Zusammen — Chapter One
Feb. 25th, 2024 01:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
legendtrainerPosting the chapter here to see how I feel about it, before I post on AO3. Chances are, if I pot it somewhere public, I'll get a feeling of whether or not I like it. That's my hope, anyway XD. (Some formatting is missing)
The conflict had only just gotten serious enough to really be called a war, having taken three vorns after to really get going. Three vorns after he’d ended his relationship with Megatron, and left Tarn for Iacon. Thoughts of his breakup, as such, were still pretty damn sore.
Jazz turned the note over in his hands, appreciating the quality of the black flimsi—something was taped inside of it too, though he wasn’t sure what it was. He hadn’t opened it yet, and was a bit scared to. Given the material, and that it had been directly delivered to him by Lazerbeak, it couldn’t be anyone other than his ex. Holding the note made it feel as if the bottom had dropped out of his spark casing. Jazz’s joints felt itchy with nerves.
He’d only managed to get the note at all, as he was the only one of his squad to run towards, instead of away from, the familiar sound of an avian cassette. Even only a vorn into the official war, Soundwave was already a notorious, high-ranking ‘Con. His cassettes were always given a wide berth. Lazerbeak had stuffed the note and package into an instrument case, a place he knew Jazz would check for parts. He’d then jetted off with a caw, startling all the patrolling Autobots once again, giving Jazz enough time to grab it. The poor avianoid had been sooty and covered in scratches, Jazz hoped the little guy was okay.
Jazz tapped his foot, a nervous habit Ravage had never been too fond of (the cougaraider had always sat on the sportscar’s lap had he started). Jazz huffed, fiddling with the note’s purple seal and trying not to think of anything back in that apartment he’d left behind. Scanning the skies for other Cons, Jazz picked at the wax holding it closed. He forced himself to read it.
My respect for you has never wavered, even if our tempers have reared their heads. Know you are in my thoughts.
It wasn’t a break-up. It also wasn’t an apology — Jazz didn’t really know what to make of it. Whatever it was, it was in Megatron’s scratchy and unmistakably bad handwriting, though. The ex-miner’s hands had never been made for fine control, and shook when he gripped something so small as a pen or stylus. Megatron had always refused to get them replaced.
He was also the only bot Jazz knew who could call what had happened to them ‘tempers’ instead of ‘irreconcilable differences’. That argument in the filthy afternoon light of their Kaon apartment hadn’t been the most violent, but it had been the most bitter. The novel flippancy in Megatron’s tone had been sharp as sin.
Jazz spun the note around in his hands, checking for hidden codes, holding it up to the rays of the sun that were filtering through the filthy, smog-laden air, flipping through settings on his visor to check for invisible residues, but there was nothing.
He felt out the package inside, a thin cylinder-ish thing about the length of Jazz’s hand. He scanned again to double check for explosives, but again found nothing of the sort. Blacklight showed smears of dried energon, though. Interesting. Worrying.
Unwrapping it revealed… a finger. Grey with death, but paint flakes in the wrapping said it had once been scarlet, and that it had been wrapped while still fresh. Jazz wrapped it back up to keep it from making a mess. It was a very, very rich somebot’s finger, but Jazz wasn’t sure who. The entire thing was carved with curlicues. Towers bots changed paint as often as they ate, and ‘large’ wasn’t much to go by. There was a ragged gash which the frame hadn’t had time to repair before the finger had been removed — by force, if the tearing on the energon and hydraulics lines said anything. He slipped it into his subspace, confused.
He looked at the short note again before putting it, too, into his subspace. Neither the itching-unsure sensation nor the pit in his spark had fully gone away. The note said nothing direct, and Megatron was normally nothing but. Had he not fully bought in to the end of their relationship, and sent the letter to Jazz to give himself more time? To make sure Jazz thought twice about getting other partners before Megatron decided if he wanted to try again? It was a bit late if that was the case.
Jazz shoved the letter too into his subspace, and made his way back. They had only just started to look for him, wary from Lazerbeak’s flyover. After tuning out of the dressing-down he got from a superior officer for running off, they continued trudging through their patrol route. Army officers’ angry words held nothing on the slag his old owners had once said to him with a smile.
The dull, squat rectangle of the base sat on the horizon like a chunk of scrap sheeting. The perimeter guards looked a bit distant as they let them through the gate, not obviously distracted, but too worried to pay attention to the group that trudged past them. One of Jazz’s patrolmates telling them they’d met a Con’ on their route seemed to make it worse.
The outside training areas were abandoned, with scrap looking like it had been dropped mid-use and just left where it had fallen. There was no alarm, and no alert on Jazz’s HUD. He began theorising what juicy incident might’ve caused such a stir, but wouldn’t have gotten a notice sent out. Maybe his random patrol group wasn’t notable enough to remember notifying.
Inside, the base was tense and full of whispers. Knots of bots stood milling around, backs turned outwards, and too distracted muttering amongst themselves to notice the returning patrol. Snatches of half-heard conversations were plucked by information gathering programs running in the background, a picture building. Meanwhile the mess hall, usually deserted at this time of the night shift, was packed. Soldiers’ whispers collated in Jazz’s processor as they fought their way to the energon dispenser. He realised a few kliks before the otherss that Sentinel Prime was dead — killed not a quarter of an orn before in the siege of Nyon.
Slowly the others seemed to as well, and they started. Jazz heard the buzz of comms as others finally figured they were back from patrol and sent them the news. It was no wonder why their beat had been so quiet, or why the finger in Jazz’s subspace was fresh enough to leak energon into the wrapping. Lazerbeak must’ve flown as fast as his thrusters could take him.
They all hurried through the dispenser line towards the rest of the crowd packed around the wall-mounted television. Behind his visor, Jazz snuck a peek up to the separate, raised area where the Autobots’ ‘special guests’ ate. There was something telling about the juxtaposition of vibes coming off them, versus those of the rank-and-file around him. It told quite the different story. The terror in their EMs was nearly unnoticeable from the sheer confusion and wariness and hope the masses projected. Supreme Leader of the Autobots though he may have been, but the average Cybertronian held no love for him.
Jazz, personally, would have enjoyed deconstructing Sentinel’s processor diode by diode while the Prime was still conscious had he a little less self control. Having him rot in a jail cell while the damage his autocratic rule had caused faded away would’ve suited him well. Megatron had clearly had other, more certain, plans.
Over the tops of helms, Jazz caught the newscast. The clearly-frazzled news anchor had the look of someone being ordered over comms, and was narrating over clips from the fight. While it had clearly been cut to make Sentinel Prime look as good as possible, as time passed a more clear image of the encounter took shape.
The rapid-fire cuts made it clear there was some shenanigans, as the film was clearly originally Con work. An Autobot propaganda cut of Decepticon propaganda, which Jazz found pretty funny. A quick check on some forums confirmed what looked to be a deliberate spread by the Con intelligence. In that light, it was very clearly Buzzsaw’s strong camerawork on display in the difficult updrafts caused by the fires below, where the view slowly bobbed and circled the two combatants.
He ignored the news anchor’s rattled prattling — Jazz figured he was getting more accurate and up-to-date info off the forums. The smoky rooftop fight between Megatron and Sentinel had been a bad idea from the start — for the Prime. Sure, Sentinel was some ex-soldier type, but Megatron was a singularly skilled gladiator. No clever cuts could hide how clearly Megatron wiped the floor with the pompous scrapheap. There was just no way to make the gunmetal grey beast of a bot look bad in a fight; he was a force of nature.
Backlit by fire, flankers, and swirling ash, the billowing smoke was black and oily — that of a people burning. It was dramatic. It was sensational. Sentinel cut a complicated form of gold, and Megatron was a murky shadow with the red gleam of his optics and the reflections of his safety markings. The gladiator had always been one for atmosphere. Jazz had an inkling that Megatron, drama queen that he was, had picked the location on purpose. There was no tactical reason to fight to the death on top of a burning building, and somewhere, Soundwave was probably seething about the risks.
The broadcasters tried to hide just how much Sentinel begged at the end, where he was knelt with a blade to his throat before a disposable nobody. No editing could hide how there had never been a single noble diode in that slag’s entire frame. Truthfully, the ease with which Megatron decapitated the head of state might make one a little charged behind their panels. Would have, if Jazz hadn’t been very aware of the bedlam that was going to ensue and engulf bots’ lives. The complications, the chaos this would cause cascaded in likelihood and percentages. He forcefully culled the program. There wasn’t enough information yet to warrant getting lost in his own head about it.
However, there were known factions at play within the Autobots, and Jazz’s processor flipped through them, head down and distraught in the packed mess hall. It was a solid, tangentially-related distraction. He slipped out to the hall as the televised footage began to loop. He thankfully remained unnoticed by the distracted crowd. He didn’t need to see it on the screen, because the fight was replaying in his head as he made his way to the empty washracks.
Under the sputtering solvent Jazz checked the datanet, and grabbed the uncut film off some forum before it got nuked by the mods. He watched it at quintuple speed as he dried himself off. Watched without all the stuttering cuts, it was clearly Buzzsaw’s strong camerawork.
The monochrome bot made his way back out to his teammates before they realised he’d been missing, thinking the whole while. It was good news for his sanity, perhaps. The Autobots were now technically leaderless, what with the Senate’s puppet decapitated. Oh, sure, there would be an interim leadership. Jazz put his bet on the Senate headed by Sentinel’s SiC — some crusty old general from the Golden Age — but the general and bureaucrats hated each other to the struts. Nothing would be getting done. It would be bureaucratic gridlock.
Jazz took a seat as one of his teammates passed around a cube of highgrade spiked with nitro. Technically it was supposed to be a dry base, but he had a feeling there would be a lot of wet parties tonite. He took a deeper sip the next time it came around. The main bot Jazz had come to kill was done in before he’d even gained a single rank. He took another sip, feeling a bit washed out and bitter.
The Matrix was some unknowable nonsense, Jazz doubted anyone could predict where it would end up. That was assuming Sentinel had even carried the damn thing in the first place, and if he had, was it now in Decepticon hands? That was an even more unknowable fate; the Primes had been one of Megatron’s favourite rant topics, and he was as likely to use it to have a propaganda-laden Con Prime as he was just to smash the slagging thing.
Jazz shook his helm hard enough to hear something rattle. Nothing was happening tonight, politics was too slow, and the official mourning period for the Prime was an full thirteen chords. He had time. He needed to recharge. He needed to not think.
As he left the mess a cycle later, he heard the soldiers’ worry over Sentinel’s proper replacement. Jazz didn’t bother wasting much processing power thinking about the Senate’s next puppet. Whoever they would be, they’d be far out of Jazz’s current reach.
Another quick rinse in the washracks, chatting quietly to some basemates, and he was back in the barracks, lying flat on his back in his berth. Unable to sleep despite the soft comfort of the surrounding bots’ sleeping ventilations, he swore he could feel the weight of the flimsi in his subspace. Subspace tech made that physically impossible, but his sensors didn’t know that. The finger felt like a lump of lead.
Still, he was unable to sleep despite the soft comfort of the surrounding bots’ soft sleeping ventilations. He swore could feel the weight of the flimsi in his subspace despite the tech making that impossible.
Jazz really had thought they were done, through, but Megatron wasn’t done with him, it seemed. Jazz couldn’t really work up the conviction to deny himself that devotion.
It did, however, place a target on the bot he’d been on-and-off sleeping with for the past while, a chunky little scooter with a sweet spike and braided cables. Megatron was deeply possessive of those he was close to. His devotions ran deep. He collected ownership. Jazz wouldn’t wish the revenge Megatron would cook up on anyone but his old masters. The note didn’t directly state much of anything, but Jazz wouldn’t take the chance. He sent a quick message to Scootpipe, now off base, saying that they’d have to cut it off.
Jazz fell asleep, still feeling that unsurity, and woke up every morning for orns and orns feeling the same thing. No letters, no responses. Not a chirp or word from Lazerbeak or Buzzsaw, not even a small cassette’s silhouette in the distance. Even the usually frantic patrol routes were quiet, and the officers seemed tense. Megatron wasn’t usually one to let feelings linger when he could say something. Jazz ended up worried on two fronts.
They all continued worrying in the common rooms about who would replace Sentinel, Jazz joining in if only to keep up on the base rumour mill.
A tense patrol the orn after some senatorial discussions left him with more questions. He’d seen Ravage for the first time in a vorn — not clearly, but the cougaraider had stopped and very purposefully let them both make eye contact. The message was clear: Megatron was still watching. Jazz had stood there as Ravage had slipped back into the rubble and his patrol partners had caught up. “Only a shadow,” he’d said.
A chord later, he used one slow day on monitor duty to peruse the darknet forums he was behind on. A group of errant Autobots was gaining power, led by some ex-dockworker-cum-archivist petitioning the court. The designation sounded familiar, and Jazz hummed, switching back to the monitors as he perused his internal database. The bot, a cute tricolour hauler, had been on his radar it seemed. Some more research dug up information that Jazz wouldn’t say it made him hopeful, exactly. It did make a little of the weight in his struts lessen. Something here could work, could do some good. He himself didn’t have much influence right now besides some blackmail on some of the high-ranking bots he’d been holding in reserve, but it might be worth bringing it into play for this group.
Jazz once again had a plan.
Work Rating: E
Chapter Rating: T
Characters in this chapter: Jazz
The conflict had only just gotten serious enough to really be called a war, having taken three vorns after to really get going. Three vorns after he’d ended his relationship with Megatron, and left Tarn for Iacon. Thoughts of his breakup, as such, were still pretty damn sore.
Jazz turned the note over in his hands, appreciating the quality of the black flimsi—something was taped inside of it too, though he wasn’t sure what it was. He hadn’t opened it yet, and was a bit scared to. Given the material, and that it had been directly delivered to him by Lazerbeak, it couldn’t be anyone other than his ex. Holding the note made it feel as if the bottom had dropped out of his spark casing. Jazz’s joints felt itchy with nerves.
He’d only managed to get the note at all, as he was the only one of his squad to run towards, instead of away from, the familiar sound of an avian cassette. Even only a vorn into the official war, Soundwave was already a notorious, high-ranking ‘Con. His cassettes were always given a wide berth. Lazerbeak had stuffed the note and package into an instrument case, a place he knew Jazz would check for parts. He’d then jetted off with a caw, startling all the patrolling Autobots once again, giving Jazz enough time to grab it. The poor avianoid had been sooty and covered in scratches, Jazz hoped the little guy was okay.
Jazz tapped his foot, a nervous habit Ravage had never been too fond of (the cougaraider had always sat on the sportscar’s lap had he started). Jazz huffed, fiddling with the note’s purple seal and trying not to think of anything back in that apartment he’d left behind. Scanning the skies for other Cons, Jazz picked at the wax holding it closed. He forced himself to read it.
My respect for you has never wavered, even if our tempers have reared their heads. Know you are in my thoughts.
It wasn’t a break-up. It also wasn’t an apology — Jazz didn’t really know what to make of it. Whatever it was, it was in Megatron’s scratchy and unmistakably bad handwriting, though. The ex-miner’s hands had never been made for fine control, and shook when he gripped something so small as a pen or stylus. Megatron had always refused to get them replaced.
He was also the only bot Jazz knew who could call what had happened to them ‘tempers’ instead of ‘irreconcilable differences’. That argument in the filthy afternoon light of their Kaon apartment hadn’t been the most violent, but it had been the most bitter. The novel flippancy in Megatron’s tone had been sharp as sin.
Jazz spun the note around in his hands, checking for hidden codes, holding it up to the rays of the sun that were filtering through the filthy, smog-laden air, flipping through settings on his visor to check for invisible residues, but there was nothing.
He felt out the package inside, a thin cylinder-ish thing about the length of Jazz’s hand. He scanned again to double check for explosives, but again found nothing of the sort. Blacklight showed smears of dried energon, though. Interesting. Worrying.
Unwrapping it revealed… a finger. Grey with death, but paint flakes in the wrapping said it had once been scarlet, and that it had been wrapped while still fresh. Jazz wrapped it back up to keep it from making a mess. It was a very, very rich somebot’s finger, but Jazz wasn’t sure who. The entire thing was carved with curlicues. Towers bots changed paint as often as they ate, and ‘large’ wasn’t much to go by. There was a ragged gash which the frame hadn’t had time to repair before the finger had been removed — by force, if the tearing on the energon and hydraulics lines said anything. He slipped it into his subspace, confused.
He looked at the short note again before putting it, too, into his subspace. Neither the itching-unsure sensation nor the pit in his spark had fully gone away. The note said nothing direct, and Megatron was normally nothing but. Had he not fully bought in to the end of their relationship, and sent the letter to Jazz to give himself more time? To make sure Jazz thought twice about getting other partners before Megatron decided if he wanted to try again? It was a bit late if that was the case.
Jazz shoved the letter too into his subspace, and made his way back. They had only just started to look for him, wary from Lazerbeak’s flyover. After tuning out of the dressing-down he got from a superior officer for running off, they continued trudging through their patrol route. Army officers’ angry words held nothing on the slag his old owners had once said to him with a smile.
The dull, squat rectangle of the base sat on the horizon like a chunk of scrap sheeting. The perimeter guards looked a bit distant as they let them through the gate, not obviously distracted, but too worried to pay attention to the group that trudged past them. One of Jazz’s patrolmates telling them they’d met a Con’ on their route seemed to make it worse.
The outside training areas were abandoned, with scrap looking like it had been dropped mid-use and just left where it had fallen. There was no alarm, and no alert on Jazz’s HUD. He began theorising what juicy incident might’ve caused such a stir, but wouldn’t have gotten a notice sent out. Maybe his random patrol group wasn’t notable enough to remember notifying.
Inside, the base was tense and full of whispers. Knots of bots stood milling around, backs turned outwards, and too distracted muttering amongst themselves to notice the returning patrol. Snatches of half-heard conversations were plucked by information gathering programs running in the background, a picture building. Meanwhile the mess hall, usually deserted at this time of the night shift, was packed. Soldiers’ whispers collated in Jazz’s processor as they fought their way to the energon dispenser. He realised a few kliks before the otherss that Sentinel Prime was dead — killed not a quarter of an orn before in the siege of Nyon.
Slowly the others seemed to as well, and they started. Jazz heard the buzz of comms as others finally figured they were back from patrol and sent them the news. It was no wonder why their beat had been so quiet, or why the finger in Jazz’s subspace was fresh enough to leak energon into the wrapping. Lazerbeak must’ve flown as fast as his thrusters could take him.
They all hurried through the dispenser line towards the rest of the crowd packed around the wall-mounted television. Behind his visor, Jazz snuck a peek up to the separate, raised area where the Autobots’ ‘special guests’ ate. There was something telling about the juxtaposition of vibes coming off them, versus those of the rank-and-file around him. It told quite the different story. The terror in their EMs was nearly unnoticeable from the sheer confusion and wariness and hope the masses projected. Supreme Leader of the Autobots though he may have been, but the average Cybertronian held no love for him.
Jazz, personally, would have enjoyed deconstructing Sentinel’s processor diode by diode while the Prime was still conscious had he a little less self control. Having him rot in a jail cell while the damage his autocratic rule had caused faded away would’ve suited him well. Megatron had clearly had other, more certain, plans.
Over the tops of helms, Jazz caught the newscast. The clearly-frazzled news anchor had the look of someone being ordered over comms, and was narrating over clips from the fight. While it had clearly been cut to make Sentinel Prime look as good as possible, as time passed a more clear image of the encounter took shape.
The rapid-fire cuts made it clear there was some shenanigans, as the film was clearly originally Con work. An Autobot propaganda cut of Decepticon propaganda, which Jazz found pretty funny. A quick check on some forums confirmed what looked to be a deliberate spread by the Con intelligence. In that light, it was very clearly Buzzsaw’s strong camerawork on display in the difficult updrafts caused by the fires below, where the view slowly bobbed and circled the two combatants.
He ignored the news anchor’s rattled prattling — Jazz figured he was getting more accurate and up-to-date info off the forums. The smoky rooftop fight between Megatron and Sentinel had been a bad idea from the start — for the Prime. Sure, Sentinel was some ex-soldier type, but Megatron was a singularly skilled gladiator. No clever cuts could hide how clearly Megatron wiped the floor with the pompous scrapheap. There was just no way to make the gunmetal grey beast of a bot look bad in a fight; he was a force of nature.
Backlit by fire, flankers, and swirling ash, the billowing smoke was black and oily — that of a people burning. It was dramatic. It was sensational. Sentinel cut a complicated form of gold, and Megatron was a murky shadow with the red gleam of his optics and the reflections of his safety markings. The gladiator had always been one for atmosphere. Jazz had an inkling that Megatron, drama queen that he was, had picked the location on purpose. There was no tactical reason to fight to the death on top of a burning building, and somewhere, Soundwave was probably seething about the risks.
The broadcasters tried to hide just how much Sentinel begged at the end, where he was knelt with a blade to his throat before a disposable nobody. No editing could hide how there had never been a single noble diode in that slag’s entire frame. Truthfully, the ease with which Megatron decapitated the head of state might make one a little charged behind their panels. Would have, if Jazz hadn’t been very aware of the bedlam that was going to ensue and engulf bots’ lives. The complications, the chaos this would cause cascaded in likelihood and percentages. He forcefully culled the program. There wasn’t enough information yet to warrant getting lost in his own head about it.
However, there were known factions at play within the Autobots, and Jazz’s processor flipped through them, head down and distraught in the packed mess hall. It was a solid, tangentially-related distraction. He slipped out to the hall as the televised footage began to loop. He thankfully remained unnoticed by the distracted crowd. He didn’t need to see it on the screen, because the fight was replaying in his head as he made his way to the empty washracks.
Under the sputtering solvent Jazz checked the datanet, and grabbed the uncut film off some forum before it got nuked by the mods. He watched it at quintuple speed as he dried himself off. Watched without all the stuttering cuts, it was clearly Buzzsaw’s strong camerawork.
The monochrome bot made his way back out to his teammates before they realised he’d been missing, thinking the whole while. It was good news for his sanity, perhaps. The Autobots were now technically leaderless, what with the Senate’s puppet decapitated. Oh, sure, there would be an interim leadership. Jazz put his bet on the Senate headed by Sentinel’s SiC — some crusty old general from the Golden Age — but the general and bureaucrats hated each other to the struts. Nothing would be getting done. It would be bureaucratic gridlock.
Jazz took a seat as one of his teammates passed around a cube of highgrade spiked with nitro. Technically it was supposed to be a dry base, but he had a feeling there would be a lot of wet parties tonite. He took a deeper sip the next time it came around. The main bot Jazz had come to kill was done in before he’d even gained a single rank. He took another sip, feeling a bit washed out and bitter.
The Matrix was some unknowable nonsense, Jazz doubted anyone could predict where it would end up. That was assuming Sentinel had even carried the damn thing in the first place, and if he had, was it now in Decepticon hands? That was an even more unknowable fate; the Primes had been one of Megatron’s favourite rant topics, and he was as likely to use it to have a propaganda-laden Con Prime as he was just to smash the slagging thing.
Jazz shook his helm hard enough to hear something rattle. Nothing was happening tonight, politics was too slow, and the official mourning period for the Prime was an full thirteen chords. He had time. He needed to recharge. He needed to not think.
As he left the mess a cycle later, he heard the soldiers’ worry over Sentinel’s proper replacement. Jazz didn’t bother wasting much processing power thinking about the Senate’s next puppet. Whoever they would be, they’d be far out of Jazz’s current reach.
Another quick rinse in the washracks, chatting quietly to some basemates, and he was back in the barracks, lying flat on his back in his berth. Unable to sleep despite the soft comfort of the surrounding bots’ sleeping ventilations, he swore he could feel the weight of the flimsi in his subspace. Subspace tech made that physically impossible, but his sensors didn’t know that. The finger felt like a lump of lead.
Still, he was unable to sleep despite the soft comfort of the surrounding bots’ soft sleeping ventilations. He swore could feel the weight of the flimsi in his subspace despite the tech making that impossible.
Jazz really had thought they were done, through, but Megatron wasn’t done with him, it seemed. Jazz couldn’t really work up the conviction to deny himself that devotion.
It did, however, place a target on the bot he’d been on-and-off sleeping with for the past while, a chunky little scooter with a sweet spike and braided cables. Megatron was deeply possessive of those he was close to. His devotions ran deep. He collected ownership. Jazz wouldn’t wish the revenge Megatron would cook up on anyone but his old masters. The note didn’t directly state much of anything, but Jazz wouldn’t take the chance. He sent a quick message to Scootpipe, now off base, saying that they’d have to cut it off.
Jazz fell asleep, still feeling that unsurity, and woke up every morning for orns and orns feeling the same thing. No letters, no responses. Not a chirp or word from Lazerbeak or Buzzsaw, not even a small cassette’s silhouette in the distance. Even the usually frantic patrol routes were quiet, and the officers seemed tense. Megatron wasn’t usually one to let feelings linger when he could say something. Jazz ended up worried on two fronts.
They all continued worrying in the common rooms about who would replace Sentinel, Jazz joining in if only to keep up on the base rumour mill.
A tense patrol the orn after some senatorial discussions left him with more questions. He’d seen Ravage for the first time in a vorn — not clearly, but the cougaraider had stopped and very purposefully let them both make eye contact. The message was clear: Megatron was still watching. Jazz had stood there as Ravage had slipped back into the rubble and his patrol partners had caught up. “Only a shadow,” he’d said.
A chord later, he used one slow day on monitor duty to peruse the darknet forums he was behind on. A group of errant Autobots was gaining power, led by some ex-dockworker-cum-archivist petitioning the court. The designation sounded familiar, and Jazz hummed, switching back to the monitors as he perused his internal database. The bot, a cute tricolour hauler, had been on his radar it seemed. Some more research dug up information that Jazz wouldn’t say it made him hopeful, exactly. It did make a little of the weight in his struts lessen. Something here could work, could do some good. He himself didn’t have much influence right now besides some blackmail on some of the high-ranking bots he’d been holding in reserve, but it might be worth bringing it into play for this group.
Jazz once again had a plan.
