely, no matter how much this entire ordeal had frayed at his nerves. Something later? Of course, but not right then. That would be stupid, and even for all his misgivings about them, Jazz had never thought preprogrammed mechs to be stupid.

Jazz let out a mental sigh of relief when he saw the perpetually irritated mech who he was going to be passing by for the fourth time. Judging by the expression on his face, his day had only gone from bad to worse during the time Jazz had been inside the precinct. The grump glowered at Jazz, who gave a cheery grin he really didn't feel, at Prowl, and back at Jazz.

"This your Enforcer?" the grump grunted, and at Jazz's nod said, "I'm going to need proof of purchase."

Jazz twitched at the phrasing but held out the contract.

Grumpy peered at the contract, optics scanning the formal glyphs much, much faster than Jazz would expect, but then, everyone had to have something that made them better than other people.

"Everything seems in order," almost as quickly as Jazz had turned the contract over, the mech was handing it back with a nod, and tacked on a perfunctory, "Goodbye." I don't want to have to see your ugly mug around here again.

And that was that.

Jazz led Prowl out of precinct and into the rest of the city.

Chapter Text

Prowl cycled air faster than was strictly normal for him as he stayed in step with his new master the whole way to where Jazz was staying in Praxus. Jazz. He forced himself to contain the keen he wanted to let out by locking his voice. He was walking away from his cadre, away from Smokescreen, and his Focus. He was walking away from the very reason he was created and sparked into this frame.

He would never see them again.

As they entered the high class temporary quarters, Prowl's thoughts traced circles around each other as the deluge of memories that Downlink had shoved into his spark amplified his terror by adding the weight of the knowledge of the ages that he would be broken by the one whose spark had resonated with his own.

He was walking to his death, even if his spark was allowed to remain.

Dim optics stared blankly into space, unresponsive to any pleading from Core or Wing or pair-bond.

He shoved the memory out of his processor and a tiny shiver shifted his plating even as his processor tried to think of ways to protect himself, to safeguard his mind.

Jazz sat down on one of the couches with a gust of his vents.

He didn't know what Jazz would want though. He scanned the files his cadre had compiled on the mech and read through the extrapolations and projections.

Polyhex. Musician. Programmaphobe. SpecOps. Internal Affairs. Autobot.

It told him everything but what he needed to know.

What does he want, Prowl agonized. Jazz could have whatever he wanted. He had power, physically, mentally, politically...

He didn't realize that the shiver had been noticed until Jazz reached out to touch the trailing end of his wing.

Prowl stopped dead, the wing trembling slightly as clawed fingers wrapped around the white edge of his third and largest wing panel even though the mech didn't do more than grab it. He didn't damage it, didn't clench his hand, didn't crush, or tear, or stab. He didn't hurt Prowl. Yet.

He didn't dare pull his out of his new master's grip in fear that he might anger the mech. If he did, he would only have himself to blame for whatever was done to him.

"Hey," Jazz said, making Prowl's spark quaver even as it pulsed and resonated with the other's spark, "Is something wrong?"

Prowl forced himself to stop any sign of his fear and blink at Jazz blandly as he unlocked his vocalizer. "I am fully functional for anything you may require of me, sir," he replied as placidly and exactingly as he had ever spoken to Blacklist, "Was there something that you wanted me to do?" Prowl didn't think that Jazz had made any signal that he wanted Prowl to do anything other than follow him, but he wasn't trusting that he hadn't missed something. Maybe he wanted Prowl to sit? Kneel?

Tell me you want something, Prowl mentally pled, Let me be useful instead of just... Jazz didn't have any rules that he had to follow in his treatment of Prowl like Blacklist had in taking care of the preprogrammed mechs under his control. Blacklist had to make sure that his subordinates were in working order to police the population. Jazz could do whatever he pleased with his new contractee and no one but Prowl's cadre would care, but they wouldn't know if anything happened to him.

Jazz frowned, fingers tightening slightly in a wordless threat, "People don't normally shake like that unless something's pretty wrong, mech."

Prowl hesitated, not wanting the mech to follow through with the threat. Jazz would obviously not accept another "correct" answer, but Prowl didn't know what else to tell him.

People... the thought connected to his tentative response tree with a snap and a whole new array of options opened up, He connected me to a "person" so maybe...

Calculations whirled through his processors at speed, patterns clattering into place. "Sir..." Prowl said haltingly.

Jazz let go of his wing and instead held it up in a 'stop' motion, "Please don't call me that."

Prowl blinked again, thrown off balance by the sudden, unexpected cessation of the direct threat and the following incomprehensible command. "Don't call you what, sir?" Prowl inquired, attempting to clarify.

"'Sir,'" Jazz said, "Don't call me sir."

Prowl's wings tipped ever so slightly in a confused cant but he mentally rewrote a routine to remind him to substitute the more typical address in place of the military style one that was more customary in the enforcers, "Yes master."

Jazz recoiled, leaning back in his seat as far as it would allow, both hands coming up as if to fend him off.

Prowl froze entirely, fear clutching him as the part of him that wasn't frozen from offending the one mech who had power over him screamed at him, Danger! Damage control!

Jazz was shaking his head and he croaked, "Don't."

Prowl drew his wings in as small as the three unadorned panels could fold and abased himself, "What should I call you, ma--" Prowl cut himself off mid-title, hands trembling ever so slightly from all the stress. "What should I call you, sir?" he asked, tensing for punishment for disobeying the one of the few commands he had been given yet, but 'sir' had received a much less severe reaction than 'master' had.

The expressions that crossed Jazz's face were too quick for Prowl to decipher and the silver mech shuddered. "Call me Jazz," he said softly, "Just... It's just Jazz, Prowl."

Prowl stared.

"That is... most irregular," Prowl managed, forcing himself to cut himself off before he dropped any of the titles that were coming to mind and caused an even worse reaction.

Jazz gave an odd, forced sounding chuckle, as he lowered his hands, "This isn't the Enforcers, Prowl, or the military. You can call me Jazz."

"I am a preprogrammed enforcer," Prowl reminded him, puzzled and wondering where their wires were being crossed or if Jazz had somehow managed to forget something like that as they were walking, "I am your subordinate."

Jazz grimaced, "I didn't buy your contract for that. I don't wan't you as my subordinate."

Prowl went rigid, I don't wan't you as my subordinate... Memories of horrors of what happened to those who belonged to masters didn't want to have his kind as subordinates threadened to swallow him. He shook for a moment before the control that he had spent a lifetime cultivating stopped it again.

"Prowl..." Jazz's voice was soft again, with that odd unidentifiable sound, Prowl noted. Jazz cut himself off, shaking his head. For a long moment, Jazz just looked at him, staring into his optics. He cycled his air sharply and stepped closer. He reached up his hand and placed it lightly against Prowl's chest, over the preprogrammed mech's spark.

"I'm not going to hurt you, if that is what you are afraid of," Jazz said finally, reluctantly.

Prowl's spark wavered, torn by the fear he felt, the words being spoken, and the feeling of the pulse of his spark which yearned and ached. It was wrong. "I am a preprogrammed enforcer," Prowl said again, monotone cracking. I am a preprogrammed Enforcer. That is what I am. That is what I was meant to be. That is me.

Jazz stared up at him for another long moment before he smiled, a tiny, gentle quirk of his agile mouth rather than a grin, "I know." He patted Prowl gently before dropping his hand and taking Prowl's. He laced their fingers together. He pulled Prowl as he took a step back toward the couch, drawing the preprogrammed mech with him, "Come." He patted the seat beside him, "Sit."

Part 2

Prowl looked from the fingers entangled in his own to the couch that Jazz was patting to the calm expression on Jazz's face. Cautiously, he maneuvered himself into the seat which was clearly meant for grounder frames and didn't make allowances for wings. If he was in a better mood he might have even let himself be surprised that there was a place that offered quarters in a Praxian city that didn't have the normal furniture that catered to mechs with wings, sensor wings or otherwise.

As it was, his attention was more on taking in and collating each and every iota of data his sensors were receiving into adjusting his behavior to be the least offensive he could manage, and if that meant sitting on a grounder seat, that meant sitting on a grounder seat.

He wound up sitting more sideways than straight, facing Jazz with his wings angled over the side of the couch. He was just about settled when he heard a muffled laugh and paused.

Jazz was laughing. At him?

"Si--," Prowl cut himself off, "Jazz?"

"I'm sorry," Jazz chuckled and waved his free hand at Prowl, "I didn't think. I'll see about getting something better for you to sit in. I didn't exactly expect to have anyone staying with me."

Prowl was stumped enough for the fear to abate a little, "That is hardly necessary. You needn't trouble yourself, sir." Prowl flinched and the tension came right back. Berating himself, he combed roughly through his code looking to stomp the bit that was giving him trouble out of sheer frustration.

"Hey," Jazz said, "Chill. What did I just say?" He nudged the heavy armor of Prowl's chest plates with a finger in a manner that if he had been one of Prowl's cadre, Prowl would have said it was almost friendly.

"Not to call you sir," Prowl said, then, venting the stress-heat building up under his armor with an almost silent rush of air, He's not going to hurt me... Prowl could play the overly literal preprogrammed mech with the best of them but... Best not to. He's smarter than that. Not going to fall for it. "And that you aren't going to hurt me," Prowl said more lowly, wanting to believe it but not daring to actually do so.

"Right," Jazz said with another there and gone, quicksilver smile, "I'm not going to hurt you, and if I'm going to have a Praxian around, then that means that I'm not going to have you sitting in a seat that is so obviously not meant for your frame type. That can't be comfortable."

Jazz was obviously expecting a response, so Prowl replied with a careful, neutral, "It is adequate."

"But not comfortable," Jazz nodded, "Yep. The couch has got to go."

Prowl almost forgot he was afraid at the sudden leap in logic and the decisiveness that statement showed. He stared at Jazz, bemused, "If that is what you desire, s--Jazz."

"It is," Jazz said smoothly and recaptured Prowl's hand before the preprogrammed mech even knew he was reaching out.

This mech is weird, Prowl thought with chagrin. Jazz was acting contrary to the vast majority of the teachings he had been given and the memories he now held.

On top of that, the odd way the obedience code was behaving was actually making Prowl nervous because Prowl had disobeyed Jazz's command to not call him by the same title as Blacklist and the code had very obviously not reacted with any sort of punishment at all. Something is wrong with it, Prowl concluded as he poked at it and it didn't so much as stir.

Prowl sat there, watching Jazz watch him. He tilted his head ever so slightly, wings twitching open a little more to expose more surface area, and therefore more sensors, to in turn pick up more data. "Jazz..." Prowl spoke up when it became obvious that his master would be perfectly comfortable simply scrutinizing him in silence, "What duties am I to be assigned?" How odd it was to be uncomfortable leaving off the "honorific" of referring to his master by title...

Jazz hummed and, to Prowl's surprise, played with his fingers a bit, like silver pit-kitten prickles against his white hardened plating and sharped, utilitarian claws. It was an odd feeling, having those small hands in his own when the only prolonged contact that he'd had with other mechs was with other Enforcers. "To tell the truth..." Jazz said, optics staring down at their joined hands, "I don't have anything in mind for you to do... Like I said... I wasn't exactly expecting to have company..."

Prowl's wings dipped slightly restless discontent. The need to make himself useful came as much from having always had duty of some sort, whether it was from his masters or among his kind, as it did from the memories that told him that it was better to be useful than it was to be used. Finally, the memories were settling slightly, and offering less horrifyingly gruesome examples of all the ways he was could be used and abused. "I will be in your way as little as possible then," Prowl said with a nod, taking the cue, "I will, of course, follow any and all of your commands." Even if the obedience code was acting odd, Prowl wasn't going to push it until he knew what was going on with it. He wasn't going to be finding it out right then either, because the stress of the long orn had left him exhausted, needing time to recharge, evaluate everything that had happened, and have some energon, because the time he should have had some had come and gone.

"You want something to do, then?" Jazz asked, a gleam in his optics as he raised them to pin Prowl neatly.

...That was a dirty trick, but Prowl had a way out of that little verbal trap of revealing he had a preference one way or the other, "I am accustomed to having work to do."

The gleam of interest didn't fade and Jazz leaned forward, "I'll think of something for you to do then. I'm good at that, but before I have you do anything, I think you need to refuel and have some downtime. You look tired."

Prowl stiffened. No one besides another preprogrammed mech had ever noticed or commented about something like that, other than to perhaps notice enough to reprimand him for being too slow to fulfill an order. Even then, it had never been about him, but the fact that he had failed, not that there was something that could be done to make him better fulfill the orders, if they had ever thought about it that way, which was unlikely in the extreme. "Yes, Jazz."

Jazz smiled, the same small smile as before, but instead of fading it stayed in place this time. "Now that that's settled... Is there anything else I can do to make you more comfortable?"

"Whatever I am provided will be adequate," Prowl replied promptly. As a test, he offered another "correct" answer.

Jazz shook his head. "We'll figure that out later then, but for now, I think I'll just get you some energon and show you to a berth so you can recharge," Jazz said with a whoosh of air from his vents.

Another "correct" answer drawing a different reaction than was usual. "Yes, Jazz," Prowl said, head lowering in a bow. Jazz's designation would be his title, Prowl decided, since he wasn't allowed to call him sir or master.

A lot of the fear had fallen away by the time Jazz unfolded himself from his seat on the couch in a rippling flow of quicksilver and offered a hand to Prowl. He only belatedly realized that he was being offered help up by his master, an Other, which was yet another oddity. Prowl took the hand though, and rose to his pedes, once more towering over his strange, baffling new master. He blinked down at him, gyros spinning before his lagging processor locked them down, though not before he wobbled a little.

"Whoa there, careful," Jazz flashed a grin up at him as he braced his hands against Prowl's chest and chirped, "This way!"

"Yes, Jazz," Prowl replied tiredly. He might not be as afraid, not as terrified, the rough edges temporarily worn away by exhaustion and the odd, piercing intelligence behind the silver mech's optics but he was still just as wary. There was no way of telling if Jazz was going to do something later. There was no way of telling if he wasn't going to do something.

Exhaustion from too many orns spent working blurred the trip from the couch to the energon dispenser, where what he received was of unusually high quality, friendly, meaningless chatter that made him of Soundcloud when he didn't have anything pressing and just wanted to talk and sing to fill the quiet as he relaxed, the faint impression of hands, gentle like Smokescreen's but too small to be his Wing's, on his arms, his sides, his hips, steering him into a dimly lit room, and down on a berth that looked new.

Ah.

Recharge.

Chapter Text

Jazz retreated from the room he had chosen to recharge in when he had first come to Praxus and waited until his sensors reported that Prowl had fallen into recharge before he vented sharply and buried his face in his hands. His armor was clamped tight out of pure emotional turmoil as he leaned against the wall behind him.

He's afraid of me, Jazz thought, rocking back on his heels slighly, No, he's flat out terrified of me. It might have faded some toward the end of their conversation but that because he had passed the point where the need to rest overrode emotional frailties.

His hands fell to his chest, to the pulse he could feel as his spark reached out to Prowl. He knew from experience that that kind of spark deep terror wasn't going anywhere fast. When Prowl came out of recharge, Jazz could bet that all the fear was going to come right back.

It might not be right, but Jazz could only do what he could, like he always did.

He remembered the way Prowl had bent to his will, the shaking that was only the tiniest of tremors that what Jazz could now tell was instead the strictest kind of emotional control he had ever seen in any mech, and that was including Soundwave who had the benefit of wearing a miniaturized communications suite on his face, for all that it looked like a typical mask, and an visor shaped HUD extender that acted much like Jazz's own visor when he had it deployed.

The mech had that kind of control and Jazz had cowed him by flinching away from a word.

He turned off his optics, remembering the way Prowl had drawn in his wings in a way that he had never seen a triple paneled winger do and practically grovel for forgiveness.

"Primus," Jazz whispered, "What did they do to you?"

An innocuous word could set Prowl shaking in fear. A touch meant to comfort could make him go rigid, waiting for punishment and pain. A poorly chosen word from Prowl, which, after his first reaction, Jazz had found a completely understandable mistake, had had the mech practically begging for his life, despite the complete lack of epxression on his sculpted, immobile facial features, set to look regal and imposing, but showing nothing else, let alone emotion.

He hadn't bothered looking closer to realize that the lack of facial expressions was not a lack of emotion, nor a choice but instead an intentional physiological handicap on the behalf of his frame's designers.

The horrible thing was that if Jazz hadn't been looking for it, hadn't had the training to know what to look for, he wouldn't have thought anything of it. He would have seen just another blank slate. Not a person.

Jazz shuddered. The things that mechs could do... The things Jazz could've done if he hadn't realized...

Prowl was anything but a blank slate. There was a real person in there, a real person who was scared to death of him, and yet...

And yet, Prowl was strong.

He was strong enough to look Jazz in the optics and think when Jazz was sure that for any other mech, each tiny tremor that showed through Prowl's control was the equivalent of a normal mech screaming in blind terror.

To Jazz, that was something that was beautiful and brave in a way that that made his spark shiver.

And then when he had started to relax a little. It wasn't trust in him or anything like that, but when he had unclenched enough to do more than run in survival mode, he was intelligent. Prowl was probably even more intelligent than Jazz from the way he could almost see the mech's processor cranking way in the background.

It was stunning.

Prowl was stunning.

This was a preprogrammed mech?

Yes. Yes he was.

He had never looked before to see it in them, so he didn't see. He was told that they were lesser, and he had believed it. This was a potentially fatal flaw. It was dangerous for SpecOps to let prejudices control his actions, and he had been so close to doing so.

He would have lost Prowl if he had. He would have been a fool.

Jazz shook his head. He really didn't know where to go from here. He hadn't expected to run headlong into his sparkmate, much less bring him "home" with him, not that this hotel counted as home. He was supposed to be returning to Iacon when his "leave" expired. He had already completed the mission that had brought him to the city of crystals. All that was left was keeping an appearance for the next two orn and then he would leave, with Prowl in tow.

He stalked over to the guest room where he had been storing his... equipment. It would be a bad thing if his law bound sparkmate saw some of the things that he had here. Some of them were illegal to have the possession of to the nth degree unless you had special permits, and Jazz the musician most certainly did not have those permits that Jazz the SpecOps agent did by order of the Prime.

Flaunting the apparent illegalities in the face of a law-mech was just plain not smart. It was really fragging dumb. Processor cracked. Jazz had to appreciate the irony that came with his sparkmate being an Enforcer, even more than the irony in the fact that Prowl was preprogrammed. Here Jazz was, the mech who did the dirty work and wallowed in the underworld to cut out the rusting scores with surgical ability, and then there was Prowl, wore the face of the anonymous Enforcer with brilliant white armor of the visible arm of the law.

The knowledge of what Jazz did in service of his Prime was classified and attempting to bring someone else in under the umbrella of need-to-know was not something you did in the field unless you had absolutely no other choice. This situation did not have that sort of pressing urgency, and that meant the information would stay encrypted until Jazz had Prowl settled in Iacon. He couldn't afford the complications that all that would bring, and the possibilitiy that Prowl could blow his cover, intentionally or not.

He should probably should put everything away either way. He wasn't going to be using any of it until he was assigned another mission and having all of his tools out where Prowl could find them was negligent in the extreme. Jazz was much more professional an agent than that.

It took him almost an entire groon to sort everything away for transport that made in inaccessable for use as much as it did hide everything. He fiddled with fitting the bits and pieces of surveillance equipment in armor folds, twisted in cabling camouflaged as redundancies, connectors fitting into fake ports, slim blades slotted in under his dorsal plating, sensor amplifiers and field dampeners magnetized to the undersides the his armor of his thighs...

In a groon, the room that had been full of contraband was spotless, besides a smudge that Jazz dutifully buffed out. He shifted his weight, getting used to the difference in running bogged down with his kit again. He preferred to run with as few tools as he could by principle, but the sheer amount of toys that he had made him feel as graceful as a cyberslug rather than his normal agile self. Bleck. He grimaced and slid onto the cleared off berth, feeling overly heavy and uncomfortable from the extras stashed under his armor.

Now he didn't have to worry about Prowl finding his kit by coming into the spare room. Now he had to worry about him noticing he carried more mass, which was the only telltale sign. It had passed inspection by other mechs, Enforcers even, but he hadn't spent an extended amount of time around any of them. Hmph. What an orn... Jazz thought tiredly as he planted a clawed hand over his optics, shutting them off.

In less than an orn, his entire life had been turned on its head. His beliefs were shattered and knowing up from down was zero-g on the scale of difficulty.

With war on the horizon, this was a complication Jazz honestly didn't need... but maybe... Maybe it would be worth it.

A sparkmate wasn't something a mech found every orn after all and even then he could tell that Prowl was something special.

Jazz set himself to come out of recharge at his normal time or when his sensors reported that Prowl was coming out of recharge. Tomorrow was a new orn and he had the time to devote to figure out what he was going to do. After he cleared his head.

With that thought, Jazz forced himself to stop thinking and relax into recharge, systems slowing down to idle as his subsystems started on routine maintenance. What an orn...

Part 2

Jazz snapped out of recharge a moment before he heard a crash, not of anything breaking, his sensitive audials categorized, but more like a frame hitting the ground hard. Then there was a keen of tortured pain.

He was moving before he even knew what was going on, slamming open the door to his room to see...

He stopped, razor tipped claws lowering.

Oh...

Prowl crouched on all fours on the floor, hands clutching at his helm as he gave another keen.

Three steps and Jazz fell to his knees by Prowl's side, "Prowl?" He carefully placed a hand on Prowl's back, between the base of the mech's wings.

"Ja-zzzzz..." Prowl's voice buzzed with feedback, as he broke the keen, "S-sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry." Over and over he repeated the formal declaration of apology, begging forgiveness for some reason Jazz didn't even know.

"What's wrong?" Jazz asked, fingers already seeking out a cable. A virus? Jazz wondered grimly, Or did that fragger, Blacklist, install some sort of logic bomb in him or something?

"Imperrrrrative," Prowl moaned as Jazz's fingers sliped under his armor, seeking a place to jack in. "Must... must obey," he hissed, "No, no, no, no, no..."

Jazz slid the cable home into the medical port and was immediately barraged by error reports. The highest priority of which was a bland report monitoring frame status that stated that Prowl's frame was well within tolerances and would continue to be so for three more breems of punishment. Jazz hissed in outrage and immediately commanded the function to abort execution immediately.

Prowl gave a jolt, as if he had been struck with a power line, functions stuttering for a moment, before he just... tipped over, falling into Jazz's lap. He gave a low keen, not quite as bad as the ones before, but still speaking of pain as his optics flickered.

Jazz relaxed slightly as the torture stopped, even if the twitching didn't stop and Prowl's coolant systems continued on working at high load. Carefully, as the error reports stopped flooding in, he analyzed the remaining ones. They were all caused by the first whatever-it-was that had started this whole mess. No residual damage.

Jazz puffed a burst of heated air, that was one plus at least.

He turned his attention back to the little fragger that had so easily just folded itself away so politely, unlike any sort of malware Jazz had seen before. He prodded the code a little, drawing an unexpected trill of fear from Prowl as it unfolded, but Jazz froze it before it started causing pain again.

"Oh..." Jazz hissed, pissed by what he was seeing.

This isn't malware... he realized, recognizing the elegant sweep of core coding even as it twisted about, ready to tear at itself, talons outstreached. This, Jazz thought with disgust, no mech would write their core programming like this! This has to be some sort of reprogramming... job... Jazz stopped dead, No... Preprogramed.

Jazz stared down at Prowl. His plating rippled with horror at the thought.

He's had this in his core since he was brought online? Jazz wondered. It wasn't really a question because he wasn't going to fool himself. He knew that it had been there.

He traced the code, even as Prowl stilled in his lap, finding that the only reason he could read as much as he did was because the code recognized him as having authorization to inflict this kind of torture, and it was torture, on Prowl. He found the log that listed mechs that did have authorization. And that included Blacklist, and himself as the newest according to the timestamp... which was only a few kliks old. Jazz immediately deleted the Enforcer Commandant from the list without even thinking about it, then quickly deleted all the others. After a short but vicious mental debate, Ops paranoia had Jazz leaving himself as the lone designation on the access list.

What he wasn't expecting to see were minor edits and faults induced into the code that made it less efficient even if it didn't manage to make it any less vicious and a odd sort of buffering between where the code interacted with the rest of the natural, self-written core code. Heh, Jazz thought with a mental smirk, Somebody's been busy.

Jazz carefully folded the pain code away and firewalled it, making Prowl twitch out of surprise and murmur a confused "Jazz?" as he checked the locks before he withdrew from the connection. Formally disengaging, Jazz extracted his cable and saw Prowl staring up at him, optics bright and dialated.

For one long, aching moment, Jazz hated the expressionless face his sparkmate wore as Prowl stared up at him with that regal, impassive expression. He let the anger go. Prowl didn't deserve to bear the brunt of it. Jazz was not so petty that he would take his outrage out on the victim.

"Are you okay?" Jazz asked softly.

Prowl stared at him. "Yes..." then, "You... made it... stop?"

"Yeah," Jazz said.

Prowl blinked. "Why?" he asked.

Like that was even a question.

"It was hurting you," Jazz bit out.

"It was punishment," Prowl corrected in that damnable monotone, so different from what Jazz had seen between the gaps in the preprogrammed mech's armor. Prowl slowly lowered one hand to the ground and levered himself upright with a telling level of deliberation, getting off of Jazz's lap and, Jazz realized belatedly, moving his wings out of what was probably a very uncomfortable arrangement being pressed into the floor.

An offhanded thought occured to Jazz. How the frag does a winged mech get comfortable enough to recharge when they always have to deal with their wings getting in the way?

"For what?" Jazz said flatly, anger sapped out of him by the strange, utterly off topic non sequitur.

Prowl stood up straight, wings arranged in a very deliberate manner, "Multiple breachs of the order to desist refering to Jazz by the title 'sir.' Partial breach of the order to desist referring to Jazz by the title 'master.' Continued breach of the order to refer to Jazz by respectful title. Amelioration: designate 'Jazz' as a form of title. Breach of the order to--"

"Stop," Jazz ground out as he rose from his crouch, his claws curling into fists as the anger flickered back to life at the litany of supposed infractions.

Prowl stopped.

"Primus," Jazz muttered, feeling sick at spark. He was saying that he had to obey... Jazz thought, Primus... He rubbed at his helm, trying to clear the tangled mess his thoughts had become.

Jazz took a moment before he said anything, "I've said that I don't want to hurt you and I know you probably don't believe me, but I don't want that--" Jazz's face twisted, "I don't want you to be hurt by your own core coding either." He raised his head, "Understand?"

Prowl's wings were very, very still for a long moment before they twitched as if to shake themselves out. "Understood," Prowl said, head bowing, wings folding up with a series of rhythmic clicks of armor on armor as he accepted the gently stated order for what it was.

Jazz stared at Prowl for a bit longer before nodding slowly when he decided that Prowl probably understood as best as he could expect for a mech inflicted with core coding as fragged up as Prowl was dealing with.

Okay. Now that that was settled, Jazz felt a little guilty for his tone, seeing that Prowl remained in the meek, chastened posture he had adopted.

The submissive stance didn't settle right with Jazz. He had never gone for the mechs who were so... Weak wasn't the right word. He was attracked to a special kind of fire he could see inside some mechs. The fire he had seen burning inside Prowl was one that he wanted to stoke, not smother, and Jazz had the sinking feeling that if he wasn't careful then it would be all too easy to snuff out Prowl's.

The fear he had seen in Prowl made all too much sense combined with the unnatural twist of the preprogrammed core coding and what it did to him.

Jazz reached out and up with a claw and gently tilted his tall sparkmate's chin up, feeling the shiver of startlement on contact. "Relax," Jazz said, "That isn't necessary, not with me." He then took the moment to reenforce his first truth with a gentle firmness, "I'm not going to hurt you."

He was going to repeat that little phrase as many times as he had to until he was sure that it had sunk in.

"Yes, Jazz," Prowl said.

"You don't believe me," Jazz said again, "but that's okay." That was another truth he didn't mind saying until Prowl could believe it, no matter how long it took.

Jazz sighed and dropped his hand, loath to let go. He wanted to touch Prowl even though he wasn't normally the touchy-feely type, but Prowl made him feel... at home. He hadn't hade a home in forever, but Prowl's spark felt like home and the mech's presense calmed him from his normally phrenic pace.

"Jazz?" The call was quiet.

"Yes?"

"I..." Prowl's crimson optics were dim, "...thank you, Jazz."

Jazz tilted his head, "Don't know what you're thanking me for, Prowl. Haven't done anything deserving of thanks."

Prowl's tightly wound presense relaxed slightly, which Jazz counted as a win, and the white wings were held looser, panels shifting only in minute amounts, but smoothly rather than twitching with stress. Optics brightened, and a hint of the fire that Jazz was so drawn to returned, "Jazz? Is there something you wish for me to do for you this orn?"

A databurst from Prowl held the details of what was required to legally hold Prowl's contract, everything from the already important signatures and credits changing hands to something as mundane as altering Prowl's color to something else so he wasn't the pristine white of the Enforcers anymore.

"Tch!" Jazz frowned at some of the things on the list but indicated his thanks anyway.

"You indicated before that you were not expecting to purchase a contract," Prowl spoke up, voluntarily Jazz noticed with pleasure, "It is only logical to make sure there are no problems in the transfer due to a lack of information."

"Yeah," Jazz said, "We should probably get that out of the way, huh?" Some of the little details were stupid in his opinion but... "Do you like being white?"

"I have no preference," Prowl said smoothly.

Jazz eyed him before he went with instinct decided that Prowl was probably telling the truth instead of trying the false "I am a drone" impression. "Don't care one way or the other then?" Jazz mused, "We should get that out of the way first. Don't need anyone wondering why I'm wandering around the city with an Enforcer on my aft." Not to mention that it would be kind of fun to see Prowl in a snazzy new paintjob... Hmmm... The possibilities...

Jazz had the oddest feeling that Prowl knew something as white wings flexed and flared in a Praxian bow, calm and assured where the others were more a cringe, "Yes, Jazz."

Just as oddly, despite his paranoia, Jazz couldn't bring himself to mind over much that the prickle of knowing didn't bother him.

"Feeling up to it?" Jazz asked, "Coming out of recharge like that isn't good for you, and that's without... that."

"I am functioning optimally," Prowl replied.

Jazz scrutinized Prowl but decided that if there was anything wrong with him, it wasn't anything he could read from the preprogrammed mech's stoicism yet. "Alright then," Jazz said, "I heard about a salon from a friend that he said was good. Let's take care of your paint first."

"Yes Jazz."

Chapter Text

It had taken him a while to get past the daze that had resulted from the combination of the even worse than normal assault on his mind and body by the unexpected reactivation of his obedience code, his master connecting to him while he was being punished, and then having him halt the punishment and firewall it so that it didn't come back...

It was almost too much to handle for him for a long while. He was forced to go almost on autopilot so he could follow his master's instructions while the vast majority of his processor concentrated on going through the mental and emotional backlog so different from anything he had ever calculated as being possible it threatened to cause a deadlock in his processing if not simply crash him completely.

It had taken him longer than the buffing Jazz had insisted on doing to get his emotional equilibrium back. It also took longer than the small cube of still too high a grade of energon. Even now, on the streets, he wasn't in stable frame of mind that he would have preferred.

Prowl paced slightly behind Jazz led the way to the salon in the customary position of a subordinate mech but even so, he felt oddly light despite the way his processor and struts ached from the rude onlining when the obedience code had suddenly snapped online, checked the logs which hadn't stopped when the active part of the code had, and promptly crushed him.

He contained the shudder to just a incremental flick of his wings that could have just been another normal small adjustment for balance as he stepped around a smaller mech not paying enough attention to realize he was in the way. The startled squawk the mech gave when he realized who and what the large white mech who had gone past him was amused Prowl greatly for a moment due to the guilty conscience being displayed before he reminded himself that he wasn't an Enforcer anymore.

The depression that loomed was firmly pushed away as he focused on planning--evil genius plotting Smokescreen would have affectionately "corrected" him--for the activities of the orn going by what information he had from Jazz. He was basing it on the fact that Jazz seemed to be prioritizing Prowl's integration to Jazz's ownership and being out from under Blacklist's control.

It was rather unnerving to have to outright discard so much information and rely almost solely on direct observations made while interacting with the target but most of the information--roughly 98.9%--that Prowl could access of all that he had received from Downlink did not synchronize with the fragile patterns Prowl had tentatively set up as belonging to Jazz. The information that had been hastily gathered by his cadre was more directly relevant to Jazz, but it was typically faulty in the way that personal data would be slower to gather, and all personal data was secondhand or worse.

The lack of personal data was even worse in Jazz's case because he did not interact with preprogrammed mechs. The fact that he had bought Prowl's contract, had taken him to his current residence, even acted almost partial towards Prowl was so far outside any of the expectations that had been laid out it was ludicrous.

Prowl stopped when Jazz did, when the small mech finally spotted the salon he had been hunting for with his optics rather than following the directions towards the coordinates as he had been.

Jazz darted a grin towards him and, to Prowl's shock, grabbed the Enforcer's wrist. He dragged Prowl into the salon, using Prowl's shock at the move to his advantage.

"Nice place," Jazz commented idly before swaggering up to the only mech that was in sight, still dragging Prowl along, and chirped a hello, "Hi there! Designation's Jazz. I got a last klik reservation." He flashed a commerce encrypted set of credentials.

The tall, delicate almost to the point of being spindly mech smiled, "Hello, Jazz." The mech paused as he processed the information he had been given before smiling professionally, shifting from wooing-potential-customer to satisfying-current-client with light speed, elaborate, chromatophores shifting in a brilliant display of color that Prowl had learned some mechs found enticing. "I see that you are indeed on my list. My designation is High Chroma. May I ask for an outline of what work you wish to be done?"

"Got a challenge for you," Jazz chuckled and nudged Prowl forward, making the preprogrammed mech feel distinctly awkward, standing next to his master. He was not used to being put on display. His cadre had camouflaged him for a reason! "I need to make my white friend here not quite so white."

High Chroma blinked at Prowl with professional politely puzzled disbelief, "...an Enforcer?"

"Problem?" Jazz asked casually.

After a moment, High Chroma shrugged, "No problem, Patron, I simply do not understand why you would wish to spend your credits on a..." a lengthy, dubious pause, "plain white paintjob."

Jazz actually laughed, though Prowl thought that, with what little experience he had gotten in reading his master's body language, Jazz was, in fact, not happy, "No, mech. Prowl here needs to not look like an Enforcer. Or at least not plain white. I thought that you might be interested in crafting an appealing look for him." Jazz was smiling, but it wasn't one of the gentle smiles he had given Prowl, or the carefree grins that his master seemed unable to keep off his face. This smile was different.

High Croma obviously noticed as well and immediately went from verging on disrespectful to apologetic and appeasing-displeased-client. The smile brightened, "I see! What did you have in mind?"

Jazz grinned, "I was thinking something--" Prowl mentally winced. Here came the garish colors. Jazz suddenly stopped and frowned, seeming to reconsider, "I think we'll start off with something classy and decide from there."

"Classy?" High Chroma said thoughtfully, optics now devouring Prowl's frame in a way the Enforcer found distinctly uncomfortable, "Hmmm... Yes, classy is probably the way to go with an Enforcer frame. Anything else would come across oddly. Bold or understated?"

Jazz made a thoughtful noise, now directing a similar frame devouring look towards Prowl himself, "Bold. Long wavelengths. High sat but rich. Doesn't necessarily have to be bright though."

High Chroma's optics lit up and he turned to Jazz excitedly, "Mostly white with deep red accents." He data burst Jazz, but he left Prowl, a preprogrammed mech and thus beneath his notice, predictably uninformed.

Jazz nodded, "It's a nice start but how about--" another data burst, but this one was also sent to Prowl, "--to accent the red."

Prowl opened the specifications with trepidation but was surprised that it wasn't horrible. There was just one problem that neither mech was likely taking into consideration with their plans. "No sensor wing coloration," he said and sent the specs back to them both with the minor alteration.

High Chroma seemed miffed but Jazz seemed oddly happy by the interruption. He grinned and shrugged at the body artist, "You heard the mech."

"But the stripes accentuate the rest of the design!" High Chroma objected, "It throws off the composition if you get rid of them!"

Jazz seemed to consider it and an unexpected comm startled Prowl when Jazz's voice suddenly prodded him, ~Reason for having no color on your wings?~

~I am a preprogrammed mech sparked to a position of authority,~ Prowl explained to the non-Praxian, ~That is the only reason that I have the panel set that I do. I am not even among the Enforcer ranks any longer. Any sort of privilege implied is false.~

~I might not know that much about you, but your record has turned up the fact that you are a master of Diffusion. Very few mechs can claim that, preprogrammed or not, Enforcer or not. That is not a false implication, and that's not counting the other stuff that I'm sure isn't in there,~ Jazz scowled at him, ~Any other objections?~

Prowl simply stared at Jazz in bafflement at just how quickly his reasoning was put down. He forced himself not to respond with an immediate "No, sir!" and a salute. A musician. Right. No musician had that kind of presence.

Jazz inclined his head, ~Good.~ He turned to High Chroma, "I don't really know too much about the meaning of the way designs are applied to wings--" a lie, Prowl knew, knowing those kinds of things was part of being Ops, "--but there is a way of marking that someone is a master of a martial art, isn't there?"

Apparently mollified, High Chroma nodded, "Which martial art?"

"Diffusion," Jazz said.

"Oooh," the artist enthused, "Those are some of the prettier designs! Understated, but pretty." Another idea was sent as a data burst to Jazz, which the silver mech promptly forwarded to Prowl when he was inevitably ignored.

Resigned, Prowl took in the changes in. After a long moment, he had to admit that it actually wasn't that bad. If he was going to have to have embellishments on his wings then he would at least have symbols of an accomplishment that belonged to him. Even if it gave away more information than he wanted to.

He would just have to make it a misleading display. Diffusion wasn't the only martial art he was the master of, but if it was the only one he actually wore...

Well.

Having a nasty surprise held back to use when you need one was never a bad thing.

That was a deception one of their brother shadow clade's would have described as being worthy of their teachings.

Jazz made an appreciative noise and when he spoke over the comm again, Prowl was almost expecting his master to ask his opinion, ~So what do you think?~

~It is fine, Jazz.~

~Even with the designs on the wings?~ Jazz gave him a questioning look. It was an odd turn-around considering how commanding he had been about the very same subject a klick previously.

~Yes. White would be more proper of a mech of my position but it would stand out, wouldn't it?~ Prowl thought that he might understand the thought process of the SpecOps agent on that point. Having the markings of a Diffusion master might make him stand out in a different way, but that was a type of camouflage of its own. ~And... I am a master of Diffusion.~ It wasn't quite pride that he said that with, but the skill was important to him. It was a part of who he was and something he had invested many a joor learning.

~Nice!~ Jazz grinned and immediately chattered to High Chroma, "Alright. I think we're decided."

High Chroma's optics gleamed, "Good. Now for the details."

Prowl's wings drooped. How complicated a process does this have to be? he grumbled mentally.

Prowl endured the babbling of terms that had never applied to him before in his life besides high gloss and white, followed by good natured haggling, and then High Chroma was all over him.

Prowl stiffened and practically yanked himself out of the artist's grabby, long-fingered hands, wings spread in an automatic what-the-Pit-do-you-think-you-are-doing-get-your-hands-off-of-me display that made High Chroma flinch back from the Enforcer. Prowl forced the memories sparked by the contact down as they rose up, clamoring to drag him down.

"Prowl..." Jazz said, voice amused but at the same time reprimanding.

Prowl immediately returned to a neutral stance out of reflex, even without the conspicuous lack a punishing echo from the firewalled part of the obedience code. He was pounced on by the crazy artist again as soon as High Chroma gathered his nerve and this time he made himself endure the unwanted attentions with a shudder as skinny fingers probed his armor and slid into gaps and under plating in a way that was invasive in the extreme.

That just wasn't right. Civilians were policed by his kind, they didn't get all touchy with mechs like Prowl unless they owned them, and even then it wasn't typical. It was unnatural.

Eventually, the artist finished his inspection much to Prowl's relief. He turned to Jazz and babbled something else that had his master nodding thoughtfully and speaking the same nonsense back as if it made sense.

Prowl's spark ached for Smokescreen, for his Wing's familiar soothing presence. Smokescreen would have known what they were talking about. He had always been more social and interested in the lives of Outsiders.

He was undone without his cadre, a Core laid as bare as an exposed spark. He had no Claws to touch with, no Vision to see, no Voice to sing, no Shield to defend, no Blade to attack, no Field to feel, no Sensor to know, and no Wings to fly with.

His determination wavered as his spark yearned.

Spindly hands poked and prodded again, but this time he didn't react. He drew upon the calm blankness that allowed him to carry out orders even under duress as a refuge from the sheer loneliness and the ravaging memories Downlink had imparted to him. Smokescreen...

With Jazz's blessing, and a muttered, "Gotta go run around and take care of all those pesky little details..." the opinionated body artist ordered him to the back room where the actual business was conducted and into the wash racks with an imperious flick of his hand.

He stepped into a large room more luxurious than any of its kind he had seen before. Everything that his people were provided was entirely utilitarian. This place was so far in the opposite direction from utilitarian it was shocking to Prowl's senses.

High Chroma appeared and ushered him toward the first, and simplest stall--Why does there have to be multiple different kinds of stalls? What is the point?--and gave him a cursory rinse, first running over his armor with a heavy mesh scrub, then a smaller, soft micromesh one, occasionally scraping at a speck of something that Prowl hadn't had the time or patience to get off quite yet. The most time in that stall was spent with the artist kneeling and scrubbing away quite a bit of grime Prowl's taloned pedes.

"Into the bath," High Chroma ordered imperiously, pointing towards an alcove mostly hidden away from the rest of the room.

Prowl gave the hot golden oils a dubious look, not seeing the point but did as he was bid.

It was a strange sensation, having the liquids slide over and under his armor in a way that Prowl wasn't sure was comfortable but the heat...

Prowl almost purred at the feeling of warmth which overrode any feeling of disconcertment. He shut off his optics and toned down the gain of all his sensors besides the ones monitoring temperature.

High Chroma seemed satisfied at least, "You will soak for a full joor before I return, unless you wish to continue your detailing sooner. If that is the case, signal me when you wish to get out and I will attend to you."

...Detailing? Really? Prowl turned his optics back on for a moment but just as quickly flickered them off again, "Understood."

Was that really his voice? He sounded so relaxed...

"Good," even like this Prowl could sense High Chroma bow and retreat from the room, leaving him alone.

Prowl cycled his vents and felt the remaining intakes that hadn't been sealed blow air bubbles into the golden oil from the vents on the sides of his chest and feel shimmering bubbles shimmy up his sides.

The unexpected luxury felt wonderful. It felt so wonderful that his processor was derailed from all the horrors that danced in him mind from memories that did not originally belong to him and all the plans that he was making to survive belonging to the unpredictable Jazz and focused instead on the new sensations he was soaking in.

He flexed his fingers experimentally, feeling the odd slide of the thick liquid against his claws despite its lack of substance. He flexed his talons and as his temperature sensors adjusted to the overall high temperature in the bath he realized that it was warmer further toward the center and bottom of the large pool. Giving it a moment of thought to analyze the possible effects on his cooling system, Prowl decided that it was more than worth it. He shifted off the shallow edge where the oil came half way up his chest and disappeared under the surface with barely a ripple and slid into the deep end.

Settling on the bottom, Prowl flared all his armor, inviting the warmth into all the places he never exposed. He curled up in the heat and let all the mountains of tension laying heavily across his shoulders go for the moment.

He spent the joor in a heady state of zen, just existing, not acting or reacting, just being.

When the joor was up, Prowl came out of the meditative state, only reluctantly returning his sensors to their normal state when High Chroma's shadow fell upon the pool. Prowl uncurled from his position on the bottom, flexing his sensor wings, spreading them, flaring all three of the panels in a lengthy stretch and fluffed his armor before laying everything back in a more customary position. He slipped forward, almost sliding out of the oil as sheets of it poured off of him, hissing at the temperature differential between the cool air and his oil heated protoform and armor. Steam billowed off of him and he let out a great rush of air as his cooling vents kicked into high gear, expelling the heated air that had been trapped within his frame.

High Chroma took a quick step back, armor shivering and pulled in tight as he stared at Prowl like he was staring Unicron in the face.

Prowl shook his head, flicking his armor to remove the lingering oil, ending his shake with a flick of his wings. His body felt so smooth as joints that would tend to be rough or stick slid across each other in a way they hadn't even since before he was sparked. He stepped forward, making High Chroma take another nervous step back, and stepped up onto the mesh drains meant to catch the oil coming off of mechs leaving the bath. He rolled his shoulders and flexed his joints in a purely hedonistic manner as he waited for the artist's prey-fear reaction to calm.

After a while, High Chroma calmed to a more professional manner, though he still stepped nervously. Any sense of less than respectful regard had vanished when it seemed that the artist had realized that Prowl was an Enforcer, the he was dangerous, and that he was not High Chroma's plaything.

The last item was the most important part to Prowl's mode of thinking.

The artist made an uncomfortable noise but spoke with only respect, "Prowl, please come this way. The next part of your detailing will be another wash."

Prowl followed High Chroma to a different stall than he had been taken to the first time. This one was filled with many different types of what looked like cleansers and dryers.

"I will be removing any excess oils from your frame and then make sure that you are completely dry before I begin to apply your colors," he was informed.

"Understood," Prowl replied docily.

"Ah..." High Chroma fidgeted, "Could you stand like... Thank you."

Prowl allowed himself to be moved this way and that as High Chroma applied cleanser and then dried him off completely with expert hands that knew how to properly handle the sensor rich parts of Prowl's frame without so much as a twinge of the physical discomfort he had been expacting at the hands of a non Praxian. He was left feeling surprisingly refreshed and sensitive.

When High Chroma was finished with the cleanser, Prowl found, to his surprise, that his armor shone almost blindingly white, even brighter than it had been when he and the others had been cleaned up for parade duty. His sensors tingled.

"Wow," the artist murmured after he took a step back to see all of Prowl's frame better, "I'd never realized that they used this shade of white for Enforcers." After a moment, he shook his head and returned to fidgeting nervously, "Prowl, there is an optional service... If you wish, I could finish off with a full cleansing... but that would require the removal of your armor..."

Prowl didn't even have to think about it. "No," was the immediate, simple yet firm answer.

When Prowl didn't react in any other way than an immediate refusal, High Chroma relaxed. It was a very personal suggestion. Maybe some Outsiders would think nothing of removing their armor for a full frame cleaning with a stranger, but Prowl was not one of them. He would only ever allow those that he trusted implicitly to see him without his armor.

"Very well," High Chroma actually seemed relieved by the refusal as well, despite having been the one to offer the service in the first place. Some frame types would take it as a mortal affront after all--usually war frames--but the artist had no frame of refference for when it came to his kind. "Since the external cleaning is finished and you are otherwise dry, we can move onto actually adjusting the color of your chromatophores."

Prowl nodded and he was led into yet another stall, one lined with just as many different colored nanite containers and jars of polish as the other room had had of specialized cleansers. That at least made sense to Prowl in that there were countless amounts of colors that a mech could get, at least opposed to the countless cleaners that had been in the other stall.

High Chroma stepped over to a holographic display that was idly displaying what looked like previous jobs of a wide variety of colors and frame types. With a swipe of his hand through the light, he disrupted the display and brought up the plans of what Jazz had negotiated and he got to see the designs with his own optics instead of what his processor projected with software not made to do so.

A rotating display of a Praxian Enforcer appeared, first a plain white, then with a gesture from High Chroma, the model changed to a colored version. Prowl stared at it. It was oddly unnerving to see.

The model shifted, obviously following a behavioral display pattern from some other type of Praxian--a civilian model most likely, even a high ranked one would have more casual body language. After a moment, Diffusion master marked wings flared in a confident, flirtatious display as bold red chest plating fluffed up in a way that he couldn't help but disapprove of having directed at him, even if it was only a hologram, before returning to a more casual stance, before walking in place.

"This is the design that Patron Jazz commissioned. Is there anything missing or that should be altered?" High Chroma asked, gesturing toward the model.

"It is fine," Prowl said. It was a good design, if shocking to Prowl's simpler sensibilities. If he had any luck, other mechs would be distracted by the color and not even look to see Praxian Enforcer behind it. Everyone knew that Praxian Enforcers were white. The city was actually famous for it.

The artist clapped his hands together excitedly, "Alright then! This is my favorite part." He stepped over to the wall and after a moment of perusing the containers, returned with his arms full of them, and a set of unfamiliar tools among more familiar ones, such as the handful of nanite paddles.

The artist set them down on the table and arrayed them in a manner that at least looked like it made sense to him, even if it didn't make sense to Prowl. High Chroma smiled brightly at Prowl and motioned him closer. "Please stand right here. I'm going to start off with your breastplate because that it going to take the longest to cure, and then I'll do your chevron, then the rest of the red accents, since this kind of red has one of the longest curing times out of all my colors," the artist chattered happily, "After that, I'll go back and work in the gold."

Prowl was positioned in a way that made sure the vast majority of the plates that High Chroma was going to attending to were available, though it soon became obvious that he would have to wait for another pass because some of his armor was in the way of access to other parts of his armor. The artist didn't seem fazed at all and when he made the observation merely added, "That happens sometimes. Most often with the more durable builds and every single war frame that I've had through here. I had one patron that I had to go over five different times with just one color to get everything coated, but it's just what you get when it comes to that frame type. There's a reason most of them don't bother with color nanites--except on the rare special occasions of course--when they get themselves so scuffed up all the time."

As he was talking, High Chroma took a container and with a deftness that came from long practice, arms splitting down the middle so that he suddenly had four arms that held and stirred together a number of chemicals and the nanite paste into a sterile container. He picked up one of the paddles and dipped it into mixture. It came up with lot of brilliantly red nanites that were promptly plastered across Prowl's chest armor.

One hand held the nanite container, one hand managed the applicator, another smoothed out the nanites into a smooth layer, and the last moved behind the others with one of the odd tools that looked oddly like one of the old fashioned blasters that still occasionally turned up in the gutters but instead of accelerated plasma only output some kind of signal that did something to the nanites that had been put down.

It went surprisingly quickly, but perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised. High Chroma was a professional, one that was obviously good at what he did and had even upgraded himself to be that much more efficient at his job.

It took roughly two breems for all the red to be put down and set for curing. Red coat finished, High Chroma grabbed another clean container and proceeded to create another mix, one that was a bright bur rich metallic gold. In less than a klik, he was attacking Prowl again in a flurry of arms that was over almost as quickly as it had begun and he was changing colors for a glossy black.

In another breem, the comparatively less complicated black armor was set and High Chroma was stepping back with a smug expression, "Aah! This one turned out so nice!" He set down his tools and after an odd set of motions his arms reintegrated, joining back together with a series of clicks to form a pair of more normal looking arms with double thumbed hands which he clapped together with a pleased sound.

"You have... hmmm... probably another breem before the red nanites finish integrating and we can remove the excess," High Chroma said with cheer, "And then we can polish you up and you'll be free to go." Luckily, the artist didn't seem to need an answer as he puttered about, putting everything away.

Prowl didn't move, because he really didn't feel like accidentally scraping something and then having to have to have it done all over again. To that end, Prowl waited patiently, not even twitching a wingtip.

In the intervening time, High Chroma finished cleaning up, which required a quick scrub of his color flecked hands, and pulled out a series of waxes, polishes, and buffers.

Here we go again, Prowl though, when High Chroma dipped a cloth into jar and twirled it around before pressing it against Prowl's frame, rubbing in the wax on it with an expert hand. Hmmm... Prowl tilted his head slightly, enjoying the firm, knowledgeable pressure as every bit of his frame was waxed, then polished to a gleaming shine.

The pressure eased and the rubbing slowed to a stop. "Done," High Chroma said softly.

Prowl gave a low rumble, but straightened from the infinitesimally small slump. He fluttered his wings in unconscious wordless appreciation of the wrap up, "Indeed." How hedonistic... Prowl mused.

"If Patron Jazz not returned from his errands you are free to wait for him to do so in the lobby," High Chroma said as he wiped the wax off of his long fingers. He gave Prowl a smile, "If I dare say so myself, feel free to stay as long as you like if only to draw more customers by showing off my work!"

The artist laughed and shooed Prowl out of the back.

Luckily, Jazz had already returned from his errands and when Prowl walked into view, his optic ridges rose and he gave an appreciative whistle. "High Chroma does good work," his master said, approving of the change.

"Why thank you, Patron Jazz," High Chroma said with the arrogance of an artist who knew he was good at what he did and accepted the compliments as being his due.

"Definitely worth it," Jazz said, "the tip too."

High Chroma's optics flickered for a moment, before he held up one finger, "Speaking of tips, this is the other thing you asked for."

Prowl's optics sharpened as the artist handed over a small DCID to the small silver mech who promptly subspaced it. What was that about? the Enforcer wondered. It wasn't exactly typical to use those things. Hmmm...

Jazz turned to him with a lazy smile, "Alright. I think I've got everything handled for you to come home with me. Is there anything that you need to do?"

Say goodbye...? Prowl shook his head, "No Jazz."

Chapter Text

Honestly, when Jazz had left Prowl in High Chroma's care, he hadn't expected the utter shock he would feel upon returning to see Prowl appear with a blaze of resplendent color against his still mostly white armor.

It was one thing to talk about it and send specs back and forth, processor to processor, but to see it with his own optics as Prowl loomed like that foreboding, emotionless instrument of justice he was created to be, with colors like that... That was something else entirely.

He hid his shock at the reaction it dragged from him with an automatic whistle of appreciation of a good looking frame and a ready compliment, if only to hide how much he liked it.

He was not the type to look at frames for when he was looking for something he liked, even if he could admire the pretty ones. When it was for pleasure, he appreciated the mind more, and when it wasn't... Well. He endured. Over the vorns, he had run the gamut, from enjoying messing up Prime's too shiny finish on occasion to tumbling with the roughest, toughest war frames to never see a lick of chromatophores. Variety was the spice of life for Jazz, but never before had he looked at someone like the way he had looked at Prowl. It hadn't seemed right to be like that with fake-people that Jazz had avoided at all costs due to the way they made his spark flutter and shiver in all the wrong ways.

He had avoided the pleasure bots, ignored the heavy labor crews, and queasily politessed his way around the rest of the ones that he couldn't evade.

But there stood Prowl who, contrary to everything he had felt before from the sick squirmy feeling that something was wrong in his spark he had felt before, felt like home.

He hadn't had somewhere he wanted to call home as opposed to simply having a place to stay in a long, long time and Prowl's spark felt like a promise of that forbidden paradise that had always slipped through his fingers sooner or later.

He barely remembered to say the required phrase to the artist, who he had asked to do a very special something for him.

When High Chroma placed the little data cache in his claws he subspaced it immediately in an attempt to halt the burning want to access all the information within. The DCID was relegated to burning a hole in his subspace with a fire that was fed with his curiosity.

Instead of letting his thoughts linger over what he might see, he turned his attention to the freshly waxed and polished and boldly colored Prowl and asked the mech who feared him if there was anything that Prowl needed to do.

Of course the answer was an immediate no, even if he would have really rathered the answer be yes.

But it wasn't, so Jazz couldn't do anything but nod and have his Enforcer follow behind him like a large no-longer-white shadow drawn by the invisible leash--which no less real for being made of code--that Jazz held one end of by virtue of holding Prowl's contract while the other end of the leash that was wound like a shock collar about his neck, about his spark, starving it of life and light, stealing from him the very right of self-determination guaranteed to all of Primus' creations.

He had needed to think and rearrange his mental landscape to account for what he had learned from his sparkmate. Needed time to stow away his outrage and fury so he could do so. Needed time to figure out where a sparkmate would fit into his life besides being his. Needed time to arrange transportation that would include Prowl in his plans, instead of the single spot he'd had on the cheap economy maglev that headed between Praxus and Iacon.

Needed to figure out who had treated what was his so poorly, who he needed to kill to make things better.

Jazz stopped that thought before it could go any further.

Bad thoughts, Jazz, he scolded himself, Bad thoughts.

It would be nice though...

Jazz firmly steered his attention in more productive direction, but made a mental note to talk to Prime to about checking on the treatment of preprogrammed mechs, with an aside thought wondering if the big mech would accuse him of having been infected with a virus. Or hacked. It really was wildly out of character for him after all.

He needed some sort of plan.

Plans... He hated making plans, necessary evil that they might be. ...Meh.

As much as improvisation might be his highly preferred method of dealing with things, even he would admit that doing nothing but was one good way of getting yourself into a pile of slag so high you might never see the top of it again.

He slapped himself in the face with a muted clang, ignoring the way Prowl startled and stared at him strangely, and told himself to stop procrastinating.

"Don't mind me," he told his sparkmate from behind his hand. His sensors told him that Prowl merely continued to stare however. Probably wondering what kind of freak Jazz is supposed to be. "My processor works better with a little percussive maintenance sometimes," he joked.

"I'll have to remember that," Prowl replied in his typical monotone after a long moment. It was almost a joke. Delivered in perfect deadpan.

Most mechs would probably think they were simply dealing with an overly literal mech, but Jazz couldn't help but throw his head back and laugh.

He grinned like a loon, floundering mood picking up at the joke and the way his spark warmed in its casing. Yeah, he thought cheerily as he grabbed Prowl's wrist again, still drawing a startled reaction, but less surprised than the time before, and dragged the larger mech out into the hustle and bustle of the city, I like this mech.

Now how's this for a plan? he though with a mental laugh. "Where're the best places to get spots on the next vac-levs out of Praxus heading for Iacon?" he tossed out. He had a perfectly good source about probably just about everything Praxus in his claws, he might as well use it.

"The Central Hub," Prowl replied, flicking a data burst of schedules to him, apparently unruffled despite being "dragged" along, most probably because he had legs that seemed practically as long as Jazz was tall and any serious dragging by Jazz would just be ridiculous.

"Next stop's there then," Jazz said, "Best route to get there?"

His answer was an instant route that had overlays of traffic pattern calculations, construction detours figured in, and speed/angle vectors. Tags were included for several secondary paths.

Jazz whistled.

That was something he hadn't been expecting and came to a halt, pulling them both out of the pede paths so he could stare up at Prowl with curiosity.

"Top ten most popular attractions in Praxus?" Jazz prompted, a niggling thought itching away at the back of his processor.

Prowl simply burst him a list wordlessly.

Jazz's optics gleamed, "Now give me routes to each of them."

A nanoklik, and Jazz had his routes, each as detailed or more so than the first one.

Fraaaaaag... that's hot, Jazz thought with a wave of jealous lust for the kind of mind his sparkmate had just shown he had to have been hiding behind his Enforcer standard face plates. It might not be hot the way explosions were, or hot the way a warrior was in his element, but it was hot all the same. To be able to calculate all those things so quickly... The possibilities...

"I think I like your processors," Jazz told the mech with a genuine smile, but Prowl merely twitched faintly before, oddly enough, the declaration seemed to relax him into not holding his wings quite so tensely. Huh... Odd reaction.

So I compliment him on his new appearance and nada. I compliment him on his mental prowess and I get progress. Hmmm. I'll remember that, Jazz filed away shrewdly.

"I am a tactical model of Enforcer," Prowl said, sending Jazz the full model type name, which the Ops mech promptly accessed one of the databases that he had available to him for his job and downloaded all the specs, "I have a higher level of parallel processing capability than the standard model and integrated tactical modules."

Jazz absorbed that and frowned slightly, "Did Blacklist know just what it was he was giving away when he practically just gave you to me?"

Prowl's specs were actually pretty astonishing for a preprogrammed mech. Just saying that he had a higher level of parallel processing was an understatement in the extreme and describing the parts of his processor devoted to tactics as mere "integrated tactical modules" was almost obscene. Enforcers might have frames made out to an exactingly strict cost-benefit analysis sturdiness, but Prowl's processors were top notch, bar none. Prowl's contract might not have been cheap, but if Jazz had known the shiny that he had been getting there then he would have expected the contract to be many times the price he had gotten.

Prowl's head inclined slightly, evaluating, "In all probability... No."

Jazz chuckled, the sound rife with a darker kind of satisfaction, "Just goes to show that greed doesn't pay." He nodded to himself, "Alright. After we get those seats on the vac-lev I want to see what you can do with that souped up set of processors you've got there." He pointed a claw toward Prowl and poked the mech's crimson breastplates for emphasis.

"If that is what you wish," was said blandly, though again, the emphasis on Prowl's more intellectual capabilities seemed to drain some of the tension out of the mech. "Do you wish for me to lead the way to the Central Hub?" Prowl offered unexpectedly.

"Heh. Yeah, sure," Jazz nodded, reigning in his desire to observe what made Prowl's inner workings tick for himself. "Go ahead."

He couldn't ask because there was too much risk that Prowl would say "Yes Jazz." and ignore whatever it was the preprogrammed mech actually wanted. Jazz wanted Prowl to trust him enough to offer something like that, rather than Jazz simply taking it.

To Jazz, to do otherwise to his sparkmate seemed just wrong.

Prowl bowed, an elegant tilt of his head and a subtle sweep of his wings, before he started out into the crush of mechs, using his larger frame to make way for Jazz as he headed straight for the transport lane that would take them out onto the speedway.

Jazz slipped past Prowl as the larger mech ushered him forward and out onto the mag strip. He polarized his pedes to the surface rather than letting it do what it usually did, which was make things float. He waved Prowl forward. "I'll be right behind you."

Prowl nodded and, rather than stepping onto the mag strip, seemed to glide forward, an impression aided by the mech's flaring wings, looking almost as though the Praxian was going to take flight.

Seams shifted and split, parts whirling, as Prowl's frame reconfigured itself in one smooth predatory motion that a mech like Jazz could appreciate even if it sent the other mechs around them skittering nervously several steps in the opposite direction for the same reason. Prowl's alternate was sleek in a heavily armed and armored way. The combination of the wings that could deceive someone into mistaking the alt for a flight frame and the heavy duty cannon that sat right next to the base of each wing was making Jazz all tingly.

High Chroma does good work, as always, Jazz thought, though this time he refrained from complementing Prowl on his frame, working his theory.

With a stylish twirl, the smaller silver mech transformed into his own alternate form and they were sailing onward, toward the Central Hub.

And if Jazz was silently ogling Prowl's shapely aft the entire time, then he didn't say a word about it.

By the time they returned to Jazz's quarters it was well into the thirty-fifth joor and the silver mech was worn down from the constant running around, still weighted down by the full uncomfortable weight of his kit.

He flopped down on the couch and kicked his pedes up on the far arm rest and crossed his arms behind his head as he molded his frame to the shape of the couch.

When Prowl merely hovered near the door instead of coming inside and sitting down or leaving like Jazz had been telling him to since the had finished arranging everything, Jazz gave him a flat look.

"Come inside, or go ahead and head out," the silver mech told the Enforcer once again, just as he had when Prowl seemed torn between two decisions, "Don't just hover there."

He uncrossed his arms and twisted so he could look straight at the door, "If you come inside, you can sit on the Praxian made chair, no unnatural positions required. Take a load off. Have some energon. Read some files. Whatever. Or, you can go ahead and leave and go do whatever you want out in the city, so long as you're back here by the fortieth joor."

With that declaration, Jazz decided to pretend to ignore Prowl with studied obviousness until the mech made up his mind one way or the other. It was the only way that Jazz had left that he thought might work to get Prowl to head off was to "release" him from his "duties" for some period of time. The problem with that was Prowl being too suspicious to just head off like that.

Jazz was curious but unlike most times in his life he reined himself in. He knew that a mech couldn't just be uprooted like that with no loose ends to take care of, but Prowl wasn't going to share whatever it was he would be doing if he left. If he acted as if he could care less, then Prowl was more likely to go do that. Whatever "that" happened to be.

What he really wanted to accomplish, besides getting time alone to inspect the DCID's contents, was to give time for Prowl to settle whatever affairs he could with the way Jazz was going to be so abruptly uprooting him. He couldn't be obvious about it though, because he was pretty sure it would make the skittish mech that much more withdrawn from him and risk the reappearance of the drone facade. Jazz wasn't so sure that Prowl wasn't just so disoriented that he didn't even have the presence of mind to keep it up.

If that was the case, Jazz didn't feel like reminding him until he had insinuated himself in Prowl's mind as not being whatever kind of terrifying monster Prowl saw him as. It was a different sort of infiltration mission than he was used to, but it had similar principles--the only real difference was the fact that he wasn't doing it under orders.

Prowl continued to hover for a while before he edgily bowed and said, "I shall take my leave then, Jazz." Then he waited.

When Jazz realized that Prowl was waiting for him to affirm that it was allowed, even though he had just said so, he fluttered a hand at the larger mech, "Shoo then. Off you go."

Prowl nodded his head and practically fled in a highly dignified manner that Jazz couldn't help but think of as over the top.

With Prowl gone, Jazz waited several breems before he pulled out the thing that had been stupidly difficult to ignore after he had gotten it. Jazz gave the DCID a prod and it unfolded from its tiny cube-shaped transport form into the more delicate shape that would allow a single point connection with a mech's data ports.

Instead of slotting it into the port on his wrist immediately, he pulled out another small cube that he connected first. As soon as the bridge was initialized and finished his automatic checks for proper configuration, he connected the DCID and accessed it.

Immediately, aggressive authentication schemes latched onto the firewalls built into the bridge before connecting to his own systems. Verification passed and Jazz was finally able to see the information he had been dying to get at since High Chroma had handed it over.

"I have compiled the requested information an adaption schema according to my tests," an internal representation of High Chroma's face appeared as the init pulled up a list of files. His face creased into a smile, "You did say you were bringing me a challenge, and I have to say that the subject definitely qualified. Though I have included a more detailed report, this is a personal overview of my findings."

High Chroma's face disappeared from the "display" and detailed display of Prowl's frame appeared in its place. "As a disclaimer, you should know you are not going to be pleased by quite a few of my findings. The first thing that I discovered was that the subject has a class of sensors that have no differentiation between a neutral touch and one that on a frame with normal sensors would be interpreted as pleasurable. This is not true for the opposite however and though I did not test it, readings indicated that the sensors would convey pain appropriately. This is a hardware issue, not a software one, and can only be fixed with a rather invasive surgery."

High Chroma's voice was grim, but he was correct. Jazz was not pleased. Not pleased at all.

"After observing the subject's reactions to a variety of different touches, I believe that his code has made adaptions that cause him to interpret different kinds of pressure and patterns of touch in a pleasurable manner. I have included the raw data in the files, but I believe that he found my method of waxing his frame enjoyable. Similarly, but to an even greater extent, he enjoyed the oil baths and seems to have made adaptions to related the high heat of the baths to a pleasurable feel."

The mental display changed, focusing on Prowl's sensor wings, "I don't know if this is standard for his model type's origins or if it is specially reserved to a select few, but contrary to typical Praxians, the subject's sensor suite is much denser throughout all of the panels, making the loss of a panel much more crippling than the standard frame from the sheer loss in sensing capability. Even with the loss of a panel, however, they will still have a greater range than the standard triple wing." The display changed again to compare Prowl's sensors to a standard triple wing's and the difference was immediately obvious. "If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't believe it, but the subject picks up three times as much sensory data by default when compared to the standard triple wing model. I wouldn't be surprised if the subject could push that to four or five times as much."

If Jazz wasn't seeing the readings that had been taken as well, he wouldn't have believed it either.

"More information on what I could pick off on the nonstandard configuration is available in the files as well, but I thought that I should stress that his sensors pick up a great deal more than you would expect, even for a Praxian, and that you need to respect that."

The display changed yet again, highlighting certain points of Prowl's frame, "I would suggest that you have him looked at by a medic, or make sure to attend to his maintenance with higher quality care than he has received prior to coming into your hands because I was seeing signs of wear and tear that is easily preventable with proper maintenance. In any case, regular oil baths should ease the irritation, at least in the short term even if they won't fix the problem."

"The subject has what appears to be a war frame's beliefs on the place of armor removal, or at least similar enough that the instant answer was a negative without room for negotiation. I do not believe that you need to worry about the more problematic war frame's issues on the matter, because there was not even a hint of the threat of physical violence attached to it. He doesn't like the casual suggestion of the idea but he isn't going to dismember anymech over it, like some mechs I could mention."

"Unfortunately, that also means that I could not gather all the information you wished to know, but I did not think you would appreciate me pushing the issue from the impressions I received from you at the beginning of our meeting. If that was in error, then I'll have to apologize for misreading you. I'm not going to apologize for not pushing it if that was what you wanted, however," High Chroma said sternly, "It would be bad for business or bad for my health. I wasn't going to be risking either."

Jazz snorted, Always thinking the worst of me...

"The only thing that is actually immediately fixable is also one of the more shocking. I first noticed it when I was applying the colors but I confirmed it when I was doing the finishing touches of polish... The subject... He doesn't have a glossa. He has a small temporary energon reservoir and the usual cilia, but nothing else besides the a sparse amount of chemoreceptors."

Jazz shuddered. No glossa? Combined with having no way of feeling good physically was just...

"That is the main points that I decided you should know about the subject's physical status, so that means I get to move onto the interesting psychological bits."

"First off, I think that this is really your kind of job, you slacker," High Chroma said petulantly, the eternal diva, as he reappeared in Jazz's mental display.

Jazz snorted again.

"That aside, your new pet project does a fine imitation of a drone, you know," the artist complained, "He is disturbingly difficult to read. If you hadn't told me some of the things to watch for I would have missed the signs. It is fascinating that you managed to notice a gem like this one amongst those glorified dronews, especially knowing your particular... hang ups about those things." Suddenly High Chroma was frowning again, "If I find out that the subject was already reprogrammed by you when you brought him in I am going to be very annoyed with you for messing with me."

Jazz frowned for a moment before deciding that it was probably just as well that High Chroma thought that Prowl was someone out of the ordinary--or, as much as it rankled at how easily he could have done it, made Prowl to be subtly out of the ordinary by Jazz--rather than what Jazz suspected, which was that the preprogrammed mechs might be just as much people as he was.

"I tested his reaction to startling, which you saw: no physical violence, simply a response to remove himself from the range of the stimulus. His reaction to arrogance and orders was simply to ignore any insult and do as he is told. I tested his reaction to being left alone and he doesn't seem to have any problem with it in short term; he entertained himself and merely did what I believe was a form of meditation while in the oil bath. After that I tested his reaction to fear directed toward him from others after he startled me and found that though he had a classic war frame prey-reaction, he simply made himself act as though I didn't exist until I stopped presenting myself that way. Though he seems to have a chase-reaction as well, given what his function is I think that it has been relegated to criminal chases."

"Anyway. I mentioned the war frame behaviors and you saw the reaction I got out of him when I startled him the first time. There's the workarounds for physical enjoyment, which have to have some kind of effect on his psyche. He had two normal physical reactions that I could catch, beyond testing the ameliorating effect of the oil bath had on his frame. The first was relaxing slightly at the being polished and the second was a frame language thanks. Beyond that I'd just be speculating." High Chroma shrugged, "Your new war-frame-kin toy is quite the stoic."

High Chroma scowled, "It doesn't help that he keeps his EM field tucked away where I couldn't feel it. I don't know if he can't feel fields, or if he just doesn't ever let them out because he's a suspicious slagger like you." High Chroma tossed his head, "If the latter is the case then you deserve to have a toy just like you."

Jazz scowled and just about ripped out the DCID then and there, but High Chroma's voice warmed from the caustic tone it had taken, "I am glad that you seem to be dealing with your little phobia, and you probably couldn't have picked a better one out of the bunch, but I'm pretty sure you already knew that, you flighty little glitch."

Jazz grumbled, Meddling glitch of a psychoanalyst...

High Chroma leered at him, "I hope you enjoy your toy's new paints, frag off, and leave me the Pit alone. The favor I owed you is paid in full."

The recording ended abruptly, leaving Jazz teetering between outrage and wry appreciation for how well the arrogant artist-cum-profiler could get under his plating.

Alright. If that's the way you want to play it. Fine. Favor repaid... Jazz thought flatly. He would miss winding High Chroma up just to see him flash and spark in his peculiar vainglorious way though. Best not to push it unless he wanted the mech to actually snap. He had pushed him pretty hard the past couple times he had been by to collect on favors after all.

He spent the rest of the time poring over the collection of raw data High Chroma had collected for him, adding it to the profile he had begun making the moment he had decided that Prowl was his.

When Prowl returned, at exactly the time specified, Jazz had finished collating the data and was merely tapping his claws pensively against each other as he stared into space, just thinking as he paced the short distance between the couch and the door leading to the berthroom.

Jazz stopped pacing and his optics turned to see the Enforcer. "Prowl."

"Jazz," Prowl returned with a bow, but Jazz could see that wherever he had gotten off to had settled him.

Good, Jazz thought, pleased as he stepped closer and caught the edge of Prowl's elusive EM field before it vanished from even his senses. The mech really did hold his field in tight, so Jazz made no indication that he had felt it.

What he had felt in Prowl's field in that nanoklik had been the most relaxed out of all the fleeting moments he had caught whiff of it.

It was... odd, seeing Prowl now, with what he knew about the quality of the Enforcer's frame, or rather the lack of. The differences between what he could read off of Prowl with his own finely tuned sensors and what High Chroma reported versus what the official specs said was disturbing, and spoke of festering corruption in the system. He would have to check one of the standard model of Enforcers to be sure, but he was almost certain that if he compared the spec with reality, the reality would be of lower quality than it was supposed to be.

He wanted to growl and do something, like oh, say... frighten the slag out of a few choice mechs in charge of overseeing the making... creation? ensparking? of preprogrammed mechs, but he knew that the best thing he could do for a case like this one was to report it to Prime and have it made into an official mission for his division.

Jazz huffed, catching himself dazing off again and rubbed the side of his helm with a careful claw, "Need any Energon? You've been out for a while."

"That is unnecessary," Prowl said but moved further into the room and sat in the chair Jazz had had moved into the room purely for the Praxian's comfort. He honestly didn't want to force the poor mech to wedge himself into one of Jazz's "grounder: small" type seats, even if the memory of it would remain an amusing reminder that there were reasons for the different kinds of seats, beyond that fact that if a big mech got a too small a chair, well, the end result was predictable.

"Is it?" Jazz asked, sitting back on the couch that he personally found the most comfortable bit of furniture in the room.

"The energon that I have received since coming here has been of higher quality than that of which I am used to," Prowl offered as he leaned back onto the oddly shaped, narrow backed chair, wings hitching up and slotting into grooves that Jazz only belated realized, being close enough to see it for once, were there to offer support to the appendages. "My systems will run for a longer period of time than I am accustomed to."

"Higher quality?" Jazz asked with a frown, "I only have the standard stuff here." If standard energon's considered "high quality" to him, then what kind of slag do they fuel the Enforcers with? And it would be "fueling" in the derogatory way referred more to keeping machines running than keeping mechs alive and energized. Disgusting, Jazz thought, flicking an angry claw as he thought about what he would like to do to whoever it was that would just treat mechs like... that. ...I am a fool, Jazz thought, Who the frag would even care if they gave a bunch of preprogrammed mechs substandard energon? I sure as Pit wouldn't have. Before Prowl. I wouldn't have even thought about it. Newfound self-disgust gnawed at him.

One of Prowl's wings flicked dismissively out of its resting place before folding back. "As you say," Prowl said quietly, his optics were dimmer than they had been, despite his assertions that he was fine.

Jazz made his frown disappear though. The energon quality was just one more thing to look into. Maybe he's just relaxed, Jazz reasoned, not really believing it. It should take a lot longer than just an orn or two for someone to relax... or maybe it was just Ops mechs who were like that. Maybe. Not likely. But Jazz was pretty fragging removed from normal so he knew he wasn't the best judge.

Jazz sighed, exhausted less from the physical exertions of the orn than from the fledgling self-loathing that he had only just felt begin to clutch at his spark and the emotional whiplash he had been struggling with, "I'm going to turn in early in a few breems. You can stay up or turn in yourself."

When Jazz stood, Prowl's red optics brightened. "I will recharge in a groon or so," Prowl informed him.

Or maybe it wasn't relaxation of any sort that had Prowl running with dimmer optics. Maybe Prowl was just so used to eking every bit of energy that he could out of what he was given that he acted as though he was energy starved all the time. It was an unhappy thought, but more likely than the others that had come to mind.

A tangled mess of fierce emotions glimmered in his spark but Jazz merely nodded. "Gotcha," Jazz said, "See you next orn then." He meandered off to flop down on a berth and make sure he wouldn't accidentally attack Prowl if the mech managed to startle him out of recharge or something like that before he settled down into recharge. As nonessential systems slowed or stopped, autonomic sensors still kept a focus on Prowl, and the rest of the quarters, even in the deepest of recharges. Those sensors, driven by the paranoia of a mech who lived the Ops life and reveled in it, would not be deactivated unless Jazz was stuck in stasis lock or he was overridden by a medic with the right access codes.

Jazz didn't even think about his recharge routine any more. He was simply used to it.

Chapter Text

A new orn... The orn he was going to be leaving Praxus. For good.

Prowl knelt on the balcony as the sun rose, still a tiny ball of fusion in the sky that Cybertron was inexorably coasting closer to, but it was close enough, bright enough to scatter wavelengths and dim the stars further away.

Other suns lived and died in his memories, stars young and old, as Cybertron drank in the life giving energy radiating off them the way mechs would drink their energon. Some stars were left to burn brightly and light their part of the galaxy.

Other stars were devoured, consumed by the Primes' solar harvesters and fed to Cybertron, keeping the planet that many saw as the living body of their sleeping god, Primus.

It was a meditation on life and the passing of time.

The paths of time stretched out behind him, recorded by the optics of those who had come before him.

It was now Prowl's purpose to record the next steps he would take in life, so that maybe one day, if he still had his life and had the time, he could engrave his life into the spark of another, waking a Core to the clarity of Focus.

Lore keeper.

Prowl understood the things that Downlink could not properly explain before.

How could anyone explain the way he could now see the universe as it stretched out before him?

Calmness settled in his spark as he met the memories, the good and the bad, the countless lives, with the calm of acceptance, the stillness of spark.

He knew his past. He knew his people's past.

The past did not rule him. From this point, perhaps some future Focus' past would be his present.

Prowl accepted that. Even if it meant that he would have to put Praxus behind him figuratively as well as physically. Even if it meant that he would have to put his cadre behind him.

He was one of the Lost now, and Prowl accepted that.

To shield his kin from unkind optics.

He pressed his hand to his spark as it whispered goodbyes to each of them, to Smokescreen in particular, to Downlink, and when his thoughts turned in a different direction, to the mech he had long acknowledged as Master even if he had never held Prowl's contract.¹

The door slid open and his hand fell and joined the other resting on the still white armor on his thighs.

"What are you doing out here?" Jazz asked, padding out to join him.

"Meditation," Prowl looked up, "Is this the time you are normally up?"

"Hm? Yeah," Jazz said, "What time do you normally come out of recharge?"

"Zeroth joor," Prowl said, looking back out toward the rising star.

"That early?" Jazz asked, plopping down beside the larger mech, "That gives you less than two joor. And you do that to get up for meditation? Why?" He leaned in, peering at Prowl curiously. "Have you even had energon yet?" The last question was almost accusing.

"I have not had energon yet, no," Prowl said, "I told you before that I am able to operate for longer periods of time than I am strictly used to on the grade of energon you have here. I do not require lengthier recharge periods because I have a method of defragmenting during periods of idleness. The meditation is a habit that I acquired during my time as a student of the Arts. It allows me to clear my mind and prepare for the coming orn."

The weight of Jazz's optics didn't go away but the silver mech seemed to be thinking about something. "...Is that part of why you were so..." he waved a hand, "...off the previous orn? Compared to your... composure on the first orn." Shoulders hunched, "You didn't exactly have a chance to meditate then, considering the way be both got shocked out of recharge."

"Yes," Prowl said, "It was... a rather unpleasant way to come online."

"I'll bet," Jazz huffed, "Bad enough on my end."

There was a moment of silence but Prowl didn't really feel any need to fill it with pointless platitudes. It had been horrible. They agreed even. There was no need to draw the subject out.

Jazz sighed, "Yeesh... How depressing... If the meditating thing is that important to you, I'll be sure to not disturb you then." He paused, "I'm not disturbing you now, am I?"

"No," Prowl said, "I had finished before you came. I was merely... thinking."

"Ah, that's good," Jazz's head bobbed and he looked skyward as well, "Wouldn't want to have been disturbing you."

Prowl shook his head, "You wouldn't have been disturbing me, even so."

Prowl could feel the skeptical look directed his way, "...right. I'd like for you to tell me if I am anyway."

Jazz fidgeted again, making a soft, harmonic humming sound that skittered across his sensor wings in a good way. Prowl resisted the urge to shift them to better catch it, remaining still as he had since he had knelt down. The Enforcer was really getting the feeling that Jazz was the type of mech that just couldn't sit still no matter what they did.

"What about the online defrag?" Jazz eventually asked, "Why would you need something like that?"

"Long shifts," Prowl answered simply and merely added, "Very long shifts." when Jazz motioned for him to elaborate.

"That's it?"

"Multiple long shifts with little to no opportunity to recharge," Prowl offered.

"...Somehow I just know you're downplaying something," Jazz said suspiciously, "So. You're used to running on slag for energon, little to no recharge, and you still manage to somehow be more composed than the majority of the mechs I know. That's saying something."

Jazz was right about Prowl downplaying something... and wrong.

Two joor per orn was the time allotted to each Enforcer for recharge. If they had been the near drones that everyone thought they were, then that would have been sufficient time to defrag and routine automatic self-maintenance. The problem was that he and the rest of his cadre all had a lot more things going on in their processors than just the preprogrammed instructions all of them had. Things like I and me and personality that they were so careful to shield from the gazes of Outsiders.

Jazz jumped up, and looked down at Prowl, "Well, I'm not going to let that continue."

Prowl stiffened but before any of the innate fears he had of what Jazz was going to keep from continuing could realize, Jazz was already talking again, "You're going to be refueling until you can use that frame of yours without having to run power saving algorithms throughout the orn and recharging so you don't have to be defragging at the same time that you're online."

Prowl's shock had him standing when Jazz grabbed his wrist and pulled him inside from the balcony and over to the energon dispenser.

The Enforcer was herded over to a stool and sat down while Jazz prepared a cube.

The cube was set down in front of Prowl who merely stared at it.

"Well?" Jazz nudged the liquid energy closer, "Drink."

Prowl tossed the energon back and put the cube back down. There. He bored his optics into his master. Happy now?

...and Jazz suddenly had a rather thoughtful look on his face that twigged Prowl's self-preservation sensors slightly. That look gave Prowl a rather foreboding feeling. Oddly, it did not come across as a malicious one, likely because despite himself, Prowl wanted to believe his master when he said that he didn't want to hurt him.

Jazz gave voice to his thoughtful mood with a trill, "Going to have to fix that."

...Fix what? Prowl shifted and the extra energon sloshed in his tank uncomfortably. Urgh. He was not used to having so much energon in his tanks at any one point in time. He pulled his wings in in discomfort at the foreign rolling sensation.

Too much energon.

The irony stung.

Prowl had too much energon and had to figure out a way to burn more energy, rather than as little as possible. Carefully, Prowl switched off a few of the power saving algorithms that he had always used to limit himself so that he wouldn't run out of energon before he received his next ration.

Power consumption soared, sending Prowl's finely tuned energon consumption calculations into a tizzy as the danger line for power consumption for his normal operating parameters was crossed to the nth magnitude. He carefully adjusted a copy for the higher energon intakes but stored the original for later use if it was required—the algorithm was too finely tuned for him to simply discard it when he couldn't be sure that it wouldn't be necessary. Better safe than sorry.

Heat production rose as sections of his processor that rarely, if ever, saw use started accepting current. Coolant cycling sped up. His sensor wings twinged as the more power hungry sensors were activated and began transmitting more sensory data. His fans sped up audibly before he redirected other energy towards increasing the power of the—non-regulation—sound baffles he'd had installed in place of the normal ones and tweaked to appear and report as the standard model when queried.

A poke that was becoming familiar interrupted him, "What's up?"

"Recalibrating," Prowl muttered as he finished tweaking things around for the moment in said recalibrating and brightened his optics to a vibrant crimson. He was going to have to keep a careful optic on his energon consumption for a while until he had everything set.

"Recalibrating what?" Jazz verbally prodded with yet another of his endless questions.

At least he didn't physically poke me again this time, Prowl thought, "I have never had this much energon at one time before. It is... disconcerting. I needed to edit my energon consumption algorithms."

Jazz grimaced at his answer, "I see. Well I'm going to fix that too."

"Fix what?" Prowl asked, but Jazz waved the question off.

"It's almost time to leave and I still have to go confirm the credit transfer with the went through. You should probably come with."

Prowl bowed his head to the kindly worded order and followed Jazz's example, dropping the question.

When they arrived, the Hub was packed with mechs, likely heading back to wherever it was they had come from to see the parades.

Prowl stared at the long gleaming angles of one of the tunnels to where it disappeared straight down one of the branches of the natural three dimensional, hexagonal tesselations that made up Cybertron's surface leading down toward the center of Cybertron. It was a long way to Iacon, several joor even by the vac-lev and the dive their 'lev would be taking actually shaved several joor off the total travel time than if they were to take a surface one.

The Hub had actually been built at one of the critical junctures of the branches, which meant that the travel lanes could move between azimuth branches, up the altitude branches, or as the case of the first part of their trip, they could go down, closer to the planet's core.

They sliced their way through the crowds toward their destination, using the same maneuver they had the couple previous times they had gone out, with Prowl opening up a path and Jazz following close behind in his wake. It was slightly odd to Prowl that they fell into that behavior so easily, but at the same time, it wasn't.

As they got closer, Prowl found himself eying the height of the door to the mag-lev. A Convoy class compartment? he wondered for a moment, before he passed through the entrance and saw the seating arrangements, Ah... I didn't think there would be enough of Convoy class mechs to justify configuring an entire compartment. Someone marginally intelligent had made the decision to make the compartment into a single leveled area that could seat medium to large mechs, unlike the compartments reserved for the smaller mechs, of which Jazz would certainly qualify. Those compartments were divided up into an upper and lower deck to take advantage of all the headroom the smaller mechs weren't filling.

Jazz grinned at him, "So this is what the front compartments look like huh?" The small silver mech swaggered past a glowering, purple, sparkly, glitter-covered, hung-over looking Convoy class like the mech didn't have over twice Jazz's height, several times his mass, and what seemed to be a towering bad mood. "Nice digs."

Even though Prowl knew from Jazz's records that the small silver mech could more than take care of himself, Prowl moved forward until he was on Jazz's wing and stared at the purple Convoy in that blank, slightly threatening way he knew sparkling mechs found extremely creepy. It was the principle of the thing.

The Convoy turned his glower toward Prowl for a short moment before giving a grunt of someone who just wanted the world to stop existing for the moment. Rather than sitting down, the large mech tipped over into a seat with all his hang-over induced ill temper and mass instead.

The deck rattled slightly.

Prowl suppressed a sigh with a wry quirk of his wings, It's always something...

Jazz was grinning at him, "Come on. We're in the back."

Prowl nodded and followed after the small mech as he trotted down the aisle. Jazz really was dwarfed by everything and everyone in the compartment.

To Prowl's surprise, Jazz didn't stop before he had passed the last of the rows of seating and instead led the way to one of the private seating areas.

Jazz pinged the door with a code and waved Prowl inside.

The door hissed shut behind them with a finality that Prowl hadn't been expecting to feel.

He had already made his peace with this. It was just... final.

Prowl glanced around the small room as Jazz gave an agile jump and situated himself on one of the overlarge seats, looking quite comical, truth told. Honestly, he was a bit baffled by the private room. He didn't see any need for it.

Still, he sat, after he accessed the controls for the seat adjustments and made it reconfigure itself for his frametype. He leaned back, threading his wings into the wing notches and letting the seat support his frame's weight. When he looked up, Prowl found that, contrary to expectations, Jazz had not made his own seat smaller, but had rather made it larger and was lounging in a spot normally used for a larger than normal Convoy class' aft.

Prowl stared.

His master was just so weird sometimes. Even in the short time he had known Jazz, he could tell that he was an odd mech.

"Hey, don't look at me like that," Prowl snapped his gaze away, "...Prowl..."

Prowl could hear Jazz sigh, "I didn't mean it like that... You can look at me any way you want. I was joking."

Prowl carefully avoided looking at Jazz, "Jokes are not... Your words have power over me, s—, Jazz. Please try remember that." He flinched at the almost disobedience.

Jazz was quiet for a long moment. Quiet and still. "I gotcha..." Jazz said, and his hand patted Prowl's arm lightly.

Cautiously, Prowl dared a glance up at Jazz who was watching him with clear optics.

They waited for the announcement that the train was fully boarded and would be departing on schedule in silence, until Jazz started humming a song that Prowl recognized as song that was currently popular with the Iaconian populace.

The harmonics thrummed against his "new" sensors in a way that was so distracting that Prowl hardly even knew time was passing as he forced himself to not visibly react to the horribly distracting sound of Jazz's voice.

"Alright," Jazz sat perched on the edge of the adjustable seat once the 'lev had reached the full speed, peering at him, "I told you I want to know what you can do with that processor of yours."

"What do you want to know?" Prowl asked in return. Honestly, this was a safer line of questioning than most of the topics his master could have chosen to bring up.

"What do Enforcers of your type do in general?" Jazz asked, spreading his hands and shrugging, "What have you done specifically that put your processor to work? What are you best at?"

"I see. Tactical models are in charge of analysis of the criminal element, organizing plans to prevent incidents before they are realized, intervene in ongoing ones, investigate incidents that have already occurred, and organizing the task forces that are involved in each type of event," Prowl said at length, not stopping because Jazz was listening intently, "While Blacklist's subordinate, I often did not have the energy to spare to run at an optimal capacity, three major incidents where I had the opportunity to use my processor at higher than normal capacities were during the Tarn terrorist incursion, the Iacon shuttlecraft hijacking, and the Standalone Hack incident."

Jazz made an interested noise but motioned for Prowl to continue.

"I am best at organizing large scale operations, both long term and short term, in both offensive and defensive capacities," Prowl said, "The Tarn terrorists were dealt with by a long term defensive tightening of security and surgical strikes against key points. The shuttlecraft incident was a combined effort between Praxian Enforcers, the Kaonite government, and Central Iacon. Though it was a much shorter period of time, it required a high level of precision and cooperation that Praxian Enforcers are uniquely suited to. The Standalone Hack incident..." Prowl stopped for a moment.

Jazz held up his hand, "You don't have to talk about that if you don't want to. Nasty business that."

Prowl nodded silently. Nasty didn't quite cover it but Prowl wasn't going to belabor the point. The less said about that mess the better.

"So you like what you were created to do then," Jazz said thoughtfully.

"My spark is highly compatible with the work it was called to do," Prowl half agreed. He did like it, but being good at something doesn't necessarily mean that you like it.

"Does that mean that there are those who aren't suited?" Jazz asked.

Prowl carefully did not freeze at the unexpected question. "Yes," he answered, the word rough.

Jazz was silent for a long moment before he asked the question, "What about those sparks?"

"The worst case scenario is glitching until catastrophic containment failure causes the spark to extinguish," Prowl said finally, "That is what happened to the rest of the hexad I was sparked with. An 83.333% failure rate was deemed not worth the cost. Later runs for tactical models were scaled down to ensure greater programming-spark compatibility."

"That...!" Jazz closed his mouth and shook his head, a harsh frown pulling at the corners of his mouth and changed the subject, "Do you have other things that you are good at besides tactics? You are a master of Diffusion I know. Are martial arts something you are interested in?"

Prowl struggled with the pressure of the obedience code because although Jazz had pulled its teeth with that firewall it still had plenty of leverage over him, "Martial arts... Yes." Not going to say it. Not going to say it. Not going to— "I am also a master of Metallikato." He wrestled with the code, Enough! The vice grip didn't let up, making it hard to think. It was still so much better than having blazing hot claws dragging through his mind.

Jazz tapped the center of his crest, "Hey, you okay?"

The vice grip loosened as it was redirected. "I am well," Prowl said, relieved.

"I'm going to be honest here," Jazz said, "I've been watching you and I think I can tell a programmed response linked to that nasty bit of code that I took care of. Just now, it happened again. Tell me if I'm right."

Prowl gave a short, reluctant nod.

Jazz sighed, "Thought so. What was it that set it off?"

"I..." Prowl sighed, "I did not wish to let my skills be known."

"So you know more than Diffusion and Metallikato?"

Prowl was answering the question even before he realized it, "Yes." Prowl's anger at the obedience code flickered though his field.

"I see," Jazz said thoughtfully. His optics brightened, "How about this: If you don't want to tell me something, you can say you don't want to talk about it."

Prowl jaw fell a micron. He could feel something in his code shifting unnaturally in response to the words, reconfiguring into something different.

Jazz laughed, "I'm serious."

"That's..." Prowl shook his head. Blacklist had never asked questions. He had given orders. Jazz had been the opposite, he never stopped asking questions that Prowl had to answer. Prowl hadn't been sure what was worse, but then out comes Jazz with something so bizarre.

Blacklist would have never done it. There was a niggling memory that Prowl couldn't quite reach that made the situation seem more familiar from the foreign memories which had slowly settled over the past orns.

"So, what martial arts to do you know besides Diffusion and Metallikato?"

"C—," Prowl fritzed his own vocalizer to stop himself from answering the question. He shook his head and carefully said, "I would prefer not to answer." He waited for the ceiling to fall.

It didn't.

Jazz grinned and clapped a stunned Prowl on the shoulder, "How about that? Guess it works, huh?"

"It does," Prowl said, surprise leaking into his voice.

Was it really that simple?

Jazz paused, head tilting in the way that said he was listening to a comm, "Hey, I've got to go check on something. I'll be back in a klik."

Prowl nodded and Jazz hopped down from his seat and vanished out the door without another word

Prowl stared out the window of the train that would be taking him to Iacon, sharp optics picking out the shifting in the composition of the landscape, and the shifting of the colors and patterns that the planet itself created and he was able to pick out the Iacon aesthetic that was as different from the Praxus aesthetic as Praxus was from Kaon, or Tarn.

After Jazz got back from whatever it was he was doing, the questioning resumed, only this time it was more like testing than asking questions.

"Now, since you're tactical, I had a friend of a friend of a friend who knows some other tactical mechs send me some scenarios and how fast they tend to come up with solutions," Jazz flashed a handful of data chips, "You can you run these as-is, right? Don't need the simulator?"

"I can run them directly," Prowl confirmed. What kind of tactician worth their processor required a simulator to do their job? That's just shoddy work. Prowl might have sneered if he'd had mobile face plating, but he gave Jazz a short but sharply dismissive flick of his wings to convey just what he thought about that.

Jazz smirked, "Right. Forget I asked." He handed over the chips. "I want to see you run them at max capacity and put all that energon to use. I've got more for you if that's what it takes. Then I have some more scenarios I want to see you do at the levels you had under Blacklist, and a few at the levels you normally used when faced with an unexpected situation while on patrol." Jazz frowned, "I want you to run those last two scenarios like you would be dealing with a normal energon limit."

"I will," Prowl said, accepting the three chips It would be interesting to see how well he did when his tactical capabilities were higher than they had ever been.

Prowl connected to the files, noting with interest that they actually were tactical scenarios made to be the most realistic and complex available.

A friend of a friend who knows some other tactical mechs just gave you these because you asked for them? Prowl thought wryly, Sure, master... I completely believe you.

These were extremely high level tactical exercises of the sort Prowl had never had the ability to access before, even if he'd had the capability to run them without using up too much energon and being unable to follow through with his duties. And it seemed that Jazz would be able to follow his actions due to a little rider attached to the chips.

With the energon to power his processor to limits it had never seen before and something to use his considerable mental abilities on... It was a gift unlike any other. It calmed the spark deep need to plan that had been the only thing that had saved him from the same glitch induced deaths that had taken the rest of his hexad.

Eagerly, Prowl leaned back, arranging his frame so he could ignore it, initiated articulation locks and edited his comm parameters to interact with the exercise rather than broadcast like he would be doing in a real situation. Only then did he allow himself to access the first one.

Immediately, his HUD filled with information. The objective came first. An element of the Tarn underworld was staging a revolt, drawing followers from all over Cybertron. The element had fortified its position and had taken rulership of Tarn. Prowl was to quell the rebellion.

Maps of Tarn were provided. Intelligence of all sorts was included, with the various pitfalls of real-world intelligence. Enemy troop movements. Fortifications. State of the citizenry. Rumors even. Everything he would have access to if he were really directing an effort of the type described.

Prowl took it all in with a spark that craved all of these myriad of things, all the information and control that he was so rarely given. With a brightly burning spark, Prowl torn into the tactical simulation and crushed the rebellion. Then he was given another simulation. And another. And another. He went through all three types of operating parameters Jazz had given him until he finished them, exhausted of energy but feeling alive in a way that even the tactical planning he had done before in the service of Praxus had never made him.

When Prowl came out of the exercises with crimson optics shining, Jazz seemed duly impressed. He waved a cube a cube of energon in Prowl's direction, "Got something for ya. You're lower than I'd like." Blue optics continued to appraise him, "I have to say... that... that was something else."

Prowl accepted the cube and tossed it back, catching the disapproving look that flashed across Jazz's face, for a second time involving energon that orn. Prowl didn't know why though, and until he found out, or Jazz told him, he wouldn't be able to fix it. "It is what I was created to do," he said instead. It felt good.

"And I'm guessing they didn't let you do that often enough," Jazz said.

Prowl's good mood dimmed slightly. "...No," Prowl admitted.

After the failure of his particular design type and the deaths of his hexad... He had effectively been tossed aside.

Forgotten.

It wasn't necessarily a bad thing for one of the Hidden, but it also meant that he wasn't called to act as his function demanded.

If it hadn't been for the care that had been taken with him by clade and contingent, he would have later deactivated, like the rest of his hexad had from incompatibilies, only he would have done so from the sheer inability to manage having so little information to analyze, to collate, to manage and organize and command. Slowly they had taught him to manage and calm the frantic knowledge that his weak frame and underclocked processor could do so much more if only he was given the chance as the full force of the obedience code was slowly chipped away with changes collected over countless vorns...

Prowl carefully turned his thoughts away from his kin.

He was Lost to them now. Even if he found them again he could never look back.

When they hit the halfway point to Iacon, Jazz became distracted, not tracking the conversation of Prowl's actions during the simulations quite as closely before he suddenly froze, before his face twisted into an rictus of anger, "Soundwave...!" His EM field erupted in a blaze of outraged frustration.

"Jazz?" Prowl hesitated reaching out before he placed a hand lightly on Jazz's forearm. The violence in the field making his containment protocols war with his obedience code for several valuable nano-kliks.

Jazz hissed and spat angry static but didn't move from his spot even though he was practically vibrating in place, angrily flaring silver armor. He wasn't quite in a blind rage, but it was close.

"Try to calm down," Prowl advised, wrapping his hand around Jazz's, "There is nothing that can be done to fix whatever has angered you on this 'lev."

"That fragger," the silver mech growled quietly before, field calming in a distinctly unnatural way that Prowl couldn't trust was real or honest in the slightest.

Prowl glanced up, checking the door to the rest of the compartment with an expert optic, glad that the closest passenger would several rows away on the opposite side of the aisle, behind a wall and out of range unless Jazz pushed his field abnormally far beyond the confines of the room. If Jazz didn't do anything to draw too much attention then he might be able to head off any trouble... "What happened?"

"Soundwave happened," Jazz said in a too calm voice, though his field was still tinged with rage, "That fragger messed with my mind. He hacked me. How dare he?" Hints of hurt were quickly swallowed up by the rage.

Carefully, Prowl extended his field only to stiffen when he felt the way the fiery rage was doused, as if dipped in liquid nitrogen.

"I'm going to kill him." Cold. So very cold.

So this is the Operative...

All signs of the typical fidgeting Prowl had seen in Jazz's posture had utterly vanished. The Operative was as still as a statue.

"Not," Prowl said carefully, "at this moment in time, Operative Jazz."

As predicted, that knocked Jazz for an emotional reset, luckily leaving the deadly silver mech gaping rather than ready to start ripping unsuspecting mechs, or Prowl, to pieces.

That possible reaction had an uncomfortably high statistical probability, but it was the best option he had at the moment. He personally preferred not to be attacked, but better Prowl than an innocent bystander.

"What did you say?" Jazz asked, sounding oddly vulnerable.

"Operative," Prowl repeated, moving his hand from its death grip on Jazz's arm to wind around the small mech's shoulders, meshing his field with the numbness that had taken the place of the chill in Jazz's to soothe some of the shock, hurt-fear-anger-rage held back by the numbness. "I know that you are a member of the Autobot Special Forces. I knew," Prowl added, "but I did not have to tell you that I knew. I told you of my own free will."

Free will...

There was a thrill in saying those words, and it made his spark sing in a way that was like and unlike the way it felt to engage his processor the way it was meant to be used, the way he had been created to, the way Jazz had let him with those tactical simulations.

He was still held at the mercy of his code, but somehow, with Jazz—infuriating, indefinable, category-defying Jazz—who held his contract, his leash, who owned Prowl as surely as Blacklist, and Pitfall, and Chelae had, Prowl was freer than he had ever been since his spark had been caged within this preprogrammed frame, because Jazz willed it.

It was not true freedom, because Jazz could so easily recage him and grind his free will into dust should he so choose, but what he was given made the world seem so much more alive.

Prowl wanted to sing that song, the song of being alive, the song of having the freedom to fly, even if his fate was to return, like a trained cyberhawk inevitably returned to perch on his master's fist after being flown.

He wanted to share the rhythm of the emotions his spark made as it moved to an entirely different beat.

"How did you know?" Jazz was calm once more, though some anger in his field remained, it was not the same anger that threatened to explode in a very real, very messy manner.

Prowl stalled, feeling the demand to answer and his desire to not do so coexisting side by side by the ability to choose to answer, or not. It was an uncomfortable sensation but Prowl would prefer the discomfort to have a choice, to be able to protect his cadre as he could.

"I would prefer not to answer that question," Prowl said, tensing to await the reprimand.

When no reprimand materialized, Prowl raised his head and saw the intent way Jazz was studying him.

"Why?" Jazz asked.

Prowl hesitated, trying to figure out a way to phrase an answer that would satisfy his master's need to know and still keep his people safe. He didn't want to have to use the non-answer option more than he had to due to the possibility of Jazz revoking the right.

Jazz straightened, shifting Prowl's arm, "If people know that I'm ASF, then my cover is ruined and a lot of people will be in danger."

"I have access to an exclusive data network," Prowl relented, "The timestamp on that particular information is several vorn old." Jazz's grip slackened in shock.

"Oh Primus," the mech whispered, "Compromised that long...?"

"No!" Prowl hurried to clarify, "The network gathers information but never disseminates it except to ones that are a part of it. The network never takes action on the information unless a member of the network is being threatened directly." The Enforcer struggled to explain the relationships maintained by his preprogrammed kin without giving away exactly how much information they had, how large their "network" was, or the fact that all reachable preprogrammed mechs were a part of it if the locks on their model type had been broken far enough.

"That ain't making me feel much better, Prowl," Jazz said.

"The network is characterized by its apathy," Prowl tried again, "A member might request information, but neither the request, nor the information being passed are leaked outside the network, nor is it acted upon unless necessary. I requested information on you. Profiles for both your musician cover and your work as an operative came up."

Whatever could be said of the mercurial mech, Jazz could never be said to be stupid. "I was a threat to a member of this network of yours. Wasn't I? I was a threat to you."

Prowl nodded hesitantly.

"Are you really a preprogrammed mech?" Jazz asked.

The world tipped on its side.

Prowl vented harshly, "You have seen some of my code. Do you believe that someone would willingly put into place any of those elements that you have firewalled?" The question came out harsher than was strictly intended.

"...No," Jazz said eventually, "but I had to ask. There are just too many inconsistencies. You are an Enforcer, but you are a master of at least two martial arts. You say you are proprogrammed but then you say you are a member of some exclusive data web that knows what I do but somehow doesn't care? Your spark resonates with mine. I have never heard that that was even possible with a preprogrammed mech."

"It has happened before. Several times."

Jazz sat back in surprise, derailed for the moment from his previous line of enquiry, "...It has? I've never heard of..."

"Sentinel-Blitzburner: 670195, 131140, 23. Nova-Stargrasp: 872224, 599635, 111544, 6623, 117," Prowl rattled off a few of the vorn-dates of some of the more recent Dyad, beginning with the current pair, "Guardian-Ironwing: 65589, 10038—"²

Jazz held up his hand, looking faintly sick. He opened and closed his mouth several times but nothing came out. After a moment, his hand covered his optics.

"Jazz?"

"...What happened to them?"

"...Jazz?"

The hand fell, and his expression was severe, an odd mix of emotions that Prowl wasn't about to be able to untangle. He wasn't sure if he wanted to try. "What happened to the preprogrammed mechs that had a resonance?"

Prowl was quiet before he started slowly, "...The kindest were perhaps the ones who were simply killed quickly, or reformatted. Some were reforged."

"And the others?"

"Tortured to death. Isolated and the subsequent resulting insanity, followed by euthanization. Forcibly reprogrammed, often glitching to the point of spark containment failure. Gifted as an offering to the Cult of Primus before that priesthood was put to death. Dismantled for usage in continued forced ensparkings—"³

"Enough," Jazz choked out, obviously rattled, "Stop." His hands were clasped together, trembling faintly as micro-tremors of the claws closing about something and crushing it made them twitch. He bowed his head and Jazz slowly stilled. The chill of the Operative returned, but the sense of danger didn't do the same so Prowl remained as he was, despite how vulnerable the position made him.

This stillness didn't feel the same. This was thinking. It as an entirely different kind of dangerous. The mind was the most powerful weapon of all after all.

Prowl waited as the operative nestled under his arm thought, but the dangerous silver mech felt like he belonged there. It reminded him of having an armful of familiar, friendly shadows than rather than an Outsider than he had known for a mere few orns.

Was this the work of his spark?

If it was, he was truly lost the moment he had laid optics on the one who bore the spark that resonated with his own.

He would have never willingly touched an Outsider of his own free will outside of his duties before, but here he sat doing just that. And it wasn't just touching either. Prowl had the full length of his arm in contact with Jazz's plating and he was pressed up against Prowl's chest armor, against each of his rib plates, and flush against his hip. He could feel the heat radiating off of him and the normally bland field that had erupted so violently was flickering with a myriad of conflicting emotions, despite its chill.

"Soundwave..." Jazz said slowly, coolly, "hacked me."

Prowl paused, confused for a moment, "Soundwave?"

"Yeah..." Jazz hissed icily, "What the frag was he hoping to accomplish?"

An ache started in the back of Prowl's processor. Soundwave... The designation was familiar.

"Who is Soundwave?" Prowl asked finally, mentally groping for memory tags that just weren't where they were supposed to be.

He could feel the jolt both from Jazz's frame and the twitch of the mech's field. The silver mech hurriedly brought his and to tap at a port, "Open!"

Prowl had the port open and Jazz was accessing it before the Enforcer even consciously processed the command. Prowl recoiled from the mental presence, firewalls fortifying as the mental presence skittered along them. The last time Jazz had done this, Prowl had been in no state to protest and the intervention had been a welcome thing, but this was just...

"Not going to hurt you," the silver mech muttered as he poked and pried... but didn't order him to take them down, Prowl noticed with shocked relief, "Don't be silly. I wouldn't do something like that. To you at least. Don't deserve it. There." The inspection stopped, but the point where Jazz stopped was a hole in his shields that was even more horrifying than the fact that he had Jazz a few firewalls away from his code and Jazz had his claws on an exploit. Apprehension prickled.

"What did I just say?" Jazz murmured, optics intent as they stared at nothing, concentration writ across his face. The mental presence withdrew slightly, and Jazz's optics refocused, "I need to find and fix whatever it is that Soundwave did. Understand?"

Horror rose. He was hacked.

Prowl's composure broke.

Unlike other mechs, Enforcers did not scream out loud, their fields do not proclaim shock or horror.

All of Prowl's horror and terror and rage was turned inward.

Even the sanctity of his thoughts—the only things that he could call his own—were not safe.

Jazz, who was connected to him, felt every single emotion as Prowl's protective firewalls fell and all that was left was a sense of a scream. ::Get it out. Get it out! Get it out!::

When Prowl became aware again, he was held tightly within the confines of his own mind by firewalls that did not belong to him.

Unthinking, he lashed out attempting to rip and shred whoever it was that had forced himself on him. ::Out! Out! Out!:: he shrieked.

Unfortunately, the outburst was weak and did nothing to deter the intruder and the firewalls locked down even tighter. Prowl snarled and fought, weakly because he was unable to access so much of his own mind, boxed in the way he was, but he fought.

He fought mindlessly until he was exhausted and couldn't fight any longer.

He could feel the changes the intruder was making in his programming even behind the walls and he wanted it to stop.

A long while later, Prowl registered words coming from the intruder and comprehension soon followed.

::—arkless creation of a drone-fragging priest who got himself kicked out of the fragging Cult of Primus! Oh! There you are!:: The intruder washed hesitant worry and care over him, ::Feeling better?::

A frazzled Prowl slowly matched an ID to the intruder.

::Jazz...:: Prowl felt the many firewalls that had held him releasing but he did not reconnect everything just yet, staying in the small part of his processor where he had been trapped, ::What happened?::

Worry. Protectiveness. Anger. ::You were hacked, sweetspark,:: Jazz said softly, ::It's okay now. You can come on out.::

Violated.

Prowl shuddered and carefully stretched out to reconnect everything only to feel...

Jazz's mental presence had wormed its way throughout Prowl's mind.

Before the yawning pit of horror could swallow him again, Prowl was practically smothered with caution and caring and all-better-now. ::I'm sorry,:: his master apologized, ::I wouldn't have done that if I hadn't had to.::

His master... apologized?

::Not your master, sweetspark,:: Jazz crooned. Prowl could feel small hands running over the back of his helm.

Muzzy confusion. ::...Sweetspark?:: Why was his master calling him that?

::Mmhmm,:: Jazz hummed, ::You're just too sweet for all these things that have happened to you.::

Prowl tried to figure it out, but the thoughts just wouldn't connect. Neither could he become more than a little concerned that everything wasn't working right.

::Hey, now,:: the shadows mech said and the stroking stopped, ::Don't worry about that. Everything is fine. Why don't you recharge and let that straighten everything out, okay? There's plenty of time.::

Recharge? But it wasn't time for him to do so and his Wing wasn't here to watch over him in case the Commandant came calling...

::Shhh...:: the stroking resumed, and the protective caring blanketed him, ::I'll watch over you. It's fine.::

Prowl wavered between comfort and confusion before eventually the feeling of being safe lulled him into recharge. One of his Master's shadows had found him. They would watch over him. He leaned into the safety of the shadow's protection and the rest of his higher thought capabilities shut down.