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.
It felt odd, trying to lower her defenses without Labyrinth's presence to help ease them down. For all that her cohort had taken care of one another, full processor access was something limited to Labyrinth himself.
Shadow physically braced herself, grateful for Jazz's arms, solid and steady around her. Without Labyrinth to countermand his personal security codes, she faced a constant string of conflicts to be overridden, and a growing sense that what she was doing was wrong, that she had no right to offer Labyrinth's property to an outsider. More than once she had to pause, focusing on both the comfort of cohort and the fact that as her commanding officer, Jazz could literally ask anything of her and she could not deny him, even if he was reluctant to press that authority.
Each layer of defenses peeled back and sealed away left her feeling more raw, like tearing off plate and mesh and digging into protoform, phantom pain ghosting through her frame. "That's everything." Her voice scraped out of a vocalizer glitching with barely restrained panic as she shut down the last of it, feeling raw and vulnerable and horribly exposed.
Jazz could feel and hear the strain as Shadow did what he asked. It translated into tension all through her frame, in hands clutched hard on his arms, in the fine tremor that shook through her in sweeping intervals, in the roar of her vents. He was sure that she was wading through vorn and vorn of conditioning in opening her defenses to him, and a swell of pride--not at her breaking that conditioning, since he had no illusions that she was doing that, merely bludgeoning down one rule with another, but at her strength--washed through him. He let it filter into his field, entwining with the steady reassurance that he was cohort, that he was safe, that he was here to help her and make things better.
"It's all right. You're doing the right thing," he murmured, hands stroking along shivering plating. "It's all right to let in people you trust to help you. It's what friends and cohort do for each other: we let each other in, so we can make things better."
Jazz extended a wrist cable. Not going for a port, just indicating the next step. "Gonna go nice and steady, here, and I want you to watch what I'm doin'. Technically you should be able to do the same, on yourself or someone else. I'll show you what to look for."
Shadow stared blankly at the cable for a klik, until she realized Jazz was waiting for permission to proceed, just as he had waited to be invited into her room. It took her a moment to process, a moment longer to grasp that he intended to show her what he was doing; Labyrinth would have already jacked in and put her under so he could work without interference.
Jazz was waiting, patiently, his hands rubbing soothingly along her plates, and she could tell him no. She could refuse and Jazz wouldn't stop her, wouldn't punish her, wouldn't force her past this point. Her choice.
So tempting, now that the worst of the memories were held at bay, not to take the final, irrevocable step of giving herself to him completely.
An access port in her wrist slid open; she wanted it to be willingly, but she couldn't quell the surge of dread that went along with the simple action. She thought she should say something, express gratitude for his help, or for his willingness to teach her, something, but all she could manage was a ragged, "I'm ready."
So proud. Know this is hard. So proud you're doing this. Jazz's glyphs were bright, glowing with affection as he plugged into her.
The connection was easy, Jazz falling into her systems with no resistance whatsoever. She'd taken all of her firewalls down, as he'd asked. It was almost disorienting, being able to access her system overview much the same as he would his own. Shadow's meta spread out before his internal senses: here memory banks, there sensors, there the nuts and bolts programming that made it all work, that turned a quantum ball of spark and a pile of machinery into a femme named Shadowrunner.
Nothing attacked him. That was a good sign.
Jazz could already see that there were things amiss. All her voluntary defenses were down, but he could see the frayed edges of old data scarring, where her memory banks had been attacked. Entire sectors were dark, corrupted, the damage old and speaking of more things that Jazz would need to avoid being enraged over.
But those were not his concern right now. Barricade's memories were.
Jazz pinged gently, tunneling Shadow a window so she could "join" him in observing what he did. ::So far so good.:: He pinged her a glyph of encouragement and support. ::Now, how much do you know about identifying meta-signatures?::
<<Feel free to gloss this over as much as you want, or make technobabble up. Mostly he's just in teaching mode and wants to make sure she will understand what he's looking for when he goes memory-spelunking. It's a fairly advanced topic, one that a strictly break and grab hacker might not be terribly informed in. Jazz learned it so he could fabricate memories to plant in mole agents or to alter the memories of enemies. He'll bring Shadow up to date and give her a little lesson if she needs it. >>
Shadow vented softly, overstressed linkages relaxing and hydraulics unlocking at the dual reassurances of orders successfully followed, and cohort, soothing and shielding the raw ache of having her systems laid bare to inspection. That Jazz was the source of all three things, she didn't examine too closely, focusing as much as she could on the warmth of the field enveloping her and the steady, real vibration of his frame against hers.
She would happily have stayed in that cocoon of love/safety and approval/pride, but Jazz wanted to show her things, laying out a path with the clear expectation she would follow. Reflexive dread flared up at the realization, fear of failing, of that pride being replaced by disappointment and dismissal, and her hands scrabbled against his plates in a burst of panic at the thought of him leaving her. Encouragement and support echoed back almost before the fear had fully formed, soothed it away as he guided her to him with an easy, gentle touch that carried just a hint of orders, the expectation that she could and would understand what he was going to show her. Mostly buried under the steady sparkpulse of cohort, it was enough to steady her against the doubts, the creeping sense that she was betraying Labyrinth by allowing this intrusion.
Not an outsider, she reminded herself a bit desperately. Cohort, and more importantly, the one she had been given to by order of the Prime himself. Not her choice, not her fault, and if Jazz chose to wait patiently while she gathered enough processor threads to reply to his question, rather than compelling a response, it was not her place to question his choice.
She hated not knowing what answer he wanted to hear, and it made her reply more defensive than it should have been. ::I know what Labyrinth needed me to know. Enough for basic maintenance; enough to filter through level one diversionaries and identify up to level three. Enough...:: She went quiet for a nano-klik, exhausted before they'd even begun. ::Lab handled everything else.::
Jazz honestly longed for the day when Shadow was well enough for him to say what he actually thought about Labyrinth, rather than swallowing it back like he had been doing. But that day was NOT today, he reminded himself. The day when he could SAY that Lab had been a twisted, abusive fragger who hadn't been worth the energon in his lines, though, was way, way in the future.
Instead, Jazz slid sideways past the defensiveness, sending her ease-reassurance-satisfaction, even though he was much, much less than satisfied. Honestly, sending a hacker in with defenses like that...from what Jazz could see, she was all firewalls and defense, relying on speed and surprise to get in and out before her target could really lay into her. Once they got something past her, though, she was practically helpless. With the training she'd described, she had only the most rudimentary of ability to clean up anything that her antivirals didn't nix outright. She had no recovery, and in a prolonged processor-to-processor slugout, she'd go down faster than a properly-trained mech.
Labyrinth had, Jazz was sure, done that on purpose. It was another way to tie the Thirteen to him. And another way to keep them from rooting about in their own meta. Probably to keep them from understanding what the great dark, scarred holes in their memorybanks were.
Not now, Jazz, not now....
::All right. Here, then, take a look....:: Jazz highlighted what he was looking for, illustrating one recent memory block and breaking its attendant cloud of tags and markers down into its component classes so he could demonstrate how they were inherently HER.
<<Handwave and slight timejump for lesson? We could skip to where he is ready to actually go in and try and root out Barricade's memories? And then, iirc, we're going to have Lab-defense go after him and her simultaneously?>>
The sheer amount of detail in what Jazz showed her was overwhelming enough to trigger an urge to retreat, all of it too much to make sense of. Only Jazz...didn't expect her to, not immediately or all at once. That much was clear in the glyphs he used as he took her through piece by piece, explaining in detail what they were working with, in general and as it specifically fit into the shape of her own programming. It was clear in the steady hum of reassurance-confidence forming a background between them, even when she couldn't keep him from sensing her confusion. It was clear in the way he coaxed her into asking questions and either responded with more (sometimes dizzying, but never deliberately confusing) detail, or assuring her it would make more sense once she saw how he dealt with the memories Barricade had planted.
After her initial rush of panic, Shadow didn't want to retreat, caught up in the explanations. She felt much the way she had when Ironhide showed her how easy it would be to boost the power to her blasters: like she had been given a key she hadn't even known she needed.
Though this was a good deal more complex than the blasters had been, she admitted wryly as she ran through a quick review and was rewarded with rising pulses of pleasure-satisfaction-pride; more like deciding to tear out her entire weapon system and start over. She got the sense that Jazz was laying the groundwork for more than just stripping unwanted memories, that he had plans for her. That should have felt like a threat, an intrusion onto Labyrith's rights, but somehow, just like the weapons, it only felt like something she wanted, regardless of whether she was allowed to want.
::Think you understand?:: Jazz asked finally, the question so heavily glyphed with genuine curiosity and willingness to explain further that the pressure to give the right answer was nearly non-existent.
::Yes, sir.:: The "right" answer, but she meant it, the words accompanied by glyphs for confidence which she immediately second-guessed as being too cocky. Pulsing apology-submission at him, she tried to distract Jazz from her mistake. ::At least, I think I understand enough to stay out of your way while you look for what Barricade planted.::
<<Yus, time for digging around after Barricade's memories, and Lab defenses trying to eat them both.>>
Last Edit: Aug 13, 2012 18:58:04 GMT -5 by Deleted
::Great!:: Jazz let pride and happiness suffuse his field. Shadow was smart, and he was fairly sure that she actually understood, rather than just saying that she did because it was what she thought he wanted to hear.
Though he did want to hear it. She needed to be trained in this. Not that anyone (including Jazz himself) would be able to hold out if Soundwave got ahold of them, but Jazz knew that he could at least give a hacker like Barricade a run for his credits and a Pitspawn of a headache besides. He wanted desperately for Shadow to at least be that level before she came up against anyone else. It was a dream, perhaps, given the current rate of encounters with the Decepticons, that he could fully train her before she needed that training, but Jazz swore to do his best.
::All right. Here we go.:: He focused on her memory banks, explaining what he was doing as he did it. ::Now. I'm looking for meta signatures that aren't yours. You set up the search like this, set the parameters like so.... You can make them fairly liberal. After all, I'm assuming it's going to be pretty obvious that something's not yours.::
He set the search and continued as it ran. ::Now, there are exceptions. It is possible to false-code memories with someone else's meta-signature. It's not easy, and it's never PERFECT, never something that you can't find if you look close enough, but it's possible. But you often only see that in mechs that've been really worked over. Those who've been in captivity a long time with a very skilled hacker. Usually it's to plant information, or to delete memories and create new ones. But that's not something you can do in the time that Barricade had you, so what he probably did was just...ah, yeah, here, see? Just found an empty sector and dumped them. Then hooked them in to be indexed and poof. Instant trauma.::
In true Barricade Style. Fragger.
The search results were, nonetheless, cheering. The foreign memories were easy to see and would be easy to lift out again or archive, whichever Shadow wanted. ::So. Gonna start modifying the index tags, so your processor won't replay them without conscious effort. I'll mark them for archive, too, and you can decide--what the--::
Jazz had been so thoroughly lulled into a sense of security that the first attack almost slipped through his defenses. Attack code, streaming out of he hadn't seen where, slamming into his firewalls with enough force to mentally stagger him. His 'walls held, though, modulating to neuter the attack. The code snapped uselessly at him as he counterattacked and ripped it apart. In its coded guts he could see....
::Huh. That's not Decepticon.::
The second wave was easy to see, now that he was ready and watching for it. The modulations weren't terribly creative, certainly not anything he couldn't deal with, and in short order the attackers were just as code-dead as the first. He even had enough time to see the mostly-corrupted sector block that the attacks came from.
Jazz upped his defenses, wary now, and not a little bit worried. If that hadn't been Barricade's....
::Shadow, lock down your root.::
<<[/i]Figured that the defenses would be keyed to try to attack the attacker a few times before trying the NUKE 'EM ALL strategy. So feel free to have Shadow describe the defenses starting to attack her.[/i]>>
Shadow double checked that her defenses were still down, that nothing of hers could be doing this, when she felt the first cold sting of an attack on her own code and knew. She'd been thinking of Jazz as harmless, but of course as soon as he'd started making changes the rest of Labyrinth's defenses, the ones designed to activate when they were compromised, had come to life.
::Backup defenses. Not under my control,:: she managed, the words heavy with apology and faintly underscored by fear. There was an override - as important as the data they routinely carried was, they were still valuable tools, too valuable to be thrown away easily, and Labyrinth had never questioned their loyalty, trusting that if they were functional enough to trigger the override, they were functional enough to make that decision. Focusing enough to do so past the sensation of her own code being ripped apart line by line was the challenge.
Jazz was under attack again, as well, holding his own for the moment, but... ::You should get out of here,:: Shadow warned. ::I'm not sure I can stop it.::
Last Edit: Aug 26, 2012 12:18:38 GMT -5 by Deleted
It didn't take much to figure out Labyrinth's plan. Layers of defenses, not just relying upon Shadow's own half-crippled ones to repel the invader. What truly outraged him was that the defenses were not just attacking the invader, not just attacking HIM, but were also going after SHADOW, sliding past her instinctive defenses and firewalls like they weren't even there, going for her code in a scatterblast of chaos and data injection.
He hadn't just triggered an anti-hacking defense. He'd triggered a kill switch.
Oh no you don't, you Pitspawned fragger....
Jazz was not the universe's best hacker. It was a secondary skillset much like his morale officer and interrogator skillsets, like so many of the things that he could do well but not excellently. Competently, but not enough to more than occasionally hold his own against Soundwave. His processor was not specced for it.
Luckily, Labyrinth was not Soundwave. Nor was he even particularly creative. He left himself tunnels and then used them, ruthlessly, but there was no finesse, and very little complexity. Which meant that his strategy was very obvious to see: attack the invader to hold it off while wiping the agent. Jazz could see the attacking tendrils of code, spearing into Shadow's memory banks, trying to lock up her processor, lashing out at her personality core as she struggled to counter and bring up whatever override HAD to be there.
Jazz had never been so angry in his entire life as when he watched Labyrinth attacking HIS COHORT from BEYOND THE FRAGGING GRAVE.
Jazz's defenses spiraled out, smashing through the attacks on himself and modulating until the virals pinged harmlessly off his firewalls. He dug into Shadow's own firewall protocols, feeding her the same sorts of changes even as he threw up defenses around her own--not around the memory banks that Labyrinth had obviously thought were so important, but around the personality matrix, the very core of who Shadow was.
Knowledge could be re-learned. Matrixes could not be re-made.
::No way. Not lettin' him have you. You got an override? I'll give you time to use it.::
Shadow didn't have time to be surprised that Jazz didn't retreat to safety. Activating the override was a complex, multi-stage procedure she was rapidly losing the processing power for as she tried to defend herself in too many directions at once. A race, she realized; the only viable choice was to drop all her defenses, focus on the override, and hope she worked faster than Labyrinth did.
She did have time to be surprised when Jazz took the weight of that decision off her, feeding changes into her firewalls as fast as her system could assimilate them, his own defenses shielding hers from the worst of the attacks. Freed, processor threads re-routed to the override, removing the fatal lag which kept giving the security settings time to reset; she sliced cleanly through thirteen levels of security one after another until, finally, she could shut the attacks down.
::Sorry.:: She hurt in a way that told her she probably wouldn't want to examine the damage too closely later, and she refused to think how much worse it would have been without Jazz. ::I should have realized that'd trigger as soon as you started making changes. Sorry.:: Apology-regret-shame underscored the words, mixing with gratitude as she added, ::And thank you. I couldn't have stopped the wipe without your help. I'm sorry.::
Last Edit: Aug 26, 2012 13:29:59 GMT -5 by Deleted
Jazz felt distinctly Ironhide-like as he saw the override ripple through Shadow's processor and the attacks stopped. Mantled, spreading his defenses over Shadow's core, he found himself very, very reluctant to let his guard down.
Primus. That... If he'd not been there....
PRIMUS.
Jazz forced his frame to unlock, his ventilation to even out. He ran his hands soothingly up and down Shadow's dorsal plating, radiating reassurance-pride-approval. ::Nothing to apologize for, Shadow. I suspected that that sort of thing would be there. Didn't expect it to go after YOU, though. We don't usually set spec ops killswitches that touchy. Not without an easy manual override, and that did NOT look easy. You can tell me what you know about that setup later. It's not safe for you to not have the keys at hand for medical procedures like this. But you shut it down nicely, hon, good work.::
Jazz projected love and pride and not a little concern. ::You ok to continue, or you want to stop? Seriously, if you're hurting this can wait. And I don't want to poke around more if it's just going to set off the defenses again. We can do a workaround on them first, then go after the memories.::
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. ::This shouldn't have to hurt, bitlet. I'm not meaning it to, and I'm sorry that it is.::
Shadow leaned into Jazz, letting him soothe the lingering tremors out of her frame. ::Knew it was there, knew how it was set.:: She twitched again, guiltily, at the pride and praise he offered. ::I knew we aren't supposed to submit to medical procedures,:: she admitted quietly, :: I just thought...I thought I could handle it, and I wanted the memories gone, and I...I should have warned you. I shouldn't have asked.::
She was, she realized, trying to burrow against Jazz's smaller frame the way she did against Ironhide. ::We have a window before it resets,:: she said shakily, forcing herself to stop. ::We should finish before it does. We can...::
A sense of betrayal made her break off. Labyrinth had set these defenses, had reasons for them, she couldn't just...but she was hurting, and Lab was gone, and next time she might not be lucky enough to have a choice about letting someone in, or have Jazz to give her the time to trigger the override.
Burrowing again, and again she forced herself to stop. ::We can figure out a workaround later.::
<<Aster, I think we can probably wrap this up in another few tags, y/n?>>
Last Edit: Aug 27, 2012 21:09:03 GMT -5 by Deleted
Jazz kept his glyphs firm but comforting. ::You did the RIGHT thing in asking. COHORT, Shadow. We take care of you, you take care of us. That's the way it goes. You don't have to deal with everything on your own. You can trust us, trust ME, to help you if you know that something dangerous is going to happen. It's better for us to know and be able to help you if you need it than to walk in blind. We want to help. We WANT to.:: He opened his arms a bit to let her crawl in a bit closer against his side before wrapping her in close again. Not as good as Ironhide's flared plating for sparklings, but as close as he could get.
And he could hear (and see in her processor) the difficulty she had in offering to let him work around her defenses. Of course she did. Lab had told them not to let anyone touch their coding but him. Of course it was hard to defy that. He hummed a warm glyph of pride at her: i-know-this-is-hard, you're-doing-so-well, i'm-so-proud-of-you.
He settled her as close to him as she could physically get and turned his attention to her coding again. ::Right. Let's do this fast, then. I think I see where the defenses are rooted, but let me know if anything triggers on your end. Now...index tags. Watch how I do this.::
Jazz worked quickly, marking the memories to not be further indexed and for existing index tags to be deleted. ::I'm marking them as protected archives right now. You shouldn't have any more flashbacks of them, and if you need them, then you can get to them with a concerted effort and this key here.:: He wrote a tiny file with the encryption key and sent it to her. ::You can decide how to deal with them later. Strip them down to visual info, delete them altogether...whatever you want. They're not yours. You don't need to deal with them at all if you don't want to.::
<<Yep, we can speed them along here and end whenever you want. Jazz will want to make sure that she's ok before he lets her go. There can be snuggling if required. >>
Shadow vented quietly and curled in more closely against Jazz, taking what comfort she could from the contact. She should have warned him, even if she hadn't expected such minor contact to trigger anything; it went against her training, but all of this went against her training, violated everything she'd ever known.
Briefly, she forced herself to stop thinking about it, forced herself to strip everything down to the base code of commander and cohort and the steady pulse of reassurance and pride Jazz was offering. It settled, at least for the most part, the doubts and guilt, let her focus when Jazz called her attention back to what he was doing.
She studied the deft changes he made, and having something to focus on helped, too. ::Shouldn't I keep them?:: she asked. It felt strange, having the choice of what to do with the files left to her. Not that she wanted them, but...Labyrinth had kept an archive of everything. ::They're information. I shouldn't delete them.::
<<Snuggles will almost certainly be required, after this.>>
Last Edit: Aug 28, 2012 12:47:18 GMT -5 by Deleted