Mission - Awakening
Apr. 24th, 2009 01:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ante_luceThis is my cracky, random 'verse. Prolly what headspace looks like on a good day.
Title: Mission - Awakening
'Verse: G1 Transformers
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: TF cussing.
“Prowl? Something wrong?” Jazz looked up as his roommate entered, poring over a datapad, looking a little weary (and for Prowl, that meant the tactics trainee was really undercharged).
“No, I’m fine.”
“Right, and I’m pink and green. Did you forget to refuel again?”
The chevroned mech chuckled at Jazz’s ‘fussing’, holding up a glowing cube.
“I thought I’d refuel here. It’s quieter than the mess, and I can get some work done.”
“Work? Thought all you tactics bots were on medical leave after the upgrades.”
“The battle computer they installed is rather sensitive; these are theoretical exercises to help me get used to having it running constantly.”
“Frag. Surgery and homework? I’m glad I’m Ops.”
The visored bot smirked, and Prowl shook his head, still smiling faintly as he settled at his desk, consuming the energon ration. Jazz bounced over to perch on the tabletop, and the sensor panelled mech raised an optic ridge at him.
“Don’t start work just yet; I got something you have to hear.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, one of the other trainees made an aft of himself earlier.”
Jazz launched into his tale, and Prowl listened intently, sharing a laugh with the Ops mech at the behaviour of his colleague. With a final pull of glowing liquid, the tactician commented. “Quite frankly, I cannot believe he took such an illogical course of action, it was bound to fail and…”
Jazz’s snickers ceased when he realised Prowl was not continuing his sentence.
“Prowl? Prowler?”
The chevroned mech was frozen in place. His systems were still running, Jazz could hear them, but Prowl wasn’t moving, optics blank and expression so still the visored mech nearly panicked, but Ops training and a lifetime on the streets held firm and he immediately commed for a medic, then started scanning his roommate for anything out of the ordinary, finding nothing but an increase in energy use.
Casting about for anything to help him figure out what was wrong, Jazz’s gaze fell upon the trainee tactician’s now empty ration container, groaning when the last drops evaporated and the cube winked into oblivion.
“Figures, Prowl. The one time you finish a ration quickly, I have to figure out if it’s going to hurt you.”
The visored mech paced, if Prowl had been drugged (Jazz’s processors shied at the thought that something more lethal might have been used), a complete systems purge would solve the problem. But getting an immobile Prowl to the med bay where the procedure could be carried out would take time, and every click they spent sitting on their afts was time Prowl couldn’t afford. There were compounds that did their damage at lightning speed (Jazz could mix up quite a number of them, and knew how to obtain a whole lot more), but thankfully most of them could be slowed with the use of the appropriate chelates.
But which one to use? Jazz didn’t know what was coursing through his friend’s lines at the moment, and he no longer had any energon to test. The Ops trainee paused. Wait, perhaps he did.
“Prowler, I’m sorry, but this is for your own good.”
Shyly (and here he berated himself for his hesitation, his roommate could be dying on him and here he was having an attack of propriety!), Jazz knelt in front of his unmoving friend and pressed his mouth to Prowl’s, sampling the trace of fuel that still lingered there. Chemosensors immediately started analysing the components and Jazz frowned, the data reported nothing unusual was in the energon.
So he tried again, a little more desperately this time, with the same result.
Well, not entirely. Prowl’s optics flickered, and confused, Jazz just stared, before tentatively repeating the process, watching his friend carefully for any response. The tactician stirred now, pulling away with a bewildered expression.
“Jazz? What-”
Prowl’s question was cut off by Jazz practically falling into his arms with a cry of relief.
“Frag, Prowl. Don’t scare me like that again.”
“My apologies, but what exactly did I do, and why were you-” He was interrupted again by a knock on the door and the entrance of a medic.
“Sorry I took so long to get here, we’ve been overrun by all the tactician trainees coming in. What happened?”
“My roommate froze up. He wasn’t responding to anything I said. Y’said tacticians were landing in the med bay?”
“Yes. It appears the last round of upgrades was affecting them negatively. The battle computers installed were overriding their normal programming and going into constant analytical loops, causing them to shut down when their protective subroutines kicked in. We’ve been working on uninstalling the units for the last few cycles.”
“But, Prowl’s a tactics bot too. And he received one of those upgrades.”
“And this is the first time he’s been affected? Odd. Prowl, if I may?”
The tactician shifted so that the medic could access a data port, and the mech started scanning the chevroned trainee’s processors, simultaneously going over Prowl’s medical record to confirm Jazz’s statement.
“Says here you have some programming issues.”
“Yes. My social programming is underdeveloped.” Jazz winced at his roommate’s even tone. Prowl had learnt to live with his ‘defect’, as many called it, but that didn’t mean it stopped hurting when someone saw it as a horrible flaw.
“And as a result, you’ve developed subroutines around that to allow you to make logical deductions of social situations and the appropriate responses. I’m pretty sure that’s why you weren’t affected as early as the others. Those programs kept the battle computer from taking over, because the upgrade basically functions in the same manner as they do, by calculating the appropriate response to the information fed them.”
“Medic mech, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Prowl here may be the only bot able to use the upgrade, thanks to his programming.” The mech stood, patting the stunned tactician on the shoulder. “I’m not sure if you see it this way, but this could be a good thing.”
“How? I lock up when confronted by illogical matters now.”
“You’ll adapt. You adapted to your first set of circumstances, you’ll adapt again. All you need is time to get used to the sensitivity, and eventually you’ll be able to predict and stave off a CPU freeze. You certainly managed to end your lock up on your own.”
“About that. I don’t know how it happened. Jazz was the one to bring me out of it.”
Faced with two sets of inquiring optics, the Ops trainee almost froze up himself, but managed to answer the unspoken question. “Eheh, I just… shook him a little. He scared me, going from conversation to statue in a sparkbeat.”
“Hmm. Base programming directs that we respond preferentially to sensory stimuli, since our immediate environment could pose the most pressing hazard to our well being.”
“So, the next time this happens, I should smack Prowl a good one?”
The medic didn’t quite know what to make of Jazz’s smirk (or of Prowl’s sudden twitch of sensor panels), but he replied nonetheless. “Well, you don’t have to be violent about it, but moderately forceful contact, strong scents, even a loud jarring noise should break him out of a tactical analysis loop.”
“Alright. Thanks.”
The medic nodded, then left. As the door slid shut, the Ops trainee broke out into fidgets, all mirth gone from his expression, and the tactician trainee just sighed.
“Jazz, I’m not angry with you. Now please explain why your last course of action was to kiss me.”
“I have chem. analysis programming and the sensors for them are installed there. I thought you’d been drugged, and the only remaining energon I could get at was in your mouth.” Jazz looked away. “I’m sorry for taking advantage of you.”
“You were helping me. I don’t mind. But why did you get them placed in such a location?” Jazz curled up on his berth at his roommate’s question, still not meeting Prowl’s optics.
“Had them even before I got into the army. I wasn’t exactly on the straight and narrow like you were.”
“Can you tell me about it?” The other mech looked concerned at his withdrawal, and the Ops mech sighed. Prowl was safe to tell, his processors insisted. Prowl didn’t want to use this against him.
“You got a creator and a home, but I got picked up off the streets, literally. Been on my own as long as I can remember, being tricky and sly and conniving to keep myself fuelled and alive. Was good at it, still good at it, or else I wouldn’t be in Ops now. Anyway, it’s an upgrade some street mechs went for. Tainting a drink is actually pretty common in Cybertron’s greyer areas, so having them in your mouth lets you find out and stop, discrete like. And the one responsible can’t do anything about it without outing themselves.”
“Ah.”
Jazz shrugged, wanting for some reason to defend himself, even though Prowl had not shown any sign of decrying him. “I was working my way out of it, getting on the course for the straight path. Was even starting to make some honest credits. And then an associate didn’t like that I was climbing out of the slums when he wasn’t. So he got me thrown in the clinker. They checked me out, couldn’t find nothing solid on me, not that they would have, but for that one turborat whose info turned out to be false. Still, I had a rep, and they wanted the mech behind that rep under their control, as an asset, not a glitch in the mainframe. They knew some of the street law, and offered me a deal. Go into Ops, and they hand over the turborat and look the other way for a decabreem. I took it. Yeah, not very nice, but I never said I was. And now you hate me and want nothing to do with me.”
He stayed as he was, cursing his runaway vocaliser. Why did he feel it important that his roommate thought well of him? He’d never cared before. Because Prowl was his friend, his CPU replied, and he shivered. Not for long now.
“I see no reason to do that.”
“What?” Jazz nearly fell off his berth, turning around so fast to look at the tactician. The sensor panelled mech had crossed to his side of the room, and was now smiling at his confusion. Gently, Prowl laid a hand on his shoulder.
“You had one set rules to live by then, and you have a different set to live with now. Why should I hate you for the effects of your origins? It was a circumstance out of your control.”
The trainee tactician landed on the ground as Jazz tackled him in a relieved hug.
= = =
“Maybe that cartoon movie marathon for Spike and Carly was a bad idea. The Dinobots want to find the ‘Great Valley’, Sideswipe hasn’t stopped referring to the minibots by the Seven Dwarves’ names, and why the slag does Jazz keep calling Prowl ‘Sleeping Beauty’?! If our SIC has ever slept in a day in his life that wasn’t due to him being fragging sedated, I’m a two headed ostrich.”
The conversation faded as two mechs walked away from the rec. room, and one black and white mech turned a dry look on another.
“She gets woken from an enchanted sleep by a kiss from a prince. Doesn’t that sound familiar?”
“… You’re hardly a knight in shining armour, Jazz.”
The Ops mech smirked.
“Well, you aren’t a princess.”
Title: Mission - Awakening
'Verse: G1 Transformers
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: TF cussing.
“Prowl? Something wrong?” Jazz looked up as his roommate entered, poring over a datapad, looking a little weary (and for Prowl, that meant the tactics trainee was really undercharged).
“No, I’m fine.”
“Right, and I’m pink and green. Did you forget to refuel again?”
The chevroned mech chuckled at Jazz’s ‘fussing’, holding up a glowing cube.
“I thought I’d refuel here. It’s quieter than the mess, and I can get some work done.”
“Work? Thought all you tactics bots were on medical leave after the upgrades.”
“The battle computer they installed is rather sensitive; these are theoretical exercises to help me get used to having it running constantly.”
“Frag. Surgery and homework? I’m glad I’m Ops.”
The visored bot smirked, and Prowl shook his head, still smiling faintly as he settled at his desk, consuming the energon ration. Jazz bounced over to perch on the tabletop, and the sensor panelled mech raised an optic ridge at him.
“Don’t start work just yet; I got something you have to hear.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, one of the other trainees made an aft of himself earlier.”
Jazz launched into his tale, and Prowl listened intently, sharing a laugh with the Ops mech at the behaviour of his colleague. With a final pull of glowing liquid, the tactician commented. “Quite frankly, I cannot believe he took such an illogical course of action, it was bound to fail and…”
Jazz’s snickers ceased when he realised Prowl was not continuing his sentence.
“Prowl? Prowler?”
The chevroned mech was frozen in place. His systems were still running, Jazz could hear them, but Prowl wasn’t moving, optics blank and expression so still the visored mech nearly panicked, but Ops training and a lifetime on the streets held firm and he immediately commed for a medic, then started scanning his roommate for anything out of the ordinary, finding nothing but an increase in energy use.
Casting about for anything to help him figure out what was wrong, Jazz’s gaze fell upon the trainee tactician’s now empty ration container, groaning when the last drops evaporated and the cube winked into oblivion.
“Figures, Prowl. The one time you finish a ration quickly, I have to figure out if it’s going to hurt you.”
The visored mech paced, if Prowl had been drugged (Jazz’s processors shied at the thought that something more lethal might have been used), a complete systems purge would solve the problem. But getting an immobile Prowl to the med bay where the procedure could be carried out would take time, and every click they spent sitting on their afts was time Prowl couldn’t afford. There were compounds that did their damage at lightning speed (Jazz could mix up quite a number of them, and knew how to obtain a whole lot more), but thankfully most of them could be slowed with the use of the appropriate chelates.
But which one to use? Jazz didn’t know what was coursing through his friend’s lines at the moment, and he no longer had any energon to test. The Ops trainee paused. Wait, perhaps he did.
“Prowler, I’m sorry, but this is for your own good.”
Shyly (and here he berated himself for his hesitation, his roommate could be dying on him and here he was having an attack of propriety!), Jazz knelt in front of his unmoving friend and pressed his mouth to Prowl’s, sampling the trace of fuel that still lingered there. Chemosensors immediately started analysing the components and Jazz frowned, the data reported nothing unusual was in the energon.
So he tried again, a little more desperately this time, with the same result.
Well, not entirely. Prowl’s optics flickered, and confused, Jazz just stared, before tentatively repeating the process, watching his friend carefully for any response. The tactician stirred now, pulling away with a bewildered expression.
“Jazz? What-”
Prowl’s question was cut off by Jazz practically falling into his arms with a cry of relief.
“Frag, Prowl. Don’t scare me like that again.”
“My apologies, but what exactly did I do, and why were you-” He was interrupted again by a knock on the door and the entrance of a medic.
“Sorry I took so long to get here, we’ve been overrun by all the tactician trainees coming in. What happened?”
“My roommate froze up. He wasn’t responding to anything I said. Y’said tacticians were landing in the med bay?”
“Yes. It appears the last round of upgrades was affecting them negatively. The battle computers installed were overriding their normal programming and going into constant analytical loops, causing them to shut down when their protective subroutines kicked in. We’ve been working on uninstalling the units for the last few cycles.”
“But, Prowl’s a tactics bot too. And he received one of those upgrades.”
“And this is the first time he’s been affected? Odd. Prowl, if I may?”
The tactician shifted so that the medic could access a data port, and the mech started scanning the chevroned trainee’s processors, simultaneously going over Prowl’s medical record to confirm Jazz’s statement.
“Says here you have some programming issues.”
“Yes. My social programming is underdeveloped.” Jazz winced at his roommate’s even tone. Prowl had learnt to live with his ‘defect’, as many called it, but that didn’t mean it stopped hurting when someone saw it as a horrible flaw.
“And as a result, you’ve developed subroutines around that to allow you to make logical deductions of social situations and the appropriate responses. I’m pretty sure that’s why you weren’t affected as early as the others. Those programs kept the battle computer from taking over, because the upgrade basically functions in the same manner as they do, by calculating the appropriate response to the information fed them.”
“Medic mech, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Prowl here may be the only bot able to use the upgrade, thanks to his programming.” The mech stood, patting the stunned tactician on the shoulder. “I’m not sure if you see it this way, but this could be a good thing.”
“How? I lock up when confronted by illogical matters now.”
“You’ll adapt. You adapted to your first set of circumstances, you’ll adapt again. All you need is time to get used to the sensitivity, and eventually you’ll be able to predict and stave off a CPU freeze. You certainly managed to end your lock up on your own.”
“About that. I don’t know how it happened. Jazz was the one to bring me out of it.”
Faced with two sets of inquiring optics, the Ops trainee almost froze up himself, but managed to answer the unspoken question. “Eheh, I just… shook him a little. He scared me, going from conversation to statue in a sparkbeat.”
“Hmm. Base programming directs that we respond preferentially to sensory stimuli, since our immediate environment could pose the most pressing hazard to our well being.”
“So, the next time this happens, I should smack Prowl a good one?”
The medic didn’t quite know what to make of Jazz’s smirk (or of Prowl’s sudden twitch of sensor panels), but he replied nonetheless. “Well, you don’t have to be violent about it, but moderately forceful contact, strong scents, even a loud jarring noise should break him out of a tactical analysis loop.”
“Alright. Thanks.”
The medic nodded, then left. As the door slid shut, the Ops trainee broke out into fidgets, all mirth gone from his expression, and the tactician trainee just sighed.
“Jazz, I’m not angry with you. Now please explain why your last course of action was to kiss me.”
“I have chem. analysis programming and the sensors for them are installed there. I thought you’d been drugged, and the only remaining energon I could get at was in your mouth.” Jazz looked away. “I’m sorry for taking advantage of you.”
“You were helping me. I don’t mind. But why did you get them placed in such a location?” Jazz curled up on his berth at his roommate’s question, still not meeting Prowl’s optics.
“Had them even before I got into the army. I wasn’t exactly on the straight and narrow like you were.”
“Can you tell me about it?” The other mech looked concerned at his withdrawal, and the Ops mech sighed. Prowl was safe to tell, his processors insisted. Prowl didn’t want to use this against him.
“You got a creator and a home, but I got picked up off the streets, literally. Been on my own as long as I can remember, being tricky and sly and conniving to keep myself fuelled and alive. Was good at it, still good at it, or else I wouldn’t be in Ops now. Anyway, it’s an upgrade some street mechs went for. Tainting a drink is actually pretty common in Cybertron’s greyer areas, so having them in your mouth lets you find out and stop, discrete like. And the one responsible can’t do anything about it without outing themselves.”
“Ah.”
Jazz shrugged, wanting for some reason to defend himself, even though Prowl had not shown any sign of decrying him. “I was working my way out of it, getting on the course for the straight path. Was even starting to make some honest credits. And then an associate didn’t like that I was climbing out of the slums when he wasn’t. So he got me thrown in the clinker. They checked me out, couldn’t find nothing solid on me, not that they would have, but for that one turborat whose info turned out to be false. Still, I had a rep, and they wanted the mech behind that rep under their control, as an asset, not a glitch in the mainframe. They knew some of the street law, and offered me a deal. Go into Ops, and they hand over the turborat and look the other way for a decabreem. I took it. Yeah, not very nice, but I never said I was. And now you hate me and want nothing to do with me.”
He stayed as he was, cursing his runaway vocaliser. Why did he feel it important that his roommate thought well of him? He’d never cared before. Because Prowl was his friend, his CPU replied, and he shivered. Not for long now.
“I see no reason to do that.”
“What?” Jazz nearly fell off his berth, turning around so fast to look at the tactician. The sensor panelled mech had crossed to his side of the room, and was now smiling at his confusion. Gently, Prowl laid a hand on his shoulder.
“You had one set rules to live by then, and you have a different set to live with now. Why should I hate you for the effects of your origins? It was a circumstance out of your control.”
The trainee tactician landed on the ground as Jazz tackled him in a relieved hug.
= = =
“Maybe that cartoon movie marathon for Spike and Carly was a bad idea. The Dinobots want to find the ‘Great Valley’, Sideswipe hasn’t stopped referring to the minibots by the Seven Dwarves’ names, and why the slag does Jazz keep calling Prowl ‘Sleeping Beauty’?! If our SIC has ever slept in a day in his life that wasn’t due to him being fragging sedated, I’m a two headed ostrich.”
The conversation faded as two mechs walked away from the rec. room, and one black and white mech turned a dry look on another.
“She gets woken from an enchanted sleep by a kiss from a prince. Doesn’t that sound familiar?”
“… You’re hardly a knight in shining armour, Jazz.”
The Ops mech smirked.
“Well, you aren’t a princess.”
