Jazz’s visual feed lit up in blue as he fully integrated into the comm console. It’s been a while since he’s been inside the console like this. He glanced at his servos, now seemingly translucent with a light blue glow. He then regarded the system briefly, before he caught the sight of Blaster’s user, softly glowing red, off to the side.
“Alright, mech, where do we start?” Jazz asked the comm officer.
Blaster narrowed his optics, “Have you ever really done this before?”
“I wasn’t lyin’, I did dabble,” Jazz replied with an innocent shrug, “Just…been a while since I dabbled last.” When Blaster’s expression remained unchanged, he added, “If I start bein’ a dead weight, I’ll back off. Promise.”
Blaster’s translucent frame seemed to relax somewhat, his judging scowl softening into something more sympathetic. “The scrambling is intense, might mess with your visuals as well as your audials. I’ll focus on minimizing that as much as I can but it’ll probably still really suck.”
Jazz nodded in understanding. Blaster added, “You can use the clear path I make doing that to communicate with [Mirage]. I’m still not sure if the hijacker has any other tricks they’re hiding so…just be careful.”
“Gotcha,” Jazz said. Blaster gave him one last look before waving his servo, bringing up the channel with Mirage. The two were instantly met with the overwhelming sound of static. True to Blaster’s word, intense enough to even cause Jazz’s visual feed to glitch out a bit. Blaster was quick to counteract the scrambling, bringing it down from an overwhelming cacophony of noise and overstimulation on one’s sensornet to a quieter din. Still bothersome, but significantly more manageable. Jazz recalibrated his visual feed and noted that Blaster’s frame was tense as he focused fully on battling the scrambling. Even though he was built for tasks such as these, it still seemed to be difficult.
“Hurry,” Blaster grit out, “Do you see the line?”
Jazz focused hard into the static until he caught sight of a faint string—the communication connection to Mirage. When one is completely integrated with the communications console during a time where it’s not actively being sabotaged, the channel is usually wide, clear, open, and impossible to miss. Now, however, it was thin and nearly indiscernible within the static, looking as if it could crumble away at any moment. Jazz reached for the flickering line, and faintly he could hear the ragged, hyperventilating vents of his subordinate.
Chapter 9 of my fic, Radio Static, has been posted!! Mirage has his first SpecOps mission...
