Chapter Text
Prowl wakes up groggy from sedation. He is dreadfully disappointed in his coworkers, the childish pranks were long past frustrating. Drugging a mech’s energon so they fell into recharge was only funny the first time, and only if it wasn’t malicious.
The other times he’d woken with his datawork ruined or worse proved the malice, and the continued actions even after he’d upgraded his intake to filter most drugs or poisons made it worse.
He kept his optics offline for a too long moment to hold back an embarrassing keen of pure frustration and loneliness. Then he powers them on to darkness, and finds he needs to reassess his situation entirely.
He was not at his desk.
His ATS presses at the edge of his awareness, a glitch forming at the border of his sensitive systems and his shattered code. Prowl carefully tests his limbs and range of motion.
He has a pair of stasis cuffs on his wrists, baffles on his doorwings, and he has very little space before he hits walls on either side of his frame. The light is coming through a crack in the material above him, and Prowl doesn’t see a line of dark across it that would indicate a bolt or chain.
He sets his ATS to ping unlock codes to the cuffs until they unlock, previous attempts at this have them unlocked in roughly a half joor, plenty of time to shift to a better position without cramped doorwings.
The clik they fall away Prowl brings his pedes to his bumper and kicks out, the top of whatever he was in cracks loudly, and half falls in with him. No alarms sound, and Prowl carefully pulls himself out of the hole in the ground he had been locked into.
Prowl hopes for the sake of his own code remnants that he’s been kidnapped by a gang, not his coworkers.
A Polyhexian, short and streamlined stares at him from across the warehouse, visibly shocked. He is deep black with deeper red accenting, clearly meant to melt into the shadows.
“Wha’ the frag?” He says, “Ya ain’t supposed to be outta stasis for another orn.”
“Where am I? Why?” Prowl demands, and he tries desperately not to sway where he stands. His ATS is not pleased by the development, and the remnants of the drug are still running through his system.
The mech snarls at him, clearly equally disoriented for different reasons, “You aren’t supposed to be awake! You are literally the only cop worth having, an’ I can’t keep ya alive if ya won’ stay put!”
Prowl feels his ATS stall. He has been kidnapped, put into stasis, dropped into a hole, and not by one of his fellow enforcers, who hated his adherence to the law. Not by one of the criminals, or the gang lords, or the corrupt Lords of Praxus, all of whom likely wanted him dead for his sense of justice and ability to gather evidence to support it.
No, the worst, most terrifying actions done to him in this accursed city beyond the slow degradation of his own code was done by someone who wished to keep him alive. It has to be a lie.
Prowl increases his bandwidth and runs a query search in his deep files, facial matching and reference points. Meister. An assassin local to Praxus with no evidence of branching out, suspected of being contracted to one of the Lords, or gangs. Prowl’s running theory was Hydrauline, or the Scourge gang.
This is unexpected, this mech has no reason to keep him alive.
The ATS registers a cascade failure. Prowl locks his limbs and joints, his optics burning white. He cannot glitch, not here, not now. He ups his bandwidth, and his damaged code twinges at him. His precinct, who should be his cohort, would not keep him alive by mutual choice.
An assassin would.
Prowl crashes hard.
Jazz stares at the stiff frame of the crumbled enforcer who had climbed out of his hole a whole orn early. Half his joints are still locked, and the heat shimmering slightly over his frame does not bode well. Jazz sends a clip of the whole incident to Ratchet for review, for sheer lack of ideas on whatever that was.
He’d gotten two sentences out, barely, and the mech’s optics had gone white before he locked up and collapsed in short order. A crash, certainly, but not one he’d caused on purpose despite his valid panic.
Jazz gently poked the mech’s offline frame. It wasn’t graying, good. He gathered the cop bot up, and dragged him to a chair. He had chains, since stasis cuffs clearly didn’t work, and apparently he’d have to actually talk to him instead of catch-stasis-release, like he’d planned.
:Jazz, he crashed, looks like a software glitch,: Ratchet comms back, :Cool packs on his joints to help unlock them, or he’ll have real stiff cables, and magnets on the stiff cables and sore helm when he’s awake, assuming you still want the mech alive.:
Jazz pings acknowledgement back automatically and closes the line. He has cold gel packs, not many though, and he drapes them over the enforcer’s elbows, doorwing joints, and the last over his neck.
Prowl groans lowly, rebooting, as Jazz begins trailing his magnetized servos over the taut cables of his back and doorwings. His left doorwing flicks hard.
“What,” he says in a rough, staticky voice, “are you doing?”
“My medic said this’d be good for you post crash?” Jazz offers uncertainly. He wishes he knew why the mech was awake so he can fix the issue.
“It is. Why?”
The enforcer’s voice is hard, and pained, but the plaintive note underneath is poorly masked. Jazz rubs a little more firmly at a point of particular tension. The cables under his servos relax and tense in cycles.
“You’re honest, th’ only honest cop here. I can’t let you die, but you were getting too close an’ one of th’ gangs put a hit out on ya. Ya were supposed to stay in stasis ‘til I got rid’a them, then ya could go back.”
Prowl hums softly, “The Syklight gang.”
It is not a question. Jazz hums an answering positive anyways.
“I cannot just vanish. It would be noticed.”
Jazz winces, “Mech, ya already did. Been missin’ an orn and a half already. I hacked your home terminal ta request leave for a virus an’ ya boss gave ya three orn off. He didn’ even try to investigate. Tha’s the timeframe I was workin’ with.”
Prowl makes an odd sound in the back of his throat. Jazz thinks it might be a keen, smothered by pure will.
“I will not interfere,” he whispers, his optics have bled white again, “You can keep me here, or confined to my home, but I will not interfere. You won’t be able to drug me again.”
“I mean,” Jazz says, and Prowl snorts lightly.
“You might be capable, but my systems will be on high alert since they just fought a strong dose off. It won’t linger in my system well.”
Jazz considers that. An intake mod to do that sort of thing isn’t expensive, mainly uncommon. It's typically for fancy energon chefs who consistently test fuels and must be able to fight off cross effects.
“I’ll check in,” he decides, “Randomly. An’ you’ll let me, no fightin’ or tryin’ to catch me.”
Prowl nods his helm, with an unfair amount of regal grace for a mech still fighting the effects of a nasty crash, and trembling.
“An’ you’ll let me drop you into stasis for transport home, I ain’t lettin’ ya know where I live.”
Prowl agrees to that as well, and receives a free servo with a drugged cube. He sucks it down willingly. The cube has enough tranq in it to drop a tankformer and Prowl drops off with only a slight waver.
Meister is indeed checking in, even if Prowl never sees the mech again. The chain on the balcony door is left different each time, and the single time Prowl leaves a batch of energon gels out to cool they are vanished quickly, a single one left behind for him.
By the time that an all clear is left on a flimsy stuck to the balcony door and Prowl is able to return to work, Prowl has discovered that the mech has a sweet tooth, and likes to dig through Prowl’s home files. After the second time a mech in one of the gangs that was noted as particularly reprehensible in his file turns up dead, Prowl starts leaving the codes in riddles for Meister.
He doesn't condone assassination or murder, but there are few enough options available in Praxus, with how high the corruption runs. When the head of the precinct turns a blind optic to bribes and crime, and the Lords of the city themselves are involved in the more heinous crimes, then there’s little else to do.
That action had caused another cascade in his code failure, and Prowl had been glad of his off orns, so that he could dig through his code and patch it, laid up in his berth under a mountain of cooling packs.
His enforcer code was all but gone now, broken and the patches were redirecting it in different ways. He had no cohort, and the empty supporting code there ached. His trust in his precinct, and in his commander had been so shattered that Prowl truly doubted he could ever realign his code to a commander again.
The only surviving code fragment was the directive to protect his city, ironically the only part of enforcer code his precinct didn't follow. His only goal, the only thing keeping him on his pedes as his programming disintegrated was his desire to fix Praxus, all his remaining code hinged on that.
It was that directive that drove him to seek Meister out after his safety had been confirmed and their deal ended. He traced several leads, a street performer called Jazz matched his frame specs, a registered dancer called Halfstep who had an unpredictable cred account matching both incomes, and a dead mech called Ricochet who owned a warehouse deeper into gang and leaker territory.
Jazz was deemed the likeliest cover, connected with the dead mech’s warehouse, and Prowl kept a digital tracer on the mech through his ATS. Prowl truly did not need the information, but it had been deemed useful by his logic trees.
By the time Prowl was embroiled in a new case, and over his helm he wasn’t considering Meister for protection, or even to point in the direction of a nasty gang mech. Instead he was passing Jazz the street performer to drop a credit chit in his bucket that held zipped files instead of creds.
It was protected by the first password to his files that Meister had hacked. Then he was making his own meandering way to the dead mech’s warehouse, picking up fancy energon treats on his way. It was definitely alarmed, he’d know one way or another soon.
His ATS was protesting loudly. Prowl shut it down. He did not need it to crash right now. He sits quietly, reading a novel from his subspace, as he waits for several joor.
Then, Meister slips in the warehouse door, and is already glaring, the cred bucket from his time as Jazz, if Prowl’s theory is correct, is nowhere to be seen. There is an energy blade flickering on and off in his servo. Prowl puts his data pad back in his subspace.
“Wha’ are ya doin’ here,” Meister snarls, “We agreed ya weren’t to track me down.”
“Yes,” Prowl agrees, “We did. Then it was solved, you were no longer checking and the agreement ran its course. Would you like a silicon pastry?”
He offers the box of pastries and watches Meister’s face switch expressions at an alarming speed, before it settles on confusion, “Wha’?”
“Silicon pastry? It’s not drugged, you just kept stealing what I made so I assumed you liked sweet energon. Have you read the chit yet?” Prowl quietly mourns the fact that he is as chatty as his brothers without his ATS filtering. It gives away so much, but he cannot afford a crash right now.
Meister doesn’t move for a far too long moment. Then in a flurry of movements he grabbed the whole box of pastries and retreated once more, “Wha’ chit.” He grinds out.
“In your tip bucket,” Prowl says and he takes a bite out of the single manganese pastry he’d kept. Meister’s glare is piercing, but he pulls the same bucket out and dumps it on the floor, crouching to dig through.
To his credit it takes him little time to find it, and less to have plugged it in and be scrolling through the data. Finally he looks up at Prowl with his visor dimmed in what seems like pure fury, “I ain’t lookin’ for a partner, and I ain’t for hire.”
“Too bad,” Prowl says, and he takes another bite of pastry. Jazz snarls at him.
Prowl flicks his doorwings dismissively, “Technically your premise is false from the start. You already have at least one partner, your medic. For you to have had a response that fast after my crash when you kidnapped me, you have to be pretty close, at least professionally. I could find out if I wanted to, but I haven’t dug into your medic.”
Meister has shifted from fury to a mix of fear as well, “And wha’? Ya think I’ll just give ‘im away to ya?”
“No, I don’t. If you want to trust me with that information that is your prerogative. I want your help with this case specifically as a testing ground. I don’t have your trust, even if you have a decent amount of mine purely for being the first mech in this city that doesn't want me dead.”
“You’re certainly chattier than las’ time. Why ya want my help? Ain’t’cha know who I am, cop bot?” Meister presses into Prowl’s space, his olfactory ridge mere inches away from Prowl’s.
“I turned my ATS off. This is a bad conversation for me to crash during,” Prowl flicks his doorwings at the assassin dismissively, “Yes, I know who you are. I know you target the mecha that need to be targeted, you’re not careless, or driven by anger. Why wouldn’t I want your help?”
Meister scoffs, “When I said tha’ ya were the only honest cop in th’ city it were supposed to be a compliment. What’d’ja go and do this for?”
Prowl clamps his armor down tight, his field flaring raggedly, “I am the only honest enforcer in the City, or was. It destroyed my coding. I’d like to help you fix the city I was assigned to before my coding being so ruined takes me offline. It’s all I can think of.”
Meister stares at him, and shoves an entire pastry in his intake. It doesn't fit, and the first moment of chewing is obscene. “A’ight. I dunno what all tha’ means, I ain’t got enforcer coding, but I’ll help wit’ this job an’ we’ll reassess after. Wha’s th’ job, then?”
Prowl cycles his optics, “Didn’t you read the chit?”
Meister flicks his doorwing, “I ain’t that good. Your filin’ systems weird as slag. I got the gist o’ wha’ ya wanted, and then I dropped it.”
“Oh,” Prowl fidgets, “The mech trade is, um, bad here.”
Meister scoffs and gestures impatiently with a pastry. Prowl shifts. He’s better at succinct summaries with his ATS. He opens his bandwidth very slightly on it.
“Right. There is a mechling one of my informants passed on info about. He’s been in the Praxus trade for a couple decaorns now, but I couldn’t get a location. I have one now, at the docks, because he’s about to get sold out of the city.”
Meister hums around his second pastry, “Well, it’s a good job, I’ll give ya that. What’cha gonna do with the mechling when we done killed all ‘is captors?”
Prowl doesn't know. He’s pretty sure Meister can tell, especially once the mech snorts loudly.
“A’ight. I’m interested now. First things first, I’m takin’ ya to my medic. Gotta getcha checked first, and get everythin’ settled b’fore we plan this thing out.”
“Yes, Meister,” Prowl agrees easily and he earns the most disgusted look from the other mech.
“Des’ is Jazz. Ya tracked me down, ya earned it. Meister is for missions, tha’s it,” Prowl nods agreeably and follows Jazz out of the warehouse.
Ratchet is incredibly angry about Jazz’s acquisition of Prowl. Red Alert moreso, Red downright refusing to run comms that day for them. Ratchet still installs the nerve baffles on Prowl, in case Jazz has to use his sonics, and declares the mech in perfect condition to fight.
It’s a little meanly said, and Jazz is pretty sure that Ratch is hoping that Prowl will get hurt on this mission. Ratchet seems to take a while to warm up to new mecha though, based on how long it took for him to trust Jazz alone with Wheeljack.
That may have been the fault of illegal mods however, and Wheeljack’s eagerness to make and install them on a willing subject.
Prowl himself is being remarkably agreeable for a mecha that should be fighting his base coding to do this. Jazz is admittedly a little worried about the state of his coding.
Despite that, he is a very good tactician. The skill that led to his transfer to Praxus was not downplayed in the least. The plan is formed quickly, with variances and emergency backup plans. It has wiggle room if it goes wrong, and it has enough room for improvisation that Jazz can work with it easily.
If it goes as well as the planning session between them did, then Jazz will in fact be keeping his new cop bot.
The two of them are linked together with two-way comms, since Red is refusing for this mission, and Ratchet is covering cameras. Prowl is silent at Jazz’s back, with an acid pellet rifle clutched at attention as his doorwings flick with the air currents.
Apparently a single mechling doesn’t require many guards, a large group of them had been downstairs playing traxis. There are far too many doors to pick however, and Prowl is stuck guarding Jazz’s back as they check each room. As soon as the mechling is recovered they’ll switch.
Jazz has no qualms about killing every trafficker involved. He’s pretty sure Prowl doesn’t either, but until Jazz gets a look at his faulty code, he’s not letting Prowl actively make it worse.
The last room unlocks to reveal a shaking ball of scuffed red and gold plating. Jazz pulls his pistol out and arms it quickly, switching positions with Prowl to guard the door. This was going to be one of the hardest parts of the plan, Prowl wasn’t sure about his ability to earn the mechling’s trust, citing an inability to connect with sparklings previously, aside from his younger brothers.
Still, Prowl slipped into the room and approached the mechling curled on the berth.
“No, please,” comes from the berth in a tiny, staticky, broken voice.
“Shh,” Prowl murmurs back, “It’s ok. We’re here to get you out. What’s your designation?”
The mechling curls tighter, plating rattling loudly. Jazz tosses a dubious look over his shoulder. Prowl definitely looks nervous. They have a little time for this, but not actually that much to waste.
“Mine is Prowl,” he offers to the mechling, “You don’t have to tell me yours if you’re not comfortable with it. Would you like a treat? I have rust sticks and energon gels.”
There’s the sound of shifting from the berth and Jazz glances back to see the mechling peering at Prowl with one baleful blue optic. Prowl stoically offers both treats and the mechling cycles his optics at them. The mechling doesn’t reach for either treat, but he does snap his dentae around both, narrowly missing Prowl’s digits as the mech yanks them back.
Jazz snorts from the doorway. The mechling scowls at him, adorable.
“Who’s he,” he whispers to Prowl.
“That is Meister. He’s going to make sure you and I get to safety without getting caught.” Prowl answers, and the mechling scoffs.
“Yeah, right. Where are you really taking me?” Prowl flicks his doorwings at the indignant mechling.
“Well, to a medic first. Then I suppose we’ll figure it out. I mostly planned to get you out before they sold you to another city and I couldn’t get you. They’re supposed to ship you tomorrow, and my informant only got your location today.”
Jazz twists to look at the mech perched besides the scared mechling. He’s rambling again, he has definitely turned his ATS off again. They also make an interesting picture. Prowl’s nanites had been temporarily recoded for the night to prevent easy ident, and his dull yellow and orange compliments the mechling surprisingly well, even if it’s gaudy on Prowl himself.
The mechling stares suspiciously at Prowl, “Promise you won’t make me do anything I don’t want to?”
“No,” Prowl says, and Jazz tries desperately not to snort, “You probably need mineral supplements. They taste gross, but I will definitely make you drink them anyways.”
The mechling giggles incredulously, “That’s it?”
“No, you’ll have to stay safe as well, I won’t let you run into danger. And I will probably make you go to berth earlier than you want to. I think. That’s what I had to do when my youngest brother was a mechling, at least.”
Jazz is biting his lip plate desperately to not laugh at Prowl’s stuttering assurances to the mechling. He suspects that the mechling is going to live with Prowl until they find a safe house for him, but the Praxian’s hesitance is hilarious, moreso for the mechling’s confusion.
“Ok,” he says cautiously, “I’ll go with you. But you have to take my pede with you, I still need it.”
Prowl makes a confused noise and Jazz comes over to look as well. He really, really hopes that nobot cut off a mechling’s pede. It is in fact chained to the wall, and Jazz picks the lock easily, Prowl’s optics watching his movements sharply. The second the cuff falls away, Prowl scoops the mechling up.
“Hot Rod,” he says into Prowl’s audio, and Jazz hears it over the two way comm clipped to the audio, “That’s my des’.”
“Hello, Hot Rod, it's nice to meet you. We’re going to be running and fighting now. Don’t look, and hold on to me even if I let you go, got it?”
The mechling nods into Prowl’s shoulder pauldron, and Jazz and Prowl take off.
Mission success, Jazz will in fact be keeping the police bot.
Hot Rod is looked at by Ratchet the second they return, slightly worse for wear. The mechling does in fact need mineral supplements, and Ratchet can track his base code to Nyon. Creators aren’t listed, and Prowl decides he’ll just have to host the mechling until they can find him a trusted foster.
Jazz, hosting several blaster burns and a deranged smile, is as exhausted as the stressed mechling. Ratchet informs him that he’s not allowed to sleep under a bridge until the wounds have accepted the welds, or he risks a rust infection. He then kicks all three out, still miffed with the enforcer’s presence.
This is what leads to the current situation of Prowl on his couch with a mechling on his lap, and an assassin leaning on his side, both in recharge. Jazz shifts further into his side, and Prowl considers whether Ratchet drugged the mech’s energon.
Hot Rod had exhausted himself entirely earlier, refusing to drink the supplements, claiming they were bitter. He’d eventually gotten them down, but he’d glanced at Prowl the whole time, which had been odd. They’d been wary looks, mildly off put, as if he’d expected to be hit for throwing a tantrum.
Prowl had just watched him until they’d been drunk fully, then offered a rust stick as compensation when Ratchet’s back was turned, much to Jazz’s amusement at the time.
Right at the moment though Prowl is considering gathering evidence for the larger ring of trafficking in the city. His code is interfering with his plans.
>>Cohort coding disconnected.<<
That message has popped up multiple times now. Prowl genuinely doesn’t know if he can patch it. Cohort bonds are central to Enforcer coding. If you couldn’t trust your squad, your tac, your commander, then you were dead. Period.
It ran the other way as well. All those mecha needed to be able to trust each other. As such cohort networks were the core of a precinct, maintained by ritual of the day to day. The cohort coding was built on a precinct level, and was initially connected by the enforcer coding linkup when a mech transferred or joined a precinct.
It was maintained and strengthened by the precinct building on that trust, by shared energon, shared quarters during long orn cycles, shared washracks, even by shared command structures and the mutual trust between the rank and file.
Prowl’s code had been carefully blocked out of his precinct’s and left to wither away from a lack of his trust in the precinct, and his precinct’s in him. His cohort coding was frantically searching for a network that wasn’t there, a network to protect and to be protected by.
It didn’t exist anymore. It couldn’t.
>>Cohort coding disconnected. Please Uplink.<<
Prowl dismissed the notification.