Chapter Text
Darkness.
Pain, blossoming in at the base of his helm.
Prowl reset his optics, clearing them once, twice. All he could see was light and faint blurs—grains of sand were caught in the gears of his optics. Burning dust billowed in plumes across his frame, and he coughed his filters clear. He was overheating—the desert sun blazed down so that his circuits flowed sluggishly and his coolant hissed along his armor.
Had he crashed? He didn't think so—he would have remembered the crash code. But the last thing he remembered was hiding beside Jazz, nestled in among the rocks overlooking the target site. The rest of Spec Ops had vanished into the terrain around them, fanning out to provide cover and advanced warning. Prowl had focused on the canyon and the flares of energon flickering along the sandstone.
Then there had been—
The blurs were beginning to sharpen up. Dark shapes. Laughing shapes.
He was still in pain. Something hurt in his helm, his right pede felt like it was twisted around at the knee, and his right hand was shorting out. He'd been in a fight.
No.
He'd lost a fight.
Dark shapes with purple marks.
Probabilities lined up in neat rows in his cortex.
35% chance – Jazz's team had been spotted.
60% chance – Jazz had been ambushed.
90% chance –
No, he refused, he refused to believe it, his cortex had to be glitching—
One of the dark figures before him sharpened into focus, a familiar frame in gleaming silver and black, standing beside a tall white and red figure with broad wings.
95% chance as his math refused to spare his feelings.
Jazz, with red optics, stood beside Starscream, laughing with something the jet had said.
99% chance – Jazz had betrayed them.
They were laughing again. They must have taken Prowl's badly muffled keen as his despair at being captured.
In retrospect, he should have aimed his rifle at his own helm. Or at the much larger target of Starscream. Instead his emotions betrayed his logic center and he took the shot at Jazz, who simply stepped out of the way, then came close and stomped hard on Prowl's hand. Cords crumpled—his armor dented and tore through wires—
Jazz knelt on his chest, his hand closing around Prowl's throat and digging into the vocal cords—his claws sliced into Prowl's energon line—
Then Jazz stopped, looking over his shoulder. Starscream had said something Prowl couldn't hear, but he could read the jet's mouth.
They wanted Prowl alive.
Emergency Protocol Z999-9 came online. It held commands to shut down his cortex, to slam locks and firewalls in place, and then to completely unravel Prowl's code. Every plan, every calculation, every scrap of data about the Autobot forces lined up to await deletion and the destruction of every byte that contained Prowl's soul.
Panic and a second's hesitation cost him the chance to use it.
Jazz looked back down at him, grinned with sharp denta beneath glittering red optics, and sent his fist into Prowl's faceplate.
Darkness again.
"I warned you, Prowler, I really did."
The words warbled in and out. One of Prowl's audios was damaged and his frame felt like he was lurching to one side though he never actually fell. One or more of his gyros had been ruptured. He was seated, probably the only reason he hadn't collapsed, with his hands cuffed behind him and locked to the chair. He gave it a token push and found it riveted to the floor.
"But y'all just never listen to me—hell, you never listen to anyone when it really countin'."
His repair cycle worked furiously, burning up reserves that Prowl didn't think he had to spare. He scanned his systems and found himself locked out of his functions. He could lift his helm, he could move his hands, but his code and diagnostics were blocked.
"Ambush. Capture. Torture. Execution. I tol'ya."
Prowl winced, squeezing his optics shut.
"I might have listened," Prowl whispered, "if you'd told me I would die at your hands."
Jazz chuckled. "Well, to be honest, I didn't know Bossmech would gimme that privilege. But he was just so pleased that he granted me something of a reward for a job well done. Minus my chaperone, o'course."
Prowl took a deep vent and shuddered when he felt his filters scrape against dented tears in his armor.
"Who's 'bossmech'?" he managed.
Jazz came close and bent down, clasping Prowl's shoulder in a parody of friendly camaraderie.
"Not you, Prowler, not no more." Jazz gave him a rough jostle and moved away again.
Prowl took the opportunity to scan his surroundings—a room of black walls, a high ceiling, a single light somewhere above them. There were no doors that he could see but he heard Jazz sealing them tight—no one would be coming in or out. There were no windows, a work station with a large monitor, another Decepticon quietly watching a monitor on the other side of the room, and—
A torn mech on a table in the middle of the room.
Prowl had seen death before, many times—battlefield casualties and mechs who grayed out despite Ratchet's best efforts, as well as the occasional spy who got too close and took a bullet in the spark. But he'd never seen death laid out neatly and spread like a work of art, with the armor peeled back and broken in sections, the optics set beside the helm along with a cracked faceplate, with pedes and arms dropped in sections on the floor. Oil and energon dripped off the edge and splattered on the floor, running in lazy rivulets to the drain.
Prowl suddenly felt lightheaded, his sense of gravity turning upside down.
"Any…" his voice wavered, and he struggled to get it under control again. "Anyone I knew?"
"Huh?" Jazz glanced back at the table and shrugged. "Some 'bot named Torque somethin' or other. Just another 'Con what pissed off Starscream."
Prowl latched onto that, ripping his attention away from the mess of what used to be a mech.
"Is that what you are to me now?" Prowl asked. "'Just another 'con'?"
"You wound me, Prowler, you really do." Jazz touched something else on the workstation, turning a dial, patting the other mech on the shoulder. He wiped his hands clean of dust. "I ain't never gonna be just some 'con to ya."
Jazz moved out of sight. Prowl listened to his steps behind him, expecting to be grabbed or struck. But no—he heard Jazz lightly touchtyping on another terminal . Then Jazz was coming up close, bending so close Prowl could feel warm vents on his throat, and Jazz was nuzzling his scratched cable and the energon trickling from the tiny cut.
"I'm the 'con what pulled one over on the entire Autobot army," Jazz whispered. "Even had their Second in Command all up in my cortex, and he never even guessed."
Prowl didn't respond. He remembered Jazz's logic tree. He almost brought up how disorganized he'd found Jazz's systems to be, but there was no point now.
"How deep were you?" Prowl asked.
Jazz frowned, standing straight. "What?"
"How deep were you hidden?" Prowl asked. "Is this just a flipped personality? If I delete you, is my Jazz still in there?"
Jazz gave a small scoff, but his look softened a fraction. "You're something, know that? Izzat what really bugs ya?"
"Did you know what you were?" Prowl demanded, sick to his core. "Was everything a lie?"
"Aww…"
Laughing to himself, Jazz went to the slab and used one arm to sweep the wreckage to the floor.
"Are you just sad you couldn't fuck the 'con outta me?" Jazz sighed to himself and began cleaning the fluids from the rusted blade he would use first . "Love didn't cure all?"
"I want to know who I was holding," Prowl said. "Was that you?"
The other mech shrugged.
"I 'unno. Jazz is Jazz." He lay out one torture implement after another— rusted blade, force download kit, virus matrix, spot welder, poisoned energon that glowed blue .
"Not Five-Six?"
Jazz's hand tightened around the blade so much that it snapped. He stared at the damage to his hand for a moment, then heaved a vent and tossed the ruined knife aside.
"Stopped being Five-Six when the rest of 'em couldn't keep their damn thoughts to themselves." Jazz muttered something else under his vent, something Prowl couldn't hear. "Y'know, we never saw the damn city 'till Lord Megatron killed the functionsts 'n let us out? And they try to run? Fuckin' ingrates."
"Hard to keep thoughts to yourself around Soundwave," Prowl said softly.
"Shockwave, actually," Jazz said far too cheerfully. "Megatron tore open the access tunnels and we all tumbled out, and I saw the city lights and the stars and...it was perfect. So perfect. I could'a bowed down and worshipped him right then and there."
"And your batch mates?"
Jazz shrugged with a tilt to his helm that didn't suit him. "Cowards. Ain't me. They stopped meaning anything soon as they got split in two."
"Two-Six?" Prowl pushed. "'Speedy little femme, sang pretty good, loved opening up full throttle.'"
Jazz ran a search function and found that description from millennia ago, painfully presented to Ratchet as a tearful remembrance of his former crew. He gave a low whistle.
"You pulling out all the stops, huh?" Jazz nodded once. "Seeing death coming down the highway does wonders for focusing the mind."
Jazz came around the slab and hopped up, scooting the last debris of gray screws and grimy steel shavings to the floor. Bringing his pedes crosslegged, he arched his back and stretched, getting comfortable. Then, as if he were back in the Ark mess hall regaling his bots with his latest adventure, he raised his hands to begin the story.
"Lemme set you a scene, Prowler," he started. "Kaon, the grand superstructure of towers and highways and runways. S'a gem of a city, not as pretty as Praxis, too industrial to be Iacon, but a gleaming ruby of red hot molten steel and black pavement, with smoke curling all the way up to the clouds."
Jazz, whose hands had risen up and up, now let his arms drop back into his lap.
"And none o' y'all never seen it. You been stuck inside dark maintenance shafts big as a five lane highway and long as forever, and all your life, you've never once been let out. Your energon comes down the pneumatic tubes. Your oil's delivered in hydraulics. Hell, you ain't even got a repairbot to visit you. You just run over the old crews who crashed and slagged somewhere in the darkness. And when you die, they'll just spark another bunch."
Prowl didn't answer, but he gave a nod of acknowledgement. Maintenance bots were the unseen defrag code of the cities, or at least that's how the functionists had justified walling mechs up forever.
"And after a lifetime—a lifetime, mech—suddenly there's explosions and heat and light so strong you can't see, and there's a jet ripping open the walls of your prison." Jazz stared up as if reliving the moment, his face full of innocent wonder. "And there's Lord Megatron, huge, covered in scratches and dents and energon, and he puts his hand out and says 'welcome to the world'. What you think I'd feel, huh?"
"Freedom. Gratitude," Prowl murmured. "Confusion. Fear."
Jazz's smile faded.
"Huh. Yeah. Well. One an' Three screamed and turned and ran. Shockwave tore 'em apart for being cowards. Functionists running back to their little cages."
"They were afraid they were going to die," Prowl said. "Were they wrong?"
"I tol' 'em not to run," Jazz said. "I said...but hell, ain't no one listening to me never."
Prowl's gaze flickered over to the Decepticon at the far workstation. The mech's back was to them, so Prowl couldn't see his faceplate, but the 'con didn't seem interested in anything they were saying. Whatever he was staring at must have been fascinating.
"You weren't scared at all?" Prowl asked, risking another question. "Kaon was a massacre."
Jazz shrugged. "Didn't know no better. Thought maybe the streets was always filled with dead mechs. Always running over 'em in the shafts. Why would some dead bots be so scary? Right, Shrapnel?"
Presumably the Decepticon with them, Shrapnel didn't acknowledge the question.
Jazz's smile came back.
"'Sides, there was so much out there! One of the 'Cons gave me a visor 'cause I couldn't see so good in the light, and then I could get all the radio stations and streams and news and history and.."
Jazz sighed. "And...look at me, doing all'a this talking. Ain't got time to spare. Boss wants results and here I am just blabbing."
He hopped off the slab and gathered up the force download kit.
Prowl sat straight, pressing back against the chair as Jazz came closer. The kit was two-fold, a prong for inserting into a mech's seals and a jack that fit into the helm port, and Jazz held each in his hands, standing over Prowl, putting his knee between Prowl's and leaning against him.
"I hope you don't think this too forward of me," Jazz murmured by his audio.
Prowl couldn't access his port locks, but he felt them lift, felt the sharp prong lightly brush the soft edges. Then Jazz drove it home with a swift thrust that spilled code into his systems. The jack slid into his helm like a knife, pouring static and white noise that dulled his responses even further.
Jazz read the output on the force download and grumbled.
"0.0000001% done. Even locked out, you got some serious firewalls, mech."
It didn't feel like that to Prowl. The code tumbling through him was slight, miniscule, and impossible to stop. A little juggernaut, it tapped insistently at his programming and demanded entrance with insistent whispers that began to stack on top of each other. Hours, days, weeks—eventually they would win. The code would worm its way in, alter all of his permissions, drag out every bit of data, and leave him riddled with strange fragents.
"Let's hurry up the process."
There was a cube of energon pressed to his mouth. Prowl clenched his denta—Jazz's fingers wrapped around his chevron and pulled his helm back, and there was enough sudden pain that his mouth parted briefly. Jazz managed to put two fingers in, prying his mouth wide enough to pour in poison.
"This should slow down some of your processors," Jazz smiled. "Move that counter a litt—"
Prowl bit down hard on Jazz's fingers, refusing to let them slip free.
"Okay, now you're starting to tick me off, you slag." Jazz snarled, using his free hadn to smack Prowl's optics, cracking the nasal ridge. "You think I won't rip your faceplate off for—"
With a firm click, Prowl's denta came together, severing two of Jazz's fingers so that they scraped down his throat. Oil and energon splashed his mouth.
There was a satisfying shriek before Jazz squelched it, stumbling back and clutching his hand close to his hood. He vented in a rush, gulping air, and his vents turned into shaky laughs that grew loud, louder, faster, increasingly hysterical until he was shrieking in laughter.
For the first time in his life, Prowl's processors failed him.
It wasn't the poison or the alien code in his systems. He couldn't have made sense of what he was seeing if he'd been in full command of himself. The noises coming from Jazz were not sane.
Jazz was the coolest mech on the battlefield that Prowl had ever seen. Jazz never panicked. Jazz never even stumbled.
The mech in front of him now was broken, painfully broken.
The thought gave him no comfort as Jazz turned, swept up the spotwelder and ignited it in the same motion, and thrust the blue flame deep into Prowl's shoulder.
White pain ignited all through Prowl's hood and back. Pain incinerated the sensors in his doorwings. The overload burnt the edges of his optic servos and the world turned into a dark blur with only Jazz's glaring red optics in the haze.
"I'm trying here," Jazz hissed in Prowl's audio, creeping up onto his lap and digging his claws deep into Prowl's other shoulder. "I'm tryin' so damn hard...and you just making it a thousand times worse, I swear to—"
Something crackled, and Prowl heard the high squeals of a strange voice before he recognized it was Starscream. The torch suddenly withdrew as Jazz whipped around, the flame held up high.
"Hi, boss!" Jazz said, too happy to see him. "You rang?"
"...you sealed the doors," Starscream said, staring at Prowl's wide optics and his helm thrown senselessly back. "And cut the access frequencies in there. And—is Shrapnel asleep on the job again?"
"Oh, sorry boss, I just don' like being interrupted when all'a the screaming starts." Jazz jerked his claws against Prowl's shoulder, slashing a sensitive doorwing cable, and lifted his hips as Prowl bucked involuntarily. "Something this intimate demands privacy, yeah?"
"You better not be tearing him apart before the download," Starscream said. He glanced around the room until his glare rested on Shrapnel, who was still focused on his terminal. Even Prowl's screams hadn't shaken him. Starscream opened his mouth to call him, then groaned as someone called for him outside of view. He snapped at them from his seat.
Jazz's laughter was soft but constant, a steady undertone as he spoke. "No way, boss, just uppin' the download time is all. Shrapnel there gave me the idea—he tuned out the music we making and taking a quick recharge. A li'l pain makes the code flow quicker, ya dig?"
Starscream yelled at a mech over his shoulder, demanding to be left alone, grumbling as the outpost demanded his attention. He vented and favored Jazz with a half smile.
"At least I have one mech doing his job. I haven't seen you this ecstatic since we pulled you from the shafts."
Jazz gave a salute, still laughing deep in his engines, and Starscream clicked off.
Jazz watched the monitor as if he expected it to flip back on, venting hard as if he'd sped a hundred miles. When he was satisfied that they were alone again, he gave a low, tired laugh.
"Just a li'l pain…" he murmured to himself.
And he pressed the blowtorch against his upper pede.
Prowl's vocal processor shut down on itself. This close, he saw the bright flare of blue light diving deep into Jazz's thigh armor, saw the paint flash and catch fire and die out again, watched molten steel bubble up over the sides and leave scalded welts down his pede.
Jazz stiffened, straining with static, and let the blowtorch tumble to the floor.
"Tha'ss a li'l better…" Jazz slurred, slumping heavily on Prowl's bad shoulder.
Long seconds passed. Nothing in the room moved, save for Jazz's vents.
Slowly Prowl recovered his senses. He couldn't lock out the pain, but the wreckage of his shoulder had gone numb and now simply felt frozen.
Jazz was venting heavily, shrieking static underlying his voice. Prowl glanced sideways, afraid of what might happen if he caught him looking, but Jazz's optics were shut tight.
Blue energon flecked the other mech's mouth.
Prowl froze. Had Jazz drank the cube as well? Prowl knew he hadn't swallowed all of it. But why? None of this made sense. None of this...his sense of balance shifted and spun. He started to feel the sick nausea in his core processor that was his warning that he might crash. The only thing anchoring him was Jazz's weight nestled on top of him. The world was going mad and no one seemed to notice except him and—
Stop.
Stop and think.
Prowl had been given precious minutes, maybe seconds, to do the one thing he held in advantage over almost every other mech in the war. Gather data, analyze, and draw conclusions.
Data:
Jazz had betrayed the Autobots. Had betrayed Prowl. Had admitted such. This was not in question.
Jazz had begun force-downloading Prowl. Had engaged in one instance of torture to do so.
New information—Jazz had watched Decepticons destroy his batchmates.
Further information—Jazz had been ecstatic to be freed at the time.
Jazz—
Pause. All stop.
Starscream had said that Jazz was ecstatic at the time. But he'd said that after looking at Jazz just now. Assume nothing. Assume nothing. Analyze. Analyze.
Jazz was broken. Jazz was shrieking in laughter at having his fingers bitten off. Jazz had swallowed poisoned energon and engaged in one instance of self-mutilation, laughing as he did so.
Prowl imagined the scene—Jazz, surrounded by the torn, ragged wreckage of mechs in Kaon. A bot used to the quiet, dark shafts, he had been violently thrown into the overwhelming stimuli of an entire city, of the roaring of bombs and screaming, dying mechs, of Decepticons tearing his batchmates apart. And this was what Jazz had looked like—laughing, wheeling wildly through dizzying lights and a thousand new voices and songs and explosions.
Jazz had narrowly escaped death by reacting the only way he knew how—in wonder at everything in the world, even if that wonder had been frenzied . Probability—85% and rising. It made sense with what Prowl knew of his personality. Jazz blasted music at top volume in the war zone, came back shredded at the edges, then laughed and went out to court death yet one more time. Jazz cherished every mech he knew. Jazz felt every emotion so intensely...stepping out of the darkness must have been sublime torment.
Prowl glanced at Jazz again and found that red gaze returned. Jazz was watching Prowl's move. And knew Prowl well enough to guess at what he was thinking.
"Let me in," Prowl whispered, for fear someone might somehow overhear them. "I will help."
Jazz gave a long, slow reset of his optics. "Why'd you shoot at me, Prowler ? Why not 'screamer?"
Prowl's spark clenched. Jazz sounded like a weary sparkling wondering why his best friend didn't want to play the game anymore.
Prowl had to walk a fine line between honesty and igniting Jazz's anger. One optic glowed brighter than the other, a tell-tale sign that something had burned out in his cortex.
"You were... are the most dangerous," Prowl said. "You can still return to base. No one would be the wiser."
Jazz didn't move.
"And…" Prowl couldn't help the bitterness in his voice. "You hurt me. I'm angry."
Jazz glared and furrowed his eye ridges . "You'd still shoot me."
"To escape," Prowl agreed. "If I had to."
Jazz k eened deep in his throat.
"I'm trying so hard," Jazz whispered. "An' you just making this so much harder."
Prowl nodded once, tilting his helm so that he brushed Jazz's faceplate.
"I know. But i f you let me in, I can help."
Silence. Prowl despaired of someone breaking the lock and entering, or of the monitor coming on again. Or Shrapnel finally looking up and—
Prowl's mouth parted. Shrapnel had fallen sideways out of his chair, and the front of his frame had twisted just enough to reveal the melted slag of his faceplate.
There were two plans at work here, and Prowl was no longer sure who the players were. Or at least who Jazz was playing for.
Jazz leaned up in his lap, shifting to take the weight off of his slagged pede. And then Jazz bent and pressed his mouth against Prowl's and forced a deep kiss.
This...was not what Prowl had had in mind. It was rough, scraping denta, and then one of Jazz's denta came loose and hit the back of Prowl's throat. He coughed, trying to kick it out, but Jazz clamped harder on Prowl's mouth, refusing to let go, and the denta was swallowed.
Prowl's vents caught. This wasn't just a scrap of metal. There was a signal—Jazz had just dropped a wireless access port deep into Prowl's systems. The circuit was caught up, integrated, and immediately opened.
Following the signal like a beacon, Prowl piggybacked via the port being used as a force-download access and tapped into Jazz's cortex. He was allowed in before he could ask, and all the firewalls and defensive viruses lay down as he moved in deeper, until finally he touched the core of Jazz's self.
Ages and ages ago, Prowl had accessed Jazz's logic tree. At the time, he'd found it fluid in its wild loops and stray wisps, flowing in a broad spiral like a sparkling galaxy of connections, pulsing in time to Jazz's spark.
Now the logic tree was a tall, looming obelisk, dark and dull, rigid and restrained. Chunks of data were chained together with commands and protocols that were completely alien to what Prowl knew of Jazz. His friend was meant to be chaotic, free. Not locked in place like this.
Tapping, a sound like steel on ceramic. He couldn't find the source—it seemed to echo in all directions. And he couldn't find Jazz's self, the bit of awareness that focused their souls in this place. Where was Jazz?
He followed the dark obelisk down to its center and found him...what was left of him.
Jazz was unraveling himself.
Confronted with the locks and chains of Decepticon commands, Jazz had begun slashing through the codes, inadvertently smashing the core underneath until he was surrounded with fragments of his personality, with splotchy glitches of emotion and random memory files. Jazz himself was a mess of white and black armor , fangs and claws and red optics and a long wail erupting out of his vocalizer.
"I'm tryin' so damn hard, I swear..."
Prowl came up behind him, studying his efforts. There were stars inside the darkness, the endless galaxy of infinite variety that was Jazz, but the pulsing was muted and muffled. Nothing could escape the void of code commanding Jazz to work, to obey, to extract, to mend.
Prowl made a soft sound of understanding.
These were not Decepticon commands. They were Kaon commands—for a maintenance bot. Decepticon high command had simply repurposed those program strings into chains to ensure Jazz's obedience.
"Did they give you a command code?" Prowl asked. "Or were you aware that you were undercover?"
Jazz keened and leaned hard on the darkness, prying at the edges with his hands. Code fragmented and crumbled under his fingers.
"I need to know," Prowl said. "To help you. Tell me—"
"'Screamer said 'command code override coin flip'." Jazz keened again, and his pedes slipped on nothing as he put his whole weight against the darkness. "I tried it over and over, but ain't nothing changing."
"Of course not," Prowl said. "You were never programmed to revert. This is your base programming. What you built yourself into over the vorn of being with us is deleted...to be erased with the next defrag cycle. The Autobot Jazz is now a ghost lost in the machine."
Prowl watched that ghost wail again, clawing at what lay before him. Jazz was fighting to regain his self, both literally and figuratively.
The poisoned energon had slowed down the deletion process. The torture helped focus his mind by burning through the static.
But Jazz was attacking something far greater than he could hope to destroy—the process would be complete before he destroyed even a fraction of the original coding. And what he wanted to replace it with was locked in a shell of his original functionist design. Jazz could not sit and edit his code while he compiled.
Prowl came close, putting his arms around Jazz and drawing him flush against himself. He knew they were not actually touching, that this was a construct made by their minds to make sense of being aware of their own programming. It didn't matter. Jazz drew into Prowl's comfort, hiding inside his arms.
"Do you trust me?" Prowl asked.
Jazz didn't answer, pressing himself into Prowl's hold as if that would make all the bad things go away.
"I can't make it like it was before," Prowl said. "I can't destroy this. But...I can save you."
Jazz stared at the monstrous dark thing in front of him and the crystalline chaos locked inside. And he nodded once, trembling.
Prowl reached out, put his hand on the darkness, and issued a string of commands.
The surface of the structure shuddered.
Prowl read the reaction as code, as process, as numbers. He steeled himself, tightened his grip on Jazz, and issued a final command.
The darkness shattered.
Jazz glitched and vanished.
The galaxy inside pulsed in a violent burst of bright energy and exploded out in all directions, and the slower stars (memories, thoughts, emotions) began to tumble out, looking for a lodgment.
The darkness did not fade. It spread thin, became a frame and background, to highlight the new world that it had become.
The light that had exploded out began to coalesce, coming back into itself. Prowl put his hands out and held it close. The spark was familiar and warm, still trembling, still hiding in Prowl's hold.
Taking a deep vent, knowing he had precious little time, Prowl began gathering the fragments of code and data, soothing the fear and pain back into something resembling Jazz.
In an hour, Starscream expected to have Jazz's update on Prowl's download.
He did not expect the fury of the entire Autobot air force scrambled over his base, nor all of the Autobot snipers camped out on the cliffs overlooking his canyon, nor the regular forces fanning out to cut off a full Decepticon retreat.
Shouting commands and sending mechs out to meet the enemy, Starscream ran through his small outpost and smashed down the door to the interrogation room. Instead of a delirious Prowl and all of the Autobot secrets, he found a grayed out Shrapnel sprawled on the floor and Prowl finishing burning through the rear door.
At hearing the crash, Prowl turned. His shoulder was still smoking and bleeding, and he struggled under the weight of an unconscious Jazz under one arm. But the normally taciturn, sober tactician saluted Starscream over a triumphant smirk.
"You lose, Decepticon," Prowl said over the sound of overloading electronics. "You lose."
And he escaped out just as the workstation and terminals exploded, the ceiling collapsed in, and Starscream's rage was swallowed in a futile burst of missiles against scrapped rubble.