Chapter Text
Jazz frowned as he gave the unconscious mech at his pedes a little kick. This was starting to get a little ridiculous. Life as a famous musician apparently meant sometimes dealing with crazy fans breaking into your habsuite. Maybe he should think about getting a security drone. Not that Jazz wasn’t perfectly capable of defending himself, after all, his musician personality was just a cover for all the travel he did as the helm of Special Operations for the Prime. But it wouldn’t look good if he slaughtered some innocent mech who just liked his music a little too much.
Fortunately for the mech laying on his floor, Jazz had managed to get his reactions under control before causing any permanent damage. The fan would just have to take a snooze for awhile before Jazz discretely dropped him off at a medcenter in the morning.
The next day, with that task done, Jazz was driving in the central district of Praxus when he spotted a drone dealership. Well, he had time, might as well drop by and see what they had for sale.
An eager salesmech met him when he entered, introducing himself as Retail, and was quick to show Jazz their wares. A variety of drone models were on display, mostly in Praxian framestyles. Many were the more lightly-framed, curvy models popular for pleasure and companion drones, quite attractive, but not what he was looking for. They did have a few heavier models suitable for security work, even a few warbuild Tarnian frametypes.
Jazz idly browsed the display models, looking at the still frames lined up side by side as he considered what would work best for his rather crazy life, when he spotted a model that looked a little different from all the rest. “Is that an Enforcer drone?”
“Ah, yes.” Retail beamed, “This model unfortunately failed its product testing and the Enforcers sold it to us at a discount. We have been assured that it will do just fine in domestic service, however. Would you like to see its specs?”
Jazz accepted a datapad with the drone’s technical specifications and gave it a quick scroll. The unit already had martial arts downloads, in addition to the stock Enforcer pursuit-style frame and more powerful processors than were normally found in domestic drones. He looked over the silent frame plugged into its charging cradle. The drone wasn’t bad to look at either, with the usual curvy Praxian frame and broad sensor wings fanning out to either side. It was the dark grey of unprogrammed chromeonanites, but Jazz could just picture how the frame would look with color.
“Can I see a demonstration?”
“Of course!” Retail flipped a switch on the charging cradle, bringing the drone online with the sharp whine of computers and systems powering up. Finally, the drone’s pale blue optics flickered online and its wings gave a brief twitch. “ETU-7285, demonstration mode.”
“Acknowledged.” The drone had a pleasant voice, if very flat and without inflection. Even the best drones couldn’t quite replicate the emotions in a real mech’s voice.
ETU-7285 stepped out of its charging cradle and moved out into the center of the display floor with a smooth, elegant gait. Jazz found himself transfixed as the drone moved through a series of Diffusion forms, every motion fluid and with purpose. Clearly, the Enforcers had spared no expense in designing and programming this unit.
“I’ll take it.”
Retail eagerly brought over the purchasing contract, going over all the different customizations Jazz could choose to have his drone outfitted with. The basic OS didn’t need to be tampered with, Enforcer coding would work fine for a security drone. Colors took a little more consideration, before Jazz decided to go with a basic black and white, like his own frame, with just a bit of red. No reason for a security drone to be too flashy.
There were a variety of interfacing array options as well. Jazz just went with a base model spike-and-valve setup. He didn’t have any plans for using his new drone as a pleasure model on the side, but who knew.
Once he’d filled out the purchasing contract and transferred the credits, Jazz went out for some lunch while the requested alterations were made to his new drone. Color programming and an array install weren’t terribly complicated, so it would only take the shop a couple of joors to get things ready.
When Jazz returned to the shop, his new purchase was waiting for him. The drone stood tall and proud in the center of the show room floor, perfectly still without a twitching a single cable. Jazz walked a slow circle around his new purchase. The black and white paint scheme was deep and lustrous, reflecting the lights above in gleaming highlights, and the drone’s chevron was a bright crimson. Its wings displayed glyphs denoting its function as private security, and across its chest were bold etchings declaring its serial number, as well as a mark denoting that it belonged to Jazz of Staniz.
“Does it meet your satisfaction?” Retail asked, standing to one side politely as his customer examined the shop’s work.
“It does.” Jazz said with a nod, “Yer paint shop does good work.”
“Only the best for our customers.” Retail beamed. “Before you go, is there a name you would like us to put on the drone? You didn’t put anything specific in the contract.”
Indeed Jazz hadn’t, not seeing the point at the time. But calling the drone ETU-7285 all the time was a bit of a mouthful. He thought about the way the drone had moved through Diffusion forms with such silent grace, and told Retail what he wanted.
Holding up an etching pen, Retail added another glyph to the drone’s chest, next to its serial number. A name: Prowl.