TITLE: Edge
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned
by
people with a lot more money
Author’s Voice of Warning (aka Author’s Note):
English is not my first language; it’s German. This is the best I can
do.
Any mistakes you find in here, collect them and you might win a prize
FEEDBACK: Loved
“You have lost your edge.”
That were the words that started it all.
Jazz had just
stared at Barricade, speechless for a moment, then his pride had risen
and he
had bristled.
“What are you talkin’ about?”
Barricade had just looked at the other mechanoid, then
smiled a rather terrible looking smile.
“You have grown weak as a warrior, Jazz. Like any Autobot.”
And that had touched more than pride. It had wounded the Solstice.
“You think you could take me on?” had been the challenge.
And it was one Barricade had taken Jazz up on.
That the sparring session turned into a more violent form of matching
their
strengths was both their faults.
Maybe Barricade shouldn’t have provoked his companion more than
necessary. Telling him that his death at Megatron’s hands had been due
to
Jazz losing his warrior capabilities might have had something to do
with it. In
hindsight, Barricade mused later, it probably was what had shattered
Jazz’s control. The moment the blue optics flared almost bright silver
and the visor had come down, he had known he was facing the Autobot
warrior. Jazz's
visor allowed him to view his environment in a wide variety of fields
of
vision, and he only used it in battle.
And maybe if Jazz hadn’t employed everything in his power to take
Barricade out, the former Decepticon might have been able to reign in
the blood
lust.
As it was, there were two equally matched, experienced warriors facing
off. Neither wanted to give in.
Jazz was a force to be reckoned with when let lose. Barricade had no
restraints
when in battle, aside from not trying to kill his Autobot companion.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Laying on the hard packed desert ground, Barricade heard the hot metal
of his
body armor ping now and then. There was a
soft
gurgling noise next to him and he turned his head, meeting exhausted
blue
optics. A tear ran across Jazz’s nose. Lubricant leaked out of a tiny
fracture on his wrist joint. He could only see it because the hand
rested on
Jazz’s scuffed chest.
Barricade felt his own systems protest the slightest movement. There
were
warnings flashing in a corner of his vision. Everything was strained to
the
max.
“Got it out of your system?” a voice asked.
Barricade managed a weak glare at the brightly yellow Autobot looking
down on
them. Bumblebee had appeared throughout their scuffle and Jazz had
firmly told
him to stay back and let them spar.
Barricade almost laughed. Sparring. Right.
As if.
As usual the human Sam Witwicky was with his guardian and the boy was
staring
at them as if he saw giant robots the very first time. The human was
keeping
close to Bumblebee, but he looked worried.
::That was more like the Jazz I know::
Barricade sent
electronically.
::Huh. I don’t remember looking like
complete roadkill in the past::
“Like I said, you lost your edge.”
“And you didn’t use your full potential,” Jazz answered,
speaking out loud, too.
Barricade’s optics narrowed and he sat up, despite shrill alarms going
off inside him. “I did what?” he asked coldly.
Jazz sat up as well. He really did look like roadkill.
“You held back!”
Claws flexed.
“You let me win.”
Barricade rumbled. “You didn’t win, Autobot.”
“Uh, guys…” Bumblebee tried.
Sam had stepped back and he appeared unsure where this was going.
“I polished the ground with you! You held back and let me gain the
upper
hand!” Jazz went on, repeating himself.
“You want a rematch?” Barricade challenged.
“If you give me your word of honor
not to treat me like some weak maintenance unit!”
“You want me to tear your limbs from your body to prove
that?” he snarled.
“I know you, Barricade. You don’t lose against me. You don’t
hold back. You barely broke my armor!”
“Guys…”
“You want me to win by killing you?” the former Decepticon asked
levelly.
Jazz opened his mouth, then stopped and hesitated. “That would be… kinda… well…”
“Bad,” Bumblebee supplied.
“Stupid,” the human muttered.
“And counterproductive,” the yellow Autobot added. “Now would
you stop being childish? You look like the worst pair of scrap bots
I’ve
seen in a while.”
Barricade managed to get to his feet, swaying badly. He had last felt
this bad
after Bumblebee had thrown him into the power station. Jazz followed
his
example, nearly bumping into him.
“Oh man…” he moaned.
Barricade smirked. His own power levels were at fifty percent and
dropping,
“Not a word, ‘Cade, not a word!”
“I wouldn’t think of it.”
“Can you two make it back to base?” Bumblebee wanted to know
matter-of-factly.
“I’m not going,” Barricade immediately said sharply.
“You are.”
“I’m not, Jazz. I can repair myself.”
His energy levels were still sinking. He knew he would either have to
find a
safe place to enter stasis lock and hope self-repair set in, or he had
to go to
the Autobot base.
“You’re ready to keel over from energon loss,” Bumblebee told
him. “Ratchet can take care of you.”
“I don’t need your medic to fix me, Autobot,” came
the snarl.
“You so do, ‘Cade,” Jazz muttered.
One finger poked at a hole in Barricade’s armor
and the black mechanoid flinched away. It trickled some kind of
brownish fluid.
“Can you transform?” Bumblebee wanted to know.
They could. But it was a terrible process to watch and Jazz lost a few
more
metal parts that scraped against each other. Barricade wasn’t much
better. Dented and looking a lot worse for wear, they followed
Bumblebee. With great reluctance on Barricade’s
part.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Ironhide’s first reaction was to yell bloody murder when Barricade
drove
into the hangar that was the surface part of the Autobot base, but the
second
he caught sight of the severely damaged form, as well as Jazz who
didn’t
look any better, he called Optimus. Barricade’s police cruiser mode
showed large scrapes over the black and white paint job. The lights on
his roof
were splintered, torn apart, the red barely there any more, the blue
totally
gone. The letters on the doors and rear fender no longer formed
sentences and
the front guard had broken in several places. The headlights were gone,
too.
Jazz’s formerly smooth-polished silver paint job seemed to have been
worked over with sandpaper and a pitch fork, his windshield was
cracked, one
tire blown.
“Ah hell,” Ironhide muttered.
Bumblebee transformed and the larger mech
gave the
yellow one an inquiring look.
“Sparring session,” Bumblebee answered.
“Sparring?” Ironhide echoed. “Looks more like a demolition
derby.”
“I’ve never seen Jazz fight like that. It was like he was a
different bot. I mean, I know Barricade
fights with
all tricks and I’ve faced him before, but Jazz… wasn’t Jazz
any more.
Ironhide watched the two combatants roll into the medical area. He had
known
Jazz for a very long time, ever since the later second-in-command had
come
online. He had known Jazz to fight with everything he had, to defeat mechs a lot stronger, faster and more
battle-hardened than
him – because there seemed to be a switch inside him that, when
flipped,
turned him into a warrior to be reckoned with.
Jazz had gone into Special Ops and information reconnaissance. There
was no one
who could assimilate information faster than him. His storage
capabilities were
unmatched. Ironhide hadn’t seen Jazz fight with no
holds barred in millennia…
And now, of all bots, he had taken on Barricade? Something was wrong
with that
picture.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Optimus Prime didn’t know whether to read his second-in-command the
riot
act or ask Ratchet to check the central processor for logic faults. As
it was
he just stood back and watched as the medic did both, giving the silver
Autobot
and his black counterpart a thorough tongue-lashing. Actually Ratchet
was just
short of refusing to repair the superficial damage and let their
own systems handle it. That would take energon and time and it
would
severely dent Jazz’s pride of his sleek looks. Barricade probably
couldn’t care less.
Both bots looked like something had tried to shave off their outer
shell, had
managed to flay paint and metal off their armor,
and
there were punctures that, though they didn’t go deep, spoke of scored
hits.
Optimus turned to Bumblebee who had been more or less the witness.
“What
happened?”
“Uhm… Jazz kinda…
lost it?” the smaller mech answered
carefully. “I
think it was supposed to be a sparring session.”
Prime refrained from snorting. That would have been undignified.
Sparring
sessions looked different.
“Who started it?”
“Jazz.”
Ironhide crossed his arms in front of his chest. “As
if.”
“He did. I was there, Ironhide. Okay, Barricade didn’t stop
him, but I wouldn’t expect that of him either. And somehow throughout
it,
Jazz got… like lost… and really started to lay into Barricade. It
was like watching a totally different person.”
Sam, who was standing next to his guardian, nodded. “It was like he
lost
his reservation and we got a look at who is really behind the smiles,”
he
said softly.
Optimus gave the young human a closer look. Unlike many of the Autobots
he knew
Jazz quite closely. He knew more about him, about who he was, who
lurked behind
the easy going Special Operative. He had chosen Jazz as his second
because he
balanced the darker side with his lighter nature in an incredible way.
It was
probably also the reason why his spark had responded to Barricade. The
Decepticon was that darker nature and showed it openly, Jazz managed to
blind
everyone to it.
Ratchet stepped back, looking really pissed off by now. His low, angry
words
couldn’t be heard, but his tone of voice was unmistakable. Jazz looked
chagrined, Barricade unrelenting.
Both mechanoids had regained some of their former unblemished
appearance, but
there was still work to be done, mostly by their own repair systems.
Their skin
would have to heal itself and the minor damage would be taken care of
the same
way. Ratchet had only enabled their bodies to start with the repairs at
all.
“I should put the two of you in stasis lock,” Ratchet could be
heard. “Of all the stupid stunts!”
Barricade looked ready to commit murder, but he was holding himself
back with a
lot of control.
“Who won?” Optimus asked levelly.
Jazz, his face plate looking like favorite
scratching
toy of a large cat, evaded the stern optics. Barricade sneered
wordlessly.
“It was a tie,” Bumblebee chimed in.
That got him a dark look from Barricade and
Jazz only
shrugged.
“We called it a tie,” the silver Autobot added.
He had lost the aggressive energy in the fight and his more balanced
personality had reasserted itself.
“May I ask why?” Optimus continued his questions.
“It was just a friendly match,” Jazz mumbled.
Ironhide gave a bark of laughter. “Kid, you look like the whole of
Cybertron
fell on you. Not that the ‘Con looks any better.”
Barricade’s claws twitched. Ironhide gave him a challenging look. Prime
decided not to step in. For the last months, ever
since
Barricade had defected from the Decepticons, there had been posturing
and
growling on both sides. Ironhide wouldn’t lay a finger on the
other, and Barricade was very well-behaved, but Optimus knew that
sometimes all
it needed was a single spark.
“We got carried away. It was nothing serious!” his
second-in-command added.
“I have to agree in that regard,” Ratchet entered the conversation.
“All damage is more or less superficial. All punctures stop short of
harming the structure underneath. A few secondary energon lines were
ruptured,
but that was to be expected from the force employed.”
Prime gazed at Barricade, surprised. The former Decepticon was known to
be a
ruthless warrior and he had taken on and won against much bigger
opponents. He
looked like he had lost a fight, just like Jazz, but both had held back
from
outright tearing the other apart. Still, this didn’t look like friendly
sparring either.
Optimus knew that whatever he said now, it would fall on deaf audio
receptors. “Keep
the friendly matches to a minimum,” he only remarked. “I
don’t need my men scrapping each other without enemy influence.”
Barricade’s optics widened fractionally at the remark, quite aware of
the
hidden implication. Jazz almost saluted. Prime met the hard gaze of the
former
Decepticon calmly, then turned and walked away.
Ironhide followed him, shaking his head. “Kids.”
Optimus almost laughed at the general remark. While Ironhide didn’t
like
Barricade among their small group, he had come to grudgingly accept him
as a
companion to Jazz. There was no arguing with spark resonance. His
remark showed
that he had started to associate the former Decepticon with the
Autobots on
Earth.
“Go and recharge,” Ratchet could be heard. “If this happens
again, I’ll deal with both of you personally.”
Prime smirked a little to himself. That was a threat to be taken
seriously.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Jazz sat in the underground chamber the Autobots used for their
recharge
cycles. Humans would call it a bedroom. Usually it was only employed
when one
of them was damaged and needed to rest because normal recharge was also
possible in their alternate mode. He had spent hours parked in a remote
location or in the middle of a crowded car park, recharging, perfectly
undercover. Now he watched his companion as Barricade’s optics darted
nervously around.
Of course, the former Decepticon wouldn’t confess to being nervous or
on
edge. Barricade had never been in the base and he probably felt like he
was on
enemy ground.
“You’ll be fine,” Jazz said softly.
Barricade’s head whipped around and his optics narrowed briefly. He
truly
looked like he needed to recharge and heal. Jazz knew his appearance
wasn’t any less spectacular.
“We should do this again some time,” he added.
“With pleasure,” came the dark rumble.
Jazz knew what Barricade had done and maybe even why. He hadn’t really
lost his edge, just masked over his more predatory side with the
easy-going
Autobot he was known as. As Prime’s second he didn’t see that much
battle any more. He was more of a strategist now, watching others
fight.
Others called him amazingly cool under pressure. Jazz knew his control
was
unfaltering even in the most dire situations and it was that, and his
impossible speed at deciphering messages, instantly decoding or
unscrambling
top-secret communiqués, that had earned him the position as
First Lieutenant.
Still, underneath all that was a temper and
a battle
fury and the skill of a true warrior. He just never let it surface so
completely.
Except for a few times in the past. Fighting
for
survival, completely on his own, he had killed without remorse, without
weapons,
and with a speed that had shocked himself. And when he had finally met Barricade, back before the
war, and
they had matched their strengths. He had found kin in him, and
his spark
mate.
Maybe all that control had been his downfall when facing Megatron. As
powerful
as the now terminated Decepticon leader had been, Jazz had taken on
other mechs with the same fire power and
size and strength.
He had died because he had let himself get… well, not weak, but he
hadn’t let the warrior break through. He had kept the lid on his
abilities. Barricade had broken the shackles and Jazz had fought with
all his
potential. He had given up control.
“’Cade?”
The other looked at him.
“Thanks.”
Barricade smiled briefly. Jazz walked over to him, facing the battered
mech.
“Recharge?” he offered.
The tension was almost palpable again. Jazz waited. And finally
Barricade
relented. He followed the silver Autobot to one of the recharge beds.
“Nothing will happen,” Jazz promised. “You’re an ally
now.”
“Allies have been known to fall in friendly fire.”
“I’ll protect you,” Jazz teased, smiling mischievously.
It got him a warning look, but Barricade laid
down on
the recharge bed. As his optics dimmed, Jazz placed a hand on the
battered
chest.
“Thank you,” he whispered again.
Then he walked to the other bed and followed Barricade into recharge.