[ti]Ep 3[/ti]Gotta Knock A Little Harder [ Closed | Red Alert ]

[Jazz]

Timeline: Week 3 Day 7

Happiness is just a word to me
And it might of meant a thing or two
If I had known the difference...

---

     Everything had been so chaotic around the base that Jazz could barely keep up, and no one could blame that on old age. Between Ratchet being reduced to his old frat boy days and two of the kiddos- Patch and Hot Rod- being taken or gone missing, they were down their two actually trained medics and... whatever Hot Rod was outside of a pain in the aft.

     Patch. He'd given the kid such a hard time that he almost regretted it now. He never had swung by to say anything to her, even though there was much he wanted to. Notes of encouragement were all he could drudge up but that was nothing in comparison to a face to face engagement. If something were to happen to her at the hands of the Decepticons...

     There was a tug somewhere that reminded him that there wasn't time for this. They would mount up whatever plan they needed to and they'd get them back or drag them back screaming or what have you before things started to turn sour. Prowl was here so he could come up with something, and they had more than enough able bodies that could raid the cons and toss Screamer out on his backside so fast his helm would spin. Hopefully it would be something to happen sooner than later, because if anyone knew Jazz like Optimus, it was Prowl. But Prowl was much more aware of the underhanded things Jazz could and would do once he got tired of sitting around waiting for things to be ironed out and settled. The strategist probably had one optic on him at all times just to ensure Jazz didn't go off trying to be a solitary hero again.

     For now, he had to pretend he was keeping it all together. At least in the case of the mech he was on his way to see. 

     "Yo, Red. It's me." Sure, he should have announced exactly who 'me' was and under normal circumstances with a normal mech he would have and then waited to be allowed in. This was neither of those things. "Don't blow me up." He opened the door and stepped inside then closed the door and leaned against it momentarily. Not that he actually expected Red to really blow him up since he'd take himself and this entire base out as collateral damage. He did expect to be chewed out for violating the sanctity of his private space.

     Time to just wait it out and see what would happen.

     Step one: Run head first into the lion's den.

[Red Alert]

Under more favorable circumstances, Red Alert might have responded to Jazz's attempt at humor with a dry look or a roll of his optics. He might have made a wry, sideways comment about how, as satisfying as it might be, blowing Jazz up wouldn't be worth all the paperwork he would have to file afterwards. If he was in a particularly good mood, he might even have made a passing attempt at small talk, even though asking anyone about their day was a moot point for a mech who already knew what everyone was up to.

Unfortunately, these were not favorable circumstances. They were the precise opposite, actually. Complete shite, one might say; a veritable clusterfuck of such staggering proportions that Red Alert felt vaguely punch drunk, as though the news of Patch's abduction hit just as hard physically as it did psychologically - which really shouldn't have been possible, but tell that to the ungodly tension headache that seemed bound and determined to cleave his helm in half from the inside out.

If Red Alert noticed Jazz's entrance or heard his joke, he gave no outward indication. He stood with his back to the other mech on the far side of the room, facing a wall lined with screens and monitors of every shape and size. Some featured camera feeds, others sensor relays, but the largest - the one which had the honor of commanding the majority of Red Alert's intense and unwavering focus- was....well, it was difficult to say what he was looking at, exactly, because it was all in code, but one might safely assume he was reading.

Why he was reading in the dark was an entirely separate line of questioning, the answer to which had just as much to do with his excellent vision negating the need for light as it did with wanting to mitigate factors which might exacerbate his headache.

Speaking of which...Jazz.

Red Alert was aware of his presence, he was acutely aware of everything in his immediate vicinity and a good ways beyond, but that didn't mean he had to spare the other mech a moment of his time or a piece of his focus - especially not when all his time, focus, and energy were being channeled into something of considerably higher importance.

Still, he could at least spare the other mech a brief courtesy - a slight tilt of his helm in Jazz's general direction, a silent acknowledgment that he heard the mech come in and knew he was there, but simply could not pull focus at the moment. If he cared to come closer, Jazz would see Red Alert's optics darting rapidly back and forth, racing over his own encrypted notes at a determined, break-neck speed. His jaw was tightly set, teeth clenched hard in focus or pain or a mixture of the two, and his arms were crossed to keep his hands from absently rubbing at his optics, in an effort to sooth the ache thrumming behind them.

[Jazz]

     Jazz didn't bother with announcing himself again. He just walked forward with the datapad in hand and set it down on the table beside where Red was working. If you could call what he was doing work. The saboteur had seen the Security in the best of times as well as some of the worst which had sent him into a downward spiral that to this day Jazz hadn't mentioned to anyone. This was somewhere in the middle where things could start to get really bad at the flick of a switch. Not that he could blame the red and white mech considering the situation they were in. They were all hurting in their own way. While Jazz never questioned the other mech's ability to work, he did raise concern of his inability to keep it together when the two were in private.

     This was one of those times Jazz felt Red needed to be pulled back, which is why he was here. He didn't know if anyone else knew just how far Red could and would push himself. With how far he kept everyone he figured they may not even realize how much the little nerd actually cared.

     Jazz quietly sat at the edge of the table as he normally did, pedes hanging just off the floor enough they could be casually swung. For now they were just limp since his primary focus wasn't to particularly annoy Red Alert. His back was to the monitors that had already been checked over enough times to last their lifetime, casting the front of his frame in shadows that cast a void on the wall he'd been looking at.

     Carefully he reached up to his visor and slid his digits underneath, then began to fumble with the mechanisms there. Soft sounds of hisses and clanks were the only noises made for the time being. After a while the light from the visor shut off and he pulled it from his faceplate. There were no lights cast from the spots below either from malfunction or just being generally inoperable, which set Jazz in an even more eerie position. The usual familiar glow from his visor signaled that he was at least functioning since it was on even when he was in recharge. Now there was no signs of life from him. No sound, no movement, no biolights. He sat there on the desk like a dead, empty husk with his frame still and his servos cupping the curved chevron visor in his lap.

     Jazz was beating himself up over all of this internally. The traitor in the midst scenario had a very personal hit to his psyche that he didn't particularly like reliving.

     "Red," he finally said, his vocals low as not to startle the other mech though still loud enough to call his attention. "Come outta the rabbit hole before ya end up in another world where I can't find ya."

[Red Alert]

To say that Red Alert trusted Jazz would something of an overstatement, yet at the same time a gross oversimplification of his complicated feelings regarding the other mech. He knew Jazz well enough to be familiar with him, to have a detailed understanding of his character from his smallest idiosyncrasies to his larger patterns of behavior. Over their long acquaintance, Jazz had provided Red Alert with sufficient enough evidence to support the notion that he was a well-meaning, dependable individual whose intentions were generally benevolent (albeit playfully antagonistic) in nature.

This did not mean Red Alert trusted him, at least not by any conventional definition, but he felt confident enough in his own analysis of the other mech and the consistency of his behavior that he did not anticipate Jazz acting contrary to his expectations. Red Alert knew if he ever admitted as much out loud, Jazz would likely tell him that sounded a lot like trust but with extra steps, so he never bothered to try and argue the distinction - and there was a distinction, at least to Red Alert, even if he couldn't properly articulate it.

In short, Red Alert trusted Jazz (for a given definition of trust) in as much as someone like Red Alert could trust anyone – which is to say, he managed to tolerate having his back turned to the other mech for a solid thirty seconds before his plates started to itch with unease, and he was forced to spare a glance in his direction just to confirm that he was precisely where he expected him to be. He knew full well he would have heard if the other mech had moved from his position at the desk, he knew that there was no danger in not being able to visually confirm for absolute certain where Jazz was and what he was doing, but he was compelled to check anyway on the off chance he was deaf to some some sort of unfathomable calamity going on behind him.

He wasn't, of course, because that was a ridiculous notion that he entertained only because he would never know peace if he didn't.

Instead of the aforementioned hypothetical and unspecified calamity that his subconscious insisted was a very real and likely possibility, all Red Alert found when he glanced over his shoulder was Jazz in the middle of taking off his visor.

Red Alert couldn't help and did not bother to hide his grimace, unnerved by the other mech's willingness to put himself in such a vulnerable position, and chagrined by his own inability to reciprocate that same depth of trust and openness.

“...You know I hate it when you do that.”

Interrupt him when he's working, taking off his visor and leaving himself vulnerable to all manner of harm, trusting Red Alert more than he trusted himself – he could have meant any or all of these things, but rather than elaborating he chose instead to turn his attention back to the wall of monitors, leaving Jazz to interpret his words how he would.

[Jazz]

Jazz's interpretation of Red Alert's words would have to continue to be his little secret, as were most things that involved the saboteur. He trusted others to an extent- if one could call it that. He'd spent his entire life juggling from one personality to the next, telling lies to survive and telling the truth to hide the lies that it was almost hard to figure out what was actually the right way up anymore.

Trust in Optimus was the only thing that he actually knew, and what kept him on the current path. Even that could change at the drop of a hat if the situation called for it- and that was something that came with the territory. Not that he was a traitor in any means... it was just that complicated.

"I know."

Simple, straight forward, to the point. Not that he really had much to fear from the Security Officer as it was. Jazz may have been without sight, but his audials were top notch, so if Red so much as tried to move some weird way he'd be aware of it. It was funny how losing one ability heightened the others, and it had been a choice he'd made a long time ago. Now, as he stood there with hollow voids where optics should be, his helm lifted to greet the darkness around him.

"Just need some time to adjust. I'll be out of your circuits before ya know it."

[Red Alert]

Red Alert was far from a social mech – he was something of a recluse, really, and most people had the decency (or apathy) to respect his self-imposed isolation. Jazz, unfortunately, was not most people. He was sociable to the extreme and had a love for people that Red Alert shared, but manifested in completely antithetical ways. Jazz loved people and wanted to be around them; Red Alert loved people and wanted to do so from afar, preferably without anyone ever acknowledging it or trying to engage with him under the misguided notion that loving people was the same as liking them.

Because Red Alert didn't like people, as a general rule. He found most people to be confusing or exhausting or otherwise daunting to experience in one way or another, and he simply did not have the mental or emotional bandwidth to spare trying to navigate most social situations. Small talk was dull and unproductive, and there would inevitably be a lull in the conversation which would demand filling, leaving him anxious to fill the silence. Deeper conversation was a virtual impossibility as Red Alert was incapable of conceding even the smallest moment of vulnerability to anyone but his most trusted and highly regarded friends, and those simply didn't exist- at least not consistently. His trust for others was in a constant state of flux, both in general and on an individual level, and so from one day to the next his ability to confide in even his closest friends (for a given definition of 'friend') was impossible to predict.

Jazz knew this about him, and yet the mech still insisted on trying to manufacture something resembling a friendship with him – trying to draw blood from as stone would have been a more productive use of his time, in Red Alert's opinion, but he wasn't about to tell the other mech what to do with his life because that would invite similar comments to be made in his own direction.

And so he remained silent, optics burning a hole in the wall of monitors in front of him as he tried and failed not to be acutely aware of Jazz sitting on the desk behind him. The other mech was quiet, uncharacteristically so, which would concern Red Alert if he didn't already understand all too well what had driven such a cheerful mech to somber silence. It was difficult to feel anything other than abysmal, what with the dark cloud of Ratchet's “condition” hanging over their heads – though if Red Alert's suspicions were correct (which they almost always were) – Jazz seemed to believe their shared misery could be abated by being miserable together. Misery supposedly loving company, and all.

After too long of saying nothing in the vain hope that he might not have to engage with Jazz beyond acknowledging his presence, Red Alert breathed a heavy sigh and dragged his hand down his face, then moved to press his thumb and forefinger hard against the space between his optics. It was a futile attempt to assuage his headache, to quell the hot thrumming behind his overworked optics. He knew nothing but sleep or a bullet to the head would do anything to make a dent in his discomfort, but he would have time to sleep when he was dead. He had work to do, mistakes to correct, and – company to entertain, apparently, because it didn't seem like Jazz would be leaving him with anything resembling his promised swiftness.

“What a bloody mess we're in.”

Said to the open air, both an observation and a tentative invitation, a reluctant go-ahead for conversation.

“Thousands of years spent dodging bombs and bullets and it's gonae be the stress that kills me.”