#and its taken them til NOW to do one for cortex

[cherry-bomb-ships]

Oooohohohoho well it's about TIME the Crash Twitter posted one of these promo images with Cortex 👀 (x)

[themagdalenwriting]

Cultural Investigator Jazz visits Patrol Officer Prowl, on medical leave after being abducted by an unknown assailant, and learns that the enforcer's injury could end his career ... unless, perhaps, he can be persuaded to accept Jazz's help ...

"Is this a professional call, Investigator?" Prowl asked tonelessly, gesturing Jazz to a seat.

Jazz shook his helm. "Nah, mech," he said, taking the offered chair — too large for him, but Praxus wasn't built for minibots. "Just haven't seen ya since the medics cut ya loose." Too soon, in Jazz's opinion, backed by the expostulations of at least one member of the Enforcers' clinic's nursing staff, according to the notes he'd hacked, but the medic-of-record had insisted despite Prowl's ongoing pathology. "Thought I'd catch ya drivin' a desk at the precinct, but they told me you're still out injured."

Prowl's doorwings twitched as he settled into the other chair. "I am recovering. I must be certified fit to return to duty."

"That's always the trick, ain't' it?" Jazz said, not without sympathy. Enforced sick leave had long been his own particular pocket of the Pit, which he'd begun to imagine as a kind of medcenter. The last time he'd been hurt badly enough to be admitted, he'd literally been climbing the walls of the ward by the end of the third cycle, and the ruckus the Office of Cultural Investigation had raised when they'd discovered he'd forged his own discharge orders had been epic even by Jazz's standards. "Lemme know if y' need a wheel greased t' get things rollin'."

"That won't be necessary," Prowl answered, his posture ramrod straight, doorwings all but at formal attention. "Thank you for your concern."

It was hard not to take the mech's affect personally, to slouch down in his own chair and dump his pedes on the table and toss Liegian darts at random until he hit a sensor. But Jazz had read enough of Prowl's medical files to know that it wasn't personal, that his stint on that damned reprogrammer had corrupted the code that handled communications between his emotional and ratiocinative processes. Those portions of his cortex no longer worked in harmony; the best they could manage now (and possibly ever) was counterpoint. He means what he says, Jazz reminded himself. Listen to the words, not the silence between 'em. "What are friends for?" he said. "So, what'cha been up to?"

"I have been exercising at the precinct gymnasium, as directed by my medic," Prowl replied. His doorwings dipped, then flared again as he added, "I have also been studying for the sergeant's exam."

"Sure, sure," Jazz agreed. One of the peculiarities of Praxus's Enforcer Corps was its insistence that every recruit, regardless of programming, start in street patrol. Nobody transferred out until they passed for sergeant, which put an extremely mixed bag of functions on the street. The patrollers made it work, but it seemed a big waste of time and talent to Jazz. What good was served by forcing Prowl, one of Prima's natural tacticians, to spend a megacycle directing traffic and citing bots for parking violations? The quicker he got his stripes and his assignment to Tactical, the better for him and the Corps. "And?"

Prowl blinked. "I do not follow."

Jazz blinked himself behind his visor and sat up straighter. "And what else?" he asked, taking careful note of Prowl's frame language and what little activity he could discern in the other mech's field. "All work an' no play makes Solus a dull femme, y' know." He suppressed an answering flare of satisfaction at the dull crackle of affront from Prowl's field — there's life in the old drone yet! — and pressed on. "Been out for a can of oil lately?"

"I have not," Prowl said.

"Signed up for the city's fullstasis tournament again? Registration don't close 'til the end of the cycle."

"I have not," Prowl said.

"Taken in a concert? Gone for a walk in the Gardens?" Jazz asked, hiding his burgeoning dismay. I should've come back earlier. I should've wired my last report to Iacon and let 'em ping for my presence ... But Prowl had been on the mend and Jazz had needed to get Senator Proteus off his spinal strut, damn him. "Got yourself hooked on that new holodrama about th' gladiator an' th' medic?"

"I have not."

"Primus dammit, Prowl, what have ya been doin' besides study an' exercise?" Jazz exploded, leaning forward to poke Prowl in the chassis with an outstretched digit. "Sittin' here in the dark with your systems on standby?"

"I have n— "

Jazz interrupted him, guilt and anxiety as potent as engex in his tanks. "You even keepin' up with the crime reports for your neighborhood association?" he demanded. "Showin' up to the meetings? Takin' shifts at that crèche — "

Prowl's vocalizer emitted a brief, meaningless warble and his field erupted into a nova of pain that struck Jazz like a physical blow before it dissipated into the ether. The enforcer's optics darkened, shuttering; his frame listed to one side and Jazz jumped up to prevent Prowl from falling from his chair.

He'd known about this, too, from the medics' notes, though he'd never seen it before. Not only were Prowl's rational and emotional centers no longer communicating properly, but any critical conflict between them threw an exception his runtime systems could no longer catch. Instead, the thread that caused the error was forced to terminate, leading to "a brief interruption of higher processing function," in the sterile jargon of the wire crispers. Like this, Jazz thought, gently righting Prowl's frame. Primus.

It gets angstier from there, in between the world-building and the singing. Sort of a companion piece to “However Improbable,” so if you enjoyed that ...