Rebirth

Chapter 6

3rd person view

"What should we do," Jazz said, after Orion Pax had tracked him down and met him at Maccadam's Old Oil House, "is go to Kaon and see the gladiator fights for ourselves."

"Are you serious? They're illegal. It's not even legal to see one, I don't think."

"That doesn't seem to stop any of the people who do it," Jazz pointed out. He drained off his can of Visco and waved at the bartender for another. "We could go, you know. And if some authority discovers us, if we get arrested or questioned, I'll claim it's a cultural investigation. That is what I do, you know."

This much was true. Orion Pax had met Jazz because he was a cultural investigator, charged—more or less—with making sense out of all of the communications and other data that Orion Pax harvested from the Grid every day. Jazz came into the Hall of Records looking for this or that bit of history often enough that he and Orion Pax crossed paths regularly. They had developed a friendship. Orion Pax was a little intimidated by Jazz's carefree attitude toward life and authority. His caste was enough higher than Orion Pax's that he could get away with more—but it was also true that Jazz was more interested in getting away with things than Orion Pax ever had been. Where he saw an opportunity to bend rules, he bent them, and always just a little bit further than was perhaps prudent.

He sipped his own Visco. "Kaon is all the way on the other side of the planet. I've never been anywhere near there." He realized as he finished speaking that he had meant the words to come out as dismissive, but they sounded wistful.

There was a great deal of Cybertron that Orion Pax had never seen. He had heard its citizens speaking from every nook and cranny, every tower and station of the planet; he had put their conversations and transmissions into useful categories so that people like Jazz could come into the Hall of Records and use the work of Orion Pax as raw material to fashion theories with.

He felt a sudden kinship with the workers in the factories. They made machines. He made data. Were they so different?

As soon as he mentioned this to Jazz, the cultural investigator laughed. "Yes, Orion. You're different. Your work won't kill you. And when you can't do it anymore, nobody's going to throw you into a heap and turn your broken body into datacubes or image matrices."

Jazz's words hit Orion Pax like a physical blow. "You're not pulling any punches," he commented.

"Those who are fortunate should know how fortunate they are," Jazz said. Then he sipped at his Visco and waited for Orion Pax to get his thoughts in order.

"I wonder if I could get in contact with him," Orion Pax said after a silence. The Visco, as it always did, invigorated him, filled him with possibilities.

"With who? This Megatron?" Jazz shrugged. "Possibly. Why would you want to?"

"You don't find him interesting?"

Back in The Hidden Leaf Village

It's been a couple of weeks since Kushina started working on tracking seal to bring back her son Naruto. Kushina managed to scratch the surface of the track seal and field but she's nowhere near done and her two daughters seem to notice that their mothers avoiding them more and their behavior and attitudes started to change one of them Naruko blames her brother for running off leaving their mother heartbroken and their father as well now, their mother doesn't even want to leave the library for who knows what she's doing in there all she could do is blame her brother that idiot stupid worthless of a brother so of her problems. As for Narumi training day in and day out to get strong enough to find her big brother that she love with all her heart, she blames herself for her big brother running away all he wanted was their parents attention and but he never got any of that she and her sister did leave him all alone in the background she knew deep down her sister didn't care for her brother and she stopped training Narumi noticed something in the sky, looking up at the Starry Sky seen a shooting star fly by she wishes on that star that one day she'll find her big brother but for now she has to get strong enough to find him and help him to bring them back home.