FicWad

Chapter 9 - "Revelations"



The Autobot headquarters turned out to be an old abandoned research base situated in a secluded area of desert and closed from any accidental invasion. It had been given by the government to the Autobots as a place to stay and live. Rita learned from Jazz that in the two months that had passed since the destruction of the Allspark the base had undergone noticeable changes, the main cause of them being that it hadn't been initially designed as a home for such creatures as 30-feet alien robots. But now it was properly equipped with recharge stations, repair hangar and even a small firing range (on a special request of Ironhide).



But, of course, the most interesting parts of the base were its inhabitants. Rita had already seen Ratchet and Bumblebee - or rather she'd seen both their holo-forms, and also Bee's primary form (which honestly disturbed her a little at first, since the only memory the girl had connected with it was the fight of two metallic creatures in front of the hotel, accompanied by explosions and a stone rain; which was kind of hard to forget).



Ratchet's robotic appearance had a strange resemblance to his human hologram; same stoic face, same unhurried movements, same proud posture... Just like his holo-form, he was surrounded with an aura of high intelligence and condescension common for scientists, and, truth to be told, it made perfect sense. The way he spoke made Rita expect that he'd push glasses up his nose ridge any moment with his index finger (of course, the medical officer wasn't wearing any glasses, but still, he sounded like he might have).



Ironhide was another story altogether. "Big an' brutal Master of Cannons," as Jazz had characterized him before, didn't exactly cover the extent of intimidation skills and the size of the weapons the black mech possessed. Upon a brief introduction, Rita got her face full with his two enormous fists that uncurled into a pair of guns so big she had to remind herself of her usefulness to these creatures to keep from wetting her jeans right then and there. "Like my babies?"he'd said. Cowering behind Jazz's legs wasn't in her plans, and it kinda wounded her already shredded pride, but well, she didn't have that much choice left. And she didn't want to even think of what could occur if her answer happened to be "no"...



And then, the last, but not the least member of the Autobot community, - Optimus Prime. /That/guy was really /huge/. In comparison to him Jazz was tiny (not that she'd ever risk telling that to her silver guardian; males are too sensitive about everything concerning size, and probably that unspoken law spreads to all sentient species). However, her previous 'up-close and personal' greeting sessions with her guardian and Ironhide seemed to have had an effect of an inoculation from mindless fear; after several fruitless attempts at intelligent speaking, she'd finally squeezed a couple of polite phrases from herself to answer Optimus'just as polite questions, and was infinitely happy when the short"interrogation" came to an end, and Ratchet took charge, leading the way to the medbay.



So, now she was lying on a table of grand proportions (robot-sized, she decided after a quick visual estimation), with a dozen of wires attached with suckers to her arms, upper chest and forehead that were picking up her vitals, and a big machine sliding on a relay above her that slowly ran a bluish thin line of light along her body and produced a low, soft hum. Ratchet had told her that this thing would make a full scan that could probably explain what was wrong with her... The girl didn't allow herself to get her hopes high on that account; she just let this machine do whatever it was supposed to do, and simply relaxed, seeing that the experience wasn't painful in the least.



Bumblebee was sitting beside Rita's table, ready to help in any way that could be needed, his large blue optics trained on her. Even though, to the girl's relief, the scout acted unconditionally friendly towards her, he for some reason preferred to stay silent most of the time. When she asked him about his unwillingness to talk much (which probably wasn't polite, but by that point she didn't really care), he just shrugged and replied with a cryptic and very human "Old habits die hard."



Ratchet busied himself with Jazz's injuries on the nearby table. The silver saboteur lay there obediently, at the mercy of the CMO. He turned his visored face towards Rita and sent a bright smile her way, which obviously was intended to reassure her that everything was alright. The gesture made one side of the girl's mouth twitch in response.



It still felt insanely weird to be so close to these astounding creatures. Rita didn't have much to do except for watching the three of them, but she was more than content with it. Inspecting Jazz's torn chest with his multi-tooled hands Ratchet kept making quiet clicking and buzzing sounds. Rita had a feeling those were not sounds of happiness.



"So doc, what's the prognosis?" Jazz asked after several minutes of examination. "Will I live, or what?"



"Of course you'll live, Jazz," grumbled the medic, never stopping his task. "But I'm afraid I'll have to replace the entire hood section, since it is ruined beyond any repair."



"That's okay wit'me. Shouldn't take long, eh?"



"Yes, but the bad news is that I don't have this particular spare part at the moment. You shall have to wait until I make a new one from scratch."



"Aw man," Jazz half-whined, half-mumbled under his breath. "Of all the spare parts missin', it just hadda be the hood! How'm Isupposed ta show ma' aft in public now? Had I been a road roller, or somethin' just as ugly, it woulda only added more charm ta ma' looks, a'ight, but when yer a Pontiac/fraggin' /Solstice missin' a hood, people are juz gonna point their fingers at ya, an'-"



Ratchet's broad shoulders hunched down sharply, and he let out a loud hissing sound that had very much in common with a human sigh of extreme exasperation. Rita saw his apt fingers shoot to Jazz's neck at alightning speed. The saboteur's speech was cut off right in the middle of his long rant. To Rita's absolute horror, he jerked on the table once, and then slumped against it, letting out a whining mechanical drone that lowered slowly in pitch and volume until it faded to nothingness. Just like back at the hotel, when Jazz had shut down while in his vehicle form.



"Jazz!" Rita gasped in fear after a moment of speechless shock; the beeping of the machine monitoring her heart rate escalated considerably. Watching her silver guardian's unresponsive form with huge eyes, she gripped the edge of her table and tried to sit up.



Ratchet turned his flashing optics in her direction, his face a mask of stern concentration mixed with irritation. "Bumblebee," he barked once, and the yellow Autobot by her side hastily placed one of his large fingers to the center of her chest and pushed down gently, preventing her movement.



"Please, don't move, Rita, the scanner is going to collect the wrong data!" Bumblebee exclaimed, looking at her with pleading blue optics that seemed even bigger than before. "Jazz is - and will be - perfectly fine! Ratchet merely put him into a manual recharge mode; it's a Cybertronian equivalent of ahuman anesthesia, but without any harmful consequences. This is needed to make the medic's work easier and faster," he explained hurriedly, trying to soothe her.



That was probably the longest speech Bumblebee had given her since their acquaintance. He looked sincere, too, and was actually demonstrating what could be called a very convincing puppy-dog look. Rita watched the yellow scout for a moment, aware of his finger preventing her further movement, threw another concerned glance towards her unconscious guardian, and then settled down again, relaxing bit by bit. After all, Ratchet didn't look like a homicidal maniac; in fact, he - Rita was rather surprised by it -started humming some tune quietly, resuming his work, in full medic-the-repairman mode.



For another several minutes that strange tune was the main sound that filled the room beside the buzzing of the scanner and periodical soft clanging of the CMO's tools against Jazz's armor. Rita had never heard anything like that tune. No Earth musical instrument and no human voice could possibly perform it, because apart from standard tone sounds there also were different mechanical noises incorporated in it; they weren't tearing the phrases apart, but were rather creating a unique exotic mood. She wondered if maybe it was some king of a national music of Cybertron, with intricate passages and hidden meaning that seemed to almost remind her of something, but slipped away as soon as she tried to catch it... Music from another planet. From a dead planet...



"Um... Jazz- told me about the war you're all part of..."She said quietly, starting a conversation with Bumblebee who had fallen into silence beside her again. "He told me about the Allspark having been destroyed, and about the loss of your home planet it had caused... I'm sorry about that."



"It's okay..." The yellow 'bot replied in a soft tone, though it was obvious that it was anything but okay. Like a deep wound that had stopped bleeding and turned into a scar, but still ached just as bad. "It was the only way. The lesser of two evils, as you humans say... If the Decepticons had managed to lay their hands on the Allspark, it would have been much worse, trust me on that... But the Cube still had done one last miracle before it ceased to exist," Bumblebee concluded fondly, with a small smile in his voice. When he said nothing more, Rita's eyebrow arched slightly in silent question. The Autobot's optics that were watching her closely shined brighter for a second, he cocked his yellow head to one side. "It brought Jazz back from the dead," he explained as if it was something she should have known.



The softness of his tone had nothing to do with the harsh meaning of his words. Rita was stunned. "W- what?"



"Oh, I guess he didn't tell you. I thought as much."Bee's voice indicated that the scout was smiling, even though his protecting face plates didn't allow Rita to see the actual smile. After a little pause the yellow Autobot became serious again. "He had been killed during the battle for the Allspark. He stepped up against Megatron so that the rest of us and the squad of human soldiers that fought by our side had some time to fall back and regroup for the next attack..." He paused briefly, and then finished quietly, "He didn't stand a chance. Megatron tore him in two with his bare hands. It was an almost instant deactivation."



Rita's eyes got huge as saucers and momentarily shifted to the recharging silver mech lying on the other table. For the second time that morning her cardio-scanner started beeping frantically, but the girl was too lost in her thoughts to register it. Her gaze slid from Jazz's strong long legs up to his narrow but powerful hips, armored chest, broad shoulders, and impressive arms, stopping on his immobile face and black visor under the two-horned helmet... Even relaxed and unconscious, he looked like a mighty and battered war machine. She wondered what the size of Megatron must have been if he had been able to do something like that to Jazz. She tried to imagine the scene, and had to stifle the sudden wave of nausea. All of the Autobots were so human-like, so intelligent, and... /alive/. Tearing any of them in two sounded just... /wild/.



"After the victory of the Human-Autobot forces Ratchet used the last shard of the Allspark to repair and reactivate Jazz,"Bumblebee continued. "Took him a lot of time, efforts and burned circuits, both Jazz's and his own; we feared he wouldn't succeed. But he's a fantastic medic, one of the best in the whole history of Cybertron, and he managed to do something no one had done before, even in theory. So Jazz is with us again, and he bears the last piece of our world in his chest."



The scout fell silent, letting the weight of this information fully settle between them. Rita turned to Bumblebee, and was now studying his alien face and those big sky-blue optics. She didn't know what to say. What could a tiny human say to a giant robot in such a situation?Yesterday she wouldn't have thought that there was intelligent life beyond the species of Earth, and now - to learn that there is a race of sentient robots, and that their home world had died, leaving them trapped on the small blue planet in the Solar system... She was familiar with loneliness, and it must have been what they all felt. But she couldn't bring the Allspark back. There was nothing she could do. She could only listen helplessly to the story of war, death and life that Bumblebee was telling her.



"He's a hero," Bee continued in a soft murmur, and there was pride and admiration in the yellow bot's voice now. "Had Cybertron been alive and inhabited, Jazz would have been honored and respected by all our people for what he had done. But..." Bumblebee's shoulders moved slightly in ahalf-shrug, "...it's the five of us now. Not that much of recognition for aheroic deed like that," the Autobot chuckled sadly.



Once again, Rita looked at Ratchet's hands removing Jazz's damaged chest plate with care and practiced confidence. She remembered the awful events at the hotel, and Jazz's dismissive shrugs and casual attitude later. "I- don't think it matters to him, Bee," she said quietly.



After a long pause the yellow bot nodded mutely in agreement, and they fell silent again. Rita didn't mind. She should have felt uncomfortable discussing Jazz "behind his back," while he was in the same room unaware of this conversation - but strangely, she wasn't.



So, behind his striking appearance and smug smiles lay a selfless courage and a thoughtful personality. And all of that in a silver robotic body. Who'd have thought...?



x-x-x



Familiar lines of symbols ran through Jazz's CPU that was slowly powering up. As soon as his optics came online, Ratchet's face appeared in his line of vision.



"Wake up, sleeping beauty," chuckled the medic, tapping one finger on his helmet.



Jazz groaned in annoyance. "Ya didn't hafta do that, Doc."



"So we are touchy-feely now?" Ratchet kept on making fun of the saboteur, moving away from the repair table as soon as he made sure the patient was alright.



"That ain't what I meant, an' ya know it," Jazz grumbled, checking his motor functions by clenching and unclenching his fists and bending his legs. "Ya didn't hafta knock me out like that."



"Well, excuse me for needing silence to work effectively. You were too loud for my liking, Jazz; I simply had to take measures, nothing personal."



"Whatever," the silver bot snorted, sitting on the table and looking down at himself. He sighed upon seeing his chest armor removed. "So how long are ya gonna need ta make a new plate?"



"Several Earth hours," Ratchet threw over his shoulder, busy with sorting his tools at the work station. "You'll have aperfect hood by this evening, I promise."



"That's good," Jazz nodded and looked around, finding the rest of the medbay empty. "Where's Rita?"



"She went through the scanning procedure successfully, but the computer will need time to analyze the data and show the precise results. I tended to the girl's wounds and directed her to one of the spare rooms to rest. I'd recommend you to keep her company... in case Ironhide gets bored and decides to take a closer look at our new human friend." The two of them laughed at that, and Jazz stood up on his feet, still feeling just a tad bit dizzy from the forced recharge, but recovering quickly.



"Thanks, Ratch," he said with a sincere smile. No matter how much he grumbled and complained, they both knew he was grateful to the medic. For giving him one more life; for fixing his aft thousands of times before and after that.



"It's my job," Ratchet turned to the saboteur, nodding just slightly. No matter how many times he repeated that the entire Autobot squad knew it was more than just a job for him. "Now get out of here; Ihave work to do, and I don't need audience."



"Got it, Doc!" Jazz grinned and raised his palms in surrender, happy to comply and leave the medbay.



He headed to the usually unoccupied part of the base, searching for his charge. She was probably sleeping, and he tried not to make too much noise so as not to wake her up. He had a suspicion about where the human girl might be; in the spare storage room that he and Bumblebee had cleaned up and equipped accordingly for the occasions when Sam and Mikaela had to stay the night at the base.



Jazz's suspicions were confirmed as soon as the saboteur turned the corner and saw the door to the aforementioned room opened. The mech smiled to himself and headed straight to the rectangle of light that fell to the dark floor of the corridor. Having reached the robot-sized entrance, Jazz stopped on the threshold and took a look inside.



The room contained a table, a couple of chairs, one large bed and one small one, all human-sized. Rita had obviously picked the small bed as her resting place. The girl was curled up on her side, fully clothed, in an instinctively-defensive pose Jazz had seen her perform at the hotel, when she'd learned his true identity, with her legs drawn to her upper body and her arms holding her knees. But she wasn't sleeping; she was staring at him. And the moment their gazes met Jazz could see just how tired she was. Rita's skin was paler than usual, and there were dark circles around her weary eyes.



"Ya should be asleep," he said simply.



She paused before responding. "I can't. My head's killing me."



It might have been the result of emotional distress or the consequence of her strange attack when her blood pressure had jumped... "Does Doc know?"



"Yeah, he gave me some pills, but they're not working," she said in a weak voice.



The mech took a moment to utilize his internet connection, and then made a decision. He stepped into the room, went to the far wall and transformed into his secondary form. Then activated his holo-form and walked to the large bed, occupying one side of it.



"C'mere," he said, looking at the stunned Rita.



"What?" she asked in confusion.



"I made a research on the web. There's an opinion that magnetic influence can sooth or lessen pains. Won't hurt ta try, hmm?"



"Magnetic... what?" She was still too surprised to take any action.



"Long story. Juz lemme do my thing, 'k?" He suggested, tapping his palm lightly on the free space beside him, silently repeating his invitation.



Rita frowned, studying him, weighing her options. "'K, do your thing then," she mumbled in defeat after several seconds of strained contemplation, and stood from her bed. She crossed the room and lowered herself beside Jazz. He immediately drew her to himself, making her back rest against his abdomen; he needed her there for what he was about to do. Though he was careful while guiding her, he was also persistent, knowing that after all she'd seen since yesterday's evening she was fearful of the Autobots, including Jazz, and therefore needed some persuasion to be this close to him.



"Ya comfortable?" The saboteur murmured in a low voice. He was asking for permission to touch her.



"Mm-hmm," slowly, she rested her head on his chest. Permission granted.



He ran his fingers over her auburn hair once, twice, feeling her body tense in misgiving. Then buried his hands carefully in the soft strands, touching his pads to the warm skin underneath, searching for the problem spots. Rita's quiet whimper told him that he'd found them. He stilled his hands, concentrated and gave a slight pull with his magnetic field. Then moved his hands and repeated the action.



After a minute or two the girl relaxed finally, her body going softer and sinking into his protective embrace. Once her pain lost its excruciating edge she gave a pleased low moan and moved into a more comfortable position, her cheek now pressed to his chest. He kept his soothing ministrations, registering her breath and heart rate slow down gradually. She was falling asleep, too tired to stay awake till the end of the healing massage.



"I know who you are..." she mumbled faintly into his chest with her eyes closed, and it sounded like she had almost reached her personal dream-land.



Jazz didn't respond to that statement. He couldn't help smiling - humans were so funny sometimes, with funny habits born from the autonomous functions of their organic bodies which were not always controlled by their brain. Like sleep-talking, or sleep-walking, or sleep-snuggling...



But Rita's next slurred words left Jazz staring into space in thoughtful silence for another hour or so before slowly slipping into recharge.



"...Yer ma' guardian angel."



The End of Chapter 9

A/N: The 'magnetic influence soothes the pains' bit is actually true (at least I really saw such information on the net). Thanks a lot for reading, and please review. Be safe, and till the next chapter ;)