Chapter Text
Jazz slumped into Bebop's bay. It took him a hot minute to disentangle himself from the mech's neural architecture, to remember that he was human piloting metal, flesh and blood, not metal and glass.
He finally opened his eyes to Bebop's cab. Jazz scrambled up and out of the piloting harness, running through the most minimal shutdown he could before he made a break for the airlock. The (relatively) fresh air of the hangar greeted him and Jazz sucked in a deep, oil scented breath.
Jazz ran out to the side of the scaffolding.
"How is he?" Jazz shouted down at his crew.
"He's fine; Sparkplug and Spike have him," Chip shouted back as he rolled his wheelchair up to Bebop's feet.
"There's a whole lot of hollerin' for him to be 'fine,' Chip!" Jazz yelled. There was a lot of racket coming from Proto-1's bay.
"I'm not going to yell updates up to you like a princess in a tower, Jazz!" Chip shouted.
"Fine!" Jazz yelled, throwing up his hands. He scrambled down the scaffolding stairs two at a time.
But as soon as he came down the last step Chip rolled over and pulled on his hips until the man could bully Jazz into a hug. Jazz sank awkwardly down into his crew chief's embrace.
"I'm so glad you're alright," Chip whispered to him. "We were all so worried when you and Bebop just disappeared through that portal—"
"Hey, you know I'm a scrappy one," Jazz murmured back. "I was just going to give 'em a what for, that's all. Show 'em what Earth is truly made of."
Chip laughed, though it was somewhat wet. "If anyone could singlehandedly stop an alien invasion, it would be you, Jazz. Well, you or Orion."
"Speakin' of, I gotta go check on him," Jazz said reluctantly as he pulled back. "He took a nasty tumble out there, Chip."
"I know—we were warned," Chip said, pulling himself back together. He rolled back slightly, sniffed and discretely wiped at his eyes and Jazz pretended not to see. "Spike is in my earpiece, giving me updates—oh, shit. Incoming..."
Jazz glanced over his shoulder. General Silas and his aides (and some armed grunts) were rumbling to a stop in a jeep a short distance away.
"Why isn't this mech or pilot in quarantine?" one of the aides snapped.
"Wha—" Jazz started to protest.
"The containment procedures, god, does no one read," the aide shouted. "We're going to have to quarantine this whole crew, the entire hangar—"
"Relax, Perry," the General said. "We haven't had any issues with pathogens from the kaiju until now, I doubt we need to inconvenience the teams unnecessarily. I'm sure it's nothing that a good scrub down won't fix."
"Sir!" the aide protested, but the General gave him a sharp look and he subsided. The aide turned to Chip. "You heard the General, we need this mech to be decontaminated stat."
"Ah, right," Chip murmured, and he wheeled his chair away towards Bebop, directing the technicians into starting the cleaning procedures. Jazz started towards the crew (he wanted to catch up with them all, wanted to reassure himself that Orion really was alright, wanted to solidify himself in his squishy body with some manual labor) but the aide held out a hand in front of Jazz.
"Lieutenant, right this way," the aide said, putting his hand on one of Jazz's shoulders to spin him around.
The firm hand on his shoulder steered him towards the jeep.
"What, where are we—"
"Debrief, son," General Silas said, his voice full of paternalistic warmth that sent a shiver of unease up Jazz's spine. "I'm sure you have quite the story to tell."
The soldiers with guns stood ready at attention around them. They had started to look less like guards for the General and more like wardens for Jazz.
Jazz slid into the backseat, bracketed by men with guns. The aide sat in the far back, the General in the front. One of the aides behind the wheel turned the key in the ignition and the jeep rumbled to life. They passed by Proto-1's bay on the way out of the hangar. Jazz caught the barest glimpse of Orion on the scaffolding by his mech's chest, supported between Sparkplug and Spike. And then they were out of sight.
Jazz was shuffled off into a decontamination shower, which was one of his worst nightmares. The smell of the harsh shampoo and body wash had him internally groaning; he was going to have to moisturize like mad after this. There was nothing for it. He was going to have to grin and bear it.
It took goddamn forever.
The pushy aide stuck his head in once or twice to check on his progress. Finally Jazz snapped at him, "I'm gonna need at least another minute, man. I can't let any of this shit stay in my dreads."
Thoroughly scrubbed and damp, Jazz was given a generic pilot jumpsuit to change into and shuffled off to a blank walled interior room. There was a stereotypical mirrored wall on one side and Jazz wondered who was behind it. He ignored it as he rolled his damp dreadlocks against his scalp. He had kept a hold of one of the shitty towels from the shower, despite the aide eying it skeptically (he needed it to dry out his hair, damn it, not because he was going to towel whip the general, or whatever the aide thought he was going to do with it). If they were going to rush him towards some high level debrief right after decontam then they would just have to deal with the consequences.
And some debrief it was: the General himself walked in a few minutes after Jazz had settled in the uncomfortable metal chair.
"Lieutenant Jasper," General Silas greeted him like they hadn't shared a jeep ride over to this building. "We are all very glad to have recovered you."
Jazz hummed noncommittally, still rolling his dreadlocks (he was only half done) as he regarded the General. As far as he could tell the Org hadn't done shit to actually recover him except pick him up after he'd rescued himself (with the help of a particular robo-alien).
"So," General Silas started, sitting down opposite Jazz and crossing his legs nonchalantly. His aide took the other seat and readied a tablet for note taking. "Lieutenant Jasper. You managed to go through a kaiju portal."
"Yep." Jazz popped the plosive.
"Any idea how?"
"Nope!" Jazz popped the plosive again cheerfully, still rolling dreads between his palms.
The General cleared his throat, shifting somewhat uncomfortably in his seat. "I'm sure you're aware of the vital strategic importance of this event, Lieutenant."
"Understanding the importance doesn't change my understanding of the event, General," Jazz supplied back.
General Silas leaned in. "I'll be frank, Lieutenant. The game has changed if we can send mechs through the portals. We need to understand what you did that allowed you to go through one."
"And I'm telling you, General, I dunno what we did that was different from all the other mechs before," Jazz said. He shrugged, though the motion was awkward with his head tilted and his hands busy with his hair. "We just—stepped through."
"'We?'" The aide asked, skepticism underlining the word.
"Me'n'Bebop," Jazz said, casual.
"'Bebop?'" The aide asked, the skepticism in his voice increasing.
"You gonna just keep repeating what I say with a question, or...?"
"'Bebop' is his name for the mech he pilots," General Silas said impatiently, leaning back in his chair.
"The mechs already have serial numbers," the aide said.
"They fight the kaiju alongside us," Jazz said the well worn pilot line in response to this kind of dismissal of pilot culture from command. "They deserve their own names, their own callsigns."
"The pilots' well known insistence on anthropomorphization of the mechs aside," the General said, waving dismissaly, "We need to find out what you did differently, Lieutenant."
And so passed an excruciating hour where every single second of the last few days were dissected and examined, from what Jazz ate the morning of the mission, to what he was thinking about when he stepped through the portal. Eventually Jazz finished with his dreads and he started experimenting with towel origami animals in his lap. The questions were not very engaging so he needed something to preoccupy his hands.
General Silas sighed after the thousandth question about an obscure system's status during the fight when Jazz had stepped through the portal. "I doubt that this will truly matter. We will just have to experiment with the next portal."
Jazz fought his instinct to stiffen. "You're gonna try for a repeat?"
"Of course," General Silas said. "Like I said, the game has changed. Now, tell me about what was on the other side."
And Jazz, playing the part of a dumb grunt, didn't press. He described the fight on the other side, and his initial encounter with Prowl. He kept the details vague, didn't tell them his nickname for Prowl nor their attempts to communicate, deflected with humor when he could.
It was fucking exhausting.
The General became lightning focused on the capabilities of the robo-aliens, for some reason, and so Jazz had to fight to keep his answers as unhelpfully vague as he could. He wasn't going to betray Prowl or the other robo-aliens, not if he could help it, because they had risked their lives to help him.
And also General Silas was weird as fuck about them.
"And Black-and-white," the bullshit name that Jazz had given Prowl, "he had an external gun, that shot acid? Did you see the method of deployment? Pellets, or a stream? The method of firing?"
"I didn't pay that much attention to it, nah," Jazz said, leaning back further in his chair. He'd put his boots up on the table a long while ago, ignoring the disapproving look he'd gotten from the aide.
"You didn't pay attention to much, did you?" The aide snapped.
"Well, whenever I saw it we were kinda in the middle of a firefight, so you might say I was a little busy," Jazz said snidely.
"Still, Perry has a point," the General said. He sounded mildly frustrated. "You should be expected to have more situational awareness of a potential enemy..."
"They weren't my enemy, General," Jazz said, as mild and innocuous as he could.
"How do you know that?" General Silas said. "They could have been."
"They fought the kaiju with me," Jazz replied. "Enemy of my enemy and all that."
"They're aliens," the General said. "Could be that they showed you... a curated view. A set up."
"Nah," Jazz said, blase. "I was just with the one for most of it. We got ambushed by kaiju for fucks sake. They treated him the same as me, and we treated them the same. As a threat."
The debrief got a little circular after that, and Jazz endured and deflected and played dumb like a goddamn champ.
A goddamn champ who desperately needed a drink.
Jazz found Orion standing on the bay floor staring up at his mech.
He was entirely absorbed in his appraisal of his massive mech, so Jazz took the opportunity that was given to him. Jazz crept along tool chests and under work benches. He worked his way carefully and methodically. He startled Carly into yelping when she turned to see him crouched behind her swivel chair.
Jazz held a finger up over his lips, shushing her silently. She rolled her eyes at his antics. "Glad you're back, you maniac," she whispered at him.
He demurred with a flap with one hand and covered a coyish performative blush with the other. She pushed him along, out of the way of her tool chest. He continued on.
Orion's broad back was straight ahead now, his long black plait of hair trailing in a straight line down his back. Jazz crept up behind him on silent feet (crouched in half and stepping toe heel).
"Take me to your leader," Jazz intoned in his best nasally stereotypical 'alien' voice, even though he now knew just how wrong that was. Real aliens (the ones that would talk to humans anyway) didn't sound like that at all, more like a droning synth. Once they got the pronunciation down.
Orion straightened slightly, which for Orion was jumping and shouting in surprise. "You just got debriefed by my leader," Orion said mildly. "You really want me to take you back so soon?"
Jazz huffed, standing up by Orion's side.
"C'mon," he said, clapping his Captain on the shoulder and bringing the big guy in for a side hug. Orion rocked with the motion and brought his own arm up around Jazz's shoulders. "You could use some alcohol."
"I don't drink," Orion reminded him, a faint trace of humor threading through his well worn words. He hadn't stopped staring up at the impassive blank mask that made up the face of Proto-1. The normally bright blue optics on the mech were cold and dark, the big mech hanging limp in its (his) dedicated bay. It (he) looked like a puppet hung up on a shelf. It looked... uncomfortable.
"Then you can watch me drink," Jazz said his line brightly, with all the false joy he could muster. He clapped Orion on his shoulder. "C'mon, man, I deserve it, after the day I've had."
Orion hummed. "Ratchet's not gonna like it," he predicted (most likely accurately), giving Jazz a patented-Orion-side-eye over his fabric mask. His warm brown eyes were full of mirth though.
"Ratchet can sit on it and spin. I just dealt with the higher ups for four hours, I deserve a drink. He'll understand."
They walked out of base in companionable silence. It was thankfully a short walk to Elita's; gasoline was reserved for official business. Plus it felt nice to walk in his own skin, to become one with his fleshy body for a while. Jazz reflected that spending so long connected with Bebop had messed with him, somewhat. He kept expecting his ankles to bend in impossible ways, to be missing a finger on his hands.
Combined with the debrief, that all summed up to make a drink top priority.
So he walked with Orion as the setting sun lit the atmosphere in vibrant oranges and pinks and reds.
"You always get the best sunsets in parking lots," Jazz mused, looking out at the fabulous sky over a crumbling swath of asphalt.
Orion paused and hummed. "That's because they're big open places where you can see the sky. That's what I really miss about the west. The open space to watch the setting sun. Sometimes the trees feel... claustrophobic."
"I dunno," Jazz replied. "I always felt exposed on the plains. Don't feel right, being able to see to the horizon in every direction." He glanced up at Orion. "Feels like something's bound to come down and snatch me up."
Orion huffed a light laugh. "You were the one that snatched yourself, if memory serves."
"Yeah, well, if you want it done right you gotta do it yourself."
They continued on.
Elita's was a little dive of a place run by a no-nonsense woman—Jazz's favorite kind. Elita had contacts all over and was willing to smuggle all sorts of things. And she had a soft spot for Orion (Jazz figured the only people who didn't have a soft spot for Orion were the ones that hadn't met him yet), so she used those contacts to procure all sorts and varieties of tea for the teetotaler.
Jazz opted for a corn beer (locally grown! as most things were these days). He had to endure a litany of well wishes from a small group of miscreant mech pilots at the bar. By the time that Jazz managed to extract himself, Orion had secured a booth for them.
He slid in to the opposite side of the booth from Orion with a sigh. Jazz had barely taken a sip of his beer before a familiar red head was popping up from a booth by the pool table.
"Ah, man," Jazz whined under his breath.
"I told you," Orion said in a taunting singsong as the familiar steps of Ron "Ratchet" Hatched stomped their way over.
"You can be such a child sometimes, you know that? I should pop your squeaky clean reputation sometime," Jazz hissed.
"No-one will ever believe you," Orion hummed. And then Ratchet was standing there next to their booth with his hands on his hips. Orion stirred his tea placidly and Jazz resigned himself to his fate.
"You," Ratchet pointed a blunt finger in Jazz's face. "No more than two drinks. I mean it."
"Jeez, Hatched." Jazz raised his hands in surrender. "What'd my liver give you for a bribe, eh? I'll match it."
"Your liver didn't give me squat, though I'm still doing that damn deadbeat thing a favor," Ratchet growled. "It's your brain I'm trying to save from a pickling."
"Oh, well if it's only my brain," Jazz said, following up with a deliberate sip of his corn beer.
"I mean it, Jazz," Ratchet growled. "Prolonged connection is no joke. Give your neurons a break. You've only got the two of 'em."
"And they deserve a noble duel to the death," Jazz toasted. "At midnight. One shall stand..."
Orion gave him an indulgent look over his facemask.
"Oh, c'mon, OP, that was a good one," Jazz said. "Yah gonna leave me hanging?" He waggled his half empty glass teasingly in front of Orion's face. Orion rolled his eyes, but he obligingly tapped his cup of green tea against Jazz's beer. "My man!"
"Don't encourage him," Ratchet said to Orion. "Two drinks," he said to Jazz, finger pointed accusingly. "Hold him to it," he said to Orion. Ratchet backed away, still glaring at Jazz with an accusatory finger as he expertly manuevered through the bar backwards.
"I don't know if it's impressive that he can do that so seamlessly, or worrying because that means he knows the layout of this bar that well," Jazz said mildly.
"Nah, it's neither," Orion said. "He can do it because he really does have eyes in the back of his head."
"Huh," Jazz said like he was impressed with the fact.
Orion pulled his facemask down to reveal the large deep wine-red birthmark that was his namesake on his cheek. It looked painful, particularly in contrast with Orion's warm brown skin, but Orion had assured Jazz that it was anything but. The angry burn scar that marred his other cheek, however, was tight and uncomfortable looking from where it ran from the corner of Orion's mouth across his cheek down his neck.
"How're you feeling after today, OP?" Jazz asked softly. "You took... quite the tumble."
Orion was silent for a long moment. He pulled his mask back up over his face. The miscreants at the bar were making a ruckus.
"Have you gotten the dreams, Jazz?" Orion asked softly, barely audible over the noise of the bar.
"No, not yet," Jazz said. "Haven't been paired with Bebop long enough. Least, that's what I think. Hot Rod got 'em six months in. Blurr still hasn't, two years on." He shrugged, loose and easy. Jazz turned a quirked eyebrow at Orion. "You?"
Orion was silent for a long moment, staring at the depths of his tea like it held the secrets of the universe.
"I've had them," Orion said. "It feels like..." He looked up and met Jazz's eyes. "I got them the first night."
Jazz started slightly.
"I've never told anyone that," Orion admitted softly. He looked around the bar, then back to Jazz. "Not even Shockwave." And Jazz understood with that admission the import of what Orion was telling him. Pilots didn't keep secrets from a drift partner, even if they hadn't drifted in years.
"Had... Had Proto-1 even seen combat yet?" Jazz asked.
"No," Orion said.
"Then what..."
"They're hard to describe..." Orion said slowly. "It's like... like I can see things that aren't really there. Like I can feel things, like auras, around other mechs. And there are other mechs there, too, but ones I've never seen before. But I could never describe them, because they're all so bright it's... it's hard to look at them."
Orion tightened his hands around his mug. "And then there's the... the landscape. It's... it's a lot like home, actually—"
But just then something loud and warm crashed into Jazz's side.
"Jazzy!" Hot Rod exclaimed. "Oh, I'm so glad you're back!"
"Hey Roddy," Jazz said, stifling his frustration at the interruption. Hot Rod was his friend. Jazz caught a whiff of Hot Rod's breath and had to turn away to gag lightly. His currently very, very, very intoxicated friend. "Alright, you may have had enough, my man. C'mon. Let's get you back home to the Org."
"Hey, Jazzy," Hot Rod slurred as he leaned heavily against Jazz's side, completely and utterly resistant to Jazz's attempts to get him upright. "Why'd'ya always call MECH 'the Org?'"
"Because he's a hopeless contrarian," Orion supplied, a smidgeon of light shining in his eyes.
"No, it's because," he had to raise his voice to drown out Orion's 'See?', "it's confusing." Hot Rod looked at him with no comprehension behind his eyes. Jazz sighed, rubbing one hand over Hot Rod's shoulder. "We pilot mechs. We work at MECH. They make mechs. That's confusing. And dumb. They should have picked a different name. So I just call 'em the Org. What was so wrong with something like, I dunno, 'Earth Defense Force' or something that makes sense instead of a tortured acronym."
Hot Rod didn't say anything for a long moment.
"Roddy?" Jazz asked, rubbing at Hot Rod's upper arm.
Hot Rod let out a loud snore from where his face was smushed against Jazz's shoulder.
Orion chuckled. "You bored him to sleep."
Jazz started pushing Hot Rod out of the booth. "Oh, don't even start, Mr. I-have-such-a-sonorous-voice-that-people-forgive-my-hours-long-debriefs—"
"That nickname is so long it beggars belief. And I didn't just bore a man to sleep with three sentences."
"You—" Jazz pointed an accusatory finger at Orion. Hot Rod slipped on his shoulders slightly and Jazz had to catch him. "You should be nicer to me. I coulda outed whatever happened to you earlier to Ratch' but I didn't cuz I'm such a good friend. And now I gotta go be a good friend to Roddy here." Jazz hefted Hot Rod's lanky frame up higher on his shoulders. The Universe was cruel when it let Jazz's average height get dwarfed by all these giants around him.
"You need any help?" Orion asked. He started to shuffled out of the booth.
"Nah, I got 'im," Jazz said.
"It's no trouble, I don't want to stay longer without you anyway," Orion said. He took up Hot Rod's other limp arm.
"Ah, man, Orion, least finish your drink," Jazz whined. "'lita got it for you special. She'll laser eye murder me if you don't finish it."
Orion sighed and leaned over to down the rest of his tea in one long gulp. They shuffled out to the jeers of Hot Rod's friends.
"All y'all are lazy!" Jazz called back. "Making the guy who just got back from space clean up your messes!"
There was a chorus of "Ooooo," from the hooligans.
"Ground control to Major Tom!" Blurr called. "Take your protein pills and put your helmet on!" And then at least they were serenaded by the (poor) singing of other mech pilots as they left the bar. They didn't keep beat well, and they kept messing up the order of the lyrics, but Jazz just laughed at their antics.
Elita admonished them sharply from behind the bar, "This isn't a karaoke bar, fellas, keep your dulcet tones to yourself!" And the goon squad was distracted cajoling Elita for another beer.
"For here am I sitting in a tin can..." Jazz sung lowly as the door to the bar swung closed behind them.
Orion laughed. "Far above the moon..." he sang tunelessly.
"Why don't you leave the singing to me, man," Jazz laughed. Orion scoffed, offended.
They stumbled along down the street, working together to keep the limp form of Hot Rod upright between them.
Jazz cursed as he stubbed his toe on the doorframe of Hot Rod's room.
"You alright?" Orion called from Roddy's other side.
"Yeah, it's just that—as soon as this guy passes out he's all limbs somehow," Jazz said. Together they manuevered Hot Rod around the desk and managed to dump him on his narrow bed.
Orion sighed, regarding Hot Rod's insensate snoring. "Someone should make sure he doesn't choke on his own vomit."
Jazz was preoccupied with pulling off Hot Rod's boots. "I can—"
"No, you just got back," Orion said. He rummaged around in Hot Rod's closet, retrieving a blanket. "You deserve some rest."
"You deserve rest too, big guy," Jazz grunted as he finally freed Roddy's left foot. The drunkard just grumbled and rolled over on his bed.
"And I'll get it here," Orion said.
"There's a futon under—"
"Under the desk, yes, I know," Orion said indulgently. "This isn't my first rodeo."
Jazz helped Orion set up his drunk watch station and then was promptly waved off. And Jazz cursed himself. That had been a remarkably unsuccessful intel gathering session.
Ah, well, better luck next time. These things couldn't be rushed. He'd pry Orion's secrets out of him yet.
Jazz wandered back through the bunk hall. It was getting late, but mech pilots kept weird schedules (they could get a call anytime, that wasn't conducive to setting a sleep schedule). He waved at a few well wishes from passersby before he pulled up in front of his door.
As always when a pilot went missing there were delicate ribbons strung up around the door. Each ribbon had a small message written on it; prayers to an absent god that their friend would return.
Jazz had returned, unlike many other pilots. He'd carefully strung many a ribbon himself, only to carefully unpick it a few weeks later at the funeral for a pilot lost in action.
He stared at the well-wishes for a long moment before brushing them aside and opening his door. The room was a small thing, barely big enough for a bed, a wardrobe and a desk. Jazz had carefully hung his guitar above the bed. He took it down just as carefully.
It was the only thing that had survived the destruction of his childhood home in Chicago, after all. He'd found it in a pile of rubble, saved only by a quirk of how a wall had fallen. The only damage a single snapped string, but that had been repairable; a mini-miracle that it had survived the tragedy so well at all. Jazz had consistently used up the entirety of his personal items allotment on it ever since. He sat on his little bed and carefully checked the tuning.
And then he started to play. It felt like a Bowie kinda night.
"Didn't know what time it was, the lights were low," Jazz crooned. "I leaned back on my radio. Some cat was laying down some rock'n'roll. 'Lotta soul,' he said.
"Then the loud sound did seem to fade. Came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase. That wasn't no DJ, that was a hazy cosmic jive.
"There's a starman waiting in the sky," Jazz sang, thrumming along on the beat. "He'd like to come and meet us but he thinks he'd blow our minds—"
Jazz's computer beeped. He ignored it.
"There's a starman waiting in the sky. He's told us not to blow it—" the computer beeped again. Jazz grit his teeth as he sang, "'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile. He told me: let the children lose it—" the computer beeped again.
Jazz stopped strumming and sighed. He put his guitar to the side and checked his messages. Three emails had come in to his inbox in less than a minute, all from the same sender; an incomprehensible string of numbers, but with the Org's domain.
The entirety of each message was in all caps and shoved into the subject line. The first read:
From: [email protected]
Subject: THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM.
The next, eight seconds later:
From: [email protected]
Subject: THERE IS MORE TO MECH THAN MEETS THE EYE.
And the final one, six seconds after the last:
From:[email protected]
Subject: YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED.
The mech pilots rarely got kooks in their inboxes, but that didn't mean that they didn't happen. They were in the middle of the apocalypse, after all, which was kook christmas. This was a weird one though, with the internal domain. And Jazz did occasionally entertain himself by replying.
He opened the last one. There was nothing in the main body, no links or attachments to give his computer malware. He hit reply.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED.
Yeah, you know a lot about me and the state of my ceivedness. Who is this?
A second later the reply came, in the body of the message but still in all caps.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED.
A FRIEND. YOU KNOW THAT SOMETHING IS WRONG, JAZZ.
Well, that was presumptuous. And strange—they knew his call sign, which wasn't public.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED.
Yeah? You a mind reader?
Again, barely a second later:
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED.
NO. BUT YOU WOULD NOT HAVE RESPONDED TO ME IF YOU WERE NOT SUSPICIOUS.
Oh, very presumptuous.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED.
Hell yeah, I'm suspicious... of the mysterious emailer suddenly in my inbox! Why shouldn't I report this as some kinda exploit to IT?
Less than a second later (how the hell was this guy typing this fast?):
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED.
IT IS OF PRIME IMPORTANCE THAT YOU DO NOT.
And it was that strange highlighted word that made Jazz pause. That was a very peculiar word choice.
Jazz hadn't told anyone what words Prowl had found important enough to impart to his alien friend, even when Jazz had a cup of water's chance in hell of pronouncing those words.
He squinted at his screen for a moment before typing:
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED.
I dunno if I should trust just anyone randomly prowling into my inbox.
Again, faster than any human could type, a response:
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED.
THAT IS YOUR PREROGATIVE. JUST AS IT IS YOUR PREROGATIVE TO, SAY, HAVE A LOOK AT ISOLATED COMPUTER NETWORKS. FOR MORE INFORMATION OF PRIME IMPORTANCE.
Jazz fell into his desk chair. That confirmed it: Prowl had somehow hacked the email server. To... send Jazz cryptic messages.Via email.
What wasn't he saying? Should Jazz really trust an alien that he met just a couple of days ago?
But of course he could. Because Prowl had convinced a bunch of his own kind to make a suicide run on a portal to bring Jazz home. And, yeah, Prowl probably had his own reasons for coming, but that was underlined in this message, too; Prowl was still looking for his friend.
(Prowl'd said the Prime leitmotif to Proto-1 and then Proto-1 had—had moved without Orion. It'd (he'd) pulled out one of those leech-mouth-cables and spoken in robo-tongue and Jazz needed more intel. And brainstorming 'isolated computer networks' were as good a place as any to start.)
Isolated computer networks... like the maintenance computers. Carly and Sparkplug and Spike and Chip; they'd all complained endlessly about the maintenance computers only being hooked up to a local network for operational security. The computers couldn't access the internet at all. Even in the apocalypse the Org didn't want to take any chances of bad actors hacking a mech.
Jazz looked at the time. It was approaching midnight, but knowing the workaholics in the maintenance crews that didn't mean much. He needed to wait.
A few hours of Jazz anxiously strumming his guitar later and Jazz felt safe enough to peek his head out his door. The hall was empty, as expected.
He glanced up at the ceiling. There were security cameras, of course, but Jazz had pulled rank to get a room in a small blind spot caused by a tight corner. Plus, he was friendly with the security team, who spent the vast majority of their energy keeping unknown people out; they didn't pay much attention to where known actors were moving about their base.
Even still, Jazz had deliberately cultivated a reputation as an insomniac for a reason. He started to amble along his usual route.
Casual was key. Nothing out of the ordinary here, no sir.
Jazz had also found the darkest pajamas that he could for a reason. The deep shadows in the concrete behemoth that was the base lent for many a place for a slim black man in dark clothes to disappear off the cameras.
His usual route ostensibly led outside to a loading dock where he could have a discrete smoke. But it also included a nice long shadowy maintenance corridor that had nice short connections into the main mech bay. Jazz stepped into a dark recess that led to one such connecting hallway that only had one camera moving on a set sweep. He cracked the door to eye the position of the camera and timed his exit perfectly. Jazz swiftly closed the door behind him and raced through the camera's blindspot.
And then he was in the cavernous mech hangar. Massive mechs of all shapes and sizes lined the walls in their bays. At either end of the space were the large doors that opened onto the airfield.
It was a massive echoey metallic space. In some ways it reminded Jazz of the churches that his grandmother would attend on Sundays: echoing and empty when encountered after hours, but during a service they were the life of the party.
Damn. Something about the last few days had really put him in a melancholic mood.
The security cameras in the hangar were primarily focused on the mechs as the most expensive (and dangerous) equipment in the room. All Jazz had to do was get through the big gap of cleared space in front of the mechs to the maintenance stations that made up the center of the room, which was nice and easy, particularly with the minimal off hours lighting in the hangar.
He reached the Island of Human-sized infrastructure in the center of the hangar and made his slow and creeping way through the maze of toolbenches and equipment and desks. Here he ducked under a huge plate with a raggedy cut along one side (and he should check in with Chip on how Prowl's patch on Bebop's arm was holding up), there he slid alongside a toolbench for the comically oversized wrenches required for mechs.
Finally, finally, finally Jazz made it to Sparkplug's station near the feet of Proto-1. He booted up the ancient machine.
And was hit immediately with a password prompt.
Jazz sighed and looked around the desk. Nothing on the monitor, nothing behind the monitor, but underneath the keyboard, bingo. A post-it note with a random combination of letters and numbers.
He entered the password and then he was in (Jazz had always wanted to say that in earnest).
The desktop greeted him with at least a hundred text files haphazardly placed across it, like a tornado had blown through a digital paper supply store. Each were given illuminating names like 'Draft-report-final-final-FINAL' and 'whatever-the-fukc.'
"Damn, Sparkplug, you live like this?" Jazz muttered under his breath. He glanced between the desktop and the actual physical desk. The attached workbench was spotless. The harddrive was anything but. Jazz shrugged internally. He supposed that they all contained multitudes.
After some investigation Jazz managed to find where Sparkplug had kept a chronological log. There were entries going back to Proto-1's first test runs. The first dozen pilots they'd tried to use were unsuccessful. Then, Orion, shortly after he'd awoken from his coma, had given it a shot and they were off to the races. Sparkplug had listed a lot of concerns about how quickly the science team was pushing the first true solo pilot, but he was a mechanic and not a medical doctor. It seemed his objections had been waved away (much to Sparkplug's frustration).
Jazz pulled out the usb stick he'd brought for just this occasion. He started to copy files over.
Then there were the maintenance logs on the mech itself. Sparkplug noted strange power surges (worrying, given the nuclear generators that powered the mechs), how the design team had completely redesigned the power systems and cabling conduits, the placement of the piloting cab. Jazz couldn't really understand most of the engineering diagrams, but Sparkplug could, and he had helpfully transcribed notes to himself in the margins.
There was one diagram labeled a 'cut away view' that appeared to bisect Proto-1. Sparkplug had circled an empty area of the mech's chest, just behind the cab, the note just a bunch of question marks—
Loud motors engaged on rusty bearings, a grinding squeal ringing out through the hangar.
Jazz ducked instinctively under the desk. One of the massive bay doors at the other end of the hangar started to creak open.
Fuck. He peeked up over the edge of the desk. The doors were still rumbling as they separated. Why? All the mechs were here in the bays, from the massive bulk of Proto-1 in front of Jazz to the light flexible Lightning (Blurr's mech) by the doors. The bright screen of the computer Jazz had been accessing caught the corner of his eye, and he hastily locked it with a button press. He ducked underneath the desk, pulling the chair in after him. Jazz huddled in the deepest recesses of the desk, relying on his dark clothes and skin to blend into the shadows if anyone happened to glance his way. There wasn't enough time to try to sneak towards the exit, particularly since he didn't have any idea where the person (or people? there were multiple sets of footsteps) were going.
Quiet murmurs traced their progress echoing through the bay. They were rolling something heavy behind them, maybe multiple things. Jazz crouched further under the desk, carefully keeping his weight away from any of the walls. If he ducked low enough he could see under the back wall of the foot well.
"I just think I've progressed beyond this drudgery," someone whined. The voice sounded vaguely familiar. "Can't we have one of the interns do it? I could be—"
"The interns do not have the appropriate security clearances," Shockwave's cold voice interrupted. Jazz couldn't help but tense. He'd never liked that creep, no matter how much Orion asserted that he had a softer side. Jazz contended that Shockwave hadn't shown that softer side since Orion's incident, which might indicate that it had withered on the vine, which in turn tended to make Orion get that heartbroken look in his eyes that made Jazz feel like the scum of the Earth.
But never bad enough to retract his assessment of the scientist. Shockwave was creepy not just because he insisted on wearing a full piloting mask everywhere, not just because that piloting mask had a single glowing yellow sensor on the front, not just because he avoided any friendly interactions with anyone, but because he treated every single mech pilot under his care like they were specimens. Like they were things.
Shockwave creeped Jazz out. Because every time Shockwave looked at him with that impassive blank mask of a helmet he felt like Shockwave was contemplating if dissecting him would be worth the mess.
The Head Scientist of the Org and his assistant—Brainstorm, that's what that guy insisted they all call him, Brainstorm—were here in the mech bay late at night. So late at night it was arguably early morning. Pushing two carts to rest at Proto-1's massive feet—just on the other side of the desk that Jazz was crouching under. Two sets of feet and the big thick rubber wheels of industrial lifting carts.
Shockwave's black leather boots tapped the stop on the cart, pivoted sharply and started towards the scaffolding stairs next to Proto-1. As soon as he started to ascend, Brainstorm began to mutter discontentedly under his breath, the sharp clacks of Shockwave's boots on the metal grating providing him cover to vent. Jazz tried to tilt his head to better pick up what Brainstorm was saying, hoping for insights on just what the fuck was going on, but it seemed to mainly be miserable ego-driven insults aimed at the rest of the world. Lots of 'waste of my many talents' and 'why bother with this'-es and other entitled white boy staples. Jazz suppressed a massive eyeroll, realized that no-one could see him, and proceeded to roll his eyes so hard it ached.
A few minutes later (once Jazz was truly sick of listening to Brainstorm) a high pitched whine started up, just on the edge of Jazz's hearing. It was almost like the sound of an overclocked motor; Jazz had never heard something quite like it before. It... it wasn't pleasant, and his stomach swooped past his naval as it continued and continued, on and on. Then the hum of an activating mech joined the high pitched noise.
There was the sound of massive mech motors running and Proto-1's ginormous foot took a small step towards the carts. That one little step sent a shudder through the concrete floor that rattled through Jazz's palms, juddering the fine bones of his wrists.
Shockwave was piloting Proto-1.
It was possible for multiple people to be compatible with the same mech, but it was rare; the boutique neural architecture of a mech, particularly once it had already been imprinted with a human psyche, was difficult to match. Sometimes the entire architecture had to be scrapped after a pilot died because an appropriate match couldn't be found.
But of course Shockwave was compatible with Proto-1. He was compatible with Orion, after all.
"Synched?" Brainstorm asked in a loud voice. He was fiddling with something on one of the carts. "Alright, alley-oop!"
It was like the pressure in the room changed. Jazz could feel it, deep in his ears. He tried to subtly rotate his jaw to pop them but it didn't relieve the feeling of force pushing down on his eardrums. Brainstorm was resting the split petals of a lid on the sides of the box on the cart, then he took a step back.
The sound of hydraulics and motors again as Proto-1 moved. The mech's ankles were bending, behind the cart, and then something on the cart shifted, the wheels of the cart decompressing slightly as if a weight had been taken off them. As if a mech had bent down and picked something up off it. A single bright ray of light appeared on the floor by one of the cart wheels. Jazz watched it move in a straight line towards him as Proto-1's hydraulics whirred; Shockwave was standing up again.
"Initializing," Shockwave intoned from the impressive height of Proto-1. The high pitched noise picked up in intensity; Jazz's teeth ached from it. The light was also intensifying, rays shining out in every direction like sunlight on a discoball, until it was like a small star had appeared in the bay. The feeling of pressure increased, too, and Jazz's eyesight was glitching like an LED screen. An unnamed dread was building in the pit of his stomach; something was happening, something bad.
A blinding flash of light erupted from the discoball thing. Jazz's vision was only spared by the shield of the desk, and even then red and blue spots appeared in his vision. He blinked rapidly.
Something heavy was placed down on the cart again. Brainstorm fiddled with the covers and all at once the pressure disappeared. Shockwave manuevered Proto-1 back into his bay. Brainstorm had moved over to the second cart. Soft sounds of typing came as all of Proto-1's hydraulics hissed and sighed. The high pitched noise stopped, and Jazz had to hold in a sigh of relief.
Shockwave's steps clanged their way back down the scaffolding.
"It's taking longer each time," Brainstorm observed as Shockwave's black boots joined his sneakers. "Almost two entire seconds slower, compared to the last."
"It is resisting me," Shockwave sniffed. "Futile."
"Are you sure we're not reaching some kind of output limit? If you would just—"
"No. Contain your efforts to the weapons integration. I will handle the pilot interface."
"Really? 'Cuz that's going so well with Orio—urk—" Brainstorm gurgled as Shockwave stepped in close and there was the sound of something mechanical cutting off his airway.
"I have rectified the issue," Shockwave said, cold and flat. Jazz felt a chill. "It will not be a problem again."
"Really, have you?" Brainstorm prodded raspily, because he was an idiot. "Already? Because—"
"I did. Just now. Because I am efficient," Shockwave said as Brainstorm continued to gurgle. "How much more efficient might I be without these unnecessary questions..." Brainstorm's feet were rising off the ground and he was making a truly awful noise in his throat, a noise that no human made on their own, wet and choked.
Suddenly, his feet slammed down on the ground and Brainstorm crumpled to his hands and knees. Jazz froze. If Brainstorm looked to his left, he'd see Jazz huddled under the desk. Jazz closed his eyes to hide the whites behind his lids, praying that he blended in with the darkness.
"Fine," Brainstorm rasped. There were the sounds of a person scrambling up to their feet. "Fine," he sulked. Jazz risked opening his eyes again; Brainstorm had retreated to his place at the controls of the second cart. They started walking slowly away.
Jazz stayed crouched underneath the desk as the bay doors rumbled to a close. He stayed there, his hands pressed flat on the gritty concrete, and he counted the seconds slowly, as slowly and deliberately as he could. His knees and his palms ached from the hard ground, but still he counted. He wanted as much space between himself and whatever the scientists were doing as possible.
Finally (finally) he reached five hundred and he pushed the chair out. He crawled on his hands and knees out from under the desk.
Jazz peeked over the top of the desk at Proto-1. The mech was slumped in his bay, just like all the other mechs in their bays. His optics were dark and shuttered.
Still. Still. The hairs on the back of Jazz's neck prickled. He couldn't help but feel like someone was watching him.
Jazz looked over at Bebop in her bay, the mirrored slump in her posture, at all the mechs in their bays. And suddenly he was reminded of the alert stillness of the robo-aliens. Not a single optic or optical band was active in the entire building, and yet Jazz felt the pressure of attention skitter across his skin. Goosebumps prickled up his neck, down his arms.
He finished the download on the computer and got the heck out of there.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: THERE IS MORE TO MECH THAN MEETS THE EYE.
We need to meet. In person.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: THERE IS MORE TO MECH THAN MEETS THE EYE.
THERE IS A PLACE. THE POINT AT WHICH THE PRIME STANDS. I WILL BE THERE AT THE FIFTH PRIMELY HOUR, PRECISELY.
Attached was a satellite picture of the town. The Triangular Venn Diagram was overlaid, and the left hand bottom point (where Prowl had placed the Prime dot) placed directly over what looked an abandoned lot in industrial district that supplied the Org with metal. Jazz memorized the route he'd need to take.
The fifth primely hour... the fifth prime number? Jazz counted: 0700. He glanced at the clock; he had a little over two hours to get there, and it was probably about a two hour walk away. He had to hurry.
The walk gave Jazz a lot of time to reflect on what he was doing. He found himself sticking to the shadows as much as he could on his way through the mostly silent, sleeping support town. Most of the humans here had moved to this small industrial town to support the Org in its operations; it took many people for each mech. Still, humans were mostly tied to the day-night cycle (even in the alien apocalypse when an invasion could strike at any time) and the town was quiet.
He needed to know what was up with Prowl. Obviously he'd gotten English from somewhere. Obviously he was a powerful robo-alien who could do god-knew-what. Obviously he was angling for the Org's secrets. But this had to be a two way street; Jazz needed answers, too, damn it. And it seemed they needed each other to get them.
The sky lightened as Jazz walked. Stars slowly faded away into a blurry dawn. The first glimmers of sunlight were just peaking over the horizon as Jazz ducked into the lot.
Brick factories walled in the lot on two sides, a large sandy embankment covered the back. Jazz eyed the chainlink fence as he passed into the scrubby no mans land.
Jazz kept to one side. There was nothing here. Unless Prowl was going to burst out from underneath the sand, or arise like one of Well's martians from underneath the soil—Jazz scoffed as he kicked a tuft of grass. He'd never much liked War of the Worlds, and he strongly disliked that his life and his planet seemed to be imitating it.
An engine rolled over from the street. Car lights appeared, tracing light up the walls across the street and into the lot.
"Oh, shit," Jazz growled as a cop car pulled into the lot. He glanced around but the cop had blocked off his easy exit from the lot; the sandy embankment was just as likely to suck his feet into it as let him quickly scramble over, the smooth walled warehouses were useless, all the handholds at least three meters into the air. There wasn't a lick of cover anywhere.
"Fucking shit fuck," Jazz swore lowly as he tried to back up towards the embankment casually, like he wasn't running away. The black and white car stopped. Jazz could just make out the outline of a frowning white cop with sunglasses (sunglasses on at dawn, with his headlights on, too, what an irresponsible prick) through the windshield.
The police car shook. The white man behind the wheel shimmered blue and then disappeared. Then the hood of the car split in half and panels and parts went flying everywhere in a dizzying swirl of metal and noise until there wasn't a car anymore but a very familiar black and white mech—or rather, robo-alien.
"Hello, First Lieutenant James 'Jazz' Jasper," Prowl said as he crouched down on one knee, resting one massive fist on the ground next to Jazz. His wrist was level with Jazz's chest. Jazz gulped as he took in the true size of—well, he hoped that Prowl still considered him a friend. Prowl's intense blue-white optics drilled into Jazz's eyes. "We have much to discuss."
"Yep," Jazz rasped. "Yeah, we do."