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Saving Life Part 09

Deviation Actions

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After the retreat of the Decepticons was absolutely clear, Ironhide and Bumblebee stepped immediately back from their protective position in front of the bonded couple. While the two Autobots did not return to their comrades, they stood a safe distance away, unsure as what should happen next. Ironhide especially had a hard time controlling the urge to simply charge his weapons and just end the Decepticon's miserable life.

If he had not seen the way their own head of special ops acted around the Ford Mustang Saleen, he would not have believed that a Decepticon could be bonded to an Autobot and certainly not a high ranking officer. The thought made his energon boil and he did not even care about the ban on bonded couples being Autobot soldiers. He only wanted to beat the scrap out of Jazz for taking a Decepticon as his sparkmate.

Too bad Jazz already looked far too beaten up as it was. And he knew that Ratchet would not appreciate having to repair even more than was already obvious. It might result in the weapon specialist ending without any of his beloved weapons after his next check up with his lover.
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Bumblebee was just as confused. He had his personal clashes and scores to settle with Barricade, but there were two things that contained the yellow Camaro from getting too angry. First he trusted his superior. Jazz never did things without good reason, no matter how out of the blue and crazy some of his plans had been in the past. The second reason though, was Sam's behavior toward the Saleen.

Being threatened and nearly beaten to death never sat well with Sam. He should have cowered, been scared or tried to act tough like he did after Megatron's appearance. Instead he was surprisingly calm. Bumblebee had watched his charge interact with Jazz and how he threw the sparkbonded thoughtful, partly confused glances. There had never been fear in the young man's eyes, besides that one moment just after their arrival. It was strange and he decided he wanted to find all parts of the puzzle first, before he jumped to the wrong conclusions.
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After the humans hesitantly emerged from their cover, there was an awkward, uncertain silence until Ratchet began to growl and stalked his way back over to the absolutely exhausted bonded couple.

"For Primus' sake stop looking as if he would suddenly jump up and bang your thick heads together", the medic grouched, fed up. "They are obviously worn out. Barricade must have been feeding Jazz's spark with his own energy since the day of the fight in Mission City. He is beyond exhausted. He can't do anything more than lift a claw. Oh and he saved our comrades life, by the way. And Jazz, you are going to recharge this instant. You can be thankful that I'm considerate enough to consider the current circumstances or you would already know what I think about your stunt of walking around with a half cut midsection right besides your other acts of stupidity."
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The saboteur mumbled something into the shoulder joint of his bondmate while he just leant more heavily against Prowl's side. He would have loved nothing more than to recharge, but he knew the storm could start any klick and he was not willing to leave his bonded with a bunch of suspicious Autobots and humans just to get his own comfort.

As if on cue, the storm began, just not with Ironhide or Chromia, who he had expected to voice their opinion first, fiery as they were, but with someone else, who felt just as strongly about the wrongness of the current situation.

"Personally I don't care if they are exhausted or if that 'Con's actions saved a life. They can go to the pit for all I care just for doing what they did", Sideswipe growled through clenched denta and stormed forward, right in front of Jazz. "What the frag did you do, Jazz? How could you, you worthless piece of slag? I will never forgive you for this, you hear me? NEVER!"

Even Jazz seemed surprised at the strength of the twin's outburst. It shocked everyone else into silence. Everyone besides Prowl, who reacted solely out of habit, forgetting for a moment his unique circumstances.

"Sideswipe!" the Saleen bellowed at the silver twin warrior, scandalised. "Stop shouting at Jazz this moment! He did nothing wrong!"

"Who are you to order me around, Decepticon?" Sideswipe sneered back, his face scrunched over in a grimace of pain and hatred. Prowl cringed back as if he had been slapped. Jazz immediately grabbed his bonded's hands tightly in his own and tried to soothe his mate through their bond.

/He's reactin' jus' as a good friend would/, the saboteur comforted. /He's angry b'cause he thinks Ah've betrayed ya. He's still lookin' out for ya, even if yer seemingly separated./

/I am not sure he would still wish to consider looking out for me if he knew the truth/, Prowl answered miserably. /After all I have done.../

/What th' 'Cons have done, NOT ya!/ Jazz interrupted with a forceful emotion. /Remember, no blamin' yerself, Prowler, or Ah will start listin' off all th' things Ah should be sorry about./

It seemed his bondmate still wanted to protest, but their talk was interrupted by Sideswipe's rather angry bellow.

"Stop talking through that FRAGGING BOND!"

No one uttered a word after the angry outburst until Jazz moved his head to look directly at the furious twin, face unfazed.

"Ya have a right t' be angry as much as ya want from what poor facts ya've been presented with so far", Jazz exclaimed calmly. "But ya're supposed t' find out all the facts before ya come t' conclusions. And ya're missing a really big part here, so's not yer time t'start yellin' like this."

"The PIT!" the twin bellowed and if surprisingly his own twin had not hold him back, Sideswipe definitely would have attacked the injured saboteur.

/Give it up trying to talk sense into him/, Prowl sighed. /He is not listening when he is aggravated like this./

/Speaking from experience when dealing with twins?/ Jazz asked, slight amusement flowing down their link.

/You tell me/, the tactician countered dryly.

"Let me go, Sunstreaker!" Sideswipe meanwhile fought against his brother. "I just want to pummel his sorry aft once. And then I will wait till Prowl arrives and make sure, VERY sure that this stupid excuse of an officer will never set a pede near him again."

/Funny he's sayin' that, because if Ah were any nearer t' ya, we would be interfacin'/, Jazz commented dryly and earned a small snort and feeling of reprimand from his bonded as answer.
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"About that", a new voice suddenly tried to interrupt Sideswipe's ranting. It went unheard, everyone too absorbed by the verbal battle between the usually more easy going twin and the injured saboteur. The voice tried to be heard three more times before the speaker had finally enough. A loud bang suddenly interrupted the shouting and ranting and this certainly got the attention of everyone.

It was Chromia who in her frustration to speak sent off a shot from her arm canon. Surprisingly enough her face did not mirror her angry actions. Instead she looked more like she was exhausted and feeling miserable.

"If you could PLEASE let me talk now", she glowered, "I have something important to report. And it seems that it is far more urgent to tell you all, instead of just our Prime as I originally planned to do."

"A report you wanted to give to me, Chromia?" Optimus Prime asked curios and businesslike all at once.

"Yeah and if it's so important, why had you not reported it to Prime yet?" Sideswipe added with a sneer, his sour mood only doubled with her interruption.

The lithe and deadly warrior femme considered him with a look that did not speak of anger, as would have been her usual reaction, but of pity. This threw the angry twin so out of the loop that for a moment all signs of annoyance vanished from his faceplates.

"If you do not remember and haven't done the math, bit-processor, I have landed on Earth just before Blaster's report about the localisation of a Decepticon signal around Mission City came in", she explained coolly. "I was planning to report to our Prime the moment we arrived at the NEST base but as you might have noticed, we decided to do a little detour to back up your sorry afts here. Therefore the report had to wait a bit more. Or so I thought."

She forcefully threw air through her vents before she moved all her attention to her leader, Optimus Prime.

"Sir", she faltered after her brisk address and continued in a much softer, dejected voice, "since there are already some of the other bots on Earth, including those two glitchheads..."

"Hey, don't judge me by the same standard as my dim-sparked brother!" Sunstreaker protested indignantly but he was silenced, by a surprisingly stern gaze of Optimus Prime himself. He nodded silently for her to continue.

"As I said, I assume you have already been informed about the Decepticons' rather bold move after your departure that broke our whole army up into groups with no way to contact each other until Soundwave's departure from Cybtertron?"

Optimus Prime exchanged a dark look with the four comrades who had been with him on Earth from the very beginning, even Jazz, and the Prime was not surprised to notice that the saboteur seemed to know exactly what she was talking about, just as the rest of them did. But someone else thought even further and already came to the conclusion he knew what this report would be about.

/Of course, Chromia was in my group/, Prowl burst out, surprised that he did not make that connection sooner. /She must know what happened that cycle in that fight./

Clear understanding lightened Jazz's mind, though he allowed no one to see his reaction to his mate's words. Instead they both focused back on Chromia, when Optimus encouraged her to continue.

"Well, I was one of the few higher ranking officers who ended up in the group around Prowl. I... it is with my deepest regret that I... have to inform everyone that... Prowl is dead."

There was stunned silence for about an astrosecond before Sideswipe blinked his optics in sheer disbelief.

"Impossible!" the twin burst out, anger quickly returning.

"I am sorry if you cannot stomach the truth, Sideswipe", Chromia retorted with forced calm, "but unfortunately I was there and you were not. We first thought that the separation had been a simple, clever tactic of the Decepticons to take us out by overwhelming us in numbers. Not that they succeeded, at least not in our group", the frontline femme added with satisfaction in her voice.

"We were able to counter nearly every attack successfully because Prowl came up with really good plans and ideas. But then... ", she stopped to again blow air through her vents in her form of a sigh, "we found out that the breaking of our lines had only been the first step. A distraction, if you will. Their main goal was to get Prowl. They pushed until finally there was a fight where Prowl was forced to leave the ship to gain better insight which would feed his battle computer with improved tactics to repel them. However, we could not even blink an optic when Skywarp suddenly appeared besides him and before we realized what was going on, they vanished again. Afterwards we were rather lucky to get order back into our unit at all. It was just a good thing that I happen to be Elita's personal second in command. At least I had experience to lead, and we did well enough to get the pit away from Cybertron and later receive your message, Optimus Prime."

She looked at her leader again, before she turned around to face a rather incredulous looking Sideswipe.

"We tried to get Prowl out of Decepticon hands", she assured him, head bowed now. "I immediately sent some of the best agents I had with me to the Decepticon main base. We lost precious lives just to find out what happened to him", the warrior femme added bitterly and it sent a shudder deep inside of Prowl's spark, which his bondmate tried to soothe as much as he could. Sideswipe continued his act of denial by shaking his head repeatedly, not willing to believe a single word out of her vocaliser.

"When finally an agent was able to successfully infiltrate and return, the only thing he could report was that Starscream was angry about not having gathered any information and he found out that no prisoner was stationed at the base anymore."

This time Chromia's sorrowful gaze linger on Sideswipe, her face telling him to believe what she told him.

"Prowl was our second in command, the most important Autobot officer right after Optimus Prime. If he could no longer be found as a prisoner at the main base of the Decepticons, we can be assured, as much as it pains us, that Prowl has been questioned without success and then killed, since he was of no use to the Decepticons. That would also explain Starscream's dark mood. The only thing we can do now is honour Prowl's strength to withhold all information and in sacrificing his life for the cause."

"No!" the stubborn twin growled, glaring at the femme. "As long as you found no corpse to prove your assumption I will not believe that Prowl is dead. Prowl has a sharp processor. Why did your spy not check if he simply got away and was hiding somewhere in the Decepticon base?"

"Because", the femme warrior growled right back, finally fed up with Sideswipes antics, "if he escaped there would have been search parties all over the base. The activity of the base was normal though. The only unusual occurrence was Starscream's bad mood, but that can be explained perfectly well if a prisoner did not reveal anything to his liking."

"Well, I don't care, until I see Prowl's terminated body with my own optics I will continue to believe he's still alive!" Sideswipe declared, folding his arms. Chromia was about to retort something really nasty, but she was interrupted by someone else speaking up.

"He's right, ya know", Jazz quietly declared, focusing all optics and eyes back to him. "Ah know for a fact that Prowl's indeed still alive."

Surprise went through the row of the Autobots, Chromia even looked quite shocked. Only Sideswipe's reaction differed from the rest of his comrades. He still felt rather bitter towards Jazz for the obvious bond with a Decepticon, an enemy.

"Ooooh, the great Meister knows that Prowl is alive, of course", mocked the angry twin. "Talked to him lately? Did you tell him about your new 'boyfriend'?"

He used the human term on purpose, to give the insult more depth. Jazz however took Sideswipe's anger in unfazed. He even had the impudence to grin.

"Funny that ya ask, Sides' because Ah did indeed talk t' Prowl recently. An' Ah know for a fact that he's not likin' yer attitude right now."

"Impossible!" Ratchet immediately intervened, his vocaliser full of disbelief. "Your comm-line is slag, as is nearly everything of your operating systems. And we've had no unidentified landings since the joor we found out Soundwave was hiding as a satellite just around Earth's orbit. It's not possible for him to have arrived on Earth without our notice, yet you claim to have talked to him? Has your processor finally broken completely?"

Jazz allowed the medic to state his opinion, shaking his head in amusement.

"That, Ratchet, is somethin' Ah will answer t'gether with all th' other questions once Ah feel no longer exhausted", the saboteur explained, his optics dimming as if to prove his point of being beyond tired. He sighed and cuddled up beside Barricade who had silently watched the exchange between Sideswipe and now the medic.
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It was not difficult for Jazz to conclude that his bondmate had no doubt his words would not be believed as long as the truth was not out and proven. And for verification they needed the Autobot medic to take a look at the sample he had taken from Prowl's purging. The moment Ratchet realized what he was keeping there as a sample, questions certainly would arise as to who the mech was before he became Barricade. The saboteur planned for that to be their moment to explain everything.

It was the best course of action, because at least then everyone could not help but believe them, no matter what. As if to prove their point, right now the first Autobots like Chromia, Arcee and Ironhide started to look at Jazz with mistrust in their optics. Even Sunstreaker, who so far had been surprisingly calm in face of what happened between Jazz and Sideswipe, was now narrowing his optics in a first open sign of distrust. Jolt on the other hand seemed to try and hold back judgment, though his whole body was tense and he kept standing behind the together mecha and Ratchet, looking unsure.

To be honest, Jazz was surprised that Bumblebee still considered him with a look that spoke more of confusion and thoughtfulness than doubt. But he guessed it was because they had a closer relationship through their work together than any other of the Autobots present. Bumblebee knew how ops worked, how Meister most of the time ticked. The clever scout and ops agent was still aware that he did not hold all parts of the puzzle, therefore he hold back on his judgment.
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The same it seemed applied to Optimus. Because before anyone could further interfere into the current discussion, he decided to address every single member of the NEST team, including Autobots and the even more confused humans alike.

"All right, we stop questioning and fighting right now!" the leader of the Autobots ordered with a stern voice. "I understand some of you are upset and even more want to know what exactly is going on, me included. However, for now we should concentrate on the question of what will happen next."

The Prime focused his optics right on Will Lennox, the leader of the human NEST members.

"Major Lennox, I assume we were supposed to immediately return after our operation back to headquarters?" Optimus inquired and when the human nodded he continued with a calm vocalizer. "Then we have a problem. We have more members to transport than before and I doubt Jazz, Barricade, not to mention the twins who acted without authorisation, by the way", he sent a stern glance in Sideswipe's and Sunstreaker's direction, "will all fit into the one plane our group arrived with here."

"Just a klick, who says they have to return to headquarters with us anyway?" Ironhide interrupted the talk, anger finally bursting through. "I mean, with all what happened today I am not even sure we can trust Jazz, not to mention a stinking Decepticon."

"He's right", Sideswipe added. "I mean, look at what's happened and what he just said. Who the pit says that this is not all a trap? Maybe the Decepticons decided to send a little spy our way."

"A spy?" Bumblebee questioned incredulously. "And how should that work with Jazz by his side, even bonded to him?"

"And who says Jazz has not been a Decepticon all along?" Chromia asked calmly. Bumblebee only looked at the femme warrior as if she just proved that she was simply losing it.

"Personally I don't care if he is a Decepticon spy or not", Ratchet interfered with a growl. "Until further notice Jazz will be an Autobot officer, a VERY seriously INJURED Autobot officer and he needs to get on my surgical table ASAP. I don't have the right tools to care for him here more than has already been done. Therefore resolution for transportation now, talks later! They owe me answers anyway."

His declaration was met with various sounds of approval and disapproval.

Groaning, Optimus glanced over at his head of special ops and the Ford Mustang Saleen, who did nothing to object the doubting comrades and back up the yellow Camaro.

"Jazz, you need to wait here while I talk with the others and decide what will happen next."
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The saboteur knew Optimus wanted to limit the damage and spare their feelings by talking away from them. Personally Jazz did not care, at least not about himself. But he knew that Prowl took some of the accusations more personally than he should and therefore he gave the Prime a short nod of approval.

"Do what is necessary, sir. We'll be right here maybe nappin' a bit if ya don't mind."

They both knew that the saboteur would rather rip out his sparkcase than take a nap right now, when he and his mate were in a rather worrying situation with their own comrades. But Optimus played along, nodding once more before he ushered his soldiers and the humans away from the bonded couple to talk out the problem.

tbc...
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Authors note: As the readers of Story of a Lifetime might have noticed, my Ratchett as no idea about the bond between Prowl and Jazz. When I finished writing this story, SoaL just reached the part "Truth will out" but it was just in the middle of it. Because of that I mentioned the sparklings somewhere, but never went with Ratchet knowing what was going on. I considered changing it before posting this story, but decided against it. See the chapter "Truth will out" as the official breaking point where my story simply becomes a "What if" story, not to mention that Tara's story is G1 while mine is Bayverse. I hope all you wonderful readers don't mind the fact too much and will still enjoy the next chapter. ^^ Thank you all for reading so far!
As always I start this story with thanking all the wonderful readers who took the time to leave a comment for me. ^^ I hope you will enjoy the next chapter. I have to admit, this one was one of the most difficult because certain bot's *coughsSideswipecoughs* didn't want to cooperate at all. In the end, I was still rather satisfied with what those stubborn mecha came up with. And now enough of the babbling, enjoy chapter 9!

Part: 9/12
Author: Usagi-Atemu-Tom
Warnings: angst, romance, suspense, slash, SPOILER for Transformers Movies 1+2
Pairings: Jazz/Prowl, Ratchet/Ironhide

Feedback: Please, yes, I love feedback! =^^=

Summary: When one mech is on the edge of being offlined forever, another mech realises the truth of his past and the destiny he is supposed to have. But what do you do, when you wake up from the brink of death just to stare into the eyes of what is supposed to be the enemy? If you happen to be an ops mech – you collect your answers of course.

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine I don't make money with it and write only for fun and to get better in writing English. ^__^

Helpful Pointers:
Vorn - 83 years
Stellar-cycle – 7.5 months
Orn - 13 days
Joor - 8 hours
Breem - 6 minutes
Astrosecond - 5/6ths of a second
Klick - 1 millisecond

"..." - Speaking
/.../ – Sparkbond speaking

glitchhead – idiot
bit-brain/bit-processor – pea-brain
dim-spark – dimwit

Please note that I've only ever watched the two movies from 2007 and 2009. While I've 'met' a lot of Transformers from the comics and cartoons, that more often than not show up in fanfics I, of course, have not seen them in action and therefore might not be able to interpret their characters right. I am using mostly what I've learned through the movie (and maybe fanfics) and while catching some ideas here and there I am mainly using my very own ideas for things like energon, space bridges and so on.

And not to forget, much thanks to Taralynden for betareading.
Also, the inspiration for Prowl’s and Jazz’s past was mostly taken from the fanfic 'Story of a lifetime' written by the wonderful Taralynden. This was taken with her permission. Go and read her story, you'll love it.

Part 08: [link]

Part 10:[link]
© 2011 - 2024 PharaohxYuugi
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1pandamanypanda's avatar
OH SWEET! I've been following this story on Fanfic and I am so happy to see it here!! You are doing an amazing job with this story and I am digging the idea that Barricade was once Prowl ( I have read the comics for the movies, and even then they hardly ever go into what happened to Prowl during the war, so your interpretation is just pure AWESOME!)

Keep up the great work, i can't wait for the next installment!