Chapter Text
Walking in the garden with Jazz was truly an incredible experience. Finally made visible, audible, and, most importantly, mobile for the first time in millennia, courtesy of the Wheeljack Ghost Augmentor™, Jazz was absolutely reveling in his new freedom. Prowl couldn’t keep from smiling as he watched him. Jazz lit up with excitement every time anyone so much as made optic contact with him, and he practically glowed whenever they spoke to him.
“They were talking to me,” Jazz whispered incredulously after a small group of students moved on, practically vibrating where he ‘stood’ just barely above the actual surface of the garden path. The relatively simple conversation they’d just shared seemed to have shaken him, but he was still beaming. “They were really talking to me!”
“They were,” Prowl confirmed, wishing that the augmentor could have also made Jazz tangible. He wanted so much to offer physical support and comfort in addition to his words. “They were grateful to you for assisting them with their project as well.”
“Was kind of nice to be recognized for my expertise on the subject.” But Jazz’s grin faded quickly this time. “I knew a lot of different crystals were dyin’ off,” he nodded to the new seedbed the students had been studying, filled with the tiny crystal cuttings that were an attempt to help revitalize several struggling species. “I could hear it when I sang.”
“Because notes went missing?” Prowl guessed.
“Exactly.” Jazz’s hand hovered just above the delicate new growths, almost as though he were afraid to touch them instead of unable to. “I’m glad they’re trying to bring them back.”
“The library is a member of the CCC — the Crystal Conservation Committee,” Prowl told him, wondering if that was something he would be interested in. The ex-gardener’s passion for crystal certainly hadn’t waned since being trapped in it in death. “They have a station inside dedicated to the program’s efforts where donations can be made and volunteers can sign up for events. We could take a look at their calendar, if you would like.” Maybe there would be something they could attend together, if Jazz enjoyed sharing his knowledge with others.
“Really? But…” Jazz glanced back toward the chapel; Prowl once again noticed the distinct lack of EM presence around the ghost when there was no field change to match his expression. “What about Smokescreen and Wheeljack?”
“Wheeljack is probably going over every last inch of the chapel right now, and insisting that Smokescreen help him. We have plenty of time.” Though to confirm, he sent his cousin a quick message over comms. ::Are you both alright in the chapel while we continue to explore?::
::Of course!:: came the immediate, cheerful reply. ::There’s lots here to keep us occupied, though Wheeljack’s already got a list of questions for when Jazz gets back that’s a mile long and growing by the minute.::
::Thank you for the warning.:: Prowl closed the call. “Smokescreen says they are happy to wait.”
“Then let’s go!” Jazz leapt up from his crouched position, but didn’t immediately take off. He stuck next to Prowl instead, never moving far from his side as they walked together into the main building due to the limitations of the augmentor. While it could use the resonance of its humming opalescent center stone to project Jazz’s image more than a few feet away, his synthesized voice would still emanate from the device, no matter where he appeared to be . Staying close was the only way to stay convincing, if they were to maintain the illusion that Jazz was alive.
“Wow…” Jazz slowed and came to a stop in the center of the main hall. Rows of stacks branched out to either side of them behind orderly clusters of long tables and individual desks, while the main staircase to the second level rose up majestically under the warm light filtering in through the domed crystal skylight overhead. The effect was entirely different to standing in the center of the chapel. Instead of distorting everything into a kaleidoscope of light and color, here it created a distinct, grounded space. “I always wondered if it was as impressive on the inside as it looked from outside.”
“Have you never been inside the library before?” Prowl felt foolish as soon as the question left his mouth. Of course Jazz had never been the inside of the library; he’d been trapped in the crystal chapel since his death, with only a brief spell of being able to visit the rainbow crystals in the garden outside before they disappeared. He’d had no transportation beyond those bounds until now. “I apologize, that was thoughtless of me.”
“It’s fine,” Jazz assured him with a brilliant smile. “I’m here now, and it’s all thanks to you.”
“Not all,” Prowl demurred, glancing at the device in his hand. “Wheeljack played a considerable part as well.”
“Because you reached out to him and got him involved.” It seemed Jazz would not be dissuaded. He stepped up beside him, laying an insubstantial hand over Prowl’s on the augmentor. “I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you enough.”
“You do not have to. I was happy to do it.” Somewhat uncomfortable with Jazz’s intense, if understandable, gratitude, Prowl cast about for a distraction. “Come see the rest,” he said, taking a step away toward the stairs. “There is plenty more that is equally impressive in smaller, quieter ways.”
“Then by all means!” Jazz turned to follow. “Lead on. I want the whole tour.”
It took them even longer to traverse the interior of the library than it had to walk the gardens. Jazz really did want to see everything, not just the CCC station. Prowl found himself rediscovering things he had forgotten were even there, like some of the tiny study rooms tucked away in quiet corners, and an almost completely hidden stairwell that went directly from the upper floors to the basement, bypassing the main level entirely.
“Why even have something like this?” Jazz asked as they traversed the steps, emerging behind a row of stacks that looked like no one had touched them in years. “Do you think they forgot about it too?”
“Perhaps.” Prowl looked back up the way they came. “We passed a section that looked like it might have been an opening to the main level at some point in the past. They may have been planning additional renovations that would have closed up the stairwell that were never completed.”
“Budget cuts?” Jazz guessed, contemplating the ceiling. “Wonder what’s up there in front of it.”
“According to the floor plan, I believe— Jazz!” Prowl looked around hurriedly to make sure no one was there to see as Jazz simply floated up off the floor and disappeared into the walls. There wasn’t. Prowl couldn’t relax though, not when he had a strong suspicion that Jazz was going to peek out through the floor above them to see what was there. What if someone up there saw him? What if someone who’d seen him earlier in the garden saw him?
Thankfully Jazz reappeared only seconds later, drifting down onto the stairs calmly with no indication he’d encountered anyone. “Computers,” he reported. “Looks like a workstation with a bunch of private terminals around the room.”
That’s what Prowl thought he remembered being there. He preferred the one on the second floor himself when he needed an actual console rather than his personal computer and datapads, since it afforded a view of the garden. “Was anyone working there?” he asked anxiously, hoping his preferences were shared and the room had been empty.
“No. Why?”
“Because someone could have seen you, and then what? How would we explain you clipping through the floor?”
Jazz started to form a reply, then stopped, his mouth hanging open soundlessly. He was trembling again.
“You had forgotten,” Prowl realized. Sympathy he wasn’t even sure if Jazz could feel welled up in his field. “You thought no one would see you.”
“…guess that’s still gonna take some getting used to,” Jazz whispered, spectral arms wrapping around his torso like the hug Prowl wished he could give him. “Can we go somewhere there’s other people again?”
“Of course.” Prowl beckoned Jazz to follow him again. “Let me show you the reading corner. There are almost always at least one or two people there, and sometimes small groups as well.”
The latter proved to be the case when they arrived. Prowl didn’t see Kup or any of his ‘adoring fans’ today, but Jazz quickly found himself with several fans of his own. He chatted animatedly with everyone, leaving Prowl to simultaneously enjoy watching his excitement and begin worrying again that someone would notice something suspicious about their new conversation partner.
He had to remind himself that he saw every minor tell because he knew where to look, was in fact consciously looking for them the whole time, but the others had no reason to think Jazz was anything other than he appeared to be. Granted, what he appeared to be was fairly eccentric. Polyhexians, foreigners in general, weren’t an overly common sight in Praxus, despite the changes time had wrought since Jazz had lived and worked as a non-citizen for the now long-gone nobility of the city. His frametype alone was enough to attract interest and stares. Add in that the frame he remembered, and therefore what the augmentor projected, was entirely antiquated, and he was getting a lot of questions about the way he looked. Jazz was doing a good job of deflecting and only vaguely answering those questions, but they made Prowl nervous all the same. At least no one had tried to touch his unique armor!
Prowl was ready to move on and find someplace quieter fairly quickly, but there was no denying how happy it made Jazz to see and be seen by so many people. He could not, would not disrupt that just because something might go wrong. Letting Jazz continue to draw all the attention, he hid the augmentor behind a datapad and did his best to relax; he could always pull it out and claim to be helping a friend with a test run of an experimental holoprojector if the illusion fell apart. It was even the truth, and a little personal embarrassment was the worst that would happen… to him. It was what it would do to Jazz to have everyone treat him like he wasn’t real, like he was nothing more than a holographic AI that he dreaded.
Jazz remained on the floor, much to his relief — not that he could have done a thing to stop him if he’d started to float away. He could hardly put his hand on his shoulder and pull him back down! But talking to everyone seemed to be, for lack of a better word, grounding him.
“—f you’re interested in going too?”
“Me?” Prowl had to ground himself, bringing his focus out of his thoughts to the conversation that suddenly included him. “If I were interested in what?”
“In goin’ to the amphitheater,” Jazz said brightly. “I’d love to see it, even if we can’t make it to an actual performance.”
“I…” Prowl didn’t want to say no, but he didn’t know if he could say yes. The amphitheater was on the other side of downtown Praxus; not precisely far, but certainly a lot farther from the chapel than the library. Would the augmentor still work at that distance? “I think we should ask if the others would like to go as well,” he temporized, hoping Jazz would use that to make their excuses and leave.
He did. “Good idea. Thanks for the suggestion! I don’t know how long I’ve got here and I want to make the most of it.” Jazz turned to Prowl. “Let’s go find your cousin.”
They were back out in the garden, but not yet to the crystal hedge, when Prowl slowed. “I hope you did not think by what I said that I do not wish to go to the amphitheater with you,” he said, watching as Jazz’s really quite natural-looking steps slowed as well. It was sad to think he had tried so hard to mimic the movements of someone living while trapped in the chapel as a way to keep from despairing and giving up, but it was proving to be a good thing now. Only the occasional overly-smooth glide or too-quick turn betrayed him. “I would like that very much.”
“But you don’t know if it’s even possible. Don’t worry, I figured that out,” Jazz said, ‘scuffing’ the ground with his toe. The dust remained undisturbed. “If it doesn’t happen tonight, it doesn’t happen tonight. And even if it doesn’t happen at all, this is already so much more than I ever thought I’d get to do again.”
Without an EM field or the crystal of the chapel around them to telegraph Jazz’s emotions, Prowl wasn’t sure whether Jazz was happy or sad. He was feeling more than a little of both himself. “I would like for you to see the ways the city has changed since you knew it.”
“I’d like that too.“ Jazz’s smile, at least, seemed purely happy. “So let’s see if Wheeljack can tell us what kinda range this thing has!”
Smokescreen met them in the clearing just outside the chapel once they climbed through the hedge. He was holding some kind of scanner — or what Prowl assumed was a scanner; the boxy object in his hands was covered with so many antennae that had to be meant for receiving some kind of data — while Wheeljack’s discolored silhouette moved around inside. “Welcome back! Did you have fun?”
“‘Fun’ doesn’t even begin to describe it,” Jazz said, and now Prowl could tell not just by the beaming smile on his face and the bounce in his step but by the color and vibration of the chapel windows that he was overjoyed. “That library is a beautiful building.”
“You sound like Prowl,” Smokescreen teased. “He loves that building, though he’s always loved the garden even more.”
“And am I ever grateful for that.” Jazz gave the scanner a curious look as several indicators suddenly lit up. “What’s that mean?”
“That,” Wheeljack said as he rejoined them, helm fins flashing even more excitedly than the scanner, “means that the crystal is surging with energy! I’ve been trying to track down where it’s coming from, but the surges are irregular and the chapel has so many planes and facets and is so conductive that it’s confounding all my instruments.” Which didn’t seem to bother him at all. “We’re taking a bunch of readings so I can tweak the Wheeljack Ghost Detector™ to pinpoint the source.”
“Isn’t it coming from me?”
“Oh, of course it is,” Wheeljack said, nodding absently as he took the scanner back from Smokescreen and held it up beside the ghost detector. He moved his arms back and forth, sweeping the devices through the air across where Jazz and Prowl were standing. Both lit up brightest when they passed directly in front of the augmentor. “See? It can detect the energy you’re conducting through the crystal in the Wheeljack Ghost Augmentor™ just fine. But that isn’t you — you’re a being of energy, but that energy has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere,” he turned and aimed the devices at the chapel, sending them both into a blinking frenzy, “is your anchor.”
“I thought it was already evident the chapel was his anchor, given his previous inability to move beyond it?” Prowl frowned at the ghost detector when Wheeljack swung back to look at him. It still lit up when pointed at him, not just at the augmentor. “What more do you need to determine?”
“It’s incredibly rare for a ghost to be anchored to something this large,” Wheeljack replied, unperturbed by Prowl’s skepticism, “and a building like this isn’t really a singular object. Jazz appears to be tied to the chapel as a whole, but that’s because it’s all made of the same conductive crystal. All the surges caused by his activities have an origin point somewhere in there, and I’m going to find it!”
“Is that why I didn’t wind up in the Well when I broke the window?” Jazz asked, waving at the empty space where the crystal pane had once stood. “Because I wasn’t… what, tied to this plane by it?”
“Yup! Which is why I want to find your exact anchor before we do anything else so we don’t accidentally dislodge you. Not that I’m planning on breaking any more windows,” Wheeljack chuckled. His levity was at odds with the very sober message Prowl received over his commsuite: Once I know where he’s anchored, we can help him move on when he’s ready.
Prowl nodded silently, surprised but thankful for Wheeljack’s sensitivity and restraint in not voicing that thought. Ultimately it was what Jazz would want, naturally, but right now he was so excited about getting to see the world he’d been shut away from for so long. “Is that something you can more easily do with Jazz here, or does that not matter?”
“Yeah, because I really wanna go out again,” Jazz said eagerly. “Do you know how far away this thing’ll keep working? How long it’ll work? I don’t want to be doing something and just, poof!”
“Hey now, I only just invented that today! How am I supposed to know all that?” But Wheeljack was still laughing happily. “You’re the thing’s power source — the crystal’s just a conduit. Theoretically you should be able to keep projecting as long as you can keep channeling without needing a break. Lucky you’ve had lots of practice doing that,” he winked.
“But how far can I go?” Jazz asked again, his longing to get away deepening the colors of the chapel. “There’s so many things I want to see!”
“So go see them and find out! I don’t know how far you can go. You’ll just have to experiment. Hmm, maybe I should come with you…”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Smokescreen said, stopping Wheeljack before he could get too distracted by a new set of experiments. “You stay here and keep looking for Jazz’s anchor, and I’ll go with him and collect data as we move away from the chapel.”
“Really?” Prowl and Wheeljack looked at each other as they both asked the same question almost simultaneously.
“Yes, really!” Smokescreen’s doorwings flicked back in mock-affront. “You’ve been talking to Jazz for weeks already,” he said to Prowl. “I want to get to know him too. And besides, this ghost stuff is interesting.”
“Ha! I’ll make an assistant of you yet!” Wheeljack considered the two devices in his hands, then passed the ghost detector to Smokescreen. “You remember how to use it?”
“Don’t worry, I got it,” Smokescreen said. “So? Where are we going?”
“The amphitheater!” Jazz’s excitement was strong enough Prowl could feel subsonic tremors emanating from the chapel. “And whatever else’s on the way.”
Smokescreen was entirely unselfconscious carrying the ghost detector, though Prowl still felt awkward holding the augmentor. His cousin seemed to notice, and he stopped them when they got to the edge of the library grounds. “Prowl, is something bothering you? You’re acting kind of… twitchy.”
“I am not,” Prowl protested, perfectly unconvincingly. He didn’t not want to go with them, but he was even more nervous now than he had been before about people thinking there was something strange about Jazz. But how could he possibly say that without Jazz becoming upset?
“Wow, are you ever a terrible liar.” Jazz turned around to look at him, concerned. “What is it?”
While Prowl hesitated, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t be offensive, Smokescreen called him and asked, ::It’s the ghost stuff, isn’t it? You’re worried we look as crazy as Wheeljack.::
::I do want to show him the city,:: Prowl rushed to defend, not bothering to confirm what his overly-insightful cousin had already figured out. ::I am just… not comfortable with the thought of someone confronting us if Jazz walks through a street sign, or floats up into the air, or disappears.::
“Ohh, I bet I know what it is,” Smokescreen said out loud, and for a second Prowl panicked, thinking he was going to blurt out what he’d just told him. “You’ve got another project for the judge, don’t you?”
That— was not what Prowl had been expecting him to say. He blinked stupidly at first, almost having trouble processing the words, before letting his doorwings slump in resignation (and relief). “I do,” he said; nevermind the fact that he still had a couple more days to work on it. “I did not want to say no to you,” he told Jazz, “but there are other things I need to do today.”
“Prowl! When have I ever minded you having a life? Just because I can actually pretend to have one too now doesn’t mean you have to pretend you don’t.” Jazz made a shooing motion with his hands. “Go back inside! We can go somewhere together when you’re not distracted and up against a deadline.”
::And after we’ve determined whether or not he’ll vanish and get him some practice moving unobtrusively,:: Smokescreen added helpfully. ::Sound good?::
“I look forward to it,” Prowl said, and meant it. ::It does. Thank you.:: Though it was curious that Smokescreen was so willing to help out with no visible payoff. ::What do I owe you?::
::Nothing. I told you, I want to get to know him. Besides, I need to get rid of you if I’m going to get any accurate readings off this thing.:: Smokescreen waved the ghost detector at Prowl, and it promptly went off again. ::You interfere with it.::
Prowl held back a sigh. It wasn’t like he was doing it on purpose. He wasn’t a ghost! There had to be something wrong with it.
“Think of someplace we can go later while you’re working,” Jazz said, following as Smokescreen took the augmentor from Prowl. “See ya when we get back!”
“Have a good time.”
Prowl waited until they were out of sight before heading back inside the library. He would get his work out of the way now so that tomorrow there would be nothing hanging over him to interfere with spending time with Jazz.