We are a literate, intermediate to advanced AU Transformers RPG Based off of the first season of TFP with dashes of other incarnations sprinkled here or there. Characters from any continuity are welcome however must be restyled to match the TFPrime universe.
Active, with ongoing plotlines, we are always willing to integrate new characters into storylines once incorporated into the setting.
Jazz stared, mouth open but nothing, for a long moment, coming out. "I. Oh, Shadow.... Oh, bitlet, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it as...as a TEST. I just meant to warn you that he might not listen to me and that you should...slag, that you should tell me if he slipped through my watch. That's all. I'm sorry that I wasn't clear. I'm sorry I made you worry."
Jazz couldn't quit kicking himself. Wording. It had been all about his wording. Slag and fire.... He pulled Shadow in close again. "I'd never do that, Shadow. I'd never send someone into your quarters just to...just to test you. Ever."
Shadow frowned as Jazz pulled her back in. Using Rattrap as a test had been the first thing he'd done that made any sense to her; it had almost been a relief. But Jazz seemed genuinely shocked at the idea, and he wasn't showing any indication of anger or disappointment aimed at her.
Cohort, she reminded herself. Treat him like it.
"I can't think of any other reason for him to be so determined. The most interesting thing that ever happens in here is Jaws showing up to get polished." She grinned a little, doing her best to relax into Jazz's hold, surprised to find she was starting to feel better for having him there. "And since that's not a euphemism, taping it hardly seems worth all the cameras Rattrap's lost."
Jazz vented a sigh. Well, that was a pit rounded backwards while blindfolded. Skirted, really. He tagged it to remind himself to deal with it later. Like a landmine.
"I don't know, for sure. Evidently it's just a thing he does. Found cameras in my quarters, too, and a few others. Rhinox seems to think that it's just something Rattrap does to keep tabs on people. And because he's a pervy plate fancier."
But, back to the real issue. "Was it Rattrap, then, that made you feel like your room wasn't safe? Or just the room being unlocked?" And, because he found that telling Shadow why he was asking often got him better results. "I'm just wondering where the fear came from...what was triggering it? Were you actually afraid that you weren't safe right then because someone had been in your room, or did the door being open remind you of something else?"
Shadow drew in on herself at the question. Talking about Rattrap had been a welcome diversion from the actual problem; now Jazz wanted to talk about what was actually wrong, and that brought back the sense of crawling unease under her plates.
"Both," she said finally. "Knew I'd gotten," careless, sloppy, stupid, "too comfortable as soon as I saw the door was unlocked. Didn't know what was behind it. Didn't know what else I might have missed."
She'd missed things before. Little things. Phaseshift's ship docked, but no Phase taking over for the automated docking sequence as she came in. Relay's ship unsecured in the docking ring. The quiet.
Little things. Inconsequential. Things she'd overlooked because she was finally home and home was safe.
"Reminded me." The words came slowly, too many processor threads swamped by memory. "Coming home, finding Barricade. Didn't know anything was wrong until I walked through the door and saw them." She forced herself to stop staring at nothing and look at Jazz. "Could have been anything behind that door."
Her glyphs were all over the place, her tense shifting between the present and the past. That answered that question. Jazz could sympathize. He knew that feeling...that way that the past could impinge on the present, overlaying a relatively innocuous reality with memory.
And what she was remembering...it was taking horrific shape in Jazz's mind. Ironhide had told him about Barricade and the Thirteen. About Barricade and Shadow. Thirteen of thirteen. They were a cohort, had had a base of operations. It made sense that the infiltrator would have hit them at home. Easy way to catch as many of them as possible.
It was what Jazz would have done.
"Shadow. Shadowrunner. Hey. Come back to me, hey? You don't have to relive it. Pull back." Cohort-ward-protectiveness. He bit down on saying "it's all right", because it obviously wasn't. Mourning-sadness-support. "I understand. I know it hurts. And I'm sorry that you had to be reminded of it."
He leaned his head forward to touch helms, close enough that she'd be able to see the shadow of his optics under his visor. "I know the memory hurts. But you're safe here. As safe as I can make you. As safe as I can make all of us."
Except...except he hadn't, and Barricade was laughing, taunting her with that fact. Viper got a message out before I killed him, but he made the mistake of contacting your commander. Thought he'd protect you. Lab knew and he didn't warn you.
That memory led to others, of claws and guns and blades that weren't her own tearing her loved ones apart. The shocked expression on Tundra's face when the first shot failed to kill her. Wildfire's scream of mixed rage and despair as he realized he was the last one still standing.
Wildfire was lucky; he was only the last for as long as it took Barricade to tear his spark out. Shadow felt its energy dissipate along her palm.
The alien/familiar touch of Jazz's field pulled her back, and she held onto him as the room dipped, swayed, and finally settled around her. "I didn't know what was in there. I didn't know."
((OOC: Feel free for Shadow to have verbalized whatever Jazz needs to go "HOSHIT" during this lovely trip down memory lane.))
Last Edit: Jul 12, 2012 11:25:02 GMT -5 by Deleted
Her field shuddered with pain and horror, sliding down into the Pit again. Jazz could only feel/watch it, pulling her as tight and close as he could. Which was why he heard the almost subvocal litany pouring from her as she stared off into space.
"No...no...I can feel them I can see them die primus all of them I don't want to it's not me it's not mine it's not mine make it stop I'm sorry I'm SORRY please please make it stop...."
This...this was more than a flashback, Jazz thought. This was either survivors' guilt manifesting as hallucinatory memories or a sign of something else entirely. Possibilities scrolled through his helm, everything from cerebroshells to yet more of Barricade's twisted influence, but the reality was that he didn't have enough information.
All he could do was hold tight and try to get Shadow to provide the map.
"Shadow, Shadow, hon, bitlet, you couldn't have known. You couldn't have. It's not your fault." He took her face in his hands, fingers curled in so there weren't claws anywhere uncomfortable. "Listen to me: it's not your fault. That weight's not yours to carry."
"I can't stop it. Something was wrong and I didn't notice, I didn't know...I can't...they're dying, I didn't know and they're dying and I can't stop it."
Barricade's memories, driven past her defenses with all the force of the infiltrator's hate and Soundwave's skill, were clear and sharp-edged. They weren't hers - Shadow knew they weren't hers, everything wrong, from the angle at which she was viewing the room to the subtle hum of internal systems to the energon-soaked claws that weren't hers weren't hers weren't hers tearing through armor and mesh like it wasn't there, not hers not under her control and she couldn't stop it - but that didn't make them less real, or easier to escape.
"I can feel them dying." But she could feel Jazz's hands, too, just slightly more real than the memories circling through her processor. She caught at his arms, desperate for some kind of anchor. "It's not me, but I can't stop remembering. I just want it to stop."
"I know. I know, bitlet." Jazz leaned in, pressing their forehelms together, close enough that she could see his optics behind his visor. He kept his voice low, his field soothing, warm, inviting. Home-shelter-cohort.
"Shadow. Listen to me. Focus on me. That's an order. Focus on me, not on the memory. Focus on me. Focus on here and now. Right here." He squeezed her arms gently, pressing his field against her plating.
Shelter. Support. Safety.
<<Short, but he's waiting for her to be a bit more lucid before he asks her more questions. ._. >>
Memories dragged against her, but the pull of orders proved stronger. With every repetition, the cold horror of claws and spilled energon receded, Jazz became a little more real and solid, the room around them warmed and brightened.
Jazz's field wrapped around her, a promise of safety, and Shadow tucked herself against him, afraid of what would happen if she lost the physical anchor of his frame. It was an effort to stay focused even with it, random processor threads looping back, dredging up the memory files again, and having to be repeatedly cut off.
"'m sorry," she managed, the sounds emerging from her vocalizer as shaky and erratic as her thoughts. "I never...I've always been able to shake it off before." The door of the control room loomed ahead of her; she vainly offlined her optics, clinging to Jazz a little harder. "Don't know why I can't this time."
"Probably what happened today. S'not your fault. Nothing to apologize for," Jazz said, pulling her close. She was a little more massive than he was, but somehow she tucked herself in and reminded him of Bluestreak, so tiny.
She'd always been able to shake it off before. So this had happened before. Multiple times. Frag.
"Heya, look at me. S'easy to see things with your optics off. Just stay here, 'kay? Stay with me." Jazz tilted her face up with one finger, his field as soothing as he could make it. "Need to ask you some things, so I can help. I don't understand everything, so you're gonna have to start from the beginning with me. Why do you remember these things? If they're not yours, where did they come from, Shadow?"
Obediently, Shadow looked at Jazz, even though a part of her wanted to duck away and pretend she was fine. Fine was for Labyrinth, though, while Jazz was gently resonating cohort against her, and cohort...cohort deserved truth.
"Barricade." She hated even saying the name. "When we captured him...we needed the failsafe codes he had. I tried to hack him." She couldn't keep looking at him, the shame of her failure burning through her. "He planned drawing us out, though. He was ready for me, and as soon as he had me...I wasn't a match for his defenses. He broke me open, and he dumped memory files into me." She fell silent, trying to keep her words from triggering memories again, an uncontrolable shudder running through her. "His memories of killing my unit. Complete. Like I did it myself."
Halfway through her explanation, Jazz hacked himself. He had to. Because there was absolutely no other way than severing choice subroutines linked to his emotional center that he'd keep sheer, murderous rage out of his field. And that was NOT what Shadow needed to feel against her plates right now.
Even with the spec ops patch in place, Jazz could still feel the anger in the abstract. He knew he'd feel it later. Knew it was right there, waiting. Could be glad that the glitchspawned infiltrator was dead and sad at the same time because it meant Jazz couldn't rip him apart. But it was all muffled and over THERE, not resonating through his processor and field. Not sending mixed signals to his confused and abused cohort.
It allowed him to hold Shadow close and hum cohort steadily at her while she shook. While he went over what he knew about that kind of mindrape.
"All right. ...All right, then. Shadow...I can help. I promise you that I can help. Memory dumps like that should be easy to see in your banks. They'll have his markers, his meta-prints all over them. And that means that we can ID them." As long as Barricade hadn't sunk them too deeply into her meta, hadn't camouflage-coded them with her own meta-signature...but if this was a defensive smash and plant during a quick hack, Jazz doubted that was the case. "And if we can ID 'em, we can deal with 'em."
"You can? You will?" Not doubt, so much as momentary incomprehension. Barricade had twisted his memories into her own, tainting everything; Shadow had only made the mistake of trying to seek them out once, though luckily that time they had simply played through and then stopped, not endlessly repeated or slipped into her every thought. The other times had been partial, a few moments, a single death, not lacking in pain or horror but bearable. She had resigned herself to simply living with them, since seeking the help of an outsider...no. Not something she could ever consider.
But Jazz wasn't an outsider. Jazz was...complicated, and she was still learning her way with him, but he was not an outsider. An outsider could not have summoned up both the assurance of comfort which her cohort had always offered, and the unquestioning certainty that the words of her commander were law. And beneath that tangle of emotions, the still developing trust which belonged to her new cohort alone.
The relief of that realization was almost as overwhelming as the memories. For a few moments, Shadow tucked herself in against him, not thinking, not questioning, letting his field ease the worst of the tremors from her frame and slow the panicky whirl of her spark to nearer normal.
"Can you do it now? I don't..." Shadow cringed a little as she broke off, hating how desperate, how pathetic she sounded. But Jazz was cohort, and cohort could know - needed to know, in order to help. "I'm afraid of what will happen if you leave me."
"I can. I will. And I'm here." Jazz's arms around her tightened, plates microtransforming to let her rest more comfortably against his side. "I'm not going anywhere, bitlet, until you're as better as I can get you. Not gonna leave you with that slag in your helm. Just give me a klik to gear up."
Jazz settled himself more comfortably back against the wall, optics offlining as he unarchived old memories. Not all of them were pleasant. ...Pit, none of them were pleasant. That type of damage was bad no matter if you were doing the damage or trying to fix it, and he'd been on both sides of that equation. All three sides, if you counted being a victim of it, but he thankfully didn't remember too much of that.
A tiny voice in the back of his processor that sounded a lot like the old spec ops medic Nightfall was shouting about operatives fragging about in their own coding, but lacking Nightfall or Weld or Patchbolt touching down in the next few kliks, Jazz didn't have access to a spec ops medic. And Ratchet was too valuable to risk in a spec ops hacked mind. Blaster...Blaster was a possibility, though from what Jazz had heard, Blaster had been involved in the hack of Barricade and hadn't been too happy about it. So Blaster was...a last resort.
Given Shadow, given spec ops, given the circumstances...bringing in anyone was a last resort. With luck, Barricade hadn't had time to do anything but the most rudimentary plant, and Jazz would be able to isolate or delete the memories without much trouble.
With luck, Labyrinth hadn't left any nasty surprises in the Thirteen's meta. Though Barricade obviously hadn't tripped any, so Jazz was hopeful that fixing what Barricade did wouldn't, either.
Jazz brought up his hacking suite, running the scripts to augment his own antivirals and anti-ICE and reconfigure his firewalls to "don't touch it, you don't know where it's been" levels. He trusted Shadow. He did not trust Lab or Barricade.
"All right. Want you to take down all the defenses you've got manual control of. ICE, diversionaries, anything that might think I'm an enemy."