Chapter Text
Their business had picked up fast once they'd given the info they'd gathered on the Senators and the assassination plot to Quickshadow. Quickshadow was referring people to them, it seemed, though the cases they were getting, as a result, weren't potentially politically volatile. Because of the increase in work, Jazz didn't have a whole lot of time for further investigation into Ratbat, Crosscut, and Proteus. Jazz was trying to keep work within work hours, plus he and Prowl were busy apartment-hunting. They both wanted to stay in roughly the same area they were in now and that had apartment buildings, not standalone houses. While they were looking, Jazz closed out his lease and moved his stuff into storage in the rooms above the obstacle course Quickshadow had used for his training. The top level of the old converted warehouse had more than enough space until Jazz figured out what they'd need in the new place and what to do with the stuff they wouldn't.
There was still some stuff he wanted to pick up from his creator's place if they ever managed to get up there. Jazz hadn't retrieved his instruments yet, but he'd indulged himself in the purchase of a new acoustic guitar. It felt right to have a new instrument for a fresh start. He played not in his workspace under the stairs but upstairs in a formerly little-used corner of the bedroom. He was more than a little out of practice, but if Prowl minded having to listen to Jazz's efforts to get himself back up to sounding decent, he never said anything. Or turned off his audials, but honestly, Jazz wouldn't have blamed him for doing that during the first several mega-cycles Jazz was back at practice after his long hiatus.
As for the information they'd turned over to Prowl's creator, either the assassination plot was unsuccessful, to begin with, or Quickshadow had taken care of things because nothing came of it. Jazz thought they were free and clear on the Prime-assassination front right up until the bomb went off.
Prowl might not have cared much for Primes, but his arm was still tight around Jazz's waist as they stood in their living room and watched the media coverage unfold onscreen. Jazz was trying to process the idea of a world without Sentinel Zeta Prime in it. Sentinel Zeta had always been Prime, all Jazz's functioning and his creators' too.
"How did this…?" Jazz trailed off.
"I'm trying to contact Creator now," Prowl said grimly.
Prowl had a powerful onboard communications suite: Quickshadow had insisted on only the best for her creations. Prowl couldn't communicate or broadcast at deployer level, of course, but he would undoubtedly be able to coordinate with many mecha from some distance away. Contacting Quickshadow, with her matching hardware, in Iacon from Altihex was no problem. Once the connection went through, Jazz got a request from Prowl to patch him into their conversation. He accepted and caught Prowl's question halfway through.
'…this happen?' Prowl was wanting to know. 'The Primal Vanguard has never failed before. Infiltration?'
'Worse,' Quickshadow answered, her voice tight.
'Traitors?'
'Shadowplay.'
Prowl's attention snapped to Jazz, who was confused. He'd never heard of shadowplay, although he could tell from Quickshadow's tone that it was bound to be horrifying.
'You scrubbed that data before you passed it on, Creator?' Prowl demanded.
'Yes, of course, not that it wasn't shining clean before you gave it to me.'
'I Put it through Red's security software before I packaged it for you,' Jazz put in.
'Excellent. Between the two of you, the source should be untraceable.'
'Yes,' Quickshadow agreed. 'Just in case, burn and replace that terminal to ensure it.'
'Yes, of course.' Prowl relaxed slightly, but his arm was still tight around Jazz. 'How do you expect things to proceed?'
'I don't expect a successor is in the wings, so it's likely our current circle of friends will keep things running.'
'With their own spin, I expect.'
'Of course.' Quickshadow's voice shaded with worry. 'Prowl. I don't know what's going to happen, but the road has been rough of late, and I don't expect it to smooth out any time soon.'
'I'm going to need a translation for all this, mecha,' Jazz reminded them. These two were way too used to talking in code.
'Prowl will explain,' Quickshadow said. 'I have to go to work right now.'
'Of course.' Out loud, Prowl said, "Jazz, could I have a moment with her, please?"
"Yeah, of course, babe." Jazz disengaged from the comm call. Prowl spent a moment longer speaking to his creator, then came out of it and turned to Jazz, wrapping his lover in his arms.
"That last was simply personal," Prowl explained. "Do you want me to tell you, or no?"
"Not if you don't want to. You're allowed to have private stuff," Jazz reminded him, leaning into Prowl's embrace. "Thanks for checking, though." Because he wanted Prowl to keep doing it, Jazz encouraged him by adding, "you're doing a lot better with being open with me, lover."
"I have an algorithm running that puts a reminder on my HUD whenever something I'm unsure of comes up in conversation," Prowl admitted.
Of course he did. Despite everything, Jazz smiled. "Whatever works for you, babe." But there were other things to discuss now. "Speaking of uncertainty and conversations, start from the beginning with the one I overheard. What is 'shadowplay?'"
"It's also called 'personality adjustment.'" Prowl waited for a nano-klik but Jazz didn't know what that was either. "It's an offshoot of mnemosurgery," which Jazz had heard of, "but without any therapeutic value. It's often used to create sleeper agents."
"That's what Quickshadow was getting at, wasn't it?" Jazz guessed. Knowing how to translate Prowl gave him a decent handle on translating Quickshadow. "Someone got to someone close to the Prime with this shadowplay junk."
"Yes. Creator doesn't seem to know who, yet, though." Prowl locked his hands together against Jazz's back. "I don't know if she's investigating on her own or if she has been instructed to do so, but if she doesn't have the resources to do so, then I don't know who does."
"Okay, and I got the part about slagging the secure terminal," which would be a pit of scraplets to replace but needs must, Jazz supposed. "So I'm good up to there. But…" Jazz trailed off, unsure how to ask his lover how he could be sure his creator was okay. If you could be changed like that, given a sleeper personality of sorts, you could easily be made to lie about not having been altered.
"Creator has deep-coded and efficient counter-measures installed," Prowl explained in a carefully neutral voice. "I can be sure she is unaffected because she still functions."
Jazz was horrified. "Primus, Prowl!" A second horrifying thought occurred to him. "Baby, you don't…?"
Prowl shook his head. "No. Nor do my siblings. Creator couldn't stand the thought of putting something in her creations that would offline us. I'm not – we are not – in positions where we would normally be politically useful and harming us would not provide leverage over Creator. It would only provoke her wrath – if we left anything for her."
Jazz had sparred with every member of Prowl's family now except Bluestreak, and there was no question in his mind that all three of Quickshadow's creations could take care of themselves.
"Okay, good." Jazz hugged his lover briefly. "Don't want to lose you."
"Nor I, you." Prowl caught Jazz's chin in his hand and kissed him swiftly. "As for the rest of what she and I discussed: there is no known potential new Prime at this point and the Senate will most likely attempt to keep running Cybertron's government without one, and will likely make changes that will benefit themselves more than the populace."
Jazz might not pay attention to politics, but if this came from inside the Senate, and given what they'd uncovered, it seemed likely, he could see where this was going. "They're not going to look for a new Prime, are they?"
"No more than they have to, I expect. I doubt most of Cybertron can picture a world without a Prime, but that doesn't necessarily mean a leader will be chosen," Prowl pointed out. "I expect a puppet Prime at best."
"It's going to be bad, isn't it, Prowl?" Jazz asked quietly.
Prowl sighed. "Yes, it is."
"Should I set up a new secure terminal?"
"No – or not yet, at least. If someone has stooped to using shadowplay, I don't want you going back into anything until the risk factor can be dropped even further." Prowl frowned. "Now is the time for sneaky, powerful people to be either overconfident or paranoid, and there is still a chance my prediction is wrong."
"But you don't believe that." Jazz knew Prowl way too well by now.
Prowl shook his head. "No, lover, I don't."
"Sorry, love, but this is one time I hope you're wrong."
Prowl tucked Jazz close. "So do I."
Prowl was not, of course, wrong. Upheaval followed the death of the Prime, culminating in the initiation of the Clampdown. The order, splashed over every media outlet and interrupting every broadcast, came late in the evening, the result of a specially called session of the Senate. Since the death of the Prime, they had each kept a newsfeed running continuously in the corner of their HUD and saw it at the same time, even though they weren't together. Prowl had been downstairs while Jazz had been practicing in the bedroom and came straight to him once the announcement finished. Jazz got up and met him halfway at the top of the stairs.
"You saw," Jazz said, and it wasn't a question.
"I saw. Planet-wide curfew and surveillance," Prowl said softly, as they took each other's hands. "That's just the beginning, I've no doubt."
"They're starting off with restricting travel and doing random serial code checks. What're we going to do?" Jazz asked.
It would be a lot harder for some aspects of their business if they had to work around the new rules, especially for Prowl, who handled things like surveillance. Even if they could get some kind of license or dispensation under whatever new regulations came their way, there was no way it wouldn't be expensive, at best, and that wasn't an expense Jazz had thought he'd have to factor in. Plus, it would only bring attention to them and Jazz didn't want the authorities to have a reason to pay attention to Prowl. Sure, Prowl lived a quiet, law-abiding life now and had the finest counterfeit background shanix could buy, but there was always a risk.
"We comply as best we can, for now," Prowl replied. "At least on the surface."
"Mm. Want me to go back into the Senate's servers, see what I can find?" Jazz didn't like the idea, but things were getting worse, and it wasn't just about him.
"Yes, but only if you can reduce the risk factor even further," Prowl told him. "Obviously, Creator would never accept an assignment on you, but she is not the only tool at her handlers' disposal, and there may be some of them that do not respect my protection of you." Prowl cupped Jazz's face in one hand, his optics dark and serious. "I will kill anyone who so much as tries to harm you, but revenge would be cold comfort for your loss, my darling."
Jazz put a hand over Prowl's, resting on his cheek, turned his face into the palm and kissed it.
"We'd better make sure you don't lose me, then, love," Jazz said. "Can I bring Red Alert in on this, see if he can beef up the security before I go back in?"
"Yes," Prowl said thoughtfully after a few nano-kliks. "If anyone can virtually assure your safety, it would be Red Alert."
"Okay, then." Jazz kissed Prowl's palm again. "I'll bring in Red Alert and get him to make everything so secure I can barely use it before I do anything else. Alright?"
"Yes, that should be enough, though I'd like to check it over and be sure before you use it." Prowl's thumb stroked gently over Jazz's cheek plate. "But, if there is any indication of danger to you, however small, I want you to stop investigating immediately."
"I promise," Jazz reassured him. "I'm not gonna leave you, sweetspark, no way. But, I do have to ask…what if none of that works?"
"I've calculated that the most likely scenario requires us to eventually choose between Autobot and Decepticon factions," Prowl said, "and Smokescreen concurs."
"Prowl?" Jazz loved Prowl dearly, but he honestly could not see Prowl voluntarily joining a faction or anything else where he'd have to follow anyone's rules but his own.
"A civil war is almost a certainty at this point. The Senate is likely to try and further increase their power only to succeed in inciting further unrest." Prowl looked distinctly unhappy. "I'm uncertain of what, if anything, could be – would be done, is perhaps the better word choice. It would require compromise on all sides, however, and some more than others and I don't believe any of the parties which could affect the current outcomes more positively are willing to do so. We would eventually need to join a faction for protection, security, and fuel if nothing else."
"Primus," Jazz rubbed his hands over his face. "I can't – even if we wind up with a new Prime?"
"That would require a Matrix-selected Prime," Prowl answered. "I don't believe there will be one. The Senate is corrupt and has gained almost complete control over Cybertron. They will not relinquish it while they live, I'm afraid."
Jazz sighed and leaned into Prowl's arms. This was just too much to deal with right now, all at once. "Just – just tell me it can't last forever."
"It can't. It won't," Prowl promise, hugging Jazz close. "Whatever happens, we will face it together."
"I love you, Prowler."
Prowl rested his cheek against the side of Jazz's helm. "And I love you, my Jazz. No matter what comes, it comes against the two of us together."
"Yeah, yeah, it does." Jazz kissed him gently, and then they sought reassurance in each other while, outside, the streets began to empty for the curfew.