Fandom: Transformers G1
Pairing: Starscream/Skyfire, Jazz/Ezara, Skywarp/Ezara, Mirage/Tarinash, others
Rating: NC-17 for M/M, M/F
Codes: Het, Slash
Summary: Two and a half years after Ezara crashes on Earth, the first of her command crew arrive and the Tezita participation in Cybertron's war goes from theory to a very disturbing fact.

Wanderer's Home arc 3 pt 01: Taking Skywarp

Jazz had only been half-listening to Prowl give Sideswipe a public dressing down over the latest batch of illegal high-grade the SIC had found and confiscated. The first few times had been amusing, but after hundreds of vorn of it, he knew every variant by spark. Prowl was thorough, but not imaginative. So it was understandable that it took Jazz a moment to realize that Prowl had changed focus.

It actually took a new voice to make the Intel Op notice Prowl was no longer focused on Sideswipe. In fact no one was anymore. All attention had gone to the door.

Jazz actually had to reset his optics a couple times to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

He had no doubt that most had focused on the black and purple Seeker slung unconscious over Ezara's shoulder. It was the obvious thing. He'd been expecting her to return with him though, as was Prowl. No, what had both SIC and TIC's attention was the small stasis jar in her other hand.

A low groan escaped Jazz's vocalizer as he stood, taking his mostly-finished cube standard grade in one hand as he grabbed Prowl's elbow when he passed in the other.

~Not in public, Prowl,~ he insisted as he all but hauled the ranking officer out of the rec room and motioned for Ezara to continue to med bay.

She looked positively smug.

"We've got another mech for stasis and cold storage," Prowl told Ratchet when they arrived. "Looks like Ezara decided it was time to pick up Skywarp."

Ratchet grunted and waved towards an open berth without really looking at them.

"And another newborn spark in stasis," Jazz added.

Ratchet whirled around in absolute fury that didn't seem to faze Ezara as she laid Skyward down far more gently than her casual sling over the shoulder would have suggested.

"You did what?" Ratchet demanded, his optics flashing.

"I made a youngling spark with him," she answered calmly. "He's far too valuable to not have at least one."

"The parts you're looking for are mechanical, not part of his spark," Ratchet told her bluntly. "Maybe the know-how is part of him, but the parts themselves are parts."

"Not according to initial scans," she shrugged and walked over to the cabinet where the other stasis jar resided. "It's part of him the same way Intel's part of Jazz and low-emotion, high-logic is part of Prowl," she inclined her head towards them. "I don't know if the teleport came through, but I'm quite sure flight did."

"Those are skills not... oh, never mind, I'll put it with the other one," Ratchet grumbled, opening the storage cabinet. "Hope your friends bring the supplies they'll need with them. Just hope you didn't short out Skywarp's spark this time. Did he at least know what you were doing?"

"I know what I'm doing when I'm expecting it," Ezara said with a huff. "And no. I do not feel like spending the next month explaining Tezita reproduction to him. I seriously doubt he could grasp it even if I did. Smart is not one of his assets."

"So now that you know we recover from it, you're not worried about the idea of consent anymore?" Prowl asked sharply. "Because this time, you did plan on it before it actually happened."

Jazz winced and Ratchet looked ready to clock her when she leveled a gaze on the shorter mech, not that Prowl found her annoyance at all disturbing.

"Consent, as you put it, is for civvies and allies," she informed him evenly. "Skywarp is neither."

"Excuse me?" Prowl demanded, his optics flaring more brightly. "So what you're saying is that it's perfectly fine for you to rip out a piece of his spark because you want to? He's not some animal!"

Ezara cocked her head slightly, too puzzled by the reaction to take offence. "Yes," she answered evenly, a hint of curiosity in her manner at the idea it wouldn't be. "I'm not an animal either, but the rules apply to me too."

"This is where I point out she operates on a different social standard," Jazz said quietly, though he found it no less disturbing. "Consent is rare beyond acceptance of the order."

"You're telling me that it's perfectly acceptable on your world for any superior to just take what they want from a subordinate?" Prowl asked her, sounding sick at the thought. "What sort of slag-pit slave shop did you come out of?" He asked, the words coming out before he could even think about them.

"I came off the street, then the gladiatorial arena," she replied a bit sharply, though she was still far too perplexed to be angry yet. "And no, it's not. It's perfectly acceptable to breed with one for the good of the military. The Si'Mir usually oversees such things, but as the ranking officer with the training, that duty falls to me for now."

"And you couldn't have taken the time, even to try and explain it to him, and get him to agree? He probably wouldn't have cared if he understood or not!" Prowl snapped at her. "But you didn't even try, because you couldn't be bothered to care what he might think, or about the fact that there are rules about what you do with a captured enemy!"

Ezara really leveled her gaze at him, now slightly miffed. "One; he's my prisoner, not yours. I am following the rules, and then some. I don't have to be nearly this nice to him, even by his standards. Two; I did no permanent damage. What are you complaining about?"

"The fact that what you did should put you in the brig for metacycles," Prowl told her. "What happened with Jazz would have, but you didn't intend to do anything - I thought you knew that."

She made a disgruntled sound but Jazz spoke before she could put her reaction into words.

"That would have also required me to file a complaint," Jazz defended her, and himself, sharply as he glared at the SIC.

"Enough!" Ratchet's bellow stopped the social and legal debate that was brewing into a full-scale maelstrom. "You three," he stabbed a finger at them. "Prime's office. Now. I'll check black-boy out and get him into stasis."

"Make sure his spark wasn't be damaged by the process," Prowl warned Ratchet, turning to lead the others out. He knew that, legally, he didn't have a leg to stand on - Skywarp would had certainly agreed to the first part, and Cybertronian law and regulations didn't have a concept like this. Maybe it was time that it developed one.

The most he could get her on right now would be some kind mishandling of a POW, which required that Skywarp be damaged, physically or psychologically, by what she did. Both were highly unlikely, given Jazz had turned out just fine and the Decepticon's concept of damaged was not something Prowl enjoyed contemplating.

It all added up to a very irate tactician by the time they reached Prime's office.

"Enter," the leader's voice rumbled with an edge of displeasure to the buzzer requesting entry.

"Optimus," Prowl said respectfully as he stepped in, glancing to the side to see who the Guard on duty was. He wasn't entirely sure whether to be pleased or worried to see Crashcourse in the corner nod a small greeting to Skjöldur as the femme took a spot across from him in the office.

"Prowl, Ezara, Jazz," he nodded to them, sitting at his desk as he faced a delicate situation. "Ratchet sent me the basics of what happened," he began without preamble. "While I understand how disturbing this is to you and him," his gaze lingered on Prowl. "This is a debate for this room and no where else."

"Understood, sir," Prowl nodded. "I'm sorry I brought it up in Medbay."

"I still don't understand what has him so worked up," Ezara spoke.

"A much more explicit consent oriented programming core," Optimus explained in a way he hoped would offend none of them. "As Prowl sees it, if Skywarp did not explicitly agree to the youngling, it was against his will. Any assault to the spark is an extremely serious one on Cybertron."

The mechs let silence hold for several moments as she worked that over, taking it apart and running it through logic and social processors several times before some level of comprehension seemed to dawn on her.

She looked over at Prowl with a frown that was more thoughtful than upset. "I suppose that's to be expected of a law-enforcer. He never objected. I didn't hurt him. I wouldn't," her voice dropped a little into the softness Jazz knew. "Nothing will be expected of him after the youngling is born."

"Even so, he should have had some say in whether or not one was," Prowl tried to explain, her apparent inability to grasp this being a problem completely baffling to him. "It's like I said before - he probably would have agreed anyway. If we brought him back online he'd probably agree right before he teleported out. But not even giving him the chance to do that... we don't reproduce the same way you do, I accept that. And that means that we've got different views of things like this. But I can't understand how you can be so calm about all of this."

"Because it's how I was taught," she told him. "This is my duty, an important one. I could probably show you, but I'm not sure your logic center could handle just how different many of the basics are. I'd rather not endure another of Ratchet's lectures about not glitching the officers."

Prowl's optics narrowed slightly, and Jazz had to stifle a snicker behind his hand.

"He seemed to think that several subjects should be avoided around you, and I really needed to stop avoiding the cameras," she shrugged.

"Did you?" Optimus asked, concealing his own amusement.

"Unless I needed to go somewhere unseen," she gave him a polite smile. "Once they came along," she motioned to the Guard, "it was rather moot. Though Whippoorwill is good at sneaking around when she feels like it."

"I'm sure," he nodded and settled a bit now that things seemed to be more civilized.

"I'm not sure that I necessarily want to understand that sort of view of things," Prowl admitted, sensing that Optimus wanted to try and move on from a debate that they couldn't resolve.

She nodded, apparently not offended by it.

"Very well," Optimus drew their attention to him. "Ezara, I understand your desires in this, and it is not expressly forbidden by Autobot law simply for lack of any precedent. However, it is something we would have forbidden if the prospect had ever occurred to us. I want your word that from here on express permission will be obtained from any Cybertronian before a youngling is produced with them."

"I agree, within the scope of my authority for the duration of my debt to you," she said formally. It was clear to the two mechs who knew her well that she was anything but happy with it. "We will discuss this in far more detail with the Si'Mir when she arrives. The breeding programs are her purview by right."

"Of course," Optimus nodded slightly. "An issue for another time; hopefully it won't be long either way."

Ezara nodded and he flicked his gaze to Prowl, who seemed satisfied enough. At the very least there would not be a repeat of today.

"Is this binding on Mitrix and Singer?" Prowl asked before they could be dismissed.

"Yes," Ezara answered with a flick of her chin.

"Then you are dismissed," Optimus told them. "Prowl, a moment," he stopped his SIC from leaving with Ezara and Jazz. "As difficult as it may be, I must advise you against any attempt to analyze the Tezita unless you are willing to understand the basic culture their actions are built on. It is not as illogical as Ratchet seems to think, but it is not a comfortable thing to examine either."

"I understand, Prime," Prowl nodded slightly. "She was talking about stripping out parts of people's sparks like it was her right to do so simply because she outranked them. That sort of attitude... it's dangerous. Terrifying, in somebody with her rank."

"It is less disturbing when you know the process that arrived at today as ... intimately as Jazz and I do," he knew he was trying to sooth the tactician without incurring Ratchet's wrath by glitching him. "She has been planning this since she met him, well before she had any rank as a Decepticon, or any thought of allying with us.

"I do agree completely that she holds entirely too much power, as does the Si'Mir, it is a well-established and stable government that has lasted longer than our own. Mitrix ruled from roughly fourteen to twelve and a half million metacycles years ago, and arguably held power for much of the million before that. Her rule marks the beginning of their modern age."

"I know, Prime," Prowl tried to see where this was going when it hit him. They were not just more powerful than all of Cybertron's forces, they had existed in a stable, well-regulated cycle of leadership, no matter how violent, for as long as Cybertron had been free of the Quinessons, if not longer. "Oh," he murmured. Without willing it, his battle computer provided him with every allied and neutral race he knew of, comparing relative kill rates during war, frequency of wars, stability of the economy, care for civilians and advancements over time. Against planet after planet, Lydrom did well in the ranking.

It was just that none of those other worlds had a race that interacted in quite the same way as the Tezita could.

"While you are free to learn for yourself, Jazz and I both agree that for all there are portions of the Tezita culture that are at best disturbing, Ezara has little interest in imposing those ways on allies. Jazz indicated she was very contrite about what happened to him. Her different view on Skywarp may be because he is an enemy, or it may be because she already views him as a warrior in her army and thus subject to Lydrom's laws. We have agreed to her challenging Megatron for leadership of the Decepticons. If she succeeds, the Cons will fall under her rule, rather than mine, as the war ends."

Prowl nodded again, slowly, as he reprocessed information he largely already knew along with the new bits presented.

He glanced at Crashcourse and stepped up to the large desk, placing his hand, palm up, on the smooth surface. Without hesitation, Optimus placed his hand over Prowls and dropped his outer level of firewalls.

~Do you have a tactician working on how to deal with them if they become conquers instead of liberators?~ Prowl asked quietly, his optics locked on Prime's.

~Yes. Noitefel is on the task,~ Optimus answered after a split-nanoklik to decide whether or not to bring his SIC into the exceedingly small circle of those in the know. ~As a campaign tactician, he is better suited to the task. Jazz is the only other one to know of his work.~

~I understand,~ Prowl's stress lightened considerably as he broke the connection. "Thank you, Prime. I will leave dealing with Tezita politics in your capable hands."

"While you deal with out-planning the Decepticon's latest plot," Optimus teased him lightly before Prowl left.