Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The music at Macaddam’s Oil House is loud enough that Prowl can feel the rumble of the bass in his chest. It feels as though his very spark shakes at the steady rhythm set by the current song’s beat. Bots of all shapes and sizes holler, laugh, and try to speak over the cacophony of sound to their friends.

Prowl had turned down the pick up of his audials about an hour ago. He doesn’t want to be overwhelmed by the pure noise of it all. 

He doesn’t get how anyone could find this sort of environment relaxing or fun. The noise alone is enough to give him a helmache. Even worse is the dance floor, where the music is loudest, dancing mechs occasionally bump into each other, and stage lights of every color move over the crowd. 

Prowl doesn’t get the appeal. Probably never will. It’s not how he chooses to “cut loose” and relax. But that doesn’t mean that he can’t appreciate and understand that it is for some people. That this is an escape, a release. A break from a more grim reality. A place to come, have fun, and, just for a moment, forget about the harshness of war. 

Except for Prowl, because he’s here for work. 

Smokescreen would probably have something snarky to say about how the only way to get Prowl to actually go to a club is to make it part of his job. 

Prowl ignores the hypothetical quips of his brother and takes a sip of his engex. He optics the room. From his booth in the corner, Prowl can see the bar, the dance floor, and the entrance. 

The music continues to thrmmph into his chest. 

He taps a finger against the side of his cube. 

Prowl doesn’t know how these covert meetings are supposed to work. 

Well, no, that’s not entirely true. He was told that his “contact” would come to him and had been given a script of what to say to confirm identities; so he has an idea of how it should happen. But Prowl has never done something like this before. What is he supposed to do leading up to that? Does he need to sit at the bar? Mingle? Step on to the dance floor and try to blend in?

(Just the mere thought of joining the dancing mechs is enough to make Prowl’s plating itch. He took the lack of direction as permission to do as he pleased and sat himself in a corner booth with a simple drink.)

As a junior tactician stationed at Main Operating Base Tango in northern Tyrest, secret missions aren’t normally part of what is expected of him. Planning one? He can do that just fine. Actually taking part? It is simply unheard of. 

Prowl huffs out hot air and focuses back on his surroundings.

He hasn’t been given a specific time to expect his mystery contact by, so he’s been watching for anyone who might approach his booth. Which has morphed into general people watching. There’s a mech at the bar who is trying to flirt with someone with a helicopter alt. This same mech has already tried, and failed, to flirt with three others before his current conversation partner. Considering that said conversation partner is giving the same polite smile as a cashier in a restaurant that’s about to close while her blades start to twitch in irritation on her back, the unlucky mech is about to receive his fourth rejection of the evening. 

Not wanting to witness the sad but inevitable conclusion a fourth time, Prowl turns his gaze to the dance floor.

He’s been periodically taking note of the dancers and how often they repeat different moves to entertain himself. A vast majority of mechs seem to know three to seven distinct dances that they choose from based on the type of music and how fast the beat is. A servoful of others have more dance moves than the average. 

And there is one particular mech that knows more dances than all the rest. 

He’s Polyhexian, or at least from the area, with audial horns slightly longer than the average. His plating is mostly white and lime, with a light blue for accents. A dark blue visor with rounded edges sits over his optics and a wide, carefree smile graces his face. 

Prowl finds him to be the most interesting dancer since, unlike the others, Prowl has yet to see him repeat a sequence. The mech possesses a great amount of skill and enthusiasm when it comes to dancing. Both on his own and with others. It’s fascinating to watch the confidence and fluidity of someone who knows what they’re doing and does it well.

The song finishes and Prowl watches as the mech steps off the dance floor. He politely waves off invitations from others to dance a little longer, gives them a charming grin paired with an overly exaggerated slump of his shoulders. He laughs at something someone says and departs with an amicable nod of his helm and a small wave.

Prowl can’t help but feel that the dancer is putting on a show. 

The mech makes his way towards the booths on the wall Prowl is on. Prowl turns his helm to the side and continues to watch him in his periphery. He sees when they glance over the different booths before doing a double take at Prowl’s. He scrunches up his face, leans forward a small bit, and puts a servo up to his forehelm. Prowl bets that the dancer is squinting under his visor. The mech then perks up, excited, and starts bee lining straight for Prowl’s location. 

Prowl tenses at his approach.

“Pantera!” the mech calls out once he’s only a couple tables away. “My mech, I haven’t seen you since we were at Fort Turning in Nyon.”

Prowl relaxes slightly. That was the first part of the coded greeting. Now for his scripted reply. 

“It has been a while,” he answers mildly. “Are you still losing at those card games?”

The mech laughs and settles into the seat across from Prowl, “No more than usual. How’s Iacon been treating you?”

Prowl shrugs, “Fairly standard, though I am only here for a visit. The weather is better here than it is in Nyon.”

That completes the scripted greeting. Prowl now knows that this mech is his contact and the contact knows that Prowl is the mech he is meant to retrieve. From here they need to make meaningless small talk for a short time before they can leave. For appearances sake. 

He hates small talk. 

“That’s for sure,” His contact says. “Hey, you still doing that thing with the flute?

Prowl has never, in his entire functioning, even held a flute. Nor does he know enough about them to make up a convincing lie. His processor scrambles to find a way to “yes and” along with the mech without giving away his inexperience. “Not much since you left. I…got busy.” Good enough. Now to keep the conversation going (and get the focus off of him). “I see you are still dancing.”

The mech smiles, “Well I’m not called Stepper for nothing! It’d be a right crime if I ever stopped dancing! I could never deprive others of my fantastic moves.”

“Of course not.” Prowl agrees, unsure of what else to say. 

His contact, “Stepper”, laughs, “Ouch. Tell me how you really feel.” 

Prowl internally winces. That had apparently come out wrong. “I meant it sincerely.”

“Aw, you do miss me!” Stepper leans over the table and rests his helm in his servo. “Admit it, it’s boring without me there. Bland. Stale. Tedious. Dull even!”

Prowl is reminded of conversations he’s had with Smokescreen and tries to answer in kind. “Congratulations, you have downloaded a thesaurus.”

Stepper leans the smallest bit closer, a grin solidly on his face as he singsongs, “You didn’t deny it.”

“I have not confirmed it either. Keep this up and I never will.”

“Agh!” Stepper leans back, lightly smacking his chest like he’d just been shot. “You wound me ‘Tera. Absolutely wound me! You owe me for this, I hope you know.”

“Owe you what? Rust sticks for your wounded pride?”

“Well if you’re offering…”

Prowl snorts, “You are incorrigible.”

Stepper flashes him a cheeky grin and changes the topic, “How long are you here for anyway?”

“Another day, then I need to head back.”

“Wha— Just a day?!” Stepper gets up, “What are we wasting time here for? Come on, I gotta show you the sights! Catch up properly before you leave.”

Stepper gets right beside Prowl and guides him out of the bar by his forearm. 

Then, going against all training and common sense, Prowl follows the stranger to a second location. 

The path they take is meandering and full of seemingly random detours down side alleys, across back roads, and down a few levels. It ends in an old city street with buildings squished so close together that they share walls with their neighbors and the only way to get more room is to build up. The street itself is barely wide enough for two mechs in alt mode to drive past each other. 

The building they enter is three stories tall with mint green paint that is chipping on the edges and corners. The first floor has old tarnished storage containers that take up the left wall. The wall opposite has the stairs that lead up to the rest of the abode. The limited floor space between the wall and the stairs is dominated by various different crates stacked randomly on top of each other. 

Stepper leads Prowl up the stairs to the landing of the second floor. It’s a small space. The right wall has three hooks that hold acid resistant mesh covers. In front, the stairs continue on to the third floor. On the left is a door frame that is covered by a heavy mesh curtain instead of an actual door. Stepper, with a small flourish, enters and pulls the curtain aside. He gives a slight bow as he gestures Prowl inside. 

“Welcome, esteemed guest, to the Palace of Lower Iacon!” he aggrandizes.

The second floor is a single room that is split in two parts by a small counter space. The larger portion that Prowl steps into is a living area with two old couches, an armchair that has seen better days, a low table, and a circular rug beneath them. The small space on the other side of the counter is taken up by a kitchenette where Prowl can see a discolored patch on the floor. 

“It’s what I call it, at least,” Stepper says with a shrug as Prowl walks in. The dancer lets go of the curtain and sedately moves to the middle of the room. He clasps his servos together and stretches them above his helm. “Much nicer than the place in Uraya, that’s for sure.”

Prowl is opticing a questionable stain on the wall when he notices that Stepper is facing him again. The other mech’s grin gets wider somehow, more crooked, with his servos held behind his back and leaning towards Prowl slightly. It’s a posture that Prowl is unfortunately very familiar with, courtesy of Smokescreen; he’s either about to be teased or needled for information. 

“So,” Stepper starts, overly casual, “who’d you tick off?”

The second option then. Though the question isn’t one that Prowl was expecting. 

“I do not believe that I have angered anyone recently. What makes you think that I did?”

“Please,” Stepper says with a wave of his servo. “Mechs outside of Spec Ops don’t get put on this sort of thing unless they got on some higher-up’s bad side.”

Prowl takes the time to think it over. There are plenty of mechs who don’t like him. However, of the very few mechs who are above him in rank who would also possess the proper clearance to help plan top secret missions, he’s either only interacted with them twice, or has a purely professional relationship with them. Not exactly grounds to assign him this mission because he “got on their bad side”. 

“I have not seen any evidence of such levels of hostility from anyone of suitable rank or clearance,” Prowl informs Stepper. “They may have simply thought that I was the best option for this.”

Even if “this” is being an oversized data slug that can organize and analyze stolen intelligence on the go. Never mind that Prowl thinks his abilities can be better used elsewhere, or that there must be someone else with a more appropriate skill set besides “can analyze an absurd amount of data”; he has his orders and he’ll do his duty. 

“Really? Huh, guess there’s a first time for everything.” Stepper shrugs. “Don’t matter either way. We leave in five hours. I recommend catching some recharge while you still can.”

“Thank you… do I keep calling you Stepper?”

“It’s the name I go by, so I’d greatly appreciate it,” Stepper grins.

“Alright. Thank you, Stepper.”

“Don’t mention it, my mech. Be seeing you in a few hours.” Stepper gives a loose, two fingered salute as he tips back and falls into a couch, already in recharge when he lands. 

Prowl looks around the “Palace of Lower Iacon”. Leaning against the wall by the door frame is the door itself. It had probably fallen off the track. The rug has a slight wrinkle through the middle, but fixing it would require lifting all the furniture. There’s an empty cube on the counter. 

It looks like any other good-for-the-price-range domicile that Prowl’s ever lived in before. Though, if Stepper’s willingness to recommend they both recharge without anyone keeping watch is anything to go by, Prowl suspects that this building is far more secure than any of his previous dwellings. 

Prowl gives the room another once over. Door, rug, cube, mystery wall stains. 

Prowl sighs and rubs his face. He sits down on the unoccupied couch and unsubspaces a small green crystal shard just smaller than his pinkie. He turns it over in his servos as his thoughts drift. 

He’s always hated the “hurry up and wait” stage of any engagement. Even back when he was an enforcer and Praxus still stood, being idle was never something he could stand for long. He’d eventually go and find himself something to do. 

The problem here is that there is quite literally nothing for him to do until it’s time to leave. Sure, he could see what the third floor has or rummage through the storage downstairs, but, from what he can tell, this is a Spec Ops safe house. There is no telling what could be in those places or if he’s even allowed to see them. Stepper didn’t exactly forbid Prowl from anything before he went down to recharge, but that doesn’t mean that he has permission either. Prowl will err on the side of caution and not mess with the things here. 

Which leaves him with only two real options: recharge or stay awake staring at the rug. 

Prowl subspaces the shard and sets an alarm. He lays himself on the couch and cycles down to recharge. 

Four and a half hours later, Prowl is silently contemplating the merits of waking Stepper when the mech comes online with a dissatisfied grunt. 

“Alright,” the dancer grumbles as he rubs his face, “we’re gonna be making our way out the city, but first: mission prep.”

The next few minutes are a flurry of motion that ends with them both among the crates on the first floor. Stepper gives him a small subspace generator, about the size of a single knuckle, and says, “This’ll be your new secret pocket. Just install it under your backplate, yeah?” as he gestures to his own upper back. 

Prowl does as instructed. He feels his coding shift just slightly as the extra bit of hardware integrates into his system. He opens subspace controls on his HUD and sees listed there: 

-Subspace (23% capacity)

-Subspace2 (WARNING: Currently Inactive)

He activates the new subspace. He can just about make out the new, foreign hum in his back. It’s strange, and a little itchy. It almost reminds him of the time he’d somehow gotten a pebble stuck in his mid back. Smokescreen had been useless, laughing so hard he ended up on the floor, while Bluestreak helped him get it out. 

Under Stepper’s direction, Prowl moves the things that he does not want to lose into this new subspace. Namely, his rifle with its corresponding acid pellets, his medkit, and the small green crystal. His normal subspace gets filled with energon cubes, though he does put two of them into the “secret pocket”. Stepper then starts handing Prowl so many different odds and ends and weapons to place in his two subspaces as well. 

“Trust me,” Stepper says as he hands Prowl a deadly looking energon dagger with a smile that is just as sharp, “your mission partner will be glad to have these. They are essential.”

“You know who my partner is?” Prowl asks, subspacing the blade. 

“Nah, not really,” he denies, “but I have a pretty good guess. ‘Sides, even if it’s not who I think it is, these things are handy to have. That being said—” Stepper points to Prowl as he walks to a different crate to rummage through— “be sure to let the J-mech know that I said ‘Hi’, yeah?”

Prowl blinks a few times. His briefing had only referred to his mission partner as ‘the operative’. He isn’t sure if “J-mech” is their actual name or if it’s a sort of nickname and their real name just starts with the letter J. “…I will do my best.”

“All I can really ask of you.” Stepper then makes a soft victorious sound as he holds up a dented, scratched can of grey spray paint. He turns to prowl. “Alright, hold your vents.”

Prowl takes a step back. “What are you doing?”

Stepper frowns. “Uh, covering up distinguishing paint and features? So no one can recognize you if we’re seen leaving?”

“No.”

“No? What do you mean ‘no’?”

“I will not change my paint.”

“C’mon mech, we need to—”

“No.”

Stepper gives Prowl a long, incredulous look. Prowl can understand; it’s an odd thing to insist on, especially given the situation and the tactical advantage that changing paint would give. He can see that. 

But at the same time… he can’t do it. He won’t. 

Stepper sighs, big and put upon, before he tosses the can into a different crate and walks past Prowl. “Alright, fine. We don’t have the time to argue about this, so let’s compromise.” He jogs back up the stairs and swiftly returns with one of the acid resistant mesh covers. “Here,” he says as he tosses it to Prowl, “Put this on. It’ll cover most of it.”

The covering is a dark blue color and styled like a poncho. He pulls it over himself, tucking his doorwings down close to his back, and flicking the hood up and over his chevron. It’s not the best cover, he’ll admit, but he’s grateful all the same. 

“Thank you,” he says to Stepper. 

Stepper waves it off and continues his casual lean against the wall near the door. “No problem. I’m not gonna pretend I understand it, but…” He shrugs. “It’s cool.”

Prowl nods at him. 

“Now!” Stepper claps his servos together as he pushes off the wall. “Pay close attention mech! I’m gonna teach you how to disappear.”

Apparently, the art of disappearing has more to it than simply not being seen. There is a certain finesse to it. Knowing when to move, how to move, where to move to. 

Stepper guides Prowl across the city, expertly moving from shadow to shadow, slipping through alleyways, and across buildings. It’s similar to how he had led Prowl to the safe house, but with more hiding. Prowl doesn’t pretend to understand all of what Stepper is doing when he has them wait for a time when no one is there, but he follows the other mech’s lead regardless. 

Another part of disappearing is knowing what to do when going unnoticed isn’t an option. According to Stepper, a large part of getting to where you need to be is social engineering. Different goals and different situations require different acts. Sometimes it means acting confident and in charge, other times it means blending with a crowd. It’s all about expectations and filling the role required. 

Here and now, on the outskirts of Iacon at “way-to-early-in-the-morning” (according to Bluestreak) where there isn’t a good place to hide for a fair stretch of road, that means one of them has to act drunk. 

“Excuse me?” Prowl asks. 

“It’s like I was saying earlier,” Stepper starts to explain, “seeing two mech’s walking around this time of night is suspicious because people don’t normally do that. But—,” here Stepper starts to grin in a way that Prowl can only describe as mischievous— “if one or both of them are obviously drunk? Then of course these two are going home after a long, fun night on the town!”

It’s not a bad idea. While Prowl himself may look a little more into it, he knows that most people aren’t like him and will only give the two a cursory glance. 

“It may be better if only one of us is acting drunk,” he suggests. “Mechs who are likely to either take advantage or genuinely offer aid are more likely to leave us be if they think the situation is already handled.”

Stepper nods. “Good point. Alright, lean on me.”

“What?”

“Act drunk.”

“I… have not gotten that intoxicated before. I do not have a frame of reference for how I would act.”

“Sure, but with enforcer paint like yours, I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of drunks before. It’s easy, just pretend that you’re really tired, dizzy, and mumble things that you would normally keep to yourself.” Stepper leans his weight on his back pede and looks Prowl up and down thoughtfully. “Add in some light sensitivity while you’re at it. That’ll explain your hooded poncho to anyone nosy enough to question it.”

Prowl squints at Stepper, not at all happy with his assigned role in this. 

“Yes, exactly!” Stepper says as he points at Prowl. “Keep that face, it’s perfect. Now get over here and we can stumble our way to our exit.”

With a sigh, Prowl tugs his hood further down and steps up to the other mech’s side. He drapes his arm over Stepper’s shoulders and leans some of his weight on him. At some light prompting, Prowl also leans forward a bit, tilts his helm down, and squints at his pedes. They start forward, around a corner and down the street with no good places for two mechs to hide. Prowl concentrates on his steps, doing his best to emulate how he’s seen others walk while intoxicated. Uneven gate, little to no balance, tipping a little far forward before the mech holding him up “catches” him. 

“Smokescreen would laugh,” he mutters, because he was instructed to and because it’s true. 

Stepper huffs a laugh as he readjusts his hold on Prowl. “Yeah, probably.”

“He would,” Prowl insists, still keeping to a mutter. “He’s,” Prowl pauses, trying to come up with a way to word what he wants to say that sounds sufficiently “drunk” and monosyllabic. “He’s rude like that.”

“Aw, c’mon mech. You know he cares.”

They pass a building with muffled music coming from inside. Prowl turns his helm away from the bright neon ‘Open’ sign in the window. With his focus no longer on his purposefully awkward gate, Prowl actually stumbles over his own pedes and pitches forward. 

“Woah!” Stepper holds tight, spreading his stance wide to help stabilize them. “I gotcha mech.”

Prowl can feel his face heat. He is not letting Stepper know that was an accident. He decides to answer with the same thing that a different drunk mech told him in his early days as an enforcer. It had made Smokescreen laugh when Prowl had told him about it. 

“The ground moved.”

Stepper chokes on repressed mirth. “Is— is that so?”

Prowl grunts an affirmative as he squints at his pedes again. 

Somehow, Prowl manages to survive stumbling down two streets, an alleyway, and behind a warehouse without dying from embarrassment. 

“Good job.” Stepper says. “This next part’s easy. Just gotta look like we belong. Here.” He picks up an old empty crate, turns it over, and sets it on the ground near the warehouse wall. “Sit on this.”

Prowl, though confused, does as instructed. 

Stepper shakes his helm. “You’re too stiff. Relax a bit, like we’re in a rec room.”

Prowl furrows his brow. “This is how I normally sit in the rec room.”

“…Alright. We can work with this. All we need to do is adjust your posture a bit.”

In the end, prowl sits with his knees about shoulder width apart and his torso bent forward slightly to rest his forearms on his thighs, servos hanging limp. 

Stepper scratches his chin. “You need a prop. One sec.” 

Prowl watches as Stepper unsubspaces what he recognizes as the empty cube from the safe house and a full cube. He pours a fourth of the energon into the empty cube, subspaces the three-quarters full one, and holds the quarter cube out to Prowl. 

“Here. Sip on this when other mechs start showing up,” Stepper instructs. 

Prowl takes the cube. “Stepper, what exactly is the plan here?”

Stepper, with his mischievous smile, leans his back against the warehouse wall next to Prowl and folds his arms. “The plan is to discreetly get out of Iacon,” he says, as if Prowl hadn’t already known that. “To do that, all you gotta do is follow my lead.”

Prowl is about to snap ‘That isn’t a plan’ at Stepper, when the sound of nearby pedesteps stops him cold. One of his tucked doorwings twitches in an aborted attempt to flick up and angle itself to better pick up the sound. 

A large, navy blue mech rounds the corner. Stepper continues to relax against the wall. The mech leans against the wall of the building across from them. He lets out a deep rumble that Stepper returns with a nod and a hum. Prowl, seeing this, gives his own reply to what he assumes is supposed to be a greeting with a nod while he briefly raises his cube to the stranger. 

The other mech’s rumble settles. Stepper and his smile keep leaning against the wall. Prowl takes a sip from his cube.

Following Stepper’s lead it is then. 

Over the next fifteen minutes, more and more bots show up, give mostly wordless greetings, and settle somewhere. One mech with orange and red plating looks to be recharging where she stands. Some of the others look like they want to be. Prowl can gather that they're all waiting for something. There’s quite a few things that they could be waiting on, but the most likely reason is—

“Look alive everyone! The train for Mebion won’t load itself!”

—for work. Prowl subspaces the once-again-empty cube and follows Stepper and the others into the now open warehouse. 

Two hours of backbreaking work later, Prowl and Stepper are putting the last of the boxes into the train cars. As the others leave, Stepper grabs Prowl’s arm and silently leads him to the back of the car where the crates are stacked in a way that leaves a cavity just big enough for the both of them to fit inside. Once they are inside the cavity, Stepper slides a stack of boxes over to cover the entrance. 

Prowl stays silent. He hears a mech walk in and look around. They’re not found and the door for the train car is closed shut. Eventually, a whistle blows and a small tug lightly shakes the car. He feels as the train slowly picks up speed until they are well on their way towards Mebion. 

Now, as Stepper moves the crates blocking their entrance and crawls out, Prowl speaks, “You could not have told me that this was the plan from the start?”

Stepper smiles back at Prowl and holds out a servo to help him out. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Prowl takes the offered help. “I would not call operating mostly blind ‘fun’. Nor do I appreciate it.”

“Ah, c’mon Pantera.” Stepper drapes his arm over Prowl’s shoulders. “Where’s your sense of adventure, huh?”

“I must have left it on my desk at my actual job.”

“Sheesh, for someone who ‘was simply the best option’, it sounds an awful lot like you don’t want to be here.”

“That is because I do not.” Prowl shrugs off Stepper’s arm and walks into the more open part of the car. He pulls off the poncho, folds it, and stuffs it in his new subspace. 

“Oh?” Stepper asks, following him. 

“While I believe that my skills are of better use elsewhere, I have my assignment. I will complete it as best I can.” After a quick glance around, Prowl finds a good box to sit on. 

“Ah.”

A silence falls over the two. Prowl leans back and closes his optics.

“…Are you sure that you didn’t tick someone off?” 

Prowl lets out a sigh from the depths of his spark. 

Chapter Text

Bluestreak purses his lips and squints off to the side. “I don’t like it.”

Smokescreen, rather unhelpfully, snorts at him and takes a sip of energon. Like a jerk. 

Bluestreak glares at Smokescreen and, since they are both off the clock and in the rec room, meaning he won’t get in trouble for it, kicks the other mech’s shin. “No,” he says, ignoring Smokescreens pained cursing. “I don’t like it. He’s never been gone for more than a few days before and now he’ll be gone for weeks and we won’t be able to contact him at all for the entire time, and on top of that, we don’t even know what he’s doing. He could be in danger!”

Smokescreen rubs at his abused shin. “Well that’s kind of what ‘comms silent’ and ‘classified’ usually mean, yeah. Sheesh, why do you have such pointy pedes.”

Bluestreak ignores the jab at his perfectly normal pedes. “Smokescreen please, take this seriously. Prowl could get injured, or killed, or worse! And we wouldn’t even know! He’d just be gone and he’d keep being gone and there’d be no confirmation about his condition or even a location and we’d be left wondering what happened to him and hope that maybe he just went AWOL and left because at least then he’d be alive and possibly okay.”

“Hey,” Smokescreen cuts in, “Prowl’s a big mech. He can look after himself. Plus, he’s smart. He won’t do something that’ll jeopardize himself or his mission.”

Bluestreak sighs and slouches into his seat, looking up to the ceiling. “I know, I know. I just, I won’t know what’s happening to him or where he is and I can’t give him backup. I don’t, I don’t want…” Bluestreak’s engine rumbles unhappily. “I guess I’m just frustrated by it all.”

“No, I get it Bluestreak. I want him safe as well. I can’t really do much about it though, but I know Prowl. He’s a smart mech and stubborn as they come. He’ll do his absolute best on his mysterious mission. I trust him to come back, and until he somehow doesn’t return, I won’t worry about him.”

Bluestreak looks at Smokescreen. “Just like that? You make it sound easy.”

Smokescreen laughs, “Oh, no, it’s not. But there’s no point in overstressing my systems until something actually happens, so…” he shrugs.

Bluestreak huffs, “Well that doesn’t exactly help—”

“Smokescreen, here,” says a third mech who is not part of their conversation at all, holding out two datapads to Smokescreen. “These two need to be done by tomorrow, please.”

With a quick glance Bluestreak sees that it’s Major Hardtack, the head tactician on base. He’s a larger mech with a big rig alt. His plating ranges from a dark reddish-brown to plum to a kind of dusky blue with subtle gold colored trims. He’s normally a cordial, or at least neutrally pleasant, mech but right now his expression is a combination of tired and irritable that Bluestreak doesn’t want directed at him. 

Smokescreen takes the pads. “Yessir. I’ll get right on it.”

Hardtack nods at Smokescreen with a small hum that Bluestreak thinks is supposed to sound grateful. Which is strange to him, because there’s already a sound for that and it’s saying the words “thank you” out loud. Honestly, sometimes it feels like he’s the only one who knows that words exist. 

Not that he’s going to say that out loud where Hardtack can hear. He may be chatty, but he knows not to test his luck when a superior looks like that. 

Hardtack gives a nod and leaves as abruptly as he arrived, taking with him the stack of pads in his arms. Bluestreak watches him long enough to see that he’s heading towards some of the other mechs assigned to tactical instead of the exit. 

Bluestreak turns back to Smokescreen. “That was weird, wasn’t it? Like, I’m used to stuff like that from Prowl, it’s just how he is, but not from Hardtack. He normally has more tact than that. Like, come on, who gives assignments after shift in the rec room?”

Smokescreen glances over the pads. “He’s just under a lot of stress at the moment. Tactical's been feeling Prowl’s absence, especially Hardtack. Prowl’s workload is being redistributed amongst the entire department. It’s been a lot.”

“It’s only been two days though?” Bluestreak glances back towards Hardtack, now with less pads and talking to yet another tactical mech. “I mean, I can see how tired your department head looks, but seriously? Giving out assignments during downtime? How much work does Prowl do in two days?”

Smokescreen rubs his face with his servo and groans. “So much work. It’s tedious and boring but very important. We’ll all be glad when he gets back.”

Bluestreak looks down and fidgets with his own half-filled cube. “I know I’ll be,” he mutters to himself.

It’s been a week since Prowl had left for his mission and the entire base is now feeling his absence, not just tactical. Part of the “a lot” that Prowl usually took care of turns out to be some of the logistical work for the base; ammo, energon, and even having an extra pack of darts on hand for when they break from use. The supplies still come, just not as readily as the bots on base are used to. It seems Prowl would anticipate the needs of the base and get the list of supplies prepared for the quartermaster beforehand. With him gone, there is now a noticeable lag between need and acquisition of supplies. 

Many mechs are annoyed by the change but none more so than Captain Cobalt, the base’s quartermaster. About half the base has heard her frustrated rant on how poorly Prowl’s absence had been planned for and handled. 

For Bluestreak, it’s another reminder about how Prowl is not here and likely in danger. He could be hurt, captured, dead or dying or—

Bluestreak shakes his helm against his thoughts. He reminds himself what Smokescreen had said about trusting Prowl and not worrying until something actually happens. It doesn’t work as well as Bluestreak would like it to, but he tries anyway. 

Armed with two cubes of energon, Bluestreak slides into the tactical department and makes right for Smokescreen’s desk. 

“Fuel delivery for one smoking-out-their-audials Autobot.” Bluestreak says as he carefully moves several datapads aside to create space for one of the cubes. 

Smokescreen’s mouth quirks up into a small smile. “I’m not thinking that hard yet,” he says even while his main focus remains on the pad in his servo.

Bluestreak walks around the desk and sits down on the stool Smokescreen keeps there for him. “Says the mech who can’t leave to get his own energon. Are you turning into Prowl now since he’s not here to defend his title as the ‘Overworking Mech Who Forgets to Fuel’?”

“Ha, no,” Smokscreen denies while he absently grabs at his cube a few times before he finally gets it. “Unlike some, I remember to ask for an energon delivery, thank you very much.” He punctuates his point by taking a deliberately dignified sip of said energon. 

Bluestreak snorts and drinks from his own cube. “Well, since you’ve been stuck behind this desk for so long, have you heard the things that Cobalt’s been saying about Major Hardtack and his ‘lack of foresight’?”

“Oh Primus.” Smokescreen rests his helm in the palm of the servo holding the pad. “I think I was part of the first to hear what she has to say about it, seeing as she marched in here first thing to give Hardtack a verbal lashing in person.”

“In front of everyone?”

“No, she waited until they were in his office.” Smokescreen gestures to the closed door of said office. “It’s just that Cobalt was loud enough for us to hear most of it anyway. She’d threatened to make a formal complaint if something like this happens again without first taking the proper precautions.”

“Oh wow, that’s brutal. I mean, I believe it, she’s scary when her work is messed with— I remember that incident with Clank— but to threaten the head of a department with a formal complaint right to his face? She has no fear. None whatsoever.”

“She’s an inspiration to us all,” Smokescreen agrees.

They continue to talk and fuel for several minutes until Bluestreak sees Major Hardtack enter with three mechs that he’s never seen before following close behind. 

“I think there’s three new guys over there.” Bluestreak tilts his helm to where Major Hardtack seems to be giving a tour. “I don’t remember hearing anything about new transfers.”

Smokescreen looks over to the group. “Oh, finally,” he says, shoulders sagging in relief. 

“‘Finally’? What do you mean ‘finally’?” Bluestreak asks.

“Those three are the emergency transfers that Hardtack requested to help us deal with Prowl’s workload,” Smokescreen explains. He leans back in his chair and rubs at his face. “Thank the Allspark, I was about ready to stab a mech if they put one more datapad on my desk.”

Bluestreak studies the new mechs as Smokescreen mutters his slightly murderous thanks. They listen to Hardtack attentively as they’re shown around the room. One is a short and stocky mech with brown plating who keeps nodding along to whatever is being said. Another, the tallest of the three and painted a lime green, seems to be the only one comfortable enough to ask Major Hardtack questions. The last mech is closest in build to the average, just more willowy with blue and cyan plating and fine white decals on his wrists and shoulders. He’s listening, but he keeps surveying the room and its occupants. 

Bluestreak decides he doesn’t like them. On principle. 

On some level, Bluestreak recognizes that he hasn’t really met them yet and that they’re here to help, but he can’t help but feel like they’re Prowl’s replacements. Which is probably true, to an extent, as they’re only here because Prowl is not. He knows that the resentment he’s feeling is immature and unprofessional, but a large part of him doesn’t really care about that right now. He misses Prowl and doesn’t like the notion of him being replaced. Sue him. 

“Keep making that face and it’ll get stuck like that,” Smokescreen whispers right next to Bluestreak’s audial. 

Bluestreak reflexively strikes at Smokescreen for the unexpected proximity. Smokescreen, used to startling Bluestreak by now, backs up enough so that he only hits the other Praxian’s shoulder. 

“Don’t do that,” Bluestreak seethes, spark racing a little. “And what face? I wasn’t making a face.”

Smokescreen looks way too proud of himself. “Oh, just the face of a mech who just saw his deceased loved one’s murderer and has now sworn revenge!” he replies, his tone getting more dramatic as he goes. 

Bluestreak shoves at Smokescreen’s arm. “Thanks for the elaborate description but I did not look like that.”

“You did too,” Smokescreen says, tweaking the younger mech’s chevron. “It was adorable and hilarious.”

Bluestreak smacks Smokescreen’s servo away. “You’re insufferable, you know that? The absolute worst. Just you wait, next time the base has a paintball tournament, same team or not, I am nailing you in the back of your knees and shoulders. You’ll have paint in between your joints for days. You will feel it every time you walk or have to move your arms. Even the smallest bits of paint will haunt you.”

“Wow. And you snarked at me for the elaborate description.” Smokescreen drinks the last of his cube and pops it. “Thanks for bringing that, but I need to get back to work. I’m not sure when the new guys are going to officially start, and I don’t want to end up staying late.”

“Yeah, I don’t envy you or your poor desk,” Bluestreak says, poking one of the many datapads stacked on top of it. “Good luck on finishing at a reasonable time but let me know if you end up needing another delivery.”

“Yeah, sure thi—.” Major Hardtack steps up to Smokescreen’s desk, sans the new mechs. “Oh, hello sir. Is there something I can help you with?” 

Major Hardtack gives the older Praxian a weary smile. “Please, if you can. I need to finish a few administrative tasks to finalize the onboarding process for the new mechs. Can you give them a quick rundown of the department's rules in the meantime? This should only take me ten, fifteen minutes tops.”

Bluestreak awkwardly shuffles away from the conversation and heads towards the door. He passes by Prowl’s replacements on the way and overhears them talking. 

“You know him?” Miss Nods-a-lot asks the taller Question Bot. 

“Yeah, Hardtack and I would hang out a lot before the war. It’s nice to see that he’s still alive,” Question Bot answers.

Surveillance Mech speaks up, his voice colored with a towers lilt, “Suppose you will have an easier time here then?”

“Oh, I hope not!” Question Bot is quick to reply. “I’m already new, I don’t need preferential treatment on top of that.”

Bluestreak finally reaches the door and is able to leave. 

He sighs. Just another few weeks. Prowl will be back in another few weeks. It’ll all be fine. 

Bluestreak needs to find his past self from several hours ago and shake him for tempting fate because this! Is not! Fine!

Here he is, thinking he could just go into his and Prowl’s quarters and crash into his berth but no! Apparently not! Because there is a stranger in his room!

Bluestreak stares at the lime green mech from his place in the door and the mech stares back. It takes a second for Bluestreak to realize that he knows who the mech is; he’s Question Bot, one of Prowl’s replacements from earlier that day. Bluestreak looks the intruder over. He’s taller than Bluestreak by half a helm and the slightest bit wider too. He stands beside Prowl’s berth, holding a small box and in the middle of placing small personal effects on Prowl’s shelf. Which should have Prowl’s things on it, yet doesn’t. 

With a quick glance over the rest of the room, Bluestreak finds all of Prowl’s things settled semi-neatly on his own berth. 

He looks back to Question Bot. “What are you doing and why are you here?”

“Ah, um,” Question Bot sets his box down on Prowl’s berth and fully faces Bluestreak. “I guess no one’s told you yet, but um, I’m Pinpoint, your new roommate,” he says with a small smile. “Nice to meet you.” He holds out a servo for Bluestreak to shake. 

Bluestreak’s doorwings stiffen. “My… new roommate.” He repeats, his wings raising slightly. 

“Uh, well, yeah.” Pinpoint shuffles from one pede to the other. “I was assigned to this room and this berth, and my passkey opened the door, so… you got a roommate now.” He tries to smile at Bluestreak, but it looks unsure. 

Bluestreak would like the universe to know that when he mentally referred to those three mechs as Prowl’s Replacements, that wasn’t an invitation to actually have one of them replace Prowl in his own room! Primus below, for as much as Bluestreak worries, Prowl isn’t dead! Nor is he missing! There shouldn’t be any reason to assign a new mech to a berth that’s already occupied by someone else. 

His thoughts get interrupted by an incoming comm. “Hey Bluestreak,” Smokescreen says, voice tired and a little slow. “Turns out I need another energon delivery. Can you bring one to me please?”

Out of habit, Bluestreak puts a servo to his audial and looks to the side in the universal signal that he’s talking on comms. “Sure thing. I’ll be right there.”

He hears Smokescreen hum in the approximate tones of the words “thank you” before he hangs up. 

Ignoring the mech who is apparently his new roommate, Bluestreak turns around and leaves to get Smokescreen his cube. 

He doesn’t know who thought that assigning Mr. Take-Prowl’s-Job to room with Bluestreak was a good idea, but he doesn’t! Appreciate it! Then the mech just takes all of Prowl’s things and puts them onto Bluestreak’s bed? Comes in, sees evidence of both berths being occupied, and instead of going back to the person who gave the room assignment and saying, “Hey, both those places are being used,” they think it’s perfectly acceptable to set one person's things aside so they can move in. Was literally in the middle of setting up some personal items when Bluestreak walked in. 

Who does that?

Bluestreak drops off the energon to a half-awake and fully-focused-on-work Smokescreen. Well, “drops off” really isn’t the right term for it, but “forcefully opens a single servo to place the cube in as he fills out a form on a datapad”, while accurate and descriptive, is really more of a mouthful than people usually care to listen to, or has more information than they normally would care to know. 

He considers ranting to Smokescreen then and there, but refrains as he wants the other mech to actually listen and respond to the things he wants to say. 

For now he should probably get to the bottom of the roommate situation. 

He knocks on the door to the quartermaster’s office. 

Captain Cobalt’s muffled voice calls out, “If you’re here to complain about things taking a smidge longer to arrive, you can turn yourself around and leave! Believe me, I am aware!”

“Oh, that’s not why I’m here. I just have a few questions about room assignments. Have people actually been coming to you to complain about that? I know Prowl not being here has caused a slight delay in things but I didn’t think that was something worth getting upset about. That must be really annoying. I can come back la—”

The door slides open. “Come in, Bluestreak,” Cobalt says from her seat, sounding less angry and more tired than she had earlier. 

“Oh, thank you Captain Cobalt.” Bluestreak walks in and sits in one of the open seats in front of her desk when Cobalt wordlessly gestures to them. 

The quartermaster isn’t a very imposing figure. Standing up, she only comes up to Bluestreak’s chassis and has the slight frame that comes with having a two-wheeler alt. Despite this, her presence commands respect. Just the hint of her dark blue plating or piercing yellow optics can make others straighten up. 

Cobalt nods at Bluestreak. “Your welcome, soldier. Now, room assignments?” she asks. 

Bluestreak nods. “Yes! One of the emergency transfers, Pinpoint, got assigned to my and Prowl’s room and—”

“What?” Cobalt interrupts. 

“Pinpoint was assigned to our room?” Bluestreak answers. “And I was wondering why?”

Cobalt’s brow furrows. “I would also like to know that,” she says as she pulls her chair closer to her terminal. “Your room’s one of the small ones with only two berths, right?”

“Yes Captain. That’s why I’m confused about him being assigned there. I also don’t really know why I wasn’t told about it either, because I just found out about it when I walked in and he was there.”

“Huh,” Cobalt says as she navigates her terminal. She squints at it, then scrunches her nose as she mouths the word What? at it. 

“Is everything okay? Was it an error?” Bluestreak asks. 

Cobalt doesn’t look like she heard him. “Who authorized…?” she mutters to herself as she does something that involves pressing a lot of keys. Her fingers still as confusion quickly morphs into surprise before solidly falling into annoyance with a side of “this might as well happen”. She grunts and rubs two knuckles against her forehelm. 

Bluestreak drums his fingers against his leg. “So, what’s going on?”

“Major Hardtack decided to give out room assignments for me, as a ‘favor’,” she sighs. “He has Prowl put down as temporarily transferred out to make space in the system for Pinpoint while the other two got a different two berth room. Left a note in here about the berth not being used and that the emergency transfers are leaving when Prowl gets back anyway, so where’s the harm? Gah,” Cobalt rubs her optics. “It’s too late at night for me to be dealing with base politics.”

Bluestreak would also rather not be subject to politics at a time when he’d normally be in recharge. “Sir, respectfully, that sounds a lot like ‘people are being stupid and I can’t do anything about it’ and I find that concerning.”

Cobalt snorts. “Simply put, yeah. Hardtack is a Major and I suspect this is him subtly pulling rank to get back at me for… strongly voicing my opinion.”

Bluestreak can’t help but snort at that. His mirth quickly fades, however, and he looks down as he absently picks at the transformation seam on his forearm. “So I just have to deal with the stranger taking up Prowl’s berth then?”

Cobalt sighs and nods her helm. “Yes, Bluestreak. This isn’t a big enough overstep for me to fight it, but I will make sure something like this doesn’t repeat.”

“Okay, yeah. Thanks for looking into it and explaining how it happened; I appreciate that. And for letting me in in the first place, I imagine having multiple people coming to complain about the same thing all day is infuriating.”

The captain tilts her helm back with a groan. “Primus save me from bots who have to wait a day. Thank you for actually having something that I could kind of help with.” She stands up and walks around the desk. “It’s late. Let’s rest.”

Bluestreak follows Cobalt out of her office. Rest sounds good. Preferred even. His berth is calling his name. 

Wait. His berth. 

“Uh, Captain Cobalt?”

“Yeah kid?”

“I would like to request a box that can fit under my berth please. I need a place to store Prowl’s things while Pinpoint is here. It’s all sitting on my berth and I don’t want to recharge with them.”

After a quick stop to the nearest storeroom, Bluestreak returns to his room with an empty box and a new resolve. He will tolerate the new mech in his and Prowl’s space. Pinpoint is just here until Prowl returns. He’s basically just borrowing the berth until he isn’t needed anymore. Bluestreak can deal with it for a few weeks. 

He carefully places Prowl’s things into the box and slips it under his berth. That done, Bluestreak lays down to recharge, turned towards the wall. 

All the while, he ignores the unwanted presence on the other side of the room. 

Chapter Text

After half a day of travel, Stepper wakes Prowl from his light recharge. 

“C’mon, this is the fun part.” Stepper says with a grin that Prowl is immediately wary of. 

It gets even more concerning when he opens a hatch in the ceiling and climbs outside. 

Prowl follows, because he has to, and tries not to regret all his life choices that have somehow led him to this point. 

On the roof, Prowl sees a vast and flat landscape he’s never seen before. As far as he can see, the ground is covered in green and blue organic plant life. The flimsy stalks move with the wind, bending over and waving in such a way that the whole field looks like an ocean. The sunset paints the sky in reds and oranges that shine off the plants in a way that mesmerizes Prowl in a way that so few sights have. 

“Welcome,” Stepper says from where he’s standing on the car’s right edge with a dramatic gesture to the landscape around them, “to the grasslands of Centurion.”

Centurion. That would explain it. The polity was known for its focus in researching organic life. That they would have fields of the stuff isn’t hard to believe. Prowl remembers seeing an article about how the plantlife got its energy from the sun and that there was research being done to somehow emulate that process for the production of synthetic energon. 

Too bad the war had started soon after. 

“Is the ‘fun part’ sightseeing?” Prowl asks. 

Stepper’s smile is not reassuring. “Nah, though it is a nice bonus. No, see, this train is headed for Mebion. Us though? We need to get to Tyger Pax. This is where we get off.”

Prowl blinks at Stepper. “The train will not slow down for us to get off seeing as we are technically stowaways.”

“Yep!” Stepper says with way too much pep. “That’s where the fun part comes in.”

Prowl glances off the side of the train car to the grasslands as they speed by below. He fixes Stepper with a hard stare. “You are joking.”

Stepper, standing dangerously close to the edge, continues to smile at Prowl. “Oh, not at all my mech.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“Extremely so.”

Stepper stands far too casually and laid back than Prowl thinks any sane person should when they’re so close to the edge of a moving train. The sheer audacity that it takes to stand so confidently close to a fall is something he’s only ever seen in aerial bots and seekers. 

“How would we even do that?” Prowl asks, genuinely baffled. 

Stepper smirks. “Like this,” he says and backflips off the train. 

Panic seizes Prowl’s spark as he reaches out to grab the insane mech despite TacNet already calculating that he’ll get to him too late. At the pinnacle of his jump Stepper begins to shift and transform midair. It’s almost mesmerizing, the way Stepper twists himself around so he’s facing the right way followed by his body folding into itself. All angled so that when he hits the ground, he lands tires first and immediately takes off to catch up with the train car that Prowl is still on. 

Prowl can only stare at the racing alt that is Stepper as he gets steadily closer. The suspension needed to pull something like that off is not something someone with his alt would have been forged with. Then again, with how casually Stepper had jumped off the vehicle, Prowl can only assume that it’s something he does often. Meaning that he has likely acquired the needed mods to pull off such stunts. 

Stepper honks a little tune as he pulls up alongside the train car. “Your turn!” 

“You are insane!” Prowl yells, frustrated that his panic was unwarranted. 

“Thanks!” Stepper cheerily replies. “Now c’mon!”

Prowl looks at the other mech, then takes note of how fast the train is moving, and how long a single train car is. He then pulls up his own specs and tosses all the info and his plan into TacNet. 

The numbers it gives back are promising. Prowl walks to the back of the train car and transforms down to his own alt. 

“You still there?” Stepper calls up to him. “You know you don’t have to— WOAH!”

Prowl interrupts him by gunning it down the length of the train, hops off the side just before he reaches the end, and lands in front of Stepper. He bounces once then veers to the right to fall back beside the racer. 

“Mech,” Stepper sounds to be laughing, “what was that?”

“I am a high performance pursuit vehicle with the suspension to match. My method of egress was plotted with that in mind.”

Stepper starts leading them west, away from the train and towards Tyger Pax. “No yeah, I see that, it’s just that I was about to suggest you hang off the side and jump onto my roof, but this works too! Much cooler than what I was thinking.”

“Hm.” Prowl feels simultaneously smug and embarrassed. A simple solution was available, but being considered “cool” is a novel experience for him. “Weren’t you the one who told me to follow your lead?”

Stepper snorts, “Okay, fair, I did say that. Are you always this to-the-letter about your orders?”

“When they are not detrimental or I need to make a point.”

“Ah, a practitioner of malicious compliance,” Stepper says with a hint of appreciation. “And you’re sure you haven’t made anyone mad?”

Prowl pulls ahead fast enough to dislodge dirt and grass onto Stepper’s hood. 

The mech simply laughs and pulls up alongside Prowl. “Aw, c’mon Pantera, keep that up and people might actually start to think that you don’t like me.”

“What people?” Prowl asks. “There is no one out here.”

Stepper gasps, mock offended. He accelerates ahead of Prowl, performs a one hundred eighty degree drift, and continues driving backwards with their two alts now facing each other. “What do you mean ‘what people?’ We’re people! I’m a people, you’re a people, and people are beginning to think you don’t enjoy my wonderful company.”

“Firstly, the singular form of ‘people’ is ‘person’, and secondly, I do not feel strongly one way or the other about you.”

“Oof,” Stepper says as though he’s actually been hurt. “The cold flame of indifference. No one prepares you for that one. At least to be hated is to be remembered.”

Prowl scoffs, “That is unnecessarily dramatic. You do not need to be hated or loved to be remembered. Someone will notice your absence and see the space that you used to fill.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Personally,” Stepper drifts again and ends up once again driving besides Prowl, “I don’t like relying on ‘someone somewhere’ remembering me.”

“I can guarantee that you will be remembered by at least one mech.”

“How so?”

“It is extremely difficult to forget a mech crazy enough to backflip off a speeding train.”

“Ha! Fair enough. I don’t think I can forget the tactical mech that ‘followed my lead’ in getting off the train either.”

They continue across the plains in companionable silence. The terrain slowly becomes more and more hilly as the sun sets for the evening. The organic plants thin out the farther they go until only the occasional patches can be seen. 

Eventually, hours after the sunset, Stepper guides Prowl inside a shallow alcove under an overhang. While not much, it’s probably the best natural cover they’ll be able to find. Stepper transforms back to root mode and stretches. 

“Alright,” he says as Prowl transforms behind him. “We’ll recharge some here before getting back to it tomorrow. Sound good?”

“Affirmative,” Prowl answers. He rotates his shoulders a few times, trying to sooth the odd feeling his new subspace is still giving him. “Where in Tyger Pax are we going anyway?”

“Ever heard of Fort Deadfellow?”

Prowl nods. Fort Deadfellow is the unofficial, though widely used nickname given to Forward Operating Base Sentinel. When they had first heard it referred to as such, Smokescreen had laughed while Bluestreak was mostly confused (“There are so many other bases named after dead mechs, why is this one special?”). Prowl’s thoughts had been, and still are, that there is no accounting for military humor. “It is one of our bases near the front.”

“Right-o.” Stepper gives Prowl a finger gun. “We should be getting there around midday tomorrow.”

Prowl nods again. He gives his back another stretch before he finds a comfortable enough space along the back wall to rest. 

They arrive at Fort Deadfellow a short time after midday. As an FOB, it wasn’t built to be a permanent structure. It can be moved should the tactical needs of the region require that it do so. The buildings and guard towers are ones that can be easily taken apart and stored for transport to different areas. 

That being said, this particular FOB looks to be one of the more “dug in” bases that Prowl has ever been to. This is extremely evident in the wall surrounding the base. They’ve been heavily reinforced with many ramshackle repairs done throughout the structure and barbed wire lining the top. It almost resembles something that could be made in a scrapyard. Additionally, a deep trench surrounds the wall, only allowing ground access at controlled points using honest to Primus drawbridges. 

Prowl and Stepper approach the entrance on the “backside” of the base; the one facing Autobot territory. They transform and make their final approach in root mode. 

Stepper waves to the mech manning the station on their side of the trench. “Hey yo Roadside!”

The mech, Roadside, gives Stepper a slow smile. “Well,” he says with a slight drawl, “look who’s still alive.”

Stepper reaches the station and leans on the counter between the two. “Is that really so hard to believe? I am a perfectly respectable mech!”

“Ha!” Roadside shakes his helm. “You’re many things Stepper, but respectable ain’t one of ‘em.”

Stepper gives a scoff of fake offense, servo on his chest. “Name one instance I’ve ever been a less than respectable mech!”

“Oh, I’d say now’s a prime example since you’ve yet to introduce your new friend properly,” Roadside says with a glance towards Prowl. 

Prowl would rather get through the standard checks without the small talk, thank you. Stepper throws an arm around Prowl’s shoulder, pulling him close. “And drag him into social niceties he doesn’t know the rules for and does not want to be part of? For shame, Roadside! I would never be so rude to my good buddy Pantera.”

“Mhm, sure,” Roadside says while checking the screen in front of him. “Gonna need you to take about two respectable steps away from your ‘good buddy’ there so that the scanners can do their job.”

Stepper does as instructed. The two mechs continue to banter at each other as they go through the security check, though they thankfully leave Prowl out of it. 

“Right,” Roadside says after the last scan passes over Prowl. “Stepper and Pantera, everything’s in order, no explosives on you, all good.” He reaches to the side where Prowl hears the click of a button and the drawbridge starts to lower. “Welcome to Fort Deadfellow.” 

“Oh, one last thing.” Stepper places an arm on the counter. “Marshal here yet?”

Roadside lets out a laugh. “No, he’s still out scoutin’.”

“Right, cool, uh, when he does turn up, let him know his next assignment—” Stepper gestures at Prowl— “is in the mess, yeah?”

“Should I warn him that you’re here too?” Roadside asks with a smile.

“Oh no, don’t fret about that,” Stepper is quick to wave away the suggestion. “Just get him to the mess, please.”

“‘Please’! Oh, you’re right nervous ain'tcha?” Roadside laughs. 

“See, this is why I shouldn’t tell you things.” The drawbridge lands and Stepper starts leading Prowl across it. “Goodbye, Roadside!” he says over his shoulder to the still laughing mech. 

They get to the middle of the bridge when Stepper mutters, “Need to send a suggestion to command to update those scanners. I definitely have some explosives on me.”

Prowl snaps his attention to the other mech. “You what?” he hisses back. 

Stepper shrugs, like admitting to that is no big deal. “Part of the job. Can’t let Cons sneak them on base. Best to test security with friendlies than when it really counts.”

Prowl isn’t sure if he’ll ever understand this mech. His blasé and casual attitude to these sort of stunts tell of either cockiness or experience. Prowl hopes it’s the latter. “Why tell me this?” he asks. 

Stepper’s grin turns sharp. “Now there’s the important question. Survive to the end of this and I just might let you in on it.”

Ominous, Prowl thinks, and completely sidesteps the question. 

“That is not an answer,” he grouses. 

“Nope,” Stepper agrees cheerfully, “but it’s the one you got.”

They pass the gate into the base proper and Prowl sets the conversation aside for later. It’s not something he can get into with an audience. As they walk through the grounds, different bots call out to Stepper, saying hi, asking questions, and a not insignificant amount of them teasing him about how he’s missed Marshal by a few days. Stepper answers them in kind, but keeps the conversations short, especially whenever this “Marshal” is brought up. They make steady progress past the buildings and personnel in this manner until they finally arrive at a low and long building with the hangar doors wide open. 

The inside is filled with tables and benches with various bots seated throughout the room in groups or by themselves. Stepper motions for Prowl to stay put before he quickly gets them both a cube from the dispenser set to the side. Prowl takes a sip as he surveys the room. The very back has three dart boards hanging on the wall and a game of cards in progress. 

Stepper downs his drink in one long draw and pops the cube. “Okay! Marshal’s gonna be your next escort. He should be by in the next, eh, hour or so. Blue and grey plating, yellow-gold-ish visor, straight faced. Can’t miss him. Oh, and give him this when you see him.” Stepper brings out a data stick and holds it out to Prowl. “That way he’ll know you’re his mech.”

Prowl takes the data stick and raises a brow at Stepper. “And it sounds like you are not sticking around to properly transfer me into his care because why?”

“Transfer? Now who ever said anything about a—”

Prowl gives Stepper an unimpressed stare. 

“Ah.” Stepper rubs the back of his neck. “Well, y’see, Marshal’s a good mech, great at his job, and I appreciate everything he does. We just, uh, don’t get along very well?” 

“Really,” Prowl says, full of judgement.

Stepper shrugs as he takes a few slow steps back towards the entrance. “Nothing against him or anything, we just don’t really mesh is all. Best for everyone if we minimize contact, y’know?” He claps his servos together and leans his weight on his back pede. “So, with that in mind, bye!” Stepper pivots, quickly transforms, and speeds off. 

Prowl stares at the dust cloud left behind. His hold on his cube tightens. Stepper really did just leave him here, by himself, for however long until Marshal’s arrival. 

Of all the irresponsible, unprofessional—! 

Prowl pinches the nasal bridge between his optics and takes in a deep invent. He repeats the mantra Smokescreen tells him whenever others do something that he considers stupid: it happened, it’s out of his control, focus on what can be done now. 

Prowl finds an empty table to the left of the open doors next to the wall. He sits himself there with his back to the wall and takes another drink from his cube. 

And that’s all he can realistically do in this situation. 

He pinches his nasal bridge again and sighs. Time for another round of “hurry up and wait”.

For the next half hour Prowl drinks his cube and keeps an optic on whoever walks into the mess, all the while he privately fumes over Stepper abandoning him in an unknown base to wait for an unknown mech. 

His left doorwing flicks slightly as it picks up on someone approaching Prowl’s table. He glances over and quickly takes in the mech’s appearance. Larger than Prowl, plating a navy color so dark it is almost black, red forearms and kneecaps, and a blue square-ish visor. In short, not Marshal. 

The mech smiles at Prowl and raises his servo holding his energon in greeting. “Hey there, mind if I sit here?”

Prowl gestures to the rest of the empty table. “Go ahead.”

The mech says his thanks and sits across and to the side from him. Prowl nods an acknowledgment and returns his attention back to the open doors.

“I’m Trailbreaker,” the mech introduces. “Don’t think I’ve seen you before. You new?”

While Prowl himself doesn’t like small talk, he can appreciate someone going out of their way to be friendly and welcoming to a stranger. “Pantera,” he replies, keeping his gaze on the door, “and no. I am merely stopping by.”

“I see,” Trailbreaker says, still just as kind. “Are you waiting on someone?”

Prowl decides there is no harm in answering, seeing as Roadside already knows. “Yes, a mech called Marshal.”

“Oh, Marshal? Grey and blue plating, yellow visor?”

“So I have been told.”

“He’s a good mech. A bit quiet, focused. What are you doing with him?”

“I need his help getting somewhere.”

Trailbreaker nods. “Yeah, mech’s good at getting to places along the front safely. Oh, I heard that Stepper’s on base. Apparently those two have a history. Not sure how that’ll turn out with the both of them here.”

“Stepper is no longer on base,” Prowl informs him. 

“Wait, really? How do you know?” 

“He was the one who brought me here.” Prowl frowns at the spot that the dust cloud had been. “He left shortly after telling me how to identify Marshal.”

Trailbreaker is silent for a moment. “He just… up and left?” he asks. 

“Yes.”

More silence. Prowl gives Trailbreaker a quick glance. He’s looking thoughtfully down at his drink. That’s good, it means that the quiet is contemplative and that he’s not expecting Prowl to fill it. Prowl goes back to watching the door. 

A short bit later, Trailbreaker speaks up, “But isn’t he supposed to make sure you get to Marshal?”

“Yes!” Prowl snaps his attention to the other mech, punctuating the word by slapping his free servo to the table, vindicated. “He is! Thank you.”

Trailbreaker, though a bit startled by Prowl’s reaction, gives a small smile. “That been bugging you?”

“Immeasurably, yes. He just—” Prowl angrily waves his servo at the doors where he’d last seen Stepper— “transforms and drives off before I can say anything and there is nothing to do about it besides wait for whoever this ‘Marshal’ is to show up.” 

Trailbreaker nods along to Prowl’s little rant. “Yeah, I can see why you’re frustrated. Makes sense.”

Prowl lets out a huff. He drinks the last of his energon and pops the cube with what feels like a final punctuation to his irritation at Stepper. 

Trailbreaker taps the side of his own cube. “If you want, I could step in. Confirm you make it to the right mech and all.”

“You would do that?” Prowl asks. “Don’t you have your own work to do?”

“Well, I’m currently on break, so no. And besides, even if it does end up taking longer than that,” Trailbreaker unsubspaces a datapad and shakes it, “I can do my work from here until your mech arrives.”

Something gets caught in his throat that he has to swallow against before Prowl can trust himself to speak. “Thank you, Trailbreaker. I really appreciate that.”

“It’s no trouble, Pantera. Glad I can help.”

They end up waiting there for another hour and a half. Partway through, Trailbreaker pulls out his pad and starts working on it. Prowl keeps most of his attention on the doors, though he keeps an audial on Trailbreaker to answer whatever question he asks on occasion. 

It’s actually quite pleasant. 

Finally, a mech walks in that fits the description that Stepper gave. They stop at the door and scan the room. Prowl, without looking away from the mech, taps Trailbreaker’s arm. “Is that him?”

Trailbreaker looks up from his datapad and turns his helm a bit to the side, not looking right at the mech scanning the crowd, but far enough to see him. He nods, “Yep, that’s him.” Trailbreaker turns around fully and waves to him. “Hey Marshal! Over here!”

Marshal looks at them and frowns. He walks over and Prowl gets a chance to study him. He’s surprised at how similar he and Stepper look. Not close enough to be batchmates, but uncannily similar in odd places. While the faces are nearly identical, there’s small differences in build and helm shape that differentiate the two. Though they are close in height, Marshal has a bit more bulk to his frame. His helm is also more robustly shaped along with some of the shortest audial horns that Prowl has ever seen, and his yellow visor is a straight rectangle across his optics. He comes up to their table, a frown solidly in place, and puts weight on one pede as he folds his arms. His helm moves slightly from Trailbreaker to Prowl and back again. “I was expecting Stepper,” he says to the larger mech. 

Another difference Prowl notes: Marshal has a slightly lower voice register than Stepper does.

Trailbreaker subspaces his pad. “He left a couple hours ago. I decided to sit with your mech here until you came to get him.”

“Hm.” Marshal turns his gaze to Prowl. “Pantera then?”

“Yessir,” Prowl confirms and hands over the data stick. 

Marshal takes the stick, brings out a small pad, and plugs it in. A few seconds later, he nods, unplugs the stick, and subspaces them both. He glances back to Trailbreaker. “Confirmation of transfer for one Pantera of Praxus to Marshal of Altihex.”

“Transfer confirmed,” Trailbreaker replies and stands up. “Good luck out there.” He turns back to Prowl and smiles. “It was nice meeting you Pantera.”

Prowl stands as well. “Likewise.” 

Trailbreaker gives one last smile before he turns and walks out of the mess. Marshal watches him leave, only turning to Prowl once the other mech is no longer in sight. 

“Did you tell him what we’re doing?”

“Besides vaguely stating that you were helping me get somewhere, no.”

Marshal gives a hum before nodding and turning on his pede. “Let’s go. We’ll be traveling most of the night.”

“Yessir,” Prowl answers, following Marshal. 

Marshal takes them across the base to the entrance on the other side from where Prowl had entered from. He has a brief exchange with the guard posted there and the drawbridge lowers down over the trench. Marshal transforms once it lowers fully, also a racing alt, though a bit more angled than Stepper’s more wavy design. Prowl transforms with him and follows as Marshal speeds away towards Decepticon territory. 

The sky is just beginning to lighten when Marshal finally stops. He brings them to what Prowl guesses had once been a fuel stop on a road in the middle of nowhere. Prowl looks over the rundown structure and the area surrounding it. Nowadays, he supposes that it’s an abandoned building in the middle of the wastes. 

So really, not much has changed for it. 

Inside is much the same. Empty shelves fill the main floor where a few have fallen over. Glass doors for the refrigerated section fill the far wall, also empty and no longer chilled. Marshal checks behind the cash stand, the old register broken on the floor in front of it. Prowl decides to do a walkthrough of the old shelves, wings poised to pick up any movement. 

He’s looking under a shelving unit leaned against a wall and at the remains of an old camp in the space created when he hears Marshal make a grunt of malcontent. Prowl looks over as Marshal stands, gaze downwards, with a slight scowl on his face. He goes back to his own search. 

“Is it anything that affects us?” Prowl asks. 

Marshal clicks his tongue and thinks for a moment before he answers, “No, just my next assignment. Find anything?”

Prowl stands. “An old camp with no recent signs of use. Besides that, this room is clear.”

Marshal gives an acknowledging hum. He surveys the room as Prowl picks his way over, finger tap-tap-tapping on the counter. When Prowl is almost there, Marshal shoves off the counter and beckons for Prowl to follow. 

Together they clear the storage, walk-in cooler, and what looks to be a tiny hab suite for whoever had previously manned the store. 

They both end up in the hab suite. The berth looks like it’s only by an act of Primus that it hasn’t fallen apart yet. Prowl sits himself on a more stable looking box that had likely been used as a nightstand. Marshal leans against the wall, arms folded and keeping an optic on the door. Prowl unsubspaces two cubes and offers one to Marshal. The other mech takes the cube with a grateful hum. They drink in silence for a time. 

When their cubes are almost empty, Marshal clicks his tongue. Prowl looks at him, but the other mech doesn't do anything else, just looks at the door, contemplative. Prowl turns back to his cube, content to leave the other mech to his thoughts. 

“Pantera,” Marshal says, still looking at the door, “why are you here?”

Prowl furrows his brow, confused. “It is the most defensible room. Additionally, I would rather not be separated from the mech who knows the area better than I do.”

“On this mission, Pantera,” Marshal clarifies. 

Prowl scowls at his cube. He’s now two for two on the mechs guiding him questioning his placement here within the first day of meeting them. Normally, something like this wouldn’t bother him much. Though he’d normally have a more solid reason to justify his own existence, a better idea for Why him? besides—.

“I was ordered to.”

Marshal lets out a huff with a shake of his helm and turns to fully face Prowl. “No, that’s how you’re here. I want to know why you were given this mission.”

Prowl’s offense rises at the pointed question. The need to fire back and defend himself battles with his frustration that the only real answer he can give is— 

“I can efficiently process large amounts of data,” Prowl says to his cube.

—which doesn’t adequately justify Why him? in any capacity, because—

“You’re not the only one,” Marshal states.

—and he knows that, but when he had questioned his assignment and suggested that someone with more relevant skills be given it instead of him—

“I was ordered to be on this mission and help make any intel acquired immediately actionable upon return, so I am here. I do not have a better answer for you.”

Silence follows. Prowl glares at his almost empty cube. He can hear Marshal’s frustrated huff and sees his pedes as he swings one back to tap the tip against the floor twice before it’s set back down. 

Prowl takes a few deep invents and downs the rest of his energon. He turns the empty cube over in his servos. 

It happened, it’s out of my control, focus on what can be done now.

Prowl pops his cube and rubs at his face. “I do not know why they sent me, just that they did. I will complete this mission to the best of my ability. I would appreciate any help you can give me to that end.”

Marshal is still for a few moments. He lets out a small hum and goes back to leaning against the wall and watching the door. “Recharge first,” he says. “I’ll wake you when it’s my turn to rest. Then we need to continue towards Tarn. We’ll talk on the way.”

Prowl nods. “Okay.”

He sits on the floor next to the box, leans his side against it, and rests his forehelm on the top. It’s not the most comfortable of positions and he’ll likely wake with a sore neck, but it will do for now. He forces himself to initiate recharge. 

Chapter Text

They do indeed talk on the way to Tarn. They go over any relevant experience Prowl has and Marshal asks him further questions from there. Questions like:

“Can you lie?”

He can state the truth and have others come to their own erroneous conclusions. Outright, on-the-spot fabrication is harder, but he can keep a straight face and even tone. 

“Give me an example.”

Yes sir, Smokescreen has been with him all day. No sir, Bluestreak did not throw that pebble at you, he’s been doing drills as you instructed. No Smokescreen, he doesn’t know where your snacks went, he and Bluestreak have been playing chess for the past hour.

“How’s your acting?”

He understands it in theory, but he’s never had to be anyone but himself before. 

“Are you willing to hide your autobrand?”

If the need arises, then yes. 

“What do you know about staying hidden?”

There are a lot of nooks, crannies, and blind spots that can be exploited. People don’t tend to look up. They also don’t tend to give things a second glance without a reason to be suspicious, so don’t give them a reason. A lot of the art of disappearing is social engineering: show others what they expect to see and they tend not to look further. 

“Would you willingly have your processor tampered with?”

…Depends on the situation and the need. 

“Are you willing to change your paint?”

No.

Along with more questions along those lines. 

Near midnight Marshal slows as the silhouette of a crumbling city comes into view. He transforms and crouches next to a low wall. Prowl follows suit. 

“Cons sometimes patrol out here,” he whispers. “Alt mode’s too loud, so it’s on pede from here.”

Prowl nods his understanding. He takes out and dons the poncho Stepper had given him to better hide some of his white plating. Marshal nods at him and the two make their way into the crumbling ruin. 

It’s different from sneaking across Iacon. There's no bright lights to dance around or crowds to avoid or blend in with. There’s very little social engineering that they can do if they are seen. There’s also, Prowl learns, different levels of darkness, even in the middle of the night. The natural light of the night sky is just bright enough to cast its own shadows. He also, when directed by Marshal, has to dim his own optics to better blend into his surroundings. 

There’s also similarities to when he went through Iacon. Moving from shadow to shadow, slipping through alleyways, and across buildings. There’s knowing when to move, how to move, and where to move to. Marshal seems to have his own way of keeping time by tapping his first digit against his thumb followed by quickly tapping his middle digit on his thumb twice with a slight pause after before repeating. First, middle-middle, pause. 1, 2-3…1, 2-3… Over and over again with their movements timed to that beat. 

Moving like this, they steadily make their way deeper into Decepticon territory. 

As they move, Prowl takes in the city and its state of decay. He knows it was one of the minor cities at the edge of Tarn. He knows that many battles had been fought in its streets. What he doesn’t know is the city’s name, and he likely never will. The unfortunate truth is that whatever this city had once been called doesn’t matter much anymore. Not when there are thousands just like it with thousands more that will likely join it in forgotten ruin. 

There's a part of him that wishes Praxus had gotten the same treatment. To be one of thousands, to be in ruin, yes, but at least there’d be something still standing, some monument remaining in the aftermath. Maybe even that wouldn't matter so much if more had survived. If Praxus had endured a long battle instead, then people could have been evacuated, their lives saved and with them a part of the city as well.

It’s a horrible thing to think about. To want one type of destruction over another, as if having it not be destroyed at all is no longer an option. Yet here he is, wishing it had been this slower decay rather than what it was. 

The air is still when Marshal has them slip into a small one story building nestled between what remains of two much larger ones. The front room looks to have been a small reception area with a single door leading further in. Marshal opens it and waves Prowl inside before following and closing the door behind him. This room, which is only slightly bigger than the last, was an office space for whatever business this had been. It’s in surprisingly good condition with a desk, chair and filing cabinets still mostly usable and only one filing cabinet tipped over on its side. Exposed pipes run up the back wall and there are no other doors in the room besides the one that leads back into the reception space. 

“This is the rendezvous,” Marshal says and starts unsubspacing a servoful of different data drives. 

Prowl studies a small dino-bot magnet from Carpessa stuck to the fallen cabinet. “Who are we waiting for?”

Marshal pauses in organizing his data drives and lets out a sigh. “As annoyed as I am at Stepper for ditching, I need to leave as well.”

“What?” Prowl looks back to Marshal. “Why?”

“Your next escort and I are not allowed to meet face-to-face unless it’s an emergency or the information’s too confidential to even be stored on a physical drive.” Marshal starts planting the drives in different places throughout the room. “Can’t risk him being associated with me.”

“And who, exactly, can not risk being associated with you?

“A Decepticon.”

Prowl blinks. “…Excuse me?”

The room Prowl finds himself in when he comes to is familiar, but he can’t place why. He doesn’t remember why he’s in here or even how he got here either. His disoriented and fuzzy thoughts don’t exactly help him in this. 

He tries to rub his temple but his arm can’t leave its position behind his back. His other arm is similarly caught. They’re both… Prowl uses his servos to feel out what’s going on behind him. His servos have been cuffed together with cuffs that have been threaded behind a pipe near the wall. 

“What is—” he mutters, or tries to anyway. The only sound that comes out is a little click from his vocalizer but nothing else. He tries his comm next but finds that it is offline as well and no amount of poking and prodding is able to get either back to working order. 

Prowl takes a deep invent and does his best to take stock of his body. He’s sitting in what feels like a cheap office chair with his servos cuffed behind it. Thankfully the chair back stops around mid back, so he hasn’t been laying on his doorwings for who knows how long. His spinal strut and shoulders ache though. He goes to flex his shoulders to try and stretch them a bit and finds his movements are sluggish. He hears a faint hum behind him. 

It takes Prowl an embarrassing long second for him to connect the last two facts and deduce that he is being restrained by active stasis cuffs. 

Which is… not ideal, he’s sure. 

He’s also fairly confident that stasis cuffs don’t meddle with a mech’s mental facilities like he’s experiencing right now. Which means… either he’s been caught by a new type of stasis cuff or that there’s something else going on that’s making an already bad situation worse. 

Which is a fair conclusion to draw except for the fact that despite the present circumstances, Prowl feels weirdly… calm. He knows it’s not a forced calm or brought on by outside influences. Those kinds of calm usually try to suppress worry and reassure that everything is fine. That’s not the calm Prowl is feeling, this one is distinctly his own. There’s no suppression of worry or the insistence that things are fine. But there is the feeling of things falling into place. Of being in control. 

It’s the calm that comes when everything is going according to plan. 

A plan that doesn’t currently make sense, but a plan nonetheless. 

Prowl furrows his brow. His comms are out, his voice is out, his body is weak, and thoughts are a maybe. Yet, somehow, this is all according to plan. 

He decides to look around the room. There's a dusty desk in front of him, a tipped over filing cabinet to his side, with other filing cabinets, these ones upright, lining the wall to his right. On the wall directly across from him is a singular door to what he guesses is the rest of the structure. There are cracks along the ceiling with some pieces chipped off in places. 

He hears a noise outside. Several noises actually, getting louder. No, getting closer. They’re… pedesteps. Sounds like a single pair. Anticipation builds while that “according to plan” calm stays firmly in place. 

A mech comes into the door and freezes at the sight of Prowl. Prowl wishes he could say he stills at the sight of this mech as well, especially given the purple Decepticon badge on his chest, but no. Instead, Prowl’s full mental faculties come back online in a disjointed jumble because of the mech’s face. 

There’s several things that Prowl remembers in the back of his mind when this happens. Marshal had warned that his undercover spy may not be alone so they need to set up a scene of Prowl being a prisoner, just in case. Marshal didn’t want to depend on Prowl’s untested acting skills and suggested a partial processor block; it would help him give a genuine reaction for any real Decepticons, but would be something that Prowl can easily reverse if the spy was alone. Marshal had given Prowl a description of who he was waiting for, guided Prowl in setting up the block on himself, and left soon after. 

Now, while Prowl is partially aware that the mech in front of him fits Marshal’s description of the spy and that he is alone, it is his face that has Prowl taking down the block so he can properly comprehend what he is seeing. 

The chances of the last three mechs he meets, that have been specifically assigned to aid him in this mission, having nearly identical faces are low. Extremely low. 

Ignoring the similar face, everything else about the mech is different. His plating is black, dark grey, and grey with crimson colored accents. He’s a bit taller than Marshal with sharper detailing and a more angular shaped body and helm covering. He has pointed horns similar to some minibots that Prowl has seen and two ridges between them. The sharp pointed look continues with his red orange visor with its ‘W’ shaped bottom edge. 

He is also, Prowl notices, muttering to himself and has been for the past several seconds. Prowl shoves his incredulous feelings aside and makes himself pay attention, adjusting the angle of his right doorwing a smidge to better focus on the mech. 

“—get information, upload viruses? No problem, part of the job. But now they send me an entire mech? Marshal had better have a good explanation for this, I swear.” the spy walks up to the desk and angrily swipes a datastick half hidden within a stack of loose flimsi. “The usual things are risky enough, but a whole living person is pushing it.”

Seeing as he is referring to Marshal aloud, Prowl takes that to mean that the spy is well and truly alone. With no need to keep up the prisoner act, he sends the release code to the stasis cuffs. He makes sure to catch them before they can clatter to the ground. Meanwhile, the spy connects the datastick to a small, robust, and slightly beat up looking pad. 

Prowl rubs at his wrists as he watches the mech take in whatever data is stored in the stick. He witnesses the spy’s face get progressively more and more sour the longer he looks at the screen of his pad. 

The spy lets out a noise that seems like a mix of a huff and a growl as he unplugs the datastick from his pad and subspaces them both. He does a thorough walkthrough of the room, ignoring Prowl for the moment, collecting random items and more hidden data drives to subspace as well. Feeling slightly indignant at being ignored, Prowl crosses a leg over the other and studies the stasis cuff that Marshal had slapped on him. His doorwings, however, he keeps trained on the spy. 

It’s a good pair of variable stasis cuffs. Able to transform to fit bots both large and small with stasis settings to match; the highest of which is fit for a shuttle mech. Interestingly, the transformation and stasis setting are not linked together like how they usually are in these kinds of restraints. Meaning, if Prowl felt the need to, he could give a smaller sized bot a shuttle’s amount of stasis. Before the war, modifying cuffs in this way has been made illegal in an attempt to try and curb brutal treatment from enforcers. It still happened, but the law had given Prowl and others like him the grounds to report those that still used them.

Handling such cuffs now leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. However, this is war and he knows that some bots are modified to be more resistant to the normal stasis settings for their frame type. 

The spy comes between Prowl and the desk, checking the drawers and the underside of the desktop for anything else that has been left for him. Prowl can’t help but think that it’s a conscious choice on the spy’s part to turn his back to Prowl. Not as a show of trust or because they’re on the same side, but a deliberate dismissal of whatever sort of threat that Prowl might pose. 

It’s an immature display but it gets under his plating all the same. 

Done with his search, the spy stands and turns to Prowl. He leans against the desk behind him and folds his arms. Prowl would call the body language “unconcerned” if not for the tense shoulders and displeased scowl the mech gives him. As though it is Prowl’s fault that they now have to deal with each other. 

Prowl has no sympathy. He is also displeased with the current state of things, even if he has mostly made his peace with it. 

“Alright mech,” the spy says, “you’ve been placed in my dubious care for the next week until further transport comes along to collect you. Lucky us,” he says with a flat tone and his scowl in place. “So, we’re gonna make this as smooth as possible, kapeesh?”

Prowl isn’t sure if that was a threat or not. He feels vaguely threatened. A part of him wants to make things as difficult as possible for the spy, just to be contrary. However, Prowl will cooperate, because he’s a mature mech and knows how to be professional with those he may not exactly get along with. “Affirmative,” he replies with a curt nod.

“Fantastic,” the spy says, tone lacking any positive inflection. “Name’s Ricochet.“

“Pantera.”

“Charmed.” Ricochet pushes himself away from the desk and walks over to one of the standing filing cabinets. “Marshal said he left you a few things to at least partly disguise yourself,” he explains as he kneels down beside the bottom drawer and opens it. “Don’t worry, your odd aversion to paint was noted, so it’s not that.”

Prowl briefly scowls at Ricochet’s back then stands and subspaces the cuffs. He doesn’t owe this mech an explanation, no matter how hot the indignation burns. 

Ricochet pulls out three pieces of grey plating and stands. “These,” he says, turning to Prowl, “are to cover your autobrand and the enforcer insignias on your wings.” He hands one over to Prowl. “Hold it over the one on your chassis and it’ll transform to fit. I’ll do the same for your doors.”

Prowl takes the offered plate. While one side is colored, the other has cybernetics inlaid to it. He holds the plate with its cybernetic side facing his Autobot badge. The plate shifts and changes shape in his servo until he is holding what looks like a middle part of a hood perfectly sized to fit over his chest. He hears another set of micro transformations at his back and holds his doorwings still. 

Prowl sets the transformed plating down over his badge. The edges of the plate do another micro transformation and clamp in place. He hears and feels another plate do the same over one of his wings and it takes concentrated effort to keep them from moving. 

Once the other wing is covered and Ricochet steps away, Prowl lets go of his iron grip and his wings give a hard flick against the added weight. His sensors feel muted with the plates covering them and he flicks his wings again, wanting to shake off the strange feeling. 

Which seems to somehow work? The sensory input he is used to getting starts to return and Prowl has to look back to make sure the coverings are still there despite still feeling their weight. They’re there, a thick grey stripe that covers the middle of his wing from the connection point at his back to the tip. 

“They’re adaptive,” Ricochet says. “Can’t have bots with wings acting odd when they wear ‘em.”

“Impressive,” Prowl mutters. He moves his doorwings around one more time before he sets them back to their normal resting position. He compares the additional plating against his frame specs and is glad to note that they will not interfere with his transformation sequence. 

Prowl looks at Ricochet and gives a small nod. “Thank you.”

Ricochet shakes his helm and turns away to the door. “Thank Marshal. He left you the stuff.” He folds his arms and leans against the closed door. 

Prowl tenses at the move. While he knows that they are on the same side, he can’t help the unease that creeps up his back when a mech wearing the Decepticon badge blocks the only exit. 

“You’re not a field mech,” Ricoshet says, his tone already accusatory. “So what are you doing out here? Was the office too stuffy? Too boring? Wanted to do something ‘cool’?”

Prowl tries to reply, but Ricochet talks over his attempts. “Everything up to this point has been safe. From here on, you’re in Decepticon territory. Meaning if you get caught, you’re dead, understand? Don’t take this lightly. My job is hard enough as it is. I don’t need a desk jockey making things difficult because they wanted to play at being a secret agent. Who’d you have to convince to get sent out here anyway?”

“No one!” Prowl forcefully interrupts, frustrated at being questioned about his place here for the third time by the third mech he’s been paired with. “The only person who needed convincing about sending me here was me. I know it is dangerous! I know my life is on the line! I would much rather be at my desk, but I was not given much of a choice. I am here, so cease your posturing and let’s focus on the task at hand.”

Ricochet leans his helm back slightly, seriously looking Prowl over for the first time since coming in. A corner of his mouth turns up slightly. “Alright.”

They exit the small building and Ricochet leads him through the rest of the city and further into Tarn. 

“Here’s the story,” the spy says as they go. “You’re a neutral informant of mine that my boss wants to speak to. You were living near a Mebion base. Good so far?”

Prowl thinks for a moment. “How much coercion did it take to convince me to follow you?”

Ricochet gives a hard laugh. “Just the standard threats I imagine; you’ll live longer coming with me than you would staying there. Something like that. A little of an unwilling willingness, see?”

“I see. If someone asks what intel I used to give?”

“Mech, what do you think? I can’t be coming up with everything.”

Prowl gives a hum and thinks it over. He knows that the best lies have parts of the truth in them, but he can’t say anything about being a junior tactician as his cover is a neutral who probably has slight Decepticon leanings. He needs something he has at least some experience in that wouldn’t be too far fetched for a neutral mech to have done. 

By now they’ve made it past the city limits and once again make their way over the rolling hills of tarn. Dirt and dust waft into the air with each step they take. 

“…I helped load and unload the trains,” he decides. “I would tell you about the supplies that came and went and what the other neutrals and the Autobots would gossip about.”

“Not a bad shout,” Ricochet concedes and rests his forearm on Prowl’s shoulder. “It’s a good spot to notice things and hear news.” He gives Prowl a smile that sets him on edge. “There’s just one little detail that doesn’t match up.”

“And what would that b— AAH!”

Ricochet pushes Prowl down the hill they just got to the top of. The added weight to his chassis and wings does not help Prowl with regaining his footing. He topples over, rolls a few times, and is able to catch himself some and slide down the rest of the way on his front. It is not at all dignified, but he will take it over sliding on his back and damaging his doorwings. 

Prowl drags himself up to his servos and knees and spits out the dirt that got into his mouth. “What was that for?!”

Ricochet slides down the hill on his pedes with one servo on the hillside for stability. His descent is much smoother than Prowl’s had been. “You were too clean. Needed to rub some dirt on you and chip your paint a bit.”

Prowl glares at Ricochet as he stands. “And you could not have just told me so?”

“Nah, this way was much more efficient.” Ricochet gives Prowl a mean smile. “Besides, it was more fun this way.”

“That,” Prowl spits out with some dirt, “was not fun in the slightest.”

“I mean…” Ricochet shrugs. “I had fun.”

“Of course you did,” Prowl mutters. 

Ricochet taps a knuckle on Prowl’s shoulder pauldron, a self satisfied smile still in place. “C’mon, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.” He transforms

Prowl notes that while Ricochet doesn’t explicitly have a racing alt like Stepper and Marshal do, it is one that is built for speed with a similar enough frame to the other two. 

Prowl transforms as well and follows near Ricochet’s side as they leave. 

He still has a few questions about his new neutral cover.

“Do I keep going by ‘Pantera’ or should I use a different cover name?”

“You offering to let me name you?” Ricochet asks. 

“…No,” Prowl decides. 

Days later, Prowl and Ricochet are approaching a large Decepticon base which, Ricochet had explained, mainly serves as a sort of distribution center, mostly for energon. Ships of all sizes sit in the airfield as supplies are put on or taken off of them. What looks to be a near constant guard surrounds the base on the ground with several seeker trines circling overhead. 

Ricochet transforms and stalks up to the door, Prowl a step behind. The two guards stationed at the door give them both hard looks but let them enter into the base proper. They’re part way across a large hanger when a mech calls out to them. 

“Hey Ricky!”

Ricochet stops in his tracks. His fists tightly clench as he takes a deep vent in and lets out a quiet, “Scrap.” Ricochet relaxes somewhat and turns to face the large approaching mech. “Lookout,” he greets. 

“It’s Commander Lookout,” Lookout corrects. 

“Hm,” Ricochet hums, unimpressed. “Congrats.”

Lookout glances at Prowl. “Who’s this?”

“Rover,” Ricochet says, using the name that Prowl had settled on. 

It’s Lookout’s turn to hum unimpressed. “He’s not allowed on base.”

Prowl frowns at the commander. 

“Why?” Ricochet challenges. 

“Because I’m the commander of this base and I said so.” 

Ricochet scoffs, “There're very few mechs whose orders I’ll follow without question and you’re not one of them. I need an actual reason.”

“Having unaligned mechs on base is a security risk that we cannot afford, especially with the amount of energon that we store and transport here,” Lookout seethes. “Even if that wasn’t a concern, this is a military operation not a hotel. We can’t have weak willed civilians who can’t choose a side getting underpede and disrupting our workflow.”

Ricochet nods. “Understandable.”

For a moment, Lookout seems surprised that Ricochet is agreeing with him. 

“But—”

The surprise shifts to irritation.

“—my boss told me to bring Rover to him.” Ricochet places an arm over Prowl’s shoulders. Prowl tenses and side optics the mech. “Y’see, he’s not really a neutral who’s passing through; more like an asset that I’m delivering.”

Lookout studies Prowl and Ricochet for a few uncomfortably long seconds. “…Fine Ricky,” Ricochet’s hold on Prowl tightens slightly at the reuse of the nickname. “He can stay with you,” the next part he directs more at Prowl with an ugly sneer, “but just so we’re clear, I’m watching you.”

Prowl determines that Lookout is trying to intimidate Rover, the “weak willed civilian who can’t choose a side” by using his larger frame and aggressive attitude. So, to use Stepper’s lesson in social engineering, the best way to utilize this is to show the commander what he expects: a cowed and cowardly neutral. 

Prowl copies the body language Bluestreak uses whenever Prowl catches him in the middle of doing something stupid. He scrunches in on himself slightly, shoulders up a smidge, ducks his helm down and keeps his optics firmly on the floor. “Yes sir,” he says to the commander’s pedes. 

Prowl spends the next few days either in the room assigned to him and Ricochet (as Ricochet himself sneaks off deeper into the base (possibly completing the “get information, upload viruses” part of his job)) or staying close to Ricochet’s side as they get fuel and sit in the rec room for close to an hour. Each time they're out, Prowl can almost feel the heated glares Lookout sends him. It’s an uneasy few days that Prowl spends extremely aware of the proximity of the base commander and his constant scrutiny. 

This behavior continues up to the day that they’re set to leave with Lookout blatantly following them as Ricochet leads Prowl to hangar A. He thankfully stays on the hangar floor when they head up the ramp of a large ship destined for Kaon. 

“Paranoid glitch,” Ricochet mutters when they’re no longer in sight of the commander. “C’mon.”

He leads Prowl through the ship, his bad mood making others hurry out of his way and discouraging anyone from talking to them. Ricochet finds an emergency exit on the side of the transport with no one else around. After a brief moment to fiddle with the alarm connected to it, he opens the door and directs Prowl through. He closes the door behind them, rearms the alarm, and directs Prowl off the ship and into the crowds in a way that keeps them hidden from the base commander who is still staring intently at the transport ship. 

They head back into the base proper, going down corridors that get progressively smaller and less populated until Ricochet stops at a nondescript door in the middle of an empty narrow hallway. He opens the door, waves Prowl inside, and gives the hallway one last look over before ducking in himself. 

Prowl finds himself in a half-filled dust-laden closet. 

“Your guy will come by to pick you up soon,” Ricochet explains. “He’ll use a specific knock before he comes in.” He uses a knuckle to lightly rap the wall in a specific pattern: tap tap-tap, tap tap-tap, tap tap tap. “Play it back to me.”

Prowl repeats the pattern by tapping it on his arm plating. 

Ricochet nods. “Anyone come in without that, hide. Good luck.”

And with that, Ricochet slips out into the hallway and leaves Prowl in a half forgotten supply closet. 

Prowl takes off the grey plating that served as his disguise and goes to the back wall where he hides behind several dust covered crates. Once off, the grey plates transform to fold more into themselves, making them more compact and easier to transport. He subspaces all three of them. 

It’s not long before he hears the tap tap-tap, tap tap-tap, tap tap tap that signifies the arrival of “his guy”. The strange thing about it though is that it’s not coming from the door. No, it’s coming from… the middle of the ceiling?

Prowl looks up in time to see a vent cover be silently removed from its spot. Someone pokes their helm out and smiles at him. 

“How’s it hanging?” asks the fourth mech he’s seen with such a familiar looking face. Prowl is well and truly flabbergasted. The chances of this sort of thing happening are so abysmally low! “Prowl, right?” the statistical anomaly continues.

‘Low,’ he remembers Smokescreen saying, ‘but never zero.’ 

“Yes, I am Prowl,” he answers, setting the near impossibility aside for now.

“Cool.” His mission partner reaches down a servo. “I’m Jazz.”

The name reminds Prowl of something. “Stepper says hello,” he tells Jazz as he takes the other mech’s servo. 

Jazz’s smile broadens. “Stepper!” He helps pull Prowl up. “Been a minute since I’ve seen him. How’s he doing?”

“He backflipped off a speeding train.”

“Ha!” Jazz replaces the vent cover with a deft ease. “So he’s doing good then.”

Prowl takes in Jazz’s appearance. Similar facial structures aside, he has average sized audial horns and a light blue visor with a wide “V” shaped lower edge. His plating is black and white with red and blue accents, the red autobrand set in the middle of the thick blue stripe on his chassis with thinner red stripes on each side. 

“How did you get here?” Prowl asks, remembering the almost excessive amount of security around the base along with the lack of cover around it. 

“Same way you did I imagine,” Jazz answers with a smile. 

“…By walking through the front door?”

Jazz laughs, though Prowl doesn’t get what it is about what he said that is so funny. He suspects it is because he is missing context. 

“Alright, alright,” Jazz says, visor gleaming. “Let’s catch a ride.”

They use the vents to get to hangar D. Jazz points towards a medium sized ship in the middle of being loaded. Prowl nods in understanding and follows him as they carefully exit. From there, it’s a matter of ducking and weaving through the crates and dormant machines to avoid notice from the cameras and loading crews alike. 

Jazz leads them past the cargo and slips under the ship when backs are turned. Crouched beneath the ship, Jazz holds out a servo to Prowl. “Flathead screwdriver,” he requests quietly while looking over the plating of the ship’s underbelly. 

Prowl takes the item from his secondary subspace and hands it over while just as quietly asking, “How did you know I had that?”

Jazz starts fiddling with the release mechanism on an access panel. “You mentioned Stepper. He’s pretty consistent with the tools he sends others out with.”

The access panel makes a soft click. Jazz hands the screwdriver back. Prowl can faintly hear the hinges on the panel squeak as Jazz slowly opens it. Jazz looks inside and waves Prowl over. 

When Prowl settles next to Jazz, the mech points to the inside of the ship. “See the gap between the main fuel line and the thingamajig with the blinking yellow lights?”

Prowl nods. 

“It’s tight but you can get through there and prop up the floor grate in the hallway,” he explains. “Then we can climb into the space for long term storage in the top part of the wall. It has more room for us than the floor does.”

Prowl purses his lips in thought as he analyses the gap. He tucks his doorwings close to his back and climbs up into it. It is a tight fit, but he encounters the floor grate even before he can get both pedes inside the ship. He pauses to listen for any activity. Hearing none, he props the section of floor up and slides it to the side. He crawls into the hallway, doorwings up and alert. He hears the faint click of the access panel closing and turns to help Jazz into the ship. 

Jazz goes for the overhead storage as Prowl carefully sets the grate back in place. Jazz moves some items aside then makes an “after you” gesture towards Prowl. With a boost from Jazz, he crawls inside. This space is also cramped; he has his doorwings flat on his back and they scrape faintly on the roof. Prowl shimmies further in and presses himself along the back wall behind the various things stored up here. Jazz follows soon after and arranges himself to mirror Prowl against the back with their helms next to each other. Once situated, he reaches over and slides the door closed. Then, with a little help from Prowl, arranges the stored items back into place. 

“Cozy,” Jazz whispers. “You good?”

Prowl already misses the much roomier vents, he can already tell that his doorwings will have sore hinges once they arrive at their destination. “I will be fine.”

Jazz gives an apologetic smile and shrugs his shoulders. “Yeah, it’s not ideal, but it’ll do for two mechs.”

Prowl gives a soft hum as an acknowledgment of the statement and lays his helm down for the wait. 

Chapter Text

Despite not wanting the new roommate, Bluestreak does his best to maintain a basic level of civility with Pinpoint. He doesn’t bother the new mech and, so far, the new mech has reciprocated and not bothered him. While this whole mess is annoying, it’s not terrible. 

Bluestreak has even had a few short conversations with the other two temp transfers: Figment, the blue mech with the towers accent, and Nickel, the short brown one (she has become Captain Cobalt’s favorite by taking up the bulk of the logistical work that Prowl had done). Bluestreak finds he has an easier time being around these two than he does with his “roommate”.

He watches as the group of three get their evening energon. They’re in the middle of what looks to be a heated debate. Pinpoint is arguing passionately about something with Nickel. Figment mostly observes in amusement, occasionally cutting in with a comment in response to whatever it is that the other two say. 

“Who needs murdering?” Sideswipe asks with no preamble as he sits down across from Bluestreak. Sunstreaker silently sits next to his brother. 

Bluestreak blinks as he processes the cold open. “Hello to you too?”

“Yeah, yeah, hi. Now, murder?” Sideswipe asks in a tone that some may say is way too casual for the topic. 

“Wh— no. Unless we’re being sent somewhere, there’ll be no murdering of anyone. And I feel like I should probably be concerned about how eager you are for violence today? Why are you going straight to ending someone?”

Sideswipe rolls his optics. “Sure, it’s us that’s eager for violence when you’re the one staring someone down with murderous intent.”

“I was not staring at anyone like that,” Blustreak denies. 

Sunstreaker scoffs. “You were still, silent, and glaring. Battlefield behavior.”

“Exactly,” Sideswipe nods in agreement.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Bluestreak denies again. “In fact, I want the opposite. No killing anybody. None of that, at all, especially while on base when there’s no Decepticons around.”

“Ah,” Sideswipe says with a nod and knowing grin. “I get’cha. So, who are we definitely not murdering?” He winks at Bluestreak. 

Bluestreak smacks the table with his face. “You’re both impossible.”

Sunstreaker makes an offended sound. “Both? I have nothing to do with this!”

Bluestreak tilts his helm slightly to the side so he can look Sunstreaker in the optics. “Just because you haven’t said much does not excuse you when I know for a fact that you are down for violence at the slightest provocation. You not stopping or arguing with Sideswipe during that entire conversation is basically an endorsement.”

Sunstreaker’s face scrunches in disgust. “I would never endorse this idiot.”

“Hey!” His brother protests. 

Bluestreak ignores Sideswipe and continues to stare at Sunstreaker. “You didn’t deny your willingness for violence.”

“I’m not about to lie over something so obvious.”

Bluestreak turns his face back into the table. “Why are we friends again?”

Sideswipe answers, “Because we’re awesome. And cool. We pull the best pranks. We’ve bonded in battle.”

“You’re not afraid of us,” Sunstreaker adds. 

“That too. Sorry Blue,” Sideswipe says, unrepentant, “but you’re stuck with us.”

Bluestreak sighs into the table. “Guess having you two for friends isn’t so bad,” he concedes, lifting his helm off the table. “Could be worse. It’s nice to know that I’ve got mechs who have my back.”

“And since we’re such good friends—”

Bluestreak kicks Sideswipe’s shin. “Drop it with the murder already,” he says, ignoring Sideswipe’s pained cursing. “I get that you’re mostly joking, but I’m really not in the mood right now, okay? Mostly just mad at decisions that I think are stupid.”

“Stupid how?” Sunstreaker asks, also ignoring his twin. 

So Bluestreak tells them about how a mech got assigned to a bunk that already belongs to somebody else. He explains how he had found the stranger in his room, got called away, then asked the quartermaster about it. Talking about what she had found sets Bluestreak down a ramble about how dumb it is that Major Hardtack overstepped his bounds to maneuver people and assignments around the way he did and that Prowl will be upset when he returns only to find a stranger in his space and do they have any idea how much that’s going to suck? Prowl will get back from a long, likely tiring mission only to see that his personal space has been violated, and that said breach was endorsed and set up by his own superior. 

“—and it’s not like we’re tight on space,” Bluestreak says, thirty minutes in, “because I can understand it if there were no other available berths for the guy. Would have moved Prowl’s things myself and made space for him if that was the case, but it wasn’t! No, Hardtack decides to play at base politics or something stupid and now—”

“PRIVATE BLUESTREAK!”

The tone of angry authority has Bluestreak away from his table and standing at attention with an acknowledging “Sir!” before he can even fully comprehend what’s happening. 

The pure dread he feels at seeing an angry Major Hardtack has Bluestreak already seeing the etchings that will adorn his grave: Here lies Bluestreak. He opened his big mouth.

He mentally braces himself for the worst dressing down of his life. 

Bluestreak is going to have dust in his vents for weeks after this.

Major Hardtack has him cleaning the file room in the records department due to his insubordination. It’s a large room full of filing cabinets and crates of datapads. It’s a place that doesn’t receive many visitors besides a few clerks as they store and retrieve documents. The amount of dust any one thing has seems to correlate with its distance from the door; the farther into the room something is, the thicker the layer of dust it has. Bluestreak swears the dust on the cabinets along the back could have started supporting entire ecosystems before he wiped it away. 

So yeah, dust for days. 

Currently, Bluestreak is on the ground and dusting the small space underneath the cabinets. He’s determined to clean every inch of this room so that the Major can’t make him clean it all over again because he missed a normally inconsequential space. It’s getting late in the evening and he doesn’t want to miss more recharge than he already is. 

“This doesn’t change my mind, Major Hardtack,” Bluestreak mutters to himself as he works. “Still think your strange politicking is stupid and makes no sense at all. I’m not ‘questioning your authority’, I’m questioning your decisions, which is completely different. Yeah, not my place, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have opinions and complain about it during my free time if I’m the one who has to deal with— oh, how’d that get here?”

Underneath the next cabinet is a datapad. He pulls it out and looks it over. It barely has any dust on it, so likely only recently lost. Bluestreak briefly wonders how it ended up under a filing cabinet so deep in the room before deciding it doesn’t really matter and that it should be filed properly. He’s heard Prowl complain enough to know about the helmaches and dangers that come from mismanaged files. He just needs to know what kind of file it is so he can drop it off on the right clerk’s desk. 

He pulls the datapad out and sits himself up, giving it a quick once over. He clicks it on and is greeted by the first page of a KIA report. Well that’s unfortunate, but now he knows who he should—.

Bluestreak doesn’t mean to look further. These things could have sensitive information that he is sure he doesn’t have the clearance for, but as he moves to shut off the datapad, his optic catches on the name of the deceased and he freezes. 

Prowl?

That can’t be right, Prowl’s out on a mission and he promised to come back and if the KIA made it this far in the records room then surely Smokescreen would have been informed and Smokescreen would have told him if Prowl was dead. He leans forward over the pad, hoping a closer look will change what’s written on it. This can’t be real. It can’t be. Prowl should be okay and alive and not on a KIA as the deceased. Smokescreen would have told him if Prowl was gone. Right? Smokescreen can be a jerk sometimes but he wouldn’t keep something like this from Bluestreak. He wouldn’t. But then why is there a—? What is—? How did—? When—?

Bluestreak forcefully puts the datapad in his lap while he sits up straight, closes his optics, and takes a deep vent. Thinking in circles isn’t helping. This entire thing is distressing and doesn’t make sense. 

So he needs to make it make sense. 

He pulls up Smokescreen’s comm. Despite the late hour, it’s only a few short, if agonizing seconds before he picks up. 

“Hey Bluestreak, what’s up?” Smokescreen says in that slightly mumbled tone that means he’s not fully awake. 

“What’s the latest you’ve heard about Prowl?” Bluestreak asks. 

“That he’s leaving on a classified mission and will be gone for three to five weeks? You were there when he told us.”

“Not from Prowl, about Prowl!” Bluestreak huffs. “His condition or any updates! Stuff like that!”

“Nothing besides that he’s ‘on mission’? Blue, it’s almost the middle of the night. What are you trying to ask?”

“I—” Bluestreak looks down at the currently powered down pad in his lap. If it made it to the file room, it should have been processed and family members like Smokescreen notified. It doesn't make sense. “You’re sure?” He asks. “No one’s told you anything new?”

“No,” Smokescreen says, now more alert and concerned. “Why?”

“Well, uh, it’s, I was caught complaining about Major Hardtack by Major Hardtack and he sent me to the filing room in records to clean it, which is the worst because it’s late and there’s so much dust behind these things and they’re heavy but I found a— there’s an—.” The words catch in Bluestreak’s throat. He can’t say this over comm. It feels too impersonable, especially for something like this. “Can you come here? Please? I’d rather talk face-to-face than not. It’s important.”

There’s a few seconds of silence before Smokescreen replies. “You’re beginning to worry me, Bluestreak, but, yeah, I’ll be there soon. Filing room in records you said?”

“Yes,” Bluestreak says. “Thank you.”

“See you in a bit.” Smokescreen ends the connection. 

Smokescreen speed walks down the halls and into the records department. He makes his way past the single clerk recharging at their desk that Smokescreen can only guess is supposed to be overseeing Bluestreak’s punishment and into the filing room in the back. 

“Smokescreen!” Bluestreak says as he stands from where he was sitting on the floor. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You won’t believe this, I’ve been—”

The younger Praxian then proceeds to ramble to Smokescreen, at speed. Smokescreen, being foolishly unprepared for the onslaught, can only catch a few words from what he is being bombarded with. 

“Woah, woah, Bluestreak, wait, hold on!” Smokescreen interrupts as he grabs the other’s shoulders. “I didn’t get all of that, but the parts I did catch sounds concerning. What’s this about Prowl and a KIA?”

Bluestreak holds out a datapad. “I found this,” he explains. “It was under one of the filing cabinets and it wasn’t really dusty.”

Smokescreen takes the pad and looks it over. A few small markings on the side of it show that it came from the tactical department. 

Bluestreak continues his explanation. “I thought it just got lost, so I turned it on to see which clerk I should give it to—” Smokescreen powers it on— “and I didn’t mean to but then my optic caught on a name and—.”

“Prowl?” Smokescreen asks in a small whisper, feeling his lines grow cold. 

“Yeah,” Bluestreak wrings his servos together, “and I thought, ‘this doesn’t make sense, Smokescreen would’ve been told if Prowl died and he would’ve told me’ so I called you and here we are and I don’t know what’s going on because this is obviously the first you’ve heard of this so it still doesn’t make any sense about what this is and why it’s here and I didn’t want to be alone.”

“Understandable,” Smokescreen mutters, still looking at his brother’s name. “One moment, let me just—.” Smokescreen starts skimming over the rest of the document, because if he’s going to be processing his brother’s death then he needs details!

That’s when he notices something, or rather, the lack of something. “This report is unfinished,” he tells Bluestreak. 

“What?”

“Yeah, here look,” Smokescreen comes up beside Bluestreak and points at the pad. “See, there’s no date, no cause of death, no location, there’s not even a name for whoever confirmed the deactivation. Besides the identification of the deceased, there’s nothing. No KIA should have gotten this deep into records while missing so much information.”

Bluestreak squints at the blank spaces. “Why is it here then? It was under the filing cabinet but it hardly had any dust on it, so I know it’s pretty new, but it shouldn’t even be anywhere near this room in its current state unless it was placed here deliberately. Which, why? This isn’t making any sense.”

“Maybe,” Smokescreen says, “it’s something that’s supposed to help cover up Prowl’s movements while he’s on his classified mission.”

“But then shouldn’t it be mostly finished and ready to go? It can’t cover anything like this.”

“Top secret plans are above my pay grade,” Smokescreen quips, “but it being like this most likely means that Prowl is fine and that this is only here as a ‘just in case’ sort of thing.”

Bluestreak gives Smokescreen a squinty look that says that’s a load of slag, then rubs at his optics with a huff that finishes the thought with but you’re probably right.

“Okay,” Bluestreak says. “What do I do now? I’m already on Major Hardtack’s bad side, I can’t just admit to seeing something that’s probably top secret!”

“Why not just leave it where you found it then?”

“Because I found this while cleaning! It will be obvious I saw it when the place it’s at is clean and I’m not going to leave it dirty and risk a reprimand and then have to clean this entire room all over again but this time with a detail brush! I can’t pretend I didn’t see it. There will be evidence that I did!”

“Okay, okay,” Smokescreen says, lifting his servos to placate the other. Doing so brings the marks of Tactical on the pad’s side back to Smokescreen’s focus. 

It gives him an idea. 

“You don’t have to pretend you didn’t find the datapad, just that you didn’t see what’s on it. You found the pad, saw these markings—” Smokescreen tilts the pad and points out said markings to Bluestreak— “and recognized them as belonging to Tactical. You called me to come pick it up. I bring the pad to Major Hardtack in the morning and he gets to deal with the sensitive information that you and I definitely did not see. Easy!”

Bluestreak’s doorwings droop slightly with his nerves. “You think that will work?”

Smokescreen places a confident servo on Bluestreak’s shoulder. “Of course! We just act like we never saw the fake KIA, never talk about it, and we’ll be fine.”

“Right, okay.” Bluestreak rubs his servos over his face and lets out a vent. “Thanks for answering my comm so late and helping me figure all of… that out. That, uh, wasn’t a fun thing to randomly stumble upon, like, at all. Just an overall terrible experience.”

“Glad I could help,” Smokescreen says. “I leave you to your cleaning detail with a modicum of comfort.”

Bluestreak groans at the reminder of his punishment as Smokescreen leaves. 

“Hey, Smokescreen?”

“Hmm?” Smokescreen looks up from his work to see Pinpoint standing in front of his desk. “Oh hey. What’s up?”

“Well, uh,” Pinpoint starts as he nervously shifts his weight from one pede to the other, “you and Bluestreak are close, right?”

Ah, so this is about Bluestreak. The situation between him and his new roommate is kind of hilarious with his third person perspective. Just, Bluestreak being so bent out of shape over the whole thing and then there’s Pinpoint who’s just standing there, being an average person. Honestly, the amount of self-inflicted suffering that Bluestreak is putting himself through would do numbers as a B-plot in one of those discontinued reality TV shows. Smokescreen can’t help the amused huff and small smile he gets at the thought. 

“I like to think so,” he says, answering Pinpoint. He gestures for the other mech to sit down at the extra chair he has nearby. “What can I help you with?”

Pinpoint takes the offered seat. “I, uh, I was wondering if Bluestreak doesn’t like me? Or something? Like, am I just reading into his behavior too much or is that just how he is?”

Smokescreen absently rubs at his chin. “Can you elaborate on what you mean by that? What kind of behavior?”

“It’s just, I see how he acts with everyone else around here. He’s usually got a smile and he seems nice and friendly and chatty. And at first I thought it was just because I’m new and he isn’t used to me yet, but then I saw him interact with Nickle and Figment, the other two bots I came in with, and while it’s not as open as he is with others, he’s still polite and talks to them. Like, I don’t know, a cool neutrality between coworkers kind of thing. When it’s me specifically? It’s all hard looks and pretending I don’t exist or that he didn’t hear me. 

“Which makes things difficult because we share a room! I’ve tried being polite and a good roommate but it’s hard to do that with someone who I feel like hates my mere existence from the get go! I don’t even know what I did wrong! From the moment he walked into our room, he’s been cold and dismissive. It’s disheartening to end each day with a bot who’s so cheerful and kind to everyone else on base except me. And, I don’t know, I would like some help? Please?”

It’s while the other mech vents with a controlled but genuine distress that Smokescreen is viscerally reminded that while it’s kind of funny watching this from Bluestreak’s perspective, the younger Praxian isn’t the only one there. While great in a show, there are real feelings being hurt here. 

“Hey, it’s not you,” Smokescreen reassures. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Okay? You’re good.” 

“Really?” Pinpoint asks.

“Really. It’s just a slag situation. I’ll talk to Bluestreak, get him to knock it off.”

Pinpoint starts to shake his helm. “Oh, you don’t have to—.”

“Yes I do,” Smokescreen interrupts. “Slag situation or not, he’s a grown mech and shouldn’t be treating you like this.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Pinpoint looks to the side, still nervous. 

Smokescreen leans towards him and lightly rests a servo on his knee. “Hey, you’re not in trouble and you didn’t get Bluestreak in trouble. Thank you for talking to me and bringing this to my attention. You did good.”

Pinpoint nods. “Okay, yeah. Thank you for, uh, listening to me rant.”

Smokescreen gives a reassuring smile. “Of course. It was no trouble.”

Polyhex is currently a highly contested space between the Autobots and the Decepticons. Many battles are being fought over who can occupy the area and it seems that the borders showing who controls what change daily. The Decepticons, who currently control most of polyhex’s south west regions. have started to push their forces into Polyhex’s western neighbor, the Autobot controlled polity of Altihex. 

This is worrying for many reasons. The main one being that a main Autobot energon refinery is in the middle of Altihex.

As Tyrest is the next Polity over, squads are being deployed from Main Operating Base Tango to temporarily help maintain control of Altihex and push the Decepticon forces back until the more permanent reinforcements from Iacon arrive. Bluestreak’s squad is among those being deployed. 

Smokescreen has to book it to the designated hangar to catch Bluestreak before he leaves. 

He spots the sniper looking over his gun near the wall. Awesome, not on the ship yet. He rushes over to the younger Praxian. 

Bluestreak clocks the fast approaching person and snaps his focus to it. He tilts his helm to the side and furrows his brow at seeing who it is. “Smokescreen? What’s wro—?”

Smokescreen grabs Bluestreak by his shoulders and starts shaking him. 

“Wh—! Hey!” Bluestreak widens his stance, grabs Smokescreen’s wrists, and leans forwards against the other mech’s continued attempts to keep shaking him. “Can you not?”

“Nope. I am morally obligated to shake some sense into you!” Smokescreen gets a few more, smaller shakes in, despite Bluestreak’s valiant effort to stop him. 

“Why?! What did I even do?”

Smokescreen stops shaking the other mech and gives him a hard look. “I get that you’re upset about Prowl but you need to stop taking your bad mood out on Pinpoint.”

Bluestreak’s face scrunches up in confusion “I don’t though? I barely even talk to him.”

“Bluestreak, I need you to know how painfully obvious it is when he’s the only person you will not talk to. Or even just acknowledge. You think he hasn’t noticed that?”

“So?” Bluestreak challenges. “I don’t have to be friends with everybody.”

“You’re right. You don’t. But you’re at least polite to everyone else!” Smokescreen frees one servo from Bluestreak’s grip to rub at his optics. “Look, this was kind of funny to start out with when it was at your expense—” Smokescreen ignores Bluestreak’s protest— “but it’s gone on long enough. Get over the roommate thing. Pinpoint’s done nothing to deserve the attitude you’ve been giving him.”

“I haven’t been giving him attitude,” Bluestreak grumbles. 

“Oh yeah? So giving other bots the silent treatment is normal behavior for you then?”

“Well, no. I usually talk a lot. And I know you know that, it’d be strange if you didn’t know that by now. There’s even people who are always telling me to shut up. I don’t like those guys much so I ramble near them or to their faces just to mess with them. And now you’re giving me that look like I just proved your point, which… I guess, I kinda sorta did because I just admitted to talking to bots I don’t even like so not interacting with Pinpoint at all is… yeah, very noticeable.” Bluestreak tilts his helm back and sighs to the ceiling. “And you just let me ramble and talk myself into agreeing with you because you know me well enough to know how I am when I’m being ‘stubborn and defensive’.”

Smokescreen smiles at the younger bot. “And?” he asks expectantly. “What are you going to do about it?”

Bluestreak sighs again and looks down to his pedes. “Make it up to him because yes, I’ve been a crappy roommate and yes, I’m sorry and yes, Smokescreen, I’ll apologize properly to Pinpoint and be nice when I get back.”

Smokescreen’s smile sharpens into a smirk and he pats Bluestreak with the servo still on his shoulder. “Cool. Glad we got that cleared up. I hate having to be the responsible, level-headed one here. Please, don’t make me have to do that ever again.”

Bluestreak snorts, “I mean, no promises, but Prowl should be getting back soon after I return from Altihex, so you’ll be okay.”

“Don’t jinx me like that Bluestreak. It’s very rude.”

Bluestreak laughs at him. 

Chapter Text

The Mithril Sea of Cybertron takes up the entire southern polar region of the planet. There are many small islands dotted throughout the sea which, before the war, had provided solid ground for several research facilities to build upon amongst the vast and shifting ice cap. These facilities have since been abandoned. However, according to Autobot Intelligence, one of these old buildings is the location of one of the Decepticon’s dedicated server rooms for data storage. This base in the South Pole is where most of their logistical data is stored; things like base locations, supply lines, troop deployments, and more. 

While this data can be potentially accessed from any other Decepticon base, it won’t be the full thing. From what Intelligence can tell, whenever the database is accessed, the information available is limited to what is relevant to that base, its surroundings, and maybe other nearby bases. The full breadth of what information this database has can only be accessed on location or directly from Decepticon high command. 

Anything that involved Megatron and his close circle was deemed too dangerous and not worth the risk. It was decided that the best way to get at the data would be to send a small team to infiltrate the polar base and get the data from the source. 

Actually finding the base to infiltrate proved to be difficult. The Mithril Sea is large and while they have some records of the decommissioned research facilities, there was no telling if those records were complete. To add to the nightmare that was locating this base, the climate hindered any search efforts with high winds and storms and a cold that could freeze any mech left to the elements for too long. 

It made sense why the Decepticons had chosen the location they did to hide a base whose main function is data storage and logistics: the weather does a majority of the defense. Finding this base was a lost cause. 

That is until Autobot intelligence got news about a supply ship being sent right to it from Tarn. 

So with all that in mind, Prowl understands the necessity for a full day trip in such a cramped space. His wing joints, however, are threatening to mutiny against him if he dares to keep them tucked against his back for much longer. 

Lucky for him and his doorwings, the craft has just landed, with the promise of freedom soon to follow. 

After they wait for the pilots to disembark and start helping with unloading the cargo, he had Jazz carefully slide out of the overhead long term storage. It’s painful to stretch his doorwings high and set them to their normal resting position, but also a relief on his stained joints. Despite this, Prowl’s main focus remains on the mission. As he stretches his doorwings, he removes the same floor grate as before and follows Jazz as they exit the craft the same way they boarded; through the floor. 

This hangar is much smaller than the one in Tarn. It has only one other small craft parked close by. Prowl follows Jazz away from the group unloading the supplies. Besides the two pilots, Prowl counts an additional seven mechs. He mentally calculates the amount of time it will take them to unload the cargo hold and sets an internal timer for when he and Jazz must return for their escape. They weave through old crates towards the wall on the other side of the second ship. Then they slip through a side door into the rest of the base. 

The rest of the infiltration goes smoothly. They don’t run into anybody else and locate the server room fairly quickly. A quick search confirms that it is empty. Jazz inspects a trinket that was left on top of one of the server towers as Prowl searches for the best place to plug in. Finding it, he promptly connects to the system with Jazz not far behind. They get past the firewalls and Prowl copies as much information as he can in their limited timeframe. He is vaguely aware of Jazz going to their security footage and making it look like they were never there. 

His timer steadily ticks down. Prowl disconnects and signals to Jazz that they need to leave. Together, they head back to the hangar. 

They’re crouched behind a pile of crates and about to move below the supply ship when Prowl stops Jazz by grabbing his wrist. 

“Wait,” Prowl whispers as he watches the only other people in the room, two of the base mechs and one of the pilots, joke around. “Something is wrong.”

“Yeah?” Jazz asks, settling next to him. 

Prowl squints at the mechs, scrutinizing. “No one is making any effort to prepare the ship for its return trip. Why?”

Jazz tilts his helm to the side and makes a thoughtful hum. “Maybe they’ve decided to rest a bit? Play some cards, hangout?” 

Prowl presses his lips into a thin line as he watches the three mechs leave out a pair of double doors. “While possible, I do not see a mech like Commander Lookout tolerating tardiness due to negligence of duty.”

Something rattles behind them. They both snap around to face the noise. 

An old door, one that opens inwards on hinges, shakes within its frame. An eerie howl fills the air as the wind outside buffets against the outside wall and batters against the door. It’s evidently too much for the door as it flies open so violently it hits the wall with a loud Bang! He and Jazz both raise their arms to shield themselves from the intense, freezing wind as it forces its way inside. It whistles loud and sharp while carrying flurries of snow that makes the world outside look like a never ending void of grey. 

A blizzard.

Prowl squints against the wind and the cold. His gaze flickers between the storm outside and the door that is still banging against the wall. 

“They will investigate,” Prowl warns. 

Jazz nods. “Then we best disappear.”

The next few seconds are a blur for Prowl that start with Jazz grabbing him around his waist and end with the both of them inside the vent that runs along the ceiling of the hangar. Prowl blinks a few times, trying to properly process what just happened to get them from there to here in almost no time at all. He thinks he saw that Jazz had a grapple? Maybe?

A quiet snigger catches Prowl’s attention and he looks up to see Jazz’s blatant amusement on his face. Prowl glares at him. This only makes Jazz laugh again while covering his mouth to muffle the sound. 

Rushing pedesteps quickly sobers the mood. They both still and watch through the grate as one of the base mechs, colorfully cursing old buildings, runs into the room. He attempts to close the door against the wind but the amount of force that the wind puts on the flat surface is too much for him. The mech calls out for assistance. 

It is as he watches two mechs struggle to close a door that Prowl is hit with a realization. For however long this storm lasts, he and Jazz are effectively stranded inside of a Decepticon base. Trapped behind enemy lines. 

Jazz is whispering something but Prowl isn’t processing it. This was supposed to be the quick part of the plan; get in, grab the intel, and leave. There was nothing in the mission brief about a storm nor the possibility of one. Why didn’t their superiors take the weather into account? Why didn’t he take the weather into account? He had just been thinking about how the climate acts as a natural defense for the base. Sure, weather patterns are hard to predict weeks in advance, but they could’ve had a general idea of what to expect. Everyone knew that the weather impeded every attempt that the Autobots made in finding the base, did it not occur to anyone that it could be an inconvenience for the Decepticons as well?

Jazz shakes Prowl by his shoulders. Prowl looks at his mission partner’s face and his determined frown. 

“You listening?” Jazz asks.

Prowl nods. 

Jazz nods back. “Good. Did you get a blueprint of this base while you were downloading all that information?” 

Prowl nods again. 

“Awesome. I need you to go over that and find us a crawlspace. It should be next to or near the vents but not any of the vent openings. It needs to fit both of us inside. Comfort isn’t a priority, but it is appreciated if at all possible. I’d prefer it be near the hangar, but being near any storage room would also be good. You get all that?”

“Affirmative,” Prowl answers. Crawlspace, near vents but not the grates, can fit them both, comfortably if possible, and near the hangar or supplies. 

Prowl sets the requirements and focuses on going over the map with TacNet’s assistance. 

He finds a spot between the mechanical room and the thick outer wall of the building. It’s near the hangar and a quick crawl through the vents to a room marked for storage. The empty space between the mechanical room and the wall isn’t visually represented on the map, but the measurements of the room and its surroundings do not match up. 

Location acquired, Prowl explains what he found as he leads Jazz through the vents. He stops when they get to where the gap should be. The vent walls here don’t have any grates or other openings nearby. With a silent thanks to Stepper, Prowl pulls out a handheld laser cutter from his secondary subspace and cuts three sides of a square in the space in front of him. Once done, he puts away the cutter and carefully pushes the thin flap of metal down far enough for a thin slit to show. 

A quick peek confirms what Prowl suspected; a larger-than-normal gap between two walls. He pushes the flap open fully, carefully lowers himself down, and drops the last foot to the floor. 

He steps out from under the opening he cut in the vent to make room for Jazz. Then stares in disbelief as Jazz grabs at the vent near his shoulder with one servo and slides out of the vent helm first. With his grip on the vent, he flips right side up as his legs slip out of the vent. He hangs there for a moment by one servo and the other rests against his hip as he surveys the space. 

“Roomier than I dared to hope for honestly. Good find.” He finally lets go and lands on the floor. 

Jazz is right about the space available. Length wise, it is a little under half as long as The Palace of Lower Iacon. For the width, Prowl could stand in the middle of the room, spread his arms out, then tilt slightly one way or the other to touch the walls. 

Speaking of the walls, the one that separates them from the mechanical room is definitely newer than the others, though still old. 

“I suspect this area had been walled off during renovations before being abandoned at the start of conflict.” Prowl says as he points out the wall to Jazz. 

“Huh. Wonder what for,” Jazz says with an inquisitive tilt of his helm. “Hmm, my bet’s on closet space that didn’t get the door installed.”

“It is possible.”

“Well, however it happened, it’s good news for us.” Jazz pats the thick outer wall. “This is home sweet hide-y hole until the storm quits and we can leave.”

Prowl scowls to the side. There is no telling on when that will be. 

Jazz unsubspaces two emergency survival kits and hands one to Prowl. He looks it over. It’s not the standard issue survival pack that the Autobots provide. In fact, going by the company logo that he hasn’t seen in years, it appears to be a commercial pack that had been sold in outdoor shops before the war. 

Prowl sits down and unzips the largest pocket. He begins to catalogue the tightly packed supplies. “Where did you find these?”

Jazz unsubspaces two thin recharge pads and places one next to Prowl. “Last mission brought me to one of those abandoned cities in the wastes. I had some time and decided to explore a bit. Scored these under some of the rubble of what I think was a camping depot thing.”

“Hmm.” Prowl mentally adds the survival kits to his mental list of the supplies available to them. “That is fortunate.” And unusually lucky in Prowl’s experience. 

They set up a rudimentary camp. The bags lean against the mechanical room’s wall while the recharge pads are laid out next to each other on one half of the room, a little under an arms length apart. After they each drink a half cube, Prowl and Jazz lay down for some rest. 

Prowl can’t make himself recharge. From his spot next to the thick outer wall, he can faintly hear the whistling winds from the blizzard outside. 

The thoughts he set aside to do the task that Jazz gave him creep back in. As far as Prowl can tell, this was not a possibility that the Autobots had planned for. It seems that the Decepticon timetable for the supply ship had been trusted. Prowl supposes that it’s not an unreasonable assumption to make that the mechs in charge of these sort of logistics would take the weather into account when scheduling supply drops. And maybe they had. Perhaps the weather had taken an unexpected turn and now he, Jazz, and the Con pilots are stranded with nothing to blame but a bit of bad luck. 

He hears Jazz let out a huff. “Hey Prowler?”

The nickname is new. And surprising. “Hm?” 

“You awake?”

“No,” he answers. 

Jazz snorts a laugh. “What, you talking in your recharge?”

“Affirmative.”

“Okay,” Jazz says with a smidge of mirth, “I get it. Dumb thing to ask. I was wondering if you had any idea how long this storm could last?”

Prowl shutters his optics and sighs. “At the least? A couple of weeks.”

That seems to bring Jazz up short. “Weeks?”

Prowl continues to deliver bad news, “In the past, there have been storms that were reported to last for the entire winter season.”

“…The whole season,” Jazz repeats in a monotone. 

“At max.”

He hears Jazz take in a deep vent. “Well,” Jazz exvents, “I got my answer. It wasn’t as soothing to my racing thoughts as I had wanted it to be, but I got it.”

“You’re welcome,” Prowl says, at a loss for how else to reply. 

Lockbox is a Decepticon who knows her server room. She knows it very well. Better than she knows her own built-in specs. 

So she notices when the ritualistic offerings of cool little knick knacks that are placed on top of the servers are not properly aligned to their machines. 

She fixes the one that’s out of place, obviously, but the feeling that someone was there isn’t something that is so easily rectified. 

All her base mates know not to mess with the server’s knick knacks and the two temps wouldn’t have been let in here alone to do so. Nevertheless, something has crossed her space and messed with her work and now she can’t get into her usual workflow as a result. It’s honestly unfortunate. She doesn’t like having to take extra precautions to ensure the safety of her space and the safety of the many terabytes of data entrusted to her care, but something is off and she’s determined to find out what.

“Are you… sure this much security is necessary?” Market asks from his chair as he watches her set up the twelfth and final motion activated camera. 

“Yes,” she answers like the entirely sensible mech she is. “The system will only be activated when neither of us are in the room. Should the anomaly occur again, we will have the necessary evidence of what it is and thus be able to properly plan and move forward with a suitable solution to the problem.”

“Uh huh,” Market says in his disbelieving tone. Jerk. “And if it doesn’t pick up anything and nothing happens?”

“If the anomaly does not reoccur and no concerning footage is captured, I will take down one camera every three months until they are all gone.”

“That’s thirty-six months.”

“I know.” 

“Thirty-six months because the blue glow-in-the-dark rubber duckie was a centimeter out of place,” Market says as he raises a single brow pointedly.

“I don’t appreciate you implying that my reaction is absurd and irrational,” Lockbox seethes as she heads to her terminal to finish installing her new security system. 

Market sighs and sets a servo on her shoulder. “Look,” he says with a gentler tone, “I get there’s not a lot to do out here and that the pace is slow. It’s maddening, especially when there’s little opportunity to transform. But obsessing over the smallest details in order to find something to do and break up the monotony isn’t the best solution.”

Lockbox presses her lips into a line. Market isn’t exactly wrong, it’s just… “I’m positive that something isn’t right though.”

Market sighs again. “I get it, I do, and I’ll let you keep these cameras up if they help bring you some peace of mind. Just keep me in the loop so I can catch you before you get too far, okay? Chasing after ghosts and things that aren’t there isn’t a fun experience.”

Lockbox nods her agreement. “Thank you, Market.”

“Oh hush up,” he says with a playfully rough shove. “I don’t want any of the seekers thinking that I actually care.”

Lockbox snorts as she shifts her focus back to her terminal. “Primus forbid they find out you have a spark.”

Prowl understands the basics of cabin fever and why solitary confinement is inhumane, unethical, and counts as a method of torture. He is not, Prowl thinks pointedly at the universe, in need of a demonstration. 

Jazz hadn’t even lasted a full day before deciding to go explore the vents for “reconnaissance” and leaving Prowl alone in the space within the base’s wall. 

Prowl doesn’t mind at first. He spends the alone time doing what he was sent to do: organizing the stolen intel and coming up with ideas for how to best utilize it to their advantage. It’s something he’s accustomed to, working on such tactics with little to no interaction with others. Besides, after being in such a cramped space with another mech on the flight here, the solitude is greatly appreciated. 

It’s not complete isolation either. Jazz returns at the end of the day and reports what he discovered while he was out. These reports consist mostly of things about the personnel on base. It’s information that Prowl isn’t wholly interested in, but he takes mental notes on Jazz’s discoveries regardless. From what Jazz says and information pulled from the servers, Prowl knows that there are nine Decepticons on base. He has them divided into four separate groups. 

First are the seekers, a single trine who primarily act as the base’s security. There’s Highbeam (he cheats at cards), Coil (she cheats at dice), and Updraft (Jazz hasn’t caught him cheating at anything… yet). 

Next are who Jazz calls the IT guys, the ones in charge of the servers and data that the base stores and manages. Lockbox (quiet gal, she also cheats at cards), and Market, the mech officially in charge (a pretty laid back guy so far).

Then there are the maintenance mechs who keep the place running and relatively warm. These mechs are Wrangle (he’s easily the oldest mech here and unofficially the one who’s actually in charge), and Pick (he’s an alright mechanic, a bit twitchy though).

And finally are the Pilots. Technically, these two are not a part of the base, and are instead the other two mechs who became stranded out here by the blizzard. They are Livewire (Pilot, he insists on living out of the ship) and Pocket (Co-Pilot, young, she follows Livewire around for now).

Ultimately, more than Prowl really ever cared to know about a group of Cons, but it’s something for him and Jazz to do. Even if the way Jazz does reconnaissance is more akin to scrounging for gossip for two friends to laugh over in a cafe later, it’s good information to have to build up a more comprehensive character profile of each mech on base. 

Prowl barely picks up the soft skrrrt sound of a mech moving stealthily through the vents. He looks over in time to see Jazz slide his way out of the vent with the same amount of flair that he did the first time he did so a few days before. 

“Anything new?” Prowl asks from his spot on the floor of their closed off closet space. 

“Well—” Jazz sits himself next to the Praxian— “Highbeam’s in the lead for the amount of card games won. Coil tried using her weighted dice but Wrangle caught her before she could win any favors from the others. That one twitchy mech, Pick, recharged in the heated storage room while taking stock. Oh, yeah, speaking of which.”

He brings out two cubes of stolen energon from his subspace, holding one out to Prowl. While they still have a good amount of cubes between the two of them, Prowl decided that it would be easier to hide their theft if they start doing it along the same time that the pilots are getting situated in the base. 

Prowl huffs. “Anything important?” he asks as he takes and scrutinizes the fuel.

Jazz downs half of his cube in one gulp. “Not really, nah.”

“Fantastic,” Prowl grumbles. He sets his helm back on the wall, very aware of the faint sound of the blizzard howling outside. 

Pick knows when he’s being watched. It’s a skill that was forged and perfected during desperate times before the war when he had to know if he could nick a mech for a few spare shanix without looking suspicious. It’s helped him similarly after the war as well, for whenever a superior is watching or if an enemy mech may have him in their scope. 

With the two new mechs on base, the extra optics on him are expected. But not to this degree. It’s almost a constant feeling nowadays, to be caught within a stranger’s regard. He’s never truly left alone for long. Even when there’s no one near, he can still feel the weight of foreign optics on him. 

That’s when it's the worst. When he knows for sure where everyone is and he tucks himself away into a room with no one else, but those optics still weigh heavy on his shoulders. 

Pick knows when he’s being watched. 

And for a few days after this blizzard’s started, an extra pair of optics will look at him occasionally. He can pretend that it’s someone he can see when he’s hanging out with a few of the others. Right now though? When it’s just him, his number puzzles, and no one else? He can’t lie to himself about it. 

Someone or something is watching him. He can’t prove it beyond a gut feeling, but he’d bet a month's worth of energon on it if he could. 

He doesn’t even get why this unknown entity is watching him. It can’t be very entertaining. He’s just sitting here, alone, failing to do his puzzles while under such untraceable observation. 

And yet, here he is. 

Being watched. 

Still alone. 

Prowl comes to the conclusion that he will not be getting back home anytime soon, at all, whatsoever.

No matter how much he really wants to.

It’s been almost a week since their arrival at the Decepticon base. Prowl ran out of ways to organize and plan with the stolen intel two days ago and the long days of nothing but the small room quickly got old and near maddening. 

So Prowl takes a chance. 

With the base blueprints to help guide him, Prowl waits for the “slow hours” when most of the other mechs are in recharge to enter the vents. He slowly makes his way through the base until he finds something that catches his optic. 

A look through the vent grate shows that it’s one of the long term storage rooms. It appears to be mostly filled with a lot of high-quality cold weather gear.

Prowl carefully sets himself inside, then goes about methodically taking stock of all the different kinds of gear, fuel, and heavy machinery available to them in this over-glorified outpost. 

With all that data, he sets his TacNet to figuring out any plausible escape plans. 

Prowl wants to be gone. Despite the unexpected storm, he wants to keep to the original timeline that he’d been given (and had then given to Smokescreen and Bluestreak) and get back to Main Operating Base Tango in Tyrest. Back to the tactical department and to his actual job. Instead of being stuck out here behind enemy lines, in the middle of a blizzard, and playing at being a secret agent. 

The results that TactNet gives him, though, are disheartening. The escape plan that has the best chance of survival (which is a 34% chance of success; hardly worth the risk) requires stealing the transport shuttle, sabotaging the other vehicles on the base, and alerting the Decepticons to the infiltration. That would result in a mission failure, which would make everything that Prowl and his three escorts have done to get to this point amount to nothing. 

Prowl’s doorwings swivel to pick up on a soft skrrrt from the vent. Recognizing Jazz, Prowl keeps his thoughtful stare on the gear in front of him as his mission partner exits the vents. Prowl flicks a quick greeting to the other mech as the polyhexian comes up beside him, looking over the gear that caught Prowl’s attention. 

Jazz turns his gaze to Prowl, who is trying to stare the equipment into submission. “Come up with anything, Prowler?”

Again with the nickname. Prowl sighs, “Plenty, but none of which are viable. Even the ideas that are feasibly plausible are no better than our current plan of hunkering down and waiting this out.”

“Shame.” Jazz looks back over the things stored in with the cold weather gear. “You think they’ll notice if we take a blanket or two?”

Prowl does a quick assessment of the amount of blankets in the storage room. “We can safely take one blanket.”

“Nice.” Jazz smiles and deftly leans over to pick up a single blanket. “If this storm ends up lasting a long time we may be able to safely take a second blanket.”

Prowl huffs out a single laugh as he turns back to the vent. “Thank the stars for little miracles. A whole second blanket.”

Jazz and Prowl make their way back to their bolt hole. Prowl settles onto his recharge pad and shutters his optics with a sigh. 

Jazz doesn’t get to his pad and instead paces, shuffles, and, based on the sound, messes with the stolen blanket. Prowl opens his optics to see Jazz, his unfolded blanket draped over an arm, pushing his recharge pad with his pede to be closer to Prowl’s. 

“What are you doing?” Prowl asks. 

“The blanket’s big enough to cover us both, I just need to scooch over a bit.” Jazz explains. 

It’s a small thing, almost inconsequential, but the fact that Jazz’s first thought is to try and figure out how to share his spoils stands out to Prowl. 

“Why?” He asks.

“Well…” Jazz tilts his helm in thought before he shakes it and shrugs, “why not?”

Prowl blinks at the answer. It’s a deceptively simple response. Why not? Why not share when it can fit them both? Why not show compassion to the partner who’s clearly out of his depth? There’s nothing to gain or to lose here. 

Why not indeed. 

Now satisfied with the new servo’s distance between the pads, Jazz is quick to settle down and lay the blanket over them both. 

“Thank you,” Prowl says simply. 

“Aw, it ain’t much,” Jazz replies. Then, in a more teasing tone, he says, “Besides, I was told to take care of you.”

Prowl gives a small huff.

It’s been several more days of the same when Prowl brings up an issue with Jazz. 

“We are going to need to sneak into the server room again.”

“Yeah?” Jazz asks with a slight tilt of his helm. “Why?”

“The intel we have is going to be severely outdated by the time we can leave. We need to get back to the server room to get any new information that is stored here.”

“Will there even be new intel to get with this storm? It’ll be blocking any signals to or from here.”

“That is what I thought as well, but the nature of this base is to store Decepticon intelligence in a way that can be easily stored and accessed at any time. I think that this base has one or more hard lines that physically connect it to nearby bases outside of these storms. They would not use this location for storing sensitive data if they could not access what they need when they need it.”

“So even with the storm, information can still travel.” Jazz surmises. 

“Yes. So for as long as we are here, we will to need to periodically get back into the server room to get the latest data. Maybe even grab more of the older data if we have the time.”

Jazz nods along, helm tilted down as he leans his weight to one pede and rests a servo on the opposite hip. “It’ll have to be during the slow hours when most everyone else is in recharge. Even so, we’ll need to be extra alert when we go, there’s no accounting for restless nights and wandering mechs.”

Prowl nods in agreement. 

That night, once it starts approaching the “it’s so late it’s early” time when the base has the least amount of activity, Jazz and Prowl head to the server room from the vents. Jazz is just about to remove the grate when he freezes. 

Prowl stills in response. They remain frozen for several minutes before Jazz whispers so softly he can barely pick it up, “There’s more cameras than before. They don’t look like the kinds that are tied to an alarm, but I can’t know for sure.”

What? Why would there be more cameras? Did someone suspect something was amiss? Was it a reaction to the pilots being on base? What happened to warrant the extra security?

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Jazz whispers. “I’m going out. If an alarm goes off, I’m infecting the entire system with a virus and let them think it was a breach in their cybersecurity. If there’s no alarm, you stay here while I hack into the new cameras and get us scrubbed out. Once I say it’s clear, you come out and get as much data as you can before we need to hide again. Got it?”

“Understood.”

He thinks he sees Jazz’s helm nod a little in acknowledgment before he carefully removes the grate and gently sets it to the side. He slips out, landing light on his pedes on the floor below and Prowl tenses. 

After several seconds with no obvious alarm going off, Prowl slowly crawls towards the opening and looks out. Jazz is kneeling by the servers, plugged in at the same place he had been before. His lips slowly press into a hard line. 

“I can’t find the extra cameras in here.” He tells Prowl in a hushed voice. 

Prowl scans the room from his vantage point near the ceiling. “Try searching on their personal systems.” He suggests just as quietly as he gestures to where he can see the two terminals. 

Jazz quickly makes his way there and hacks in. Prowl watches silently as the spy works. 

Finally, Jazz says, “Clear. Get the intel while I program these things to ignore us.”

Prowl slides out of the vent (with less grace and a bit more noise than Jazz had, but he deems it passable). He plugs into the server, and finds that Jazz had, essentially, left a backdoor open for him to use to get past the firewalls. Security bypassed, he gets to work downloading as much data as he can starting with the newest information first. 

A quick comparison with what he’s downloaded previously confirms that he is getting new data that wasn’t there last time. Which supports Prowl’s theory that the Decepticon army does have a way of accessing the servers through the storm, most likely from hard line connections to the base itself. 

When they get back to the hideout, Prowl sits down to start the tedious work of trimming the collected data of unnecessary information and restructuring it to fit his organization method. 

Or at least he attempts to. His TacNet keeps circling back to the extra surveillance that had been added to the server room (a worrying twelve extra cameras that hadn’t been there a week ago). There must be a reason to justify such a measure being taken but Prowl can’t figure out what. If the Decepticons on base suspected intruders, then they would have thoroughly searched the base. Or at least been more proactive in trying to find them. But— and Prowl checks the notes he made of the Cons on base from Jazz’s reports to be sure— there’s been zero indication of anyone suspecting anything.

Yet those extra cameras had to have been set up for a reason. 

Faint tapping sounds pull Prowl from his thoughts. He looks over to see Jazz still standing where he had landed under the vent. His lips are pressed into a hard line as he looks at the ceiling in the direction that the server room is in. His helm tilts slightly to the side in thought while he idly taps against his thigh (strangely, it’s a simple 1, 2-3… 1, 2-3… pattern that Prowl recognizes from his short time with Marshal). He kicks one pede back and taps the floor twice with his pede tip before he sets it back down. 

“I’m going to do some recon on the IT guys and the server room,” Jazz decides. “See if I can figure out what all that was about.”

And with that, Jazz is back in the vents and gone before Prowl can think of a proper response. 

Chapter Text

Lockbox goes to check if her new cameras have anything to show her. Pick, who came for a maintenance check and stayed for the company, idly swivels in Market’s chair next to her. She sees that there is a single new recording for her to view. She brings it up and notices that it’s only eight seconds long. It may just be someone poking their helm in to look for something then. She presses play. 

…She presses play again, unsure of what she just saw. 

“That can’t be right.” She murmurs to herself. 

“What can’t be right?” Pick asks, wheeling Market’s chair to be right next to her. 

“This footage from last night. The camera must be broken.” Lockbox sets up several programs to run a diagnostic. 

“Let me see this odd footage.”

Lockbox brings the media player back to the front, enlarges the window, and lets it play. 

It’s from camera eight, which was the only camera to pick it up despite several others being able to see the area where this happened. It starts with a view of the server room, empty. Then the entire recording shifts to the side and flickers back to being properly centered. The area near the vent starts to turn into a glitchy mess that becomes vaguely mech shaped with what looks like a blue band on the “helm” area. The figure stands, disappears, flickers back into view further into the room as it smoothly moves across the floor before it flickers away again. 

The room is normal for two seconds before a second glitchy blob flickers into view in front of one of the servers (the same one that had the rubber duck on it moved), this one with what looks like a spot of red atop its “helm” area. It disappears soon after. 

Once again the scene is normal for another second. Then the video ends. 

Pick blinks at the terminal screen. “Huh,” he says after a moment, “guess we got ghosts.”

Lockbox scoffs. “Or something broke,” she refutes as she starts to bring up different diagnostic tools. “Why jump straight to ghosts?”

“Because I swear someone’s been watching me when I’m alone since the storm started. A ghost explains both of these much better than malfunctioning cameras do.”

“A malfunctioning processor might.” Lockbox mutters. 

Pick shakes his helm. “It’s not that. Wrangle’s already checked.”

“Actually?”

“Yep. He thinks it’s cabin fever.”

“And you don’t.”

Pick folds his arms. “I know how I am and how long I can last. It ain’t cabin fever and it ain’t the pilots.”

“Okay, but ghosts?” Lockbox asks. 

“You got a better idea?”

Lockbox shakes her helm. “I’m not going to try and rationalize your delusions when I’m focusing on troubleshooting.”

The diagnostic completes and shows her the readout. Lockbox narrows her optics at the green text happily telling her that everything is in order and working as intended. She makes the diagnostic check again. It comes back with the same result. Lockbox pulls up a different program and sets it to check over the cameras. It also reports no issues. 

“What do you mean everything is optimal?” she mutters with a mounting frustration. “It’s obviously not you overly-complicated, eight bit excuse of a program.”

“Huh,” Pick says, looking over the screen. “Spooky.”

“Maybe,” Lockbox concedes. “Possibly. We’d need more evidence than two things.” She taps her fingers against her desk. She’s pretty sure when Market warned against her chasing ghosts, he didn’t mean to be quite so literal. 

“I just overheard something wild and it’s given me the best idea.” Jazz says before he’s even fully left the vent. 

Prowl puts his datawork on hold and glances at the other mech. He doesn’t completely trust Jazz’s smile; it was the same one Ricochet wore before he pushed Prowl down that hill. It reminds him of Smokescreen when his brother is planning mischief. 

“Concerning,” Prowl replies with a healthy layer of caution. “What is it?”

“I’m a ghost.” Jazz says with no shortage of cheer. 

Prowl stares at Jazz for several seconds, trying to decide what he could possibly mean by that. “If you are trying to tell me that death is imminent, I do not appreciate being told via joke.”

“Nah, nah,” Jazz says with a laugh and a wave of his servo. “They don’t know we’re here. I’m just changing my career path to poltergeist.”

Prowl blinks. “What?”

Jazz then proceeds to explain the most insane plan that he’s ever heard. 

“No,” is Prowl’s first reply. “No. Are you crazy? Haunting a base? That is extremely risky for us given our present situation. Why would you even consider a plan like this?”

“It’s because of our ‘present situation’ that I’m doing it,” Jazz says, his smile lessening into something more serious. “Look, you’ve said it yourself, we could be here all winter. That’s a long time and we’re bound to make mistakes. The Decepticons are going to notice something. Lockbox already has! She set up the extra cameras and one of them managed to keep hold of some corrupted footage from last night. We’re lucky it was so messed up and that Pick was there to suggest ghosts as a possibility.”

“That is… troubling,” Prowl says, “but I do not see how haunting the entire base will help us.”

“No, see, we won’t be haunting the whole base. Just a select few mechs,” Jazz explains. “We create a situation where some think there’s ghosts while others are sure it’s just the storm. They’ll argue, either to prove a point or because they’re bored, and that will push them even further into their own reasoning. Then, whenever we make a mistake, their first thought isn’t going to be that there’s two Autobots living in their walls, it’ll be to rationalize whatever happened to fit their worldview.”

“Confirmation bias,” Prowl mutters. He is reminded, once again, about Stepper’s lesson in social engineering being part of the art of stealth. Despite the short time he had spent with the mech, Prowl is certain that this plan is one that Stepper would enjoy, if not come up with himself. 

“Exactly,” Jazz says, his smile coming back.

Prowl turns the idea over with TacNet. While he may not be very well versed in social interactions, the basic idea is… surprisingly sound. Move the enemy’s focus away from them. A classic misdirection. Just… with ghosts. 

Prowl isn’t sure what he thinks about that. 

Highbeam leaves the rec room with Pick and Lockbox when the conversation inside starts to turn into a bragging contest. He may be bored, but he’s not that bored. 

A sense of unease creeps up on him. Something in the hallway doesn't feel right, but he can’t pinpoint what it could be. He walks a smidge closer to the two grounders. 

A deep rumbling sound that Highbeam can feel through his pedes reverberates through the base’s walls. It lasts for only two seconds, but it’s enough to get him and the others to stop and look around. 

Highbeam is about to make a comment about the storm when Pick speaks up. 

“Stupid ghosts,” he says with a grumble. 

Highbeam looks at the shorter mech, perplexed. “Ghosts? Really?”

Pick folds his arms and gives Highbeam a hard look. “Yes, ghosts. They're annoying and creeping me out.”

Highbeam rolls his optics. “We’re in an old building in the middle of a blizzard. It’s going to make creepy sounds.”

Pick’s face morphs into a glare. “Blizzards and such don’t explain the video that Lockbox got.”

Highbeam tilts his helm curiously to Lockbox. She sighs and brings out her pad. She taps it a few times before she turns it around and shows the screen to Highbeam. 

The only thing he can recognize in the video is that it takes place in the server room. Everything else in it is a glitchy mess with a red bit or a glitchy shape with a slightly glowy blue bit. The video itself is very short and set to loop. 

Highbeam watches it a few times, trying to make sense of whatever it is he’s seeing. “Are you two trying to prank me here?” he asks.

“No,” Lockbox says in time with Pick’s indignant “What?!”

“We’re not trying to pull a fast one on you,” Lockbox continues to say. 

Highbeam looks back at the looping glitchy video that is still being held out to him. “You sure that no one else is trying to prank you?”

As though in reply, the building makes another deep rumble. 

Jazz’s regular reconnaissance has morphed into a hobby that he calls Con Watching. He has admitted to Prowl that “while it’s not all that exciting, compared to staring at the walls? It’s quality entertainment”. Lately, Prowl has been joining in on this hobby because, well, Jazz isn’t wrong about how boring the walls are. 

Presently, Prowl lays still in the vent near the rec room. Jazz had been with him but quickly followed the three mechs that just left, presumably to haunt them. Prowl stays put. He has no desire to be part of any “ghostly” activities. He also knows his own limits when it comes to stealth, and keeping up with Jazz while moving silently in the vents is well beyond them.

So here Prowl stays. The grate that looks out into the rec room is a few feet in front of him, so it’s easy to listen in on the conversation between the Cons still in the room. From context, Prowl knows that Market, Wrangle, Coil, and the pilots Livewire and Pocket are in the room. He is steadily connecting voices to names. 

They’re showing off the more impressive stuff that they own. Trophies from battle, rare items, pre-war memorabilia, and the like. Right now Livewire is showing off his Megatronus gladiator card that he got from before the start of the Decepticon movement. 

“Impressive,” says a voice that Prowl thinks is Market. 

“Not bad,” says Wrangle. 

“As cool as that is, I think Updraft has you beat.” This one must be Coil. Pocket wouldn’t have said this. 

“Really?” asks Livewire. 

“Definitely,” Coil says. “Yo, Updraft!”

“Yeah?!” Answers a voice that sounds like it’s coming from the other side of the room. 

“Come show ‘em your thing!”

“What thing?!”

“Your thing! The rare expensive one!”

“Ah! I getcha now!”

“What do you think it is?” whispers a mech who must be Pocket. 

“Rare and expensive… I don’t know, a pearl?” Livewire guesses. 

“Alright,” says Updraft, now sounding much closer, “gather round everyone. I got my servos on this the last time I was at Praxus.”

Prowl’s optics snap to the grate at the mention of his city state. 

Coil mutters, “Last time anyone was,” before she’s shushed by Pocket. 

“Feast your optics!” Updraft says. 

“Woah” 

“What the— how?!” 

“Yep, that was my reaction too.”

Prowl stops trying to assign names to voices. Curiosity and dread burns within him. He needs to know what Updraft has from his ruined home that could garner such a reaction. Slowly, carefully, he crawls towards the vent cover. 

“I’ve only ever seen pictures of these.” 

“How’d you get this?”

“I noticed it as we were flying overhead. Took a quick detour to snag it.”

“Lucky.”

Apprehension builds in Prowl’s chest. He reaches the grate and looks down. 

It takes every modicum of self control Prowl has not to outright gasp.

Beneath him the Cons assigned to the base watch as the two pilots crowd around Updraft, a seeker, completely enraptured by what the mech holds proudly in his servo. 

A green Praxian crystal. It’s barely the size of the seeker’s palm, making it one of the largest green Praxian crystals that Prowl has ever seen. 

The thing about colored Praxian crystals is that some colors were more difficult to grow than others. Harder still was to get the crystals to keep to one color evenly throughout the structure. Green had been the hardest color to cultivate due to its need for a very special type of environment that needed to be constantly maintained. It was easy to mess up a little, resulting in a crystal that became tainted with traces of blue or yellow. 

Bluestreak had told him and Smokescreen about how, back in Praxus, he had a couple of friends who took up crystal growing. Through trial and error, they had figured out what was needed to produce crystals of certain colors and how to purposefully get crystals with multiple colors. They’d been able to figure out a system to consistently get small green crystals with minimal impurities. According to Bluestreak, they’d been in the middle of testing if their method could reliably grow larger crystals when the bombs dropped. 

Bluestreak has a small collection of small shards of the green crystal that he has found since. He keeps them in his subspace. For luck. Bluestreak gave the largest of his little broken shards to Prowl to hold onto during this mission. Again, for luck. Bluestreak doesn’t have a lot, but each broken piece is precious to the younger mech. 

Which makes them precious to Prowl.

So to see a seeker of all mechs in possession of one of the rarest types of praxian crystals? And one who was a part of his home’s destruction? Prowl feels as though he could heat the entire base with the burning hot hatred pulsing in his chassis. Had he any less control over himself, Prowl thinks he might’ve jumped out the vent, delivering vengeance to every last Con on base, no matter the consequences.

But he can’t. He can’t and he won’t because he can look past his own feelings and see the impracticality of such actions. 

That’s what he has to keep repeating to himself as Updraft continues to show off his prize. 

Prowl can’t make himself recharge. He stares at the ceiling, listening to the faint sounds of the constant winds outside. He mindlessly fidgets with the small green crystal shard as his thoughts meander from Bluestreak, his late friends, and Updraft. The blazing inferno that was his hatred now smolders softly in the quiet room. Still there, still burning, but tamed for the moment. 

He rubs his thumb against a flat side of the crystal’s surface, taking note of the small imperfections as he does. Little divots, small ridges, all things that would traditionally depreciate its monetary value, but now stand as a testament of what the shard has survived. 

All the while a seeker in possession of a large unbroken crystal rests peacefully in the same building. 

And he can do nothing for it. 

“Jazz?” He whispers into the quiet. 

There’s a minute shift in the figure next to him. “Yeah?” Jazz asks, just as softly. 

“How do you plan to haunt this place?”

“That’s what’s keeping you up?”

“I do not want us getting caught.”

“Fair.” Jazz is silent for a moment. “So far I’ve made a low rumble sound that could be the blizzard and made a sound with such a low frequency that it can’t be picked up audibly, but it still gives people the creeps.”

Prowl hums. “Anything else?”

“I have a few thoughts, but I get the feeling you have some ideas of your own.”

Prowl pauses at the response, not expecting the question to be turned on him. It is an odd thing to say, made even stranger because it is true. “Some of the more typical happenings in ghost stories are inexplicable noises and a general feeling of unease, like you have done, but also include cold spots, strange smells, moving objects, flickering lights, and indistinguishable whispers and cries,” Prowl lists out, taking from his observations in what typically happens in the scary ghost stories that Smokescreen and Bluestreak like. “These tales then tend to escalate with more overt things like apparitions, floating objects, ominous messages, and attacking or outright killing the victims.”

“Is that all?” Jazz asks, bemused. 

“For the most part. Though I advise against using those last ones.”

Jazz huffs a small laugh. “Sure thing, Prowler. You want to help with any of these?”

Prowl opens his mouth to refuse but stops. He twists the green shard over a few times in thought. It’s a petty idea and will do little to satisfy him, but if he can get Updraft with a few of these…

Prowl sighs. “Maybe. I still do not completely agree that it will work, but… I will think about it.”

“Well, whether you help or not, do you have any ideas for how to implement some of those?”

Despite Prowl’s spoken disagreement, the next hour turns into an impromptu brainstorming session as they both go over logistics of the how, when, and where for the haunting of Jazz’s targets. Jazz certainly has a slight flair for the dramatics with some of his ideas, while Prowl is more focused on the technical side of things. It’s a bit like a puzzle for him, using the tools they have available to produce the result that they want. 

It’s as their brainstorming is winding down that Jazz says, “You strike me as a theatre mech.”

Prowl blinks at the non sequitur. “…Really?”

“Oh yeah,” Jazz says. “I feel like you’d be the type to analyze the stage production and how the tech and stage crews achieve certain effects. Someone who’d very much appreciate how it all serves the story that they’re telling.”

“Huh,” Prowl says, now seeing the flow of Jazz’s logic from the previous topic to the current one. 

“Did I guess right?” Jazz asks.

“I do not know.”

“What? How do you not know?”

Prowl shrugs, staring up at the ceiling and not at the inquisitive visor of the secret agent. “I have never actually been to a play before, so I do not know what I would pay more attention to when watching one.”

“Oh…” Jazz murmurs. “None? At all?”

Prowl shakes his helm. “None. Although, I will say, what you described does sound like something I would do. I have never thought of it before, but learning about practical effects does sound interesting.”

“Tell you what,” Jazz says after a few silent minutes, “next time the opportunity comes, I’ll take you to a play. Pretty sure there were a few theatres still open in Iacon when I was there last.”

Prowl doesn’t believe that a chance for him and Jazz to meet up after this mission for a stage production will ever come about, but he does appreciate the thought. “Sounds like a plan,” he says. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Jazz replies. “Gotta take care of you and all.”

“And how does theatre help ‘take care of’ me?”

“Mental wellbeing. Gotta make sure you’re cultured.”

Prowl can almost hear how Smokescreen would laugh. 

Pick doesn’t know how it was possible, but the feeling of someone watching him has gotten worse. Not only is it happening more often now, and still happening when he’s alone, but now it feels like he’s being judged. Rather harshly at that. 

And you know what? He doesn’t appreciate it! This invisible gazing entity comes into his house, cuts into his alone time, keeps him from being able to properly focus on his puzzles, and then it starts to judge him? No, Pick won’t stand for it! If it wants to come in here and send disapproving vibes his way, then the least it could do is pay rent! 

Nevermind that Pick hasn’t actually had to pay rent to anyone since becoming a Decepticon, this thing is encroaching on his space and his peace of mind. He’d like to get something out of the deal besides the vague but persistent feeling of criticism for every single one of his admittedly questionable life choices.

Prowl is silently judging the smaller maintenance mech. He’s been watching the rec room since early morning to help him establish the daily habits of the different mechs on base (taking a particular interest in Updraft’s morning routine). Now it’s just Pick sitting at one of the tables. While Prowl usually mentally criticizes Decepticons on principle, he is currently judging this Decepticon for not even completing just one of his number puzzles since he’s sat down. 

“Hey Prowl,” Jazz says as he enters their bolt hole. “Where does the door at the end of that short hallway off to the North side lead to?”

Prowl pulls up the base map and finds the hallway in question. He furrows his brow, confused. “What door?” he asks. “There is nothing at the end of that hall.”

Jazz tilts his helm to the side. “Well that’s false. Saw it myself. I just couldn’t find any vents that went into that area. So, I decided to ask you.”

Prowl grunts. “Strange. There is no door marked on the map, nor whatever may be past it.”

“Isn’t the map you got the original blueprints of this place?”

He shakes his helm. “It is the map that the Decepticons have on file, but it being the original blueprints is unlikely seeing as there is an entire door unaccounted for. Nevermind what may lay beyond it.”

“Oh, mystery door,” Jazz says with a growing smile while rubbing his servos together. 

Prowl side optics his mission partner. “Are you going to try to—.”

“I’m gonna try to get past it, yeah.” 

Which is how Prowl finds himself investigating a door in the middle of the night while the base is asleep. It’s… odd to be out in the open after weeks of small spaces and vent crawling. The lights in the hallway are dimmed, set to “night mode”, something that’s usually done to help encourage healthy recharge cycles. They stand in front of the unlisted door, both looking it over. 

“I do not see any outright signs of the door being tampered with,” Prowl says. Jazz nods his agreement. “You said the vents don’t lead to the door’s other side?”

“Uh-huh,” Jazz agrees. “It doesn’t go outside either. The winds would be louder if it did.” He half-heartedly presses the button on a small panel mounted in the wall that’s supposed to open the door. Nothing happens. “Figured,” he mutters to himself, “but it doesn’t hurt to check.”

On the right wall, Prowl notices the seams of a hidden maintenance access panel. He feels along the edge until he finds the latch and opens it. An invisible wall of cold air wafts out and coolly drapes over his shoulders and down his back. Prowl gives an involuntary shiver that makes his doorwings flutter. Inside is a narrow space that a single mech could shimmy into. Prowl leans his helm in. 

“The walls are hollow,” he tells Jazz. 

Jazz has the button panel popped out of the wall and hanging by the wires connected to its back. He pauses his poking around and steps over to where Prowl is. “For real?” 

Prowl takes a step to the side to let Jazz see what is essentially a snug maintenance tunnel that runs through the wall. Wires and pipes come up from below the floor and run up beside the outer wall to the ceiling and continue on their path to the rest of the base using the same supports as the vents. 

“Well that’s good to know,” Jazz comments. 

“I will see if I can find anything through here,” Prowl says.

Jazz nods. “M’kay. Keep me updated.” 

They split. Jazz goes back to what he was doing with the popped panel. Prowl tucks his doorwings close and moves into the wall. 

Highbeam wakes up before his alarm. He doesn’t know why until something that kind of sounds like someone tinkering with something and a few indistinct words light upon his audial. Highbeam rubs at his face and checks the time. It takes a moment for him to fully register the hour, but he groans into his servos when he does.

It’s way too early for this. 

Another soft sound drifts to him. A laugh? Something being moved? Who knows. Most likely one of his basemates doing something stupid. The question is if it’s a harmless stupid or a could-blow-up-the-base stupid. Highbeam sighs and gets up to investigate. He’ll do a quick check, see if it’s something he can safely ignore or if he has to stop it. 

He hopes it’s something he can ignore. He is not awake enough to diffuse a bomb. 

He turns a corner to the small dead end hall and stops short. 

A mech he doesn’t know stands at the end of the hallway with their back to Highbeam. Their helm snaps to the side to look at him with a glowing blue visor. 

The dim lights flicker and shut off, plunging Highbeam into a sudden darkness that startles him. He stumbles back with a shout, vaguely aware that the glowing visor is gone a second after the lights go out. 

Highbeam stills in the darkness. A heavy silence settles over him as a cold draft snakes past his legs. 

With another flicker, the lights turn back on. The hallway is empty and still, quiet except for the faint electric hum of the lights. Like nothing happened. 

Highbeam blinks, thoughts going so fast they may as well be still, trying to comprehend whatever it is that he just saw. 

He slowly turns away and walks back to his room. 

Coil is half up, blinking blearily down at him from the top bunk when he returns. Through a yawn, she asks, “What’s the yellin’ for?” 

Highbeam can’t think of anything else to say but, “The base is haunted.”

“What?”

He doesn’t elaborate and falls face first into his berth. 

The ethereal blue glow of that visor’s piercing stare follows him into his recharge. 

Prowl, still tense and spark pulsing quicker than normal, paces as best he can in their small space. 

That was close. That was much too close. If he hadn’t noted where the control switch for the lights had been when he passed it, or if Jazz wasn’t so skilled at moving swiftly and silently, or if he hadn’t been so careful when closing the access panel behind him so it didn’t make a sound, or so many other things that could have gone wrong, they would have been found. 

They still could have been found if it hadn’t been for—.

Prowl catches a glimpse of Jazz’s smug face from where he’s sitting on his pad. Prowl huffs his irritation and continues his pacing. 

“Sooo?” Jazz needles, tone as smug as the rest of him. 

“You are lucky that he was one of the mechs you haunt,” Prowl growls, refusing to concede the point just to be contrary. 

“And?”

“That should not have worked as well as it did.”

“But it did.”

“It shouldn’t have.”

Jazz lets out a little laugh, his smile turning into something more elated than smug. “And yet.”

Prowl pinches his nasal bridge. “I can not believe we are safe because of you pretending to be a ghost,” he mutters. 

Jazz laughs again. “Well, I’ve been told that I’m very spirited.”

Prowl looks Jazz in the visor. “Are you honestly making puns about our close call?”

“C’mon Prowler, between the two of us, those Cons don’t stand a ghost of a chance.”

“You are a menace,” Prowl says flatly. 

Jazz’s smile brightens. “You best boo-lieve it!”

Chapter Text

Bluestreak trudges through the base, into his room, and towards the berth that he hasn’t slept in for… he’s too tired to count. The point is that it’s been a while. It’s a beautiful sight to see, just as he left it and perfectly inviting to a weary bot such as himself. He crawls on and curls up facing the wall, more than ready to pass out for the rest of the day. 

It’s just as he’s about to slip into recharge that his memory decides to violently remind him of the promise he made to Smokescreen with the same sense of urgency as someone yelling “grenade!” nearby. He’s able to keep himself from shooting up, but now he feels wide awake as unwarranted dread fills his racing spark and his ballistic programs power up on instinct. Bluestreak mentally scrambles to shut off the various programs as they try to find and target the threat. 

Bluestreak sighs and presses his face into his berth. That was unpleasant. And now he has to find and apologize to Pinpoint because he did tell Smokescreen that he would when he got back. 

He lets out a disgruntled hmph into his berth. Him and his stupid promises and his stupid sense of honor and keeping his word. He’s tired and sore and he wants to rest. Just the thought of having to get up and search for his roommate is exhausting. Though, thinking it over, Pinpoint is his roommate; he doesn’t actually need to go searching for the mech, he can just wait here and Pinpoint will come to Bluestreak. Meaning that Bluestreak needs to keep himself awake until the other mech arrives. Which will be difficult because, again, he’s tired. Maybe he can set an alarm and recharge until the evening? No, Bluestreak knows himself, he’ll wake up enough to turn off the alarm and go right back into recharge. 

Okay, new plan: postpone the talk with Pinpoint until morning. 

Satisfied, Bluestreak resettles in his berth, shutters his optics, and starts to drift away into a peaceful—.

The door opens, waking Bluestreak. 

The universe must hate him. Why else, after he just decided to postpone the talk and was almost in recharge, would his roommate walk in at that moment? 

Best get started then. 

He sighs and sits up rubbing at his optics. “Hi there, Pinpoint.”

Pinpoint doesn’t answer. Bluestreak looks up to see the lime green mech staring at him in open surprise. Like he wasn’t used to his existence being acknowledged. 

…Wait, he wasn’t. Not by Bluestreak anyway. 

Right. 

Pinpoint shakes off his surprise. “Hi, Bluestreak. Sorry for waking you.”

Bluestreak shakes his helm. “I wasn’t in recharge yet, you’re fine. Anyway, we need to talk. Well, it’s more that I need to talk, but if you also have things to say, then by all means, go ahead and say them.”

“Are you feeling okay?” Pinpoint asks. 

“Yeah, I’m okay, just a little tired,” Bluestreak reassures. “Look, I want to apologize for how I’ve been acting. It wasn’t nice and actually very rude and I should’ve really put more thought into how I wanted to say this because now I’m kind of floundering here a little but I want you to know that I am sorry.”

Pinpoint stares at him. “Oh,” he says. “That’s… not what I thought this would be about?”

“What did you think I was going to say?”

Pinpoint shrugs. “I don’t know, something else?”

Bluestreak laughs. “Fair enough. Um, that’s really all I wanted to say. Do you have anything you want to tell me or ask about or anything?”

Pinpoint looks contemplative. “There is one thing. When I talked to Smokescreen, he said something about this being a ‘slag situation’ and I’m curious about what he meant?”

“Ah.” Bluestreak looks to the side and raises his shoulders up. “Fair warning, this is going to sound very immature when I say it out loud but it felt like you were replacing Prowl and I didn’t like that at all and got frustrated and you got the brunt of that and I’m, again, very sorry.”

“I’ve… vaguely heard of Prowl, but I don’t know a lot about him. Why would I be replacing him?”

“Because you’re here to help with his workload while he’s gone? And took his berth?”

“…I’ve been recharging in someone else’s berth?!”

“Yeah? Did you not know?”

Pinpoint starts to pace the room. “No! No one ever told me!”

“But his stuff was on the shelf?”

“I thought those were yours!”

“Mine?”

“Yeah, I thought you’d gotten used to having the room to yourself and took advantage of the extra storage space.”

“…Oh.”

Pinpoint sits beside Bluestreak on his berth and hides his face in his servos. “So this whole thing was because we both made assumptions about what the other knew.”

Bluestreak pats his roommate’s back. “Yeah, pretty much. Not our finest moments, that’s for sure, but now we know and can make slightly better informed assumptions moving forward.”

Pinpoint laughs. “‘Slightly better informed assumptions’? Not better communication from now on?”

“No, I know myself too well. I’ll try but that won’t stop me from assuming things. Like now for example; I’m going to assume you have a good reason for being here in the middle of your usual shift, and if you don’t then don’t say anything because I want to keep some plausible deniability.”

Pinpoint laughs again. “Today’s my rest day. I was coming in to grab a book to read.”

Bluestreak nods. “Cool. Good talk, I’ll let you get back to it. If you need me, find someone else because I’m going to be so deep in recharge the Prime himself wouldn’t be able to wake me from it.”

With one last snicker, Pinpoint grabs his book and bids Bluestreak a restful recharge. 

Bluestreak is nervous. Smokescreen can tell. 

Today is their “rest day” (one day every two weeks with light duty and no training) and Bluestreak is spending his morning outside in an out-of-the-way area in sight of the hangars. He’s set himself up in the shade of a building with a folding table, a chair, and a small cleaning kit. 

Smokescreen watches as Bluestreak slowly— methodically— takes apart his rifle and diligently gives each piece his undivided attention as he meticulously cleans them. He then sets each piece aside, just so, in a neat and orderly fashion before moving on to the next one with the same faithful dedication.

And while there’s nothing wrong with caring for one’s equipment, it becomes concerning when it’s the third time that gun has been taken apart, cleaned, and put back together that day. 

And it’s only mid morning. 

Bluestreak is extremely nervous

Smokescreen tap-tap-taps a finger against his arm as he watches Bluestreak with a pinched expression. 

From a detached third-person point of view, Bluestreak’s response to anxiety is fascinating. At first, he does what most expect of him; be more fidgety, talk faster and more often, shift a bunch. However, should the anxiety persist or get worse in some way, Bluestreak will begin to, for lack of a better way to describe it, “slow down”. His movements still. He talks less. He zeroes in on tasks with a focus that Smokescreen would describe as both unyielding and unnerving. It’s not like his battle focus, not entirely. Bluestreak can flip that on and off like a switch. This? This is more subtle. He still rambles and fidgets, but those behaviors gradually happen less and less as the anxiety continues.

It’s how the younger mech acted when they first met on the heels of Praxus’s destruction. Smokescreen thinks it’s an unconscious response to feeling less secure, less safe, and so the need to act in ways that kept him alive in the past. 

It’s an absolutely fascinating reaction, psychologically speaking. However, Smokescreen is not, and hopes to never be, an uncaring third-party observant. As such, he cannot, in good conscience, let this continue. 

If Prowl were here, Smokescreen would simply just sic his stoic brother with his cold, yet somehow soothing logic and stilted conversation onto Bluestreak (it still baffles Prowl why he seems to be the one who can sooth Bluestreak best— other mechs don’t find those parts of the tactician to be at all comforting— but it works, so they stick with it).

Of course, if Prowl were here, Bluestreak wouldn’t be obsessively cleaning his rifle during his bi-weekly free time. 

Smokescreen sighs. It would seem that, once again, he has to be the responsible level-headed one. 

Smokescreen waits until Bluestreak is almost finished reassembling the rifle. He knows he can’t have an actual meaningful conversation with the younger mech when he’s that focused on something else. There’s a certain amount of strategy that must be employed in order to talk to Bluestreak when he’s like this. He’s seen Prowl do it enough times to know the steps. Well, most of them. 

Hopefully. 

At the very least, he knows that it’s best to catch the other when he’s between tasks. 

Once Bluesteak gets to the last piece, Smokescreen takes a deep breath, rolls back his shoulders, and determinedly marches to the table that the young bot has set up. 

“Hey.” Smokescreen says as he sets his servo on the table, partly to get Bluestreak’s attention, partly to block him from dismantling and cleaning the gun for the fourth time that day.

Bluestreak looks up, a bit surprised. “Oh, hi Smokescreen! I didn’t see you there. What’s up?”

“You’re not slick,” Smokescreen tells him. 

Bluestreak gives an incredulous little laugh. “What? Of course I’m not Slick, I’m Bluestreak! We don’t even look remotely similar. Are your optics okay? Did you damage them looking at screens in the dark for too long?”

Smokescreen gives him a flat look. “Not what I meant. I know you’re beyond stressed right now, so spill.”

“And you’re not?” Bluestreak challenges, not bothering to deny it. “Prowl was supposed to be back two days ago and I’m not sure if you noticed, but there’s a distinct lack of Prowl here. He could be hurt, or lost, or dead, or captured, or— or some other variation of Never Coming Back! And we’d have no clue and no way to know for sure. Of course I’m stressed!”

Smokescreen is very aware of his brother’s continued absence. He noticed it quite painfully. With each and every datapad and assignment that would normally go to Prowl but crosses his desk instead, in the empty space at their usual table in the mess, in the alarm he has set for before he goes to his berth every night to send Prowl a message telling him to go recharge, he’s noticed it. 

Smokescreen takes a moment to carefully gather up his irritation at Bluestreak’s insinuation that he doesn’t miss his brother and shoves it down to the darkest abyss of the Pits itself. He came here for a reason and he won’t let the urge to be petty over a little hurt feelings get in the way of that. 

“I understand that,” he tells Bluestreak in a controlled tone, “but what you need to remember is that the time Prowl gave us for how long his mission would be was an estimate. We still got, like, a week, week and a half, for the longer estimated timeline.

“So there’s no need to panic or anything just yet. Prowl’s fine. And I will keep believing that Prowl’s okay until I’m given good reason to consider otherwise. Maybe not even then.”

Bluestreak sighs and rubs at his face. “I get what you’re saying, I do, but Prowl is still gone and I’m getting worried. Well, more worried, because I was already worried but now it’s just getting worse.”

Smokescreen hums and makes a show of squinting at Bluestreak while he rubs at his chin thoughtfully. “I got it,” he says with a snap of his finger. “Since you are currently unable to actually do anything to fix or even help with Prowl’s absence, you’re trying to self-soothe by turning your attention onto something you can do. Something that you can control. Which has resulted in you directing your tendency to fret onto your gun.”

“Okay Mr. ‘I got a psych degree that still influences how I interact with others and I can’t help but drop some psychoanalytic observations in casual conversation’, have you considered that it’s actually not that deep?”

“Bluestreak, you’ve cleaned your gun three times already.”

“Well—.”

Smokescreen interrupts by putting his servo holding up three fingers into Bluestreak’s face. “Thrice.”

Bluestreak shoves the servo away. “I’m aware, I can count. Three isn’t a lot, okay? You say it like it’s excessive.”

“If I hadn’t come over and grabbed your attention, you would have already been starting a fourth cleaning by now and it’s barely mid morning. Left alone, you would’ve cleaned your rifle eleven times by the end of the day.”

Bluestreak raises his shoulders and folds his arms petulantly, looking off to the side. “So? Proper weapon maintenance isn’t a bad thing,” he mutters. 

“So,” Smokescreen says, flicking the tip of the other bot’s chevron, “it actually is that deep. There’s a difference between cleaning your stuff because you’re bored and obsessively cleaning it because you’re stressed. Believe it or not, I do care about you. It’s not just anyone I tell my psychoanalytics to. Did you even have a cube before you got set up out here?”

Bluestreak rubs at his smarting chevron and glances to the ground. “No,” he admits. 

Smokescreen nods. “Wait here then, and leave the gun alone,” he instructs and walks towards the nearest mess hall. 

He comes back fifteen minutes later with a cube in each servo and a single folding chair tucked under one arm. He gives Bluestreak a cube, sets up his chair, and sits down with his own cube in servo. 

Smokescreen glances at Bluestreak. Between the occasional sip, the younger bot stares into his energon with a furrowed brow and pressed lips. Like he’ll be able to find the answers to all his worries if he just looks hard enough. 

He won’t though. Smokescreen already checked the day before. 

Smokescreen finishes his energon first. He slams the empty cube against the table and dramatically sighs. “You made me be the responsible one again. How dare you.” 

Bluestreak snorts. “Oh no, how dare I make you act like a mature and experienced bot instead of the irresponsible new build you are at spark. Clearly this is the worst crime ever committed in the history of Cybertron.”

“Glad we agree that this was all your fault,” Smokescreen says with a sniff. “I accept apologies in the form of rust sticks or engex,”

Bluestreak shoves at his arm. “You wish. I’m not giving you my treats. Get your own.”

“But that requires shanix,” Smokescreen whines, leaning half his body weight against the other’s side. “Won’t you spare some good will onto this poor, poor mech?”

“It’s not my fault you lost half your pay in a bet against Sideswipe. You should’ve known better,” the younger mech says as he lightly shakes Smokescreen off. 

Smokescreen, seizing the chance to be comedic, dramatically flops to the ground.

Bluestreak looks down at his elder with barely contained mirth. “Suffer.”

Smokescreen raises a single servo towards the sky from his place on his back and laments, “Oh what has the world come to? These youngsters and their rebellious ways.”

And with that, Bluestreak finally laughs.

It’s only a few days until the end of the longer estimated timeline that Prowl had given for his mission to take, and still no Prowl in sight. It’s worrying, but that’s not what Bluestreak is thinking about currently. No, right now, he is mad and marching towards the rec room with the sole intent of finding his quarry. 

His day had been normal enough. There was training, drills, making sure he can still accurately calculate trajectories in different kinds of weather, and more training. All normal. Until he overheard a hushed conversation between two bots as he was carefully recounting his allotment of ammunition (he thinks that they had forgotten that he was in the storage room with them, just behind a different shelf; if they had known he was still in the room, he doubts they would have gossiped as they had). 

Bluestreak enters the rec room and gives it a quick sweep. He immediately zeroes in on his target standing in front of a bulletin on the wall and talking with two other mechs while he jots down a few quick notes. 

Bluestreak stalks over to them. The two mechs finish talking and leave with cordial waves. The target notices his approach and gives him a guileless smile. 

“Smokescreen,” Bluestreak says with a hard voice and cold opticss.

The target’s smile broadens. “Hey Blue! How’s it going?”

Bluestreak squints at the subject of his ire. “It’s turned a bit sour, thanks for asking. Hey, mind explaining to me why others are saying you organized an actual betting pool on whether or not Prowl survives his mission?!”

“What?” Smokescreen says with a nervous chuckle. “No, I would never—”

Bluestreak stares pointedly over Smokescreen’s shoulder to the bulletin just behind him where the incriminating words read: Betting Pool: Does Prowl make it back alive? Yes/No. He looks back at Smokescreen, who is now just giving him a blank smile. 

“Really?” Bluestreak asks.

“Okay,” Smokescreen says, smile still in place. “I admit that it may look bad, but in my defense, it’s kinda funny.”

Bluestreak doesn’t see the humor in it. “How is this funny? Prowl, your brother, still isn’t back yet and you’re having the bots on base place bets on his life?”

“Well,” Smokescreen comes around to Bluestreak’s side and drapes an arm over his shoulder, “would it help any that I placed my bet in Prowl’s favor?

“No,” Bluestreak says, “it does not.”

“Sheesh, tough crowd.” Smokescreen shakes his helm. “Look, you know I don’t mean anything by it. All it is is a small bit of fun for a few days until Prowl gets back and I make a few extra shanix off the naysayers.”

Bluestreak narrows his optics at Smokescreen, searching. Smokescreen, with that smarmy smile still in place, keeps glancing away from Bluestreak’s face. Now, while Bluestreak may not have a psych degree, he’s known Smokescreen for a long time. Practically since Praxus was destroyed it has been Smokescreen and Prowl who have looked out for him, sat with him, listened to him ramble and actually heard what he was saying. It’s a closeness that gives the two an advantage when it comes to reading him, but it’s that same closeness and familiarity that helps him read them in turn. 

So it is with confidence that Bluestreak says, “You’re completely stressed out of your processor.”

“Whaaaat?” Smokescreen says at a slightly higher pitch than his normal. “Nah, no. I have full confidence in Prowl’s ability to survive and make sound and smart decisions.”

“Uh huh, and if I were to ask you to turn your psychoanalysis inward, would your conclusion sound something like,” here, Bluestreak changes his voice to sound like one of those olde nature documentaries, “‘despite the confidence he has in his brother, Prowl’s continued absence has had Smokescreen seek out anything that can give him some sense of control—’”

“Okay, yes, maybe. Possibly. It could be that since there are still no signs, hints, or clues of Prowl’s well being, I may have facilitated some light gambling. As a stress relief.”

“How is gambling at all a good way to relieve stress?” Bluestreak asks. If anything, he thinks that the possibility of losing money would only add to the stress. 

“Hey!” Smokescreen objects. “You clean your rifle seventeen times a day, I have people wager money on whatever’s got me worried. We each have our own ways to cope.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call your method ‘coping’.”

“It is though!” Smokescreen continues to argue. “I’m stressed, so I do the thing to alleviate that stress. I’m coping.”

“Sure, sure,” Bluestreak nods along with a faux seriousness. “But are you coping well?”

Smokescreen waves away the question with the servo not around Bluestreak’s shoulders. “That’s an entirely different conversation that we don’t need to get into right now.”

Bluestreak smiles at the other mech’s antics, anger set aside and, for the most part, quelled during their conversation. He looks back to the bulletin board and the smile slowly falls away. His own anxieties churn as he looks at what he now recognizes as a thinly veiled attempt at covering Smokescreens own worries and doubts. He wishes he could sooth those worries, his own and Smokescreen’s; that he had the ability to say with conviction that Prowl was okay, that he’d be back soon, and then have it be true. 

But he can’t. He and Smokescreen are just as powerless to do anything about this as they were that first day after Prowl left. 

So Bluestreak is going to take what he can. 

He sighs. “What’s the minimum amount to place a bet?”

Smokescreen gives him a sharp smile. “Fifteen shanix.”

Bluestreak tilts his helm as he deliberates to himself. “Eeuuugh, fine. Fifty says he’s alive.”

Smokescreen lets go of Bluestreak’s shoulders and writes down his bet in the pad. “Fifty in favor. There. Just you wait, Prowl is going to get us a couple extra shanix.”

Chapter Text

With the discovery of the hollow walls, Prowl has been spending part of his nights searching for the various maintenance access panels and exploring how far into the walls each one goes. Some don’t lead into the walls at all while others only go as far as Prowl’s outstretched arm. Still, others stretch as far along as the wall is long. He marks each one on the map he downloaded. 

It’s an informative search but it did have one unforeseen consequence. 

He keeps stumbling upon hidden stashes. 

The first one was a surprise. A neatly stacked pile of sealed energon cubes, tucked away at the end of a short maintenance tunnel. It could be used to occasionally contribute to his and Jazz’s rations. So he made a note of it and continued on. 

The second time had been inside of a broken and partially gutted dehumidifier. The cubes there weren’t as neatly stacked as the last one, and with them was a small assortment of knickknacks. Prowl made a note of it and counted himself fortunate that he’d found two additional places to get fuel from. 

At the third stash he found, he was starting to see a pattern. 

By the eleventh? He’s thinking that these mechs must have some issues, more so than is usual for a group of Decepticons. 

Prowl had given a soft sigh and made note of the new stash, this one tucked away in a high place among the wall’s framework. 

Ultimately, while the number of stashes he keeps finding is excessive, they will greatly benefit him and Jazz since they’ll be able to keep their theft of the storeroom more sporadic. Still, just because this odd behavior is something that he can take advantage of does not make it any less strange. 

Another behavior of the Decepticons on base that benefits them is the weekly game night. It’s something that Jazz noticed early, how on one night a week, every mech would gather in the rec room and play a variety of games or simply hang out while the others played. Even the pilots would attend the game nights. Meaning that the hangar and ship will have no one watching them during this time. 

After confirming that every Con on base is in the rec room, Jazz and Prowl enter the hangar for the first time in weeks. It’s surprising to Prowl just how little it’s changed in that time. Some of the supply crates that the ship came to deliver are still stacked atop each other just inside the hangar door. Except for three of them, which are stacked right in front of the old door that leads outside to prevent it from getting blown open again. 

The ship itself still has the ramp to the cargo hold lowered and the two of them use it to enter the ship. In the hold proper, Prowl can see several more supply crates stacked beside the door. It appears that as soon as the blizzard started, all work towards unloading and properly putting away the delivered goods was put on hold. 

Past the cargo hold is the short hallway that Prowl and Jazz crawled out of when they had first stowed away. The walls are lined with cupboards, draws, and control panels for the different systems onboard the ship, along with the overhead long term storage that hid them. 

At the end of the hall is a short ladder leading to the top half of the ship. There they find the quarters where the pilots share a bunk, a small energon dispensary with a sitting area, and the cockpit proper. Jazz heads for the ship’s controls as Prowl looks around the short hallway that leads from the sitting area to the cockpit. A few cupboards and access panels take up a majority of the small hallway’s walls. 

He goes through them all as Jazz does his thing. He finds tools, repair kits, survival kits, parachutes, and more. He even finds a large number of tapes for audio dramas from before the war with titles including Galvatron’s Last Stand, Spark of Crystal: SilverLight’s Choice, and Solar Winds. He vaguely remembers Smokescreen talking about the SilverLight one and it having something about a Wing Lord and an Emperor. 

In a cupboard along the floor he finds a collection of dusty manuals and many different how-to guides for flying and ship repair. Prowl moves them to the side and stops short at a slight, but distinctive, soft blue glow. 

“You have to be kidding me,” he mutters at the sight. 

“What are we kidding?" Jazz asks from the cockpit. 

Prowl fully removes the dusty books from the cupboard and looks at what’s nestled firmly against the back wall. He huffs. “I have found another energon cache,” he tells his mission partner. 

There’s a brief pause before Jazz starts to laugh. “Ha! That’s hilarious. That makes this, what, secret stash number twelve? Thirteen?”

“Twelve,” Prowl answers as he documents the contents of the stash (six cubes and a box half full of single serving packages of energon additives, these ones labeled as sweet tasting melanterite flakes). 

“How is it,” Jazz asks, voice full of mirth, “that I’m the secret agent but you’re the one who keeps finding these things?”

“I am more miffed that there are so many for me to find,” Prowl mutters. He is sure that Smokescreen would have some insight into the Decepticon’s mental state to help explain their apparent need for stashes. He’ll need to ask his brother about it after he returns. 

Jazz, done with what he was doing, kneels next to Prowl and peaks into the cubby. “So what’s the verdict on this stash?”

“It is too small to take energon from here,” Prowl says as he carefully puts the books back. “The additives may be numerous enough to swipe a few, but for now, it is best to leave them.” He closes the cupboard’s door. 

Jazz clicks his tongue as he looks thoughtfully at the closed door. He stands when Prowl does and gives a small hum. “Well, if you’re as good at finding secrets as you are at finding stashes,” he says as he directs a teasing grin at Prowl, “I should bring you on a few more missions after this.”

While Prowl is mostly sure that Jazz is joking, he feels the need to say, “There are surely other mechs that possess more relevant skills in the field than I do.”

Jazz shrugs and starts leading them out of the ship. “Maybe, but none of them have found half as many hidden spots as you.”

Prowl falters at the easy admission. He then quickly catches up to the other. “Please tell me you are not serious.”

Jazz’s only reply is to look back at him with that Ricochet-esque grin. 

A concerning answer but now Prowl’s thoughts are distracted and he can’t help but wonder something about Jazz. It’s something that’s been churning away in a background process since he met the mech and noticed his much-too-familiar face. 

“I am aware that you already know Stepper,” he says quietly as they get into the hangar and head for the nearest vent, “but do you by chance know Marshal of Altihex and the spy Ricochet as well?”

There’s a slight pause in Jazz’s movements before he keeps going, helping Prowl into the vents. “Funnily enough, yeah,” he answers, also in a quiet voice. “I actually work with all three of them a bunch. Those mechs are my people.”

Prowl tucks the entire interaction away to examine more closely later. He follows Jazz towards their hidey hole. “Explains a lot.”

“I’m choosing to interpret that as a compliment.”

“Interpret away.”

Prowl lays in the vent, furthering his self appointed task of establishing the daily habits of the Cons on base. It’s something he’s found himself doing at the same time as his actual mission of organizing and planning around the stolen intelligence. The datawork helps fill up the long stretches when nothing noteworthy happens. 

Currently, several of the Cons are settled in the rec room for their midday energon, Updraft being one of them. The storm is more intense today, the sounds of the howling winds are louder and the occasional high pitched creaks from the base itself are more frequent. It all serves as background noise for the otherwise quiet scene below him. 

Updraft makes a displeased face with an annoyed flick of his wing when the base makes another creak. Prowl makes another mental tally with the observation, the fifth one of its kind. It seems that Updraft dislikes it when the building's sounds reaches a certain high frequency.

It gives Prowl an idea. One of the different tools that Stepper had sent him with is a recorder. He unsubspaces it, sets it down in front of him, and starts recording while mentally starting a timer. Whenever the base makes a sound that Updraft cringes at, Prowl takes note of the time it occurred at. By the time Updraft gets up to leave an hour later, Prowl has four times listed. Using these, he makes four separate sound clips from the original recording of just the high pitched creaks and wind. He makes sure to have the sounds fade in and out, making them less abrupt. 

He can’t use them often or else he risks someone noticing that some of the sounds they hear are identical, but it’s nice to have a few recordings that, at the very least, will annoy the seeker. 

Prowl turns the recorder over in his servos. He’ll basically be “haunting” the mech if he commits to using it. Though he was, and still kind of is, skeptical of the idea, he will admit that it has worked so far. And if it works towards his own end, then all the better. 

Prowl sighs softly and plants his face in his servo, the other loosely holding onto the recorder. He wonders how his life led to this frankly absurd situation. 

It’s safe for one to assume that Smokescreen would have something to say about this whole thing and Prowl’s reaction to it, but that assumption would be false. Not that Prowl’s brother wouldn’t have any thoughts about it, quite the opposite; he’d have many thoughts about Prowl’s behavior. He’d give Prowl a look that lets him know that he has opinions, but he just wouldn’t say them. 

No, unless asked, Smokescreen would keep those to himself. Bluestreak on the other servo? He’d let Prowl know exactly what he thinks about all of it. The amount of depth that Bluestreak would go into about his thoughts on the matter would leave Prowl with absolutely zero doubts about the younger bot’s opinion. 

Prowl lets out a muffled huff into his servo. Primus, he misses them. He hopes that they are doing well despite his inability to return to them and the inevitable worry his continued absence is sure to cause. 

“So what’s this thing you want to show me?” Jazz asks in a mumble. “And can it wait till morning?”

They’re back in the dead end hallway late at night. Prowl lightly steps to the end of the hall and carefully checks that the way is clear. For as late as it is, not every mech is in their berths, though when they checked, Coil and Wrangle, the two still awake, were lounging in the rec room. “I thought you wanted to know what was beyond the door, but if I am mistaken, we can go back.”

“Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Jazz is quick to dissuade, looking much more awake. “What’d you find?”

“Over here.” Prowl leads them into the other hallway a few steps and opens the mostly hidden access panel. They go inside, Jazz silently closing the panel behind them. Now within the walls, they head back around the corner to the dead end hallway. 

Prowl vaguely gestures in front of them. “I noticed this maintenance tunnel was longer than the other one. On closer inspection, I found that it went past the door,” he points to the door’s defunct inner mechanisms and sliding track as they pass, “and ends in another access panel, which,” he pulls a small lever and pushes against the panel (and it only squeaks a little bit because Prowl took the time to oil it after the single audial splitting screech it made after he opened it an inch when he first found it), “can be opened.”

The area on the other side of the unmarked door is dark and, while not freezing, is still cold. Prowl unsubspaces some flashlights and steps inside. “I haven’t gone much further than testing the door.” A quick glance of the space shows that they are at the top of a stairwell and that the mechanical door leading back to the Decepticon base has been welded shut from this side. 

Jazz steps in, accepting the flashlight that Prowl hands him. “Aw, came to get me ‘cause you knew I wanted to see this?” he asks with a slightly crooked grin.

“Because it is dangerous to go into unknown areas alone without telling others where you are,” Prowl corrects. He pauses, then tilts his helm towards his mission partner as he concedes, “and partly because I knew you were curious.”

Jazz smiles and gestures to the stairs. “Shall we?” 

They head down a single flight. The air is colder here. Not dangerously so, thankfully, but enough to occasionally make Prowl shiver. A quick glance over the railing shows that the stairs keep going downwards for a few more floors. With a soft click of the button on the wall and a creaky swisck, Jazz easily gets the door to the floor just beneath where the Cons have set up to slide open into the wall. A wave of air that is even colder than what’s in the stairwell wafts out the open door and sluggishly drifts past Prowl’s legs. 

“Huh,” Jazz says with a slight shiver, servo still on the panel. “That was easier than I thought it’d be.” He presses the door lock to keep the doors open and walks inside, Prowl a step behind him.

They enter a short hallway that opens up into what looks like a large common room that, compared to the map of the floor above, takes up a large part of the middle of the building, with two rows of structural supports going down the length of the room. The walls on either side are lined with doors while the room itself has old tables, chairs, couches, and even an ancient entertainment system that was dated even before the war broke out. 

Jazz heads to the first door on the left and Prowl does the same to the right. The doors open easily enough, though Prowl makes sure to lock the door open as Jazz did earlier. Inside is a small space with a desk, chair, berth, nightstand, and a shelf. On his right is hinged door that has been left ajar and shows a small wash rack inside. 

“I’ve got a good sized kitchen over here,” Jazz informs him from the other side of the room. “How about you?”

“A berth room.” Prowl looks back over the central room again. “This entire floor was likely the living area when this base was a research facility.”

“You're probably right.” Jazz walks to his next door and checks inside. He whistles. “These are some nice digs. Why do the Cons bunk in repurposed storage rooms when places like this are available?”

“If I had to guess,” Prowl says as he also checks his next room, finding much the same, “I would say it is to conserve energy. Why heat and power two floors when just one will do? So they pick the one with the hangar and seal it off the best they can from the rest of the building to keep in the warm air.”

Jazz gives a small hum. “Someone did the rewiring wrong then. The doors here are still getting power to them.” To punctuate this, he presses the button to his next door causing it to swoosh open. “Oh nice! A music player!”

Prowl continues down the rows of doors, finding all of them to be berth rooms. The most notable of these rooms being one with multiple strings of fairy lights hanging from the ceiling. When he flips the light switch, only half of the strings turn on, some flickering for several moments before staying lit. 

The last door that Prowl opens is a small closet. It still has a few board games and puzzles stored inside. 

Prowl notices that the farther into the room he gets, the more he sees frost dusting the surface of different things. The most being at the rounded wall at the end of the room as it’s actually coated in a solid layer of ice that is about a quarter-inch thick. The winds are also louder the further into the room they go. 

When he’s done checking all the doors on his side of the room, Prowl heads towards where Jazz got distracted by the music player and sat down to fiddle with it, flashlight held firmly in his mouth. The darkness of the room works against Prowl. He doesn’t see where he’s about to step and his pede unexpectedly slips from underneath him. He tries to catch himself, fails, and rams into a bookshelf, making the shelf (and him) topple over onto an old table that breaks under their combined weight. 

In the base’s designated rec room, Coil’s helm snaps up at the short reverberating rumble. “D’ya hear that?” she asks Wrangle. 

The ancient mech doesn’t even look up from his datapad. “You’ll find,” he says with a tone that suggests experience, “that old mechs and old buildings have a lot in common. See, we both make creaks and groans when we settle.”

Coil cocks her helm to the side as she thinks the old mech’s words over, then nods her helm in deference to his wisdom and returns to her own late night hobby. 

Prowl sits himself up from the debris with a groan and a few choice curses against ice that gets underpede. 

“You okay Prowler?” Jazz asks. He’s set aside the music player and is carefully making his way over towards Prowl. 

Prowl checks himself over. “Besides a few dents to myself and my pride, I am fine.”

Jazz arrives at his side. “Oh, good.” He offers a servo to help him up. “Because that,” Jazz says as he struggles to talk around his giggling, “was one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a while.”

Prowl takes the offered servo. “I do not know if that means the Con watching here is stale, or that my fall was especially comical, and frankly? I do not care for either.”

Jazz helps pull him up. “What, you don’t want watching the Con’s to be stale? Wouldn’t that be a good thing for us?” he asks in a tone of voice that Prowl is quickly learning to associate with his mission partner’s own brand of friendly banter. 

“While yes, it should be, it would also mean that you are getting bored and that is not something I want to deal with.” Prowl rolls his shoulders back and moves his helm from side to side to stretch out his neck cabling. “I will definitely be feeling these for a few days,” he grumbles to himself.

“I’ll have you know that I am a delight,” Jazz says as he guides Prowl to a sturdy enough couch. He unsubspaces a med kit and starts to straighten up and smooth out the larger dents. “Being bored does not change that.”

“Even though you gave sound reasoning to back up your idea to ‘haunt’ the Decepticons, you are too much like Bluestreak and my brother for me to believe that you being bored did not at least play a part in your decision making.”

“I may not know these mechs,” Jazz says as he works on the dent on Prowl’s left shoulder, “but I’m choosing to believe that being like them is a good thing.”

Prowl lets out a small huff and a smaller smile. “They would agree with you.”

“Hey Prowler, Stepper sent you out with a recorder, yeah?” Jazz asks after the dents are dealt with and his medkit is stored away. 

“Yes. Why?”

“The blizzard sounds extra spooky down here and I want a few sound clips of it.”

Prowl hands over the recorder. “You can record for half an hour, but then we need to get back. It is too cold to stay down here for much longer than that.”

“Sure thing,” Jazz agrees as he goes about setting up the device. “Oh, there’s already a few recordings on here.”

Despite the cold, Prowl can still feel the heat that grows on his face and he looks away. “I… recorded some of the sounds the building made when the blizzard got more intense.”

There’s a slight pause after the admission before Jazz says, “Explains why they’re called ‘Creak1’, ‘Creak2’, and so on. Very boring names.”

Prowl forgets his embarrassment in his irritation. “They are informative! And simple! And will be right next to each other on the file list. It is basic file management.”

“Dull and bland is what it is. Where’s the personal flare? The pizzazz?”

Prowl thinks Jazz might be joking just to get a rise out of him, but he can’t be sure. “It is a name for a sound bite.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it,” Jazz counters with a smile. 

“You now have twenty-five minutes to record.”

“Alright, alright.” Jazz shrugs and continues with setting up the recorder, smile still in place. 

Prowl folds his arms. “For someone who is supposed to ‘take care of’ me, you seem rather insistent on poking fun.”

Jazz looks over his shoulder to give a big smile. “It’s part of the experience, Prowler.”

Lockbox sits in the hangar on a crate that’s yet to be put away, fiddling with the device in her lap. Pocket, the copilot, sits on the crate next to hers as both of their supervisors, Market and Livewire, have a conversation nearby. 

The blizzard, while still raging, has calmed down some from the near frightening intensity of last week. But despite the relative calm—.

An echoing groan sounds from the base, making Lockbox pause in her tinkering. 

Despite the calm, sometimes noises like that will still sound. 

Pocket shifts a touch closer. “What are you working on?” she asks.

Lockbox blinks a few times before it properly registers that Pocket is talking to her. “This,” she answers, lifting the device up slightly. 

Pocket nods. “And what is it?”

“Um, it’s a rudimentary radio broadcast,” Lockbox explains. “We don’t get many signals out here since we’re so far away and the frequent storms, especially in winter. We’re still connected to the Decepticon network because of fiber optic cables that are run across the sea floor, but any radio signals are spotty on a good day, so there’s really nothing to entertain ourselves with in that regard.”

Pocket nods along eagerly and Lockbox realizes that the copilot is actually paying attention to her explanation instead of mentally checking out partway through. 

“And, um, well,” she stumbles a bit over her words, “we’re technically not allowed to send out our own radio signals, because even though we’re deep in Decepticon territory, we need to keep the base hidden at all costs. But I figured, if I could make a radio signal weak enough, then it should be fine to, um, use it while we’re in the middle of a blizzard.”

Pocket nods again. “Do you know what you’re going to play on it?”

Lockbox can feel her face heating up at the thought of telling her the real reason for this is so that she and Pick can eventually use a spirit box in the hallway that Highbeam saw the apparition in. “Well, uh, I’m— I’m hoping to broadcast on multiple signals to uh, for variety. I’m going to ask my basemates for a copy of their playlists.”

Pocket lights up. “I have a playlist you can copy,” she supplies. 

The blizzard’s winds paired with an ominous rumble fills the hangar, the slightest of vibrations traveling across the floor and through her pedes. Lockbox looks around the room, but there’s nothing new. 

“Yeah, sure,” she answers Pocket distractedly. “That would be great.”

Pocket gets up, clearly excited. “I’ll be right back!” she tells Lockbox and runs up the ramp of her ship. 

Lockbox spins her multi-tool through her fingers to try and calm her nerves. She has to remind herself that they’re still in the evidence gathering stage, that nothing is certain, and that the base could just be making noises. 

No matter how aptly timed some of those noises can be. 

“I’m back!” Pocket says, her sudden reappearance being punctuated by a high pitched creak, startling Lockbox bad enough that she flinches and drops her multi-tool.

Chapter Text

Bluestreak is talking to Sideswipe and Sunstreaker as they walk down a hallway when he sees Smokescreen basically stalking towards them. 

“Oh hi Smokescreen!” he says. “How’s it go—.” Smokescreen grabs Bluestreak’s right bicep and keeps marching down the hall without breaking stride, taking the younger mech with him. “—Oh, we’re leaving. Okay. Bye guys! Talk to you later!” he says with a wave to the befuddled and amused twins. 

They both wave back before continuing on their own way. 

Bluestreak twists himself around so he can walk more comfortably besides Smokescreen. “So that looks like a serious face you’ve got there and I’m guessing you want to talk to me privately because you normally don’t mind the twins listening in on things. You didn’t send me a comm so it’s not urgent urgent but it’s enough that you don’t want anyone listening in. I have a few guesses of what this could be about, but I’ll keep those to myself until we get to whatever private spot you have in mind for this talk.”

Smokescreen briefly gives Bluestreak a small smile to show that he heard him and that he appreciates Bluestreak’s unique brand of discretion. He leads them through the halls, down a flight of stairs to the underground level, and to the side into one of the base’s long term storage rooms. It’s a good spot for more private conversations. The things there, while important, are not always needed, so they’re stored in more out-of-the-way areas.

“So am I good to guess now or is this thing serious enough for you to just tell me?” Bluestreak asks as Smokescreen takes them through the shelves. “‘Cause I feel like it has something to do with Prowl but I don’t think you’d keep any news about him a secret.”

Smokescreen tucks them into the far corner. “You remember that unfinished KIA about Prowl that you found?” he asks as he scans the area. 

Bluestreak feels his line chill. “Yes, I remember the pad that nearly made me panic. Did it get filed?”

Smokescreen furrows his brow. “No,” he says. “Prowl’s been reported as missing in action instead of killed.”

It feels as though a presence approaches Bluestreak from behind. “What?” He asks as he instinctively checks over his shoulder. No one is there. “Missing? But that doesn’t make much sense. Why have a KIA almost ready to go if they were just going to use an MIA instead? I’m sure these missions take a long time to plan, so I don’t think they’d just change their mind over this only a few weeks later. That’s just… weird.”

“That’s what I thought as well,” Smokescreen says. “It comes across less as a misdirect and more like someone was anticipating for Prowl to die.”

Bluestreak swallows down his nerves. “That just makes whatever mission Prowl is on very suspicious. Why assign Prowl to it if they thought he had a good chance of dying? Unless the goal was to kill him, but that just leads to even more questions. Who would want that? Why? What could possibly be gained from Prowl’s death?”

“I don’t know,” Smokescreen says. “We’ve got a lot of theories and very little facts. The only things we really know for sure are that Prowl is on a secret mission, you found a partially completed KIA with him as the deceased, and now he’s listed as MIA. We need more evidence if we want to figure out what’s going on.”

One of Bluestreak’s doorwings flick when it feels like the imaginary presence behind him shifts. Stupid sensor ghosts. “How are we supposed to find any evidence for something like this? Where do we even start?” 

Smokescreen looks to the side in contemplation. “I may have an idea.”

Smokescreen’s idea turns out to be simply requesting Prowl’s mission details from records. Which he can apparently do because Prowl is MIA and Smokescreen is his brother. 

Which is where the current problem started. 

“I said no,” the clerk says firmly. 

Bluestreak tries to object. “But—.”

“Are you suddenly his brother now?” The clerk challenges, frustrated and obviously done with trying to explain the rules to him again. 

Bluestreak can feel his face heat up. “Well, it’s just… you see, uh—.”

Smokescreen rests an arm over Bluestreak’s shoulders and pulls him close in a side hug. He leans a bit forward, placing himself just slightly in front of Bluestreak, and gives the clerk a winning smile. “He’s adopted!”

What?

The clerk looks at Smokescreen incredulously. She looks down at her terminal and back up at them. “Really.”

Smokescreen doesn’t lose his smile. “He’s our brother in all but paperwork.”

What?!

The clerk lets out an annoyed huff. “But it’s that paperwork that’s important! There’s no record in our system about you three adopting each other as brothers.“

Smokescreen nods. “I understand that it’s important and I’m sorry that we haven’t made it official yet. We were going to do all the forms and stuff weeks ago, but then Prowl was unexpectedly assigned to this mysterious mission. So we decided to postpone it until he got back.” Smokescreen’s smile becomes small and sad. “We wanted him to be here for it, you know?”

Oh, Bluestreak is experiencing some emotions alright! Those sure are feelings clogging up his vocalizer right now. He holds them down as well as he can, deciding to deal with whatever those feelings are later, and simply nods at the clerk when she glances at him. 

His right doorwing flicks as he feels a brief presence to his right. A quick glance shows no one there. Another sensor ghost. 

Smokescreen continues, “But now Prowl is reported missing, and… we just want to know why.”

The clerk looks between the two of them shrewdly before she sighs and starts typing into her terminal. “Fine, but this is the only time I’m making this exception, okay? You two need to officially adopt each other before I do anything like this for you again.”

“We understand. Thank you.”

The clerk makes an acknowledging hum. “This will take a few days to process. I’ll contact you once it’s ready and get you two set up at one of our private terminals. In the meantime, you can talk to Tripwire about getting that adoption process started.”

“Awesome. Again, thank you.”

Bluestreak nods in agreement. “Yes, thank you. And I’m sorry for being difficult earlier; I couldn’t figure out how to explain everything.”

The clerk’s hard expression softens a little bit. “You’re fine kid. It happens. You aren’t the first and you won’t be the last, but thanks for actually apologizing.”

With a last goodbye, Bluestreak follows Smokescreen out. 

Later, after a stop at Tripwire’s office and picking up the needed forms, they settle in a corner of the rec room. Bluestreak stares blankly at the pad he’d been given to fill out, the feelings from before rising up and making his throat feel tight. They’re a complicated mix of different things. Hope and joy and trepidation and fear and excitement and nerves and—!

“Are we filling these out to keep up appearances so no one gets suspicious?” Bluestreak asks, keeping his optics on the pad. “Like, is this just to cover up a lie so we can get information or was that genuine and you actually see me as family?” His grip on the pad tightens and his vocalizer briefly spits out static. “Is— is this real?” 

Smokescreen doesn’t respond for several seconds and Bluestreak keeps his gaze firmly on the form in front of him, even though he isn’t really taking in anything of what’s on it. He hears the soft clack of a pad being set aside. A blue servo reaches across the table to gently grasp one of his own. 

“Hey,” Smokescreen starts, voice hushed, “this is— I’m— I don’t know how to address this. My thoughts are not in order but I didn’t want to leave you in silence. Not sure how I want to word this. I’m probably going to ramble, but that’s fine. 

“I did lie to that clerk, you already knew that. Regardless, you— For the longest time, whenever I would imagine the future, Prowl was the only constant. No matter what I chose to do or where I decided to go, Prowl would always be a comm away. If there was anything I was sure of, it was Prowl’s place in my life. I’m still certain of that. And Bluestreak, something that I’ve noticed recently is that, along with Prowl, I can’t imagine my life without you in it.”

Bluestreak invents sharply and looks up at Smokescreen. The older Praxian smiles at him, gently moving Bluestreak’s pad aside so he can hold both of his servos and give them a reassuring squeeze. 

“You’re important to me, Bluestreak,” Smokescreen says. “If that doesn’t make you family, I don’t know what will.”

Bluestreak is very aware of the tears that are streaming down his face, but he doesn’t care. “You mean it?” he asks.

Smokescreen stands and moves around the table to sit down next to him. “Yes, Bluestreak,” he answers, placing an arm around his shoulders, “I mean it.”

Bluestreak hugs Smokescreen, burying his helm in the other’s shoulder and holding on tight. The hug is swiftly returned, just as firm. 

Bluestreak stays there a long time, and Smokescreen lets him, holding the other until Bluestreak moves to sit up. 

The younger Praxian rubs his face, wiping away what’s left of his tears, and clears his throat. “Right,” he says. “I wasn’t really taking in anything that was on the form, so I’m still a bit lost with how to fill it out.”

Smokescreen snorts. “Lucky you, I’m a form filling expert.” He reaches across the table and grabs their pads. “Just ask if anything’s confusing.”

Both Bluestreak and Smokescreen are notified when Prowl’s mission details are ready for viewing and they get there as soon as possible once their shifts end. Bluestreak’s doorwing flicks against the increasingly familiar sensation of a sensor ghost that he’s starting to think is just his nerves. 

They’re led to a room in the back with several terminals in their own private cubicle. The clerk pulls up their requested file, lets them know she’ll be just out the door if they need help or when they’re done, and leaves them to it. 

The file is heavily redacted, since it’s a classified mission that’s technically still in progress. They both do their best to read it regardless. 

It’s… not exactly fruitful. 

“So, to summarize,” Smokescreen says, “he had to go somewhere, to get something, and he was the one chosen to go because… it’s classified, but I can make an educated guess that it’s because he’s smart and has insane computing power.”

“But that’s…” Bluestreak makes frustrated gestures at the screen. “We already knew most of that!”

“Yep,” Smokescreen agrees. 

“That doesn’t answer any of our questions, not even a little bit.”

“Yeah.”

“…This stinks.”

“Oh, absolutely.” Smokescreen straightens up in his chair and brings himself closer to the keyboard. “Fortunately, there are more ways to get information from this.”

“How? Aren’t these things read only?”

“Yeah, they are, but if you push these two keys at the same time—” Smokescreen pushes two buttons on the keyboard and the screen changes, bringing up a new page— “then you get to see the metadata that’s attached to it.” 

Bluestreak briefly looks over the new page before turning to Smokescreen. “How did you know about this?”

Smokescreen shrugs. “Skills from before the war. Nowadays I mostly use it to find old strategies that used certain tactics so I can read up on them and see where they worked and where they failed. Here, I’ll show you.”

Bluestreak shifts his chair closer as Smokescreen starts pointing out the different parts. “So this here is the file’s number in our system. Knowing this can help you search up a specific file later. This—.”

Using the metadata of a classified mission, Smokescreen explains what each field is and what the information listed there means. Things like creation date, which department created it, where on Cybertron it was created, file size, file type, and much more. They even find a small note hidden within the metadata that simply reads ‘I know you’re reading this J - Quit snooping and get to work’ with a reply under it, presumably from this “J” person, saying ‘but snooping is my work :(’. Those make Bluestreak giggle. 

The next field has Bluestreak’s lines running cold. It’s a list of keywords, there to make searches easier, and the word that catches and holds his attention is ‘Infiltration’. 

“Does…” Bluestreak’s voice comes out with a slight static. He points to the word holding his focus. “Does that mean Prowl was sent behind enemy lines?”

Smokescreen stares at the word, his brow furrowing deeper with each second that passes. “That’s Spec Ops work. Who sends a junior tactician to do Spec Ops work?”

Dread rises in Bluestreak’s spark. “…The same person who prepares a KIA with Prowl’s name on it hoping he’ll die, then hides the pad under a dusty filing cabinet in the back of Record’s file room.”

Smokescreen’s face hardens into a fierce glare. Bluestreak can almost see the promise of retribution forming in his optics. The older Praxian closes his optics with a tight grimace and takes several deep, deliberate vents. 

“We need facts,” Smokescreen says when he opens his optics again, the fires of vengeance held back for the moment. “This is a big thing to accuse someone of. We need to be certain of who and why. So let’s review the facts.”

Bluestreak nods; he can do that. “Prowl was assigned to a secret mission and left later that same day. He was then listed at ‘temporarily transferred’ which made it possible for Major Hardtack to assign Pinpoint as my new roommate. Later, while completing a punishment assigned by Major Hardtack, I found an incomplete Killed In Action report with Prowl written in as the deceased on a datapad that came from tactical. We decided to give it to Hardtack, since he’s likely got high enough clearance for it, without letting him know that we saw the contents. Prowl still hasn’t returned from his mission and was recently listed as Missing In Action, which tripped us up because we were expecting the KIA to be used to cover Prowl’s tracks, and made us suspicious. So we requested to see this file, and it implies that Prowl may have been sent to infiltrate the Decepticons in the hopes of retrieving something important.”

Smokescreen nods. “Okay, tactical pad and someone who could reasonably have access to this plan… maybe it's because he came up a lot in your recounting, but it could be Major Hardtack? He’d have the clearance.”

“But he assigned me to clean the file room where the KIA was hidden. I don’t think he’d’ve done that if he was the one hiding it.”

Smokescreen crosses his arms and looks at the terminal with a sigh. “We’re not going to get answers today. We’ve already been here a long time. Let’s make a note of the file number and get back to this later.”

“Later” ends up being nearly a week after on their next rest day. They’re able to snag the most private of the public terminals on base. They bring up Prowl’s mission file, still just as redacted as before. 

Smokescreen pulls up the metadata again and scrolls through it, searching for anything he may have missed, or a connection that hadn’t occurred to him the first time. He goes over it thrice without finding anything new. His optics catch onto the frowny face that J left in their note and he can’t help but feel a sort of kinship to the emoticon. He huffs, sitting back in his chair and using a servo to rub at his optics. 

“I have an idea,” Bluestreak volunteers. 

Smokescreen glances at his soon-to-be newest brother. Bluestreak is sitting on his chair backwards, loosely hugging the back of the seat. His right doorwing makes a tiny flick as it usually does lately whenever they’re doing something sneaky. The older Praxian shrugs and pushes his chair back as he waves a single servo at the terminal in a “go ahead” gesture. 

Bluestreak goes back to the file proper and navigates through the settings until he gets to the document’s edit history. 

“How does this help?” Smokescreen asks. “With something this classified, it won’t have any names listed.”

And it doesn’t. The users listed have no names and are numbered in order of who got added to the document first, second, and so on. 

“Yeah,” Bluestreak agrees, “but it’s also got the IP address that the user was accessing the file from when they edited it in the advanced options.” And after a few clicks, the IP addresses are listed alongside the different users. 

“Huh,” Smokescreen says. “Interesting. How’d you know about that?”

“Well,” Bluestreak starts as he carefully scrolls through the edit history, “I learned about this from watching Prowl work. Then I memorized his IP and would use these things—” he gestures to the few rows of public terminals— “to do a search by IP address so I could see how late into the night Prowl had stayed up working. Then I would know when to hound him about getting some actual rest.”

“Cool, cool,” Smokescreen says a bit distractedly. The explanation reminds him of the few times he had stayed up late several days in a row only to have his streak end with the younger Praxian whining at him and annoying him into actually going to his berth. “Quick question, did you also memorize mine?”

Bluestreak pauses his perusal of the edit history just long enough to quickly glance at him with a knowing smile. 

“Figures,” Smokescreen mutters. “So what’ve you learned?”

“That whoever user number four is, they’re the one that’s stationed on this base and likely to have our answers. See, the first half of their IP matches yours and Prowl’s work terminals,” he circles the parts of the long string of numbers and letters he refers to. “These ones represent the polity of Tyrest and then the next four characters refer to this base specifically. The rest of the number narrows it down to specific terminals and access points but I don’t know those very well besides yours and Prowl’s. We also have dates and times for when they had edited this.”

“So we just need to figure out which terminal in tactical has this IP address. Then we’ll know who we can get our answers from.”

Bluestreak drums his fingers against the table. “So, do we sneak into tactical late at night, log into each and every workstation, and check them for their IP?”

Smokescreen shakes his helm. “My login only has permission to work on a few specific systems and I don’t think yours will work on any of them. We wouldn’t even be able to get into Major Hardtack’s office to check his without setting off an alarm of some sort.”

Bluestreak looks up as he starts thinking aloud. “We can’t manually check the systems themselves so that just leaves us with every terminal that isn’t yours or Prowl’s. Can’t really ask everyone for their IP address because that’s weird and no one would do that. Maybe we can see if we could somehow get the information from IT or security? I feel like those would be the guys who would know how to check and see which terminal that belongs to. That makes sense, right?”

“It makes sense,” Smokescreen confirms. “It’s just a matter of figuring out how to frame this right so they would actually tell us.”

After a small bit of thought, Bluestreak snaps his fingers. “I got it!”

Chapter Text

Bluestreak thinks his idea is rather brilliant, actually. He knows how he can come off to others; chatty, young, naive. And he is chatty and young, but naive? No. Naivety isn’t something he can afford to have anymore, but that doesn’t stop others from assuming. Bluestreak lets them as it usually works out for his own benefit if others think that of him. Makes them more likely to help if he asks them for something. 

Like now, when he came to where the technical mechs work and asked the more agreeable looking one for help with identifying the IP that “keeps sending me messages that I think are supposed to be jokes? But they come off as a bit rude,” so he could talk to them and let them know that it’s not as appreciated as they seem to think it is. His wing had involuntarily flicked at a sensor ghost, but ultimately that only seemed to further the image he was going for. 

And now the technician is looking up the IP Bluestreak gave him, meaning he’ll soon have someone to demand answers from. 

“Ah, now that’s a problem,” the technician says. 

Unless something else happens. 

Bluestreak shifts a bit in the seat that the technician brought over for him. “That doesn’t sound good. What’s wrong?”

“Well,” the other mech starts, “the IP doesn’t really belong to any one bot. It’s one of the public terminals that everybody can use for whatever.”

“Oh,” Bluestreak says, shoulders drooping. “Well that… complicates things a bit. Do you know which one it is?”

“Yeah, it’s terminal three in the west hall. Can’t really tell you much more than that, but hey, if this person sends you another one, let us know right away and we can see what we can do to help sort it out, yeah?”

“Oh, for sure,” Bluestreak nods. “Thanks for doing this much, honestly. It may not be a lot of information, but it’s more than what I was expecting to get.”

Bluestreak thanks him again, says goodbye, and leaves their work area. He heads down to the basement level so he could walk with his thoughts without anyone trying to disrupt him. He unsubspaces a rubber ball, a small brightly-colored magenta one that was made as a toy, and begins to quickly calculate trajectories and how the ball will ricochet and then throws it as best he can against the walls and onto the projected path. 

It’s a simple exercise that helps him think by putting his excess energy into something physical instead of crowding his processor with unrelated things that don’t ultimately matter. It lets him focus. 

He’s going to need that focus because who uses a public terminal to help plan top secret missions? That’s dumb and doesn’t seem very secure at all! He throws the ball to the floor, watching it bounce around the hallway as he walks before it loses enough momentum on the final bounce to gently land in his open palm. 

Terminal three better at least be one of the ones that have the most privacy by being in the corner with the screen facing away from the rest of the room. He throws the ball up at the ceiling. He catches it at the end of a high bounce against the floor. 

Because otherwise, Bluestreak will be very upset that the confidentiality of this top secret mission wasn’t taken even a little seriously. 

His wing flicks against the feeling of the sensor ghost again. It seems to follow him at a consistent distance and is a consistent size. His processor snags this information and calculates a throw against it. Bluestreak calculates two trajectories; one where the ball continues through the “ghost” to hit the wall behind it and a hypothetical one for a “what if this was an actual mech and it hit” situation. 

Bluestreak lines up the shot. It won’t do anything, but he’s upset and this is his way of getting rid of some of that by “hitting” something that isn’t even there. He throws the ball in front of him, it hits the wall at the best angle to bounce back and to the left at speed, so it sails past Bluestreak’s helm and through the sensor ghost. 

Or at least it should have if it didn’t actually hit something.

Something that shouts at being hit.

Bluestreak’s processor immediately flips which simulation was real and which one was hypothetical and his body reacts to it, catching the returning ball before he is fully cognitively aware of what’s happening. 

In the next second, now more aware and realizing that there’s an actual unknown person here, Bluestreak throws the ball again, harder and directly at the possible threat’s helm area. 

He is rewarded with a sharper cry from the unknown individual and a flicker of visibility from what he thought had been a sensor ghost. All that he is really able to see is that their plating is mostly blue. Bluestreak unsubspaces his rifle and is just about to comm Smokescreen about an intruder when a vaguely familiar voice calls out, “Wait, wait! Don’t shoot! It’s just me!”

The mystery mech drops the invisibility and standing at the end of Bluestreak’s barrel with his servos raised is Figment, the new mech with the Towers accent. 

“Why have you been following us?” Bluestreak demands, painfully aware that he’s been feeling a “sensor ghost” ever since Smokescreen told him about Prowl’s MIA. 

“I didn’t mean to at first!” Figment tries explaining. “I was worried about Smokescreen when he was told something in private and then quickly left. I wanted to make sure he was okay, but I also didn’t want to intrude.”

“That maybe explains the start of all this, but why’d you keep following us?”

“I wasn’t planning to, but then you guys said something about a KIA and the brother I’ve heard a few things about and,” Figment pauses, “I got curious?” he says while visibly cringing. “I wanted to help but I didn’t know how or how to approach you.”

Bluestreak’s shoulders slowly lose tension as the new mech explains, but he keeps his stance steady. “You know how this looks, right? Following us around, invisibly, while we’re trying to quietly figure out if that KIA came from the person on base who helped plan his mission? At best, it makes you look extremely awkward and a little creepy. Which isn’t like you, because in the times I’ve interacted with you and seen you around you're calm and sure of yourself. You’re a confident mech, so forgive me for not exactly believing you.”

“What, never heard of ‘fake it till you make it’?” Figment asks, some of his usual assurance and playful sarcasm showing through. He attempts a smile, but the gun still pointed steadily at him makes it fall flat.

“There’s a difference between trying for confidence and actually being confident. You,” Bluestreak says with a glare, “are actually confident, so try again.”

Figment raises his servos a bit higher to around helm height. “Sorry that it’s easy to be confident when I know what‘s going on? I haven’t exactly been trained on how to handle these things, so forgive me for being unsure about what I’m supposed to do when I stumble across what’s apparently a conspiracy to get someone murdered!”

Bluestreak squints at the other mech. Figment shifts his weight and raises his shoulders slightly at the scrutiny. 

“Are you serious about wanting to help?” the Praxian asks.

Figment blinks, likely not expecting Bluestreak to drop the accusations yet (and Bluestreak has to wonder, with an ability like invisibility, how often he gets accused for things; may explain why he doesn’t advertise the fact that he can disappear). “I— yes. I’m serious.”

Bluestreak squints further, taking in every detail of Figment’s expression.

“Okay,” he decides, pointing his rifle upwards and turning the safety on.

“Okay? Just like that?” Figment asks, only lowering his servos slightly (Bluestreak wonders again about past accusations made against the mech).

“Yep,” he answers, subspacing the gun. “I trust your word and your desire to help.” 

“That’s—”

“But just so we’re clear,” Bluestreak interrupts, “despite what others think, I am not naive. I’m not trusting you blindly. You wanting to help is real, but not everything about you is. I don’t know what your whole deal is, but you’re serious about looking into this with us, and that’s good enough for me. So please, don’t prove me wrong.”

Figment looks him over, like he’s reassessing a few things. Then he nods. “Of course. Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Awesome!” Bluestreak says with genuine cheer. He walks forward, lightly tapping Figment’s shoulder with the back of his servo when he goes past the other mech. “Let’s go find Smokescreen and update him on things.”

Smokescreen has learned to trust Bluestreak’s judgement, but sometimes the young bot makes that really difficult to do. 

Like now, as he leads Figment inside the long term storage room and informs Smokescreen that the new mech is now in on their investigation. 

Something happened, that much is obvious. He looks over the two mechs standing across from him. Bluestreak is looking like everything is normal and Figment seems to be observing them, gaze flicking back and forth between one and the other. Based on Smokescreen’s experience working with Figment, he knows that that’s where the mech is comfortable, a bit in the back and watching, even as he makes sly comments and playful jabs. 

“Right,” Smokescreen says. “Just one question before we move on: why?”

Bluestreak looks at Figment with a questioning helm tilt. Figment answers it with a confused furrow of his brow. Bluestreak leans closer to the other mech and softly asks, "Do you want him to know certain details of just the bare bones?”

Which means that there’s something about Figment that Bluestreak thinks is worth keeping secret. So unless the younger mech gets permission from Figment to share what the “certain details” are, Smokescreen isn’t going to learn what they are from Bluestreak. Given how chatty the other Praxian is, most others would assume that he’d spill anything once he gets talking. What they don’t realize is that Bluestreak can say a lot without saying anything at all. Secrets are safe with him. It’s honestly impressive.

Figment gives Bluestreak permission and the two fill him in on the information that IT gave them and what happened after. 

Smokescreen uses one servo to rub at his optics. So they basically had an invisible stalker, who they are now working with. He will reiterate: sometimes Bluestreak makes it really hard to trust his judgement. 

But he does trust it.

“Alright,” he huffs as he mentally focuses on their investigation. “Moving on. User Four did their part on a public terminal, so we still don’t know who they are. We can’t go to the terminal and see who logged-in and when because that kind of information is purged each time it’s reset.”

Bluestreak absently taps the plating on his forearm. “We still have the location and multiple dates and times, so it should be easy to look up the security footage using those and seeing who’s seated at the terminal, right?”

“Theoretically,” Figment says. “The question is, are you going to use official channels to get to those recordings or not?”

Smokescreen thinks it over. “Making an official request needs more concrete evidence than what we have. For all we know, that KIA and this User Four aren’t related at all and it’s just a coincidence. But on the chance that they are related, we don’t want to tip this person off that we’re onto them by calling for an official investigation.”

“So our options are to sneak in or tell a very convincing lie,” Bluestreak concludes. “Maybe both, because despite our best efforts, we are going off of circumstantial evidence and a gut feeling.”

Smokescreen turns to Figment. “Would you be able to get them?”

He shakes his helm. “That won’t work. I can sneak in, but a keyboard and mouse moving on their own draws attention.”

No simple solution then. Smokescreen starts pacing the aisle. “What we need is either a good reason for one or more of us to be there, or to make a situation where there’s no one else in the room. Any ideas?”

Figment looks up in thought. “There is that big security meeting coming up.”

“The big security what now?” Bluestreak asks. 

“The main heads of security are coming from Iacon in a few weeks to provide training. There’s only going to be one person manning security while the first meeting is happening.”

Smokescreen rubs his chin. “Sounds promising. How did you learn about this?”

Figment sighs and leans against the shelf. “I’ve been doing the jobs that mostly involve helping with administrative duties; scheduling shifts, making sure room reservations are set, processing requests, etcetera, etcetera.”

Bluestreak looks confused. “I thought you, Nickle, and Pinpoint were helping with the jobs that Prowl usually did?”

“And we are,” Figment tells him. “Pinpoint’s the only one who is doing any real tactical work though. The rest are a bunch of miscellaneous jobs from other departments that they don’t have the mechpower to cover themselves. Did Prowl ever recharge?”

Smokescreen and Bluestreak glance at each other. Smokescreen shrugs. “Eh,” he says, making a so-so gesture. 

“I ended up annoying him into getting actual rest a lot,” Bluestreak admits. “And would bring him fuel when he’d forget.”

Smokescreen shakes his helm. “We’re getting off track. Who’s scheduled to man security during that first meeting?”

Figment smirks, his posture shifting ever so slightly to look more smug. “Layabout.”

“Layabout?” Bluestreak asks, incredulous. “That mech is infamous for doing the bare minimum and leaving his post during his shift. I get that that’s good news for us, but seriously? Layabout? Who would schedule him?”

“Yes, Layabout,” Figment confirms. “And I would, because that duty got left to me and I’m trying to help two bots figure out whether or not someone has a vendetta against their brother.”

Bluestreak rubs the back of his helm. “Right. Sorry.”

“You are forgiven.”

As the other two talk, Smokescreen turns the different pieces of information over in his helm. He lays them out and goes over what he knows. There are details he needs to ask about and clarify, but the overall shape of a plan begins to form. “This training is in a few weeks, right?” he asks Figment. 

“It is,” the new mech replies. 

Smokescreen nods. “Here’s the plan,” he says and starts to lay out his idea.

Bluestreak and Smokescreen both use one of their accrued personal days to get the day of the meeting off, freeing up their schedules to move as they please without the pressure of needing to be somewhere. The meeting is scheduled to happen soon after the day shift starts, so the two set themselves up in the mess hall closest to security. Bluestreak does his best to act natural as they wait for the signal. 

It comes not long after the meeting starts. 

“He’s leaving,” Figment sends over comms. 

Smokescreen stands and stretches, outwardly unhurried. Bluestreak follows his lead after a beat and starts a conversation about fiction books he enjoyed reading. They both leave, seemingly engrossed in conversation. 

It isn’t too long before they become actually engrossed in their conversation. 

“Hey, I didn’t like the Wing Lord as a character long before I started disliking Vosnian seekers,” Bluestreak says. “He can be fun to read sometimes, but his pride made him more annoying than he was entertaining. Plus, on a character level, I just don’t think he’d be good for SilverLight as a partner. I kept getting more antagonistic sibling vibes than any kind of romantic tension from her interactions with him. The Emperor of Polyhex, though, I can definitely see getting together with SilverLight.”

“You’re entitled to your wrong opinion,” Smokescreen teases, snickering through the other bot smacking his arm. “Though the hottest take I ever came across about the Spark of Crystal series came from Prowl, and he’s never even read those books."

“You can’t just say that and not explain. What’d he have to say about it?”

“Okay, so book seven had just come out,” Smokescreen says, setting up the scene, “and I had gone on a long-winded rant explaining the plot to him up to that point. I asked him about who he thought SilverLight should be with. I knew he wasn’t interested, but he still gave it serious thought! And you know what he said?”

“What’d he say?”

“Ignition.”

“Ignition? The side character?”

“The very same,” Smokescreen confirms, subtly checking the halls before turning down the one that will take them to security. “Prowl explained that Ignition was the best for her politically, given the time period the story is set in, the most emotionally stable, and the one least likely to undermine her decisions.”

“But Ignition isn't even—!” Bluestreak pauses his rebuttal as they approach the door to security. He shakes his helm, refocusing on their objective. “Remind me to finish this later.”

Smokescreen nods absently, rechecking that the hallway is clear before he opens the door, letting Bluestreak slip in first. 

The room has a half dozen terminals set up on a central table with short dividers that evenly separate the work stations without keeping anyone working at any given terminal from openly interacting with anyone else. The wall to his left is full of monitors with two chairs set in front of the long desk there. As promised, the room is empty. 

Bluestreak’s right doorwing flicks. 

Almost empty. 

“Hey Figment,” he says quietly in the mech’s general direction, “which terminal was Layabout sitting at?”

There’s a slight pause before Figment’s voice replies, “The middle one that’s facing the door.”

Bluestreak nods. “Thanks mech.” He walks around the table, making sure to give the corner a wider berth than normal to avoid possibly walking into Figment. Smokescreen watches from near the door, helm tilted and face focused, as he moves his doorwings around. 

Figment, still invisible, follows Bluestreak around the table and to the indicated workspace. “It’s strange having someone know where I am when I’m invisible.”

“Bluestreak’s awesome like that,” Smokescreen says, casual, like it’s just a fact of life. A comforting warmth radiates from Bluestreak’s spark at the words. Smokescreen gives up trying to find Figment and walks around the other side of the table. He continues, “He has a way of knowing about things.”

“Like when you don’t sleep and he has to bully you to get any rest?”

Smokescreen pulls the chair at the terminal next to the middle one closer as he passes it. “Yeah, he’s annoying like that,” he says with the same casualness as before, as if this is also just a fact of life. 

“Hey!” Bluestreak slaps at Smokescreen’s upper arm. “See if I do anything for you again.” Despite the annoyance, the comforting warmth still persists at Smokescreen’s teasing smile. Bluestreak huffs at the other’s antics and turns back to the terminal in front of him. The screen lights up with one quick mouse shake. “Looks like Layabout is still signed in, so that’ll make things much easier for us, just need to—”

The door opens. A red and white bot Bluestreak has never seen before enters the room, saying, “I don’t know what, but there’s something fishy—!” He stops a few steps in, giving him and Smokescreen the same wide-opticed look that they are giving him. 

The door gently closes behind him. 

The new mech is suddenly on the other side of the table, pointing at them accusingly. “I knew something wasn’t right at this base! Who are you and what have you done with Layabout?!”

Bluestreak raises his servos defensively. “Nothing! It was empty when we got here!”

“So you had an accomplice take him out?!”

“Wh— no! He just wasn’t here!” Bluestreak tries explaining, but that only seems to wind the other bot up further as sparks start to light up between his horns. 

“If you’re going to lie to my face, at least have the decency to come up with something more believable!”

“But I’m not—!”

Suddenly, Figment is standing there, carefully leaning against the desk so that he is half in front of Bluestreak and drawing the attention. “Hello, Red Alert,” he says calmly, really leaning into his towers accent. 

Bluestreak’s accuser, apparently named Red Alert, grunts at the greeting, his focus still mostly on the two Praxians. “Whatever it is, it can wait, Mir— wait, what?” He looks at Figment, baffled. “What are—? But you’re—. You—.”

“Yes, hello, it’s me, Figment. Calm down so we can explain.”

A spark lights on Red Alert’s left horn as his face hardens. “What is there to explain?! There’s non-security mechs on a security terminal; that alone is enough to make me suspect a conspiracy!”

Smokescreen stands. “You are absolutely right,” he says. Bluestreak snaps his helm at him, doing his best to telepathically yell, What are you doing?! at the older mech. 

“Of course you would say that, you—” Red Alert pauses, brows furrowing. “I’m right?” 

Smokescreen nods, his expression solemn. “There is something fishy going on here, and it could very well be a conspiracy! That’s why Bluestreak, Figment, and I are here. We’ve been quietly investigating the matter and need to access old security footage for evidence.”

Red Alert scrutinizes Smokescreen as he seems to actually consider his words. Bluestreak glances between the two and takes advantage of him being the only one sitting down to pick at the transformation seams near his knee, his nervous fidget hidden by the desk. Layabout’s monitor goes back to sleep mode. 

“Say you’re telling the truth and I believe you,” Red Alert says, still skeptical, “none of that tells me what happened to Layabout.”

“He left,” Smokescreen says. 

Red Alert’s face scrunches. “What do you mean ‘he left’?”

“I mean he left. Layabout’s the laziest bot you’ll ever meet. If he thinks he can get away with it, he’ll simply leave his post.” Smokescreen punctuates his statement by gesturing to the room at large. 

“And if I check the footage?” Red Alert questions.

“You’ll see that he left about… fifteen?” Smokescreen looks at Figment, who nods in agreement. “Fifteen minutes ago.”

Two minutes later has them all, per Red Alert’s directions, seated near the wall of monitors watching as Layabout does indeed simply get up and leave. 

Electricity arcs between Red Alert’s horns. His face is set into a displeased frown as he rapidly taps the desk with his free servo. “We’ll discuss this conspiracy of yours in my temporary office. Wait for me outside room A-37. I’ll be there as soon as I can get some of my subordinates to man security.”

Smokescreen, Bluestreak, and Figment stand in the hallway just outside room A-37. Smokescreen leans against the wall, thinking over the post hour. Best case scenario, they have another new mech joining in on their investigation. Worst case, they’re all about to get severely reprimanded and get all the fun disciplinary actions that are sure to follow. 

Bluestreak shifts his weight from one pede to the other. “I kinda just realized I don’t even know who Red Alert is. Like, I’ve gathered that he’s part of the group that came to train our security department, so that means he’s from Iacon, and is probably in some kind of leadership position, but besides that? Not much.”

“He’s the head of security for the entirety of the Autobot armed forces,” Figment answers. 

Bluestreak slowly turns to stare at the other mech. “And you just know him?”

Figment gives the younger Praxian and amused smile and shrugs like it’s no big deal. “I was stationed in Iacon before I came here. He knew my old coworker and my boss better than he knew me.”

“Still though, that is insane,” Bluestreak says. 

Quick pedesteps sound down the hall, halting any further conversation. Red Alert comes around the corner and walks past room A-37 to instead stop at A-36. He opens the door and motions them inside. Given that Smokescreen has gathered that Red Alert is a slightly paranoid and deeply mistrusting individual, he supposes that telling them to meet outside a door that is nearby and not the actual door to his office is fair play. 

Once they’re all inside and situated, Bluestreak tries to speak up but is immediately shushed by Red Alert. The security head does a thorough sweep of the room. Then he unsubspaces and turns on various different anti-surveillance devices, placing them on his desk among the terminal and extra monitor already there. Only then does he take his seat and look at the three of them. 

“Explain this conspiracy to me,” he demands. 

On a hunch, Smokescreen motions for Bluestreak to take the lead. The young mech starts his explanation from when Prowl had been given his assignment and goes from there. He tells it with his usual amount of slight oversharing, something most bots quickly tire of, but Red Alert listens seriously to every detail. 

“—and that’s why we were in security,” Bluestreak concludes. “We know all those things could be unconnected and a coincidence, but we want to make sure of it and, well,” he shrugs, “I don't know, something just doesn’t feel right.”

Red Alert hums. He has his elbows resting on his desk and his servos clasped in front of his mouth. After a bit of thought, he says, “If something doesn’t feel right, then something isn’t.” He turns to his terminal and starts typing at a rapid-fire pace. “What are the dates and times you need to check?”

Bluestreak lists off six different instances when the mission file was edited by User Four. Smokescreen studies Red Alert as he checks through them and sees as he leans slightly closer to the screen while his expression gets harder as time goes on. 

After a few final taps, he leans back and flips the extra monitor to them. “Here’s our suspect,” he tells them. 

The screen is divided into six sections, each holding a still of the West Hall, zoomed in on terminal three. While a bit grainy, they all clearly show Major Hardtack seated there. 

Bluestreak squints at the Major. “Then why make me clean the filing room in Records? That still doesn’t make sense.”

Smokescreen rubs his chin. “We don’t know for sure yet if that KIA was his. If it was, it could be that in his anger, he simply forgot about it when he gave you that punishment.”

“How did he act when you gave it to him the next morning?” Rad Alert asks. 

Smokescreen digs through the old memory files. “Confused at first. I explained that Blue found it under a cabinet and something in his expression changed. I’m not close enough to Major Hardtack to know for sure what it was, but it could have been bafflement, surprise, recognition, or some combination of the three. I told him we were too tired the night before to check what was on it and handed it to him. I thought when he slumped his shoulders it was because I had just given him more work, but it could’ve been relief.”

Figment tilts his helm. “While suspicious, it’s not enough to implicate him.”

“But it is enough to investigate,” Red Alert counters, a small spark briefly arching between his horns. 

A small bee-beep! sounds from the terminal. Red Alert looks it over and makes a face. “I still have to make sure the security team here is properly trained. We’ll continue this tomorrow. I’ll send for you. You two,” he gestures to Smokescreen and Bluestreak, “can go. Figment, there’s a few things I need to ask you about anyway, so may as well stick around.”

Thus dismissed, Smokescreen leaves with his almost-brother. With nowhere they need to be, the two head outside to aimlessly walk the grounds. Thoughts of Major Hardtack and the possibility of him having it out for Prowl plague Smokescreen as they go. He needs a distraction, and if he knows anything about Bluestreak, he’s willing to bet that the younger bot needs one as well. 

“So what was it you wanted to say about Ignition and SilverLight?” he asks with faux innocence.

“Wha— oh! Right!” Bluestreak straightens up a little. “Ignition isn’t interested in SilverLight the same way the other two are. Like, where’s the romantic gestures? The proclamations of loyalty? The devotion? He’s just kinda… there.” 

He starts making various motions with his servos as he goes on. “Thematically, he’s more a listening ear and a voice of reason than anything else. Like, she goes to him when she’s upset or confused and… he supports her, lets her stay as a guest when she wants to get away. Then he… fiercely defends her reputation in his own, quiet way when the Wing Lord comes… and has her favorite tea brought in after an emotional conversation to help cheer her up, but that doesn’t— but—.”

Bluestreak stops, suddenly unsure. His optics flick back and forth, as though reading something in the air as his brows furrow in thought. Smokescreen can almost see him quickly dig up every interaction between the two characters that he can remember and analyze them. Then his optics widen.

“Oh my stars,” he breathes, “I can see it.”

Smokescreen nods. “Yep, the same thing happened to me. I had to go and reread the entire series afterwards.”

Bluestreak turns to him. “And you still want her to get with the Wing Lord?” he asks, the slightest bit of disgust coloring his tone. 

Smokescreen shrugs. “All I’m saying is it would be an entertaining read.”

Red Alert’s office is silent for a full half minute after the two Praxian’s leave, waiting to make sure they have actually left. Red Alert turns his helm to the former towers mech and raises a single brow at him. “So, ‘Figment’, huh?”

Figment smiles. “Yes.”

Red Alert huffs. “And who came up with that one?”

His smile turns sharp. “Stepper did.”

“Step—?” Red Alert’s brief confusion clears as he realizes something. “Oh. ‘Stepper’. Of course he did.”

Figment chuckles, greatly amused. “You say that like you’re disappointed.”

“That’s because I am.”

Chapter Text

Prowl sits on his recharge pad and watches curiously as next to him, Jazz wraps up the recorder in the blanket. “And this will sufficiently muffle our voices?” he asks. 

“Uh-huh,” Jazz says as looks over the wad of fabric. “By the end of this, we can cross ‘indistinguishable whispers’ off from your list.”

The “list” he is referring to being the things that Prowl said were common occurrences in ghost stories. 

Satisfied with his work, Jazz sits on his own recharge pad and sets the bundle between them. “Now we talk.”

Prowl furrows his brow. “About what?”

Jazz shrugs. “Anything really. It just needs voices.”

“…I have a list of old get-to-know-you questions that my brother gave me,” he offers. The questions are ones that he’d been given in an attempt on Smokescreen’s part to help Prowl with small talk and making friends. It didn’t go as well as his brother had hoped, but they did help much later on when Prowl used them to get Bluestreak talking again when the young mech first ended up with them after Praxus. 

Jazz laughs. “Sure, hit me with it. What’s the first question?”

Prowl pulls up the old list. It’s a simple thing containing two hundred questions along with notes from his brother littered throughout giving pointers, warnings, or snarky comments. He pauses briefly on the very first line, a note that reads, ‘Hope this helps <3 XOXO -Smokescreen (your most awesome-est older brother)’. 

“Well,” he says to Jazz, “‘What is your name’ is the first question on this list.” There is also a note that reads, ‘obviously don’t ask this if you already know what it is’, but he keeps that to himself.

Jazz snorts. “Okay, bit of an obvious first question in hindsight, yeah. What’s next?”

“What do you do for work?” Prowl reads. 

“I’m a professional poltergeist,” is Jazz’s immediate answer. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Well yeah, this is a conversation, it can’t just be me answering all of these questions.”

Prowl supposes that that’s fair. “Do I also have to give joke answers?”

Jazz shakes his helm. “Nah, not if you don’t want to.”

“In that case, I am a junior tactician at a base in Tyrest.” 

“A junior tact, huh?” Jazz notes with some curiosity. 

Prowl, not wanting to deal with another round of Why Are You Here? that he got from the other mechs he met on this mission, moves on to the next question. “What do you do for fun around here?”

Smokescreen had left a note on this one. It says, ‘Go do something fun! Get out and make some friends!’

“Oh, so many options to choose from,” Jazz says, “but I gotta say, the best fun is haunting the locals.” Jazz then gestures to Prowl. “And what do you do for fun at this here fine establishment?”

Prowl tilts his helm back slightly as he thinks it over. “I do not enjoy being here, so describing anything as ‘fun’ would be an overstatement. However, I do entertain myself by keeping tabs on the ‘locals’ and establishing a pattern of behavior for them.”

Jazz nods at his answer then asks, “Hey, mind if I ask my own questions?”

“This conversation was your idea,” Prowl reminds him. “You are free to lead it in whatever direction you want.”

“You were an enforcer before all this, right?” he asks, gesturing towards Prowl’s paint. 

“That is correct.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“While there were aspects of my work that made doing it difficult, I found it to be very fulfilling. Especially so when I could genuinely help someone in need.”

Jazz nods. “Always nice to help others. Okay, your turn.”

Prowl moves to the next question on the list. “What is your favorite part of your current job?”

“All the hard ones today, huh? Well, there’s the threat of discovery, the partial isolation, the blizzard that’s just outside; it’s a hard choice!” He shrugs. “Though if I had to pick, the guy I’m working with is pretty cool”

Prowl snorts. “The mech I am currently working with is a confusing mix of contradictions that somehow work well enough together to make a person. That being said, he is also the most tolerable part of this mission.”

Jazz laughs. “Yay, I’m tolerable!” 

And on they go, each taking turns to ask the other questions. Prowl steadily moves down his list while Jazz seems to ask things from off the top of his helm. 

One of the more baffling replies that Prowl gets is Jazz’s answer to the question, “What is the best career decision you have ever made?” 

“I made friends with a dock worker,” he says with a knowing smile, looking very proud of this accomplishment. 

“And this… helped you in your current career?” Prowl clarifies with the other mech. 

“Yep.”

When no further explanation is given, Prowl asks, “Are you going to elaborate on that?”

“Nope!” Jazz cheerfully replies. 

Jazz’s questions are more benign, asking things like, “You’ve mentioned a brother before, what’s his name?” and, “Do you have any pet peeves?” (Prowl had answered, “Unintuitive file naming” which got a good laugh out of Jazz).

Eventually, Prowl exhausts the more serious questions from Smokescreen’s list and Jazz takes out the recorder to turn it off. 

“Now all that’s left is some editing and this should be good to go,” Jazz says. “Thanks for playing along.”

Prowl nods. “What else is there to do while we wait to get more intel from the server room?”

Jazz unsubspaces a datapad to plug the recorder into. “I’m following your logic, but there are plenty of mechs who would’ve refused to help. So thank you.”

Prowl blinks, then gives a small nod. “You’re welcome.”

This venture is most certainly ill-advised and not one of necessity, but after weeks of being careful about volume and spending time in tight spaces, the call to once again venture forth into the sealed off depths of the base is near siren-esque in its allure. They know that the other floors are there. Know that, besides the cold, they are safe. A wide open space where they can talk without care, trip over things without worry, and where they can simply exist and be without it being life-threatening; it’s almost maddening to consider not going back. 

Prowl can feel the itching desire, the near need, to go back as it stirs in his gut and slowly rises up his chassis until it firmly grabs hold of his spark. He can see that same desire in Jazz as he shakes his leg, taps his fingers against his arm, and paces the floor. The pacing only serves to accentuate just how small their hide-y hole really is. The space that once felt like a place to relax, and so large in comparison to everything else, is now cramped and constricting and agitating. Prowl already knew that they were stuck inside, but now it truly feels like they are trapped. 

So for the sake of their sanity, Prowl takes some risks. 

He sneaks back into the long-term storage that holds the cold weather gear and absconds with two sets. It’s a larger theft, but he is banking on the Decepticons continuing their trend of half-hearted efforts when it comes to inventory management. 

While Jazz’s face and body language do metaphorically light up when Prowl presents the gear to him, his visor also physically gets brighter as well. 

With the both of them now better equipped, they once again descend to the lower floors of the building. They skip the residential floor and head to the next one down. The doors of this floor are unpowered and thus left wide open (an emergency feature that all automatic doors are supposed to come with so as not to trap anyone inside in case power is lost for any reason). Jazz and Prowl do a basic walkthrough of the floor, which appears to have been dedicated to research and science, with the next floor down being much the same. The air also gets colder the further down the structure they go. 

The last floor looks to have had two main functions: holding the generators and the garage. The door to the stairwell opens up inside the old, partially iced over garage that takes up the majority of the ground floor. It still has a few defunct snowmobiles stored inside. The next room over is the generator room. The room itself is just a bit bigger than the berthrooms upstairs and has three generators inside, though it looks to have previously held four. Prowl guesses that the Decepticons took the fourth upstairs and repurposed it. 

Jazz and Prowl linger on the bottom floor once they finish their walkthrough, reluctant to leave and go back to the tight confines of the top floor’s ventilation. Prowl distracts himself by making small adjustments to his gear and examining them more closely. When he had picked them up from storage, he was only worried about whether they would work or not and hadn’t fully processed anything about their design or color. 

The one that he got for himself is designed to work around wings of any kind, be they seeker wings, helicopter blades, or doorwings, with an attached cape to cover them for warmth. Both sets also came with a pair of ice cleats, linked bits of metal that attach around a mech’s pede to help prevent slipping on ice. 

Color-wise, a majority of the gear is a grey mid-tone with a few smaller sections being a darker shade. The only bits of color on both sets are the purple Decepticon logos on the front and back, and the scarves. Jazz’s scarf is light pink with a few thin lines of light grey. Prowl’s own scarf is of similar design but the main color on his is orange with cyan stripes.

Jazz fiddles with the tassels at the end of his scarf. Prowl takes a moment to make sure the cape part of his jacket falls smoothly over his doorwings. 

“So are both of us here trying to not look at the door?” Jazz asks. 

Prowl sighs. “It would appear that way, yes.”

Jazz chuckles. “Well, with this gear on, how long until it starts to get too cold?”

“Theoretically, these should keep us warm indefinitely. The real deciding factors that would send us back would be our need for fuel and the convenience of having the other rooms available to us from the vents.”

“So at least a few hours then,” Jazz concludes, hopping from one pede to the other. “In that case, I’m going to run a few laps.” He gives Prowl a lazy two fingered salute as he takes a few steps back. “I’m off!” Jazz then pivots and sprints away. 

Prowl watches as Jazz runs around the garage. He doesn’t keep to a set path, going every which way and using the snowmobiles and old crates left behind as obstacles to vault over or run around. He demonstrates an impressive amount of agility, control, and stamina as he goes. 

After a few minutes of watching this, Prowl turns his attention to the back of the garage filled with tools, cabinets, and various workbenches. He starts methodically going through them, taking note of everything he comes across and their condition. He finds an old step ladder that loudly protests being open, but stays standing when he uses it to get into and assess the things stored in the higher cabinets along the wall. He moves aside a rusted toolbox on the top shelf of the second to last cabinet and groans at what he finds behind it. 

Jazz, who is close enough to hear him, veers off course and jogs over. “What’s got you so frustrated?” he asks as he neatly sets a servo on the counter below Prowl and hefts himself up to sit on it in one smooth motion. 

“This is getting ridiculous,” Prowl mutters as he reaches toward the back corner and pulls out a servoful of snack bags featuring brands he hasn’t seen since the war began. He drops them onto the counter space beside Jazz and reaches back in for more. 

Jazz bursts out laughing. “No way you found a pre-war goodie stash!” He picks up a few of the bags and looks them over. “Primus, it’s even got the older mascot art.”

“Ridiculous,” Prowl reiterates, dropping more sealed treats onto the countertop. 

“I don’t know Prowler,” Jazz giggles, “I’m starting to think you have a gift for these— Are those Trunkies?!” He snatches up some of the latest treats that Prowl has dropped, palm-sized tungsten cakes with a creamy filling. “Oh sweet spark light, they are!”

“There are more,” Prowl says as he drops the rest of the brick-shaped snacks onto the counter. With one last reach into the cabinet, he brings out the rest of the bagged snacks shoved into the back of the highest shelf. He steps town from the ladder and begins organizing the pile of treats by type. 

Jazz looks over the selection. “The rust sticks have definitely gone bad by now, same for the ener-gummies, but the gold chips and silver cookies should be good if the bags that they’re in are still sealed.” He lifts up one of the Trunkies and waves it around a little bit. “And of course, these things are indestructible.”

“You can have those,” Prowl says, remembering the much too sweet flavor of the few Trunkies he’s had before. He starts separating the other treats into piles he mentally categorized as “safe to eat” and “hazardous to health”, making sure to check the seals of each bag before they are put into the “safe” pile.

Jazz looks at Prowl with a serious expression. “Prowler, you are now my new favorite person.”

Prowl huffs at his mission partner’s dramatic way of saying thank you. “You’re welcome. Is there a reason the rust sticks have gone bad?” he asks even as he continues to sort them into the “hazardous” pile. 

“I recognize the brand.” Jazz opens one of the Trunkies and starts eating it. “I don’t remember all the details, just that how they made and packaged their rust sticks weren’t good for long-time storage.”

Prowl nods at the explanation. “So then they have greatly exceeded their shelf life by now.”

“Definitely,” Jazz says around the last of his Trunkie. 

Prowl adds a few gold chips and silver cookies to Jazz’s Trunkie pile and subspaces the rest for himself. 

Jazz subspaces his own pile and starts stretching. “I feel much better after that treat and the run. We should come down here periodically like we do with the server room. ‘Cause I don’t know about you, but I was ready to explode.”

Prowl nods and sets a background process to figuring out a schedule. “I was getting restless as well,” he admits. “While risky, it would be even more dangerous for us to not utilize this space.”

“Glad we agree. Wanna go snoop around the science rooms before we need to head back?”

Prowl thinks for a moment, then nods. “Certainly.”

Highbeam walks quietly through the dim halls of the base late into the night. It’s a familiar walk he’s done when recharge won’t come easy; old anxieties building up in his processor and not letting him rest. He kneels by a nondescript part of the wall and opens up the access hatch there. He moves an old towel aside to reveal the stack of cubes he keeps there. His anxiety begins to fade at the sight and as he picks one up, covering the rest. 

What feels like a breath of cold air passes over his neck. He looks around, but there’s no one else there in the hall. 

Highbeam swallows against his re-emerging anxiety and softly closes the door of the access hatch. He slowly stands as he looks over the empty hall. 

Another breath of cold air passes over his right wing. A shiver moves down his back as his wing flicks against the unwelcome sensation. 

He holds his energon closer to his chassis and begins his walk to the designated rec room, helm now on a swivel. 

He arrives and is about to sit when something makes him pause. At first, he can’t make out what it was, but as he stands there, still as a moonless night, he can faintly make out… voices?

He shifts his wings around and turns his helm from one side to the other, trying to nail down where the sound is coming from, but no matter what he tries, it seems like the faint sounds are coming from every direction, surrounding him. 

Highbeam presses his lips into a thin line and carefully sits down. The noise gets the slightest bit louder. He can make out two distinct voices, seemingly having a conversation, but no matter how he concentrates, he can’t make out a single thing being said. He lets out a huff and opens the seal on his energon. 

The voices immediately cease. Highbeam tenses, the sudden quiet unnerving him more than the whispers did. 

Everything remains still. 

He sips his energon, wary, but the voices don’t come back. 

When the cube is almost empty, another cold puff of air lights upon his audial. Highbeam, already tense, shoots up, downs the last few swallows of fuel and speed walks back towards his room as quietly as he can. 

As he passes the threshold of his room, before the door can close behind him, he hears one last bout of whispers from the hall behind him. 

Prowl takes a deep invent to calm his nerves. Everyone’s in recharge, he’ll be quick, and it’ll work out fine.

He removes the vent cover and exits into the rec room. His spark feels tight as he heads for a specific table and moves it two inches to the right. He then takes out a polish rag he had swiped from the seeker’s room and drops it on the floor a few steps to the left of the moved table. 

There. Task complete. Prowl hurries back up into the vents before someone can come in unexpectedly and puts the cover back over the opening. 

He sets himself back to his usual observing position and does his best to calm his racing spark. 

Now all he has to do is wait for morning. 

He is roused from a light recharge by voices approaching the rec room. He shifts slightly closer as he watches the scene unfold. 

Highbeam enters first and takes a right to where the energon is stored. Updraft, who is right behind him, jumps up to slap the top of the door frame then turns around to walk backwards and talk to Coil, who walks in last, face-to-face. As they do every morning. 

It seems that today they are starting the morning with a friendly argument that means nothing. 

“It would never come to that,” Updraft tells Coil. “I am a master of my surroundings and would see them coming from—” his hip hits the corner of the table Prowl had moved— “OW!”

Updraft instinctively gets away from the thing that hurt him, but keeps facing the table and doesn’t notice as his back pede lands on his own missing polishing cloth. His pede slips out from under him and he falls soundly onto his back. 

It’s silent for only a moment before Coil starts laughing so uproariously she also ends up on the floor, clutching her middle, and struggling to get out the words, “Y—yeah, such— such a master,” she giggles, “of your surroundings! Ha!” Any control Coil had mustered up to speak is lost as she once again devolves into boisterous laughter. 

Updraft sits himself up with a groan and rubs the back of his helm. 

Prowl unsubspaces the recorder, sets the volume down low, and plays Creak2.

While the volume is too low to be properly processed as its own separate noise, it’s still just loud enough for the high pitched tone to register. Updraft’s wing flicks with annoyance. “Oh, shut up!” he yells at Coil. 

Coil keeps laughing, unrepentant.

Back in the garage of the old research facility, Jazz and Prowl stand around a workbench with their own projects. Prowl uses a combination of the tools and equipment that Stepper had sent with him as well as parts salvaged from machines that had been left here long ago to jury-rig a small space heater. To his right and on the other side of the workbench, Jazz uses the same tools and materials to construct what he has dubbed the “Reverse Spirit Box” in preparation for his next haunt. 

The Decepticon’s he’s been haunting are going to use a radio scanner, what they call a “spirit box”, in the hallway that Highbeam saw Jazz in. Jazz’s plan is to set up a camera (a small thing that Stepper had sent Prowl out with) by the vent grate that looks out into that hallway while he himself sets up in the same area in the floor below. From there, he will sometimes reply to their questions. In order to do that, he needs his reverse spirit box. Jazz explained to Prowl how it works. When he speaks into the device, it will manipulate the “spirit box” that the Decepticons have to pick out sounds and words that are the most similar to what he says. Jazz calls this result “on demand ghost speech”.

On the workbench between them sits the old music player that Jazz found on their first excursion. It’s been fixed enough to pick up on the radio signals that Lockbox has been making and is currently softly playing old rock songs that Prowl hasn’t heard in a long time. 

Jazz sways along with the music and slightly bops his helm to the beat. He whisper-sings the lyrics as he works through dismantling several defunct walkie-talkies. As time goes on and more music plays, Jazz gets more into dancing than he is with assembling his Reverse Spirit Box. He eventually abandons it completely, too caught up in his joyful dance. 

Prowl takes a break from the half-finished space heater to watch. He is reminded of being in Maccadams months ago when this mission had started. The different mechs on the dance floor and how Stepper had stood out to Prowl from the rest. He doubts anyone else noticed how Stepper never repeated himself as he moved. Prowl watches Jazz dance now and sees that same uniqueness and lack of repeating patterns. 

Interesting. 

Prowl speaks up in the space between one song’s ending and the other’s beginning to ask, “How well do you know Stepper?”

“Hmm?” Jazz looks over to Prowl and the workbench. He walks back over to his spot, still moving slightly to the beat. “Oh, pretty well; we trained together. Even stayed in the same unit afterwards ‘til we specialized in different areas.” He picks up his discarded tools, focusing back on his project. “Why?”

Prowl takes a second to study Jazz and his body language. It… feels defensive, but without a vast majority of the normal tells that Smokescreen would use to describe the behavior, he can't be certain. “You two dance the same,” he answers, turning back to the space heater. “Did you train with Marshall and Ricochet as well? You called all three of them ‘your people’.”

“Nah,” Jazz answers freely, putting salvaged parts together in a new framework. “I met those two later. I end up working with all three of them a lot though.”

Prowl nods. 

“What about you though?” Jazz asks. “Have any mechs that you’d consider your people?”

Prowl presses his lips together. He gets the impression that the relationship between him and those that he considers his is an entirely different kind of relationship than whatever Jazz may have between himself and his co-workers. “There are only two who fit that description for me, and they are Smokescreen and Bluestreak.”

“Ah, yes,” Jazz says as he squints at his project’s internals. “The brother and the… kid?”

Irritation flashes through Prowl’s chassis. He knows that many people refer to Bluestreak as ‘kid’ all the time, and he’s usually fine with that, but to hear someone use it as a sort of title akin to that of ‘brother’? Prowl can’t help but feel like it belittles Bluestreak and his accomplishments, as well as disparages the importance that the younger Praxian has in Prowl’s life. 

“My kin,” he curtly corrects. 

“Brother and kin,” Jazz accepts easily. “Makes sense. They’re the kind of bots you want to have in your corner, right?”

The anger quells and Prowl lets out a soft sigh. “Yes, I cannot think of anyone else I would rather have on my side.”

Jazz gives a teasing smile. “Not even the Prime?”

The corner of Prowl’s mouth ticks upwards. “While the Prime would no doubt be a great help with whatever it is that has got me backed into that corner, he would not go to the same lengths with the same tenacity as Smokescreen and Bluestreak would for me.”

“Even against Megatron himself?”

Prowl thinks on it for a moment. “I believe Megatron’s presence would only incentivize them further.”

“What do you think they’d do?” Jazz asks. 

“Kidnap the Prime, throw him at Megatron, and get me to safety during the chaos.”

“Ha!” Jazz’s smile fills with barely repressed mirth. “Funnily enough, that would probably work.”

Coil decides to tag along with Highbeam on his ghost hunting with the two grounders, Lockbox and Pick. While she personally thinks that the base is just old and making sounds, the whole thing looks like it could be fun. Like a haunted house, but more interactive. Besides, having a skeptic on their little team would probably do them some good. 

They set up a “base camp” in the mechanical room and take turns as pairs with the spirit box and a camera in the hallway that Highbeam supposedly saw an apparition in. Lockbox and Pick take their turn first. While each has their own distinct styles of asking questions and how they interpret the “responses” they get, they are both very serious about the entire thing. 

Coil starts her and Highbeam’s turn with the spirit box looking around the boring and apparition-free hallway as her trine mate turns on the device. Stuttery static fills the air and Highbeam looks about ready to leave. 

Time for a little levity. 

“Sup spooks,” she says with a grin. Highbeam snaps his attention to her, optics wide and disbelieving. “I’m Coil and this is Highbeam, but if you’re actually real and haunting us, I think you might already know that. Still, doesn’t hurt to be polite.”

“What are you doing?” Highbeam hisses at her. 

Coil looks at him, unimpressed. “Being polite, weren’t you listening?”

The spirit box makes a noise that’s different from its usual static, but it doesn't sound like any distinct words, just jumbled together sounds. 

Coil replies as though something meaningful had actually been said. “See? They agree. People nowadays don’t have any manners.” She shakes her helm with exaggerated disappointment. “Like, I get there’s a war going on, but would it kill you to have some basic respect for the people on the same side as you?”

“Shhk—tsk shhhhk— bee—ple— shhhhhk,” the spirit box says. 

Highbeam startles. Coil ignores him and gives a sage nod, “Yeah, people. Do ghosts still have to deal with bureaucracy? That would suck.”

“Bureaucracy?” Highbeam asks.

“Hey, we’re all gonna die eventually, I wanna know if there’s like, a ghostly government or something that I need to be aware of. A spirit council or ghoulish board of ethics.”

Highbeam looks more perplexed than nervous now. “What?”

“So, Ghostie, which is it? How does the afterworld work?”

There’s no reply besides static.

“Alright, sheesh, don’t tell me the secrets of the grave then. I hope you’re enjoying yourself.”

Highbeam snorts. “You’re ridiculous, I hope you—”

“Sshk—shhkts— apple tater—,” the spirit box interrupts. 

“—know that. Wait.” He giggles a little as he fights a grin. “Wh—what’d it say?”

Coil can’t help but snicker also. “Look I—,” she tries to smother a chuckle, “I don’t know what an ‘apple tater’ is, but—,” she and Highbeam try and fail to hold back their mirth— “but good for you.”

“Mis— tsssts—shhk— sick.”

“Music? Yeah, I can do music. There’s one that’s been looping in my processor lately. Highbeam, you know the one, it’s all she took the midnight train going anywhere,” she sings. 

“Are you actually going to—”

She wasn’t but now she’s obligated to. “Something something share the night, it goes on and on and on and ooon!” 

“And now you’re singing,” Highbeam says, trying to sound indifferent, but Coil can tell he’s entertained. 

“C’mon, you know you wanna!” she encourages. “Strangers, waitin’.”

Highbeam sighs and joins in the next part. “Up and down the boulevard.”

The spirit box adds, “Ssk— Bowl— yard— ksshhh.”

Highbeam’s optics widen at the device. Coil simply points at it and says, “Yeah, they get it!” She then keeps singing the song. The spirit box keeps making its sounds, occasionally with things that might be words. Sometimes they almost sound like what she’s singing. 

“Hold on to that feeling, ye-ah!” Jazz sings the outro along with Coil. “Streetlights, peopleee.”

“You are ridiculous,” Prowl says from his seat next to the one Jazz had been sitting in. His mission partner stood up when he started singing so he could dance around a bit. His movements were limited because of the corded mic in his servo. He would sometimes press the push-to-talk button on the side to sing a word or two into it. 

“It’s called having fun Prowler,” Jazz teases as he sits back down in his abandoned chair.

In front of them, on the small table they repurposed for this, sits a small monitor and speaker showing the view of the hallway from the vent grate. Next to that is the main body of Jazz’s Reverse Spirit Box. On the corner closest to Prowl sits an assortment of tools. He picks one up and gets back to working on the space heater in his lap. “The two are not mutually exclusive, Jazz.” 

“Okay,” says Highbeam’s slightly tinny voice, “you’ve lost spirit box privileges, it’s my turn.”

“Ah, but we were jamming,” Coil whines even as she easily hands over the device. 

Prowl starts measuring and cutting down a few wires as Highbeam awkwardly gets through a short greeting and explains how he had seen the “ghost” briefly all those weeks ago. 

“So I wanted to ask,” Highbeam says, finally getting to the point, “were you going downstairs?”

Jazz clicks the button on the radio mic. “What’s it to you?” he asks. 

“Wh—t’s… t— —ou,” the spirit box says through layers of static. 

“‘Lots to do’?” Highbeam interprets. “Yeah, I guess if you were a scientist, there’d be lots to do but, uh, you’re dead? I imagine it’s hard to do any science when you don’t have a body.”

Jazz snickers. “Wow, rude,” he says as Coil mocks her trine mate with much the same sentiment. As a small argument starts, Jazz quickly clicks the button three times without actually saying anything into it. The result is what sounds like a brief and barely noticeable increase in the stuttering static. 

“That could be a problem,” Prowl comments.

“What could?”

“Having them think that their ‘ghost’ is usually in the labs. They could bring their investigation downstairs while we are also here and we would have no idea until they walk in on us.”

“Ah, true.” Jazz thinks on it. “We can set something up at the top of the stairs, as a precaution. Maybe come up with a plan later.”

Prowl nods. Jazz turns back to the pair in the hallway.

“Okay, fine, I’m sorry,” Highbeam is saying to appease Coil and stop her teasing. “You do your ghost-science however you’d like.”

The next few questions, Jazz decides to let them sit in silence, spinning the mic around by the cord. Prowl carefully connects the last few wires he needs to the inside of his jury-rigged space heater. 

“—it’s not like I’m asking how they died,” Highbeam is saying to Coil. 

Crack-BOOM!

Both Prowl and Jazz jump at the sudden and intense sound of thunder, with Prowl dropping the small soldering iron and Jazz immediately pulling out two wicked looking energon daggers from his forearms. The building shakes with the noise. The lights flicker and turn off. The monitor loses connection to the camera, filling with static. The winds outside roar louder. A second later, the connection is reestablished and, after a moment to reboot, the camera shows a darkened hallway with two seekers standing stock still. 

The lights flicker again before turning back on. More thunder rumbles in the distance. 

On screen, Coil starts laughing. “Your face!” she says to Highbeam. “Oh, that’s the best-timed weather I’ve seen since that time Updraft said it wouldn’t rain in Yuss! Ha!”

Chapter Text

“Okay,” Smokescreen says the next day in Red Alert’s office, “with our one lead and single suspect, we need evidence and a motive. In order to get either, we need to understand the mind—” he taps the corner of the whiteboard he brought in with a meter stick to where there’s a picture of the mech printed on flimsy and held up by a magnet— “of Major Hardtack.”

His audience of three each have different reactions. Red Alert looks serious with a datapad ready to take notes. Figment is faking boredom even as he watches the room. Bluestreak looks Smokescreen over and is steadily getting more concerned by the second. 

“Did you get any recharge last night?” his youngest brother asks. 

“Some, but that’s irrelevant. Now, seeing as I haven’t been able to get my license renewed or keep on top of the latest in psychological research due to the fact that we’re in the middle of a civil war, I will preface my presentation by saying that this is my semi-professional opinion based on personal interactions with and observations of the subject in question. Any questions so far?”

Bluestreak raises his servo. “How much is ‘some’ in regards to the amount of time you were able to rest?”

“Enough. Now,” he uncaps a red marker, “the first thing to know about the good Major is that he is a people person in that he is good at navigating the different interpersonal relationships between himself and others which makes him good at base politics.” 

On the board he writes “Knows People” then uncaps a black marker and writes “Politics” as a bullet point beneath it . 

“Knowing people and how they interact also makes him good at understanding societal rules. His deep understanding of these rules makes him, metaphorically, good at playing the social game. And when Major Hardtack plays, he plays to win.”

Smokescreen adds another bullet point under “Knows People” that says “Society is a Game”.

“We’ll circle back to this later when we discuss possible motives,” he says, tapping the board next to what he just wrote. “In any case, the next thing about him is that he is a good manager.” 

Next to “Knows People”, Smokescreen writes, “Management Skills” in red.

“He manages the tactical department with such skill, it almost looks easy. From schedules to time of requests to handling assignments, he’s on top of it all. Yes, Red Alert,” he says, pointing to the primarily red mech when he raises his servo. 

“I did a background check on him,” Red Alert supplies. “He used to work with a major shipping company that made deliveries all over Cybertron. He was the general manager over the Northwestern branch that covered several city-states. He started with the Autobots in Logistics; planning out supply lines and how to protect them. He was moved over to Tactical from there.”

“Thank you, Red Alert,” Smokescreen says as he writes “Prior Experience” in black under “Management Skills”.

“Another thing that goes under here is that, due to this past experience, Major Hardtack has mastered the art of delegation.” He writes “Delegation” under the previous point. “Paired with his people skills, the Major is good at knowing who in his department is best suited for the work that needs to be done and how much they can take. This is another point that we will touch on briefly later in the presentation.

“Now, everyone has their faults and vices. Hardtack's are the need to be in control and that he can be vindictive,” Smokescreen writes “Control” and “Vindictive” in red under the two previous headers, leaving the right half of the whiteboard blank for now. 

“From what we know, Major Hardtack is used to being in a position of authority as he’s been in these positions for a long time. He doesn’t take well to feedback that doesn’t come from someone who is over him or is at the very least a peer. When someone voices frustration at the decisions he’s made, instead of explaining himself or just ignoring it, he gets after them for ‘disrespecting his authority’.” Under “Control” he writes “Takes Criticism as Disrespect” with the black marker.

“This leads straight into his vindictive nature. It’s not often that this pops up and I feel he usually has a good hold on it, but regardless, it is there. He is more likely to follow his petty vindications when provoked, either severely or repeatedly.” Here he writes, “Can be Provoked” under “Vindictive”, then continues his explanation. “The unfortunate thing about this, however, is that the person who is provoking Major Hardtack could be doing so unintentionally.” He adds “accidentally” to the end of his last point.

“Which handily brings us to the point of tension: Prowl.” Smokescreen draws a black line between the half of the board he’d been writing on and the half that was left blank. On the top of the blank half he writes “Prowl” in red and underlines it twice. He then sets the red marker aside and uncaps the black one. “Now there are several points of contention between these two that are relatively small on their own. The first one being that Prowl thinks that a lot of societal rules are stupid and that people should just say what they mean.” Smokescreen writes, “1. No Small Talk” under Prowl’s name. “So while Major Hardtack plays to win, Prowl decided all the ‘pomp and circumstance’ was stupid and doesn’t play at all.

“Next, Prowl likes to understand things and how decisions are made.” He adds “2. Asks Questions” to his list. “He is also very smart and tactically minded, so when something doesn’t seem like a good strategy, he wants to know if there’s information that he’s missing and will ask why.” Smokescreen puts down “3. Competent”. 

“This comes up a lot with his interactions with Major Hardtack because Major Hardtack is not a good strategist,” Smokescreen declares as he writes out “4. MH isn’t a strategist”. 

“What?” Figment says, forgetting to look bored. “But he’s the head of the Tactical department.”

“True,” Smokescreen agrees. “He is. And he’s great at planning out how to keep supply lines stable. Everything else? That’s where these guys,” he points at “Management Skills” and its two points with his meter stick, “come into play. He may not know tactics but he knows who does and what they’re good at. Sometimes though, there are plans he needs to make, so he’ll go through past plans that worked with similar circumstances and copy those.”

“Don’t you do the same thing?” Bluestreak asks. “You said you read through past strategies when you told me about metadata.”

“That’s different,” Smokescreen says. “What I do is learn from past battles and to try and understand the techniques used and the thought process for why the tactician made the choices they did. What Major Hardtack is doing is copying the different parts that worked and stitching them together with no real thought or appreciation for the how’s and why’s behind it. So while sometimes this works, it normally doesn’t blend the different parts together well. This becomes a problem when it’s a plan that gets presented to the whole department for review because of these two— three points here.”

Smokescreen points at numbers two and three on his Prowl list, “Asks Questions” and “Competent” respectively, as well as “Takes Criticism as Disrespect” on the other side of the board. He sees as realization starts to dawn on his audience. 

“I see,” Red Alert says as his horns spark. “So Prowl would ask questions to better understand, but since he doesn’t use social norms, it comes off as rude. Especially so for a person like Major Hardtack, because he would assume everyone is playing by the same rules.”

“Yes!” Smokescreen says, excited that someone is getting it. “So Prowl’s blunt but honest questions get taken as criticism and criticism—”

“—Is disrespect,” Red Alert finishes the thought. “And Prowl’s perceived disrespect happens often and in front of others, which provokes—”

“—Hardtack’s vindictive nature, yes!”

“And it leads to murder as the answer!”

“Almost!” Smokescreen says. “There’s a couple more layers to this. The first is kind of obvious but still needs to be stated, and that’s that we’re at war! War is stressful; it’s everywhere, in everything we do, and influences just about every choice that we make. Additionally, Major Hardtack is in a position of leadership, which just adds to the stress. This means that he’s constantly under a large amount of external pressure, and that can have a negative effect on people and their ability to appropriately handle any additional stressors.

“The second has to do with this,” he points towards “Delegation” on the board, “as I said we would come back to it. How delegation fits into this is that it can become one of the tools he uses for his vindication. Like I said before, he’s usually pretty good at knowing someone’s limits, so sometimes he’ll add just a little bit more to their pile, get the reaction he wants from them, and then set their workload back to normal. Prowl though? He doesn’t react the same way and, again, he’s competent.

“I didn’t really think about it at the start after Prowl left because I was tired and busy along with everyone else before the three new mechs came. I just figured that Major Hardtack knew Prowl’s limits like he knew everyone else’s and that it was fine. But then Figment made a remark about if Prowl ever got to recharge with the number of small jobs piled on top of his tactical work and it got me wondering. Why did Prowl have all these additional jobs? And from other departments?”

Red Alert narrows his optics. “Major Hardtack tried his usual thing, but didn’t get the reaction he wanted,” he says, watching Smokescreen. At Smokescreen’s nod, he continues, “So he kept adding more and more jobs, but that still didn’t work. I did some research on Prowl as well, and his tactical work maintained the same quality leading up to his mission assignment. So not only is he doing these additional jobs without a visible fuss, but his normal work doesn’t suffer from it. Which leads to more jobs. And when that doesn’t work and the criticisms from Prowl continue, that turns into resentment. And resentment leads to hate. And hate leads to planning a murder! And planning a murder leads to having a KIA prepped and waiting for the confirmation!”

“If we find the evidence to support this, then yes! We have a motive!” Smokescreen agrees.

Bluestreak is staring at the ground with wide optics. “I knew Hardtack never really liked Prowl,” he says with a touch of disbelief, “but they always appeared to be, I don’t know, professional? With each other?”

Smokescreen nods. “Same here, and that’s definitely how Prowl sees it. To him, it’s purely professional.”

“But to Hardtack,” Figment says, “they’re at each other’s throats.”

“Allegedly,” Smokescreen puts in. “I feel the need to point out that this is all just conjecture. We don’t want to fall into confirmation bias and accuse an innocent mech. Yes, there is one-sided animosity between Major Hardtack and Prowl, but that could be where it ends. We need real, stone cold, can’t-mean-anything-else proof before anything else.”

Bluestreak rubs at his optics. “Okay, okay. So, if it even exists, how do we get that evidence?”

“We’ll start simple, where we know information will be. You still remember Prowl’s log-in information, right Blue?”

“Wait, he knows what?!” Red Alert asks.

“Training,” Red Alert grumbles as he combs through the files they got from Prowl’s terminal that documents when he had been assigned extra duties and the reason Major Hardtack gave for each one. “All of you are going through the cybersecurity training when this is over. I’m going to make all ten hours of it mandatory. With the little information retention quizzes at the end of each hour and everything. I’m going to make Prowl change his username and password the moment he comes back. Make him do the cybersecurity course as well.”

Red Alert continues to mumble threats of training and beefing security. Bluestreak does his best not to listen to the scary mech’s ranting and to worry about possible training later. Instead, he turns his focus onto the tactical department’s (publicly available and thus didn’t need to be acquired in a morally dubious way) old calendars and comparing dates of those department-wide strategy sessions to when Prowl got assigned extra work. 

So far, every single meeting has Prowl getting more work assigned to him afterwards. 

“Even if he isn’t trying to get Prowl killed,” Bluestreak says, noting yet another meeting that ended with a job being added to the growing workload, “just this is enough to accuse Major Hardtack of abuse of power and unwarranted retaliation, right?”

Red Alert grumbles another security threat under his breath before he answers Bluestreak. “It’s enough for an investigation,” he concedes. He points to the next meeting on the calendar. “There isn’t a job added after this one, do you know why?”

Bluestreak looks over the date. “Oh,” he says, “yeah, Prowl wasn’t at this one. He was in the infirmary because the twins were running away from Sergeant Blowout and didn’t notice him. They felt really bad about it too; stayed on their best behavior for, like, a week after Prowl got released.”

Red Alert makes a note and they continue comparing dates with the occasional grumble from the security head. 

Smokescreen paces the length of Red Alert’s office, clenching and unclenching his servos as his face is screwed up with barely held back anger that burns low and hot from his spark and throughout his entire chassis. His personal pad is left on the table, screen still powered, opened up to the app that he uses as the base’s unofficial bookie to keep track of bets. Specifically, it’s opened up to a recent anonymous bet made on the chances of Prowl’s survival; two thousand five hundred shanix against. 

“Where’s the threat? Are we under attack?” Red Alert asks, standing with a pistol already in servo. 

“No threat, no attack,” Smokescreen says through clenched denta. “Just angry.”

“What’s wrong?” Bluestreak asks as he leans over to look at the pad. He whistles at the large sum. “Dang, that’s a lot, but these things don’t usually make you angry, no matter the amount placed on the bet.”

He’s right. Smokescreen would usually just laugh at the poor sucker who is sure to lose all that hard earned shanix because of their misplaced confidence. He’d even make a game of it, trying to guess which mech on base the anonymous bet belonged to based on how they react to the news of their loss. 

There’s just one problem. “I recognize that pen name,” he seethes. 

Again, it’s a game he likes to play with the anonymous bets. Some mechs change their pen name between bets, others like to keep it the same. While a good portion of the base like to stay private with their bets, the ones who consistently use the feature are those of higher rank, to help maintain the image that their title demands of them. 

Smokescreen has a few higher ranked individuals figured out. Captain Cobalt likes to use the pen name Scavenger. Their head of communications goes by B00mM1c. He’s even recently concluded that OverclockedDucks belongs to the base commander (he thinks it’s an inside joke).

Figment looks over the pad. “Chalice?” he asks.

“Is Major Hardtack,” Smokescreen answers. 

Bluestreak looks at Smokescreen in surprise. “You’re certain?” 

“It’s a nine out of ten chance that Hardtack is Chalice.” He looks at Red Alert. “Do you have the clearance to check payments made from an individual’s monetary account?”

Red Alert squints at him. “Yes,” he answers with a touch of wariness. 

Smokescreen stops his pacing, takes a moment to invent, as, with a better hold of his agitation, he asks, “Can you please check to see if Major Hardtack’s account is down twenty-five hundred shanix? Then we’ll know for certain if this is him or not.”

A few minutes later, Red Alert confirms what Smokescreen had already suspected. 

“Okay,” Bluestreak says, opticing Smokescreen and his tamped down rage. “I can see why that would make you upset, but this feels a bit much. What are we missing?”

“I keep track of the running betting pools on base. Sometimes I notice names that pop up often or are unique, so I know the betting habits of Chalice. Well, Chalice is relatively conservative when it comes to betting on things, usually going from fifteen, twenty, sometimes fifty shanix, but never above a hundred. Unless,” here he taps the now darkened screen of his personal pad, “it’s something that he is certain of. If he thinks he knows, for sure, what the outcome will be, he’ll bet a thousand on it. And with a two thousand five hundred shanix bet like this? He’s basically saying that the outcome is guaranteed."

The air hangs heavy over them after his statement. 

Bluestreak shifts in his seat. “This doesn’t look good, but remember what you said about confirmation bias? This could just be Major Hardtack deciding that Prowl's probably dead after being missing for so long.”

Smokescreen huffs and looks at the ceiling. “I know, I know. I’m stressed and upset and this bet coming in now just aggravated that.” He takes in a deep invent. “I’ll be fine, just give me a moment.”

Figment leans a servo against the desk, the other servo on his hip, and looks down at the pad’s blank screen. He lightly taps the desk and gives a small hum in thought. “Hey Red, as the highest ranking bot on this investigation, do you think that the evidence we have now is enough to justify us utilizing a bit more stealth and espionage in our information gathering?” he asks, turning towards the security head with a sharp smile. 

Red Alert squints at Figment harder than he had at Smokescreen earlier. “What, exactly, is your plan here?”

Figment’s smile turns mischievous, like he knows Red Alert won’t like what he’s going to say next. “I was planning on using the full access that Major Hardtack gave Pinpoint to his office.”

There’s a beat of silence where everyone is still. Electricity arches between Red Alert’s horns. 

“He did WHAT?!”

The open invitation that Major Hardtack had given to Pinpoint had been a bit of an open secret between the three new mechs. It was something Pinpoint complained about to them when he’d first gotten it, vowing that he would never use it because he didn’t want any preferential treatment from his old friend, no matter how well intentioned. Figment had tucked that little tidbit away in case he needed it later. During the following months, he and Nickel would mostly use that information to tease Pinpoint.

Until now, anyway. 

Figment feels he did a wonderful job setting up for this moment. Being the mech helping with the miscellaneous administrative tasks, he was the one helping with the security training and making sure parts of it ran smoothly. So he spent the past week slowly showing signs of getting more and more tired and finishing his tasks for Major Hardtack later and later in the day. Pinpoint’s been giving him concerned looks each time he ran into the tactical department last minute to hand over his work. 

And it all cultivates to this moment. 

The stage is set. It’s thirty minutes after the shift ends. Pinpoint is the last mech left due to his terminal running slightly slower than normal and Smokescreen challenging the usual stragglers to a game of cards. Major Hardtack left an hour early for a security meeting with Red Alert and a few other department heads. 

Figment enter stage left, he thinks to himself as he runs down the hall and bursts into the room. “I got it! I’m done!” he says, panting and holding up a pad. “I…” he looks around the mostly empty room, “finished? Where is…?”

Pinpoint waves from his desk. “Hi Figment. You’re uh, you’re a half hour late.”

“What? No, I still have a half hour until—.” He fakes checking the time and widens his optics. “Scrap! Is Major Hardtack still here? I need him to put this in.”

Pinpoint shakes his helm. “No, he had to go to a meeting.”

“A meeting?” Figment asks. “No, that was supposed to be tomorrow, what do you mean…” He scrambles to pull out his own pad and look through it. “Did they change the schedule on me?” he murmurs just loud enough for Pinpoint to hear. “Scrap, scrap, slagging scrap! I need this put in tonight!” Figment sets a servo against his helm and starts pacing. “How am I—? What am I supposed to do?! Those meetings keep going overtime!”

On the edge of his vision, he can see Pinpoint’s conflicted face as he shifts in his seat. Just a little more. 

Figment makes his optics well up. One spills over and he fiercely wipes it away. “For the love of—. Now is not the time.” He grumbles angrily to himself. “I just, I just need—.” The other optic spills over as well and Figment wipes at that one too. 

Pinpoint gets up and places a servo on Figment’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay,” he reassures. “We can… put it in ourselves.”

“How are we supposed to—.” Figment stiffens slightly and looks up at Pinpoint. “Are you sure? You said you didn’t want to use it.”

Pinpoint looks away and shrugs. “I mostly just didn’t want to abuse it, but this is an emergency, right?”

Figment nods. 

“Then I’ll let you in, you put your thing in, and we leave. Nice, fast, and simple.”

Figment nods again. “And you’re sure?”

“Absolutely.” Pinpoint walks to Hardtacks office, Figment a mere step behind. 

Pinpoint opens the door and Figment wastes no time moving around the desk to Hardtack’s terminal. Pinpoint stays in the doorway glancing between Figment and the room outside. 

Out of sight of Pinpoint, Figment inserts a datastick Red Alert had prepared into Hardtack’s terminal and pretends to do the whole process of uploading his work. Once he “finishes” he unplugges the datastick and surreptitiously tucks it behind the plating in his right arm. He quickly walks out of the office and Pinpoint closes the door behind them. 

Figment gives his taller colleague a hug. “Thank you, Pinpoint. I promise, it won’t happen again.”

Pinpoint pats his back. “I believe you. You’re usually on top of things, it’s just been a crazy week.”

Figment groans and slides out of the hug. “Yeah,” he agrees, “it’s been nuts. Thank you, again. I owe you one.” 

Pinpoint waves away the sentiment as he returns to his desk. “You're good. Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

He nods and heads for the door. “You as well. Don’t stay up too late.”

“Don’t worry, I’m almost done.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

Figment exit stage left and scene, he smiles to himself in the hallway. 

He receives comm from Red Alert. “I still say my idea would’ve been a lot less complicated, Mirage.”

He sends a comm back. “Red Alert, I love you, but you are not subtle. We couldn’t risk him hiding or deleting things.”

“I’m siding with Prowl on this. The pomp and circumstance are more hassle than they’re worth.”

The next day has them all crowded around Red Alert’s terminal, staring at his monitor in various states of confused shock and surprise. 

“Where did you say you found this again?” Smokescreen asks. 

“On the copy of Major Hardtack’s hard drive that Figment got us,” Red Alert replies. “I found it using the dates your brother gave me for the security footage as a starting point.”

Bluestreak nods absently. “You know, when you said we needed undeniable proof, I didn’t think we’d actually find something that was so… blatant.”

Because there on the screen is the recovered log of direct messages between Major Hardtack and the anonymous agent that was also assigned to Prowl’s mission. 

It starts off benign with a cordial greeting from the Major, wishing the agent luck on their mission, and asking for a personal favor to make sure that their assigned mission partner is ‘well taken care of’. The agent replies with their own greeting, thanks for the well wishes, and assurance that they’ll do everything they can to keep Major Hardtack’s mech safe. 

Rather than showing gratitude to the agent for their promise, Major Hardtack instead expresses concern that they have misunderstood what he is asking them to do. He needs the agent to make sure that the other mech is ‘permanently taken care of’. The agent responds by saying that they can only do so much and that their mission partner’s well being is not something they can ensure once the mission is over. 

They go back and forth like this for several more exchanges. Major Hardtack keeps using different phrases to allude to what he wants while the agent is either not getting it or is choosing to be willfully ignorant as they take everything that Major Hardtack says literally. 

And then finally, near the end of the log, Major Hardtack apparently gets fed up with the agent and plainly states that he wants Prowl to die on this mission. He justifies it by saying that even though Prowl isn’t a Decepticon, he still poses a threat to the Autobots. 

The few other messages after that are the Major asking if the agent understands and them saying that they do, but Bluestreak can’t bring himself to look away from the words of Hardtack accusing Prowl of being a danger to their cause and condemning him for it. He can’t understand why the Major would think that this was the best way to deal with Prowl. He followed along with Smokescreen’s explanation easily enough and he gets it in theory, in a way similar to how he would discuss a fictional character’s motivation and thought process, but he’s struggling with applying it to someone he feels like he should have been able to trust; a person who is supposed to be on the same side as him. 

Something stirs in his spark. It burns as it spreads and freezes where it lingers. It makes him numb to the world and yet all too aware of it. As pervasive as a morning fog but bringing with it a focus of unmatched clarity. 

“Where is he now?” he hears himself say.

“Off-base with a member of my team reviewing a patrol route,” Red Alert answers. 

Smokescreen rolls back his shoulders. “Lets gather a welcoming committee for when he returns then.”

Bluestreak isn’t there when Red Alert and the security team confront Major Hardtack when he returns to base. Instead, he’s posted outside on top of a cliff to the west of the base where he has the best view of the west exit and the path that leads away from the base and deeper into the Tagan Heights. It had been Smokescreen’s suggestion, saying that if Major Hardtack decided to run, this path is the one he is most likely to choose. 

Bluestreak lays prone near the cliff side, rifle set up and steady. He keeps a careful optic on the base, waiting for any disturbance. He keeps still under the camouflage tarp laid over him, the same blue-ish grey as the terrain around him. The sun slowly sets at his back, turning the sky red and giving the landscape more of a purple hue. 

He doesn’t know how to feel about being posted here. Part of him wants to be there when they confront the Major, to watch as the confusion in his optics slowly turns into realization, then dread; wants to stare him down and ask him why. Another part of him is glad to be up here. Because as satisfying as he thinks it would be to see, he doesn’t want to be near Major Hardtack and he doesn’t want to hear any excuse or justification that the mech might give; it’ll just make him angry. 

Mechs are scrambling at the gate, hurrying to get out of the way. Smokescreen comms him a quick, “He’s heading your way!” just before what looks like a fast moving mass of mauve pushes through the closing doors, forcing them back open and leaving one hanging by just the top hinge. 

“Copy,” Bluestreak mechanically replies to Smokescreen, making slight adjustments to his positioning. 

The big rig tears down the road towards Bluestreak’s position at speeds that are just plain unfair for a mech that large to reach. A line of smaller mechs that he vaguely recognizes as part of security pour from the base in pursuit, closely followed by two mechs that he instantly recognizes as Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. 

Bluestreak briefly wonders how the twins got involved, but pushes the thought aside to focus on the task at hand. He tracks the Major’s movements, his ballistic programs powering up and crunching numbers about speed and distance and air pressure and the direction of the wind and many other factors that will affect his aim. The world around him seems to slow. Based on the speeds of those below him, Hardtack will outpace and eventually lose the security team, especially on the windy and splitting paths of the Tagan Heights. Sideswipe and Sunstreaker are both fast enough to keep up, but if they can eventually catch him is a completely separate question that he doesn’t have the hardware to figure out. What he can figure out is the place to shoot in order to make that question a moot point. 

Bluestreak comms security and the twins as he adjusts his aim to further down Hardtack’s projected path, “Pursuit, Bluestreak at Delta-Seven, two rounds incoming, over.” He quickly fires two shots just as he hears a confirming, “Copy,” from the leading security mech and Sideswipe. 

In a moment that lasts hours but is over in a second, he sees the bolts fly through the air and hit Hardtack’s two back left tires. 

“Hit, non-lethal,” Bluestreak comms to the mechs as well as Smokescreen, watching as the Major swerves left, his forward momentum then causing him to capsize. He transforms back to root mode mid-roll for more control, twisting in a way that lets him get back to his pede and run. 

Which is when the twins catch up. Sunstreaker drives right up to the taller mech's legs and transforms to grab them and make him trip up. At the same time, Sideswipe drives himself up the cliff side, transforms, and springs himself off the rock wall to tackle Major Hardtack near his neck and chest. Together, they force him face first onto the ground. 

Bluestreak observes as the security team catches up only a second later. Then they and the twins get the Major’s arms behind his back and a pair of variable stasis cuffs around his wrists. 

“Target captured,” he says to just Smokescreen. “Bluestreak out.”

Three security mechs lift Hardtack from the ground as the twins observe from the side. Sideswipe turns towards the direction of Delta-Seven and waves. Bluestreak lifts a single servo to wave back. Sideswipe points at him then makes an okay gesture with a questioning helm tilt. Bluestreak answers with a thumbs up, then gets back into position. 

The twins and security escort Major Hardtack back to base and Bluestreak watches the entire march from under the tarp on the top of the cliff. Once the Major is no longer in his sights, he moves the gun to point where no one is and clicks on the safety. 

Then he just… stays there, laying prone, rifle still in his servos, staring blankly at the path below him. 

He may need to amend his earlier thoughts; that wasn’t satisfying in the least. There was no accomplishment, no closure, and definitely no comfort.

The shadows around him get longer and the light slowly shifts from golden to a more muted purple. He’s going to need his night vision gear soon if he still wants to see the road. That would normally be part of the equipment he always has on hand when deployed, but right now it’s still on base, because this was barely an assignment and most likely won’t even count as a mission. All he really needed was himself and his rifle; he’s lucky he thought to grab a camo tarp while he was running out to get to the ridge in time. 

Someone’s coming. His right wing flicks slightly in their direction. They’re coming from the east, the same direction as the base. Their engine makes a gentle hum as they approach at a steady, unhurried pace, which usually means that everything is fine and boring. 

He hears as the person turns the corner to his position, smoothly transforming as they approach walking over to his prone form sedately. Bluestreak doesn’t let up on his watch over the road beneath him, despite seeing less and less of it as the sun sets further along the sky. 

“Hey Blue,” the mech says gently, and that’s Smokescreen’s voice. That doesn’t make sense, why would Smokescreen come up here? He was expecting one of the other snipers like Trickshot or Curveball to come relieve him. While a good shot, Smokescreen isn’t a trained sniper and can’t take Bluestreak’s post. 

Smokescreen sighs and Bluestreak realizes that he never actually replied to the mech. He hears as the older Praxian steps closer on his right side. “Yep, this appears to be a mild case of BFOB.”

BFOB, pronounced bee-fob, is the acronym that the three of them came up with to mean Battle Focus On Base. This “battle focus” is something that Bluestreak can normally switch on and off very easily, but sometimes, especially in the earlier days, he would get stuck on “on mode” when off the battlefield. Prowl would help him switch off his battle focus by asking questions from his “How to Not Be Socially Inept” list. Smokescreen’s method of grounding him involved—

“The rust sticks are suing Primus, so Sunstreaker danced sadly about it.”

—saying something so ridiculous that it would make him snap out of it.

“What?” he asks, turning his helm to Smokescreen. 

The confounding mech shrugs. “Yeah, heard the whales gossiping on the way here.”

Bluestreak can only stare at him in bafflement. 

“Crazy stuff,” Smokescreen continues, feigning seriousness. “The diesel snails told Command to start mining Oxygen. But today’s been canceled due to budget cuts, so the Prime took a nap instead. Then a landside filed for bankruptcy and the talent show became a democracy which then voted to destroy the parallel universe from the future.”

“I’m having a stroke,” Bluestreak concludes and slowly sits up. “My processor overheated and I’m having a stroke.” 

Smokescreen snorts and sits next to him, moving the tarp around so it rests over both their shoulders. “Not quite, but it helped your BFOB.”

Bluestreak sighs and leans against Smokescreen’s arm. It’s nice, having someone who cares. “Aren’t you the one who gave Prowl that list of questions? Why don’t you use those?”

“Nah,” his eldest brother shakes his helm. “Those are Prowl’s thing and I’m not stealing that. Besides, I didn’t keep my copy of it. Pretty sure I deleted it a month after I gave it to him.”

“Probably for the best,” he smiles, “it’s always funny when Prowl seriously asks the ‘would you rather fight twenty scraplet-sized turbo hounds, or one turbo hound-sized scraplet’ question with a straight face. Peak comedy. It wouldn’t have the same impact coming from someone else.”

Smokescreen laughs. “True. Our brother is a master of deadpan humor. Sometimes it’s even on purpose.”

“So how’d Sideswipe and Sunstreaker get involved anyway?” Bluestreak asks, suddenly remembering his pushed aside confusion. 

“Hah,” Smokescreen huffs with a shake of his helm. “Good couple of friends you got yourself there Blue.” 

He tolerates the non-answer, knowing it’ll lead into the relevant information soon. “Yeah?”

“Mhmm,” his brother nods. “They were close by when Hardtack returned. Started squaring up when they heard what the Major was accused of and immediately gave chase with the others when he bolted.”

“So their fondness for violence makes them good friends?”

“Among other things, but yeah.”

Bluestreak chuckles and looks up at the darkening sky. His smile fades. “I miss him.”

Smokescreen leans slightly into him, giving a reassuring pressure against his shoulder. “Me too.”

The brightest of stars twinkle at him in the fading light. Bluestreak mentally reaches out to them as he hopes, prays, that Prowl’s mission partner didn’t take their orders to spark.

Chapter Text

Prowl enters the top of the stairwell alone. He is sent a ping from the rudimentary alert system that he and Jazz had set up. Since comms are still dangerous for them to use, he sends his own ping into the channel, signaling to Jazz that the alert is just him. Which means he has at least five minutes to set up until the secret agent comes by. 

In the abandoned living area, against the wall to the right, between two doors, he’s already made up an area with two chairs, a small table with his space heater placed underneath it, and the two most sturdy shelves on each side, each perpendicular to the wall. The result being a sort of artificial alcove that he makes his way towards now. 

He unsubspaces a large tarp with tattered edges that he found in the garage and lays it over the two shelves. This creates a sort of canopy over the sectioned off space, with the tarp reaching down to Prowl’s knees. He then places a few old lamps and other weighted pieces of decor on top of the shelves to help keep the tarp in place. He ducks under the tarp, turns on the heater, and carefully places two energon cubes on top of it. He stands and, using a roll of tape Stepper gave him, strings a length of fairy lights he borrowed from one of the berth rooms between the two top shelves overhead. 

The alert system sends him a ping with Jazz sending his own a second later. Prowl checks on the energon and ducks back out from under the tarp. 

He’s rechecking that the tarp is secure when Jazz speaks up. 

“What’s this?” he asks. 

Prowl mulls over how best to explain himself and decides to answer with a question. “Do you know what day it is?”

“The… twenty-first?” Jazz answers uncertainly. 

Prowl nods. “Yes, true, but today is also the winter solstice.” He sees Jazz walk up to his side in his periphery, but keeps his focus on the tarp. “Back when conflict was first breaking out, Smokescreen said that it was important for people to hold onto happy things in whatever capacity they can manage.” His brother told him that after Prowl had ranted to Smokescreen about mechs who continued with “meaningless celebrations” in the face of so much tragedy. “I did not completely understand it then, but I figured that Smokescreen knew what he was talking about. I decided that I would hold onto the solstice, and that perhaps I would get what my brother meant in time. And I did, eventually.” It was actually their first solstice with Bluestreak that made it finally click for Prowl. The sight of the younger mech’s tear-stained yet joyful face is not one he will soon forget. 

“So,” he continues, “this is me celebrating, in the capacity that I can manage.” 

With that, he lifts up the tarp, gestures a small “come in” to Jazz, and ducks inside. The air inside is noticeably warmer, but not yet to the point that they can take off their cold weather gear. He sits in the chair on the left and checks on the energon as Jazz slowly makes his way in and takes in the simple decorations. Prowl, deciding that the cubes are warmed enough, takes them off the heater and sets them on the table. He unsubspaces two packets of melanterite flakes as well as two cleaned straws from the kitchen and sets one of each next to the cubes. 

Jazz sits down in the other chair and softly laughs at the energon additives. “So that’s where you went last game night?”

Prowl nods, though he had also used the time that night to pour a little bit of sand (one of the more unusual tools that he’d been given by Stepper) into Updraft’s polish. 

Jazz hums, tilting his helm in thought. He makes a “one moment” gesture and exits the space on nimble pedes. He soon returns just as quietly as he left with the music player he had fixed. He gets back to his seat and sets the device on the shelf next to him. He turns it on, sets the volume down low, and flits through the channels until he finds one playing old solstice music. 

Prowl smiles and pours half of his packet of melanterite flakes into his drink. He stirs it with the straw to help the flakes dissolve into the fuel. Jazz uses his entire packet, then, after a quick taste, silently asks for the other half of Prowl’s. Prowl easily hands over the flakes. Jazz gives a delighted smile and quickly adds it in. 

They sit in companionable silence, sipping at their warmed and sweetened energon, listening to the soft notes of nostalgia from the speaker, and gazing up to the small lights that parody the night sky. 

Many songs later, when the last of his fuel is gone, Prowl carefully sets the cube on the table. 

Jazz sits, leaning forward with his arms resting on his legs, looking down at his own empty cube as he slowly turns it over in his servos. “You know, I’d almost forgotten about the solstice. After so long, the time of year doesn’t really register unless I’m measuring how long it’s been since a mission started or when the last one ended.” Jazz sighs, sits up, and leans into the back of his chair. He sets his helm back and looks up at the fairy lights, cube still held loosely in one servo. “…I used to keep track of the holidays, at the beginning, but… I guess I stopped at some point.”

Prowl examines the other mech, the somber mood juxtaposed with the jolly tune of the current song. He can’t help but think that this is a part of Jazz that he would not have been able to see had it not been for this mission and the length of time they’ve spent isolated in hostile territory with only the other for company. He turns his gaze back to the lights above. 

“This war takes a lot from us,” Prowl says, unsubspacing the green shard and rubbing his thumb against it. “If we are not careful, it will take everything we have.”

“So you hold on to what you can, right?” Jazz asks.

Prowl tightens his grip around the crystal. “You hold on tight to what you cannot afford to lose. If they are taken regardless, you hold the memories close to your spark and let them fuel you to keep on living.”

Jazz hums in acknowledgment. 

Prowl unsubspaces a package of silver cookies, opens it, and holds the open bag out to his mission partner. “Cookie?” he offers.

Jazz huffs a laugh and sits up, setting his empty cube on the table between them. “Sure,” he says, taking one from the bag. 

Prowl takes a cookie of his own then dumps the rest of the bag’s contents onto the table to share. “Do you want to hear how Smokescreen and Bluestreak accidentally exposed a Decepticon plot before it could even start?”

Jazz snorts and turns to Prowl with a grin. “Okay, that sounds hilarious. How’d they manage that?”

They spend the next few hours swapping funny stories, both before and during the war. It brings the mood back up from its previous slump and makes Jazz laugh uproariously at several points. 

At the end of the day, Prowl subspaces the trash as Jazz pops their empty cubes. They both work to take down the small space and put things back to where they belong. As they move the last shelf back to its place, Jazz speaks up. 

“Thanks. I didn’t know how much I needed this.”

“Of course,” Prowl replies. “Happy Solstice, Jazz.”

Jazz gives him a large smile. “Happy Solstice, Prowl.”

Updraft just wants to drink his energon in peace. It’s been a long few weeks, okay? The base will sometimes make these irritating sounds that feel like a knife to his audials when the wind gusts, he’s been getting hip checked by the table every other day, there’s sand that’s somehow getting on him when he polishes sometimes, and just last night the storm got harsher and kept waking him up. In short: Updraft’s exhausted, leave him alone.

Though it appears that some don’t respect his silent signaling of “go away” because that pilot what’s-his-face or whatever the grounder’s name is storms over with a thunderous expression. “You thief!” he yells at Updraft. 

The seeker is very much not in the mood for whatever this is and glares back at the pilot. “Good morning to you too,” he grumbles. “What’s this about?”

“You stole from our ship!” the pilot spits out. 

“I haven’t even been on your ship since we were taking out boxes when you got here.” Updraft denies. 

“Oh, so I guess these,” he plucks two wrappers from off the back of the seeker’s shoulder, “came from your own personal stores then?”

Updraft squints at the blue wrappers of what he thinks might be a wrapper for an energon additive in the pilot’s servo. “I have never seen those before in my life,” he says truthfully. 

“You expect me to believe that?” the pilot questions. “How else do you explain having these on you?!”

“I don’t know! I didn’t even know they were there until you got them off!”

“So what, did the ‘ghost’ the others are on about steal from my ship? Did it use the additives then? Huh? Oh yes, the spirit of a dead mech drinks sweetened energon and leaves the trash on the back of random mechs, that makes so much more sense!”

“Hey, I never said that it was the ghost! Just that it wasn’t me.”

“Give me your energon then.”

“What? No!” Updraft brings his cube closer to him. “This is my morning cube, get your own.”

“So you are the thief!”

“I’m not!”

“Why else wouldn’t you want to let me see your cube then? You put these in there!”

“I did not! You just told me to give you my energon for no reason, of course I’m gonna say no!”

Wrangle places a servo on the Pilot’s shoulder and moves him back a step as the old mech cuts in between them. “Updraft, Livewire, knock it off,” he says in that quiet but hard way that makes others listen. 

So the pilot’s name is Livewire? Cool, Updraft will not be committing that to memory. He will actively delete it from his mind when this is over. 

“Now,” Wrangle says, looking between the two of them, “act like the mature mechs you claim to be and calmly explain what happened. Updraft first.”

Updraft glares at the pilot and starts explaining. 

“You missed a big argument,” Jazz says when he exits the vents into their small “living space”.

Prowl sits on his recharge pad with his back against the wall holding one of Pick’s puzzle books that the short mech had thrown away in frustration, all the while blaming ghosts for having nothing better to do than to watch him. “I am aware, they were loud enough for their muffled voices to travel, though I did not catch any actual words.” He glances up from the current puzzle to Jazz. The smile he is expecting to see on the secret agent’s face for having something to gossip about isn’t there. Instead, there’s a small, thoughtful frown, with a slight helm tilt to his right, while the visor is pointed at Prowl. 

Something’s wrong. “Did something happen?” he asks. 

“Just something I thought was odd is all,” Jazz says. “Say Prowl? What’d you end up doing with those empty additive packets from Solstice a week ago?”

Oh. So it appears he had successfully framed Updraft, but in so doing, he had made himself the target of Jazz’s cold gaze. 

He can’t lie outright, Jazz would pick up on it immediately. So he’ll tell the truth, selectively. “I pushed them through the vent grate in the seeker's room. I figured they would fit into the mess there better than anywhere else.”

“Uh-huh,” Jazz says, distinctly unimpressed. “Well, they ended up sticking to Updraft and Livewire saw. He immediately blamed Updraft for stealing.”

Prowl nods. “That would explain the yelling then.”

“It doesn’t explain everything though,” Jazz says. “I’ve noticed a few things. Updraft’s been bumping into tables more often, complaining about grains of sand, and getting more and more irritable. I’ve also noticed how the four creaks you recorded particularly get on his nerves. Individually, these things don’t mean much, but together? It makes it seem like Updraft’s being haunted by a vengeful little ghost of his own. Does that seem right?”

Prowl can’t help the sliver of irritation that flares at the wording “vengeful little ghost”. It’s as though his efforts are nothing more than a cute imitation and then dismissed. “Whatever it is that you are implying, Jazz, I do not appreciate it.”

“What, that you’ve been messing with a mech behind my back?” Jazz asks brazenly. “I thought we had better communication skills than this. Just, c’mon Prowl, we’re partners! Don’t go and start keeping secrets from me now.”

The anger Prowl had been forcing down erupts. “Secrets? You want to talk about secrets, agent Jazz? Fine. Why don’t we discuss your own then?”

Jazz rears his helm back, surprised. “Mine?”

“Yes, yours,” Prowl growls, standing up. “About how you smile and laugh like Stepper; give the same cheeky grin and dance exactly like he does. About the fact that you keep time like Marshal and how you both kick your pede back and tap the ground with your pede-tip twice when you’re going over options. How Ricochet does the exact same smirk with the exact same posture and helm position that you do.

“While we are at it, why not go over how when I was handed off from one mech to the next, none of them ended up being at the same place together. Or how all four mechs that I met on this mission each share the same face. Maybe I should even bring up the fact that when someone describes a group of other mechs as ‘their people’, they don’t usually mean ‘people I can turn into’, Jazz!”

Jazz doesn’t react. He simply watches as Prowl begins to pace in the small space they’d both taken as their own. 

“I can understand,” Prowl continues, “the need for being undercover and secret identities, but to then turn around and get after me for secrets?” Prowl stops his pacing to point at Jazz. “The utter hypocrisy of a Spec Ops agent saying that to me is astounding.”

Jazz stares at Prowl. He tilts his helm to the side and back a bit like Ricochet, shifts his weight to one leg and places a servo on his hip like Stepper, and softly clicks his tongue in an otherwise contemplative silence like Marshal. All these elements come together and mix in a dangerous and confident way that all scream Jazz.

A silence hangs between them. Circles them. Lightly winds between their legs like a cyber-cat, brushing up against them before it sits itself comfortably to the side to watch. 

It’s in this silence that Prowl realizes that he has made a mistake. In his anger, he has tipped his hand too far, revealing more of what he knows than is safe. 

Prowl keeps his focus on Jazz. Every movement and twitch, anything that’ll give Prowl even a slight warning of an incoming attack. 

Finally, Jazz speaks. “I get it now.” One side of his mouth lifts up into a sharp little smirk. “You’re dangerous.” 

Prowl is very aware of the small space that they are in, how Jazz stands between him and the one exit into the vent. Is also aware that even with a head start, Jazz has the skill and experience to quickly catch up with him. 

That he is well and truly trapped. 

“Get what?” he asks the secret agent, his TacNet frantically searching for an escape, even as he knows that his only real option is to try and talk his way out of it. 

“Why someone wants you dead,” Jazz says, much too blasé about the news he had just imparted. 

Several things start lining up for him. Stepper, Marshal, Ricochet, they had all— “You kept asking why they sent me,” he says. “Either because they did not tell you why or the reason given was insufficient.”

Jazz’s small smirk grows. “See, this is why you’re dangerous. A mind like that could pose a serious threat.”

“And what did your own investigation find?” he asks. 

Jazz tilts his helm to the side, amused. “And what makes you so sure that I’ve been investigating and not just waiting?”

“Because you just told me that someone wants me dead and you have not killed me yet. None of that is standard procedure and you are not the type to be so careless about your work.” Prowl quickly thinks over the mechs who know him who could have reasonably been involved in this mission enough to give Jazz kill orders. “So you have been investigating me despite Major Hardtack’s orders,” Jazz looks impressed, “and came to your own conclusion.”

Jazz gives a low whistle, servos on his hips. “See, I knew you were smart, but that’s kind of impressive. Yeah, your superior got in contact with me just before the mission to ensure that I ‘took care of you’.” The way he says it this time sends a chill down Prowl’s back. Jazz then scoffs. “The thing about me though is that there are very few mechs in this world whose orders I’ll follow without question. This ‘Major Hardtack’ isn’t one of them.”

It’s with a fair bit of surprise that Prowl finds that he believes him. The fear gripping Prowl begins to lessen its hold on his spark, but still, he asks again, just to be sure, “And what did your investigation find?”

“Apparently,” Jazz says with a slight chuckle, “someone I can live in the walls of a Decepticon base with.”

Chapter Text

It’s later in the night and Prowl lays on his recharge pad, still wide awake. He knows from the steady whirring next to him that Jazz has yet to recharge as well. 

It feels like so much has changed but at the same time that they haven’t. Jazz knows that Prowl figured him and his different identities out. Prowl knows that Jazz was supposed to kill him but won’t. It feels like the world has changed with those kinds of revelations. 

And yet, what has changed between them, really?

They still eat from stolen cubes, still sleep on scavenged pads with a pilfered blanket, and still plan on going to the base’s basement within the next two days. Yes, they know more things about each other now, but it changes little in the day-to-day. 

“I just realized,” Jazz says softly into the darkness, “that I didn’t get a straight answer on if you’re haunting Updraft or not.”

“You did not.” Prowl agrees. 

“Are you?”

Prowl hesitates. “I… suppose it can be seen that way, but that is not really what I have been doing.”

“Oh?”

“It is about the intent. Your goal with what you do is to scare a few mechs, make it so that there is a debate about what’s making noises, and to entertain yourself. My goal is more… personal. Simply put, when they attacked Praxus, Updraft stole a trophy from the city that is very important to me. What I have been doing is getting what little… vengeance, I suppose, that I can while still remaining safe.”

“Huh,” Jazz says. “Didn’t take you as the type for vengeance.”

“I am normally not,” Prowl concedes. 

There’s a slight pause. “So you put sand…?”

“I put sand in his polish, yes. Not a lot, or he would just throw it out and get a new one, but enough to occasionally irritate.”

“Evil,” Jazz laughs. “Remind me not to get in a prank war with you.”

Prowl huffs at that. “If that ever happens, then yes, I will remind you.”

“Actually, I have another question. When I entered the room in that ruined city as Ricochet, you made this face for a brief moment that was almost… dumbfounded? What was that reaction about?”

Prowl sifts through the partly muddled memory. “I had been pretty disoriented at the time but I knew enough subconsciously that simply seeing your face was enough for me to force myself back to my full mental capacity.”

Jazz giggles. “Prowler, in any other context, that could be taken as romantic.”

“Jazz,” he says with a flat tone that only makes the other giggle harder. Prowl rolls his optics. “Back on topic, while your helm shape, armor, and mannerisms changed between each persona, your face stayed the same. How could I not be dumbfounded when the third mech I meet for this mission had the exact same face of the other two?”

“Most mechs don’t really notice that. Especially not so immediately after only spending a few days with each person. What was your reaction to seeing me in the closet then?”

“Well and truly flabbergasted.” 

Jazz starts laughing again. “And here I thought it was because I came in from the vent.”

“That as well, but I was mostly caught up in how all four of my escorts shared the same face.” Prowl waits for Jazz’s laughter to peter off before saying, “As this conversation seems to be about asking questions, I have a few of my own.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Did you really have to push me down that hill?”

There’s a small clank followed by muffled laughter. Prowl glances over to see in the slight light of Jazz’s visor, that the secret agent has covered his mouth in an attempt to contain his mirth. Prowl looks back to the ceiling. 

“It was not that funny,” he grumbles. 

“It kinda was,” Jazz counters through chuckles. “But yeah, sorry, Ricochet isn’t supposed to be the most… considerate of mechs. He's designed to fit in with the Cons but still apart in that he can’t be pushed around.”

“So you push me?”

“Your paint was too neat! And clean! It was the quickest way to fix that and you weren’t going to gleefully roll down the hill of your own volition.”

“Fine. Why did you tell me about the bomb on your person as Stepper?”

“Nah,” Jazz says.

“Nah?”

“Mmm, nah. Still want to see if you can figure that one out yourself.”

“You are a menace.”

“Why thank you!”

Prowl huffs. “Is Jazz also a persona?”

“No, no, Jazz is me. It’d just put a huge target on my back if all the things I do were credited to only one mech, so the alter egos help with that. It's kind of like delegation but not really.”

“I… suppose that makes sense.”

“Okay, my turn,” Jazz says. “I’ve gotta ask, I get that you were a Praxian enforcer before the war, but now… why keep the paint?”

Prowl stares up at the ceiling in silence. Jazz keeps doing this; surprising Prowl with innocuous yet poignant questions and statements. He wonders if he’ll ever get used to it. If he’ll ever not be surprised by Jazz. 

“Everyone has their own way of remembering their home,” he answers. “This is mine.”

“…Oh,” Jazz says in a quiet exvent. “I thought that was what the green shard was.”

“In a way, it is,” Prowl says, absently unsubspacing the crystal and turning it over in his servos. “It is just not mine. This is Bluestreak’s way of remembering home. He lent me his largest shard before I left base, for luck.”

“Does he collect all kinds of Praxian crystals?”

“No,” Prowl says, somber. “Just green.”

“Is there a reason?” Jazz asks gently. 

So there in the dark, contained to hushed tones and whispered words, Prowl explains the significance of the green crystal to Praxus as a whole, and then to Bluestreak personally. And then, caught in the flow of the words and the revelry of being listened to, describes the trophy that Updraft proudly displayed to the others. 

“I see,” Jazz says by the end. He pauses, the silence heavy in their tiny room. Then, “I’d hate him too.”

Prowl laughs, the bluntness of the delivery breaking the heavy atmosphere with a small sense of understanding and camaraderie. 

“I feel like if Stepper and Ricochet ever met,” Jazz says, “they would be friends.”

Prowl and Jazz are currently in the old research facility’s living area on the fourth floor, sitting on the sturdiest of the old couches. Well, Prowl is sitting properly, Jazz is laying on his back across the rest of the couch space as he uses Prowl’s lap as a pede rest. Prowl, in turn, is using Jazz’s legs as a table for the stolen puzzle book. 

Prowl glances at Jazz, confused. “But they’re not real? They are literally just you.”

Jazz waves away Prowl’s words. “Yeah, but if they were real mechs, I think Rico and Stepper’d be unlikely friends.”

“Hmmm,” Prowl hums, thinking about it. “Terrifying thought.”

“What, you don’t see it?” Jazz asks. 

“I do see it,” Prowl clarifies. “That is why it’s terrifying.”

“So you see my vision of the sunshine character befriending the grumpy one.”

“I see two hooligans getting into mischief together. One of them just lets himself be mean about it.” 

Jazz laughs. “And it would be glorious.”

Prowl rubs at his optics. “No, I already have to deal with a duo like that for real back at base. I do not need to be tormented by the thought of the twins but with Spec Ops training.”

“The twins?” Jazz asks. 

“Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. Frontline fighters, both a bit rough, but loyal. They enjoy pranks between deployments. Bluestreak befriended them. Smokescreen likes to make bets with them.”

“Sounds like fun.” 

Prowl makes a noncommittal hum. “While we’re on the subject of your alter egos, I’ve been meaning to ask: what happened between Marshal and Stepper?”

“Oh yeah, that?” Jazz shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Despite being the one who made it up?”

“Hey, not everything needs to be super detailed to be believable. Most I got is a personality clash. Besides, I find the ambiguity of what happened actually adds credence to the incident. Makes sense that the two involved don’t want to talk about it, y’know? Plus, it’s fun seeing what others think—.”

A ping is sent on the alert system.

Prowl shares a wide opticed look with Jazz. 

Then another ping, and another, and more still. 

They both move quickly for the nearest vent.

Five mechs enter the cold stairwell. They are Lockbox, Pick, Highbeam, Coil, and Pocket. There are many reasons they’ve decided to search the sealed off sections of the old base: investigating ghosts, exploring new areas, but mostly, they all wanted an excuse to avoid the tense atmosphere between Updraft and Livewire for a few hours. 

Of the five, only two have thought to wear extra gear, those being Lockbox with a scarf and Pocket with a poncho. To be fair to the seekers, they don’t need the extra protection for a short exploration seeing as they are better suited for the chilling higher altitudes. Pick, though, absolutely should be wearing something but decided to forgo any kind of common sense. 

“Okay,” Lockbox says, adjusting her scarf, “this place has multiple floors. We should—”

“Split up?” Coil interrupts. “Cool. I call ground floor!” 

“No!” Lockbox protests, but it’s already too late. Coil vaults herself over the railing, engaging her thrusters in order to make a speedy and controlled dash for the bottom. A delighted Whoo! echoes up the stairwell. 

Lockbox face palms and lets out a frustrated groan. “Fine! Fine. It’s fine.” She looks over to the three mechs that stayed. “Looks like we’re splitting up, but I insist we do so in pairs. Pick, you and Highbeam check out the next floor down. Pocket and I will look through the floor below that. Got it?”

After confirming their understanding, the two groups set off into the building’s depths. 

Coil is so glad she picked the ground floor. It’s a garage! That takes up most of the floor! With a high ceiling!

She tunes into the base’s radio, specifically the channel reserved for instrumental music, then, with her thrusters still engaged, begins to dance among the rafters. Well, it’s more swaying and spinning than anything, but she does it in time with the music, so she calls it dancing. After being unable to do their normal patrols for so long, it feels great to be able to do even this little bit of flying. While the itch to transform and fly recklessly into the wide open sky is still present, it’s not as demanding as it has been lately. Besides, Wrangle said that according to his creaky leg struts, the storm would end within the next week and a half, and she trusts the old mech and his odd weather predicting limbs. She can wait for another week and some days to get to the open skies. 

Coil sees a colorful pile of something in her peripheral vision. She looks down to the counter by the wall and sees a… pile of old snacks? She lowers herself closer. Yes, those are old snacks. Rust sticks and ener-gummies with outdated art and all. Disappointing that they’re all snacks that don’t keep for a long time though. 

Faint screaming makes her left wing twitch. She turns to look at the empty doorway to the darkened stairwell. 

Pick hates that the moment he and Highbeam enter the large living area, the feeling of being watched comes back up twofold and intently focused. The feeling of unseen optics are as unnerving as ever, but he clicks on his flashlight and carefully makes his way in regardless. Because as much as he dislikes the heebie jeebies that the ghosts give him, he’d rather deal with that than the strained air going on between Updraft and the pilot Livewire. 

He and Highbeam quietly begin exploring different areas of the room. It’s definitely abandoned, with furniture that’s breaking and broken and a fine layer of frost that gets thicker the further into the room one gets. He’s halfway down the room when he stops and optics the walls near him. There’s something strange about the icy frost here, but he can’t tell what. He can see that it’s thinner in some spots and thicker in others but he can’t see what it is about that that’s got him on edge. 

Squinting at the walls and the frost on it, he slowly steps backwards, hoping that maybe some distance will show him a pattern that his proximity keeps him from seeing. Step after step, the shape the thinner parts of the frost make begins taking form. It looks like the silhouette of a mech, standing tall with one arm raised slightly and pointing further into the room. 

A shiver runs down Pick’s spinal strut, only partly because of the cold. He takes another step away from the wall. Something brushes against his back. 

“Aagh!” Pick yells as he jumps away from whatever is touching him and turns to face it. 

“Yeaagh!” the thing yelps as it too jumps away. Pick relaxes somewhat at seeing that it’s Highbeam, then tenses up again when the seeker turns around with his gun drawn and pointed right at his face. 

“Dude!” Pick yells. “What’s with the gun?!”

Highbeam’s optics widen. “Sorry!” he says as he quickly points the gun’s barrel to the ceiling. “Sorry, I thought you were the ghost.”

Pick can only stare at the jumpy seeker for the few seconds it takes for him to properly process what Highbeam had just said. “What good’s a gun against a ghost?!” he berates. 

“It’s a habit!” Highbeam says in defense. “How else would I react to being on edge when something just brushes against my leg?!”

Pick pinches his nasal bridge. “You know, most—.”

A spat of static from further in the room cuts off Pick’s retort. The static buzzes then partly resolves into quiet, tinny sounding music that Pick recognizes as one of the songs on the instrumental channel. He and Highbeam glance at each other before slowly turning to where the slightly static-filled music is coming from. Pick scans the area with his light. There, between them and the back wall, laying on its back beside a broken and fallen over side table, is a radio that’s seen better days. 

The music dissolves into static. Random snippets of songs start coming through, ranging from a single note to several words, each one louder than the last, and each time, they all return to static. 

Pick takes a step back, glancing up at Highbeam. The other mech briefly meets his optics with his own creeped out look. Another loud spat of static gets them both looking back at the radio. 

“KSHchkshhhh— GET,” a portion of a song sings, louder than the others before it. “SHHHhhhkchsssh— OUT!” sings the radio from a different song before it abruptly cuts off. No music and no static coming from its speaker. 

“I—,” Highbeam tries to speak into the silence. “Did it just—?”

CRASH!

They scream. Pick jumps into Highbeam’s arms, who holds him tight as the seeker scrambles back and away from the bookshelf that has just fallen over. Highbeam trips over a discarded piece of furniture and lands on his back, but he is quick to get back up, Pick still securely in one of his arms, and run for the door. 

The door that’s now closed.

Lockbox and Pocket walk through what had once been a lab of some sort. Old machines and various instruments strewn about in a system that Lockbox can only guess at. Empty and frosted over vials await use on a countertop to her left while the island in the middle of the room has a tube of ice laid across it. 

“What do you think they were researching?” Pocket asks as she meanders through the room, looking around at everything curiously. 

Lockbox shrugs. “I deal with software, not whatever this is.”

“We can still guess,” Pocket says with a smile. “C’mon, it’ll be fun! I say…” she looks around the room, “that they were looking for traces of the sunken city titan of Navitas.”

Lockbox can’t help the little snort she gives at that. “More likely they were doing something with the ice core here,” she says, gesturing to the ice tube. “Could be for researching atmospheric changes over the eons or ancient microbes. I can’t tell.”

Pocket beams at her. “That sounds cool! Not as fun as finding a long lost titan, but still cool.” She walks to the door. “Let’s check out the other labs on this floor.”

A long and low creak sounds through the hall. Lockbox’s shoulders tense as she tries to tell herself that it’s just the old building. Pocket doesn’t seem to mind the noise as she walks into the next room. 

“This one,” Pocket says as she slowly looks around, considering, “is where they were developing a top secret super serum.”

“Or where they would analyze samples from the Mithril Sea,” Lockbox counters, looking at frozen vials of the substance. 

Faint screaming sounds above them. Pocket looks up in confusion.

“Should we check on them?” she asks. 

Lockbox shakes her helm. “They’re fine. Probably just scared themselves.” A quiet bang-bang-bang-bang follows, sounding like frantic knocking, and a few more indistinguishable yells. “Or they’re trying to scare the rest of us.”

Despite her dismissal, Lockbox will admit to herself that the screams and banging have placed her a bit on edge. Pocket nods at her reasoning and gets back to exploring the labs. 

The next three labs they visit each bring a new fantastical guess from the copilot, going from sparkeaters to time travel. Lockbox keeps guessing things that are more grounded in reality, often repeating previous guesses as it seems some research spread over multiple labs. Still, it’s fun going from one room to the next and seeing just what Pocket will come up with next. 

The tension in her shoulders has yet to leave, however, as she can’t seem to shake the unease that being down here gives her. The occasional noise from the storm, the building, or the others hitting walls do nothing to help in this regard. 

They’re in between labs when Lockbox hears a new sound that is neither from the storm nor the building. Plink-ding-ding-dingding. It comes from the hallway behind her, closer to the stairwell. It sounds almost like something small has fallen to the floor. 

Lockbox stops and turns around, but there’s nothing new to see. “Did you hear that?” she whispers to Pocket. 

“Hear what?” Pocket whispers back. 

Plink—plink-ding-ding-dingdingding. 

“Okay, I heard that one,” Pocket says, moving a step closer. 

Lockbox moves her light over the hallway. Nothing seems to be—.

She barely registers a blur to her left when something small and hard hits her in the middle of her forehelm. “Ow!” She grabs at where her helm is smarting and hisses. 

Pocket is by her side in an instant. “What was—?”

“BOO!”

They both scream, with Pocket also throwing her flashlight at the figure that had suddenly appeared in front of them. 

The flashlight spins as it sails through the air and hits Coil’s cheek.

“Ouch!” the seeker cries. “Ow! Okay, I deserve that, but ow!”

“Wh— Coil!” Lockbox yells reproachfully. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Coil dismisses, rubbing her cheek. “Sheesh, that’s a wicked throw you got there.”

“Um, thanks?” Pocket says, bending down to pick up her improvised weapon. 

“That wasn’t funny, Coil,” Lockbox scolds. 

“I thought it was funny,” Coil says with a shrug. 

“What did you even throw at me?”

The seeker proudly holds up what looks like an old pack of ener-gummies. “I found these! They’re hard as rocks.”

“You’re a rock.”

Pocket cocks her helm to the side. “So was it you who was scaring the other two?”

“Hm? Oh, no. No idea what’s got them yelling.”

Lockbox rubs at her optics. “We should probably go check on them.”

Coil, Pocket, and Lockbox stare at the closed door that had been open when they’d passed it earlier with Highbeam yelling for help on the other side of it. 

“I don’t want to know how this happened,” Lockbox decides. 

“I do,” Coil says, grinning. “I want to hold this over Highbeam for as long as I can.”

Pocket knocks on the door. “Pick? Highbeam?”

“Oh thank the stars!” Highbeam says in relief. “The door closed on us.”

“I can see that,” Coil teases. 

“Coil,” Highbeam says, “now is not the time—.”

“IT TURNED ON AGAIN!” Pick yells. 

“Slag it, why?!” Highbeam yells in response, sounding like he turned away from the door. 

Coil laughs. “Having fun, then?”

“We are not in the mood,” Pick seethes, “to deal with your scrap when we have been trapped in this room with the possessed radio from the fragging Pits! If you’re not going to help us get out of here then I don’t want to hear it!”

Coil reaches out and pushes the button to open the door. 

Surprisingly, this actually works. 

Highbeam and Pick’s shocked faces glance from Coil to where her servo is still hovering over the button. Coil tilts her helm to the side, a smirk slowly forming. 

“Don’t,” Highbeam softly pleads. 

Coil looks down on her trine mate. “It wasn’t even locked.”

Lockbox rubs at her temple. “So who wants to avoid Updraft and Livewire by playing cards in the heated storage room instead?”

After a round of mumbled agreements, the group heads up the stairs. Highbeam hesitates in the doorway and looks back inside towards the radio that had tormented them. 

A single spat of static is enough to get him hurrying to catch up with the rest. 

Minutes later, Jazz and Prowl carefully come out from the frosted vents. 

Prowl looks his mission partner over. “I did not realize you could wirelessly connect to the radio. Or play your own music through it.”

Jazz smiles and points at him with two finger guns, the radio behind him turning on with a few instrumental notes before a voice sings, “You got the touch!”

True to Wrangle’s word, the storm clears a week later. The seeker trine are out the hangar and dots amid the clouds before anyone else can properly comprehend the storm’s end. Those left on base help unload the rest of the cargo that the ship came to deliver and go over pre-flight checks and make sure that the hangar doors still work. 

No one notices the two figures that slide out from the vents and slip under the ship, open an access panel, and climb inside.

Chapter Text

An unexpected side effect of leading Livewire to thinking that he’d been stolen from is that he has moved many of his important things to the back of the long-term overhead storage, making what was already a tight fit even more of a squeeze. Prowl’s wing joints hate it and he is inclined to agree with them. 

Some of the more notable treasures (mostly because they are right next to his helm and he’s been staring at them for hours) is Livewire’s collection of audio dramas and audiobooks, each of them carefully labeled in neat glyphs and organized by series. He’s read every title thrice. Currently, he’s staring at a series of twelve tapes, sorely tempted to swipe them all. He recognizes that this isn’t something he would normally consider. He suspects that it’s a mix of spending months stealing from Decepticon stashes and his aching wing joints making him irritable that’s causing the theft to be so tempting. It wouldn’t even be for him, since Smokescreen was the one who enjoyed the Spark of Crystal series. 

There is also the fact that his brother had told him to bring back some souvenirs before he left. Prowl knows that it had been said in jest, but he also knows that Smokescreen and Bluestreak would both get a kick out of it if Prowl actually did bring something back. They often did when Prowl took their little quips seriously. 

And maybe it would partially make up for him being gone for far longer than he had originally thought he’d be. 

“Hey,” Jazz whispers so softly it almost gets lost in the normal sounds of the ship in flight. “What are you thinking so hard about?”

“Contemplating larceny,” Prowl replies just as softly. 

Jazz presses his lips together and ducks his helm down while his shoulders shake with held back laughter. His reaction emboldens Prowl to seriously think about the tapes in front of him. 

The sounds of the ship change, slowing down. His motion sensors report a slow one hundred and eighty degree turn as the ship lowers, then rocks as it lands. 

Running pedesteps rush down the hall towards the back of the ship from the cockpit. “Slaughter City!” Pocket cheers as she goes out. 

They stay still, listening to Livewire as he grumbles to himself and meanders his way to follow his copilot. 

A few minutes pass in silence. Jazz lets out a vent and starts moving things aside for their exit. 

After a moment of indecision, Prowl huffs and subspaces the twelve tapes. 

“How is it,” Prowl asks as they run around a corner of a hallway in a munitions factory in Blaster City, “that we can hide inside a small Decepticon base for months with the residents none the wiser, but we take one step in this massive facility and they already have the alarm blaring?”

Jazz throws a smoke bomb and a flash bang at the mechs behind them. “The art of stealth involves timing, blind spots, social engineering, and luck.” He flips over some railing to an automated assembly line that Prowl simply side vaults over. They run along the conveyor belt, Jazz bending over to scoop up a half made blaster pack as he does. “Sometimes you’re just unlucky.”

Prowl points up to the high ceiling to the overhead catwalks among the rafters. “Up there.”

Jazz nods and grabs hold of Prowl’s servo, the strange sensation of magnets engaging holding them together, then grabs a large chain as it moves up along a pulley. Once high enough, the magnets turn off and they drop to the nearest catwalk, continuing their run away from their pursuers. Prowl mentally adds magnet servos to the list of things that Jazz apparently has. A few turns gets them out of sight long enough for them to duck into the nearest vent. 

It’s almost nostalgic, crawling after Jazz in the enclosed space. 

“Is the grappling hook broken?” Prowl asks. 

“Nah,” Jazz says as he holds out his right servo and it transforms into the grapple and back. “Bouncer’s just not supposed to have it.”

Ah yes, “Bouncer”, the name for Jazz’s current identity. They had both put on disguises back in Slaughter City. Jazz, through a series of micro transformations and modifiable plating like three they had used on Prowl when he met Ricochet, changed into a neutral mech with predominately a dark, warm-toned purple with green accents and a dark orange visor. His audial horns now taper off to a dull point and point slightly back. 

Prowl’s disguise is more thrown together using things they had on hand. With Prowl’s three pieces of modifiable plating, and some extra ones from Jazz, they made it so his thighs, forearms, and doorwings are now blue and made his helm green with a purple chevron. A large green racing stripe hides his autobrand, along with the addition of the navy poncho he’d worn in Iacon, but with the hood down. Prowl named the new look “Batedor”. 

“But Bouncer does have magnet servos?” he asks. 

“Allegedly,” Jazz says. “They’ve never been able to confirm if he does or not.”

They move deeper into the depths of the factory. The alarm eventually shuts off but Prowl is under no illusion that the Decepticons have given up on their search for the neutral intruders. 

They come across an unguarded terminal in a small room that looks as though whoever had been in it dropped everything and left. The unknown occupant is likely not going to return anytime soon as those working here are trying to help find them. Which gives Prowl enough time to use the terminal to download a map of the factory and for Jazz to tap into the Decepticon’s comms. 

They relocate to a small empty hallway in the facility’s basement with a single custodian closet that otherwise leads to a dead end. It looks to be an area that’s rarely visited if the slight disrepair is anything to go by. Using their recently acquired intel, Prowl marks his new map to show where the Decepticons are and where they’re going. While a majority are actively searching, a good number have been posted near exits and along the factory’s perimeter, which will make leaving all the harder to accomplish. Unless…

“We need a distraction.” Prowl concludes. 

“Got it.” Jazz starts bringing out materials from his subspace or hidden on his person and assembling them together in what Prowl recognizes as the start of a bomb. “Hey Batedor, can you find us someone’s energon stash?”

Prowl rolls his optics at the suggestion, but starts an unenthusiastic search of the area regardless. “I am not some magic stash detector,” he tells Jazz as he checks behind the many loose wall panels. “The chances of me quickly locating—.” Prowl stops short and stares at his recent find. “You can not be serious,” he mutters. 

Jazz walks over and looks over Prowl’s shoulder. “Well look at that!” he says with a cackle. “Congrats Battle, you got magical powers after all!”

“It is Batedor,” Prowl corrects. He reaches into the wall and gives a cube to Jazz. He then subspaces the rest, more for the principle of the matter than any actual need. 

Jazz snickers at him while putting the final touches to his bomb by attaching the energon cube and the half made blaster pack to the deadly contraption. “Voilà! One distraction ready to go, and I know just the place for it.”

Later, Prowl waits near the west entrance, watching the four mechs guarding it from his spot behind a pallet of tank shells. Jazz sends him a short query? ping. He responds with a quick affirmative ping. He removes and subspaces the poncho, getting ready to move. 

A loud Boom! reverberates through the walls and shakes the building, causing the stored ammunition to rattle. Alarms blare and warning lights flash as a voice yells over the loudspeaker, “They’re in assembly! Catch them and contain the fire!”

The four guards hurry towards assembly. One of them, a two wheeler, transforms and races down the hallway with their greater maneuverability. Prowl moves around the crate, keeping the shells between him and the Decepticon guards, and closer to the open exit. As soon as the guards turn the corner, Prowl transforms and floors it, sailing out the factory and heading down the westward road. Behind him, two more explosions go off in quick succession, setting off more alarms and panicked orders. 

An engine roars behind him. Prowl adjusts his left rear view mirror to the side and up until he spots the shape of a purple and green racer flying down the service highway that runs parallel to the main road before it bridges up and over it to continue North. He watches as, instead of following the curve of the bridge, the mech that he is sure is Jazz heads straight for the railing. Right before he’s about to collide with the solid steel, Jazz transforms and flips over it with a joyful “Whoo!” He rolls into a somersault as he falls towards the main road, transforming back into alt mode and landing with a hard bounce before accelerating to catch up with Prowl. He laughs with unrestrained jubilation as he pulls up next to the Praxian. 

“Do all of your exits involve ill-advised jumps from things that should not be jumped off of?” Prowl asks, mildly curious.

“Only the fun ones!” Jazz answers brightly. 

After half a day's travel going west, Prowl and Jazz turn north for Peptex. Back in ancient times, the city-state was the center of a powerful king’s territory, and even after all this time and multiple wars, parts of the city’s protective wall are made of remains of that king’s massive fortress. Nowadays, the city-state serves as a fortified Decepticon port, using its position near the center of Decepticon territory and its superior access to the Rust Sea to take in and redistribute supplies and equipment. 

This also makes it the best place to find a boat. 

While Jazz scopes out the docks for a boat that will suit their needs, Prowl walks through the nearby market. It’s a crowded space filled with Neutrals and Decepticons alike. Vendors advertise their wares and haggle with customers, games of chance are played and bet on, and a heated disagreement gets physical. The crowd gives the fight a wide berth, but doesn’t give it much attention otherwise besides to heckle or casually bet on the outcome. On the opposite side of the street from the fight, Two mechs quietly talk to each other as items are covertly exchanged between them. Prowl pretends not to notice. 

Prowl adjusts his new visor that he traded a cube of stolen energon for. They’re a yellow-orange in color and similar in shape to Ricochet’s, just a bit thinner and not as opaque as Jazz’s many visors are. He got them mostly to help further distinguish “Batedor” from Prowl and obscure the color of his optics. 

He feels someone get too close to his back. He turns, drawing the energon dagger he’d been given in Iacon, and points it at the person intruding on his space. 

“Woah!” Jazz says, backing up a step with his servos up. “Easy Batedor, it’s just me.”

“Bouncer.” Prowl tucks the weapon back into its subspace. “Found one?”

“Sure have. Let’s get going before they decide to leave without us.”

The ship Jazz picked out is something he calls a Catamaran. It’s a double hulled boat with a covered helm station and a center mast with a triangular sail on the front and back that can be manned by a single mech but has room for more. It has the Decepticon insignia on the front sail as well as on the sides of the boat. The back of the ship has the boat’s name The Swordsman written in a fancy curled script. It looks to have been a civilian craft that’s been retrofitted for war with guns mounted to the side and front. Prowl wouldn’t be surprised if the engine had similarly been modified for better speed and performance. 

Jazz waves to the dockmaster, who waves back but doesn’t interact with them otherwise. 

“Did you bribe him?” Prowl asks under his breath. 

“Nah, tampered with the paperwork to make it look like we own this.” Jazz steps onto the boat and gestures to where it’s tied to the dock. “Untie us?”

Within minutes they have the boat untied, the engine on, and drifting away from the docks. Shouts and running pedes has Prowl looking back to the dock entrance. Three Decepticons run in their direction, yelling things like, “Stop!” and “Our ship!”

Jazz cackles as they immediately take off at high speeds, weaving past other boats and larger ships, leaving the dock, and the three panicking mechs, in a mist of sea spray, soon only small specs in the distance. 

“Ever thought you’d be a pirate, Battery?” Jazz asks. 

“Batedor,” Prowl corrects, “and no. I do not possess the skills to operate this sort of craft like how you do. Did you learn from your dock worker friend?”

Jazz shrugs, “Eh, kinda. Mostly learned how to navigate a shipyard from them. My nautical knowledge came from someone else. C’mere, I’ll show ya. Then we can be the most feared pirate duo this side of the Rust Sea!”

Just across the Rust Sea from Peptex, there’s a significant stretch of land between Vos and Tarn that neither polity has laid claim to. It’s too low for the seekers to trouble themselves with and lacking in any energon deposits for the mines of Tarn to really care. The terrain itself is craggy and difficult to work with as it is the area where the Lithium Plains transition to the Soaring Peaks. According to Jazz, many smugglers and neutral merchants use the area to move goods back and forth across the Rust Sea and between factions. 

Jazz navigates their stolen vessel into a partially hidden cove where Prowl meets Bowsprit. She’s a salty old sailor operating what Prowl would loosely call a “business” from the naturally fortified area. She gives Jazz unamused looks when he asks her to look after the ship for him and very colorfully asks him if he’s got a few screws loose for bringing her a Decepticon ship. 

“It’s fine, Bowsprit, really!” Jazz reassures. “Just sand off the serial numbers, get it new paint, and no one will know!”

“You’re full of Slag, Bouncer. I don’t put up with this much fragging scrap from anyone else.”

“Yeah, but you love me.”

“I tolerate you because you actually deliver your end of things.”

Jazz lays an arm on Prowl’s shoulder. “See? She loves me.”

Bowsprit scrutinizes Prowl. “Keep this slagger out of trouble, ya hear?”

Jazz sputters at that but Prowl ignores him. “I will try ma’am.”

“Good.”

“Really, Bowsprit?” Jazz asks, mock offended. “You just met, don’t even know his name yet, and you’ve already decided he’s more responsible than me?”

“You saying he isn’t?” she challenges.

After a brief negotiation, Jazz and Prowl get access to two land speeders, each towing a maglift holding a variety of crates. They just need to bring the speeders and their cargo to a mech on the other side of the Lithium Plains in Nova Cronum. They set out immediately, following the strip of unclaimed land between Vos and Tarn as it curves northwest for a day before they pass Nova Point, the most western part of Tarn, and head north. 

Here they ride out into the Lithium Plains proper. It’s arid and hot with coarse sand that would make it difficult to drive had they tried to travel without the land speeders. Mesas, land arches, and tall columns dot the land, providing shade for them to wait out the midday heat in. On the third day, they take refuge in the shade of a small arch near an old highway. 

Prowl stares at the highway, takes in its cracks and potholes and sections where it simply eroded away. There is evidence of past repair, but that too is also damaged. He wonders, if he follows the road where it heads northeast, how far the nearest rest station is. Wonders further how far the next station is from that one and how many stations would he count before he’s met with ruins. 

“Hey,” Jazz greets as he sits next to him. “You good?”

Prowl keeps looking forward. “I know this road.”

“Yeah?”

Prowl nods and points to where it leads to the southwest. “Going that way will take you to Nyon.” His servo moves, tracing the length of the road until he is pointing northeast. “Continuing in that direction will eventually get you to Praxus.”

“Ah.” 

They sit in silence for a while. Prowl keeps his gaze fixed on the road before them, not daring to look in the direction of his city. He knows that Praxus is many days of travel away, but an irrational part of him is afraid that he will look up and see the destruction that was left behind. That he’ll see the half melted rubble and the colorful crystal shards glint sorrowfully in the daylight. That he’ll catch a glimpse of the innocent mechs who perished with their city. 

“Do you miss it?” Jazz asks. 

Prowl tilts his helm, thinking about it. “There was plenty not to like about Praxus. When I joined the Autobots, it felt like I could not leave fast enough. I was quick to put the city behind me, thinking that if I ever went back, it would be too soon. There was no love lost between me and my city.”

He unsubspaces Bluestreak’s crystal shard, rubbing his thumb against its side. “But then, not going back had been my decision. It was a choice I made and one that may have changed if given enough time. 

“Then the Decepticons attacked and suddenly it was gone. Destroyed, completely and utterly. Standing amidst the rubble, all I could think about were the good things. The gardens I would go to for a moment of peace, the people I helped, the neighbors who helped me. I was surprised to find that, despite my grievances with the city, I was devastated at its destruction. I realized, while combing through what was left, that I can return to Praxus as many times as I want, rebuild it perfectly to the finest detail, but I will never be able to go back home.

“I do not miss the city itself,” Prowl admits, turning the crystal over, “but I do miss the home I had there and the innocent mechs that were a part of it.”

Jazz shifts, leaning to the side just enough to tap Prowl’s shoulder with his own. Prowl leans towards Jazz for a moment, giving silent appreciation for the gesture. 

When the worst of the heat passes and Prowl is getting his land speeder back up and running, Jazz pulls his up to Prowl’s side.

“I was gonna wait to give you this,” the secret agent says, reaching for his subspace, “but I think now is more appropriate.”

Prowl can only stare at what Jazz holds out to him. It’s large for what it is, just about palm sized with many facets and a stunningly vibrant green. Updraft’s trophy, the green Praxian Crystal that had brought up a deep rage in Prowl when he first saw it all those months ago. 

“You—,” Prowl starts, servo hovering over the crystal’s surface. “How did you—?”

Jazz smiles. “Updraft tried hiding it in the ceiling above his berth.”

Prowl carefully picks up the crystal with both servos. “That was extremely risky. Why take it?”

Jazz leans forward on his speeder, crossing his arms over the handles, and shrugs one shoulder. “I wasn’t about to let him keep it. Didn’t belong to him anyhow.”

Something constricts around Prowl’s spark as he blinks away the sudden excess of optic fluid. He holds the crystal closer to himself. “Thank you,” he says in a coarse whisper. 

Jazz’s smile turns small, almost melancholic. “Of course.”

Days later finally brings them to Nova Cronum. They deliver the goods and the speeders like they promised Bowsprit and head into the Autobot controlled city. Prowl feels parts of his back relax that he hadn’t even realized were tensed. Jazz leads them to an old apartment where they change out of their neutral disguises. Jazz switches into Stepper and starts calling Prowl by the name Pantera again. From there, it’s a simple train ride to Iacon and taking the roundabout way to the Palace of Lower Iacon. 

It’s an odd sight to see, the old apartment with its stains and the rug with a single wrinkle. Jazz takes back about half of the things he’d originally given to Prowl, mostly the weapons except for the dagger, and tells him to keep the rest. The reason he gives for his decision being that they’re still good tools to have on hand. Then Jazz, now looking like himself once again, leads Prowl to the back entrance of Autobot High Command. 

Jazz knocks on the door. “Hey Red, mind letting us in? Or do I have to get creative?”

A small speaker by the door crackles to life. “You can take your ‘creative’ and shove it down to the Pits, Jazz. Figment? Really?”

Jazz laughs. “Ah, c’mon, don’t be like that! It was clever!”

“It was one step short of being a pun,” the mech that Prowl assumes is Red refutes. “Now prove your identity so I can get Prowl to change his username and password.”

“Can’t give the current security codes, on account of being gone, but I can give the ones that were being used when I left.”

“No, those can be stolen. Tell me something only you would.”

“Something uniquely Jazz? Alright, easy.” Jazz places his servos on his hips and smiles at a section of the wall. Prowl thinks that’s where the camera may be. “When a blizzard kept us trapped inside a Decepticon base, I became a poltergeist.”

There’s a pause from the other mech. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

“He did,” Prowl answers. 

Red makes the most put upon sounding sigh. “Of course he did. Okay, fine, come in, go through security, do your debrief, then bring Prowl over so I can update his credentials and his login.”

It’s the part about credentials that makes Prowl connect a few things. He looks at Jazz as they walk in and asks, “Did you tell me all those things as Stepper on the chance that I may need to be moved into your department for my own safety?”

Jazz shrugs. “If Hardtack didn’t want a smart mech working for him, that’s his loss.”

They go through an extensive security screening and debrief with a mech who says to call her Blackout. Her plating is a mix of black, dark blues and purples, and dark greys. Prowl is given a pad to upload his intel and suggested plans onto as Jazz starts the verbal report.

“To start,” Jazz begins, “Prowler here figured out the deal with Stepper, Marshal, and Ricochet.”

“Is that so?” Blackout asks, turning her sharp gaze to Prowl. “How’d that happen?”

Prowl glances at Jazz, who gives a tiny nod. Looking back to Blackout, she seems faintly amused by Prowl’s caution. “They all share the same face. I was very suspicious after meeting Jazz, but only confirmed it later after further interactions with him.”

Jazz then takes over again to summarize what happened on their mission, leaving out several details as they are either not mission critical or simply treading on things that are personal. Prowl follows his lead on what to leave out when he is looked to for further details. 

By the end, Blackout taps the desk in thought, looking between the two of them. “My turn then. Plenty has happened here while you were on mission. Jazz, officially you were listed as injured and in recovery to cover for your absence. Prowl, you were reported as Missing In Action and you will remain so until you return to Main Operating Base Tango for your own safety. We had sent an agent to investigate Major Hardtack. He was found unfit for duty and removed from base. 

“In the time between then and now, one of your senior colleagues, Highdive, was made the new director of the tactical department. They have made sure to state on record that should you return, they want you to be appointed as their vice director. Congratulations Captain Prowl, you’ve been promoted.”

Prowl blinks at the news. That is a significant move up from Junior Tactician. 

Jazz nudges his arm. “Hey, congrats mech! It’s not as cool working with us,” he teases, “but congrats.”

“Thank you,” Prowl says to them both. “I will do my best.”

Blackout inclines her helm. “Of that, I have no doubt Captain. Now, there’s a few things I need to discuss with agent Jazz and I believe Red Alert wants to meet with you. Just head back towards security and he’ll find you.”

Prowl recognizes the dismissal for what it is. He nods to Blackout and gets up to leave. 

“And Prowl?” Blackout says when he’s half out the door. He looks back to where she is now looking at him with open amusement. “Be sure to keep those brothers off yours in line, m’kay?”

Prowl is about to ask ‘What did they do now?’ when her wording registers. “Brothers, plural?”

She gives him a knowing smile and no explanation as she once again directs him to see Red Alert. 

It’s during his meeting with Red Alert, between updating credentials, his login, and being informed of a mandatory cyber security training, that Prowl learns of Bluestreak and Smokescreen adopting each other and of the outstanding adoption between Bluestreak and himself that only needs his documented consent to finalize. Prowl already sees Bluestreak as kin, but to have documented proof that he feels the same is spark warming. 

When he is released from Red Alert’s thorough checks and updates to his profile, Jazz is waiting for him in the hallway. 

“Good news my mech,” Jazz says as he walks up to Prowl’s side, “we don’t have to say goodbye just yet because I get to take you home.”

“Is there a reason for that?” Prowl asks. 

“Well,” Jazz starts as he leads Prowl through High Command, “officially, I’m escorting you back because of concerns for your safety, what with the thing about Hardtack wanting you dead. Plus, there’s a mech at your base who’s being transferred here, so I can pick them up after I get you back safe. Unofficially, I want to spend a few more hours with my friend.”

“We are friends?”

“Well, yeah. At least I think so.”

“Oh,” Prowl says. It’s not often he makes a new friend, even less so that said bot grants their friendship so casually. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, Prowler.”

Jazz brings the small aircraft down gently. He feels just as strange seeing M.O.B. Tango as he did seeing the Palace of Lower Iacon again. They land at the hangar next to the field that serves as the training grounds. There’s a good-sized crowd gathered on the field in a semi-organized manner. They’re not training and he can’t see anyone roughhousing, so they’re not organizing any games. Curiosity piqued, Prowl walks towards them with Jazz not far behind. 

Prowl approaches the crowd from the side and can see that in front of them are two mechs next to a small table with a framed holostill on top. He can see the crowds' more serious expressions as he gets closer and then registers that the two in front are Smokescreen and Bluestreak. 

Smokescreen is in the middle of addressing the crowd. “—is an acknowledgement of love rather than an admission of loss. While we still believe that he’s alive, that doesn’t mean he isn’t lost to us in some capacity.”

Prowl slows to a stop. The holostill is a close-up of him. This is…

Jazz whistles softly next to him. “Wow. First op and already got your own funeral.”

A funeral. Prowl knows that after a certain length of time, mechs who are reported as MIA can have funerals given to them. It is a way to provide closure to the friends and family of the missing mech. Prowl saw the date on his MIA, he does some quick mental math and… yes, Prowl has been gone for about a week longer than the minimum amount of time given for funeral rights to be provided. 

Bluestreak shifts his stance and looks up from the ground to perform a quick sweep of the area, something he does when he stands in wide open areas for too long. His optics sweep over the crowd and glance to the side where they briefly move over Prowl. Bluestreak then realizes what he just saw and does a double take, optics wide and mouth falling open slightly. 

His younger brother quickly gets over his shock. “Prowl!” he yells, interrupting Smokescreen, and takes off at a dead run. 

Prowl barely registers Jazz taking a step back before he is almost knocked over by an armful of sobbing Praxian. Bluestreak clings to him with both his arms and his legs. Prowl just barely regains his footing when he is run into on his side by Smokescreen and has to scramble to keep the three of them from toppling over. 

Prowl is half aware of the crowd as they fan out around them and their mutterings of, “Prowl?”, “Prowl’s back!”, and “Is that really him?”. He even hears Sideswipe whisper, “Dude, we just made bank,” to Sunstreaker. 

Before Prowl can try and decipher that, Bluestreak’s muffled voice declares, “You aren’t allowed to go on any secret missions ever again,” from where he’s tucked his face into Prowl’s shoulder. “I don’t care if I have to fight the Prime himself, you’re not going.”

“Seriously,” Smokescreen says from where he’s hugging them both on the side, “what were you doing that made you so late?”

Prowl gives Smokescreen an incredulous look. “What was I doing? The mech I debriefed with in Iacon told me to keep my brothers in line. What have you two been doing?”

“Mmmm,” Smokescreen hums as he puts his helm down on Prowl’s other shoulder. “Details later. Hugs now.”

Prowl huffs, but ducks his helm and returns the two hugs in earnest. 

“By the way,” Prowl says much later, “I did get you two some souvenirs.”

Smokescreen lets out a surprised laugh while Bluestreak has trouble keeping himself still with the force of his glee.