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Ratchet’s reputation among the Autobots was extremely well-known.
He had undoubtedly earned his position as Chief Medical Officer through prodigious skill and knowledge, and deserved all the respect that entailed- but in practice, he was more known for his fearsome personality. The war had had significant effects on the psychology of every combatant, and of course a position of vulnerability such as allowing medical treatment was a much more emotionally fraught thing than it used to be. It wasn’t uncommon for a mech to have to be ordered into medbay for anything less than life-threatening injuries.
Normally, Prowl was one of the ones who ordered reluctant patients to submit to treatment. Keeping the Autobots in good repair and having accurate records of vital statistics was undoubtedly a beneficial thing. Knowledge of troop and officer health allowed for more accurate planning. It was simple logic.
However, normally there were not such significant secrets that even the most superficial scan would threaten.
Prowl was sitting behind his desk in his office, frowning down at the datapads that seemed to have multiplied tremendously since the last time he had looked at them. Obviously, it would have been more efficient to consolidate all of the information onto a single pad, as even the documentation it took to run a war effort wasn’t enough to fill the memory banks of just one of the devices. In practice, though, the varying levels of clearance governing each report and requisition form would have made data management even more of a mess than it already was if he attempted to restrict it in that way. That was not even mentioning how much of a security risk having all useful knowledge in one place would be; with mechs like Soundwave on the enemy side, there was no such thing as being too careful with information security.
Even if it meant that his workspace was more datapad screen than the visible surface of his desk.
“Starting your own archive, Prowler?”
Prowl leapt into tension, battle protocols onlining all at once at the unexpected voice behind him. His acid rifle was too big to maneuver in such cramped conditions, but he had a blaster in his servo and aimed at the source of the noise before his linguistic center had even processed the meaning of the glyphs.
Jazz grinned broadly, the utilitarian light of the office glinting off of his fangs. He tilted his helm, lilting, “Bit jumpy, mech?”
With a scowl, Prowl subspaced the blaster, manually deactivating his battle protocols and cycling down his systems. It wasn’t the first time that the demon had appeared without warning in locations that should have been secure against his intrusion, and it would likely not be the last. Though it was still unsettling that someone so dangerous had such free access to one of the most secure rooms in the Autobot Headquarters, making that disquiet obvious would help nothing. It was clear Jazz already knew of and enjoyed the effect of his surprise appearances, and giving him more to hold over Prowl wasn’t the best idea.
Doorwings fluttering in an instinctual attempt to find Jazz on sensors that could not detect him, Prowl straightened and recomposed himself. He allowed himself to catalogue the demon’s appearance, taking note of places where his paint was scuffed or missing entirely, the nanites unable to replace lost population just yet. There were two parallel scratches carved along the shape of one pauldron, not deep enough to pierce energon lines, but visibly the silver of bare, wounded metal.
Jazz caught him looking and his grin went a little wry. “Even I gotta admit there’s places where it’s tough for a bot of my size class to fit,” he said, elaborating while explaining exactly nothing. “But I got the download you asked for!” He flicked a clawed servo, a dataslug held flashily between two digits.
Prowl moved to take it, thoughts already priming for analysis of several plans that might be altered by the contents of the slug, when his office door pinged. He had no appointments on his schedule, and those that would call upon him outside of one were few and far between. In fact, it was almost always another member of High Command, as was likely the case in this moment, too. He stilled, just for a nanoklick, and then turned to face the doorway and sent the responding ping to let the visitor inside.
Ratchet swept inside with the presence of a mech twice his size, glowering and broadly projecting impatience in his EM field. Without even a hint of buildup, he ordered, “Get Sideswipe into my medbay before his broken arm heals misaligned and I have to replace the whole fragging limb! Why those idiot twins think they can still get one over on me, I have no idea! It’s not like the whole base can hear the grinding when he lifts anything above his hip- oh wait that’s exactly what’s happening.”
Behind Prowl, there was the faintest amused exvent, barely audible over the ambient background hum of the inside of a building. With the intensity of a hunting turbohound, Ratchet turned to Jazz, pointing one accusatory digit toward him and jabbing the air between them harshly. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed you haven’t shown up for as much as even a scan! I don’t care what hole Prowl dug you out of- if you’re going to be one of us you’re going to accept proper healthcare, so help me Primus…”
Prowl couldn’t help but stiffen just slightly, though he kept his EM field carefully contained. There was no possible scenario in which Jazz would not be revealed as a demon by even a cursory medical examination. Even the fuel in his lines was a dead giveaway. Prowl was perfectly aware of the public opinion on demons, among those who were even aware they were more than a myth. Exposure of Jazz’s species would not only destroy all trust the Autobots had in him as an operative, but it would ruin Prowl’s reputation too, as someone so closely associated with him. With Prowl so imperative to Autobot victory, such losses would be completely untenable.
While all this was racing through Prowl’s processor, Jazz shifted his weight onto one pede, cocking out a hip. “Of course, mech,” he agreed easily. “I’ll head over as soon as I’ve got a spare breem or two.”
Ratchet’s biolights pulsed irritation. “I know a lie when I hear one,” he grumbled. “You’re going to try to squirm your way out of it again.” His optics alit on the scratches through Jazz’s pauldron, and something settled in his field that immediately set off alerts in Prowl’s systems. With a few quick strides, Ratchet crossed the room and put heavy servos on Jazz’s opposite shoulder, physically shoving him toward the office door. “Well, enough. I’ll walk you there myself.”
Prowl stilled, knowing the demon wouldn’t take kindly to that kind of mechhandling. A prediction of claws or a blade tearing through the medic’s plating flashed through his simulation systems, and he automatically began to scramble for plans to alleviate the fallout of an attack on Autobot High Command by one of their own.
But Jazz only tensed for a moment, expression unreadable, before he visibly let himself relax, the faint twitch of his doorwings the only hint at his true thoughts. “You don’t gotta do that,” he cajoled, shifting and fidgeting under the grasp. “I really just haven’t had the time. In fact, I was in the middle of a report just now- should get back to that before-”
“You can report afterward,” Ratchet replied, no nonsense. Before Prowl could formulate a reason to stop him, the medic had pushed Jazz out into the hallway, beginning the short path from Prowl’s office to the medbay. What had been convenient access in the case Prowl crashed while working now hindered him, as there was very little distance to cross at all.
Prowl hurried out after the pair, clearing his vocalizer. “There’s no need for this, Ratchet,” he began. “I have been assured Jazz has had perfectly adequate medical care when he requires it-”
Not halting his march, Ratchet cast a dark look over one shoulder. “If someone claimed they had “perfectly adequate” tactical support without consulting you, would you take their word for it?”
Well, no, of course not, but Prowl refused to admit that aloud, reaching for a reason Ratchet would accept before this went too far.
All too soon, they crossed the threshold into the medbay, and the door slid shut behind them with an ominous near-silent hiss of mechanisms. Prowl felt real alarm begin to thread through his systems as the trap began to close around them, every bit of processing power he could spare working through the crisis in tacnet.
It was only because he was already desperately taking in every bit of information he could that he saw the way that Jazz’s artificially casual frame language shifted just slightly in quality. He noted the briefest pause in the demon’s motion, and the way his audial horns both flicked just a touch to one side. Something had caught Jazz’s attention.
Following the projected direction of Jazz’s sensors, Prowl looked up just in time to see First Aid, Ratchet’s chief assistant, poke his helm out of the staff room off to one side of the medbay. It was always more difficult to read the expressions of mechs that had both facemasks and visors, and the white and red medic was no exception, but something in the set of his posture betrayed surprise. In the next moment, his EM field vanished inward abruptly, gone from polite, casual inattention into something closed-off entirely.
Prowl felt his optics narrow. Something was happening here.
Ratchet, evidently having noticed none of this, was shoving Jazz toward a medical berth. “Sit, and I’m going to fill those scratches, and anything else you’re trying to keep hidden. And then you’re going to let me get baseline readings, because you don’t want me making guesses if you end up on my table in critical condition.”
Jazz ducked around and away from the CMO as he turned toward the supply shelf, not even making a pretense of obeying the command. He backed up toward the door, coincidentally stepping right next to Prowl. “I really don’t think this is necessary, Ratchet-”
“Did you graduate from the Academy of Science and Technology when I wasn’t looking? How many doctorates do you have, hm?”
As Jazz opened his intake to respond, there was a clicking static hum as First Aid reset his vocalizer, drawing the attention of the other three mechs in the room. Fidgeting a little under the focus of three sets of optics, he said, “I can handle this one for you, Ratchet.” When the other medic said nothing in immediate response, he added, “He’s doing stealth missions, right? If infosec is a concern like I think it is, then you know I’m good for keeping secrets.”
Only because they were so close could Prowl feel the spasm of Jazz’s EM field, though even then he could not read the emotion projected.
Interestingly, Ratchet, too, had stilled. He was almost always frowning, as he was now, but his optical ridges drew close, wrinkling the mesh between them. “How altruistic of you,” he deadpanned, suspicion in his own loosely held field.
First Aid tilted his helm upward just slightly, giving the impression of lightly challenging optic contact with his superior officer. “Just doing my best by the patients,” he replied mildly.
Ratchet looked from his assistant to Jazz, calculation plain on his face. He exvented heavily, raising one servo to his faceplate. “In that case, then… [leave/begone/depart.]”
It took Prowl a few nanoklicks to parse the suddenly spoken Primal Vernacular, let alone comprehend the glyphs. In that time, the other two bots in the room had jerked into motion, First Aid ducking back into the staff room as if shoved, and Jazz darting through the door into the hallway before it even fully opened.
Jazz froze in place, and Prowl felt himself mimicking him the moment he understood what had happened. A demon didn’t have to obey Primal Vernacular spoken by anyone other than their contractor, but the way he understood it was that the ancient language held a touch of compulsion to obey that took focus to reject. The fact that Jazz had instinctively moved in response to a glyph that few mechs even understood anymore had just given him away. There was no reason for Ratchet to have spoken the command unless he knew exactly what it meant.
… But First Aid had reacted too. Did that mean-
Ratchet exvented again, casting his gaze upward to the Unmaker. “I take it back, uh, [cancel/undo/rescind.] Get back in here, both of you.”
Jazz crept back inside, frame language no longer deceptively easy, but instead carrying that same hint of predatory focus and threat that had accompanied his initial summoning. With a brush of a servo, he locked the medbay door behind him, gaze trained unerringly on Ratchet.
First Aid stepped into the main medbay too, but Prowl could teek exasperation in his suddenly unconstrained field rather than any kind of alarm. “If you wanted to calm things down this was not the way to do it, Ratchet!”
Ratchet flapped a dismissive servo, saying, “Dancing around the subject would take too long. Now everybody’s got the idea and we can get things straightened out.” He turned to face the others, looking from Jazz to Prowl and back. “Prowl’s your contractor, I assume? Are you embodied permanently, or re-summoned as needed?”
Prowl felt his helm begin to heat as several variables had to be reassigned or restructured entirely. Ratchet knew Jazz was a demon- First Aid was almost certainly a demon too- if even officers among Autobot High Command other than himself were summoning demons, then that meant-
Voice perfectly steady, Jazz replied, “Permanent, ‘s far as I’m aware.”
Ratchet nodded, optics moving from side to side in the way that signified making a note on internal records. “Do you have consistent access to sacrifice? I’ve got a supplier for dark energon if you need it, but if you’ve got alternate arrangements I’d rather not draw any more attention to it.”
Jazz glanced over his shoulder, meeting Prowl’s almost unseeing optics as the other remained focused on untangling the errors that threatened to choke his processor. “I’m all set,” he said shortly, and did not elaborate.
Ratchet nodded again. “Right. Well, of course your care’s not going to be like most patients, but your species is no excuse for refusing you treatment. I’d also still like to get your baseline vitals- I can keep them in the same encryption I have for First Aid’s, if that’s alright with you.”
Dryly, Jazz asked, “Isn’t it wasting supplies to use them on a demon? I burn a little timer and I’m good as new, no need to use anything else up at all.”
The familiar scowl made another appearance on Ratchet’s faceplate. “Just because you can heal on your own doesn’t mean you have to.”
First Aid chuckled a little. “Good luck convincing him otherwise- I’ve been trying for vorn now.” He sobered slightly, meeting Jazz’s gaze head on. “I’d also like to apologize. I think trying to cover for you ended up giving you away.”
Demons had some way of recognizing one another that a normal mech could not sense, Prowl realized. One point of data was not a trend, but the fact that they had both immediately attempted to keep the other secret had implications that strained his systems further. How many demons did he pass orn to orn without realizing, who might know exactly what Jazz was and where he must have come from? How many uncontrolled vectors of information were now out there, and how likely were they to hinder Prowl’s plans moving forward?
Jazz tilted his helm and a fanged grin spread across his faceplate. “Gotta say, I’ve never met a demon so bad at lying before,” he laughed. “’S kinda embarrassing, mech.”
The white and red bot bristled. “I’m out of practice! Not many contractors summon demon healers of all things!”
Prowl suddenly became aware his fans were running full blast and had been for some time. A familiar, dire warning appeared on his HUD, telling him that he had been at a redline temperature for long enough that he was about to enter emergency stasis. “Ratchet-” he managed.
From the periphery of his visual feed, he saw the CMO look up in alarm. “Damn it, Prowl,” he swore, reaching with unerring familiarity for the primary medical port at the back of Prowl’s neck. “Warn me before you crash yourself- we’ve been over this-”
Prowl heard nothing more as his conscious systems all shut down, and he fell into the crash.