Chapter Text
Of all the indignities that the new King had visited on Prowl since the coronation—the marriage to claim Prowl’s child as his own, the subsequent annulment after the birth, the title of Royal Mistress, and the removing Prowl from the royal apartments—the reception of Lord Mirage at court might be the worst.
Prowl, who had been raised with the best education a courtesan could expect, was well aware of Lord Mirage’s reputation. The first courtesan to have achieved the rank of First Tier since the days of Zeta Prime, advisor to kings and generals, of impeccable lineage and credentials, handsome, wealthy, and well-connected, Lord Mirage’s arrival would be a nightmare for any courtesan.
Lord Mirage, decked out in courting jewelry, with grand alliances behind him, and a longstanding relationship with the King, was a threat to every single thing that Prowl had left.
Were he in Praxus, with a support network, or even still the Consort of Polyhex, Prowl would have been well within his rights to have Mirage thrown from court for the way the courtesan blatantly flirted with the king.
But of course, Prowl was only a mistress, now. Stripped of all rank, of property, of titles, his wealth only from an allowance that, were Prowl less good with funds, would barely be enough to pay for Springer’s tutors, let alone keep Prowl in appropriate dress for court, Prowl could do nothing but bridle at the insult as the king accepted the flirtations with pleasure, laughing and smiling, kissing Mirage’s hand and leaning back to whisper observations to Sir Hound, his right-hand-mech and bodyguard.
The message was clear to Prowl. The time had come for the King to choose a Consort. If Prowl was lucky, Lord Mirage was either soft or incompetent, and nothing would change.
Prowl had never been lucky.
If Lord Mirage was any good at his job, which, by all accounts, he was, Springer would be a bastard within the year, with Prowl sent back to Praxus in disgrace without his sparkling. If he had any luck and if the king and his new consort were kind, his allowance would be cut back to basically nothing, with Springer removed from his custody since he was unable to provide for him. Perhaps he would be permitted to stay at court and watch his son be raised by Mirage from a distance, or perhaps Prowl would be married off to some minor noble with an estate far from the capitol, and be permitted to see Springer on royal progresses and during the Season.
And there were always the worst case scenarios, where Mirage or the king decided that even an illegitimate sparkling was a threat.
It was only a lifetime of practice that stopped Prowl from panicking on the spot. It was…doubtful, at least, that King Jazz would allow for Springer to be killed. Such a thing would hardly endear him to the court, or the public, especially as popular belief was that Springer was Jazz’s child, a polite fiction to allow Jazz to claim the throne for himself rather than serve as regent.
Prowl had no move to make to counter the inevitable. Lord Mirage would know, within the week, that the lock on the door connecting the royal apartments to Prowl’s chambers had never been opened, that Prowl had been barred from the king’s berth. With his status as the mistress of the Primal Minister, Ultra Magnus, he may even be able to get his hands on the sealed annulment. Which would reveal that the formal reason for the annulment was that Jazz had testified that he had never taken Prowl to berth, and that Springer was not actually his sparkling.
If Mirage discovered that, it would be open season on Prowl. If Jazz had never even bothered to take Prowl to bed, it would be apparent that there was no fondness, no warmth to be suffered. It would be immediately apparent that their initial bonding had not, as the rumors delighted in saying, been a seduction, nor a romance, but instead a political maneuver.
He wondered if he could stretch this quarter’s allowance enough to hire someone to taste his food. If Mirage did not have to fear the king’s displeasure at Prowl’s death, it would be very simple to have Prowl killed, sweep in to adopt Springer for his own long enough to carry, and quietly shuffle Springer out of the line of succession with a marriage back to Praxus, or perhaps a hunting accident, if Springer was not cooperative enough at his throne being stolen from him.
Prowl would have to do something about this.
Jazz was delighted when court ended, and he could go back into the royal apartments, and let Hound and Mirage have their proper reunion.
The royal apartments were awful, fashionably speaking. And he could barely redecorate them, because most of it was historical, and culturally significant, and so they weren’t touched.
There was the royal suite, with its comically large berth, luxurious private wash racks, massive closets, and secret entrance to the quarters of the royal mistress. Then there was the (currently unoccupied) consort’s suite, which had a similarly but not quite as big berth and wash rack, and even bigger closets. There was a royal nursery, for if the royal couple decided to keep the sparkling nearby, rather than sending them to the general palace nursery to socialize. There were five sitting rooms (one for morning and another for evening, one for both the king and the consort, and one that was the "nursery parlor," whatever that was), a formal dining room, an informal dining room which was still fancier than anything Jazz had eaten in before Optimus had become the Prime, three additional wash racks, a room for the Kingsguard that Hound had claimed as his own, a cozy little library, and a surprisingly bare, utilitarian office.
(Springer had moved to the general nursery after he’d been moved onto non-sparkling grade energon, so Jazz had secretly claimed the nursery as a music room, since it had great soundproofing.)
There was very little evidence left of Tarantulas. Within hours of the mech’s death, the palace servants had whisked everything away. Which would be incredibly suspicious, if apparently this wasn’t royal protocol, and everyone looked at him with confused optics when he tried to figure out who had given the order to dispose of the contents of the room between the consort and the king’s berthchambers.
Luckily (unluckily?), no one had disrupted Tarantulas’s freaky labs, so Jazz still had a much better picture about what had been going on during his predecessor’s reign than he might have liked.
The best room that wasn’t the nursery-slash-music room or the library was one of the sitting rooms (the king’s afternoon sitting room, apparently), which Jazz had managed to get filled with comfortable chairs and stock with quality high-grade. It was where he tended to meet with people he actually liked, who wouldn’t swoon at drinking high-grade before the fifth rotation of the moon before the high holidays in a room that faced the south, or whatever other obscure etiquette rule that Jazz tended to break just by existing. So that, of course, was where he reunited with one of his best friends.
“So, do I get to meet the sparkling yet?” Mirage asked after a lot of making out and a little subtle hardlining that Jazz pretended to not notice.
“We’ll set it up with Prowl,” Jazz waved a hand. “He’s protective of the bitlet.”
“You do that, your majesty,” Mirage purred, lounging on Hound’s lap like it was a throne…and one more comfortable than the actual throne Jazz sat on every day, at that.
“Ugh,” Jazz made a face. “I cannot believe that glitch killed so many of our cousins I ended up first in line.”
“You’re doing fine,” Hound said. “We’re almost done rolling back the policy changes he made, and then we can work on strengthening the border without offending the neighbors by making it obvious we think they’re going to invade.” Which they were, obviously, because for all of Megatron’s big talk about peace through tyranny, you don’t make an empire with only three city-states.
“I’m doing fine at just undoing Tarantulas’s slag,” Jazz said, pouring himself a large cube of high-grade. Being king sucked, but at least he could get the really good stuff. “Once I need to start actually making my own decisions… Well, we’ll see how much I managed to pick up from Optimus.”
“Or we find you a consort,” Mirage pointed out. “That should take at least some of the burden off your shoulders. I could think of a dozen candidates back in Iacon, and I’m sure I could scrape up a few more here in Polyhex… I think the Protectobots are of age to court, if we wanted an alliance with—”
“They’re barely more than bits themselves, we’re not going that direction,” Jazz cut him off. “And I’m not exactly in the mood to pick up a new consort.”
“It’s not about mood, it’s about need,” Mirage said with one of his “Jazz you skipped out on Academy etiquette training and you’re missing some key context” sighs. “But if you’re trying to preserve Prowl’s reputation, I suppose we can hold off.”
Jazz nearly asked what Prowl had to do with any of this, but then Bumblebee came in, bearing reports from Iacon and Kaon for them all to review. It was tricky, running the Prime’s spy network from a different city, but with good runners like Bee, and a number of trusted agents like Mirage and Hound, they weren’t losing ground to Soundwave just yet.
Jazz’s life changed when Consort Prowl of Polyhex sent Optimus Prime a quiet plea for help.
It wasn’t that unusual—lots of mechs sent requests to the Prime, asking for prayers or help or money. What was unusual was that a consort was asking for an annulment, on the grounds of abuse. Usually, someone’s family handled that sort of thing. But the consort didn’t seem to have family interested in his welfare, which theoretically meant that Prowl had few other options but the Prime.
If it weren’t for one tiny detail.
“You’re in line for the throne of Polyhex, aren’t you Jazz?” Ironhide said, squinting at the message when it was passed to him. Ironhide wasn’t nobleborn, despite having a “Sir” appended to his name, and generally thought of inheritance and succession as a bunch of meaningless rich mech slag, which Jazz heartily agreed with. “Sixteenth in line or somethin’?”
Jazz flashed a meaningless smile. “First, actually.”
Optimus looked up in surprise. “Since when?”
“Last month,” Jazz said, drumming his fingers on the table. “My relatives keep having ‘accidents’ it seems. King Tarantulas is tightening his grip.”
“You think it’s a trap?” Ultra Magnus, who, as the keeper of the books of nobility, among his many other duties as Primal Minister, had been the only mech present who was unsurprised by Jazz’s announcement.
“Not sure why it would be,” Hound said with a frown. “It’s not like Jazz’s identity as Primal Spymaster is well-known, there’s no reason Tarantulas would expect Jazz to be sent to investigate.”
“Unless he knows the Prime’s a soft touch, and thinks he’d want to remove him after such an accusation,” Mirage pointed out. He was calling in, his hologram self far less decorated than he would be if he was here in person. “Then he might send Jazz, as a challenger.”
Optimus raised his hands up in a surrendering gesture. “I have been well and truly lectured about how I’m not supposed to play that game,” he said. “Jazz, what’s your assessment?”
“Tarantulas is an amoral slagger,” Jazz mused, tapping out the rhythm of the Polyhex coronation march on the table. “Never met his Consort. Our reports say he’s stoic, keeps to himself when he’s not holding court. So it’s either a lie, or it’s really bad.”
“And his alliances?” Magnus asked. “Is the king… sympathetic to the Decepticons?”
“I think he’s in it for himself, but he doesn’t like Primal Authority,” Jazz said, thinking back on overcharged holiday rants about how Primus didn’t exist from his childhood. “Not gonna lie, annulling his marriage might push him right into Megatron’s arms.”
“So what?” Bumblebee, the youngest member of the Council, asked in alarm. “We don’t do anything?”
Red Alert twitched slightly. “If we ignore such a request, and it gets out, that might alienate Praxus.” These days, most city-states were just looking for reasons to be alienated.
“Or the courtesans’ guild,” Mirage observed, tapping his chin. “Prowl is respected as an administrator and consort in our circles. If you ignore this request, it sends a message that courtesans have no protections, and courtesans are already mad because of Sentinel’s regulations. It could lead to mass defection to the Decepticons, if it seems like the Primacy is willing to leave them out in the cold.”
“Courtesans wouldn’t go to Megatron,” Jazz said, frowning. “The mech hates them. Thinks they’re a waste of fuel and an outdated product of the caste system. Says so in his speeches about the corruption of the nobility.”
“He wouldn’t turn down the best administrators, bureaucrats, and diplomats the Primacy has to offer,” Ultra Magnus disagreed. “If the guild goes over to the Decepticons, half of my staff could be gone.”
“If Prowl has Decepticon leanings himself, this whole thing could be an opening salvo of a gambit to cause exactly that,” Hound pointed out. “Say he’s being abused, and then either the Prime interferes, destabilizing Polyhex and causing it to go over to the Decepticons, or we stay out of it, and then it leaks, and it looks like the Primacy is abandoning people and not being willing to stand up to royal abuses.”
“Difficult to say,” Red Alert said, flipping through a digital readout of Prowl’s disappointingly small surveillance file. “The consort maintains correspondence with several Decepticon-aligned courtesans—”
“But so do I, so that’s not saying much,” Mirage finished. He and Red Alert have an argument about that approximately once a month.
“So what we’re saying here,” Ironhide said, cutting off the inevitable rehashing of the value of information versus risk. “Is that this is an accusation with teeth, and we should probably investigate it before going one way or another.”
Optimus sighed. “I’ll write the edict and sign it in advance so it’s ready. Jazz, you go investigate. If it’s true, I expect you to deal with it.”
“I’ll take Hound and Bee,” Jazz said, as Ultra Magnus pushed a pad towards Optimus with the appropriate language.
“Not Mirage?” Ironhide asked.
“I’m still working in Vos,” Mirage said, frowning. “It’s unstable here. I’m trying to contain the damage, but…”
“If Vos goes over to the Decepticons, we’ll have more problems,” Ironhide agreed darkly. “Want some of my mechs, Jazz?” As Primeguard, Ironhide had plenty of very useful knights and warriors who Jazz was not above borrowing in the event of violence. Special Operations was small, and while they all punched above their weight class, sometimes you wanted a nice, big, heavily armored mech with an axe to hide behind.
“Not this time,” Jazz said, shaking his head. “This’ll be quieter than a squad, and hopefully means that less hackles are up when we get there. Just me, my sworn vassal, and my squire. My cousin’s funeral rites are in a few days, I’ll say that’s the reason for my visit.”
“Thank you, Jazz,” Optimus said with a nod. “Hopefully this can all be resolved quickly, and without much fuss.”
It was nice to be back in Polyhex, if Jazz was going to break a lifetime of habit and be honest. Home was home, even though he was pretty used to Iacon and the battlefield. The air smelled right, the roads felt right beneath his tires, even the coolant tasted better than anything he’d put in his system in centuries.
He hadn’t rightfully been back to Polyhex since he’d gotten his adult upgrades, having taken off in the grand tradition of many younger-sparks-of-younger-sparks, vying off to become a wandering troubadour, or perhaps a knight errant, or both! (He’d done both.)
He’d made a solid go of it. He’d become an accomplished musician, gotten knighted in the field, and he’d earned enough accolades that he’d come to the attention of one Orion Pax. Orion, a mid-caste archivist with a bit of a radical streak, introduced Jazz to all sorts of people in the nascent revolution that would one day consume Cybertron.
But back in the day, it was just a bunch of friends, sitting around a table, arguing about Primal Mandates and the caste system, organic rights and imperialism. Jazz had been right at home, listening to Megatron’s poetry, swapping war stories with Ironhide, composing with Soundwave, and needling Magnus about the nature of the law. It had been good. Even when they started acting instead of just talking, when Megs got himself banished from Iacon for publishing a poem laying out Sentinel Prime’s corruption and having Soundwave blast it across all major frequencies, when Sentinel’s goons had tried to kill Magnus for defending Perceptor’s latest scientific theory in court, when there were riots and arguments and danger, it had been good.
And then Ironhide and Ultra Magnus and Orion had gone off on an adventure, seeking to locate the Matrix of Leadership, which would disprove Sentinel Prime’s claim to power, and open up the system for change.
Orion didn’t much believe in the Matrix, or even Primus, they all knew that. He wasn’t a writer, but he could go on about the subject with enough high-grade in his system.
So imagine everyone’s surprise when the next time they saw him, he had the slagging Matrix in his chest and they were calling him Optimus, and now there were two Primes.
After a couple centuries of fighting it out with Sentinel, things with Megatron and Optimus only got worse. Megatron was not a fan of Optimus claiming the Primacy, but he’d been willing to put up with it for a while, even though every other day felt like it had brought a new argument about hypocrisy.
And then, for reasons that Jazz was still a bit fuzzy on, Megatron and Optimus had the fight to end all fights, and Megatron left. He’d declared the entire Primacy a deception against decent mechs to blind the masses to the abuses of the wealthy, and killed Sentinel on the way out the door. He’d gone back to Kaon, taking half their forces with him, seceded from the Primacy, and declared the foundation of a new Decepticon Empire in short order, vowing to protect any city state willing to “shed the chains of the Primacy and its corruption.”
It had been a bit of a surprise, to say the least.
The only bright side was that Sentinel dying was an unexpected boon to them, since it let Optimus declare sole claim to the Primacy. Sure, Optimus might be heartbroken, sure their army was shattered, sure their planet was on the verge of religious civil war, but at least it let them settle into Iacon instead of the battlefield!
Sentinel still had followers (and at least three “successors” out there somewhere, each claiming to be the real Prime, and that Optimus was a fraud with some fancy special effects), but generally, between all of OP’s inner circle’s efforts, they’d at least managed to consolidate power enough to declare peace.
And through all of it, Jazz had paid very little attention to the fact that he was anything more than just another knight (...slash spymaster) in the service of the Prime. If it weren’t for Ultra Magnus and his instructions to heralds at parties about Jazz’s titles, he’d probably have forgotten about it by the time that dear old cousin Tarantulas started killing off their family and Jazz found himself rapidly zipping up the line of inheritance. He’d never gone home, never paid his respects when Rancho took the throne, and just kept busy, what with setting up a multi-city spy network, infiltrating the Decepticons, and keeping Optimus alive despite the best efforts of many assassins.
So, outside of the circumstances, it was kind of nice to be home.
He went straight to the palace like a good heir ought to.
The place was exactly as he remembered it, if a little less impressive after a few centuries of hanging out in Iacon with its Primal grandeur. It was big and fancy, with gorgeous stained glass and elaborate mosaics, all showcasing the art and skill of Polyhexian craftsmen. The acoustics of the throne room were magnificent, too, which Jazz hadn’t appreciated when he was younger.
Tarantulas, on the other hand, looked different than he had last time that Jazz had seen him, but the rumors about Tarantulas and his science experiments kind of… put it all in perspective.
Consort Prowl was a different story. A big, bulky Praxian build, Prowl dripped with jewelry and was covered in gilding. He stood behind the throne, leaning down to whisper in Tarantulas’s ear on a regular basis. It could be sweet nothings, it could be advice, it could just be asking how much longer was left in session! Jazz had no idea, and Prowl’s expression gave nothing away.
After Jazz made his formal greetings and was welcomed and sent to stand with the rest of the court, he watched.
A noble petitioned the crown for tax relief. Prowl leaned over to murmur something. Quick as you please, Rancho reached up and snagged Prowl’s hand. Jazz watched intently as a thumb stroked the inside of Prowl’s wrist, and the king smirked up at Prowl. Prowl whispered something, too soft for even Jazz’s advanced audio receptors to pick up, and then Tarantulas released the hand, and denied the noble’s request.
For four days, Jazz attended court, keeping an eye on things, trying to figure out if Prowl actually was in danger. The letter to the Prime had been light on details. Prowl had no visible injuries, and by all appearances, Rancho was mildly handsy, but that wasn’t exactly a bad thing in a bonded. General gossip around the court had the king being absolutely besotted with his consort, that Prowl was a devoted spouse, and that things were all rosy.
…Yeah, okay, it was time to go digging and find out what was going on behind closed doors.
Jazz knew from his old days living here that there were a bunch of secret rooms underneath the royal quarters. Usually used for secret torture cells or playrooms for bitlets, but Tarantulas was a bit of a scientist when he wasn’t being a king, so he’d turned them into laboratories.
Luckily for Jazz, he knew another way in. When he’d been a sparkling, those rooms had been a bit of a play maze for the royal kids, and Jazz’s favorite part…had been the air vents.
Jazz had seen some slag in his day. This was a new one though.
The old playrooms had seen some major renovations since the days before his adult upgrades. Gone were the colorful games, the race track, play areas divided up into areas for different ages, and age appropriate datapads and equipment. Instead, it was a nightmare evil scientist laboratory straight out of a horror vid.
He’d seen evil labs before—Shockwave had a few, and he’d poked around them in his day, not to mention Brainstorm’s lab dubiously qualified—but it wasn’t exactly something he expected to see where he used to race his cousins.
But uh, this was a new one.
Prowl was tied down to a medical table with some sort of strange white material. Strands of it were trapping his hands at each side of him, his legs slightly apart, and strands over his torso and neck keeping him pinned to the table. A glob of it covered his mouth, muffling the sound coming from it. But up close, with Jazz’s audio capabilities, he could hear the agonized scream.
The source of the pain was pretty clear: Tarantulas had Prowl’s chest open, spark exposed, bright even in the ominously dim laboratory. If Jazz was a decent mech, he’d be embarrassed about it; it was hardly good noble manners to be ogling anyone’s spark, especially not a bonded mech’s. But instead, Jazz could see, horrified, the smallest orbiting sparkling, maybe a few days old at most, zipping around the carrier’s spark, as if terrified.
“Shh,” Tarantulas was saying, patting Prowl’s spark chamber absently. “This will help, I promise. He will be stronger for it.”
There were a series of alloygator clamps attached to the rim of the spark chamber, with thick, heavy cords leading from it. It almost looked medical in nature, the sort of thing that Ratchet might use to try and restart a spark, or maybe Vortex would use to– slag. Tarantulas did something. Electricity crackled through the air and Prowl shrieked even through the gag, trying to curl in on himself, his hands jerking in the bonds, trying to reach for the sparkling, trying to protect it, or maybe even just himself, as the sparkling started to flash brighter, the color wobbling and shifting.
Jazz had seen enough.
Using the sound of the electricity whining and Prowl’s screams, Jazz kicked open the vent cover. It clattered to the floor, making Tarantulas look up. Whatever he was doing to Prowl seemed to stop, at least for a moment. But whatever he saw, he wasn’t fast enough to react before Jazz fell from the ceiling, knife drawn.
Jazz had killed a lot of people in his day. On the battlefield, and in dark, quiet rooms in the name of his Prime. But honestly, there were few executions that had felt as earned as how Jazz felt when he landed knees first on the king’s shoulders, and slit the glitch’s throat.
Energon splattered everywhere—Jazz’s goal had been quick, not clean—including all over Prowl, who was staring at Jazz with wide, terrified optics, even as the pain was clearly fading, the scream dying in his throat.
Tarantulas fell to the ground, greying out with a gurgle and a gush of energon, leaving Jazz venting heavily over the corpse. After checking that the mech was dead (Jazz had been stabbed in the back a few times too many by a target he’d thought was already greyed out), he turned his attention to the victim.
Jazz reached for Prowl, transforming out his claws. Prowl flinched back, his chest plates slamming close, as if he thought Jazz would reach in and rip out his spark, or maybe just the sparkling. But he couldn’t move away as Jazz removed the clamps as gently as he could (although clearly it still hurt since Prowl flinched every time) before sliding his claws through the strange, sticky substance, starting with the gag.
Prowl remained frozen still and silent, tracking every movement like a glitchmouse that Steeljaw had cornered, even as the last of his bonds fell away.
“Can you stand?” Jazz asked, keeping his voice even, crouching over the injured mech.
“Yes, my lord,” Prowl said, struggling to his feet. His vocalizer was staticky from his earlier screams. There were no visible injuries, but there had been marks up and down his spark casing, like scorch marks, and dents where the clips had been placed. That had to hurt.
Jazz grimaced, thinking about the pain, and Prowl froze, as if he’d just misstepped. “Your majesty,” he corrected himself, as he stood on wobbly feet and tried to bow, nearly losing his balance in the process. Jazz scrambled to catch him, even though Prowl flinched away from his touch.
…Frag. ‘Majesty.’ Jazz was the king now.
…Or well, maybe he was.
Jazz exvented, glancing at Prowl’s spark chamber, despite himself. “Who all knows?”
Prowl made as if he intended to touch his torso, to cradle his spark casing, but caught himself. His optics darted around, looking to see if there was anyone here to help him. There wasn’t. It was just Prowl, Jazz, and the greying corpse of the previous king.
Hound and Bee were pinging him for updates, but Jazz didn’t dare respond, not until this was all sorted.
“No one,” Prowl finally said, bowing his head. “We only learned an hour ago. He was the one who performed the scan.”
Jazz transformed away his claws. “Well,” he said. “That’s mighty inconvenient.” A sparkling meant that Jazz wasn’t actually the king. A regency council would have to be convened, and while Jazz was likely to be declared regent, he might have to clean house to get that set up as a sure thing. It could get messy.
Prowl let out a shuttering vent, clearly resetting his vocalizer. “It—it does not have to be, your Majesty.”
“Oh? You’ve got a suggestion?” Given how early along it all was, theoretically Prowl could reabsorb the excess energy of a sparkling. Or if Prowl claimed that he was knocking spurs with a local knight or noble, he could maybe get the sparkling declared illegitimate, which could take it out of the line of succession…
(If Jazz hadn’t been on this mission explicitly to help Prowl, the option of just killing the consort would have theoretically been on the table. Jazz had done worse things than killing a carrying mech, even if Optimus would be very disapproving of it.)
The former Consort had finally regained his full composure. The pain, the fear, the uncertainty was all wiped away. “No one knows about the sparkling,” Prowl said. “If—if you were to bond with me, and take the throne, the timeline would be such that you could claim him as your heir.”
Jazz whistled, impressed despite himself. He thought about it. It would allow for an easier transition, and it meant that Jazz wouldn’t have to deal with procuring an heir. If he raised the bit and was proclaimed the sire he wouldn’t have to deal with people whispering in their ear trying to convince them to kill Jazz and take his place.
Not to mention, a regency was inherently unstable, and that was the last thing Optimus needed right now.
“That would work,” Jazz said, relaxing slightly. He pinged Bumblebee and Hound, letting them know where he was. “That should work nicely.”
“What happened? ” Optimus demanded, as soon as the room was sealed, and they were alone. Well, except for Hound, but that barely counted. “When I asked you to deal with this, I thought you would deliver the annulment, not assassinate the king!”
He wasn’t angry, just upset. He knew Jazz (probably) had a good reason.
“Well you know what they say about plans and first contact,” Jazz said airily.
“Jazz. Assassinating your predecessor could lead to internal instability. You’ll be rooting out loyalists for centuries.” Optimus would know. Megatron had killed Sentinel and they were still finding true believers amongst the dataclerks.
“Had to do something, and I didn’t have time to find a quieter kill,” Jazz said.
That got Optimus’s attention. “That bad?”
Jazz grimaced. “So the reason, as best I can tell, that Prowl asked for help was because Rancho was trying to spark him up, and he knew very well what was going to happen when he caught.”
Optimus looked alarmed. “He’s carrying?”
“Barely,” Jazz nodded. “It’s why we’re doing a bonding with the coronation. Gives plausible deniability the bit’s mine. Cleaner that way.” Optimus sat down heavily, expression grim. “I’ll need Percy or Jackie to come by. Also Ratch. I can’t make helm or aft of these notes. But best I can tell, Rancho wanted to make sure the bit was a triple changer. So he was… doin’ all sorts of stuff to Prowler beforehand, and once he knew…” Jazz grimaced. “I couldn’t let him go.”
“I understand,” Optimus said heavily. “It sounds like you made the right call. How is Prowl recovering?”
“He’s keeping busy,” Jazz said. He’d barely caught a glimpse of his new “betrothed” since he’d killed the mech’s conjunx. Prowl had, by Bee’s report, not even dared to report to a medic—Ratchet couldn’t come fast though—and instead was throwing himself into planning a state funeral, Primal visit, the coronation, and his own bonding ceremony. All of it was effortless and elegant and appropriate and all that boring stuff.
He looked forward to all of this being over so he could at least let Prowl have a break. Poor mech. He’d been trying to get an annulment before he got saddled with a murderous assassin.
Not until the sparkling emerged, Jazz wasn’t going to screw over the kid. But soon, Jazz could at least give Prowl that.
Ratchet arrived in a literal storm, called Jazz a variety of names, and then stomped off to go look at Prowl.
“How is he?” Jazz asked, when Ratchet finally emerged from the examination.
“Patient confidentiality,” Ratchet snapped.
<Asking for ops reasons.>
<Still confidential.>
Jazz sighed. <Do I at least get to know if I’ve got an heir?>
<Frag off. Ask your “conjunx” yourself.>
<Okay, what can you give me?>
<If you hadn’t killed that slagger, I would have myself,> Ratchet declared, the glyphs coming with six different kinds of emphasis and a pictograph of a knife for good measure. <He’s stressed, there are signs of prolonged abuse, he’s been the subject of a mad scientist for possibly his entire bonded life, and his stupidly sensitive tactical processor has just been fed so much new junk data that he’s a vent away from glitching. So you don’t need me to tell you that you’re going to be a good little conjunx and respect the frag out of all his boundaries, not touch him without permission, and not provide him with any additional unnecessary stress.>
Jazz nodded. <Thanks Ratch.>
<Don’t thank me,> Ratchet growled. <Just do your damn job.>