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Prowl had visions.
Smokescreen and Bluestreak knew, and they were fairly sure that Jazz knew - or at least suspected.
The highly advanced experimental ‘tac-nets’ or ‘battle computers’ that a Praxian Enforcer would have installed was a lie. A well-constructed and carried out one, but a lie nonetheless. He certainly an excellent tactician and administrator in his own right, but it was the visions that allowed him the success rate that he enjoyed.
If Prowl let his processor idle for even a moment, his mind was whisked away to sights of what was to come, with scenes of gruesome battles played out before himself. Battles and missions and executions that had not yet happened.
That particular trait of his had been considered a gift in Praxus - once in a generation, a spark was carried that could foresee events to come. The messenger of Primus, the one who would protect the Praxians.
In short, Prowl was the one in the generation of the three Praxians left.
He hated it.
He hated the betrayed look Smokescreen had given him when news reached Iacon of the bombing of Praxus, he hated the way Bluestreak avoided him when they finally told him of the visions, he hated having to send soldiers off on missions that he knew would kill them.
He hated knowing who would die - how, where, and when - and being unable to tell them.
How was he to explain how he knew all these things with such absolute certainty?
“Sir, don’t go to the grand opening of this park. Megatron will take it as an opportunity to attack, and there will be hundreds of human casualties.”
“How can you say that with such certainty?”
“I can see into the future with absolute clarity and accuracy. It’s a gift, don’t worry about it.”
Prowl would much rather stick with ninety-eight point two percent than attempt to explain such a thing to Optimus Prime or risk the information falling to the Decepticons.
(Optimus would go anyway)
He was already targeted enough for his ‘advanced and accurate battle computer,’ who knew what would happen if they were to know that it was actually that he always knew exactly what was to happen.
(Prowl knew)
He had already failed to use the visions for their primary purpose.
(Protect Praxus)
Cybertron was a ruined wasteland. All he could really do was keep what few mechanisms remained alive.
Smokescreen was a native-born and raised Praxian - of course he knew about the visions.
He just hadn’t expected that the one to receive them would be his younger cousin.
Prowl had always been far too aware of what was going on, never seemed to feel any surprise or sudden emotion of any sort. It was only when he was declared the new Vision of Praxus that everything made an alarming amount of sense to Smokescreen.
Now, he wouldn’t lie and say that he hadn’t talked Prowl into helping him out on more than a few bets before he became a more experienced gambler, but he also wouldn’t admit that to Ironhide’s face.
It was when Praxus fell that he began to see the visions as something other than a useful tool for his gambling habit.
“You knew,” he had asked Prowl blankly when the news broke. “You knew this was coming, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
Smokescreen clenched his fist, glaring determinedly through the floor as the news anchor continued regaling the masses with news of his home. “Why didn’t you come up with something to say to Prime? Send a message to the Praefectus Vigilum so he would evacuate the city?”
“They would have all died then,” Prowl told him lowly. Smokescreen flicked his optics up to look at his cousin’s face for the first time since the vidscreen had announced we interrupt your scheduled programming for breaking news out of the State of Praxus. “The escape tunnels were bombed first.”
Prowl looked lost.
Smokescreen dipped his doorwings, and wrapped a comforting arm around his cousin.
“C’mon,” he said. “Optimus is probably planning a search for the survivors. Gotta make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, right?”
Prowl’s lips quirked ever-so-slightly. “Right.”
Bluestreak didn’t remember much of Praxus aside from the shrieks of bombs falling and the roar of seeker engines.
But, as a Praxian, the moment he was old enough to know how to keep a secret, Prowl and Smokescreen told him of the Vision of Praxus.
More specifically, that Prowl was the Vision of Praxus.
Bluestreak had tilted his head quizzically at the revelation.
“The vision of what?” he asked them. “What’s that?”
Prowl had looked amused but unsurprised at his question, while Smokescreen berated himself - of course Bluestreak wouldn’t know the significance of the title.
“It means I can see the future,” his guardian had told him bemusedly.
Bluestreak thought about it. It made sense - Prowl always knew what he was going to do before he even did it, and he’d always wondered how a tac-net could predict so much.
He thought about it a bit more
“Did you know about Praxus?”
Prowl wasn’t able to answer him that time.
Jazz always knew that there was something off about Prowl.
For all the tactician liked to use his percentages, it was certainly uncanny how if Prowl said something had a high chance of working, it did, and if he said it was doomed to fail, it was a massacre. There was a reason he was Second in Command and Head Tactician, after all.
Jazz also knew that it took luck that didn’t exist to be completely right, no matter how high the percentage was, for four million years.
He could personally attest to having tried everything he could possibly think of to shock the mech, and nothing worked - Prowl just seemed to know everything that was going to happen.
Jazz knew other mecha jokes about how Prowl was the only one able to reign him in and control him, and Jazz would acquiesce to that - he listened to Prowl because Prowl knew things.
Prowl was an honest, pragmatic mecha. Jazz knew that as long as he listened to what Prowl said, no harm would ever befall him. He had kept himself safe throughout the entirety of the war that way - it was the reason he had the highest success rate in Spec Ops.
If only his subordinates knew to do the same.
Jazz’s suspicions had been growing for a while - it was hard to not be at least somewhat intrigued by the tacticians insanely high success rate once you stopped to question it, and it didn’t seem like anybody other than Jazz had.
“What’s yer secret, mech?” he’d asked Prowl once, curled around the tactician, late into the recharge cycle. “Yer battle computer’s impossible - not even Perceptor or Shockwave can recreate it, and yer predictions don’t even have success rates - they’re just facts.”
Prowl had hummed sleepily, running his fingers along Jazz’s transformation seams. “Well, why don’t you tell me your best guess?”
“Yer a - what do th’ humans call it? - a fortune teller or somethin’.”
Prowl had laughed quietly and told him to get some recharge.
So Jazz had always had his questions and theories, and Prowl didn’t do anything to dissuade him.
Either he was on the right track, or Prowl was having a right laugh at his idiocy.
Jazz had firmly dismissed the second idea the day they had been relaxing in a corner of the rec room, and Prowl suddenly shot up straight. There was a look of hopeful terror on his face if Jazz had to name it.
“Medbay,” his lover had said. “Medbay, we need to go now,” he said urgently, already out of his seat and dragging Jazz along.
“Mech, what’s th' hurry?” Jazz asked worriedly.
“I already know, but I need to know,” Prowl had said cryptically.
Later that day, when their limbs were entangled and they were curled around each other, lying in their berth, Jazz asked a question he knew Prowl would answer, but had never truly known if he had wished to know the answer to.
“Will the war ever end?”
“Yes,” Prowl said, with a level of confidence that was astounding even for the usually accurate tactician. “I will make sure of it. I will make it happen.”
And they fell into recharge, tangled in each other.
Jazz sunk into the comforts of his future dreams against the pulse of his spark, Prowl’s, and a new third one to join their life soon.