Ep. 1.5 - FIVE MINUTES! - Closed

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<<This is...pretty much the beginning of 1.5, after everyone's gotten back. Definitely after Karma.>>


There were rules about gratuitous use of alt modes in the base. Jazz usually stuck to them, because hey, there were organics about, and they were squishy, and it was harder to avoid them if they stumbled into your path when you were going 90mph and couldn't pivot.

This time, though, he made an exception. He made it to Ironhide's room in record time, screeching to a halt in front of it and transmitting the "no really, MY cohort" access codes at it before he'd finished transforming.

He was talking as he came through the door, a muddled field of worry and concern and exasperation.

"'Hide! Primus wept, mech, what happened? I'm gone for three days and come back and all the Pit breaks loose!"

Megatron at the Neutral Base. Shadow missing. Barricade alive. Ironhide confined to base. Jazz had thought for a long klik that Fort Max was JOKING, but all it'd taken was an even shorter klik to sample the general EM pall over everyone he met to realize that something really had gone seriously bearings up.

And that pall was even WORSE in close proximity to Ironhide. Jazz swallowed back mock histrionics about how he couldn't leave 'Hide alone for FIVE MINUTES and softened it to, "Seriously...what happened?" His glyphs spiked out in various confused directions, encompassing to you/to team/to COHORT...?

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"What didn't?" The deep reverberation of tank churning anger was both reflexive and strained - ingrained, deliberately sustained, because the alternative... the alternative made Ironhide's systems cold, the alternative was things he didn't want to think about or go through, the alternative was no help and the pacing, trapped, manic energy of anger was the better choice by far. Ironhide, who had been pacing around the width of his work table, turned abruptly to Jazz and memory alone was enough to send seething surges of black anger through his field. "Whole thing gone aft over helm straight t' th' smelter an' Ah don't even know where t' start!"

Not in words, at least. Words couldn't contain all that had gone wrong. He had already crafted a bare bones report, though, bullet points of events in their starkest and most pared down form. Megatron, injured, seeking refuge with Cleaver. Barricade alive, by Cleaver's hand. Barricade, come to retrieve his repaired commander. Shadow bolting, still missing, the Prime's orders to him to not follow. He pinged it to Jazz sharply, throwing himself down on the stool beside the workbench, plates sharp edged and bristling. "Everythin' went wrong, that's what. Yeh've got t' find her, Jazz. Yeh're probably th' only one who can, an' th' Prahm ain't ordered YEH not to."

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Fragging hell, Jazz thought as he went through Ironhide's report.

"Everything" pretty much summed it up. Barricade being alive alone would have been enough. Megatron thrown into the mix was WAY more than enough. And Cleaver being at the center of it was just...the icing on the energon doughnut, adding all sorts of cohort issue to those that were already there. Especially...Primus, especially for Shadow, who was still figuring out where she stood in the cohort. To have another cohortmate fix Barricade and Megatron and not warn them....

No wonder Shadow had run. Knowing where she was, where she was coming from...it made perfect sense. And getting her back if she didn't want to be gotten back was going to be a Pit of a job...and by the way she wasn't answering her comm, that seemed a given. Jazz devoted a thread to comming and directing...Steeljaw. Yes, Steeljaw was the perfect cat to get in on this...if he wasn't already.

Meanwhile, though....

"We'll find her." His glyphs were sure, buttressed with absolute certainty. "Got a cat on it, and I'm on it, too." He stepped in, threat protocols barely pinging at getting that close to a bristling, enraged frontliner. And oh, was he enraged. Jazz couldn't remember the last time he'd felt Ironhide's field like this. Betrayal and and anger and frustration and righteous indignation, and none of those words were enough to describe the plate-stripping STRENGTH of it. Ironhide was running himself to pieces. Jazz could HEAR it in Ironhide's systems, ramped too high for too long. He sounded like he'd been on the battlefield for cycles, not confined to quarters.

Jazz stepped right into all that, hands going up to lay on Ironhide's pauldrons, pushing support and love and here/not!alone/cohort into his plates. "'Hide. I got it. I've got your back. I'll get it done." He reached up, one hand stretching to cup the side of Ironhide's helm, then to draw them close to touch helms. "Backup's here."

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For one moment, one traitorous instant, his cohortmate's field slipped into and between all the jagged pieces of his own, humming support-love and the siren call of letting go. Ironhide's engine faltered, the thunk of it through his chasis almost painful as it turned over with a grinding ache, and for one tiny sliver of stupidity Ironhide almost gave in, almost caved and leaned into Jazz's offered comfort.

Stupid. Half-throttled, glitched, rusted out, stupid - one moment in which everything the anger, carefully fed and cultivated, was covering over lunged up and tried to freeze the fuel in his lines. Ironhide shuttered his optics reflexively, shuddering. It hurt, in ways he didn't want to examine, had no intention of examining, and it took another entirely too long moment, his engine grinding choked protest, to force himself to pull away from the warmth of his cohortmate's field, catching Jazz's wrists in his hands to push the smaller mech away. "Don't," he managed roughly. "Ain't got time for it an'... Ah can't afford it."

It was harder to spark the anger back up every time he faltered, harder to catch the heat of it, hold it close, keep it burning. He managed with gritted dente, deliberately ramping his own systems back into high alert until the vibration of it set his very struts on edge, and that, in turn, fueled the endless spinning resentment and frustration. Ironhide vented sharply, shaking his head. "Can't do this right now," he gritted out. "Shadow first. Worry about th' rest later."

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Ironhide's field was SLAGGED. Jittering and unstable, flaring underneath an iron vise of control. A fitting complement to the grinding, high-gear chaos of his systems.

Slag and burn it. This was more than Ironhide being angry. Or worried or frustrated. Or afraid. Jazz had seen him like that before. In battle. After officers' meetings. In situations of life and death, of possible loss of cohort and Prime and faction and LIFE. And this was different. More complex, more strut-deep compromising, and rife with code conflicts. Which, if Prime HAD ordered Ironhide to NOT aid a cohortmember in danger, was completely unsurprising.

Some day, when this was taken care of, Jazz was going to have a sit-down with Prime and explain in small words why that had been a bad idea.

Jazz had been too happy about finding his lost cohort to focus too closely on the old problems he'd made note of vorn and vorn ago. Time changed mechs, and he'd been keeping an idle optic open, seeing how it had changed his cohort. Evidently it hadn't changed this, however.

One day, a small part of Jazz was certain, Ironhide's glitched-and-patched coding was going to crack him apart at the seams. But it would not, if Jazz had anything to say about it, be TODAY.

Jazz let himself be pushed away, but his servos twisted in Ironhide's hold, getting his hands on Ironhide's forearms and holding those points of contact hard. He pulled the cohort out of his field and instead firmed it to support/unit cohesion/shared mission. His glyphs shifted as well, taking on a military sheen. "All right." But we are going to DEAL with this later, you glitched, stubborn rustbucket. "All right. I've got you. We're lookin' for Shadow. Steeljaw's on the satellites right now, and I'm gonna join him. And we will bring her back, 'Hide, if I've got to knock out her stubborn self to do it."

He pressed that certainty into Ironhide's field with a final grip of his hands and then let go, giving Ironhide space. "Now...what else? I got me'n Steeljaw to order around. Anything else we need to do? Anything else I need to know when we find her?"

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Loaded questions with too many answers. Easier to formulate replies where military and cohort bled into each other, forming overlapped glyph shapes that Ironhide knew clear to the core of his spark. It let him draw in a fuller ventilation, a few systems easing the bare minimum to smooth the constriction in his lines. It hovered on the verge but stopped there, balanced on the edge of duty-to-cohort that could, for a moment, keep everything else safely at bay.

For a moment Jazz was both superior officer and cohort, and Ironhide could lean into that the way he couldn't let himself slip over the edge of cohort and comfort.

"Yeh need t' know what went down with Barricade," he said briskly, already unwinding a cable from his wrist to offer to the saboteur. "Th' truth, not what went in th' report. Same for th' DMZ." The memory files were easier to handle as data packets, labeled files that he could organize into a chain of sequences for Jazz's perusal, without any connection to himself. Barricade, Megatron, Optimus, Barricade again, Shadow's last salvo at them all before she had run, the entire slag sucking smelter mess of it all, laid out in neatly labeled memory files and date stamps.

He hesitated over the duplicate time stamps of the first files, then left it as it was, knowing Jazz would be able to see through the flimsy construct in a nanoklik. "...Ah could use a little help," he admitted, though the words wanted to choke in his vocalizer, rough as gravel.

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Jazz realized, as the data unfolded before his cortex, that he was not surprised. It had been something in how that mission had gone down. Something in the wording of the reports. Something in the timing and the actors involved. Something in how Barricade had been killed "by accident". (Jazz had informed decisions about how Barricade would end up dead, but they did not include "by accident".)

Jazz knew what that report would have meant coming from him. It was the type of report that neatly swept the issue through the grating while he wrote another, much more detailed report to the head of spec ops. And Shadowrunner WAS spec ops, and Ironhide- was Guardian to the core. There was little, once Jazz thought of it, they wouldn't do (and to BARRICADE in particular) to save Earth and save Prime.

So no, Jazz thought, Barricade's screams replaying in his cortex, he was not surprised.

He could see what Ironhide had tried to do to his memories...had likely HAD to do, to satisfy his coding. So much of it was bound up in protecting Prime and cohort and faction. Of course he'd hidden what they'd done from the rest of the Autobots. Because they hadn't had someone like Jazz there to take over so they didn't HAVE TO.

Oh, Ironhide....

"Yeah...yeah, you could." Jazz throttled back the impulse to offer comfort, as that obviously wasn't what Ironhide needed right now. He kept his glyphs at the same level that Ironhide's were: canted toward the Guard's particular blend of cohort and officer hierarchy. "A'right. We'll bring back Shadow, then deal with whatever she's convinced herself is true that isn't." Which was likely a lot. Jazz understood Ironhide's taking responsibility as commanding officer in that clusterfrag, but the level of secrecy might've given Shadow the impression that they were doing something even wronger than they were.

"And then--" Jazz leveled a finger at Ironhide, his glyphs uncompromising. "--THEN we are dealing with you and that corrupted tree and anything else that's misfiring in that rusted box of a processor of yours. Me or Ratchet, whatever, but we are dealing with it, 'Hide." He thumped a fist lightly against Ironhide's pauldron, his glyphs spreading to support/concern/for-your-own-good.

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Ironhide absorbed his cohortmate's glyphs even as he reflexively jerked back from them. "Ain't goin' t' Ratchet," he snapped, the rejection fast and firm, threaded through with a tank churning recoil that he couldn't stop. He sucked in a deep ventilation, forcing himself to focus past the jumbled tangle of emotions and constant slithering trickle of errors. "An' Ah'm thinkin' Shadow's knowin' an' reactin' t' EXACTLY what went down."

He hooked an ankle around the stool at his worktable, dragging it close enough to slump down onto. "Barricade's just th' rust glaze on th' oil cake," he said at last, the words streaked in static. "She didn't tell us. Cleaver. She had Megatron right there, th' whole time, an' she didn't tell us. Ah wouldn't... Ah wouldn't've called Shadow there, if Ah'd known. Ah wouldn't've cleared Gasket t' be workin' there. Wouldn't've called Prahm, neither, if it hadn't all exploded like it did. Would've minded mah manners and quarantined th' whole area, but she didn't say anything." He reached up, rubbing at the cracked corner of his optics. "...Ah don't understand it," he admitted, glyphs spiraling out in fractals of confusion and pain. "She said... she said it ain't th' way they did it in her cohort, but Ah don't understand. If yeh can't trust yer cohort to have yer back an' support what yer doin'..."

Ironhide sucked in a ventilation, shuttering his optics. "Ah don't think Ah'm wrong in guessin' that if Ah can't wrap mah processor around it, Shadow can't either. Th' whole clusterfrag was like bein' dropped in freefall with a fire fight goin' on. Everythin' readin' as threats, not knowin' what else we weren't being told or might be waitin' t' drop, an' THEN Barricade waltzes in - an' that ain't Cleaver's fault, she didn't know Shadow had any history with him, didn't know any of us did, but it was th' last fraggin' thing Shadow could handle."

He pressed both hands to his helm, fingertips digging at the edges of plates, as though the pressure might be sufficient distraction from the cold rage that boiled up. "Ah should've gone after her. Frag the Prahm, frag his Pit slaggin' orders! Ah should've gone after her when she left."

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There was so much in that outburst that Jazz hardly knew where to start, except that "I should've"s never got anyone anywhere.

He moved closer, smaller hands pressing over Ironhide's. "You did what you thought was right. You did your best, Hide. And no, it didn't keep things from bein' all slagged up, but there's no fault in that. This whole thing sounds like it blew up real hard and fast, and we BOTH know how those things go. You do your best. You clean up the mess later. And that's what we're gonna do, Hide, same as we always do."

Jazz spread his hands. "And you're right. Don't know how we're gonna explain this to Shadow, and I don't know how to explain it to you, either. I got nothin' 'cept to say that maybe CLEAVER was doing what she thought was best, too. She's been a Neutral a long time, been alone a long time...."

Jazz dropped his hands, hopping up to sit on the worktable. "Maybe we're runnin' into the same problem with her as we are with Shadow: her definition of cohort just isn't the same as ours. Not yet. We need to talk to her about it. Definitely some trust issues to work out."

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The anger was hard to hold on to, spiking and ebbing in waves that left Ironhide feeling as though gravity had cut loose. He vented carefully, once, then again, leaning forward far enough to press his forehelm to his cohortmate's knee. "Ah know," he managed thickly. "When Ah'm thinkin' clear Ah do know. Ah ain't angry at her, Jazz. It was a Pit slaggin' mess, and we got tons of scrap t' talk about t' make sure it don't happen again, an' all kinds of talkin' t' get us all comin' at things where we know where th' others are comin' from. Ah KNOW. Ah just..."

He shuttered his optics, shaking his head slightly, hands slipping down to curl around the comforting solidity of Jazz's frame. "Ah don't know what Ah'm doin' any more. Made a scrap heap outta all of this, 'til Ah don't know where t' start." A pause, his vents hitching on the intake. "Sorry," he added, softer. "Sorry yeh had t' come back t' this, but glad yer back."

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Jazz was glad to hear a bit of the overdrive dropping from Ironhide's systems. It was a small victory, at least. He slanted a wry smile at the helm in his lap, laying one hand on top of it. "Can't leave y'all alone for five minutes," he said, glyphs gentled with teasing fondness.

"And you're doin' your best, 'Hide. S'all you can." Jazz rested his forearms on the back of Ironhide's shoulders, leaning on them as he curled forward over his cohortmate's helm "And I'm here, and I'm not goin' anywhere, and we'll work this out."

Jazz let that sink in for a klik before adding, "And first thing y'gotta do is take care of yourself. You've been runnin' full-tilt ever since, haven't you? Probably getting errors all over the place. Lemme help with those, 'specially the database errors. Can't fix 'em all, but it's quick and it'll let you do a full debug and defrag, which'll help some more."

Jazz tapped a talon lightly on the top of Ironhide's helm. "There's things to do, but only if you're not runnin' on overdrive."

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Ironhide hesitated - there was part of him that wanted to ask to just stay there for a few kliks more, in the fragile reassurance and safety of his cohortmate curled around him when everything ached. It was, he acknowledged, a purely selfish part; there were scores of other things that took priority, things that cut off the request before it ever formed and kicked him back into gear, striving for something more like 'functional' than what he had been managing thus far.

"It'd help if yeh could fix that archive file tree Ah broke," he agreed. "Gettin' scrap echoes from it in a junkheap mess." Turning his head slightly, he leaned his forehelm more firmly against Jazz's thighs, baring the line between helm and dorsal armor where a recessed medical port snicked open. Reaching up, Ironhide gently gripped the saboteur's wrist before the other mech could move, giving it a small shake.

"Got into it with Prahm," he admitted, keeping his optics shuttered, as though the words might be easier to confess to behind the relative lack of a portion of his sensor net. He felt Jazz still slightly and pulsed a reassurance that he wasn't entirely sure of. "Gettin' some glitch feedback from it. Just... leave it alone. Yeh know how it goes. It'll sort itself out when we stop fraggin' each other off."

He could count on the servos of one hand the number of times it had been an issue - few and rare and far between - but Jazz had seen, first hand, the shakes and glitches that came with a Guardian putting himself at odds with his oath. Never this bad, a portion of him whispered, where he could feel the conflict growing through his code with every moment spent not retracting the vicious anger that still burned deep in his spark. It wasn't bad YET, but it would be. The looming spectre of medical intervention cut it all off, locked up safe where he could deal with it in his own way - he always had, and that was reassurance enough for what he pulsed at Jazz.

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"Yeah, I heard," Jazz said, squeezing Ironhide's hand in reassurance before plugging into the offered port and easing his way into Ironhide's systems. Jazz wasn't a medic, but this wasn't the first time he'd helped cohort ease out a glitch, and he'd long-ago convinced Ironhide's systems that he was LIKE a medic. "Figured that you'd be having issues with that."

And how. Jazz sighed and began pruning the archive tree that had snarled itself into uselessness when what was really throwing most of the errors was the Guardian coding.

Jazz hated it. He really did. It was cruel, bringing mecha online with blocks like that on their free will. And then discarding them like so much scrap, besides. Jazz was very aware that Ironhide was one of the LUCKY ones--alive and still functioning with something like normal capacity--but it still ticked him off. No mech was infallible, and if 'Hide or any other ex-Guardian wanted to be torqued off at Prime, they should be able to do so without their own code fighting to drag them back into line.

Jazz kept that out of his field, though, sending a pulse of reassurance-confidence-I've-got-this to Ironhide as his attempts to gently untangle were useless and instead he had to lift out the false-memory by the roots and re-tag it to convince Ironhide's memory files that the original one was really correct. It slotted back into place reluctantly, and Jazz packaged up the false one and squirreled it away in a clearly-marked place so that Ironhide could find it again, if he ever wanted it for some reason.

Jazz nudged his engine into a soothing gear, field a warm wash over Ironhide's own as he started to retract from Ironhide's systems.

have your back-right here-reassurance-support-cohort

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The feel of some of the dissonant duality of the crafted memory smoothing out was a relief that momentarily overwhelmed the other errors. Ironhide shunted a long exvent, hydraulics going limp for a moment just to revel in the sensation, even if that sensation was the reality of what they had done to Barricade.

Necessary. Worth it. Except that his Guarded charge would say otherwise and that conflict was an entirely different snarl through his circuits. Ironhide firewalled it away and let himself, just for a brief moment, soak in the feel of his cohortmate's field, wordless reassurance that things were, or would be, alright.

And the sooner he let go and stopped taking up the saboteur's attention, the sooner they could get to making those things alright. Ironhide leaned his forehelm against Jazz's thigh plating, and no amount of knowing what he needed to do could make him let go any faster. "Ah'm on base arrest," he told the other, voice a low rumble. "Or close enough. Puts yeh after Arcee, 'til th' Prahm lets meh get back t' duty."

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Jazz's helm thunked against Ironhide's. "Third-in-command. Wow, really climbin' the ranks here. Awesome." His field, staticky with concern and worry, indicated that he thought that this was anything but awesome.

Jazz gave up and just leaned forward, sprawling over Ironhide's head and upper backplates. He pushed warm concern and support through his field, layering it over Ironhide's own like the tenaciously-sticky coating of an oilcake. It was the best he could do, lacking the ability to fix the still-glitches he could nearly HEAR rolling around Ironhide's coding. He kept his meta to himself, though, just tweaking here and there, queueing up a general housekeeping defrag like a human doctor would slip some vitamins in their patient's pockets before retracting and disengaging them.

Meanwhile, his vocalizer babbled on, low-key and barely a thought behind it. "So I get your job, eh? Kick aft and take names in addition to spec ops and base security? I'm just becomin' a multikit, here.... Better be on your best behavior, mech, and get back in the game, or I might decide I like your job better'n mine...."