Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Could you say that several things were going wrong?

Yes, yes you could, because that was exactly what was happening.

God, Jazz hated T-2s- or Warpers, whichever, they’re just as annoying either way (stupid metal chicken-lookin’ teleporting idiots)- because if the whole coop hadn’t gotten loose with a neat and fun battalion of Just Too Many Of Them maybe he wouldn’t be in this situation. 

And yet despite all that, it’s still way better than the time he briefly got eaten by Wrong Space a little bit, that’s for sure. Not like that’s a high bar, but still.

A broken elbow joint (annoying, but not really painful) and optics half-shattered, (way more annoying, because now he’s gonna trip over everything in a five mile radius) aiming blindly at were certainly NOT anything Jazz was familiar with, because even the most annoying of the things he fought on a regular basis weren’t horrible little gooey gremlins that liked to chew on the biometal of his mech.

At least these ones were much easier to kill than the average T-1. Jazz barely even had to aim, which was a very good thing, considering at the moment he wasn’t sure if he could hit any of his usual targets anywhere near lethally. One good thing about them being gooey instead of made of metal, at least.

The sword was definitely a good idea. Probably one of the best ideas he’d had, period, because while it may have been largely ineffective against anything made of metal, it was chewing through these itty bitty corrosive anklebiters like nobody’s business.

Beep. Beep beep beep. Oh, and now his ankle joints are pinging him. Of course, because this couldn’t have been easy. That’d mean Jazz’s luck is finally turning around.

Okay, probably a good idea to get out of here. The incredibly unlucky T-2 that brought him here died a While ago, but circling back to its corpse still might be a bad idea considering how wildly everything else is swarming. Notably, there were some bigger critters of the corrosive kind circling around. The small ones were easy to kill (REALLY easy to kill, you just gotta make sure you hit ‘em), Jazz did not trust his chances with something bigger, especially if it was equally corrosive. The little guys packed a punch, and he wasn’t too sure his mech was gonna be able to take all those hits without spontaneously combusting afterward or whatever.

So Jazz leaps as best he can over the remaining chompers, and throws himself out the door as fast as he can into somewhat cramped hallways.

Honestly, the fact that they’re that big is still a surprise to Jazz (most things aren’t built with mecha scale in mind) but he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and he presses on. 

The hallways are mostly empty, and whatever critters are there are pretty easily ignored. Too slow to catch up to Jazz, anyway, who’s running as efficiently as he can with a half-dissolved ankle. His gait is definitely suffering for it, but he’s good enough at in-grav maneuvering (basically just regular running around, but in a gigantic tin can with legs) that it doesn’t really matter. Could be worse, in any case, at least they didn’t aim for the knees.

Jazz speeds through another few near-empty hallways. He can really tell about the gait now- he has to compensate for the fact that one of his legs doesn’t really want to bear his weight anymore, and his speed goes down a little to avoid slamming into any walls. The way he runs probably looks a little more like a limp now, and he has to catch himself on the wall more than once to avoid falling over. At least the pings aren’t too bad, and his ankle still works at least a little bit.

Well, at least if he does fall over, it probably won’t break anything in the chassis. There’s pros to being a mecha pilot other than getting very used to the smell of blood.

 Unfortunately, getting magic self-repair on your mech isn’t one of them. Boy, would that be useful.

Jazz pilots a slightly modified Wolf-Class. Bebop is pretty small for a Wolf, but the fact that Jazz managed to convince the mechanics to give her really, really long legs does help with that. It also makes her faster on average, which is good when your entire job is maneuvering well enough you don’t die.

The amount of live critters in here is dwindling. Jazz can’t tell if that’s a good sign or not. Whatever corrosive element is eating into his ankle joint doesn’t help, either- the damage alert pings are starting to pick up in volume, and it’s getting annoying. Jazz already has some hearing damage from Being Too Close To Gigantic Explosions, this just isn’t helping at all .

In fact, they’re taking up so much of Jazz’s already limited field of view, he almost doesn’t notice the other mech in the room with him.

They’re black and white with a red chevron like a crest on its helm/head/whatever, and holy Laika is that a face?? With real expressions??? Oh, that’s so unfair. Jazz barely convinced his base mechanics to get a tactically sound biometal sword in his mech, how come this guy gets FACIAL EXPRESSIONS- 

-but all that doesn’t matter , because this mech is crumpled up against the wall wearing a face that’s something in the ballpark of ‘miserable agony.’

Jazz is highly familiar with that. Every pilot is, if they’re worth their bullets.

He stops, nearly tripping over his own corroded ankle and barely catching himself on the wall, as the new mech looks up. Jazz can see their eyes adjusting to focus on their new guest, which is something of a feat considering the state of his ability to see.

They say- something. It’s words, Jazz is pretty sure, but beyond that he has no idea. Probably a language he never spent the time to learn, but in any case a language barrier is Not Ideal here.

The other mech seems to realize that whatever they said went completely over Jazz’s head, makes a tired/weary clicking kinda noise, and then says, in what’s probably the most bizarre language they could have said anything in, considering it’s the notelang Jazz himself had been making in his spare time, “[Person] is [Question?]”

-Meaning “who are you,” roughly.

There’s so many questions to be had about all that, but Jazz is perfectly content to chalk it up to “Wrong Space At It Again” and move on with his life, because he’s got more important things to do than wonder how this is even mildly possible. Crazier things have happened, and will continue to happen. Thinking about it too hard won’t get you anywhere.

Even despite that, Jazz has to take a second to make sure he’s not losing his mind, and then slaps a hand over his nonexistent (mech’s) mouth to cackle as quietly as he can about it for a little bit before responding. “[Person] is [Me] is “Jazz,” [Jazz.]” meaning ‘My name’s Jazz,’ and then the closest name-thing Jazz could think of that’d fit. He doesn’t really know what to think, but the likelihood that the unfortunate T-2 that brought him here in the first place had something to do with it is steadily increasing.

“[Answer] is Not [Question.] [Question] is [Again] for [Change:] [Animal] is [Question?]”

Which- what. Okay. Attempted translation, this is ridiculous: ‘Not what I wanted. Let me rephrase: what are you?’ Which. What? Okay??

“[Me] is Not [little-animal-negative.] [Animal] for [Hurt,]” Jazz says, feeling really, really weird about actually saying this stuff out loud. He says that last bit gesturing at his slowly melting ankle, which doesn’t seem to have miraculously uncorroded since he last looked. Intended meaning: ‘I’m not one of the little bitties outside, they did this.’

The other mech seems dissatisfied with this answer. “[Words] is [long-negative.] [Word{s}] is [old-use-negative.] [You] is [Know] is [Common] is [Question?]”

Jazz has to think through that one to understand. He’s pretty sure they’re saying ‘This is taking too long. This language(?) is outdated. Do you know Common?’ Which. He probably doesn’t, if he’s going to be honest, but he knew this, which shouldn’t have been possible to be talking in right now because he made it, so the answer’s more realistically a maybe .

“[Chance] is [Yes-No.] [You] is [Tell] is [No] is [Question?]” Well, now Jazz can see why people would have retired this. Too many ‘is’es. Intended meaning: ‘Maybe. You can teach me if not, yeah?’

“[Yes.]” And then, to Jazz’s utter astonishment, he sort of understands the next thing they say. It’s full of root words and suffixes and it goes by way too fast for him to fully get any of it, but the fact he knows any is probably very good.

“[know-small] is [pos-pos-pos]!!!” Jazz says immediately after, trying to throw his hands in the air-

-and immediately putting one back against the wall so he doesn’t fall on his face. That’d be really embarrassing. In front of this really cool pilot, too! First impressions are important!!

“[know-small] is [Question?] [Yes.] [Know] is [Positive.]” They seem slightly confused. Jazz can’t blame them, he’s also confused. Much more than slightly, but he’s nothing if not able to deal with wacky crap 24/7. It’s basically his job, along with punching metal dog-shaped aliens in their funky evil little faces.

Well, having an odd stranger that he has half a language barrier with is better than being alone with his terrible ankle. Probably.

☆。*。☆。

Prowl could have been having a much worse day. (75%.)

Prowl could have also been having a much better day. (43.8%.)

Overall, his day was approaching ‘ not great.’

You could make a case for said ‘ not great ’ness starting when he first accidentally warped into an experimental Quintesson weapons base with violently angry little foot soldiers that seemed to have a love for biting at anything they could reach, but Prowl really considered it starting when the unfamiliar mech limped at unsafe speeds into the desecrated room with him.

Prowl heard the clunking noise of its pedefalls at least thirty kliks before it appeared, and he simply sat, watching the percentage of the source of the noise being a Quintesson soldier slowly, slowly tick up.

When they finally entered the room, Prowl had to take a moment to realize that the newcomer was made of metal and let the sound of his processor frying slightly die down before trying to say anything.

They were thin, with oddly rounded plates and very long legs, one of which was sparking slightly at the ankle joint. It didn’t look very healthy, but they seemed to pay it little mind. They were primarily white, with blue and red accents around their joints and on their servos and pedes.

Prowl was slightly glad that they proved to not understand Cybertronian speech, considering his first attempt at communication was nothing less than static-filled word salad, but what they did end up knowing was.. rather unsatisfactory.

They both ended up introducing themselves. Their designation was Jazz. They knew Old Common- or Is-Chatter, as it was called back when it was in greater use- although they visibly had to consider Prowl’s words before coming up with a slightly hesitant, clunky reply. Jazz didn’t know Modern Common, though, which was... an issue, to put it lightly. A language barrier would be very, very inconvenient for even communicating basic ideas between the two of them.

And though Prowl was loathe to admit it, it wasn’t like he had very many other options.

Additional observations made in this span of perhaps twenty minutes: Jazz didn’t appear to feel pain, as judged by the concerning amount of limping they were doing and speaking not a word on, not even appearing to feel anything on the matter besides perhaps mild annoyance (34.7%), and the fact that their right elbow joint sparked something fierce when they moved it too much. Which they were also saying absolutely nothing about.

Prowl was growing slightly concerned for his new ally-companion(?) and the growing number of things slightly... Off about them. 

They seemed to have poor vision, and if anything the cracks in their oddly-shaped visor (it might not be a visor, considering how it seemed to be built directly into their face,) certainly weren’t helping.

They wobbled dangerously on their feet but kept refusing Prowl’s offer of helping them stay up, instead opting to lean against the walls.

Whenever they tried to hold still for any real length of time, whether it be so Prowl could stick a patch on their elbow joint so it would stop sparking so badly and making him wince or when they were just waiting around, they wavered slightly.

  Very, very slightly; Prowl never would’ve noticed if he wasn’t looking. It was like they were constantly resetting their balance, and couldn’t lock their joints.

The following conclusions Prowl could make from all of this:

Jazz is not Cybertronian. (78.9%.)

Jazz is a related, yet distant, species of biomechanical entity. (58.7%.)

Jazz is.. something else? (19.4%.)

The more time Prowl spends with them, the more sure he becomes of the first statement: even a very, very odd Cybertrionian does not have all of those things in combination, the way Jazz does.

They don’t seem to have an EM field, either- Prowl initially assumed they were just being polite, but the more time he spends with them, the more he realizes that Jazz is just... always this outgoing. 

They ramble in the half-cooked pidgin between Modern Common and Is-Chatter the both of them put together in an attempt to chisel away at the language barrier, and the little mannerisms Prowl notes and neatly tucks away inside his processor are endearing. Above all, Prowl knows that if Jazz had an EM field, it would be full-blast emotions around Prowl at the very least. From what he knows, Jazz doesn’t particularly seem like a quiet mech.

That’s why it’s all the more jarring when they suddenly fall silent when the pair of them finally make it to the Quintesson warp terminal.

Prowl is about to ask what’s wrong when he sees it for himself: the terminal itself is ruined, blown out like a faulty fuse. That’s not what Jazz’s cracked and fractured visor is pointed at, though, that’s the crumpled bio-metal animal (? 78%.) lying still on the Quintesson-splattered floor.

“[You] is [Know] [Animal{?}]” Prowl asks, unsure how he wants to phrase the query. 

The moment before Jazz answers is one of the longest in Prowl’s life, but eventually they simply reply “[Yes.]” as though the words themselves are made of lead and have to be dragged on hooks out of their vocalizer.

Prowl doesn’t ask further. No matter how much he wants to. He instead opts to crouch next to the animal, inspecting its flattened features.

As far as he can tell, it was cracked open from one of the gaps in its armor and shredded from there. It has two limbs, pointed and silvery, flecked multicolor from what’s likely (88.7%) to be its metallic blood rather than anything else’s. Quintessons bleed a green-yellow color. Cybertronians bleed pink or blue. 

Prowl doesn’t know what color Jazz would bleed. He’s not entirely keen to find out.

It’s likely not their blood (87.5%), though. For one thing, they aren’t visibly leaking, nor are they leaving a polychrome trail as the pair of them wander through the base.

Speaking of them, they’re standing as still as they ever do (wobbling slightly-ever-so-slightly,) helm tilted slightly (about 17 degrees, the TAC-net notes.) They haven’t moved besides that consistent wobble, visor on low light and gaze unclear.

The crushed, silvery animal remains still. Prowl doesn’t know what to call it. Jazz knows what it is.

“[Animal] for [Person]-[Attention]/[Name] [?]” He asks, as quietly as he can while still being sure Jazz would actually hear him.

There’s another long moment. These tend to happen in conversation between them: Jazz is smart, they’d have to be to have survived this long, but their unfamiliarity with any of the lingua francas of the universe is near-absolute. Prowl wonders again, absently, where did this strange mech come from?

“...[Person]-[Attention]/[Name] for [mech-animal] is-” They stop, cut themselves off, mutter something Prowl can’t catch and likely (99.6%) wouldn’t understand anyway, before continuing, “-[move-vanish-animal]/[T-2]/[Warper].”

Prowl blinks. “...[Warper{?}]”

Jazz shrugs. “[Warper] is [move-vanish] is [Annoy.] [Name] is [Simple.]”

Well. Another fact obtained for certain: Jazz knows what this animal is and does, and they call it a Warper. Because it.. teleports?

There is very little reason for Jazz to lie here. Prowl can safely (94%) assume they are telling the truth about this strange, unfamiliar creature.

Jazz shuffles. Their oddly pointed pedes make scuff marks on the Quintesson base floor. “[Leave] [Please] [?]”

It’s one of their little mannerisms: they shuffle, they slide the tip of some kind of blade in and out of its compartment on their forearm, their finials twitch, their visor flickers slightly in time with their words. 

Prowl can’t blame them for wanting to leave; there’s nothing left in this room to look at. Moving on is the best course of action.

Prowl just nods. Jazz is already halfway across the room before he has time to look up, and he spares a moment to wonder how fast they’d be if they were in complete working order before chasing after them.

Chapter Text

Jazz apparently made the mistake of forgetting how batshit crazy his life is, because exactly no things that have happened in the last two days have made a perfect 100% of sense, but hey, at least he’s getting used to it.

It’s really weird being taller than Prowl.

At least, Jazz is pretty sure that’s what the other mech (pilot? probably a pilot in there-) meant when they(he?) introduced themselves, but it’s not like Jazz really has a way to factcheck considering the only person in probably at least an AU has one pretty big language barrier between them, so does it really matter?

Besides, if ‘Prowl’ really was what they meant, then there are two explanations Jazz can reach for, because Jazz knew a Prowl once, and that Prowl is very, very dead.

Either: it’s just Wrong Space At It Again, and Jazz should put it out of his mind before his brain explodes trying to figure out how any of this works,

Or: This pilot and his best friend happened to have the same name.

One is much more likely than the other, but all the same, Jazz thinks about it. It’d be just his luck if it turned out the mysterious pilot he met out in Literally The Most Middle Of Nowhere It Gets happened to be some Wrong Space wibbly-wobbly whhhhatever. It’d be consistent with his track record thus far, anyway.

Even if it is just the second option, it is going to be strange, thinking of another person he doesn’t even know all that well, or even at all, really, with the same name as somebody he was so close to, but it easily could be worse. The guy’s name could be Shock, for that matter, and if Jazz never heard that chemmy ratscrape’s name again, it’d still be too soon.

Jazz wouldn’t know how to bring the topic up even if there wasn’t that language barrier- what, is he gonna say “hey, sorry, you kind of look like and have the same name as my dead best friend, what’s your opinion on this information?”

But back to the matter at hand: it’s really, really strange being taller than another mech for once.

Wolf-Class mechs certainly aren’t small: 25 feet is nothing to scoff at, but compared to other models, even ones part of the same megacorp, Jazz got used to being on the shorter end of people when he was on the battlefield.

Not like he’s comparatively very tall out of mech, either. Five foot six is pretty average, but it basically just means he feels about the same height all the time.

Prowl is roughly 22 feet tall: probably closer to seven meters, if Jazz thinks about it. That’s certainly not small either, but if it’s a bit short compared to Jazz, then it’s tiny compared to the bigger mechs. 

Sure, he’s interacted with Rabbit-Class mechs, and they only stand at about 20 feet tall- not that that’s really much to scoff at, either- but also, Rabbit-Class mechs are scouts, and Jazz is never standing next to one for longer than maybe five seconds because they’re too busy running as fast as their tin can legs will carry them.

Thus, it feels kinda strange to be taller than somebody he’s hanging out with pretty consistently.

Thinking about what his friends would say if they ever met Prowl is probably thinking a bit too far ahead, though. He’s gotta focus on how to get out of here first. Maybe with Prowl in tow, but Jazz’s base is definitely way farther away than Prowl’s. That one’s pretty much 100% guaranteed to be a vain hope.

But hey, they got out of the Corrosive Critter base. Prowl didn’t even ask too many questions about the T-2, which-

Jazz doesn’t actually know why that made him so scared. (Not really scared? Maybe a little? He’s having a time, whatever his emotions are doing is barely his business anymore,) Prowl would probably know about them, the Leviathans are everywhere, but- 

Oh. Oh no . The realization hits Jazz like a freight train.

That Warper teleported him here. There’s a chance (it’s not large. Nobody knows the exact range of those things, but there’s gotta be some limit to it) but it’s still a chance, and the chance is that Jazz isn’t even in the same galaxy anymore.

It would explain why he’s never seen those little corrosive beasties before, and why there haven’t been any pooches (T-1s) or other warpers or even a ripper (T-5), and why Prowl didn’t recognise the Warper, the T-2, crumpled on the floor and ripped open where Jazz managed to catch on the gaps between its plating and save his own hide.

It makes a lot of sense. It makes so much sense he doesn’t want to think about it, for the implications on if and how he’s getting home.

He hasn’t even realised he’s stopped dead, feet planted firmly on the ground, when Prowl turns around, a look of- that might be concern? -on their incredibly expressive face. (Jazz is still a little bit jealous of that. He won’t say anything, but he is.) 

“[?]” is all Prowl says, head tilting a little, but Jazz knows pretty safely what they mean.

Jazz takes a shaky breath to think on what he wants to say. “ uuh. [place-safe-mine] is [Far.] [I] [Realize] is [Only] [this-time-now.]”

Prowl makes a noise; it takes a second for Jazz to realise it’s their air vents reversing in a way that sounds.. suspiciously like a sigh?? (that’s a really cool body language emulation trick, Jazz is definitely gonna try that one later-) They look up at him, eyes just about as soft as they can reasonably get on a 22-ton tin can. 

“[I’m Sorry], [But] [at least] [We] are [{not} Alone.]” Prowl says, and Jazz has to take a second to figure out what that means. He has to take a longer second to accept what that means. (The language barrier is coming down, if slowly.)

Jazz somehow wasn’t expecting Prowl to care this much.

It clearly isn’t a lot, but- Jazz wasn’t expecting any, and now he realizes that’s stupid, because Prowl is literally the only thing he’s met so far that hasn’t tried to kill him yet, and the same is probably true of Prowl.

Jazz cares. He cares not only because Prowl is his only option, but because- well, that’s an issue for later, they’re both still running from those corrosive critters. (Prowl probably has a name for them, but Jazz hasn’t figured out a way to ask for it yet.)

Speak of the devil. Jazz can hear the scuttly noises that can only mean said corrosive critters are hot on his tail. He’s almost grateful for them, because it means he doesn’t have to spend any time worrying about what to say.

In fact, he’s so busy Not thinking about that fact that he barely notices Prowl’s noise of alarm when Jazz slams forward on autopilot, (haha. a mecha pilot on autopilot ) his sword through one critter and another stamped beneath his heel in the span of three seconds.

Said noise of alarm becomes even more alarmed as Jazz spins his head- Well, Bebop’s head, his neck can’t actually spin 360 degrees, no matter how cool that’d be- to look at Prowl to make sure none of the little gremlins got to his brand new buddy. 

That’d really suck, if his newly minted tentative friend died - NOPE, NOPE NOPE, PUTTING THAT THOUGHT AWAY. FOCUS, JAZZ. BEBOP’S ANKLES WILL THANK YOU.

The two he dealt with are quickly discarded (more like kicked out of the way, really) and he looks up to find- oh, Laika’s teeth , that one’s way bigger.

This one is large enough and close enough to Jazz’s supremely broken optics that even his regular puny human eyes can pick out exactly what it looks like: not pretty . It’s like if a goat and some kind of lizard and an octopus had a terrible, terrible, gooey baby that wanted him dead.

Altogether, it means that if he squints, he can kind of pretend it’s a really small T-3- or squidwhale , to other pilots- and as it turns out, the big corrosive gremlin goes down about as easily. 

It takes maybe a minute?

However, after that minute, Jazz immediately notes several Problems. 

The fact that his ankle joint is now pinging him so much ‘screaming’ is a pretty safe descriptor of the noise it’s making is Not a Good Sign. The alerts from said ankle damage are covering basically all the field of view Jazz had left, (also Not a Good Sign,) and his leg is about two centimeters from giving out on him entirely. But hey, at least his sword is still in one piece. (Mostly.) Win for that.

They didn’t install it with any sensors, because it’s supposed to be a weapon and not a limb, but there’s ways to get around objects not telling you how damaged they are. With an experimental and probably overkill hack through the lizard-goat-squid thing, Jazz determines it works Well Enough, wipes all the goo off it- or at least some of it, it’s really hard to tell at the moment, what with his next to nonexistent vision- and slides it back into his arm.

Jazz is just about to turn back to Prowl and give them a thumbs up when his leg collapses out from under him. The strangled shriek he makes at suddenly losing all pretenses that he’s better than gravity is incredibly dignified, thank you very much .

It takes a second for his optics to come back after klonking into the ground so hard, and when they do, the first thing he sees- besides the million alert pings about his-slash-Bebop’s ankle, of course- is Prowl’s face. 

Jazz is still jealous about that, (Articulated mech face!!! It speaks for itself!!! How the hell did they even MAKE that!! Jazz couldn’t even get an emoticon display, and that’d take way less computing power than FACIAL EXPRESSIONS- ) but it makes figuring out what the other pilot-mech-whatever is thinking a lot easier. Or at least at making educated guesses.

Currently his educated guess is ‘concern.’ That one doesn’t take a whole lotta brainpower.

Prowl’s blue optics/eyes- wow, those are really blue, do they glow? They probably glow. They’re robot eyes, of course they glow. Their eyes, they’re looking at him, because that- that’s what eyes do, what was Jazz trying to say? Think? Maybe he has a concussion, wouldn’t that be fun-

“[Jazz{?}] [Status{.}].” Prowl says. There’s some kind of emotional edge in that, but the pings are too loud for Jazz to hear properly. It takes another few seconds for his lightly fried brain to recognize his own name- [Jazz], as in his name, is [good-noise-person] all slapped together, so a more literal translation of his name- that version of his name? Who knows- could be Musician. He likes the sound of that.

“ [Jazz{.}] [Status{.}].” Prowl practically growls, (oh hey, that rhymes!) and the undercurrent is now loudly identifiable as panic/worry/nerves, even over the sound of Bebop’s systems making their unhappiness clearly audible. Violently audible, even. 

Jazz tries to respond. All that comes out of his speakers is a loud blat of static.

Hm. 

That’s not good.

He tries again. “ KKHJHJKHT - - -live] [Alive] [Alive]-” Jazz flicks his mic off- just for a second, to take a breath, collect himself, maybe cackle a little (okay, more than a little)- “-[Jazz] is [Me] is [Alive- uh - {.}]. [!{?}]” 

Man the grammar on this thing is weird. Why is that legal. Oh well, if Jazz somehow insults Prowl’s entire bloodline he can blame the language barrier. It’s very easy to blame. If it didn’t wanna be blamed so much, it shouldn’t’ve been so annoying.

Prowl’s face(plate? is it their face if it’s part of the mech they’re piloting?) does a complicated maneuver that Jazz doesn’t have the time nor the visual clarity to decipher. While they deliberate, Jazz takes this as a great moment to study Prowl more closely.

Downside to visor-type optics: the nearsightedness. It’s not so bad as to be noticeable usually, but right now isn’t usual in any measure of the word, so this is probably the clearest look he’s going to get at Prowl for a While. Their face is plenty human- Jazz is still NOT jealous, that would be stupid - and all the shades of concerned microexpressions they’re currently making are... concerningly realistic. What kind of distant super-megacorp has the money or time or cares enough to make mechs like that? Certainly not any of the ones he knows.

Jazz doesn’t have the time to ask before Prowl is trying to haul him to his feet. Several issues with that: Jazz is taller, and heavier, despite being more literally narrow. Prowl may be pretty strong- they are /are in a massive robot, after all- but not nearly strong enough to pick him up. Also, Bebop is built specifically to be hard to grab onto. 

It’s normally pretty tactically sound: it’s better to be living longer on the field than being able to recover mech corpses. If the corps cared that much, they’d just send a Carrion Crawler to go get them, if only to recover the scrap metal.

It’s less tactically sound when you’re slipping out of your new ally’s hands like a wet spaghetti noodle. It would be pretty funny to watch Prowl struggle to pick him up, hands unable to catch a grip on Jazz’s tight-knit plating, if his ankle was any better than scrap metal right now. 

It’s still pretty funny, even with that glaring caveat. And also the headache threatening to crack a hole in Jazz’s skull.

His whole life is starting to feel like one long chain of ‘this isn’t usually a problem, however: ’.

It takes a long couple minutes for Prowl to eventually realize that Jazz basically has to use Prowl as a crutch for there to be any real results, but eventually they’re both upright and Jazz-

-was going to look at his ankle, until he remembered how useless his vision is right now. Pleasant. Really pleasant. How the hell is Jazz gonna explain this to his new friend?

“[Status{?}]” Prowl asks again, and Jazz has no idea where to start.

Jazz makes several failed attempts at remembering what a translation for ‘eyes’ would be before just huffing- he does the vent trick, because it’s neat and can’t hurt on the front of Prowl figuring out what his current emotional state is (not great) - and says “[{~}25%] [Function],” while poking (LIGHTLY) at his own visor. A brief moment passes while he considers further. “[Correction:] [{~}10%] [Function].”

Jazz can’t see Prowl very well, but he sure can imagine the look of Concern™, (capitalized, trademarked, the works,) on their face. He can vaguely feel Prowl’s grip on him tighten, just a little, like they’re worried he’s going to slip out of their grip again.

It’s not too unreasonable a concern, to be fair. That has definitely happened before. Which is to say in the last three minutes.

“[Jazz.] [We] {should}[Move] for [Safe{-quality}].” Prowl says, and Jazz can’t tell if they’re being quieter on purpose or if Bebop’s audio receptors are failing on him. 

Right. Safety. Good idea, that’s a really good idea. Prowl might even have on-the-fly mech repair tools or something, it wouldn’t surprise Jazz at this point, not with the rest of the everything he’s dealt with today- holy Laika it’s only been like four hours. Thank you, chronometer, it feels more like days. Maybe weeks. He’d really appreciate it if things stopped trying to kill him.

Probably better not to get out of Bebop at all, though- Jazz hasn’t had time to analyze the atmosphere here but Chances Are it’s not breathable. Most atmospheres aren’t. Choking to death on bad air would really, really suck, especially in front of his new buddy.

Jazz has just gotta hope that Prowl, with their superior (not broken as all hell) eyesight, can actually find a place.

☆。*。☆。

The more Prowl gets to know Jazz, the more concerned he gets. Just in general, really, because there’s so much going on with that mech he wouldn’t know where to start on the specifics.

The concern probably (43.6%) started as soon as he met them, but it really kicked in when they took out those Quintesson foot soldiers in approximately 34 seconds flat and then almost immediately collapsed.

The ‘Jazz can’t feel pain’ hypothesis now has more evidence both for and against it: clearly their ankle was in worse shape than either of them were able to note if it almost literally snapped in half like it did, but the strangled noise they made on the way down certainly sounded pained.

For a singular, very, very long second, Prowl assumed Jazz had died on the spot, until their visor flickered back on and their vocalizer started blaring static.

Overall? The situation isn’t great. It hasn’t been great since the very beginning. Jazz- well, Jazz can’t particularly walk right now, but they seem more annoyed by that fact than anything else. There is something to note about that, though- Prowl is fairly (89.7%) sure that Jazz only learned how to vent- as in blow air through their systems to cool them down, not the emotional kind- as an emotional response from him. Like a parrot imitating their owner’s voice.

Prowl is doing his best to ignore the implications of that. There are better things to be thinking about, notably where anything approaching ‘safety’ is within a 50-mile radius. He’ll probably get a chance to think on it further once they set down. If they set down.

Jazz has to hold on to Prowl, mostly, rather than the other way around. Prowl doesn’t know why their plates are meshed together like that- it’s probably a combat mod, considering how quickly they took care of those Quints- but right now it’s really more of a hindrance than anything else.

 Prowl can see the merit in it: being difficult to grab would be very helpful in a fight. Unfortunately, no fighting is happening.

Additional issue: if Prowl interpreted what Jazz was trying to say correctly, they currently can’t see... basically at all. Prowl already assumed as much, considering how cracked their visor is, but 10% functionality is... less than expected. Prowl takes a moment to wonder how terrifying they’d be if they were at 100% functionality, and then moves on.

Literally as much as figuratively- Jazz is basically using Prowl like a living crutch to make up for the fact that one of their legs won’t bear their weight anymore.

Trying to strike up a conversation is probably (67%) a bad idea. Prowl was never any good at small talk, and the fact that Jazz can’t understand anything spoken too quickly certainly doesn’t help.

That doesn’t make the awkward silence any less awkward.

Nor does it make the gnawing urge to Know More about Jazz starting to manifest itself inside his processor any less present.

To avoid thinking about the horrors of social interaction, Prowl decides to find more little things about how Jazz acts. In part because watching the scenery slowly, slowly roll by isn’t interesting, and because Jazz is the only living being he’s met since accidently getting himself stuck in that base that hasn’t immediately wanted him dead. It’s not hard to imagine he’d like to actually learn about them, and if he can’t do that through conversation, he can do it through observation.

Jazz’s head swivels and tilts around more than it did previously- probably trying to catch a glimpse of anything out of the parts of their visor that still work. The individual fragments of it flicker separately. Prowl is almost completely sure (98.6%) that is not a good sign.

 Their footsteps are heavier, too- they probably (79.4%) can’t balance their weight right anymore, what with the fact that one of their legs physically cannot support their weight anymore.

The silence stretches on. Prowl isn’t sure if Jazz notices (or even can notice) Prowl cataloguing all the little things about their behavior, but he stops looking anyway. Looking for some kind of shelter was the reason they set out in the first place, even before Jazz’s ankle joint turned into scrap metal.

Prowl has enough time to note how much longer Jazz’s legs are than his own before he finally spots something close enough to shelter: what appears to be an empty cave entrance. If it’s big enough to fit the both of them, it’d be perfect, but from this distance it’s hard to tell.

As they get closer- slowly, slowly, as all of this has been, Jazz clearly notices it too. Their finials swivel up, head tilted oddly in the usual effort to see just about anything.

As the pair of them get closer, Jazz suddenly trips on something or other- there’s not a whole lot in the surrounding landscape, mostly rocks, and- no, really just rocks, to be honest. Rust-red stone and dust as far as the eye can see.

 It’s fairly safe (94.8%) to assume a rock is what Jazz tripped on. Unfortunately, all the issues that came with trying to haul them up to their feet in the first place are still prevalent, and Jazz nearly drags the both of them down with how much they’ve been leaning on Prowl. 

They don’t , but it’s a near thing.

Prowl, unfortunately, (or rather, fortunately, at least in terms of not acquainting his face with the ground) has practice helping mechs bigger and heavier than himself walk, which includes helping them stand back up when they inevitably fall over. Most of those mechs don’t have body mods that specifically make them harder to grab onto, but the experience still stands.

What Prowl is suddenly realising because of this is that Jazz only yelps like that when they’re surprised or shocked- they clearly didn’t anticipate their leg collapsing on them in the first place, and they certainly didn’t expect to nearly fall over here.

 Generally unrelated to that first realization, Prowl is coming to the conclusion that Jazz, unless they’re actively trying to make conversation, is a very quiet mech. 

That conclusion, however, seems at odds with what else Prowl knows about the mech, but there’s bigger, more immediate problems to concern himself with. Prowl can think about that later.

Notably, they’ve finally gotten to the cave entrance, and while it’s a little bit tight, they both fit without complications.

What will be a complication is how Prowl is going to make sure Jazz doesn’t keel over by accident: even though they clearly can’t feel pain, all the damages are still affecting their mobility and their ability to fight.

By no means is he a doctor, but Prowl can weld and stick a pain patch on, so that’s going to have to be good enough. Thankfully none of Jazz’s lines are split- as curious as Prowl might be about the color of their blood, ( blood , because the chances of Jazz bleeding energon the way Prowl does are (13.6%) very low,) he would prefer if it stayed inside his new friend. 

Friend. When did that happen? It makes sense- it’s tactical, even, Jazz is literally the only mech around, but it feels real enough. 

He likes listening to them ramble, even if they’re hard to understand. It’s odd, really, since Prowl has no patience for chatty idiots normally.

Then again, as previously discussed, nothing about this is normal. It might have something to do with the ever-present language barrier (45.6%) or how odd Jazz is, as a mech, in general (76.4%). A mystery. Mysteries aren’t something Prowl has much opportunity to interact with, these days.

Prowl shakes his head slightly. Jazz still needs repairs. Back to the task at hand. 

Jazz is leaning back against the cave wall, poking lightly at their own injuries. 

Prowl can see, with startling clarity, the sparks that fly every now and then from nearly every one of their joints- some of those surely must have healed at least a little by now, their self-repair-

Jazz is not Cybertronian, Prowl remembers. They might (54.3%) not have any self-repair at all. 

How they’re even alive if that’s true is beyond Prowl, considering how many injuries they’ve accumulated in the last solar cycle alone, but it just means that Prowl is going to have to ask if they’re hurt more often than any of his teammates back home. Especially considering they can’t feel the pain.

Oh, right, speaking of that: “[You] is [Injury] is [Aware{?}] [Know] is [{not}Feeling] [Injury].” Prowl asks, and Jazz takes long enough to respond that Prowl is starting to think his message went straight over their head when they finally reply: 

“[I] is [Injury] is [Aware], [yes.] [Injury] is [{not}Feel] {but}- [Aware?] [Sense?] [Annoy(s)].”

That is- better than Prowl had hoped. Jazz is aware of their injuries despite the fact they can’t feel the pain.

 Which- well, that’s functionally the same as being able to feel them, just less agonizing. Though apparently annoying? Prowl doesn’t have the time to ask what they mean specifically by that.

That’s yet another ‘tactically sound but can easily morph into a problem’-type thing from Jazz’s systems, which seem to be popping up in swarms as of late. 

Prowl’s list of concerns are only growing. This mech seems to have talent for that, being concerning.

Well, Prowl has enough pain patches to share. He can even call it an experiment, if he wants to. 

He holds one up for Jazz to see, watching as their head tilts around slightly to catch a better look. It’s not much, not really- it’s a little white adhesive square with painkiller nanites in it, not particularly interesting. It’s one of the heavy-duty ones, which Prowl feels is warranted, considering the state of Jazz’s ankle.

They seem to accept it’s some kind of medical equipment and nod before moving to fidget with their hands, and then to poke at their elbow joint more. 

It’s like they’re allergic to staying completely still, even sitting down.

That isn’t unique to Jazz. Prowl is, at the very least, acquainted with some other mechs like that.

Said elbow joint has started up sparking again. Jazz doesn’t seem to have noticed. This is probably to be expected.

What they evidently do notice is when Prowl sticks the pain patch on- it’s a little haphazard, but it’s not as though Prowl’s an accomplished medic or anything, so it’s better than it could have been. 

One of their finials folds back and their head tilts in the manner Prowl is beginning to be able to recognise as confusion. 

Jazz is likely performing some of this for Prowl’s benefit and Prowl’s benefit alone, to make their emotional responses easier to decode. At the very least, his TAC-net appreciates it. More data is more data.

Prowl can faintly hear them murmur something in their unknown language- likely in awe or something like it, if his calculations of how they utilize tone are correct.

“[Question] is [Feel/Sense] that{?}” Prowl asks, after a second or two of silence.

Jazz nods, leaning in to catch a better look at the patch, awkwardly stuck onto their ankle as it is. It’s not directly on there- that would get in the way of the welds Prowl’s going to have to do soon- but it’s close enough to make sure it’s not going to hurt.

“[Pings]{-mine} are [Lowered {~}{66.7%},]” Jazz eventually says, voice still carrying the slightly awed tone.

Prowl has to take a few seconds total for that one. The first few are for recognising what they mean by pings, which Prowl eventually figures out they probably mean the same way he would- pain pings, the literal signal an injured limb sends a processor to convey pain. Which means Jazz probably just understands them slightly differently than the average Cybertronian (yet another clue that they aren’t Cybertronian.) 

This of course clues into the second realisation that happens a second after: Even if Jazz doesn't feel pain, (at least not the same way Prowl would,) it was still obviously causing discomfort at the very least, which clues into the third realisation that if Jazz felt pain the way Prowl did, they probably wouldn’t be coherent at all.

Prowl has had several miniature crises by the time Jazz pokes him (very lightly) on the nose.

“[You okay{?}]” They ask, quiet as can be, and it’s equal parts touching and infuriating that they care that much.

“[Fine,]” Prowl replies, a little distractedly, because the TAC-net is still spinning wildly inside his helm on this new information. He takes a welding torch out of his subspace and holds it up for Jazz to inspect, equally distractedly.

 It’s going to be a few minutes until Prowl can make sense of any of the information he’s just been given, and doing some repairs on basically any part of Jazz is mindless enough that the chances of any significant failure are low. (13.7%, assuming Jazz will continue fidgeting the entire time.)

Jazz seems unconvinced when they reply an affirmative, and a very brief conversation about the semantic differences between ‘blowtorch’ and ‘welding torch’ later, Prowl has one of Jazz’s hands (concerningly dented and scraped up, Prowl notes, but that is what the welding torch is for,) in his own, trying to fix the almost comical amount of damage on his ally.

He has to stop to glare at them every now and then, because even though they’re still certainly in whatever passes as a significant amount of pain for them, they still fidget, still move around constantly- tapping fingers on rock or their own plating, finials twitching, the works. It gets to the point that when they do finally stop, visor blinking off, Prowl is momentarily concerned (terrified) that they’ve shut down entirely until he hears the faint whistling of their vents.

Asleep, probably. (87.4%.)

Prowl will have time to ask later. Right now is repair time and rumination time.

...Jazz is, on many levels, an enigma.

The possibility of them not being Cybertronian at all is seeming less and less like a possibility and more like a fact. It’s little oddity on little oddity, the lack of exventing as an emotional cue until Prowl did it, the way they walk and their lack of knowledge of any of the galactic lingua francas, their apparent lack of an EM field- it all piles up into something alien. 

Alien, yet friendly.

Prowl is, ever slowly, growing to not mind the uncertainty his new ally presents. Concerning as they might be, they are at least another sapient being who doesn’t want him dead. (Truly, his standards are vigorous.)

All the same, Jazz is a friend, no matter how odd they may be.

Chapter Text

It’s honestly a miracle Jazz’s life can come up with ways to surprise him now, after a year and a half (or so) in pilot service, but all the same, it does.

Recap of the past- holy Laika it’s only been two hours??? that can’t be right (time blindness strikes again, I guess)- amount of time that doesn’t feel real, let’s go with that. Recap time. For all that.

Jazz and Prowl made it to shelter. Prowl has one million on the fly mech repair doodads and one of them is apparently damage signal mitigation? Like. Painkillers. But for your giant robot that doesn’t feel pain. I mean, Jazz does, he’s got a nervous system like every other human being, but Bebop doesn’t, because she’s a twenty-two ton hunk of metal.

Which isn’t to say he doesn’t appreciate it, because as soon as the ankle pain pings cut out, Jazz realizes he has a nasty headache (which starts fading out soon after) and also he can see about twice as well now that maybe two-thirds of the alert pings have vanished off the face of the planet.

Which is. Well, it doesn’t say good things about how his ankle is doing, that’s for sure!

“Hooooo-ly Laika,” Jazz says, under no allusions that Prowl will be able to understand that, and then “[Pings]-{mine} [Pain] are [Lowered {~}{66.6%},]” to Prowl’s question that he isn’t super sure he heard right but has no idea how to ask again. No matter, Jazz can be awed by military-grade mech painkillers on his own time. 

Seriously, they have to be painkillers, because they’re eating away at his headache and the- back pain he didn’t realise he had, which means Jazz needs to get up and stretch a bit sometime soon or he’s gonna get baked into his pilot seat.

Prowl, for their part, looks... a little more than the average amount of shocked and concerned they always look. Their (mech’s) eyes are wide, flicking over Jazz (the way real, human eyes do, which Jazz is starting to maybe think isn’t a mech thing at all,) the way they do when they’re thinking about something too hard.

They’ve got these little wing-shaped things in their back that Jazz couldn’t notice before- they were probably folded up, as to not make a bigger target, or maybe Jazz was just too busy trying not to die and then too optically compromised to notice. They twitch as Prowl talks, too smooth to be totally manual. Sensory equipment? But then why do they look kinda like car doors??

“...[You okay{?}]” Jazz asks.

Prowl startles a little, says “[Fine,]” and then holds out- is that a blowtorch?

While Jazz may be able to see better now, that doesn’t mean he can see good. Hitting your face really hard on rocks is not conducive to having good eyesight. Especially when your eyes are made of glass. 

He has to tilt his head around, trying to catch an actual good look at what he’s Pretty Sure is a blowtorch. “[What’s that{?}]”

Prowl flicks it on. “[Welding torch.]” It’s pretty obviously a blowtorch, but- yeah, it could be a welding torch. Aren’t those the same thing? It’s probably for repairs.

“[Blowtorch?] Same as [welding torch.]”

Prowl gives him a flat look at that. “[Welding torch,]” they repeat.

“They-re the [same thing]!” Jazz says.

“It is a [welding torch.]”

Anyway. After that fun discussion- the language they’re making is somewhere between English and maybe a coding language invented by an alien, but it’s getting faster to talk in, so Jazz is counting that as a win- it turns out the welding torch/blowtorch- Prowl is starting to sound British, somehow, even though that’s probably impossible, considering there’s a nonzero chance that Jazz isn’t even in the Milky Way Galaxy anymore.

Wait, that got off topic. The blowtorch is medical- wait, no, it’s mech repair. Mechanical medical? Mech-med? Jazz is thinking about this too hard is what’s happening. It’s a blowtorch to weld your mech back together. Sensible! Prowl keeps glaring at him when he moves too much. Also probably sensible!

Prowl’s everything is weird. Their mech is high-tech, but only in like, a vaguely ostentatious kind of way? (Jazz swears he saw teeth, which while that’s cool, is also a bit overkill. Who invests in functioning teeth on their mech? For biting people? Prowl doesn’t seem the type.) Their eyesight seems better than his- not like that’s a high bar, but Jazz bets it’d still be better even if his mech optics weren’t shattered to hell and back.

Jazz waits to make sure Prowl seems in the rhythm of welding Bebop back together before disconnecting the neural link. He figures making it look like he fell asleep might help with making sure they don’t lose their entire shit thinking he died, or something. Jazz has a lot of stuff to think on right now. Also some stretches to do, because piloting a mech isn’t great exercise unless you’re also on a treadmill the whole time or something, but that’d be really impractical.

Jazz stands up, back cracking kind of concerningly loudly. It always takes a second to get over the weird, ephemeral disconnect-feeling- he always feels stiff somehow, like his joints can’t bend enough anymore. There’s also the vision problems. When you disconnect from a mech, because of the machinations of how the link works and yada yada yada (Jazz never paid any attention to the explanation of why all this happens) it takes a hot minute for your vision to correct itself.

It’s probably got something to do with the fact that when you’re hooked up, you’re seeing out of your mech’s eyes rather than your own (unless you’re actively trying to with your regular human eyes, that is) so it takes a minute for your brain to recognize there are no more mech’s eyes to see out of.

It’s not really all that important, as Jazz is still very much cooped up in Bebop’s cockpit, but there’s definitely some potential for that to become a very large problem. Jazz personally is used to not being able to see very well, with his track record of breaking Bebop’s optics or getting kaiju juice on there or otherwise making it kind of annoyingly hard to see, so he’s pretty good at getting through things while not being able to see real well. Or at least he’d like to think so.

The inside of the cockpit is.. about the same as it’s always been. Washed in low red light from the dim LEDs. Kind of cramped. Over-warm, from the fact that it’s a bit hard to get proper ventilation when you can’t be sure there’s air at all outside of the mech, let alone air that’s breathable. Kind of like a closet, in terms of size, at best.

A closet that smells like someone’s been sitting in it for multiple days in a row, because that’s exactly what Jazz has been doing. It’s a little like being in your car on the longest drive of your life, except the car is shaped like a person and the drive is killing aliens for a living.

Jazz is physically located somewhere in Bebop’s chest area. This is because the head’s not big enough to have him fit, plus the fact that it’d also make the neck even more of a weak spot than it already is. It’s tactical! 

Well, so’s being hard to grab, and Jazz already saw the adverse effects of that. But that’s beside the point. 

Jazz not being in Bebop’s head also makes it so it’s totally possible for Bebop to be entirely beheaded and Jazz to just. Be fine. I mean, sure, he’d no longer be able to see, or really sense anything, considering the majority of the ways he gets any sensory input at all is in Bebop’s head, but he’d be alive , and Jazz really appreciates being alive.

Jazz isn’t particularly tall, but there’s just not a lot of room they can dedicate to fitting the pilot in one of these things. Most of the rest of the chassis is filled with life support and storage, and then everything else is kaiju-killing equipment.

Prowl doesn’t really seem to have... any of that. They’re built boxy, not at all streamlined the way Jazz is. Meaning: concerningly grabbable for being a war mech. Bright colors- well, not really, their color scheme is black and white and red, with really, really blue eyes. Bright colors wouldn’t be an issue, anyway, kaiju don’t have much in the way of color vision. Kind of dull colors, really, compared to some pilots he knows. 

Speaking of those eyes... Jazz doesn’t know, but they don’t feel mech. Well, they are, but they feel distinctly alive despite that. Like... living metal.

Living metal. T-1s and T-2s are living metal. Is Prowl living metal, too? That would... Maybe explain a lot of things, actually. The hyper realistic face, all the weird features, no visible place for any life support, oh my Holy Laika Above Jazz straight up met an alien.

What the hell. Holy Laika. Jazz is suddenly very glad he disconnected, because he’d have no idea how to explain himself suddenly jumping up and cheering wildly at the prospect of getting to talk to Prowl more. Normal behavior, right? Completely normal behavior. He’s normal. He’s so normal. He’s the most normallest human being in-

-literal Astronomical Units, holy Laika he’s so alone. Well, Prowl’s here, at least! That’s gotta count for something! Prowl! Somebody Jazz can talk to so he can make sure he isn’t totally going insane!

Wait a minute, Prowl probably thinks he’s also the same kind of.. giant robot space alien he is. Which. That sounds so stupid. Incredibly stupid. Giant alien space robots is equal parts cool as hell and so, so stupid. It’s a miracle Jazz hasn’t exploded yet from sheer Emotions.

And at least that means this is almost definitely just another guy named Prowl. Because. What. If Wrong Space is to blame here, Jazz is going to become much, much more concerned about what’s happening to him, but also at the same time he does have bigger things to be worrying about, notably staying alive for the foreseeable future.

Well, it’ll probably be better to have Prowl keep thinking he is Bebop. Would save him from having to explain the whole pilot situation.

 Small issue with that: Jazz has no idea how to be a normal human being, let alone a normal space robot. 

Then again, the ‘normal’ part of that has probably boarded a ship and sailed away already. Such is Jazz’s luck. At least that means that Jazz won’t have to try too hard- inevitably he’ll make more social faux pas than he knew were possible, but Prowl’s probably already gotten used to the fact that Jazz is a walking talking dumpster fire, so nothing on that front really needs to change.

It’s a good thing, too- Jazz hasn’t really known how to be normal for a long time. He’s considered weird even by other pilots, which is something of a feat considering what the job description is. If you think your coworker, who also punches aliens for a living, is weirder than you are, something’s funky about that.

Then again, ‘normal’ is kind of a relative concept. Jazz is literally the only member of the human race Prowl has ever met, so maybe he can convince them that all humans are like this and that he’s perfectly average.

It’s a vain hope, but it sure is something!

Alright, stretches done, Jazz has officially moved enough he probably won’t become one with his pilot’s seat. Probably. There’s worse fates to be had, anyway.

Jazz links himself back in. Prowl visibly startles a little as Jazz ‘wakes back up,’ having apparently touched up most of the minor dings and scrapes that even Bebop’s systems forgot to tell him about while Jazz was busy losing his mind (just a little bit ) about apparently having met an alien.

Jazz ‘stretches’ a little- it doesn’t really feel like anything, not when you can spin your head all the way around and then some, but it’s a good way to calibrate your brain to how far your mecha can move versus how far you, the human, can move.

Most pilots don’t really do that, not when they’re less flexible in-mecha than out of it, like most artillery-role mechs. Don’t need fine motor skills when your job is to shoot aliens with gigantic cannons, after all.

Well, it’s not like Bebop has much of that, either, but still. Flexibility is flexibility.

That’s apparently what they build Wolf-Classes for- it’s probably got something to do with the fact that they’re meant to be agile or whatever so they can stab kaiju more efficiently, but all it really does is make everybody else seem slow. Especially when you spend more time in your mech than you do out of it.

That last bit probably isn’t healthy, but where’s Jazz going to walk around here?? Forecast says there’s a 99.99% chance that he can’t even breathe the atmosphere, and also he certainly isn’t getting out now that he knows his good buddy Prowl would see him as a chestburster or whatever.

“[Status?]” Prowl asks.

Jazz tilts his head, listening to see if there’s any pings. Next to none, okay, status report? 

Overall mech stability: 83.5%.

Okay, that’s really good. That last 16.5 or so percent is probably just the ankle and the optics back at it again, so Jazz would say he’s doing pretty well, actually! Hasn’t even combusted yet. Which is great, he likes not combusting.

“[83.5%,] [{~} 90% {not} including ankle].” Jazz replies.

Prowl nods at this. The blowtorch is long gone- Jazz doesn’t even know where they would’ve had room to put it, especially considering they definitely don’t have any storage space in that chassis, but it has evidently been put away. Along with all the other (looking back, kind of obviously medical equipment-shaped) mech repair tools.

Man does Jazz feel a little bit stupid for not realizing that Prowl isn’t also a piloted mech, now that he keeps noticing a million little details about how they’re clearly just like that.

Expressive mech face with teeth, eyes that visibly calibrate and look at things the way actual people do and look like actual people eyes instead of a flat plane of glowing glass, incredibly articulated hands with five fingers instead of four, et cetera, et cetera.

It really does seem obvious now that Jazz knows what he’s looking for, at any rate.

Then again, that’s how most things you didn’t know previously are, once you know what they’re supposed to be.

“So... [what now{?}]” Jazz asks.

“[Locate] [Communications,] so we can [Contact] [Allies],” Prowl replies.

Right. Okay. Well, Jazz doesn’t really have any allies in the even mildly contactable range, considering the whole ‘might no longer even be in the Milky Way’ thing, but hey, maybe if Prowl can contact some of their buddies, Jazz can maybe even postpone his inevitable death at the hands of either some kind of Beast or just straight up space as a whole.

None of that comes through as Jazz just nods, though.

Really, finding somewhere to broadcast something isn’t a bad idea- maybe some other pilots have gotten irreversibly lost out here, too, and in any case it can’t hurt to try.

Well, maybe it can, in the form of attracting some kaiju, but that’s a bridge Jazz can burn when he gets there.

But as soon as Jazz so much as even tries to stand up, Prowl is levelling him with a smaller version of their trademark glare- maybe something more like a disapproving look, really- and says “[No.] [{Your} Status: Still Injured.] [Stay Here] until [Repairs] are [Finished.]”

Well, that’s stupid. 

For one thing, Jazz doesn’t think they have the tools for fixing his visor on hand, (nor does he even know what those would look like) and also, he’s fought with worse?

Sure, the one time he (Bebop, really, but same difference) got decapitated wasn’t fun per say, but it probably wasn’t the worst experience of his life. That was an illustrious category reserved only for the time he got very briefly lost in Wrong Space, but the less said about that time the better.

Really, all Jazz needs is some kind of makeshift splint for his ankle, and he can get moving on just fine. Sure, he may feel like he’s got a peg-leg for a while, but that’s better than having to lean on Prowl the whole way.

When Jazz voices these opinions (“[Status: Fine,] I-ve [Fought] with [Status {worse than} Near-Critical] [Before,]”) Prowl’s Disapproving Look strengthens into a full-on scowl, with perhaps a touch of concern.

“[Against] who?” Prowl asks.

Jazz blinks, visor flickering a little in surprise. “[alien-threat-many-force:] or: [“Leviathans”].”

Prowl’s expression somehow darkens further, which Jazz didn’t know was even possible. “[alien-threat-many-force:] [“Quintessons”].

Is that what they call the little gooey things? Or maybe those are footsoldiers, the way T-1s aren’t actual Leviathans? Maybe that’s what Prowl calls their version of the Leviathans? Or maybe the Quintessons are the Leviathans. 

Many such questions to be had. It’s a real shame Jazz doesn’t know how to ask even half of ‘em.

Alright, may as well take a shot at asking one. He has nothing to lose about it. Tilting his head a little, Jazz says “[Leviathans:] same as [Quintessons{?}]”

“[Information:] [unknown.]” Prowl replies, after a long moment.

Well, yeah. Of course Prowl wouldn’t know, Prowl hadn’t even heard of the Leviathans before this. Which is. Wow, that’s a novel statement. Hadn’t heard of the Leviathans. You know, just the inescapable alien threat clearly trying its damndest to destroy the human race for only Laika knows what reason.

Then again, Prowl probably feels the same way about Jazz’s never hearing about the Quintessons. Which are possibly the same thing as the Leviathans.

Alright, that’s enough speculating on the nature of the universe for now. Jazz has things to do. Notably, his eyes work well enough right now (he’s also having a moment of relative safety, where he’s not actively being chased down by a hostile something-or-other, that really helps) that he can finally check out the damage on that ankle!

Leaning in to check it out probably won’t be much good, considering that Jazz may or may not end up whacking Prowl in the face, so, alternatively, Jazz can just kind of.. rotate his entire leg?

There’s pros to being wildly flexible like this! However, Jazz does not miss the weird feeling you get when you rotate a limb farther than you’re used to being able to rotate it, nor does he miss the somewhere between mildly concerned and mildly terrified look on Prowl’s face.

Speaking of Prowl, they’ve pulled out a decently-sized blue cube of something, peeled a little seal off the top and are... drinking it?

Well, okay, if Jazz hadn’t figured out they were an alien, he would’ve figured it out just now, because. What. Huh. Well, I guess that answers the unspoken and unwondered question of how Prowl got any fuel.

Tabling all that for now, Jazz goes back to his original plan of inspecting the damage.

His ankle was pretty much snapped in half, and then welded back together pretty expertly for someone who has next to no idea how Bebop works even a little bit.

Which is to say that Jazz might even be able to walk on this without too many complications, which is probably the best news Jazz has heard since he heard about the time Shock tripped and ate shit in the hallway that once.

Really, the status report is only about ~70% functionality, even being generous about it, but even only that much means it’ll hold Jazz’s/Bebop’s weight just fine, so Jazz is plenty ready to get going.

Sure, it may be beneficial to his health if he waited a bit more, but when has he ever done things based on how good for his health they’d be? That’s not why people become mecha pilots.

Prowl probably needs some time to sleep, though. 

Jazz too, but sleep deprivation is an older friend than even constant mortal peril, so unless he starts falling asleep in the middle of fighting some kaiju, he’ll be fine. Again: dealt with worse. That’s what he gets for one and a half years of ever-present danger and however many years spent being afraid before that.

“[You need] to [Sleep/Rest/Recharge{?}]” Jazz asks. “Can [Keep watch] for [you.]”

Prowl blinks- surprised, maybe? -and then nods, shifting to make themselves more comfortable on the intensely un comfortable rock.

Oh, right, they probably can feel things through that mech, considering it’s their body! Man, one upside to having basically next to no nerves anywhere but his mech’s hands and feet- he can sleep just about anywhere. Especially if he disconnects, but that’s a good recipe for almost getting scrapped alive, especially if the scrap collectors- Carrion Crawlers, as they’re typically called, no one really remembers why- are inattentive and assumed ‘lying still = dead.’

Why, yes, Jazz’s gripes seem suspiciously specific, it’s because they all actually happened.

But anyway. Jazz looks away, out into the sandy red distance. Not much to look at, really. Getting dark, but the sunset must be behind the pair of them somewhere, because Jazz can’t see it.

Alright. Jazz (the Jazz in the cockpit) leans over to one of the few physical controls they left in his mech- a way to play music!

Sure, he’d had to bribe the mechanics a Significant Amount to have ‘em install it, but smashing through kaiju with the loudest, crunchiest, screamiest music you’ve ever heard in your entire life is an experience unparalleled by literally anything else Jazz has ever experienced in his life, so he’d say it was worth it.

A big chunk of his music library got corrupted beyond repair, though. For all the loud-crunchy-screamy stuff, he barely even notices, because it just adds to the feeling of it, but you can’t really listen to classical music with the staticky cutting noises of perhaps some unfortunate pilot’s dying screams blaring through it.

But after a few minutes of sifting through things that he both wants to listen to right now and also isn’t corrupted so much as to be completely unlistenable, he finally sets on the playlist he threw together for when he’s actually doing his job (read: ripping apart aliens) in maybe the hopes it’ll help keep him awake.

Chapter Text

It turns out that night watch isn’t all that interesting.

There’s just really nothing out here- nothing but dust, and rocks, and more dust, and more rocks.

It’s just a reeeeal dustball out here. Old Western movie kind of dry and empty and windy and completely uninteresting. Not even so much as a tumbleweed to watch blow by.

And it’s especially uninteresting when it gets dark, considering Jazz just can’t see very well (in or out of mech) in the dark.

Nothing shows up, though, and Jazz gets a pretty usual night of listening to music loud enough he can feel the bass vibrate the whole cockpit.

Is that good for his hearing? Well, no, but nothing else about his lifestyle is good for his health either, and besides, if anything’s gonna kill him, it’s not gonna be that he likes blaring music in the dead of night when he can’t sleep. It’s not that loud. Probably.

It’s not loud enough Prowl can hear it, anyway, so Jazz is free to blast away pretty much all night. 

Speaking of Prowl, they started waking up a bit before sunrise. Jazz is happy to see they didn’t somehow explode overnight, and also, almost completely unrelatedly, feels like he needs an energy drink. Maybe several, actually. Possibly even a few.

He hasn’t been paying attention to the time, but it sure feels like he’s been up for 48 consecutive hours, and all the chemical pick-me-ups Bebop had once upon a time got used up on an ill-advised experiment to see how many hours he could stay up in a row a long, long time ago.

(It’d ended up totalling in the hundred, hundred ten hours range, and then Jazz had passed out for pretty much a week straight. Best sleep of his life.)

In his defense, it’d been the only time they knew for sure that there would be no attacks in the sector they were defending, so everybody got some time to goof off before they all had to get back to work (and therefore back to dying.)

Jazz says some generic greeting to Prowl- probably “good morning,” that’s a pretty safe bet, pretty normal, certainly things that normal people say to other normal people. 

He’s currently clinging to being mentally present with everything he has, just. Give him a minute, he’ll be fine in a minute.

Small issue: he and Prowl have to, like, get going soon? Possibly even right now? And Jazz just faked being asleep so he could do his stretches and make sure his muscles still work. 

Sleep. Is important. He kind of needs that.

Space robots probably don’t need to sleep once every day, they’re space robots, but also. Jazz’s brain. Feels significantly mushlike. More so than it did before he stayed up all night, anyway, which seems kind of obvious now that he puts it that way, but all the same. Falling over because he couldn’t keep himself awake is one of the most surefire ways to give Prowl a heart attack.

Do they even have a heart? They’re a giant robot, do they even need blood?? Wondering about Prowl’s biology is not a good idea right now. Jazz does not have the brain cells to spare. All his brain cells are currently writhing around on the ground like consumptive Victorian orphans.

Prowl can’t even carry Jazz, because the whole thing about being hard to grab is still true, and because Jazz hasn’t gotten any lighter since then, either.

So this is really just a bit of a Situation he’s gotten himself into.

Wait a minute, isn’t there some kind of autopilot function? For this exact reason? 

Yeah, there is! How convenient! It’s probably going to use up all the good luck Jazz had left in his life, but he doesn’t have time to worry about that, he’s going to bask in this singular instance of something Good happening and moving on with his life.

Jazz never liked the thing- he always preferred to pilot his mech with his own brain instead of getting some kind of code script to do it for him, but right now is. Kind of an exception. Considering the fact that most mecha pilots usually get at least one, maybe two hours of sleep before linking into their mecha and doing ill-advised things with all that fancy free will they have.

Jazz can do incredibly stupid things with his free will, too! In fact, he does stupid things every day, the first and most notable of which being deciding to become a mecha pilot at all.

Jazz gets his way through the conversation (barely.) He says something about the fact that they should get going, (they really should) waits a bit, gets up, and walks behind Prowl. He’s kicking up dust with every footfall. He doesn’t have the brainpower to spare to make his steps light and graceful and whatever else they usually are right now. Currently all the brainpower is being filtered into staying awake enough, if not coherent enough, that he can actually get what he needs to do before he explodes.

He sets up the autopilot quickly with just the instructions to follow Prowl and follow their directions, and as soon as Jazz’s overworked and overtired brain registers completely that he doesn’t have to do anything right now, he’s out like a light.

☆。*。☆。

Prowl doesn’t know exactly what’s going on with Jazz at the moment.

The pair of them walk through the dusty red landscape, the alien sun having long risen to cast light enough to start baking anything caught in its rays too long.

Jazz is walking somehow stiltedly, movements even, yet mechanical. Done with little of the grace Prowl had learned to associate with them.

Their head is lowered, visor almost completely off, finials sitting at a slightly raised (neutral, 76.9%) position.

“[Jazz{?}]” Prowl says.

Jazz doesn’t answer, continuing their even-paced walk, keeping in time with Prowl.

Hm.

Prowl slows down, and Jazz slows down with him. Keeping in time. Following him.

Several possibilities arise:

1) Jazz is ignoring Prowl for some reason. (24.01%. Unlikely, considering their outgoing and friendly nature. Jazz would probably tell Prowl if he accidentally did anything to offend them.)

2) Jazz’s audial capacity has suddenly taken a turn for the worse, and they can no longer hear Prowl calling their designation. (5.7%. Doubtful. The lowered visor brightness and no noted instances of Jazz poking at their finials as they have been noted poking at other injuries suggests otherwise.)

3) Jazz is recharging, and their biology permits them to continue moving even despite this. (39.82%. They were up all night last night to keep watch. There is a noted instance of them recharging within the last two solar cycles, but that can be excused with possibly Jazz simply needing much more recharge than the average Cybertronian, or that instance not being recharge at all. Likewise, this could be some kind of systems check, but as far as Prowl can see and can calculate, Jazz is recharging, or at least performing some kind of equivalent period of inactivity. Besides, of course, the walking.)

Prowl is likely free to continue going. Jazz may have (63.2%) done this in an attempt to continue the walk to the closest communications station while also getting some recharge.

If Prowl were capable, he’d likely do this too. It’s remarkably efficient- he probably wouldn’t be able to sort papers while asleep like this, but being able to do anything at all is remarkable in and of itself.

Jazz, even asleep, follows after Prowl. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that Prowl is their only option, or maybe it’s that Prowl exudes the energy that he might even know what he’s doing, or maybe it’s a combination of both.

Or it might be that Prowl was the one who knew where the base was. He doesn’t know. It’s still something approaching flattering, though, that Jazz would do something like that despite the fact that they barely know each other.

Prowl’s only options are either stick with Jazz or abandon them. Only one is viable. Leaving Jazz behind is barely even an option. Jazz is skilled and competent, and Prowl appreciates mechs with skill and competency. Besides, having company, even if that company can be unpredictable, is better than nothing. Especially interesting company.

Jazz’s motives are ever mysterious, though truly only to a degree. Jazz wants to stay alive, same as anyone. Prowl happens to be nearby. Thus, they are together in this.

So he keeps walking. Now is a good time to simply observe Jazz, considering their current inability to answer questions.

The way they walk when ‘asleep’- their sleepwalking, for ease of discussion- is notably different to the way they usually walk.

Less lithe and confident, more putting one foot in front of the other. At the optimal rate to match Prowl’s own movement, of course. Mechanical. Efficient, but not particularly graceful. Automated. Done with no supervision by anything sapient, meant to get you one place from another while you rest or are otherwise distracted.

It’s interesting to watch, what with how mildly wrong it is. Jazz doesn’t walk like that. Jazz apparently sleepwalks like that. It’s intriguing to watch.

The landscape remains pretty consistent as they continue on- same rust-red rocks and dirt and distant clifflike shelves of the same kind of uniformly-colored rock.

In other words: still not particularly interesting. Prowl has never been one for geology, and even then, he severely doubts this place would be of much interest to anyone. The atmosphere is unremarkable, the rocks are unremarkable, there is no wildlife to speak of, et cetera, et cetera.

The one thing of particular note about the place is the sheer concentration of Quintesson bases on its surface. Most are long-abandoned by now, considering the hostile nature of the experimental weapons built here, but the fact that they were there at all is still, at the very least, something.

Prowl blinks.

There’s something in the distance.

Prowl stops, Jazz coming to a halt beside him. His doorwings twitch, trying to get a better read on what it could be.

Quintesson soldier? (37.5%.) Mech? (19.04%.) Experimental weapon? (67.5%.) Any are possible. ‘Experiment’ and ‘Quintesson’ seem to be the only likely options.

As it approaches, Prowl catches more details.

The beast- quadruped, burly, about as tall as he is, biometal plates covering its body- rumbles closer, sharp-edged face split open by a thousand-toothed razor’s-edge jaw, beady red-orange eyes lit by a dim glow that catches in the dry, hot sun like bloodlust.

Prowl flips into altmode and speeds away as fast as he can physically make himself go. There is no way he could do any reasonable damage to a beast like that- even if his blaster can get between the plates, the effect would be minimal at best, and then he would be torn limb from limb.

The sand and rocks catch painfully on his tires, but Prowl cannot afford to stop.

Jazz dashes after him, joints audibly straining to keep up. Honestly, the fact that they can even keep up this well is a testament to their abilities, considering they don’t have an altmode at all (98.72%, no kibble and visible interest in Prowl’s kibble, as if unfamiliar.) and especially impressive considering they are still asleep, but Prowl does not have the time to spare to think about such things.

Prowl eventually runs out of energy to keep going- after how long he doesn’t know- but he returns to root mode, slides behind cover, and hopes the beast will overlook him.

In his haste, he failed to realize that Jazz would not hide with him.

And so, Prowl gets to see, with startling clarity, as the animal leaps, claws extended, and shears Jazz’s head clean off his body.

The rest of Jazz’s body stumbles to a halt, still somehow upright, wobbling dangerously.

Prowl watches Jazz’s head bounce off the ground once, twice, thrice, with a triplet clunk, clunk, clunk, rolling a little on the flat ground before coming to a halt, and Prowl accepts, with blind certainty, that he is certainly dead.

Chapter Text

Jazz is slammed back into reality with a white-hot bolt of panic and the sounds of screeching metal and blaring alert pings.

The first thing he registers is that he can’t see.

The second thing he can register is that he can see, but only a gigantic, all-caps, LED-red [OPTICAL SUITE DAMAGED. STATUS: 0%] message.

Jazz expertly waves an uncoordinated hand through the general area where his-slash-Bebop’s head should be, and-

Well. No shit, the optical suite is damaged!

Okay, keep going. Wake up, get yourself together, make sure you do what you can to not bite it. Roll with the punches, baby, or you will die.

Time seems to slow down (probably does slow down, thanks combat mods) as Jazz swings, letting the sword extend faster with the additional power of gravity.

Right. Okay. There’s a thing. A thing nearby. Gotta figure out how to see it.

An idea occurs to Jazz almost immediately.

This is probably the worst idea he’s had in a long time. But: if it keeps him alive, Jazz is willing to try anything.

 He can get the emergency air filters out, open the cockpit to the outside world, and squint real hard to figure out what and where the thing that chopped his head off is.

Either that, or he can wait for it to come back once it realizes he’s not actually dead. 

Just swinging in the general area won’t be helpful- kaiju are usually smart enough to attack when you’re as off-guard as you can get.

While it may be a terrible idea, it is also the best idea he has so far, so Jazz gets to digging for those air filters as quickly as he can.

He feels distinctly slow doing it, like his brain is going a million miles faster than he could ever move, but he finds them quick enough.

His hands catch on the tightly sealed little package of emergency air filters, (Jazz spares the barest of moments to thank Laika and whatever else might be out there that they were where he left them) and he rips it open carefully (read: with his teeth) before fitting one over his face and covering it with the built-in helmet jaw guard.

The jaw guard is an emergency quasi-safety feature built into pretty much every FAUNA-brand helmet to ever exist, to make sure that if you ever thrown around inside your mech, you will at least be able to find all of the teeth that got knocked out of your face. In a pinch, it also makes the second half of a pretty decent gas mask!

With a long several seconds of finagling, the cockpit panels open a few inches, hissing steam like unhappy mechanical snakes. All Jazz can see out of it is dust and rocks, but that was to be expected. That’s pretty much the only thing out there.

The first thing of actual note he catches a glimpse of is a black-and-white blur that may or may not be Prowl, crouched next to a particularly large rock.

Oh, Laika’s teeth, Jazz forgot about Prowl.

The second thing Jazz sees through the five-inch gap between the cover panels is a kaiju-shaped gray-green-silvery blurred blob of biometal, standing too close for comfort to just about anything but especially Prowl.

Jazz doesn’t have time to think before he’s dashing as fast as his legs will carry him to intercept.

Jazz certainly did not hit at the optimal angle. He has no idea what he’s fighting- definitely something he’s not supposed to be by himself, it’s too big to be anything in his weight class, but Prowl’s combat capabilities are certainly not melee, so Jazz is just gonna have to suck it up and get a distraction so Prowl can either escape or back up enough to be able to aim properly. 

Either would be good. Either means Prowl won’t die. Prowl not dying is the priority.

Maybe the thing assumed he’d be dead if it just carved through his whole neck- and sure, if he was the same species as Prowl, he probably would be! Thing is, he’s not, and now he’s pissed that somebody tried to kill him while he was taking the first proper nap he’s had since he got here! 

But in any case, if it’d assumed he was dead, maybe that would explain the fact that it took way longer than usual for it to start fighting back- Jazz could only tell because of the usual amount of time-as-molasses, really it was probably only thirty seconds at absolute most.

The thing flails, sharp-edged claws scrabbling wildly- maybe panicked? Makes sense, Jazz did just get summarily decapitated and all that did was serve to make him angry. He can feel the blows deflect off his armor more often than they connect, and Jazz swings back as often as he can. His hits land more often.

His sword catches on the flesh between plates, and protocol takes over- twist, pry the armor off, make a bigger weak spot you can aim for more easily. Get your blades as deep as you can get ‘em and shred.

That’s what the dagger is for. Jazz hadn't needed it with the corrosive ones, considering he could just spear ‘em through with his sword arm and kick ‘em to the side, but for a bigger, hardier thing, (like absolutely everything Jazz is used to fighting) you pry up a weak spot and start ripping from there for all you’re worth.

The thing fights dirty, though- chopped off his head, for one, meaning he basically can’t aim anymore, and keeps trying to go for his joints, but Jazz is pissed, and when he’s pissed, he’s ruthless.

It takes a while. Some of that may have just been that he couldn’t tell how much damage he’d already dealt, but by the time he was stomping its metal face in, (with his good leg, he’s not a complete idiot) he was pretty sure it was dead.

So, sure, hacking what he’s pretty sure was its head might’ve been a bit overkill, but sue him, he has a license to be a bit dramatic. Plus, he needed that stress relief! He hasn’t had the proper time to really go ham on something in a while!

He stops. He can feel Bebop’s limbs shaking a little. Time still feels slow, every moment stretching into a second and every minute stretching into hours.

It’s either that the thing was surprised because it’d assumed Jazz was dead, it was already mostly done for, it wasn’t totally finished baking, or Jazz got really, really lucky.

It’s probably that third one. Fully grown beasties like that put up more of a fight, and investigating what’s left of it, Jazz can kind of see that it looks like-

oh. Oh Holy Laika Above.

That looks like a Ripper. A T-5. A baby T-5, sure, real small and with a bigger head than most, positively childlike, but that’s still definitely a T-5, and Jazz just killed it pretty much entirely by himself- Prowl probably got some shots in, Jazz can’t tell. They’re the type to be competent even when there are aliens trying to rip their face off, they probably got some shots in.

T-5s are just not things that die easily. 

T-5s are terrifying, sharply intelligent monstrosities that require a minimum of five pilots to kill cleanly, and even then, at least one of those pilots is dying in the process. Smart and mean enough that they like toying with their prey. Bigger than just about every mech they make.

Well, at least the fully-grown ones are. Jazz didn’t know they weren’t just constructed, like other troops, but maybe it’s just got something to do with how they are. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He’s just glad he’s alive.

Rippers are things that live in pilot’s nightmares. Rippers are things that can take down an entire base’s worth of pilots entirely by itself, if you’re unlucky enough.

But it is dead. Very much so.

Jazz laughs at that, a disbelieving, sharp-edged thing, curling in on himself with the energy of the remainder of the adrenaline and the dissipating quicktime in his veins.

Quicktime. Time dilation. So you move faster, or at least fast enough to keep up with the especially nasty kaiju and make sure you continue being an asset instead of a pile of scrap metal torn open. Your best friend during a fight.

It’s not just what just happened, he doesn’t think. Maybe this was just the straw to break the camel’s back, the last thing on a long, long list of terribly unlucky things that’ve happened to him over the course of his whole life, starting either with being born or losing his best friend.

He nearly spears Prowl through when they first try to get his attention, (a light touch to his shoulder, barely enough to even feel through the mech interface) but he doesn’t, though only on account of the fact that he put his sword away to more effectively roll into a tight little ball of glittering, dangerous emotions shaped like shards of shattered glass.

Oh, right, his mic still works because A) there’s alternate speakers in the thigh joints, so people who aren’t in mechs and/or scaffoldings can understand him better, and B) the original speakers are in the lower section of Bebop’s neck! Where the baby Ripper did not hit!

So! Prowl heard all of that!

Prowl also probably assumed he was dead for a hot minute there!

GREAT!

Nothing like having your alien teammate get a front-row seat to a mental breakdown that was probably a long time coming for a bonding experience!

If Jazz had a nickel for every time he’d been decapitated, he’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s really infuriating it’s happened twice.

Okay, what else does he have to sense things with. Infrared? Nope, that was with the head. Radar? Unhelpful. It’s hard to use at the best of times, best used supplemented with actually being able to see. In other words, off the table.

Prowl’s saying something. They’re too muffled through the metal of the cockpit and the pings and all the other noise to be understandable.

“I- [sorry,]” Jazz manages to haltingly get out. “[Can-t hear you,] [audial capacity: {~}5%,]”

There’s more muffled murmuring of something-or-other sound , and then a little “Communications request received. Accept? [Y/N]” shows up on the HUD viewpanel.

Jazz laughs, a significantly less sharp-edged thing, now, (because of course Prowl has comms, why wouldn’t they?) and clicks to accept.

Chapter Text

Jazz’s head bounces, rolls, comes to a halt. The rest of Jazz, miraculously, stands frozen, hands twitching of their own accord.

Prowl is simultaneously calculating the odds of his death versus the odds of him being able to escape versus the odds that Jazz is dead. 

Odds of survival: Not high. 

He couldn’t outrun the thing before. He’s certainly not going to be able to now. Maybe Jazz’s body would distract it? (Doesn’t that seem a bit cruel?)(You don't have time to be considering the cruelty of it.)

The biometal beast- a Quintesson footsoldier, experimental, perhaps? -turns, movements languid, calm. It doesn’t even consider Prowl a threat. To be fair, Prowl hasn’t done much of anything yet, because a large chunk of his processing power is being spent via reconciling the fact that Jazz is almost certainly dead with the fact that their body somehow still hasn’t fallen over.

It lists a little to the side, and then corrects, one hand coming up almost drunkenly to make an uncoordinated swipe through the area where their head once was.

Prowl. Doesn’t know what to do with this information. Because people do not survive having their heads chopped clean off their bodies. That is not something people do. The processor disconnect alone-

And yet. Jazz is still moving. That same hand comes back down with a perhaps more skillful, more intentional motion, letting loose with the additional power of gravity the same blade Prowl had seen before. It wavers a little, held defensively- or at least as defensively as they could manage, considering their head has been entirely separated from their body.

The Quint either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, attentions long pulled away to seemingly look Prowl over. As though it were sizing him up, trying to gauge if toying with him would be worth it.

It seems markedly intelligent , some backend part of Prowl has the wherewithal to note. The bulky, quadrupedal beast stalks in a loose circle around Prowl with a grace not befitting it. This thing knows what it wants. Perhaps that want is crueler than Prowl would like.

The animal stalks closer. From this distance- (not far, not as far as Prowl would like, but Prowl hasn't been able to get what he'd like for a long time, now, so what difference does it make?) -he can see its dentae clearly. Off-white and sharp and in at least two rows, constantly bared as the animal has nothing in the way of lips. Almost like a grim smile.

Over to the side, somehow still standing, stock-still albeit wavering on their feet, Prowl can hear their.. chest plates? He doesn't have the time to look over, to make sure, and anyway that conclusion doesn't make any Pit-damned sense - so it's probably something else. Has to be. Right?

The animal stalks closer. The TAC-net is working itself into a spiral, trying desperately to estimate the odds of survival, of success, of anything it can grasp at. Prowl can feel the calculations rattle around, faster and faster as they all stack up zero.  

(Or, at least, close enough to not matter.)

Prowl has just about opened up a notation file to mark down his last will in case anyone ever stumbles upon his greyed-out corpse when Jazz slams into the beast.

The hit is inefficient, easily explained by the fact that if, somehow, improbably, they are still alive, they wouldn't be able to see at all. 

It still catches the beast off-guard, however, knocking it off its balance just enough that Jazz's kick (with their good leg, Prowl somehow has the time to note,) lands square in the middle of its face.

And then the pair of them descend into a mess of scrabbling metal and kicked-up dust before Prowl can so much as blink.  

From what he can catch, though, Jazz fights like a rabid animal. A highly precise- especially considering the circumstances- and faster than general reaction time should allow rabid animal, but a rabid animal all the same. Perhaps that has something to do with the circumstances.

In any case, Jazz is moving around so much that even if Prowl hadn't essentially stunlocked himself thinking about the prospective realisticness of the noise actually being Jazz’s chest plates and all of the implications that came with that, all of which Prowl wanted exactly no part of, he still wouldn't have been able to land any shots. Not without significant risk to Jazz, who was already missing their entire head. Likely also a significant portion of their neck. In other words: Not viable to even be aiming in the direction of. Shouldn’t even be alive, but Prowl gas safely packed that logical inconsistency into its very own neat little box where he can not think about it for the moment and continue to focus on staying alive.

There’s a particularly loud screech of metal-on-metal, quickly followed by a wet ripping sound, and on the heels of that, another screech. 

Prowl refocuses, sees that Jazz, despite their lack of.. Several Important Things (Prowl’s not letting himself think about it. Too many things are happening for all of that to get the proper attention it needs, due to budget cuts and time constraints) has aimed well enough to start prying up the outer layer of the beast’s shelling, splattering incandescent polychrome something-or-other over the dry, rocky ground. It catches the light a million colors, and then is quite promptly scuffed into the dirt by Jazz’s errant pede.

Prowl feels quite like the lump of dirt he’s standing next to, watching this. 

He really does wish he could do- really just about anything, in this situation, because if he tries to shoot he may miss and hit Jazz instead, and that is the last thing either of them need right now. Hand-to-hand was off the table before any of this even started, because that’s about as far from Prowl’s intended jurisdiction as is possible to get.

The ‘rabid animal’ observation hasn’t gotten any less astute, though. Somehow in the midst of the rest of Prowl’s processor curling in on itself like some manner of dying insect, he manages to calculate a 76.8% chance that if Jazz were physically capable, they would be biting as a means of attack.

What nice and reasonable priorities, the battle computer in his brain has.

Prowl then has to clamp down on another inane data spiral about how Jazz is meant to fuel if they don’t even have an intake, because that’s not the point.

Prowl is further distracted by Jazz picking up the animal and bodily throwing it a fair distance. Prowl refocuses, aims. This is as clean a shot as he is going to get. Capitalize on your chances, Smokescreen always said. 

Well, he's trying his best.

The shot lands true, and Prowl is relieved his calculations (94.5% he’d land the shot with no collateral) were accurate. Jazz may be more durable than every other mech Prowl knows, but he’d hate to find out about a critical weakness to blaster fire or some other such fault. 

Prowl is thinking too much about the possibilities. But he doesn’t have anything else to do, not when he's stuck resembling an inanimate object for his considerable lack of being able to do anything at all.

So Prowl watches. He watches as Jazz stomps the animal's skull in with more prejudice than Prowl would have thought they were capable of. 

"Teɪk ðæt, ju.. bɪtʃ-æs naɪtmɛr mɑnstər," Prowl hears them say, unintelligible for the sake of the fact that Prowl certainly (96.5%) has no chance of knowing the language in the first place, and for the fact that the combined probable slurring of the words and the static lacing their voice makes it so that even if Prowl knew the language, he likely wouldn't be able to understand them anyway. 

Prowl might be thinking in circles, he quite honestly cannot tell.

There's a pause, as Jazz leans over the corpse of the beast that really should have killed them. They freeze after a few seconds, then rock back on their heels.

Their feet scuff in the dust, kicking up little cream-gray clouds around their ankles. The sword hand comes up, blade clattering back into its compartment, to maybe try and wipe something off their face, but it misses, passing through the empty space where their head no longer is. 

(Prowl can still see it, lying forgotten by the wayside. It’s not a sight he enjoys.)

Then they hunch in on themselves, arms wrapped tight around their body for the sake of the fact that they don't have a face to bury in their hands anymore. It takes a second for Prowl to realize they're laughing , a barking, acrid, static-filled kind of noise that speaks to instability and perhaps hysteria.

Well, Prowl didn't need the TAC-net to figure that one out. He doubts he would do very well, either, if he woke up with his head chopped off.

He slowly, slowly approaches. He doubts they can see very well. They likely can't hear very well, either. Really, now that he's putting some thought into it, a lot of important things are attached to one's head, which again begs the question of HOW IS JAZZ ALIVE? and then Prowl has to stuff that back into its metaphorical box before he overheats and explodes.

“[Jazz,]” Prowl tries. No response. Jazz’s acrid laughter begins to die off, their whole-body shakes dying down in kind. Prowl waits a moment. Tries again, with similar results.

He reaches out, brushes their shoulder. The distinctly sharp way they move at that isn’t quite a flinch but isn’t quite anything else, either- it takes Prowl a second to realize that Jazz probably would have stabbed him on instinct, had their sword still been out. He’s not going to worry about that right now. He’s got bigger priorities.

“[Jazz.] [Status report{?}] [Audial capacity{?}] [How are you {living/functional}{!?}]” Prowl says.

Jazz just sort of twitches. Prowl is only just now realizing how expressive those finials were, and how inordinately difficult it is to read Jazz’s expressions without them. 

Eventually, stutteringly, still laced with static but intelligible nonetheless, they say “aɪ- [sorry,]” Brief pause. Considering? Vocalizer glitch? Prowl may never know. “[Can-t hear you,] [audial capacity: {~}5%,]”

Well, at least that answers that. Prowl had already assumed as much, but having complete confirmation is always nice. 

What does he do now, though? If Jazz can’t particularly hear or see at the moment- 5% is really quite a lot, for missing... every piece of sensory equipment Jazz has (or at least the ones that Prowl found on his cursory scan when making repairs on them earlier.) It’s still not any good, mind you, not when the visual capacity is bound to be the same level if not worse, but...

Jazz mentioned comming before, when they were rambling on the way to that first cavern, in passing. They must have comms systems, right? Communication would be just as important for whatever their species is as it is for Cybertronians, wouldn’t it?

It’s worth a try, at any rate, not like Prowl has any better ideas. Or any other ideas at all.

He sends a cursory comms request- he’s not sure how Jazz would even receive such a thing in the state that they’re in, but when they accept anyways he puts that question in its little mental box and fishes out “HOW IN PRIMUS’ NAME ARE YOU ALIVE EVEN A LITTLE BIT” instead.

He doesn’t phrase it like that, because he doesn’t have the vocabulary and because he has more decorum than that, but it’s a near thing. He hopes, at least, the violent confusion comes through.

Judging by the slightly strangled laugh they make, it does. Good. Prowl’s never been much good at the emotional part of communication.

“ɛɛɛɛɛ... [{Processor/Brain/-Spark?} located in-] mm.” They huff- it’s an odd sound, with no actual vent to accompany it- like they don’t know how to say it properly, and then with one of their four-fingered, clawed servos, they tap gently at their own chest plating. “[{Here.} Located {here.}]”

So their- they don’t have a spark? Or they do, and it’s the same thing as their processor? Or at least something analogous? Prowl’s not a doctor, biology is not what he is versed in, but all the same this is intriguing and he doesn’t really know what to do with the information but he wants to do something.

“[Alive/Functioning {still/continually} due to this.] [Sensory suite {was} located in helm.] [Optical, Audial Capabilities: ({~}5%), {rounded/generously}.]” Jazz continues, gesturing vaguely to the space their head used to be. “...[Could {you} locate {helm}-mine{?}]”

Jazz wants Prowl to find their decapitated helm. He won’t have to do much looking- it hasn’t left his sight, not really, a glinting silvery thing lying like a dismembered drone bit in the dust. There is no blood, no energon, nothing to imply it was part of something living once.

“[Query: {helm} re-attachable{?}]” He asks, instead of trying to verbalize any of that.

“[Yes.] [{Welder/Welding-Torch/Blowtorch} adequate.]” Jazz replies. Sure. Of course they can just weld it back on. Perfectly normal behavior. Ratchet is going to get so many helmaches just from coming within a certain radius of this mech.

Prowl walks the few steps to retrieve Jazz’s head. He picks it up, and then hands it over to its rightful recipient as quickly as he can, because holding a severed helm does not feel right. He does not appreciate it. It is not an experience he is looking to repeat.

“[Thank you{!}]” Jazz says, once they’ve gotten a sure enough grip on their own helm that they (probably) aren’t going to drop it. They’re almost cheerful enough Prowl can forget how gruesome this whole situation is.

He pointedly does not look at the dead biometal beast as he helps Jazz get their bearings so they can walk beside him as usual.

“...[{Biometal-Animal}-name{?}]” Prowl asks, curiosity winning out over his desire to stay in that amiable silence.

Jazz is silent a long moment before they answer. “[That {Biometal-Animal} is called {Ripper/T-5.} That {specific} Ripper was.. {small-life? not-long-life?}]”

“[That {T-5} was {young{?}}] ”

“[Yes, was...]” Jazz pauses, twitches like their head would have tilted here. “[Small, {in comparison.}]

“[Small.]” Prowl repeats, injecting as much incredulousness he could ever possibly fit into that single word.

“[Yep.]” Jazz replies. “[Most are, ɛɛɛɛɛ, {about/close to} {twice/x2} height-{mine.}]

Most of them are about twice as tall as Jazz, who was already taller than Prowl.

Prowl doesn’t know what to do with that information, so he tucks it neatly away and lets the topic drop.

The pair of them continue walking for a while after that. Prowl’s glancing over at Jazz every so often, to make sure they aren’t going to suddenly trip on something and tumble into the dry, rocky dirt, but the silence is companionable and anyway Prowl can busy himself enough with idly calculating the trajectories of the sandy sunbeams to not worry about any of the fine details that can and certainly will grind every process in Prowl’s body to a jarring halt if he considers them for too long.

It is not an unfamiliar experience to Prowl, this constant pushing down of greater but futile to look into and ruminate on problems, setting them aside into their individual boxes and sealing them up until he has some time to finally stop, to finally get a chance to breathe.

Eventually the terrain even spreads outwards into something geographically interesting- the original base Jazz and Prowl originally met at was sequestered into something like a shallow valley, where there wasn’t much opportunity for something as benign as hills.

The landscape is not what gives Prowl any pause, though.

In the distance, idly trundling along, is another animal. Prowl has the capability to recognize it, now- although, it is different in size and shape to the last. Smaller, perhaps, though the size metric is difficult to ascertain at such a distance.

“[Jazz,]” Prowl says. They stop, body twisting around in maybe (76.3%) some attempt at replicating the effect of swiveling their helm to face him. Said helm is still tucked under their arm. “[{Animal/Beast/Biomechanical Entity} {spotted/located.}]”

“[Description? {Size} = {mech} or {larger} or {smaller}{?}]” Jazz gets straight to the point. It’s something Prowl appreciates about them.

“[Hard to tell.] [{Very} far away.]” Prowl replies. “[Coloration-]” He has to squint, to be sure of this next point, “[{brighter than} the {Ripper/T-5.}] [{~}{Orange} and {White.}]”

“əʊ! [is {Ally/Friend{!}}]” Jazz suddenly says. “[{no} {Leviathan/Quint} has {bright} coloration.] [{always} silvery or.] ʌʌʌm. [{~}brown{?}]”

“[brown-{ish},]” Prowl demonstrates the grammatical construction before he even has time to fully parse what Jazz’s words mean. “[Wait. {Friend/Ally}{?}]”

“[Maybe {friend/ally.}] [Same {species} as me, {but} {not}-same {construction/making} as me.] [Unsure about.. {group-loyalty{?}} {Allegiences.}]” Jazz replies.

Prowl glances at the distant mech(?). Then looks at Jazz. Back at the possibly-mech.

“[Same {species}{?}]” Prowl says. More incredulousness. 

“[Yep{!}]”

Chapter Text

Hot Rod feels distinctly like a space cowboy right now.

Now, that would be really cool, if not for the fact that he’s also irreversibly lost, like, the most lost anyone’s ever gotten, ever? And the fact that he doesn't have a horse, but no horse would even be able to survive this atmosphere. 

Sure, it may be relatively breathable, what with its roughly analogous oxygen/nitrogen content, but there was some extra stuff in there that Roddy wasn't super sure he wanted in his lungs. Or anyone else's lungs. Or really just in lungs in general.

That’s alien atmospheres for ya. Usually they’re too dry or don’t have enough oxygen or occasionally have too much oxygen or are otherwise Not Fit For Human Consumption and the air filtering systems have to scramble to get anything approaching breathable out of the mess.

But back to that point about being lost.

Transport pilots, man. Can never trust them to not fly through rips in reality and end up distances unknown to man away from your intended destination.

Or, at least, that’s probably what happened, considering Roddy was asleep at the time, (sue him for trying to catch a nap! Honestly, it was something of an achievement considering how loud the onboard temperature regulation systems were, but after bunking with Riccochet, #1 Champion Honk Shoo Mimimi-er, Hot Rod could probably sleep through a nuclear blast.)

He wishes he had a mech-sized cowboy hat. At least then he’d look really cool while also wandering the most featureless dusty-ass flat rocky landscape he’s ever seen.

The sky is a dull, almost overcast grayish-blue color, despite the fact that there’s not a cloud to be seen. The wind blows dramatically but also near-silently over the Dull As Balls rocks. 

He kicks one and watches it fly away into the distance, bouncing once off the ground, which then kicks up a moderate cloud of dust.

It’s just like a terrible roadtrip. Where you’re completely alone. 

Fun!

Hot Rod pings the surrounding area for comms receivers again. No dice. It’s the same result as last time, which, considering he’s seen, just, absolutely nothing of note (oh boy, there’s a funny-looking rock! It’s the most interesting thing he’s seen in an hour, and he’s kind of maybe possibly probably going to lose it at some point.) it kind of isn’t surprising.

What is surprising is the fact that he’s alive at all, but hey, as the adage goes, if you’re not absurdly lucky, you’re dead. It’s true in a surprising amount of situations, but especially when you’re a mecha pilot.

Yes, hello, welcome to your Personal Gigantic Amounts Of Danger Machine, we need you to punch aliens for the good of humanity, please try your best not to die, your mech was expensive and it'd be such a pain to replace you.

Hot Rod pilots an Asphodel model- basically a flamethrower on legs vaguely shaped like a horrifying crossbreed between a gorilla and a leopard. The fire it shoots is what we in the business call “should Not work, but it does, so we make good on it.”

The only good thing having the occasional neighborhood Reality Warping Zone (Wrong Space is really very aptly named if you give it any thought. Yep, that Space sure is Wrong,) is that Hot Rod gets to light things on fire even in the vacuum of space. How does that work? He has no idea. It's not super important.

To be honest, it doesn’t really matter how that works, because a) it’s So Much Fun and b) it has probably saved his life at least five times by now. Who cares about things like atmospheric oxygen content when you can just blast them in the face with MYTHOS-brand Kitty Cat Hellfire.

The deranged cackling may be over-the-top, but Roddy has a brand to uphold! He can’t go around setting things on fire underangedly, can he?

Hot Rod trundles on through the bleak landscape. Not a lot to do when you’re dead-set on Getting Somewhere but also are probably the worst at multitasking there ever was. And also lack opposable thumbs on two of your arms.

The Asphodel model has four arms technically. The very front pair don’t have any thumbs because they’re meant to be knuckle-walking on, but if you really wanted to you could hold things with them. Back legs not so much, the claws on that one don’t even close enough to pick things up at all. 

The middle pair (Six limbs total! Well, seven including the tail.) are the most generally arm shaped: they have thumbs and everything! They’re also not great for walking on because of all of the scanning stuff they put in there- MYTHOS mech models don’t have great eyesight. Or “optical capabilities” or whatever. 

This all just means that usually Hot Rod is pinging his radar like a madman trying to figure out if that blurry blob thing in the distance is a friendly or a rock, but hey, that comes with the territory, he's used to that.

What you don't ever get used to- or at least Hot Rod doesn't want to- is how often everyone dies.

Yep, the carrion crawlers are back out, turns out your buddy caught a bad one from a kaiju and they're dead now, we’ll bring in what’s left of their mech so you can sift through the parts and maybe find their body.

It's worse with the other corps, though- FAUNA sees so much death they don't even bother with that last bit, just takes the mech-bits and tapes ‘em together for the next sorry sucker to drive instead. 

Well, the carrion crawlers act independently at MYTHOS bases anyway, not like the corp actually cares about what their pilots are doing so long as they're killing the kaiju faster than they are each other.

Wow, now that he's thinking about it, his life REALLY sucks! And so does every other pilot's!

Eh. Fact of life, at this point. Life sucks. You get over it. Lifespan-measured-in-weeks kind of problems. Neighborhood reality distortion kind of problems. All-my-friends-keep-dying-and-I’m-trying-my-best-to-not-take-it-personally kind of problems.

Hot Rod really does have a loooooooot of problems.

The dust is sort of transitioning from ‘bone white’ to probably somewhere around the ‘rust red’ end of the possible dust color scale, which is mildly exciting. It has kind of completely covered (him? his mech? every day he has the debate with himself on whether the mech is his body because he controls it) though. 

It’s definitely covered up at least some of the flame designs he spent an inordinate amount of time stenciling and painting on there, which is a shame! Hot Rod spent way too long on those just for them to be covered in dust!!

The landscape is gradually changing, too. Getting hillier, or maybe that’s just Hot Rod reaching for anything mildly interesting. In any case, the dust is definitely getting redder. Which is neat.

He crests a particularly large hill, stops to take a glance around to see if there’s anything at all, and then-

There! In the distance! Either those are the most interesting rocks Hot Rod’s ever gonna see in his life or those are actual mechs! Or maybe kaiju. In any case, they’re something!!

Whether those things want to peel his face off or not he’s yet to find out, but it’s still nice to know he probably isn’t totally alone on this giant near-featureless rock!

He trundles closer, pinging the radar. Probably not rocks. Rocks do not have energy signals. At least Roddy’s pretty sure they don’t.

One of them- there’s two, two distinct figures, and one of them is waving. The other starts waving, too, after a few seconds.

Hot Rod unhooks one of his sensor arms from where it was wrapped around the midsection of his mech (to keep it out of the way- they don’t do super well with getting banged on rocks and such, at least not as well as the rest of him does,) and waves back.

Then he pings comms again, because he’d like to actually be able to talk to whoever these people are.

The signal goes searching.. searching.. as per usual, and then chirps as happily as an inanimate piece of machinery can and says eligible communications recipient found! send request? [y/n]

Hot Rod clicks ‘yes.’ After a second of it connecting, he sees the caller ID show up just a few seconds before the audio connects- [ID.2.0789, “Hot Rod”] (that’s him!) and [ID.2.1061, “Jazz”].

Roddy has just enough time to process this before the little mic symbol turns green, and the first words out of his mouth are “HOLY LAIKA, JAZZ, I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!”

See, it turns out that Hot Rod knew this guy back in training! Something something territory disputes and Jazz got assigned to a different base- as in far enough away Hot Rod wouldn’t have any reasonable excuse to go see him, not to mention it’s owned by a whole other megacorporation- and then when Roddy tried looking into all his friends from boot camp he hadn’t seen since his file said MIA. Which is basically the same thing as “dead,” considering that none of the megacorporations had anything approaching a good track record with locating pilots that had gone missing.

So Hot Rod had already gotten over the fact that Jazz was probably super mega dead. And then. He shows up here of all places??

“Teeth n’ tail, Roddy, you don’t need to blow my ears off about it,” comes Jazz’s staticky reply.

 “No- dude-” Hot Rod waves his arms around vaguely. It doesn’t really mean anything but it feels nice, and is also probably visible from a distance, so win for that. “You misunderstand! This is great! Your file said MIA! And you are! Not dead!”

Jazz makes the teeth-sucky noise usually accompanied by an expression of ‘oohhh, yeaahhh, abouuut that.’ “I may have, uh. Gotten a bit lost. In Wrong Space.”

Hot Rod wants desperately to be standing next to Jazz out of mech just so he can see the expression Roddy’s currently making with his face.

“I mean, I’m fine, perfectly dandy, didn’t even have any long-lasting effects as far as any of the medics can tell other than the fact my eyes keep changing colors, but like-”

“Okay, stay put, I need to get over there so I can shake you around what do you MEAN you got lost in Wrong Space-” Roddy kicks up into a sprint. He wasn’t before, because sprinting on this model of mech is kind of really energy inefficient, but he knows where he has to go and it’s really not all that far away, all things considered, so off he goes!

“I mean- What it sounds like? Accident with a T-2? Drifted around Laika knows where for at least a day? Got eaten by the local rip in space-time? Y’know. As you do.” Jazz sounds way too casual for what he’s saying. People do not just ‘as you do’ out of getting lost in pockets of reality so distorted that physics kind of stops working right. Unless you’re ID.2.1061 “Jazz,” apparently.

“Y’know, I don’t actually know! Why does all the wacky stuff happen to you?? Save some for the rest of us, why doncha!”

“Roddy, if I could give some of this astronomically improbable luck to literally anybody else, I would. I’m kinda tired of it at this point.”

Hot Rod screeches to a halt in front of what he assumes is probably Jazz, stopping himself from barreling into the guy just barely because- “Dude?? Where the hell did your head go??”

“Incident with a baby T-5,” Jazz says, :) emoticon almost audible in his voice. He’s holding up something that Hot Rod has to take a second to realize is his severed head.

“Wh- Laika’s teeth, you can’t just keep saying stuff like that.”

“I can, actually, watch me.” Jazz shakes the head around a little. The visor on it is broken.

The mech standing next to Jazz- Hot Rod only just noticed them- is some manner of mechanical marvel because That Is A Human Person Face. With teeth in it. What.

“Oh yeah! Roddy,” Jazz gestures in vaguely the direction of his kind of ostentatious-looking friend, who has a look on their face like they’re slightly afraid of Hot Rod. Or maybe like if a talking mutated panther rocked up to the social function. “This is Prowl. They’re cool. Probably saved my life at some point.”

“Only probably?” Roddy asks.

“I was kind of passed out for a pretty significant section of it.”

“Yeah, I remember you do that.”

“That was one time-” Jazz makes a move like he’s trying to pinch the bridge of his nose, but is foiled for a number of reasons. One, he doesn’t have a head at the moment, two, he doesn’t even have a nose on a regular basis, and three, the arm he tried to move was the one keeping said severed head tucked under his arm, so it falls and clatters loudly against the dusty ground.

There’s a moment of silence as everybody stares at it, and then Jazz goes “Aw, damnit, I dropped it, didn’t I.”

Hot Rod almost asks him if he can’t see, and then realizes that this is an incredibly stupid question because of course you can’t see when all of the things you have that approximate eyes are disconnected from the rest of your body. What he says instead is “I can try to weld that back on for you!”

“Yeah, Prowl’s got a blowtorch somewhere, but, uh.” He gestures to his lack of a head. “Could you pick that up for me?”

Hot Rod scuttles closer and picks up the head to hand back to Jazz. He gets a nice reading of exactly how broken that visor is, which is to say inconveniently, but not unfixably. Mech visors are all made with weird weldable glass A) because it’s way cheaper to make and B) because it’s way easier to fix.

“Thanks. Uuhh. I’ve kind of been connected for... definitely too long, so I’m just gonna-”

Hot Rod doesn’t have time to go “Wait no not right here you’re gonna fall over also what do you mean too long-” before Jazz is indeed falling over, and then Hot Rod has to rush to catch him, and then he and Prowl, the buddy whom he has almost certainly no way to talk to, are making awkward eye contact over Jazz’s decapitated body.

The comm disconnects.

“Well, shit,” Roddy says, because this entire situation is, plainly put, not very good.

Chapter Text

Prowl would like to file a complaint with the universe itself.

Why and how and most importantly why has he of all mechs been stuck with one- no, two, now, the newcomer (who Prowl is still not entirely sure isn’t another experimental Quintesson, but Jazz hasn’t tried to stab it and it hasn’t attempted to peel his face from his helm, so he’ll accept the probability as acceptably low)- unhinged alien mecha. One of which seems nigh unkillable. The other... Prowl hasn’t gotten enough observation time to deduce the indestructibility of the new one.

And so Prowl is standing, ever awkwardly (he’s always been like that. “ Primus, Prowl, it’s like you’re documenting the behavior of everybody you talk to,” he remembers Smokescreen said once,) observing the two alien mechs wave and gesture incomprehensibly at each other.

They’re on comms. Prowl can’t hear the conversation, nor would he be able to understand it. Jazz shakes their helm at the newcomer- Prowl still doesn’t have a name, and he’s not sure when he’s going to get one, if ever, despite the fact that this is one of the very few times in which he’d actually care enough to want it- and the newcomer unlatches a pair of arms from where they were placed (to keep them out of the way? (72.8%)) to wave more dramatically.

Is the new one a beastformer or something similar? Jazz doesn’t transform (93.6%), so this one likely wouldn’t either, so Prowl supposes that has to mean that they’re always shaped like that. 

Now that they’re up close, anyway, Prowl has the chance to get a good look and catalogue everything he finds for potential weaknesses in case it does turn out to be hostile and he needs to shoot it.

Having a separate alien force crash the civil war they were finally approaching the end of hasn’t done much to help Prowl’s paranoia, if you couldn’t tell.

The newcomer has six limbs, seven including the tail that flicks and waves around as they (most likely) speak. Chances are it’s not quite like Prowl’s doorwings, but close enough. There’s an attachment at the end of the tail, carved finely and painted with intricate (if gaudy) flame designs.

In fact, now that Prowl has the chance to look properly, he can see that the newcomer is plastered in them, in sunset shades of red and orange and yellow, simply buried under whitish-peach dust. It speaks to a level of fine control and more pressingly reach Prowl’s not sure that they’d be able to get on the limbs they have.

Jazz also has neatly intricate designs on their plating, too- the paint is a bit damaged from all the injuries they keep getting without seeming to notice any of them, but the designs are similarly neat: small enough that Prowl would probably need a magnifying glass to appreciate properly.

Prowl doesn’t mean it as an insult, but there’s next to no way that Jazz painted that themselves. Not with the fine motor control they’ve demonstrated thus far, anyway- to their credit, they can swing a weapon incredibly well, and are more precise than even Prowl would be with said weapon, but he wouldn’t trust their handwriting as far as he could throw it.

Well, at least they have opposable thumbs. Only four fingers is fine so long as you can still grasp things.

Prowl focuses back at the interaction happening in front of him that he still can’t hear, but can at least see. Jazz shakes their decapitated helm at the new one again. Gestures at Prowl. Gestures back to the New One. Probably says something along the lines of “This is Prowl, he is my friend.” Immediately proceeds to drop their decapitated helm.

The newcomer picks it up for them and hands it over. Prowl gets data on how they walk out of that- the front pair of weight-bearing limbs are actually hands, based on the fact that the New One was putting their weight on... what is probably analogous enough to knuckles that Prowl isn’t going to think about it too hard despite his inclinations to the contrary.

More silent, unknowable dialogue exchanges. Prowl has almost entirely tuned them out again when-

Jazz tips over.

The newcomer rushes to catch them, the arms usually held out of the way snapping up to make sure Jazz does not acquaint what is left of their neck with a rock. 

Their decapitated helm, once more, falls to the ground. The unpleasant crunch noise it makes as it makes contact is not promising.

There’s a moment of silence.

“ wɛl , ʃɪt, ” says the newcomer.

Prowl has no idea what that means, but based on anecdotal evidence and context, he’s inclined to agree.

Instead of doing anything that could be construed as useful, Prowl takes a professional moment to bury his face in his hands and scream as loudly as he physically can for a couple seconds.

When he looks back up, the newcomer is nodding, as though they understand. They have no particular method of emoting other than aggressive arm waggling, but seeing as two of those arms are for walking on and the other two are busy carrying a large (HOPEFULLY) unconscious pile of Jazz, Prowl’s got nothing.

The impassive, completely expressionless helm does not offer anything to the situation. Nor does the rest of the mech attached to it.

“....Can I just have one normal, good day..?” Prowl asks no one in particular, not because he thinks anything will happen, nor because he is under the false pretense that anyone in the vicinity can understand him, but because he needs to complain about something right now. For stress relief. Because shooting something isn’t an option. He needs the blaster charge, (and anyway he has no viable targets other than rocks,) in case any more wild animals and/or beasts show up. Other than the ones that Prowl has already decided don't want him dead.

The newcomer tilts their head, as though thinking, then after a few seconds, extends one of their arms, hand opening and closing in a manner it takes Prowl another few seconds to recognize as slightly demanding.

Grabby hands. The completely alien mech with whom Prowl has exactly nothing to show for a method of communication with is making grabby hands at him.

“Can I just have one normal, good day...?” said mech echoes back at him. Prowl didn’t know it could do that. Can Jazz do that too, if they’re the same species? But what is it intending to mean by that?

The grabby hands- well, hand, the other is still making sure that Jazz doesn’t completely fall over- continue. One of the panels on its back pops open with an audible hiss.

Language packets. The newcomer probably (63.78%, with a margin of error Prowl would frown upon if he had the time) wants language packets. So Prowl is going to have to hardline connect to hand said language packets over.

...Prowl does not want to do that. However. There don’t appear to be any other options. No matter how much Prowl doesn’t want to do this and risk getting diseases previously unknown to mankind, it is, to put it bluntly, the only option he has. Communication is invaluable and extremely necessary.

After a long moment in which Prowl has already decided he’s going to do the thing which he has already decided is extremely stupid and tactically unsound but is pretending like he’s still deliberation on the matter (to who he isn’t sure) he beckons the newcomer over, lowering himself to sit on the dust-coated ground. A hardline connection is not a safe or practical thing to be doing standing up.

The new mech nods vigorously, gently sets Jazz down, too, putting their helm on top of them in a way that might suggest they were holding it, then walks over and sits down.

They’d be about Prowl’s size, if a little bit taller, were they not also a quadruped. As such, they are still a little bit taller than Prowl, but also are significantly longer. Prowl isn’t sure how to feel about the fact that he is the shortest person here between a quadrupedal alien and a bipedal alien.

Nature is amazing, Prowl thinks dryly, and then focuses back on the matter at hand.

 The newcomer turns so the open panel- that’s definitely a port, but can Prowl adjust to fit it is the question- is facing him, then lie down, likely because they, too understand that being able to fall over is sub-optimal in this scenario, (56.8%) or because they wanted to make sure Prowl could easily reach. (74.3%).

In any case. Prowl makes peace with the fact that this is quite possibly the stupidest thing he’s ever done in his entire life, and plugs in.

☆。*。☆。

Hot Rod shrieks when the connection goes through.

Mostly out of surprise from the measurable something rushing up to meet him instead of a neat little text box with “Communication Established” and a dinky little text box on it, though. Mostly.

He was expecting an actual file of something or other sent as a message or maybe a physical object like a thumb drive if Prowl was feeling fancy, not.... whatever this is. 

He also yelped a little out of pain, but that’s hardly- what was their name again? Prowl? Yeah, that’s it! Prowl! Neat name - Prowl’s fault. The neurolink tech has gone a looooooong way since the very very beginnings of mechas as a whole, but it’s still finicky and fragile and has a tendency to cause mild brain damage more often than not. And definitely not built to handle this, whatever this happens to be right now.

Anyway! It feels, very distinctly, like there’s something else poking around in his skull. Or like his brain is making direct contact with someone else’s brain. It’s a bit hard to describe, but it’s for sure not normal, but Hot Rod can get used to not normal. It’s his job.

Which is not what Roddy was expecting, not in the least, but as they say: adapt to the wild shit the universe throws at you and do it quick or you Will die. He hasn’t lasted this long as a mecha pilot to not be able to adapt to the circumstances! That’s not how you stay alive in this business!

Roddy’s brain instinctively shied away from it, is the thing- ‘utterly gigantic’ and ‘unfamilliar’ and ‘Holy Laika Above why the Fuck are you in my skull, only I’m supposed to be in there’ do not mix well with the general brand of neuroses that being a mecha pilot give you.

Once he got over all that, though, it just becomes cool, though- what kind of mecha rig gives you a presence like that??? Or lets you do this at all??? Hot Rod is just. So jealous. Also, he wants those language packets, so help him Laika he’s going to figure out what this guy is like.

It takes a bit of reorientation to figure out how to ‘gesture’ in this weird brainspace thing he’s got going on, but once he figures it out he reaches toward the unfamiliar presence (that’s TOTALLY Prowl because who else could it be) and makes psychic grabby hands.

Roddy can practically feel the waves of polite disappointment float through the brainspace. All he does to that is make more grabby hands. 

He’s already gotten over the craziness of the mind meld. Roddy’s the one who started this and he started it with a mission, so he’s Going to Complete the Mission . If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s doing what he says he will.

Prowl(‘s presence? Wow, describing the brain-scene is way more complicated than you’d think. Hot Rod wonders a bit what he looks like to Prowl, then forcibly gets himself back on topic) retracts a fair amount (probably going to get those data packets! Wahoo! Progress!) and while they do, Hot Rod messes around with trying to get visual on this. It’s not easy- well, no, it’s pretty easy, but only once he thinks about it like seeing through his mech. Turns out it's the same kind of skill, which really isn't all that surprising once he gives some thought to it.

The brainspace shows up as a dark void, Roddy floating inside a warm, brightly painted shell (his mech!) and opposite him, a fair distance away, a bright, glowing... something or other. Something vast and complicated and intricate.

Now, if he’s going to be entirely honest, Hot Rod doesn’t particularly care enough to examine all that in detail. Job to do. He’s gonna do the job. As much as it pains him to say it, there’s gonna be time for tomfoolery and shenanigans later.

Prowl comes back. Well, a mechanical arm, like on the carrion crawlers, with a million joints and a claw-hand moseys up to Roddy’s brain front door, and when he leans out to see, he notes it’s holding a shiny cuboid glowing thing that’s probably his slightly fried brain’s attempt at giving the data file a form and a shape. Brain-him leans out to snag it and then retreats back into the shell to go find a place to put it.

What he ends up doing is just throwing it at the (metaphorical? imaginary? the semantics don’t matter it was in his brain) wall, as the disconnect was just as painful as the original connection and it startled him but anyway that’s beside the point because (Roddy takes a second to peruse the files he has, because he’s gotta make sure that all actually worked) it worked!

Inside the mech, Hot Rod throws his hands up and cheers a little. As a treat, y’know? Yelling loudly is good for the soul. His mic is still off, no one can tell. The itty bitty shriveled up thing he calls his dignity remains intact.

Roddy (the mech) sits up, and whips around to face Prowl, who is also standing up and has a slightly consternated look on their way too human and expressive face, which is an issue he needs to address with those shiny new words he has.

He takes a second to flick his newfangled translation filters on before unmuting his mic and saying, politely if loudly (he never was much good at things like, say, volume control) “HI! WHAT THE-

☆。*。☆。

-HELL WAS THAT!” The newcomer immediately yells, having sat up and swiveled around to face him with a speed Prowl wasn’t quite aware they possessed.

Prowl flinches a little at that, more about the sudden loud noise than anything, but to their credit, the newcomer seems to notice and backpedals accordingly. “Aw- I mean, that was cool, that was really cool, how does your rig do that-? but also, like, warn a guy!”

“I- isn’t that what you were-” Prowl suddenly feels the urge to scream again. He resists the temptation. “I thought-”

The newcomer freezes, and yet still interrupts him. “Oooohhh. Miscommunication. Okay, that makes sense! Yeah, the whole, uh-” They wave vaguely towards Prowl “-that whole thing, don’t do that again? Please?”

Prowl blinks slowly at them. He is, quite possibly, too tired for someone who speaks this many words that quickly. “Yes. It will not happen again.” and then, before common sense kicks back in and he can stop himself, “ ...How are you talking so fast.”

The newcomer makes a noise that may or may not be something like a laugh. “Aw, yeah, people say I do that! Anyway, you’re Prowl, right? I’m Hot Rod.”

Hot Rod. Well, at least Prowl has a name for them now. “...Yes, I am Prowl. Nice to meet you, I suppose.”

“Wow, you’re kinda stuffy. How did you get to be friends with Jazz, again? Don’t answer that.” Hot Rod swivels to face where Jazz is still lying in the dust. “Oh, yeah, speaking of Jazz, do you know how we’re gonna haul his ass? He’s a frontliner, they build those guys to be slippery.”

Prowl thinks back a day or so, to when he failed miserably at getting Jazz off the ground when their leg first broke. “I noticed that, yes.” Then, a beat later, when the rest of that sinks in, “...What do you mean, built?”

Hot Rod turns to face Prowl. “Wwwwhat it sounds like? Gotta get weaponry from somewhere to fight the ~ eternal war~ ” They raise their hands and make honest-to-Primus finger quotes at that, Prowl’s life is a joke, “-or whatever. He’s a kaiju-killer mech, that’s literally his whole job. You didn’t notice?”

Hot Rod has just offered up so much information so casually that a small portion of Prowl wants to shake them around by the shoulders and say ‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT, THOUGH??? EXPLAIN FURTHER?????’

Prowl does neither of those things. Instead, he says “What,” and hopes that the horror he is feeling comes across in his voice.

“Oh! Yeah, that does sound bad- uuhhhhh-” Hot Rod puts one hand to the bottom of their helm in a strangely cybertronian kind of display, then says “Yeah, I can’t think of a way to make that sound any better. Um. It’s not that bad, I swear.”

Prowl really does think it is that bad, but he’s tired enough he won’t press. What a wonderful treasure trove of horrifying implications, this mech.

“ANYWAY! Jazz totally isn’t dead. I mean, I could peel him open to make sure, but I don’t trust the atmosphere and anyway that seems like a bad idea to begin with, so how about we wait a few hours and then arrange the funeral if nothing happens?”

Prowl doesn’t like how casually they said that, but doesn’t know how to arrange the sentiment into words in a way that wouldn’t be a non-sequitur.

Hot Rod continues without input. “I mean, he’s a hardy guy, he’s probably fine, but- I dunno. You gotta prepare for the eventualities, you get me?”

“...Yes, I do.” Prowl eventually says. Death is not something that he ever wanted to get used to, but he understands the sentiment, especially applied more generally. Always have a plan of action when things go wrong, because they will go wrong, and if you don’t already have a plan you will waste your precious little time making one.

“Hey, quick question, why’s your face so expressive?” Hot Rod suddenly asks, apropos of nothing.

Prowl stalls a little at that. “I- What?”

“What, is it not translating right? Your-” They reach up and tap the front of their own helm, “-face.”

“No, I understood the words, but what do you mean?” Prowl asks, a sudden sense that he won’t like the response they make or its implications steadily building.

“How much money did they spend on you?? You’re pretty clearly a comms model- nice wing doodads, lemme say- but like?? Teeth?? I want teeth, why didn’t they let me add teeth to my mech???”

Prowl fixes Hot Rod with a look he hopes is as horrified as he is currently feeling. 

‘My mech.’ Is that a translation error? (78.9%) Is Hot Rod simply insane? (5w.x%, wretched incalculable aliens)  Strange 3rd person talk?? (not seen previously, 1?e.7%) Loadbearer???? (34.5%) Hot Rod is clearly an alien, do alien loadbearers even exist???

The TAC-net sets up so many simulations at once that just about every one of Prowl’s vents open to dispel the sudden heat generated from it. Hot Rod fixes him with a look he could almost swear was concern, despite the fact that Hot Rod has no way of demonstrating facial expressions.

Despite all of that, the first question to leave Prowl’s mouth is “ Wing doodads??”

“Is there a more technical term?? Did I somehow offend you???? Oh laɪkə DID I offend you???” Hot Rod suddenly asks, voice going so high it becomes squeaky at the end.

“No. What? No.” 

“What???” Hot Rod squeaks back.

Prowl wants to sigh loudly and agonizingly, but all his vents are still open and it would take too long to actually get a proper amount of air, so he instead buries his face in his hands. For merely a brief moment. He’s stressed out enough as is. “This is going in circles.”

“Um. Yep. Sure is. Did I, though??”

Prowl fixes Hot Rod with the flattest, most unimpressed look he can manage. “No. You did not.”

They sigh almost comically. (No accompanying vent, TAC-net notes.) “Ohhh thank laɪkə.”

The real question is why Hot Rod was so worried about that in the first place, but Prowl doesn’t have the processor capacity to waste considering that, so he shoves it in its box along with several other pressing issues he should really get around to addressing.

“Soooooo, uuuhhhhh-” Hot Rod starts, but is cut off by (as if on cue) Jazz making a staticky groaning noise from their position lying flat on their back in the dust. They twitch slightly, shuddering to an upright position, helm falling off where it was balanced on top of their chassis to clunk against the ground. Again.

“ʌʌʌʌʌʌʌgχ. ðæt wʌz ðə wɜrst næp aɪv ɛvər hæd ɪn maɪ laɪf,” they say, completely incomprehensibly, as per usual. Prowl’s already gotten used to Hot Rod being intelligible. He’s getting complacent.

“Oh, hey, you’re not dead! Great! I was worried there for a hot minute!” Hot Rod says, rather too cheerfully for the sheer amount of Things that have happened in the past solar cycle. 

Then, without preamble and without checking to make sure Jazz even understood them, they continue, “Mind if I weld your head back on now? No time like the present, yeah?”

Chapter Text

It takes all of five minutes for Hot Rod to pass the language files over to Jazz (how exactly, Prowl isn’t sure, and quite honestly his processor is fried enough as is that as much as it pains him to admit it, he doesn’t actually need that information) and now the pair of them are chattering loudly and endlessly at each other.

From what Prowl has been able to peripherally absorb from their conversation, they knew each other a long time ago. (Prowl isn’t sure the terms they use for timekeeping are translating properly- with the way they talk about it, a ‘year’ has to be equivalent to a vorn, right? Possibly something longer? But then what are ‘months’ and ‘weeks’? a ‘day’ is fairly easy, just a solar cycle, but the scale falls out of place with every other unit.)

Jazz is back to laying flat on their back, most of the dust cleared out of the immediately surrounding area for the sake of the fact that Hot Rod has indeed started welding their head back on. 

The pair of them make amicable conversation, as though this is a regular and/or normal occurrence. Hot Rod is using the end of their tail to do the actual welding, despite the fact that Prowl had one on him and offered to let them use it. (It’s a flamethrower. It can shoot gigantic plumes of fire. Prowl saw as such with his own two optics. How and why Jazz is letting a flamethrower anywhere near them like that Prowl doesn’t know and isn’t inclined to find out.)

They both say things that Prowl finds himself wanting to write down and examine further, things about “home base,” and “oh, you know how MYTHOS is,” and a million other things that all speak to a shared life experience that Prowl is distinctly outside of. Prowl doesn’t know how these mechs live. Prowl has just enough distance from it that he is, and likely always will be, considering the rest of his experiences with Jazz, concerned.

Concerned, concerned, concerned, concerned. It’s a new and novel experience for Prowl- he never had room to consider people he barely knew like that, they were merely allies or enemies or maybe, in a case of rare exceptions, something like family. 

...No. This isn't quite concern, not really. It’s more like a deep, sinking dread. Prowl is familiar with the deep, sinking dread.

“Wait, which wires go together again?” Prowl hears Hot Rod ask.

“They’re color coded, ya bolthead,” Jazz replies, making a swing to swat lightly at Hot Rod’s hand. (They miss.) “Wolves are mass-produced, just like every other mech in this laɪkə-damned universe. They make ‘em to be easy to fix.” They make a motion like they were going to try and sit up, but thought better of it. “Please tell me you know your colors, Roddy.”

See. Like that. Jazz just casually insinuated so many things in, what, three sentences?- That Prowl doesn’t even know where to start. The use of universe, the fact that the word “wolf” translates vaguely as some kind of animal but are implied to be mechs (mech type? mech classification? mass produced? Are Jazz and Hot Rod MTOs or something similar?) and this meaning that they (Jazz? Is Jazz a ‘Wolf’?) are easy to fix? The use of that unfamiliar word that refuses to translate, “laɪkə.” (What does that mean?)

Prowl doesn’t ask, though. He just sits, observing. Jazz and Hot Rod seem happy enough to yammer away at each other, ignoring Prowl sitting a measurable distance away, staring at them (“Of course I know my colors! Not my fault the visual acuity on this bag of bolts isn’t much better than a kɑrdbɔrd box-”) and anyway it is simply much easier to gain data like this than to try and participate in the conversation himself.

It is troubling, though. Prowl doesn’t know how to ask, but he wants to know the details, and he wants to know badly. For now, he will listen.

beep beep beep.

[LIVE TEXT LOG BETWEEN [ID.2.1061 “Jazz”] AND [ID.2.0789 “Hot Rod”] INITIATED.]

ID.1061: yolo

ID.0789: WAIT

ID.0789: HOLD ON

ID.0789: HOLY LAIKA we’ve got textcomms????

ID.1061: yes roddy. we have textcomms.

ID.1061: isn’t technology beautiful.

ID.0789: i KNOW you meant that as a joke but it really is!!!

“...welding your head back on with the boys,” Hot Rod is saying as Prowl tunes back in.

“It’s a wonderful bonding activity. First thing I’m gonna see is your ugly face.” Jazz replies.

“For your information, my face is displeasing at worst,” says Hot Rod. This manner of casually (and seemingly lightheartedly, though Prowl’s never been much good at telling that sort of thing) insulting each other seems to be commonplace for them.

“Though, Roddy, I swear to fuck if you get my head on wrong I’m gonna strangle you to death.” Jazz continues conversationally.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you said that when I put the mystery goo in your bed a whole year ago and yet,”

“I wasn’t any good at strangling back then. I’ve gotten better. You’ll feel my wrath, arson boy.”

“I repeat-” A concerningly large swath of sparks flies out. Hot Rod leans back, tail end still pointing at Jazz’s neck. “Oh, that’s probably not good-!”

Jazz talks over them with a “Oh, hey, I can see now!”

“Wait, really?” Hot Rod tilts their head to the side. “I have no idea what I just did, man, but let’s see if I can do it again!”

“You have fun with that. Please try your best not to make us both explode.”

“Yeah, yeah. What are you, my mother?”

Prowl notes that the casual (joking? likely so) statements of intent to bodily harm are somewhat similar to Decepticon small talk and culture. (Prowl doesn’t know what ‘strangling’ is, though. He’s not sure it translated right. How do you overheat someone else to death?)

The conversation slows to a stop. The only sound is the faint noise of the end of Hot Rod’s tail producing flame.

“What does ‘laɪkə’ mean?” Prowl asks, to fill the silence as much as out of genuine curiosity.

“Oh! Prowl! I.. kinda forgot you were there, sorry. Still can’t see great, and also you were being quiet.” Jazz says. “Uuumm. And laɪkə is like, a, uh, religious figure?”

“Eeyep. Church Grim. Our Holy Lady Above, Laɪkə, guardian of the lost and ill-fated, star-kennel hound, patron of one-way trips, yada yada yada all that.” Hot Rod adds, nodding. “I’m not even religious, I just read books.”

Prowl nods. A religious figure. That lines up with the use of the word- ‘laɪkə-damned’ and ‘thank laɪkə’ and every other variation thereof that he hadn't even noticed he was documenting. “So who is ‘laɪkə’?”

“She’s the first animal we sent to space. I think. It was a really long time ago, and some of the sources don't really agree exactly what she was..? That’s the most popular story, anyway.” Hot Rod says. “Actually, now that I’m in the answering-questions mood, why don’t we just have a, uhhhhh. What’s the word..?”

“A Q&A, yeah. Not a bad idea,” Jazz contributes.

“‘Course not, I have no bad ideas!” Hot Rod says.

“I have only known you for approximately two hours and I can already tell that is not true.” Prowl replies flatly. “But yes. I have... quite a few questions.”

“Well then ask away!” Hot Rod says. “We’ve got nothin’ but time right here, so may as well get something productive out of it, yeah?”

“Yes. Jazz. You said earlier that you were a ‘wolf.’ Explain.”

“Oohh okay. So basically me and him-” Jazz gestures vaguely at Hot Rod, “-we’re both combat pi- mechs. Combat mechs. But we’re from different megacorporations, is the thing, that’s why we look so different. Roddy, do the thing, I can’t see well enough to draw the symbols.”

[LIVE TEXT LOG BETWEEN [ID.2.1061 “Jazz”] AND [ID.2.0789 “Hot Rod”, CONT.]

ID.1061: okay okay roddy

ID.1061: roddy this is important

ID.0987: WHAT

ID.1061: i completely forgot to say

ID.1061: but prowl

ID.0987: WHAT ABOUT PROWL???

ID.0987: THEYRE COOL!!!! PLEASE DONT TELL ME THEYRE SECRETELY EVIL

ID.1061: no theyre fine its just that. 

ID.1061: they are also. 

ID.1061: an alien

ID.0987: THWYRE A WHAT

ID.1061: yeah that was my reaction too

ID.0987: JAZZ

ID.0987: WHAT DO YOU MEEEAANNNN

ID.0987: ALIEN PILOT????

ID.1061: prowl isnt a pilot

ID.1061: prowl is the robot

ID.1061: the robot is prowl

ID.0987: GIANT ALIEN ROBOT?????

ID.1061: no dude i completely sympathize

ID.1061: but the thing is. the important thing

ID.0987: MORE IMPORTANT THAB BEING A GIANT ALIEN ROBOT???

ID.1061: yes more important than that

ID.1061: is that. okay shut up for a second i need to lay this out very simply

ID.0987: ill try my best sir.

ID.1061: leviathans = quints

ID.1061: quints = bad

ID.1061: quints = organic

ID.1061: us = organics

ID.1061: organics = bad

ID.1061: do you See the Problem here

ID.0987: NO i DONT explain BETTEr

ID.1061: we’re organics

ID.1061: prowl doesn’t know we’re organics

ID.1061: prowl thinks organics are bad

ID.0987: OHHH

ID.0987: OH NOOOO

ID.0987: OHHHH NOOOOOOO

ID.1061: and theyre totally gonna kill us if they find out we’re space hamsters in giant tin cans

ID.0987: OHHHHHHH LAIKAAAAAAAA

ID.0987: THATS NOT GOOOOOOOOD

Hot Rod sighs (again, no accompanying vent) and leans over slightly to allow one of their arms to land in the dust.

They draw three symbols with text (in a script Prowl cannot read) beneath it: a pawprint with four toes, a four-pointed star, and a simplified lightning bolt.

“Cool, okay. The paw is ‘FAUNA,’ that’s the one I’m from, the star is ‘MYTHOS,’ and the lightning bolt is ‘EFFECT.’ Roddy here is from MYTHOS.” Jazz knocks lightly on Hot Rod’s plating at their mention of the other mech’s name. “Even though the names are in all caps, they aren't acronyms for anything. Not sure what they’d even be acronyms for, anyway...”

Prowl doesn’t know what ‘caps’ are in this context. Certainly not lids. In any case, this is a substantial amount of information- being ‘from’ a particular corp influences how a mech looks? Are they being constructed by these corporations, or edited to fit the roles they’re given after the fact? 

How would someone even edit something approaching Cybertronian to look like Hot Rod? To their credit, Hot Rod seems to getting along just fine with their unconventional bodily structure, but the fact that they might have been changed is a more troubling conclusion.

“That doesn't answer my question.”

“Yeah. Right. Uh. A ‘wolf’ is one of the categories of mech. Each corp has about fifteen or so- they’ve all got different naming conventions. FAUNA names theirs after animals, MYTHOS after myths, and EFFECT after old scientists.” Jazz twitches, hands tapping restlessly. “Wolves- that’s what I am, yep- we’re Kaiju-class. Means we’re specialized for killing- you called ‘em Quints?”

“So these corporations... constructed you?” Prowl asks. “And yes. I did call them Quints. You call them Leviathans, correct?” Fifteen or so categories. How many mechs are out there, speaking the same language as Jazz, fighting Quints (or Leviathans. Prowl isn’t sure if there’s a difference.) and living and dying the same as any other mech.

Jazz stills. Hot Rod pointedly looks away, expression as unreadable as ever. (It’s so strange, how wildly expressive their voice is in comparison to the rest of them. Perhaps it’s to compensate?)

“...In a manner of speaking,” Jazz says, at length.

Prowl digests this for a second, then nods, slowly.

Jazz and Hot Rod are MTOs. Or something close enough. This... explains... a few things. The pair of them talk about ‘cheapness’ and ‘construction’ and a million other things along those lines and near those concepts, and Prowl is realizing that he must look like someone either incredibly rich or incredibly lucky to these two. Because he has things like a face.  

Hot Rod made a comment about how expressive his face was, like they were surprised someone would bother, and now that Prowl has the context for that he feels a little sick.

He feels sick and angry and he wants to know what did this to the mechs that he is slowly but surely getting to know as (occasionally insufferable, difficult to predict, alien) allies. Good allies. Dependable and skilled and friendly. Built as lesser, built as weapons, given no choice in the matter.

“Well, damn, that got dark quick,” Jazz says. “Changing the topic now. Roddy, you got any questions?”

“Uhhh...” Hot Rod says, looking back over. “I dunno. Gossip? When I was looking to make sure you weren’t dead or anything- gave me a heart attack, by the way, please try not to do that again- I saw there were some new guys over at your base, but it wouldn’t let me in to check on their files, soooo...”

“Oh, yeah! Those two. Sunny and Sideswipe. They’re Rabbits-” Jazz gestures over at Prowl and says “-Those are the scout models,” clearly for his benefit, not that he knows what ‘scout models’ means in this context nor what they would look like, “-and they’re nice enough. Reckless. Damn good sharks, though.”

“Sharks?” Prowl asks, head tilting.

“Oh, right, neither of you would know what that means- a ‘shark’ is a scout mech with a kill count that’s more than incidental. As in, goes out and shoots kaiju despite the fact that they.. kinda aren’t supposed to? I dunno, I don’t really pay much attention to what they’re doing, I’m busy not dying the whole time.”

“So they’re basically exactly like you but shorter.”

“Yep, pretty much! Those little shits- Sunny and Sideswipe, I mean- are freakishly talented. Filled the space I left behind after I got, uh..” Jazz trails off. Prowl wants to know what happened. Prowl wants to know badly. He will not ask. “..I came back. It doesn’t matter a whole lot. Those two were fighting for a place in my shadow, anyway.”

Another long pause. More sparks.

“Wow, that didn’t get any less dark.” Hot Rod comments.

“Yeah, it really didn’t!” Jazz replies.

“Hey, quick question, can you see any better now? I’m not super sure I did any of this right-”

“Uhhh, hold on, lemme check-” Jazz’s visor flickers, then stays on at a low setting after a couple seconds. “Well, that’s better. Eugh. Work faster, please, this is giving me a headache.” (An odd choice of words, considering the fact that their head is what’s being re-attached, but also, it may just be a translation error.)

“I’m trying my best here,” Hot Rod replies. “I think if I get it to the point where you can move your neck and nothing breaks I’m just gonna call it fixed n’ move on.”

“Yeah, fair. I can probably get Prowl to do it the rest of the way, anyway. Very steady hands, that guy.”

Prowl’s surprised Jazz would think of him for that. Prowl’s also surprised they cared enough to notice, but that really shouldn’t be unexpected. Jazz is known for caring about things. Jazz stayed up all night for watch despite the fact that they probably didn’t even need to, and suffered for it later.

“The megacorporations. FAUNA, MYTHOS, EFFECT. What...” Prowl trails off, thinking. He knows what he wants to ask, but he isn’t sure how to ask it. “How much sway do they have over your lives?”

“Oh, uh. I mean. They basically control everything. Where we go, how long we stay there, what mec- what our jobs are... everything.” Hot Rod says, making as close an approximation to a shrug as their construction allows. “I mean, not directly, but there’s overseers with ties to High Command in pretty much every base. And way less so for me, because the corp I’m under doesn't give two shits about us.”

“A ‘hands off approach,’ as you might say,” Jazz adds. “Basically, our lives suck. They suck real bad.”

“...I’ve been gathering as much, yes.” Prowl says.

Another long moment of silence. Jazz starts tapping on things restlessly, the same way they did when Prowl was making repairs. Was that really all that long ago, or has the sheer amount of events warped Prowl’s perception of time? It’s hard to tell.

Apropos of nothing, Hot Rod asks “Is Sunny his actual name, ooor..?”

“Naw, it’s Sunstreaker, but his brother calls him Sunny, and it stuck. Or... so I’m told, anyway.” Jazz replies.

“Wild that you guys just pick your names out,” Hot Rod says. “You gotta do something interesting to get yours pretty much everywhere else.”

Jazz makes a noise that Prowl doesn’t have any context for, hands tapping faster. “Yeah, well. Most of us FAUNA mechs don’t live long enough to do anything real notable, so...” Based on their tone, the noise probably indicates a grimace or something similar. They’d have to get creative with expression indicators, considering all Jazz has is a visor, and Hot Rod has even less than that.

“You remember why they call me Hot Rod, right?”

“Well, yeah, but Prowl doesn’t, so you may as well.”

“Right, okay, cool, so basically I wouldn’t stop fucking around with the little transport buggies, and I accidentally modded one to go so fast it broke a hole in the base wall and sent me flying over a hill at like thirty miles an hour. That was fun.”

“It’s a wonder you survived to make it to combat.”

“That is also true! Anyway, souped-up transports were called ‘hot rods’ back in the day, so they started calling me that, and it stuck.”

Then Prowl has any time at all to think about what the actual words Jazz said meant, and immediately that dead-concern feeling is back. MTOs don’t have a very long lifespan: Jazz just said ‘FAUNA mechs.’ Shorter than average? Shorter than the average for the other two?

Prowl assembles all the information he has on these megacorporations.

FAUNA: Mechs under it have lower lifespans. (much lower?) (“Most of us FAUNA mechs don’t live long enough to do anything real notable.” [Jazz.]) “FAUNA names their{ mech categories} after animals,” [Jazz again.] What animals? From what planet? Jazz’s and Hot Rod’s home planet? Species’ home planet? Somewhere else? Known examples: “Rabbit,” “Wolf.” Symbol: pawprint with four toes. Naming conventions of mechs (individual) different from MYTHOS: names are chosen.

MYTHOS: Cares less (not at all?) about mechs under it(?). (“because the corp I’m under (cited earlier as MYTHOS) doesn't give two shits (expression unclear. likely meaning: does not care at all.) about us.” [cited from Hot Rod.]) (“A ‘hands off approach,’ as you might say,” [cited from Jazz.]) “MYTHOS(‘ mech categories are named) after myths,” [cited from Jazz] known examples: [N/A.] Which myths? From what culture? Symbol: four-pointed star. Naming conventions of mechs (individual) different from FAUNA: names are given(?) based on something notable you did/about you.

EFFECT: ... “EFFECT(‘s mech categories are named) after old scientists.” [Cited from Jazz.] Symbol: simplified lightning bolt. Which scientists? How old? Known examples: [N/A.]

GENERAL INFORMATION: “Fifteen or so” [cited from Jazz.] categories of mech in every corporation. Religious figure of ‘Laɪkə,’ first animal(? what kind?) to be sent to space. (presumably by Jazz + Hot Rod’s species.) Other names: Church Grim, Patron Saint of One-Way Trips, etc

REMAINING QUESTIONS: How are categories of mech enforced? How different do the categories look from mechs under the same corporation? How many mechs of the same species as Jazz and Hot Rod are out there? Where did Jazz go when they were ‘gone?’ Why don’t they want to talk about it? How old are Jazz and Hot Rod? What is the estimated lifespan of a ‘corp mech?’ What- 

Prowl is snapped back into reality by the sound of Jazz and Hot Rod cheering loudly.

“YEAAHHH!!! I CAN MOVE MY NECK AGAIN!!” Jazz is yelling, head having spun one hundred and eighty degrees (just to test that they could, probably) and fist-pumping the air.

“YEEAAHHHHH!!!!” Hot Rod is also yelling, having sat back to give Jazz some room to flail about. 

Jazz’s head spins back around with an audible click-cklick-click-k noise that sort of concerns Prowl, but they don’t seem to notice or care, and anyway Prowl is tired enough that he’s inclined to accept Jazz’s reading on the situation and move past it.

The yelling continues for at least a few more minutes before Jazz struggles up to their feet (balance offset? from what? likely the reintegration of visual stimulus) and they say “Right, cool, now that allat’s sorted, we can get moving!”

Right. The communications base. Prowl may or may not have briefly forgotten about that, in the haze of all the rest of the things that have happened.

“Yes. Are you sure you’re fit to be traveling, though..?” Prowl asks, as close a thing to concern as he’s willing or able to inflect in his voice.

“Pshhh,” Jazz says, waving a hand. “Not my first time getting my head chopped off and then welded back on my body. I’ll be fiiiiine.”

“Your what,” Prowl says.

“I’ll be fiiiiiiiiine,” Jazz reiterates.

Prowl doesn’t agree, but also has no power to stop them.

Chapter Text

And so they all get back to walking.

Jazz doesn’t really know what to do with the fact that Prowl has a voice now- well, no, they always had a voice, but it’s different now that he can really understand what they’re saying at a reasonable speed. Different now that they can inflect things like tone in their voice.

Well, that, and the mounting dread that if they find out, they’re going to kill him, but hey. Not too different from the usual dread, Jazz can deal with it. He has to.

beep beep beep goes the textcomm channel. 

ID.0987: idk man

ID.0987: prowl doesnt SEEM evil

Jazz sighs, the analog controls making a kinda concerning crack noise as he pulls them out with his actual human hands. The edge of something got caught on another something, probably. Nothing to worry about. Probably.

ID.1061: i mean

ID.1061: i don’t think they are

ID.1061: just.

Jazz pauses. Just what? What does he even mean?

ID.1061: i dunno. think about it like those old horror scifi movies.

The light in the cockpit is as low-red as it always is. Prowl and Hot Rod and Jazz all walk at roughly the same speed, Prowl in the lead for the sake of the fact that they’re the only one who knows the way. The pilots are only tagging along because they’ve got nothing better to do, anyway. Hanging around in the desert with nothing to do but eventually starve to death simply does not sound fun.

ID.0987: dude which one there’s like a bajillion of em

Roddy’s text tone is a shrill trifecta of little beeps, and it keeps mildly jumpscaring Jazz. Shrill beeping is not usually a good thing, when you’re in a big hunk of temperamental machinery, and that machinery is the only thing keeping you alive. 

Maybe Jazz should mess around with the controls some, see if there’s a way to change that. The fact that he can feel his heart rate spike every time can’t be good.

ID.1061: the one with the aliens that hatch out of people’s chest cavities

ID.0987: OHHHHH that one

ID.0987: wait how is that related

Well, it seems pretty obvious to Jazz.

ID.1061: i mean

ID.1061: is that not what we are to prowl

There’s a long pause. Jazz watches the little ‘typing...’ bubble appear, wait for a long moment, vanish, appear again.

ID.0987: holy hell i never thought of that

ID.0987: oooookay. ooohhh laika

ID.1061: the horrors just keep on comin’ don’t they

ID.0987: noooo shit!!!

Jazz glances over at Prowl. It's so weird, seeing a mech-scaled face with stuff like eyebrows and a mouth and everything else you'd expect from a regular human person face. Not to mention that Prowl definitely has at the very least a mild case of resting bitch face, but that one wasn’t their fault. Some people just loom.

Jazz wonders idly what he and Roddy look like to them. Roddy would be like... a massive, talking animal. With a flamethrower tail. Jazz’s already gotten used to it, because what is he if not adaptable, but for a literal alien (who probably only has bipedal frametypes) it would be pretty weird! It would be pretty strange indeed!

Prowl’s taking all of this surprisingly well, if Jazz is gonna be honest. He knows, from an objective standpoint, that it’s kind of a lot. To him, it’s just life, but this guy doesn’t live his life, so. Maybe that’s just compartmentalization, though. Jazz is familiar.

But anyway, Jazz and Hot Rod have mostly been chatting over textcomms. For the sake of the fact that the pair of them now had a preeety significant cover they had to keep up. Jazz would not like to be crushed into pulp, thank you very much.

“Wait, so it was Wrong Space you vanished into, right?” Hot Rod suddenly asks.

Jazz looks over. “Uh. Yeah, what of it?” He glances at Prowl- not enough to move his head, so basically imperceptibly- who looks very suddenly like they want to ask questions.

“I was tryin’ to write a mission report, but I’m realizing now that I’m saying the words out loud that that’s kinda really stupid.”

“Well, props to you for the self-awareness.” Jazz makes it obvious he’s looking at Prowl. “Prowl. You’ve got questions, I can tell. Ask ‘em.”

Prowl seems momentarily surprised by the direct statement, blinks, then says “What’s Wrong Space?”

Jazz and Hot Rod both very briefly stop in their tracks at that.

“You- you don’t have Wrong Space?? Not at all??”

“Maybe it’s a translation error? Y’know, Wrong Space, random areas where reality decides it’s gonna warp in on itself!” Hot Rod adds.

“No, I can’t say I’ve... ever heard of such a thing,” Prowl says, tone somewhere in the territory of concern.

“Holy Laika,” is what Jazz says to that. No Wrong Space. Where do they get fuel, then? Jazz saw Prowl drinking something earlier (still a wild experience. That mouth works?? It’s attached to something like a digestive system??? Jazz has never been more jealous of a robot before. Except for maybe the chainsaw hands robot they put on posters, but that one doesn’t count.)

“Wow. That’s- wow. Okay. You don’t have Wrong Space. Prowl, buddy, this is like saying you don’t know what stars are, to put it in perspective.” Hot Rod adds.

Prowl squints a little at Hot Rod, like maybe they don’t quite believe him, and doesn’t say anything further. Just waits for the pair of them to continue talking.

Jazz’s noticed they do that a lot. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, or maybe Prowl is just bad at socializing. One point does not make a graph and all that. 

“Uh. Okay. Hell, where do I start?” Jazz asks, to nobody in particular. “Wrong Space is what we call big areas of usually- not always, but most of the time- interstellar space where, uh. Reality doesn’t play nice. Nobody knows why, just that if you go there you don’t... usually come back. And even if you do, you come back... different.”

Prowl nods, like they’re taking notes inside their head. Who knows, maybe they are. “That isn’t something I’m familiar with. I believe you, but I’ve never seen or heard of... anything like that.”

Jazz is suddenly struck by the fact that Prowl is really a bit stuffy for also being a cool as all hell alien space robot. Those are not things that are supposed to line up. Opposite ends of a sliding scale. And yet, Prowl is both.

“...Would it be incorrect to assume that Wrong Space is where you vanished to?” Prowl eventually asks. Jazz didn’t even realize he’d been letting the silence drag out like that.

“...No, that’s right. Got lost. Drifted out Laika knows how far, ended up in the local Wrong Space patch, woke up a week later in the medbay with my commander staring at me like he wanted to blast a hole right through me with the sheer force of his eyeballs.” Jazz replies, waving a hand. 

It was fine. He got over all (most of them, anyway, he already had nightmares before then) the lasting effects. Even his vision went back to normal eventually, and the fact it fuzzes out again when he’s under extreme amounts of stress is something he can deal with. He’s alive. That’s the bar. That’s the standard. Be alive and stay that way.

Prowl blinks- wild they can do that, no Jazz still isn’t over the whole articulated face thing- with a look on their face like they’ve just figured out some concerning implications but know better than to ask about it.

Jazz frankly doesn’t know what kind of implications they would’ve even been able to get out of that, but all the same. Prowl’s smart. Too smart. They’re going to figure it out, and when they do, Jazz really, really doesn’t want to kill them. He doesn’t want it to come to that.

Maybe Prowl won’t decide to crush Jazz into goo when they find out. Maybe. That’s the hope. That’s what Jazz is looking forward to. He doesn’t want to think about the alternative. (he doesn’t want to die, but he doesn’t want to kill his friend, either.)

The conversation lapses into silence. The trio continue walking through equal parts sandy and rocky dust that is definitely getting paler. Prowl’s in the lead, occasionally slowing down and squinting at something nobody else can see. HUD viewscreen, maybe? How’d they get it in their eyes, though??

ID.0987: yo dude you okay??

ID.1061: yeah i’m fine

ID.1061: thought too hard about things. you know how it is

ID.0987: well. um. hey

ID.0987: at least we arent EFFECT pilots!!

ID.1061: yeah.

ID.1061: at least we aren’t EFFECT pilots.

“Soooooo...” Roddy says, breaking the silence. (Well. Silence is a relative word. There’s still the wind and the sound of footsteps and all the ambient mechanical noise three giant robots make just by existing.) “Where are we going again?”

“There is a known Quintession communications station on this planet. We’re finding it, so I can get in contact with my allies, and perhaps you will be able to as well.” Prowl answers. Jazz was right, they do sound mildly British. Which is. What. Jazz decides that he's gonna move on.

“Oh, uh. All the people I know probably think I’m dead. Like suuuuuper dead. Jazz was a weird exception to the ‘anybody who vanishes basically ceases to exist’ rule. People assume you die if you go missing. That’s just how it goes.” Hot Rod says.

“And we probably wouldn’t be able to get in contact with them, anyway, not with the fact that we’re probably literal galaxies away. I don’t even want to. I don’t have many people who would miss me.”

Roddy’s head whips around to face Jazz. “WHAT?? We’re not in the Milky Way anymore?????”

“I mean. Probably?” Jazz starts counting off in his fingers. “No Wrong Space, no Leviathans, different mechs, never even heard of the megacorporations, different common language,”

“So- okay. Sure, alright, I can roll with that. I’m gonna miss Percy, but... maybe Prowl’s friends won’t be so bad?” Hot Rod says, voice pitched like he’s trying really, really hard to put a positive spin on this. Honestly, it’s better than Jazz would’ve been able to manage, so props to him.

“...So you have no desire to contact home, nor the capabilities. Noted.” Prowl says. Jazz is starting to think the undertone of concern/horror is just what their voice sounds like. Sure, his life may suck real bad, but it’s not that bad. At least he doesn’t think so. Maybe it looks worse from the outside. Jazz wouldn’t know.

“Yep, sounds about right,” is what Jazz says in reply. Roddy doesn’t add anything. Maybe he’s got friends, but Jazz doesn’t. He hasn’t for a long while.

The conversation lapses into silence again, this time steeped a few shades distinctly more awkward. 

So, with the absence of anything else to do (Jazz is not going to be the one to break the silence. That’s Roddy’s job,) Jazz’s mind inevitably wanders, and he’s thinking about one of the only friends he ever had.

It’s almost funny, how much of either a galactically unlikely coincidence or how cruel a joke it is, because the fact is, one of Jazz’s only friends was named Prowl, too.

Jazz doesn’t much like thinking about Prowl, the old Prowl, his Prowl. Because his Prowl is dead. His Prowl is dead, and Jazz doesn’t like to think about him for the sake of the fact that his death is still something like an open wound, bleeding messily on things and spilling his grievances about the piloting system as a whole over the ground for everyone to see.

And he can’t be a rebel, not like that. He’s the ace. The brilliant, shining star, the most competent person on base for the fact that everyone who ever exceeded him is either living a good life up in Command, happy they aren’t the ones on the ground dying anymore, or dead, or both.

Jazz knows this isn’t a career for people who have dreams of living a long life. But it’s one thing to know that objectively and another to see everyone you could have ever called a friend die one by one.

Jazz doesn’t want to end up like them, to have all that’s left of him taken away by the glorified trash cans that skulk over the battlefields once all the action is over and be compressed into a brand new shining weapon for yet another fresh pilot to climb into and repeat the process. 

He wants to be remembered, in some way, more than the scratched-in signature, cast in nothing but blue paint and spite. All those names huddled together in some nook on base, crowded beside and overtop Laika knows how many other names, all to people who are long, long dead by now.

Jazz used to go to that little nook and trace the edges of the letters that you could still read, back when he still had the time to mourn like that.

Hookshot. Stardust. Trackmark. Trench. Cook. Grenade. Clanker. Carhartt. Nix. Hawk. Blade. DIO.

Who were those people? How long ago were they alive? Does anyone remember them, even just as blurred faces in a crowd? Did anyone ever mourn them? How many people did it take, before any memory of who they were was gone?

Jazz doesn’t want to die, but more than that, he doesn’t want to be forgotten.

So he’ll remember his Prowl for as long as he can. Because he at least deserves a memory if not a burial.

(The thing they call a ‘pilot’s funeral’ is less a real funerary service and more something akin to a vigil. Sometimes even Command gets involved, with their tinny praise and canned lines about remembrance, but only the real hot-shots get them: everyone else just huddles around the day of, whispering stories and the reasons they care enough to show up at all.

There are no grave markers, just names and dates painted and scored and chipped and scratched into the walls that eventually no one will be able to read. The average FAUNA base is riddled with countless faint reminders of the people that only once lived there.)

Jazz is startled out of his sudden extremely depressing introspection time by Roddy whacking him over the shoulder.

“Dude! We found it!” he says, gesturing wildly at- It takes Jazz a second, but he realizes it’s a building, complete with comically large satellite dish on top. The whole thing is more than lightly dusted with bone-white dust, and also so are Jazz and Hot Rod and Prowl, now that he’s looking. All the paint on their feet is totally covered up- it looks a bit like they all were walking around in the world’s largest container of powdered sugar.

“Oh, hey, looks like we did,” Jazz says, as though this information is not blindingly obvious.

“Yes, well. We still need to get inside, as it were.” Prowl says, tone flat, already striding off towards the base.

As the pair watch Prowl recede away into the distance, Hot Rod asks, “Dude, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Jazz says back.

Roddy just sort of looks at him. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and then he’s following Prowl through the white puffs of dust they kicked up.

Jazz follows, too, after a long moment. He doesn’t want to be left behind.

Chapter Text

As it turns out, Prowl is capable of a depth of mixed concern and horror that makes it feel a bit like there’s something stuck in one of his vents and he can’t quite breathe right.

It’s fine. Shouldn’t be an issue. The issue is the pair of mechs ambling along after him who are a perfect mixing bag of awful Prowl would almost think they were making it up as a sob story, had he heard it from anyone else, in anything other than bits and pieces, in anything other than the mix of joking and flippant and careful tones, like they thought half the things they were saying didn’t matter.

The truth is that they matter. They matter quite a lot.

Jazz knows what a face is. Jazz has always known what a face was. Hot Rod straight up asked how much money they spent on Prowl’s creation because he had one. The pair of them were never confused on what it meant, they always knew what it was, so why don’t they have faces too.

Jazz said- “woke up a week later in the medbay with my commander staring at me like he wanted to blast a hole right through me with the sheer force of his eyeballs.” -direct citation, always nice, everybody loves a direct citation. Jazz’s commander has eyes. Does having a face mean rank? Is that why the pair of them seem slightly uncomfortable around Prowl, or is it just that Prowl’s social ineptitude is getting in the way again?

But if it was only the commander, how would Jazz know how to read facial expressions? Prowl gets the impression that their commanders aren’t around very often, where would they have learned it?

Civilians, maybe? But where would Jazz have met any civilians? If they’re MTOs, no one would bother to subject them to empurata, right? (The possibility is inordinately difficult to calculate, and Prowl does not have the processor space to spare.)

And why did they downplay it so much? The topic was brushed past as fast as they could, like they were trying to convince someone (themself? Prowl? Hot Rod?) that it didn’t matter, that it was in the past so they don’t need to think about it anymore. Down to the way they said it, phrased it- impersonal. Tone flat, looking away, relaying events that happened to someone else in the first person. That wasn’t them, that was some other Jazz.

Prowl wonders what else they’re brushing past, what else that happened to them they’re pretending doesn’t matter for the sake of.. what? To appear stronger, more put together? But who would be looking? Who would look and care? 

Prowl is afraid of the answer he’s going to find. He’s not quite used to that. Then again, these two alien mechs have already introduced Prowl to brand new experiences of horror and concern.

If he so much as gets half a chance, he is trying his Pit-damned best to dismantle whatever Torment Nexus government that’s been set up over there. At all costs.

And all of that isn’t even getting into Wrong Space.

Prowl doesn’t like it. Not in concept, not in the bits in pieces he’s heard of it. Jazz is apparently a miracle survivor of the thing, and Prowl doesn’t like the implication. How many people have gone in and never been found, if one mech making it is enough to call a ‘miracle?’ Does he want to know? (He probably doesn’t. He’ll find out anyway.)

He wonders idly what about Jazz changed when they came back. Prowl never knew them before, and he doesn’t even know how much it would change you, in any case, but data is data, and it’s nicer than wondering if the medical situation on this is more or less horrifying than the rest of it. (Ratchet is going to have a conniption at so much as the sight of these two.) 

(In any case, with the track record thus far, Prowl’s bet is on ‘worse.’ How, exactly, that’s even possible, he’s yet to see.)

Hot Rod and Jazz have gotten into some kind of discussion- Prowl turns his audials back up (as it turns out, Hot Rod makes a combination of faint rattling and clicking noises while moving that is extremely annoying for long periods) to listen.

“-not in the Milky Way anymore?????” Hot Rod is asking, voice pitched up almost comically.

“I mean. Probably?” Jazz raises a hand, starts tapping off fingers for each point they make. They’ve only got four on one hand, Prowl notes. “No Wrong Space, no Leviathans, different mechs, never even heard of the megacorporations, different common language,”

And as it turns out Jazz is observant. No, of course they are, MTOs who aren’t observant or otherwise competent in some manner typically do not survive their first combat. Still. It is nice to see that Prowl is- wait a second, what’s the Milky Way? (Prowl’s not going to get a chance to ask anytime soon, is he.)

“So- okay. Sure, alright, I can roll with that. I’m gonna miss Percy, but... maybe Prowl’s friends won’t be so bad?” Hot Rod says. The words come out as tinny, even to Prowl’s ears. 

The Milky Way must be home, in some kind of way. Prowl wonders idly who Percy is, (Someone Hot Rod knows, but that much is blindingly obvious) then realizes that the Milky Way must be far enough away that both Hot Rod and Jazz think there’s no chance of communication. Jazz doesn’t even seem all that put out by that fact, either. As though perhaps they don’t even want to go home.

“...So you have no desire to contact home, nor the capabilities. Noted.” Prowl says. 

He’s always hated how stilted his voice is, when it comes to actual talking. Why can’t he just bundle up his thoughts in the perfect form they were in on the inside of his head and simply hand that to people instead of having to assemble them into sentences? It would all be so much easier that way. Doubtless that mechs would find ways to misinterpret him anyway.

Jazz nods. They’ve been quiet this whole time. Prowl wonders if it means anything, because as much as the TAC-net is good at calculating odds and scenarios, it never made him any better with people.

The conversation lapses once more into silence.

It’s funny to think that a few days ago, Prowl assumed Jazz was a Quintesson soldier (only very briefly, and only before he ever saw them) and that they were going to kill him.

Now there’s two of them, and Prowl wants to get them to a doctor and figure out what their usual state of being is so he can make sure their quality of life is as good as they can manage for the fact that they are still at war with the Quintessons.

But in order to get there, they still need to get into this comms station. Prowl cannot contact the Autobots (or anyone else on the Lost Light, for that matter) with the power of his mind. No matter how much more convenient and useful that would be.

This situation is all much more complicated than Prowl first anticipated. He wonders if everyone at Autobot HQ has assumed he’s dead by now. Probably not. They have more faith in him than to get incidentally murdered at some experimental Quint base for the mistake of assuming he understood how alien tech worked.

--- (One Hour Later) ---

The door screeches loudly as Jazz comes barreling into the room, skidding to a sudden halt just fast enough to avoid slamming into the control panel Prowl is already elbow-deep in.

“Hey hi Prowl Prowlie Prowler my good pal my chum my pal we may have a bit of a problem. ” Jazz says, speaking so quickly the words almost trip over each other, skittering around the otherwise mostly silent room like a pack of unruly clowns. They rock back and forth on their heels, flailing a little every now and then as though to keep their balance in a nervous, frenetic kind of display.

“What.” Prowl says, too irritated (at being interrupted, and at the probable terrible news, and at the fact that this is taking so long in the first place, did no Quintessons ever stop to do any form of maintenance on their comms or is Prowl just forever cursed to never have his work done with) to bother putting in the effort to force his tone anything other than flat.

“We got Quuuuuints..-? Yeah, Quints, that’s what they’re called- We got Quints.” They bounce a little, weight shifting from heel to toe and back again, hands folded and tapping against each other. “Roddy can deal with ‘em for a while- he’s area denial, and also there’s like a bajillion hallways and choke points in here- but I mean I figured it’d be good to let you know?” The question is pitched unnecessarily high. It’s not even really a question. Jazz is nervous, that much is obvious, and they are also obviously stalling for something.

Prowl says as much. “You’re stalling. What do you want to say.”

“The Quints may or may not have fucked over the wiring is the thing,” Is Jazz’s immediate response.

“Why didn’t you lead with that.”

“Because-” They throw their hands up. Prowl scoots away a little to give them room to flail dramatically, though his range of motion is a bit restricted, because he’s elbow-deep in the console and taking the time to pry himself out would take too long when he’d just have to put everything back not seconds later. “-’cause usually when I give bad news to people in charge they flip out-” (euphemism? for what?) “-on me. And also the wiring was already fucked and you seemed pissed about it.”

Prowl blinks. This is, on Jazz’s part, a fair observation, if a bit skewed. Prowl would never be mad at Jazz for reporting someone else’s damage. That would be stupid and illogical. He doesn’t know how to say that without sounding just as dumb, though.

“Fair enough. Please keep them from doing that more, if possible, and let me work on my own time.”

Jazz nods vigorously, a bit like one of those novelty bobblehead toys that Prowl never much liked, and flees back out the door. Prowl never noted how much effort they must be putting into not scraping the top layers off the floor until suddenly they weren’t. The noise is awful, but they’re gone so fast it doesn’t particularly matter.

Prowl gets back to work, though he extricates one hand from the metaphorical (perhaps not metaphorical, really, considering this is Quintesson tech) guts of the machine to turn the security feeds on.

Prowl doesn’t know if this is an accurate statement, because he doesn’t have the bandwidth to calculate the probability of it, but it feels like the Quintessons let some wild beasts at their comms, because he doesn’t know how this kind of disrepair would happen otherwise, even if there aren’t any obvious claw marks. 

He is probably unnecessarily angry at this. He needs to find a table to flip. It’ll make him feel better. Property damage is irrelevant.

He glances up at the security feeds. It takes a second of roving, but he does find the one with Hot Rod in camera view, quickly joined by Jazz, who descends onto the Quintesson soldiers- scouts and basic fighters, not much else is small enough to fit in these hallways, nevermind where they came from- like a plague of hungry locusts. 

Jazz and Hot Rod work together very well. Hot Rod is best at distracting and damaging broad sweeps of enemies, while JAzz is a precision weapon: Hot Rod takes care of the majority while Jazz can dash through and catch anything that survives the fire. It’s almost mesmerizing, but Prowl catches himself and gets back to his job. All three of them came here so they could set up the comms. He better actually set up the comms. No use in dilly-dallying.

He’s finally made progress on the stupid thing (he owes many thanks to his soldering iron and his self-restraint to not rip something out of the wall and throw it) the door slams open again.

Prowl is about to snap something barbed at the intruder, but the words die in his mouth because instead of it being Jazz coming to report something else (uncharacteristically nervously, Prowl realizes only now) it’s Hot Rod, dragging a limp and unresponsive Jazz in tow.

“Quints are handled,” Hot Rod says, “But-” Hot Rod trails off. They don’t need to specify. They are currently propping Jazz up against the wall. Jazz should not be that still. Something is wrong. Jazz’s visor is off, completely black, and the tip of one of the retractable swords (the one in their left arm, Prowl notes) is out, scratching a shallow line into the floor. 

“What happened,” Prowl asks, voice much calmer than he actually feels.

“I don’t know! I don’t know, he just collapsed. He’s not responding to comms and none of his lights are on, and I can’t even hear his ventilation syste-” They suddenly come to a jarring halt, and then their helm slowly spins one hundred and eighty degrees to face Prowl as they say “Oh. Oohhh. His fuel ration ran out, that’s what he was cursing about- oh, I’m so stupid for not realizing, UUUGH,” and then all Prowl has is questions.

“What? Fuel ration?” Like food? Jazz doesn’t have an intake, but they never mentioned needing anything, so it slipped Prowl’s mind. It shouldn’t have, he realizes this now.

“He’s alive, don’t worry- uhh. Fuel rations are however much of the fuel tank that’s actually open to being used. It’s stupid, but it’s built into the systems so deep that none of the engineers want to do anything to it in case it screws other things over irreversibly. It’s meant to stop people from going on joyrides randomly, but it’s definitely also gotten people killed. Like that,” Hot Rod gestures at Jazz, “-except he’s fine, because I torched everything in the vicinity before it could even think about trying anything.”

Prowl makes the executive decision to shelve all previous trains of thought he had.

“They what,” he says, tone exactly as murderous as he feels.

“I mean! It’s fine! He’ll be fine in a minute when the next one opens up! Which- actually, that could be hours, uum. This is bad, this is baaad, but it’s not like life-threatening, probably-”

Prowl cuts them off. “Hot Rod, I need you to clarify,” he says, as he’s prying both hands out of the console specifically so he can gesture about this, “That your fuel systems have allotted sections that cut you off from being able to do anything if you happen to do too much in a specific period of time? That you have rationed-out sections of being able to live?”

“Okay, it sounds really bad when you put it like that-” Hot Rod backs up, hands in the air like a surrender. “I-it’s not, okay no it is pretty bad but not- not that bad? It’s only really bad if you use up the end of your ration during combat, but they last so long and usually you can get a license from your commanders to just do it in the off-hours so you don’t. Y’know. Die. And if you get to the end of your ration supply somehow, they’re probably just gonna give you a medal for living that long.”

This only raises more questions. “You only have one supply of fuel rations!?”

Hot Rod shrinks back. “U-um. Yeah?”

Prowl narrowly resists the urge to shake Hot Rod around by the shoulders to try and knock some sense into them that no, this isn’t normal, what do you MEAN that’s just how you live. “And this isn’t a problem because none of you live long enough to reach the end.”

“I mean, some people do, but nobody in FAUNA, at least. MYTHOS mechs tend to last longer. Refills just cost a fortune, ‘cause- ‘cause the fuel is from Wrong Space.” Hot Rod fully turns around, shrugs languidly as best as their construction allows. “S’called Liquid Stars. Hyper-efficient. Easily the most expensive part about making one of us.” Their tone has gone flat, informative, impersonal. They’re just relaying words they’ve been told by someone else, probably someone higher up on the corporate ladder.

“You all only get one fuel tank’s worth of fuel and don’t have any intakes because the fuel is extremely expensive and very few mechs last long enough to ever need more,” Prowl repeats. “I think your supervisors have invented new war crimes against sapient beings,” also escapes Prowl’s mouth, which is frighteningly unprofessional, but also what he honestly thinks.

That seems to startle a laugh out of Hot Rod. “I mean. Maybe? I don’t know, I’ve just been living through it. Been trying my best here.” They sit down heavily next to Jazz. “Um. How are the comms going?”

Prowl slowly turns back to the mangled console. “I’ve been making progress,” he remarks flatly. “I think they either didn’t touch them since they were built or some manner of acid slug made a home inside. The damage is atrocious.”

“Okay, you have fun with that,” Hot Rod says. “I’m... I’m gonna take a nap now. Wake me up if anything happens.”

Chapter Text

Jazz’s day has been, categorically, going bad.

Accidentally dragged himself into a depression spiral about that dead best friend he had way back when? Sure, why not. 

Get jumpscared by more of those not-Leviathans (Quints, they’re called Quints) when he was just trying to make sure he didn’t explode? It’s not like he has any say in the matter.

 His fuel ration running out at literally the worst possible moment because he got too distracted expelling a significant portion of that built-up and compressed anger he has and he forgot about the warning it gave him earlier? Jazz is just starting to think that the universe itself hates him personally.

Only a few of the dim red lights that are always lit up the inside of the cockpit are on. Those are the ones on the same power grid as the life support. Jazz knows that because he hasn’t choked to death on bad air yet.

Thank Laika the mech designers had at least the sense to get life support a second battery source. It probably won’t save Jazz in the long run, but at least he’s not dead yet!

It’s kind of difficult to tell what’s happening around you when you’re in an offline and unresponsive mech, it turns out. 

Really, that information should have been obvious, considering his whole stint with having his (mech’s) head chopped off, but it’s a bit different when you don’t even get the pressure sensation of walking. Jazz assumes Roddy is dragging him somewhere safer right now. Whether or not that scraping noise is that or something trying to pry him open he has no idea.

He decides that now is not the best time to be considering his imminent mortality, and disconnects to go get a meal pack. And stretch. And maybe convince his regular person joints to move properly again.

He stands up and spends a few minutes trying to crack every joint in his body. Having an actual microwave for “heating your food up to temperatures many would call ‘edible’” purposes would be nice, but the thing is that would be kind of impractical and also probably inordinately dangerous for all the functionality it would actually have. So instead he’s just sticking it in the nearest engine compartment.

Okay, not directly into the engine compartment. Into one of the engine vent compartments, for multiple reasons including “the actual engine compartment is inaccessible from the inside of the cockpit” and “the actual engine compartment is so Surface-of-the-Sun type hot it would melt his McFreakin’ face off”. The vent is a better zone. He’s only burned his hands on it maybe five times. And it heats up his cheap space noodles faster than anything else he’s got access to. 

He’s allowed to sacrifice some of a water ration to get a lunch that actually tastes like something, that’s his shiny new right as the longest-lived guy at the base. The base that he’ll (hopefully) never see again.

You know, Jazz actually wasn’t all that distraught at the news that he’ll probably never be able to go back. Oh no, he doesn’t have to almost die every day anymore. The horror.

Who would he even miss? The twins, maybe. But they weren’t friends. Jazz was plenty friendly, but he hasn’t had friends. Sunny and Sideswipe were just scared of him. Intimidated by him? Doesn’t really matter. Same conclusion either way. Jazz was old and unapproachable and had seen more things than most anyone else you could find. 

No one wants to hang out with the living ghost, even if that ghost buys you a drink sometimes.

He should feel worse about leaving behind everything he ever knew, right? He should feel more than just slightly bad. Right?

He doesn’t know. All he really feels is dread at what’s coming next, and relief he won’t have to go back.

It hits him right then: he doesn’t have to go back.

That novelty bounces around on the inside of Jazz’s head for a pretty significant amount of time before he blinks and realizes he’s been staring at nothing for a while. He never even put the cup in. For shame.

Maybe things will get better now. Probably. It’ll be different. Maybe that means better.

The vent compartment is just barely accessible in the chunk of space below the seat, behind where Jazz’s feet go. It’s more than a bit awkward to get at, but also it’s the only reasonable (and even then that’s a bit of a stretch) way to get his food anything other than in a state of being an ice block. Jazz didn’t have any dignity to begin with, there are no losses here.

He sticks the cup inside after prying the cover open (a big plume of steam hisses out and fogs up his helmet visor as he does) and then closes it after for the sake of the fact that the vent isn’t actually supposed to vent into the cockpit, and also that cover isn’t supposed to open at all, and really this is probably really stupid (as in a stupid decision for his health) but the thing is Jazz is hungry and he doesn’t care.

He’s got enough food to last him years in here, and all of it is as cold and hard as rocks. And most of it is tasteless ration bars. (Jazz likes to chew on the wrappers of those. It’s a more interesting dining experience than the actual food, which is really just kind of pathetic on the part of the ration bars. He craves texture.)

Well, no, not tasteless, there’s two flavors: sawdust and cardstock. 

Jazz misses real flavor. Eating just-about-tasteless vitamin rocks is not his idea of a good time.

The inside of Jazz’s mech is actually pretty cozy. Above and around the seat are more containers and fancy cabinets (the proper term is compartments, but that sounds kinda stuffy) than he cares to count, all stuffed with various things including water rations, ration bars, food rations, food packs, more water rations, a spare container of jaw guards that he’s got no idea where he got from, a third flavor of ration bar that tastes even more like cardstock somehow, even more water rations, short-term air filters, did he mention the water rations and the box of all the spare parts people kept giving him for whatever reason. 

There are some genuine keepsakes in there, but mostly it’s useless junk people wanted off their hands. Why did they give all that to Jazz of all people? He’s got no idea. But he has it now, and it’s in the third compartment up on the left side of the chair.

There really is not a lot of room in here.

Jazz kind of wants to get out and walk around. No, scratch that, he really wants to get out of his mech and take a walk. There’s a whole conga line of reasons why he can’t, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to.

 Funny how the human brain is like that. Jazz wishes it wasn’t.

The cup is wedged in the vent compartment well enough that all the vibration- he’s definitely being dragged to somewhere safer, because as much as Roddy’s mech is awesome it is not very good at picking up things larger than itself- it shouldn’t get knocked over and spill all the water in it. Spilling water in the vent compartment would be very not good. It probably wouldn’t break anything, but it would simply be better not to risk it. Jazz may be a foolhardy idiot, but he knows better than to mess with the hardware. The hardware is what’s keeping him alive.

Wow, this really kind of sucks. He can’t do anything in here. Not even fire up some music or one of the bajillion recordings he has. (Jazz likes recordkeeping, and he bartered a camera off one of the mechanics, and as it turns out FAUNA mechs have an absurd amount of data storage built in that nobody ever uses, because they’re usually too dead to care.)

He can’t even fire up Tetris while the power’s cut. This is terrible. He doesn’t even like Tetris!

He sits down criss-cross applesauce on the cockpit floor and starts counting the lights, because he’s got nothing better to do while he waits for his food to cook. 

They’re meant to be base lunches, where there’s water you’re not supposed to save until you’re actively dying of dehydration, but nobody stopped Jazz from stealing half the stock and nobody asked after said missing half of the stock, so they’re his now. Especially now that he’s literally galaxies away. Try stealing his food now, FAUNA management! They can’t stop him from being a waste of resources all the way out here!

He counts through the lights (there’s only ten of them on right now,) stands up again, goes through some more stretches to once again avoid becoming a homogenous sludge with the pilot chair, and then pries his noodle cup out of the vent compartment.

He has to set it on the seat of the chair immediately because it is indeed boilingly hot, but hey, it didn’t tip over somehow, and also the flavor didn’t leech out of it as far as Jazz can tell, so win for that. Jazz hasn’t had much of a sense of smell for a while now, so he can’t tell if anything smells better because of it, but hey! Food! Everybody loves food. Especially Jazz.

He wonders what Roddy and Prowl are up to out there. He kind of got distracted because of the, you know, suddenly losing all power and being forcibly disconnected from his mech ( not a fun experience. Mecha are actually headache machines. At least this reminded him to go get lunch, that’s something.) Prowl was fixing the comms, Jazz remembers that much. Prowl was fixing the comms to talk to their friends out somewhere and almost certainly get help.

He doesn’t really know, not for certain. The memory’s a bit fuzzy with panic, because of the Quints showing up and then the whole fuel ration thing. His memory’s always been a little spotty anyway, that’s fine. He can deal with it.

The cup & contents have finally cooled down enough that they’re actually edible when the rest of the lights come back on. Jazz squints in the sudden light, realizes what that means, and sighs before taking the thirty seconds to link back in. He was eating lunch, couldn’t it have waited just a bit longer?

His vision sort of flickers as his brain adjusts to the connection again, and then after a long few seconds of disorientation- Fun Fact: if you’re disoriented in your mech, the training is to stay as absolutely still as you can get. No use knocking things over and/or squashing some poor fool underfoot just because you can’t find your balance. - he figures out he’s in the comms room Prowl was hanging out in before.

Jazz’s audial capacity cuts back in a few seconds after that. Prowl is muttering to themself, hands stuck in the console (Jazz can kind of see something dripping out of said console, but decides not to worry about it since Prowl doesn’t seem bothered, or at least not bothered enough to stop doing whatever it is they’re doing) and glaring up at the blank and empty monitor screens nearby. There’s like a million of them in here, like a useless homemade panopticon.

Roddy is sat down next to Jazz, folded up and powered down like how you’d leave your mech in the hangar. He was probably trying to catch a nap, which, honestly, Jazz can respect. Everybody loves sleeping. And food.

He takes a long slrrrrpp of his noodles. The kind of coordination it takes to do things with your person body and your mech body at the same time was never something Jazz figured out, so he’ll be awkwardly pausing a lot. At least they taste good! Which is to say they taste like anything. Salt is a beautiful flavor. Jazz missed flavors.

Prowl doesn’t seem to have noticed Jazz woke up. They’re probably too busy messing with the comms, which seem to be frustrating them to no end at the moment. The language they’re muttering in isn’t the same one that the translators can pick up, so Jazz has no idea what they’re saying, but judging by the fact they keep stopping to glare holes in it they’re not having an easy time of it.

Upon confirming that Jazz doesn’t need to be doing anything at the moment to avoid his untimely demise, he hooks back out to finish actually eating his food. At least he can put music on now! And he won’t have to do awkward pauses in doing anything! That’s a win!

Man, and there’s literally no mechanics to help Jazz figure out how to link the audio player to the life support power without irreversibly breaking something else by accident. The one bad thing about not being able to go back. Well, Roddy seems pretty good with mech electronics, maybe he’ll be able to help. 

They haven’t been able to get out and like, actually see each other yet, which is kind of wild, even if Prowl was also there the entire time. Usually that’s the first thing you do when you meet an old friend again.

Well, there’s been a lot of absurdities lately, so Jazz may as well just get used to not knowing what’s going to come next and move on. He’s got the power. He’s survived this long, he’s certainly got the power.

Maybe if he repeats it to himself enough times it’ll become true. 

☆。*。☆。

By the time that Prowl finally, finally gets the Quintesson comms system up and running (he hates wetware, he hates it so much, why did the Quints decide that what their stupid computers needed was blood and neurons, but his disgust is not more important than actually contacting people) he’s happy enough that he almost genuinely forgets he did all of that in order to actually get in contact with the Lost Light.

He spends a long few minutes scraping Quint biomachine goop off of his servos while he considers the new and even less exciting problem of how to actually get in contact. 

The Lost Light typically does not accept mystery communications, especially quintesson mystery communications, for a ‘we are running from the local galactic superpower that wants us all extremely dead and the ship is intentionally extremely hard to contact on Quintesson hardware for this reason’ kind of reason. 

Prowl of course has authority to make communications in more normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances. They haven’t been for a long while now.

Maybe he could do something with the caller ID? Prowl has no idea how ID codes work with Quint tech, but if he could figure out a way to finagle the machinery into accepting something recognizable as Prowl into the system, maybe all the mechs over at the Lost Light would actually have reason to accept his call and he can finally move on to waiting for someone to show up rather than restraining his urge to whack his face into the console in pure unadulterated frustration.

Such is life. Prowl wishes life was more convenient for him.

The main issue is that Prowl is not fluent in Quint code and barely knew what he was doing anyway. 

Maybe he should just try calling them instead of devoting too much processor space into trying to calculate what he’d need to do in order to make the call recognizably him. 

They don’t usually get random communication requests from derelict Quintesson weapons bases. Surely Optimus in all of his optimistic and empathetic glory would be willing to pick up. Prowl calculates there is a 46.25% chance of it.

It takes another long minute to actually figure out how to call, and another few to input the Lost Light’s comm ID, which was made unnecessarily complicated for what Prowl logically understands is a good reason but is currently extremely frustrated at. The cheat sheet is also in code. Prowl can read it fine, but the computer keeps trying to auto-correct the spelling of the actual codes to the encoded ones and also to other various things and Prowl is probably going to end up throwing something as hard as he can very soon.

Eventually he is finally able to send the comms request. It takes entirely too long. As has this entire situation.

Prowl counts forty-five entire seconds before the line picks up. 

He can only imagine how he looks: covered in dust, slightly hunched over the Quint console with half-dried goop in the panel spaces of his hands, teeth grit, and a positively murderous look in his eye. Or so he assumes, anyway. He wants very badly to have a decontamination shower. Perhaps several.

On the other end of the line is, predictably, Optimus Prime front and center, along with Red Alert, and additionally Soundwave standing half out of frame. They’re on the bridge, Prowl is able to recognize the background.

There’s a long moment of silence as everyone on the Lost Light presumably gets it into their heads that instead of a Quint, it was, in fact, Prowl contacting them.

Prowl’s infinite patience has proved in actuality rather finite. “Yes, it’s Prowl. Yes, I am alive. Someone please send a recon ship or something to come pick me up.”

Chapter Text

“Prowl,” Ratchet starts, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I wish I was,” Prowl says, his face buried in his hands. “They have no reason to be making any of this up. There may be some error in my findings as I don’t know the full extent of what they.. are,” Prowl unsubspaces a second data pad, slides it across the table towards Ratchet. “But besides that, this is everything I know.”

“You found two alien soldiers, both very obviously traumatized, one of which bears a strong resemblance to a victim of empurata, and you just decided to bring them here.” Ratchet says, trying to make sure he has the facts right.

“Both of them don’t have any way to get back to their home planet,” Prowl replies, voice muffled. “And in any case, Jazz doesn’t even want to.”

“And Jazz is...” Ratchet flips through the first datapad, finding an image of them quickly enough. “Right. Okay. How about you give me the facts so I don’t lose my mind trying to dig through all this.”

“It’s-” Prowl has already sat up by now, visibly biting back something, probably about ‘it is organized, you just lack the ability to find things.’ “Yes. I can do that.”

“I met Jazz first, in the experimental Quintessons weapon base I accidentally warped myself to. They were polite, competent, and did not understand a word of Neocybex. We left the base and came across Hot Rod, who spoke the same language Jazz did and who was successfully able to obtain the language packets for Galactic Common from me. Neither of them are Cybertronian by any means. Jazz more closely resembles one of us, but they have said, in no uncertain terms, that they and Hot Rod are the same species.”

Ratchet pages through the datapad and finds a loose schematic of (what he assumes is) Hot Rod fairly quickly. “Hm. Quadruped.”

“Indeed. The tail is a flamethrower, also.” Prowl says this as though it’s a normal and casual thing to say. Ratchet doesn’t quite think so. “Anyway. Besides that, they both keep making casual references to a form of government I am finding more and more horrifying the more I hear.”

“Functionalism?” Ratchet asks.

“Worse.” Prowl replies, dead serious. “They only have one tank’s worth of fuel. It’s apparently hyper-efficient and lasts them longer than anyone in charge expects them to ever be alive for. I asked Hot Rod what would happen if they ever ran out and they said that ‘they’d probably give you a medal for living that long.’”

“They’re MTOs, or something like it, as far as I can tell. They keep casually saying things that make me stop and consider the implications of it all. They don’t have self-repair, they were continually surprised I had a face, and they don’t seem to understand that half of the words that leave their mouths are deeply, deeply concerning. Which in itself is a concerning point, if their perspective is skewed enough they think this is normal.”

“I- they’ve got only one what.”

“One tank’s worth of fuel. Yes, I’m aware. They don’t seem to think it’s much of a problem but Jazz can shrug off being entirely decapitated, so I’m not inclined to trust the judgement of those two.”

“Jazz can WHAT!?”

Prowl nods sagely. “That was my reaction too. Neither of them particularly make sense, but they’re competent and loyal and are exceptionally good at dispatching Quints, so for once I’m inclined to look past that.”

“Wow, now that’s an achievement,” Ratchet murmurs. “But the reason they’re so good at Quint-killing is because they were literally built for it?”

“As far as I can tell,” Prowl agrees.

“And I have to try and make sure that they aren’t actively dying,” Ratchet says, a question to no one, because he already knows what the answer is. “Great. Okay.”

☆。*。☆。

When Prowl warned them that the ship that was coming to pick them up was going to be pretty big, Hot Rod quite foolishly assumed that meant ‘mech-sized aircraft carrier,’ not.. whatever this is, holy LAIKA.

Okay, sure, it’s probably not that exciting to Prowl, but Roddy just keeps getting surprised by the scale of that thing. He’s seen more alien mechs (presumably the same as Prowl, because almost all of them have faces the same way as they do) in the last ten minutes than he kind of would have assumed existed at all. It’s all so big and exciting and Roddy kind of feels like he’s going to explode but that’s not really that important.

It turns out that Prowl’s species has been on the run from their version of the Leviathans for a while now. The Quints (as they call ‘em) showed up unexpectedly, blew everything to bits in the middle of the civil war they were already having, and then the people that survived fled in groups. 

This one, the Lost Light, is one of the largest by virtue of the fact that their ship is REALLY COOL and can basically teleport-slash-hyperjump really big distances to get away from stuff. “Like if a Whale and a Bat were the same thing” is what Jazz said, which is probably true because Robby has next to no idea what his corp’s mech classes are. 

That was never his job, he’s not paid to know that. Actually, they don’t even pay him.

But besides that, Jazz and Hot Rod both have basically had their faces glued to the windows the entire time, because the stars out here are so different! But in a way that’s really really pretty to look at. They’re all in the wrong places, but so bright in the sky, like lanterns, or maybe what stars would be if they were all closer. 

Really more like lack of sky, the whole ship took off pretty shortly after picking Prowl up, but the point still stands. The novelty of seeing the stars a lot kind of wore off back at base. This is new, this is exciting. This whole ship is!

Roddy wonders why they sent the whole ship to pick them up instead of maybe a smaller scout ship, but he doesn’t think he has the clearance to ask. Probably that all the scout ships exploded or otherwise died horrible deaths at some point.

It also turns out that most people here speak the same home language Prowl does, and Jazz and Roddy both don’t have the files for that. They’ve got the files for galactic Common, which is a completely different thing. Fun! Not highly inconvenient at all!

All in all, Roddy rates it 10/10 for both extreme coolness and also how he keeps accidentally freaking people out. It’s kinda funny, really, because Roddy is taller than some of these people and he’s still built like the unholy child of a gorilla and a leopard. 

So, really, it makes sense that people are a bit scared of him, but, like, it’s just kind of an interesting novelty.

Everybody back at base already knew Roddy was an incorrigible loser with approximately three brain cells to his name, so it’s really pretty fun, actually! They’ll probably get used to him at some point and then it’ll go away, so he’s gonna enjoy it for all it’s worth at the moment.

After being dragged around for the most head-spinning speed tour of this completely gigantic ship ever known (engine room, bridge, thirteen separate and completely identical hallways (those are just the ones Roddy counted!), engine room? again?? but different?? two engine rooms??? workshop, an entire bar??? that has people in it????, a couple fun break rooms, way too many spare vent entrances he and Jazz could totally exploit for fun and profit, bridge again.)

The tour was led by this very nice and friendly bot named Blaster who Hot Rod kept accidentally scaring the crap out of by virtue of the large combination of things that he is: Critter shaped, capable of lighting things on fire, faceless, apparently pretty undetectable over the noise of the ship, et cetera, et cetera. 

It was kind of funny, and then it kinda became sad, and then it circled back around into being funny again when Roddy figured out how to scale the walls and climb around on them upside-down like the world’s worst giant spider.

Then they got dragged to medical.

Jazz is pretty obviously uncomfortable with the whole thing, and by the whole thing Roddy means being in a medbay. Or in the general vicinity of somebody considered a doctor.

It’s been a while since he and Roddy were properly in contact, so Roddy’s got no idea what specifically happened, but he can guess. The universe has tropes, and the one Roddy’s familiar with loves to repeat itself.

The medbay itself isn’t anything special, other than the scale. It’s got beds. It’s got a lot of tools and things that Roddy doesn’t even know what to think of, too. Clean blueish-white lighting, alien vital monitors, everything Roddy would expect from an alien mech medbay. And some average stuff, too. Stuff Roddy wouldn’t even really think about if Jazz wasn’t also looking at it like it might explode. 

The doctor in here seems nice enough, at least to Roddy. Prowl introduced them as Ratchet, and they’re painted in a respectable palette of orangey-red and white. Roddy will readily admit he’s no expert in alien facial expressions, but he’s pretty sure that Ratchet mostly looks concerned about Jazz and Roddy’s whole everything. 

Which, really, judging by Prowl’s reactions also, seems like a bit of a common thread. Sure, their lives suck, that much is obvious, but they can’t be that bad. Probably.

Roddy elects to sit down in the corner, or at least as close to the corner as he can while still having a good view of Jazz. He’s playing medbay buddy. Ratchet is probably reputable and unlikely to pull an EFFECT, but Roddy watching can’t hurt. 

[LIVE TEXT LOG BETWEEN [ID.2.1061 “Jazz”] AND [ID.2.0789 “Hot Rod”], CONT.

ID.1061: roddy help what do i say

ID.1061: roddy

ID.1061: roddy please

ID.0987: jazz i think your doctor is experiencing brand new stages of grief :D!!!!

ID.1061: is it my medical files?? are they really that bad????

ID.1061: they can’t be that bad right

ID.0987: i mean. i wouldnt put it past EFFECTs meddling

ID.1061: prowl doesn’t know about EFFECT though!

ID.1061: what could possibly be this concerning out of the everything else!

ID.0987: i think our entire everything counts as concerning to these guys man!!!

ID.1061: well that just seems inefficient

ID.1061: their brains are gonna explode when they get an actual medical file on me

ID.1061: if they think the stuff that categorically Isn’t That Bad is That Bad

ID.0987: i dunnooo....

ID.0987: somethin to be said about perspective maybe??

ID.1061: but like. genuinely. this isn’t that bad

ID.1061: and anyway ratchet has had that face this entire time

ID.1061: hey wwwwwait a minute

ID.1061: huh. well that’s a fun coincidence

ID.0987: yo what is???? :D?????

ID.1061: my base commander’s also named ratchet

ID.1061: pretty common name i guess

ID.0987: oh man thats pretty neat actually!!

ID.0987: maybe pretend that this ratchet is that ratchet

ID.0987: that might make it less stressful

ID.1061: no that just makes it worse actually my ratchet HAAAATES me

ID.0987: aw well

ID.0987: i tried!!!

☆。*。☆。

Ratchet has no idea what he was expecting from the two fabled aliens Prowl casually threw so much information directly at Ratchet’s forehead about, but it wasn’t this.

Jazz is folded up sitting on the berth, demonstrating both an ungodly amount of tension and an ungodly amount of flexibility. Essentially every one of their joints can spin three hundred and sixty degrees to face essentially any direction, and Ratchet hasn’t gotten used to it yet.

Hot Rod is sitting ominously in the corner like a very large, very quadrupedal security camera. Ratchet doesn’t mind the observation, it’s pretty obviously one of the only things stopping Jazz from bolting out of the room entirely, but it concerns him that it’s necessary at all.

Ratchet runs a few scans. He’s not expecting much.

The first one freaks out because as it turns out, Jazz doesn’t physically have a spark, and it assumed Ratchet was failing miserably at his job and letting his patient die. He’s not. He’s better than that. Jazz is just a statistical outlier, and also an alien.

The second one also freaks out because it registers Jazz as a Quint. It takes longer for Ratchet to get that one to shut up, and by the end Jazz is somehow even more tense and folded up, like they’ll compress themselves into a perfect little sphere and roll away if they get much more crunched-up.

Ratchet doesn’t know how he’s going to bring this up. “Jazz, are you made of Quint parts?”

Jazz looks up, visor flickering briefly. “I- uh- yeah, I am, why?” They sound nervous, voice quiet and a little stuttery. Ratchet notes it for later. It seems unlike what Prowl told him about Jazz.

“That last scan picked you up as one,” Ratchet says, as casually as he can manage. Even if Prowl hadn’t told him as much, Jazz strikes him as a flight risk. Number one rule with flight risks: don’t scare them.

[LIVE TEXT LOG BETWEEN [ID.2.1061 “Jazz”] AND [ID.2.0789 “Hot Rod”], CONT.

ID.1061: roddy did i tell you i hate doctors

ID.0987: no but i gathered as much dw

ID.1061: well i do

ID.1061: saying that right now. i do Not like doctors

ID.1061: it’s just. get away. i’m fine. please accept that i’m fine and leave me be and don’t stick me with anything and don’t leave any “””fun surprises””” i do not want them leave me alone i can bleed to death on my own time

ID.0987: jazz i get this may not be very helpful but???

ID.0987: dude that’s not normal???

ID.1061: yeah yeah yeah i get it

ID.1061: but like.

ID.0987: yeah no i understand all that

ID.0987: but i mean. prowl is nice. 

ID.0987: logically people prowl likes will also be nice

ID.1061: i know i know

ID.1061: still

ID.0987: that para does noia?

ID.1061: you fuckin bet that para noias

☆。*。☆。

Ratchet’s expectations, as few as they were, have still somehow been exceeded for how obviously medically horrifying Hot Rod and Jazz are.

Jazz doesn’t have any pain sensors. Not a one. They apparently don’t have much in the touch sensor department either. Jazz just isn’t very good at interpreting sensory input, as said by them, in their own words.

When Ratchet asked about it, they gave a vague and concerning answer along the lines of “old models had ‘em, and then they realized that was a really bad idea, so we don’t anymore.”

Ratchet doesn’t know where to start with that.

He discreetly comms Prowl about it while measuring Jazz’s range of motion. Prowl comms back with “Yes, that’s been about my experience,” and then quite promptly refuses to answer any of Ratchet’s follow-up questions. 

Jazz’s range of motion is as suspected: completely ungodly. They could probably squeeze themselves into some cupboard anywhere on the ship and never be seen again. Ratchet has very few doubts that they will if given half a reason to.

Ratchet is growing extremely exasperated with everybody in this situation, and he hasn’t even taken a proper look at Hot Rod yet.

Ratchet has officially run out of tests and scans to run. Jazz doesn’t even have a spark, so he can’t run a spark scan to make sure they’re not actively dying of anything. Jazz doesn’t even have protoform as far as Ratchet can tell, which explains the evident lack of self-repair, but also raises some questions on how they’re even alive. Ratchet decides to chalk it up to ‘alien biology’ before his processor explodes.

“Alright,” he says out loud, “As far as I can tell, you’re a completely healthy alien. Congrats.”

Jazz, true to their name, does some halfhearted jazz hands. They don’t say anything besides that, though.

“Anyway. Hot Rod, get over here, it’s your turn.”

It’s a little awkward to watch Jazz unfold themself and then hop off the medical berth like they weren’t just sitting with their feet by their head, but they do, and then they and Hot Rod switch places like it’s a practiced act.

Hot Rod.. is a little disconcerting to look at, in Ratchet’s medical opinion.

They clearly function fine, if they’ve made it this far, and from Prowl’s notes (why does he have detailed notes? Ratchet knows, but at the same time doesn’t really want to) they seem cheery enough. 

Actually, based on those notes, both of the newest local terrors are being extremely quiet as compared to their usual demeanor. Hot Rod was cited as being ‘loud,’ and they haven’t said a word yet.

Ratchet’s bet on the cause is, of course, the medical trauma. Prowl wouldn’t’ve had the time to notice between all the other stuff, and he’s not a doctor. They probably (almost certainly, really, now that Ratchet’s thinking on it) trust him more.

That trust may be the only reason Jazz hasn’t broken the door down in an effort to vacate the premises yet.

Pleasant.

Ratchet finds that Hot Rod, other than in construction, is largely the same as Jazz: no spark, no protoform, no energon or energon pump, no pain sensors. When Ratchet asked Jazz if they had a fuel pump, they just said “Yep.” and then didn’t elaborate. When Ratchet asked them to, they said that if it got damaged in any substantial way, they were basically instantly dead, and then Ratchet stopped asking after it. He assumes the same is true of Hot Rod.

Right. Okay. Well, at least Ratchet had the foresight to write down all their current stats as a baseline, in case something terrible happens: they probably aren’t an actual baseline because Ratchet wouldn’t put it past either of them to not have been stressed out of their minds the entire time, even if they were just doing it quietly. But it’s close enough, or in any case as close as Ratchet is going to be able to get.

He turns around to find a drawer to stow all of these new and fun (they are neither of those things) in for approximately one singular minute, and then he turns around, and-

Where’s Hot Rod.

Ratchet blinks, looking around.

Where’s Jazz.

Where did both of those idiots go.

Ratchet realizes only later that he probably should’ve known better than to turn his back for literally any amount of time, but in his defense, he was distracted at the time.

Chapter Text

[LIVE TEXT LOG BETWEEN [ID.2.1061 “Jazz”] AND [ID.2.0789 “Hot Rod”], CONT.

ID.1061: okay i’m leaving

ID.1061: as soon as that doctor turns their back i am skedaddling

ID.1061: i will be positively absconding

ID.0987: DUDE?????

ID.1061: either you’re frolicking in this field with me or you’re frolicking in this field against me roddy

ID.0987: DUDE??????????

ID.0987: THIS IS LIKE THE WORRRST TIME TO ADMIT YOUR ESCAPE PLANS MAN

ID.1061: listen.

ID.1061: i literally just came up with the idea

ID.1061: and the room feels too small and i just have to go. i have to get out

ID.0987: you are a miracle of science my man

ID.1061: yeah i’m aware

ID.0987:

ID.0987: okay

ID.0987: okay fine i’m coming

ID.1061: we will escape together, arson boy

ID.1061: but also

ID.1061: like 

ID.1061: genuinely

ID.1061: holy laika i need to get out of here

ID.0987: okay boss ill help 🫡

ID.0987: please do not die on me and/or lose your entire mind i need you to be chill and normal

ID.1061: i haven’t been chill and normal a day in my life

ID.1061: i woulda thought you’d know this by now.

ID.0987: OK

ID.1061: plan is a go?

ID.0987: is a go. is a go muchly.

ID.0987: okay wait

ID.0987: 3

ID.0987: 2

ID.0987: 1

ID.0987: GOGOGOGOGOGOGO

ID.1061: !!

ID.1061: GONE

ID.0987: GONE!!!

ID.0987:

ID.0987: ok

ID.0987: wow that went way better than i thought it would!!

ID.1061: well shame on you

ID.1061: my spontaneous and extremely stupid plans have a really kinda high success rate

ID.1061: can’t believe you’d doubt me >:(

ID.0987: no!!!

ID.0987: i wasn’t doubting you!!!!

ID.0987: okay. no. i was doubting you

ID.1061: i can’t believe we’re friends roddy

ID.0987: me neither man.

ID.0987: anyway uhhh we can actually comms now

ID.1061: oh yeah

ID.1061: right

ID.1061: that’s a thing we can do

ID.1061: prepare for my awesome voice that totally doesn’t sound like i just woke up from a seven year coma

☆。*。☆。

Prowl is rather rudely awaken from his long-needed and pitifully short nap by approximately twenty alert pings, the majority of which are from Red Alert.

This is, regrettably, normal.

What isn’t as normal is the remaining two being from Ratchet of all mechs.

They’re short and to the point, as all of Ratchet’s pings are: Your terrors fled the medbay. They’re loose in the ship.

Well that’s just great.

If he’s going to be entirely honest, he really should have forseen this or a similar outcome happening considering the general unpredictability and flightiness his two most recent allies and friendly walking headaches are and would continue to be, but in his defense most of his processor capacity was taken over by an extreme want to be Clean and Asleep. It was not the time for critical thinking. Critical thinking had died in a ditch and needed to be resuscitated by time to rest.

Prowl spends a brief moment to wonder what he’s doing with his life and how he ever even got to this point, and then he stands up, brushes himself off, and leaves his personal quarters to go hunt down Jazz. The door still catches slightly as it tries to close. He should really fix that.

Prowl pays no mind to the the slightly concerned and frightened looks that come from his determined striding around. Usually when Prowl is walking around with a kind of resigned determination in his eyes, it’s not a good thing. Prowl doesn’t care. He’s got a pair of aliens to find.

He takes a cursory scroll through the remaining pings- they’re all mostly Red Alert freaking out over the fact that two unknown entities are loose in the ship, which is information Prowl already knew.

Speaking of...

Prowl stops, looks around. 

If he were an alien soldier who recently got lost in a gigantic alien ship, where would he hide?

☆。*。☆。

“That was a terrible idea,” Roddy says, over comms, for the tenth time in half as many minutes. “That was so bad. Why did I agree to doing that?”

“‘Cause if I did it by myself, it would’ve been the same amount of stupid but twice as dangerous,” Jazz replies.

“What, were you gonna fistfight Ratchet???” 

The pair of them are currently doing some super-spy type maneuvers around the ship: Roddy figured out how to climb on the walls during that handy-dandy extremely confusing tour they got, and Jazz figured out the same trick not long after, so now with their combined powers they’re clambering around on the hallway ceilings like giant budget Spider-Men.

It’s pretty fun, all things considered. What isn’t super fun is watching everyone else just casually walk around beneath them- Jazz keeps thinking one of them surely has to look up eventually and then they’ll both be spotted, but it hasn’t happened yet. It’s kind of absurd.

“If I had to, I would’ve,” Jazz replies.

Really, Jazz doesn’t have anything against Ratchet specifically. Ratchet seems fine. Jazz just doesn’t like doctors. He can’t remember a time he ever liked doctors. He especially doesn’t like any of the other doctors he’s known personally.

The actual mechanisms of climbing around Jazz isn’t sure of- something to do with magnets and leverage and whatever the hell, it’s not Jazz’s problem because it works just fine and he’s got bigger priorities at the moment. Notably finding a hole to curl up and die in like some kind of exotic bug.

It is honestly kind of astounding how little these guys look up. Surely Jazz and Roddy aren’t the only ones who thought to climb on the ceilings. There’s so much room up here. And exposed piping. That seems like a bad idea. Maybe it’s to account for height differences, but so far Jazz hasn’t met anybody more than maybe a couple heads taller than himself. 

Roddy’s clambering is a bit more awkward than Jazz’s- with the way that the pair of them are stuck upside down to the ceiling, his usual method of knuckle-walking doesn’t really work, but the front hands on Roddy’s mech aren’t really supposed to bend that much, either. So Roddy’s a significant amount slower than Jazz.

“What was even the game plan after this??” Roddy hisses.

“Well, you see,” Jazz says, “I didn’t really think this far.”

“You didn’t-” Roddy cuts himself off, stops to unhook his grabber arms from where they were folded under his chassis (is it over his chassis now that they’re upside down?) to gesticulate at Jazz with. “Jazz, you are so lucky you’re my only form of human contact right now, I’m this close to strangling you-”

“Aww, thanks, Roddy. I didn’t know you cared that much.” Maybe Jazz is layering on the sardonic sarcasm a bit too much, but he’s tired and irritated and twitchier than usual, and all of that in conjunction makes him snappy.

There’s a long moment of silence. Hot Rod audibly takes a long breath in and out. “Laika, I think we both need to get some sleep. I haven’t been that genuinely murderous in a while.”

Jazz just nods at that. He’s not wrong. Finding a panel space that he definitely shouldn’t be in and taking a nice long nap in it sounds great. If there’s one upside to the unholy flexibility, it’s that Bebop can pull off some really fancy contortionist tricks without even really trying to.

“And also to make an actual plan,” Roddy continues. “Jetting out of there went pretty well, actually, if your only step was ‘bolt as soon as Ratchet has their back turned.’”

“Yeah, usually if I try and make a plan it goes awry at around step two, so nowadays I don’t even bother and just have a goal in mind.”

“Well, that’s pleasant.” There’s a long moment of silence. Well. Relative silence. The pair of them are still clattering around over exposed pipes and things. “Okay. We have to find Prowl again. They’re certifiably nice and trustworthy. They probably won’t be that mad at us for fleeing the medbay.”

“Probably,” Jazz agrees, counting off on his fingers as best he can while still stuck to the ceiling as he continues: “Few issues with that, though: we don’t know where they are, we don’t know how to navigate this stupid big ship, and we don’t know if they won’t eviscerate us on the spot about it or not.”

A moment of silence that is somehow both brief and cavernously long. “Well, when you say it like that, it does sound pretty bad.”

“It’s always pretty bad. That’s just how life goes.”

“Y’know, I’m starting to think your quality of life is significantly worse than mine?”

Jazz looks over, one finial pressed flat to the back of his head in an attempt to mimic a singular raised eyebrow. “You only just noticed?”

☆。*。☆。

Prowl is beginning to become truly frustrated.

Jazz and Hot Rod should not be this hard to find. They’re both taller than a significant portion of the crew and not particularly subtle at that. How did they just vanish? It doesn’t make any sense. Not at all.

Maybe he should get used to those two not making any sense, but it’s only been a couple of days and Prowl briefly and foolishly assumed he had the machinations of their behavior mostly figured out.

They’re definitely still in the ship. Red Alert would be screaming in his audials if so much as an airlock door tried to open. Not that Prowl knows either of them would do well in a vacuum, anyway, and-

Prowl shuts down that line of thinking before it derails him entirely.

They’re on the ship.

However, this does not particularly narrow down any of the hiding places they could be.

There’s two of them, and they’ve had maybe a couple of hours (being extensively generous) to flee into the depths of the ship. This means that, for all intents and purposes, they could be anywhere, provided that anywhere is within the confines of the Lost Light, which is still gargantuan. 

Prowl should not be surprised at the ingeniousness of two extraterrestrials who decided they needed to be out of the area, but he is.

Really. He can’t belive he didn’t consider the (now blindingly obvious) possibility of medical trauma. Hindsight is 20/20, as they say, but truly he feels if not stupid than a bit of a dummy for not realizing.

Perhaps the stormy glare now permanently fixed on Prowl’s face from the slurry of general irritants he’s been facing since he woke up scared everyone else out of his general vicinity, but the hallways seem... empty.

Prowl stops and takes a second to look around.

The hallway does, indeed, seem concerningly empty.

Prowl thinks to himself, Did I scare them off with m-? 

He is quite rudely interrupted by none other than Hot Rod falling out of absolutely nowhere to land (with a loud yelp and a louder crash!) directly in front of Prowl.

There’s a long second or two of Prowl and Hot Rod staring at each other, the latter in a disorganized heap, before they start flailing to roll themselves over (they were upside down? Why were they upside down?) and straighten up to try and make approximate eye contact.

It is dead silent.

Prowl’s gaze slides slowly, slooowly up to the ceiling.

His suspicions are confirmed when he spots Jazz, clinging to the ceiling with methods currently unknown to Prowl, stock-still, neck craned around to approximately where Hot Rod would have been before they fell.

There’s another deafeningly loud drawn-out space of dead silence.

“Um,” Hot Rod starts, “I can explain.”

Prowl looks at Hot Rod. Then back up at Jazz, who is still completely frozen, stuck to the ceiling, visor over-bright.

He doesn’t ever get the chance to reply, because as soon as he opens his mouth to say something, Hot Rod is tearing down the hallway past Prowl, away from Jazz, and Jazz has dropped off the ceiling to run as fast as their legs will carry them in the opposite direction.

Well.

Prowl takes the half-second to consider A) who would be more efficient to chase down, and B) if leaving tire tracks on the Lost Light hallway floors would be worth it.

Moment of consideration taken, he flips into altmode and executes a perfect U-turn to start running Hot Rod down. 

If someone decides they have an issue with the tire tracks, Prowl can assign them barnacle duty himself.

☆。*。☆。

Hot Rod wants to go home.

If all else fails, if he explodes in a fiery wreck and dies tomorrow, let the world know, that he really wants to go home right now.

Prowl’s nice, he knows that, he knows that, but Prowl is also sporting cop colors and can turn into a car and is RUNNING HIM DOWN AS WE SPEAK.

See, okay, Roddy really doesn’t want to be enemies with Prowl. Roddy wants there to be at least some semblance of goodwill, and also wants not to blast a hole in the ship hull and sent everybody rocketing off into the vacuum of space. Not his idea of a good time. So he will not be using the flamethrower, thank you very much, but also he would like not to be run down.

He doesn’t even know how he slipped off in the first place! That wasn’t supposed to happen!!! Oh, just his luck, too, that it was RIGHT when Prowl showed up. Positively comical.

He can hear his mech’s joints straining. He is not meant to be running this fast.

He can still hear Prowl (is that their engine? They’re a car of course they have an engine so that has to be it but why does it growl so loud they’re not that loud normally) racing up behind him, like an oncoming storm.

Time seems to slow down.

Gotta get out of here, is one of the many lightning-fast thoughts bouncing around like caffeinated ping-pong balls on the inside of his skull. But how do I do that?

Prowl will catch me if I keep running, running’s not an option. 

Vents? Vents maybe? 

But where are any? Ceiling, that’s where-

-but do I have the time? To get at them, to scale the wall?

No! Don’t! Need more time-!

Can’t! No time! NO TIME! 

Floor vent!? Maybe!? Is there a- 

YES-!!

GO GO GO GO-!!!

Roddy trips, falls into a haphazard roll (the long shoulder plates scrape loudly and probably painfully if he could even feel pain there against the floor as he does) coming up just quick enough for a grabber arm to wrench a floor vent cover open and duck into a second roll to shove himself inside.

Oh holy blessed Laika I’m so lucky, Hot Rod thinks.

Then, a beat later:

Scratch that, I’m dead, they’re gonna kill me, oh Laika save my puny soul I’m so so dead.

They’re gonna kill him. They’re- Prowl is, definitely, but also everybody else on the ship, and probably kill Jazz too, he shouldn’t’ve agreed to that harebrained escape plan but Jazz would’ve done it anyway and he’s dead, just DEAD.

They shouldn’t’ve tried to escape medbay. It wasn’t that bad. Ratchet was 85% trustworthy and that is great odds compared to basically every other doctor Roddy knows or has even heard of and Roddy just broke a vent cover escaping from a senior officer (nobody who’s low-rank can afford to call in a ride to come back to home base! Prowl was important they were always important Roddy just ran from them he’s DEAD) and he’s dead, dead, so dead. Cataclysmic amounts of dead. Basically mutiny. 

Well, okay, they didn’t tell him not to bolt, but it was sort of implied, and anyway that defense doesn’t hold up in court. Not that he’ll ever get that far. Because he'll be dead.

Roddy doesn’t know how deep he is in these vents. He’s not stuck, yet, probably, and anyway even if he was he can sacrifice a decent amount of plating before things start getting hairy on the “how much structural integrity does Roddy need before he starts dying of bad air” front. And if it gets too bad he can just. Dismount and be a space gerbil for a while. Nobody’s finding his Asphodel in here. He bets not many of ‘em could even fit in here. (Thanks, stupid flexibility!)

This vent is kind of cozy. Maybe he should just stay here. Nobody can come get him in here. That’s nice. Isn’t that nice? Maybe if he stays in here forever they’ll forget he was ever here and then when the ship docks he can find Jazz and they’ll flee off into the sunset and eat Not-Leviathans and rations until they die of predictable and tragic causes.

That sounds nice. He’d like to do that. He’d like to go home, where things make sense. He’d like to just be able to stick with somebody who’ll have his back, even if they might end up strangling each other at some point.

Roddy’s breath catches in his throat. No, nope, don’t cry. You’re not allowed to cry. Not the time, he says, whispered harshly in a sentence nobody but him will hear. Everybody else thought he was weird for figuring out how to talk without projecting your voice through your mech’s speakers, but it’s a neat trick. Like thinking out loud, except nobody yells at you to be quiet that way.

His mech puffs steam once, twice, before lowering itself down and curling up as much as it can in the tight confines of the vent tunnel. Like a cat. The grabber arms settle over his mech’s head, shielding where eyes would be, if it had any.

The line between what’s Roddy and what’s his mech has always been kinda blurry. He doesn’t put enough thought into it to really care. He’s trying to... not explode. Yeah, not explode. Let’s go with that. That sounds better and more succinct than ‘staving off the latest mental breakdown that’s probably an amalgamation of the several mental breakdowns that Roddy’s been kind of postponing this whole time.’

Don’t think. Try not to think. Not good if you think. Don’t poke it, don’t think, leave all that for when you can unpack it, which is never.

He sends a brief message to Jazz over the textcomm.

ID.0987: please be okay man

Their audio comms cut off as soon as he and Jazz got out of range from each other- Roddy didn’t see where Jazz went, he must have bolted down the other way while Prowl was busy chasing Roddy. 

Smart. Don’t attack the superior officers. Never attack the superior officers. It only makes things worse.

Maybe if he takes a nap in the vent things will have fixed themselves by the time he wakes up. He’s tired, anyway. That nap back at the comms base was what felt like ages ago.

He hopes he won’t dream.

Chapter Text

“So Jazz is dead.”

Sideswipe sits up so fast he misjudges the location of the bunk just above him and whacks his forehead on the unforgiving metal. “What- Sunny, what-”

“We do agree that ‘missing in action’ is the same thing as dead, right?” Sunstreaker replies. He sticks an arm down, the dinky little message pad Command gave him in hand. On it is the usual casualty notice, but this time unusually short:

ID.2.1061 - “Jazz” : Missing In Action.

Jazz’s entry is the only one on the list.

“Huh,” Sideswipe says. “Well. Shit.”

The pad gets yanked back up, and judging by the knock-knock noise of it bouncing off the top bunk mattress following a beat or two later, Sunny threw it. Lightly. It’s too important to break, which is a shame, because it kind of sucks.

“Yeah,” Sunny agrees. “Yeah.”

“Well what are we gonna do now?” Sideswipe asks.

“Hell if I know,” Sunny replies.

“That’s not helpful,” says Sideswipe.

“Well, I haven’t got anything that would be helpful.” Brief pause. “Come on, we’ve got to check in with Ratchet about this before we start scheming about anything else.” 

Sunny rolls off the bed. Well, no, it’s not really a bed so much as a slab of vaguely furnished foam that’s elevated off the ground, but it is a pretty nice foam slab. Sometimes even arranged in bunks! The twins have a bunk. Sideswipe really likes his bunk.

Normally, rolling off the top bunk means you hit the ground unexpectedly and then everybody else in the room laughs at you, but Sunny does this enough that he’s figured out a system of actually landing on his feet. He’s weird like that.

Sideswipe gets off the bottom bunk like a normal person. “Wait, why do we have to go talk to Ratchet? Wouldn’t he already know?”

“No, he doesn’t read the casualty reports.” Sunstreaker replies, brushing dust off his uniform. “Can’t blame him, but it means we’ve gotta go tell him in person.”

“Awh. But what if I didn’t wanna go talk to our base-com? What if I was pretty sure he hated me with the passion of a thousand suns?”

“He hates everybody, Swipes. You get used to it.”

“You say that like we haven’t both been here for exactly the same amount of time...”

Sunstreaker lightly whaps Sideswipe over the head. “Stop being pedantic. We’ve got bad news to try and not be shot over.”

The pair of them step out into the hallway. RK is an older-ish base, evident by the number of signatures, (that is to say, names scratched into the walls,) but you don’t really see them if you aren’t looking for them. They sort of blend into the background, and it’s not like Sunny or Swipes have anything else for a frame of reference. 

They’re identical, or at least close enough to it that people tend to confuse them for each other and probably would forever if they hadn’t decided to just color-code themselves and everything they own. Sunny’s the yellow one, Swipes is the red one. Easy peasy.

Of course, all the uniforms that they hand everybody are, y’know, uniform, so people have to get creative with it to get any sort of individuality. Just like their mechs. Usually the method for achieving this individuality is spray paint, either bartered off the occasional passerby independent pilot or made on-base with sheer ingenuity and spite.

So, sure, the colors are probably going to flake off eventually, but really, that’s only a problem if you’re living that long.

A lot of things are short-lived in FAUNA bases, measured against the metric of how long it’s going to last versus how long there’s going to be anybody who needs it. It’s a race to see what will fail first, and usually it isn’t the equipment.

There’s basically nobody else up. (Sideswipe gives a passing nod to the only other person he sees. He doesn’t know their name.)

It’s not like it’s late or anything, though- it’s just that nobody likes to aimlessly wander around on base, because aimlessly wandering around means you have a chance to meet the doctor, and nobody wants to meet the doctor. 

It doesn’t help that the base layout is positively mazelike. The pathway from (most of) the dorms to the hangar bays is a pretty straight shot, but there’s always somebody who hops out late into a skirmish because they got lost on the way.

Really, the base commander and the mechanic aren’t that much better, but you can at least hold a conversation with those two without feeling like they’re absentmindedly fantasizing about prying your liver out of your body. 

And really, that’s one of the least offputting things about Shock. Ratchet and Short Fuse aren’t licensed to just snag you out of nowhere and decide that now is the perfect time to test a new highly experimental device.

Well, the name they have in the documents is “Shockwave,” but nobody calls him that. It’s as close to a measure of disrespect as anybody can get away with to his face, to drop the last syllable, so it’s the measure everyone takes. If it irks him, he doesn’t say, though they’re all hoping it does.

“So what are we going to actually say to him?” Sideswipe asks. His and Sunstreaker’s steps are in sync, a steady beat neither of them have to actually think about. “I mean, isn’t he gonna find out on his own? Jazz wasn’t subtle.”

“If we don’t tell him and he finds out on his own, how much do you want to bet a newbie freaks out and panics themselves straight into their imminent doom?” Sunstreaker says, his tone drier than the surface of the airless rock RK is slowly, slooowly circling.

“...Yeah, fair point.”

They’ve just made it to Ratchet’s door when the alarm klaxon goes off. 

WREEK! WREEK! WREEK! 

It’s that noise that everyone on base hates with fear and malice in equal measure. Not only because it signifies you need to get outside right now and start doing your job, but also because it kind of sounds like a dying animal. No one is a fan. No one has ever been a fan.

Sideswipe curses at the top of his lungs, then doubles back around away from the door to make a proper break for the hangars. Sunstreaker follows a beat after, snarling something about stupid CHICKENS largely incoherently under his breath.

They both make it to the hangars in pretty good time, boots knocking against the floors like a small stampede of extremely annoyed pilot. 

The twins’ mechs are both in the same bay, one because they’re pretty small- well, okay, twenty feet tall isn’t actually small but it’s smaller than pretty much every other mech on base- and two because the scanners are stupid and keep registering them both as the same person and it was really more of a hassle than it’s worth to try and fix it.

There’s a trickle of other pilots rushing in to get in their mechs and get outside to actually see what set the alarms off. (If it’s another false alarm, Sunny’s going to start maiming.)

Sunny hits the button on the remote that gets the cockpit hatch on his mech to open, rubber boots skidding on the narrow catwalks as he sprints to get in.

It’s a pretty quick process, once you’ve done it enough times, to link in. That's usually why older pilots are out first- they’ve figured out shortcuts

The twins’ mechs are also fairly identical other than the color-coding. They’re both (comparatively, when compared to the metric that is every other mech on base) short, round-ish mechs with legs that take up a good seventy percent of the total height and big long finials. (That’s the defining feature that give the Rabbit its name!) And a set of tiny little foldable thrusters attached to the back of their mechs, a bit like fairy wings. 

Those aren’t standard, the twins just like being able to actually move properly in 0-grav.

The lil wings are nice. They’re invaluable for proper movement, firstoff, but also they make for fun and interesting ways to try and emote. They haven’t quite figured out how to make a code out of it yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Both Sideswipe and Sunstreaker link in quickly and efficiently, peeling themselves out of the hangar bay to wait for someone with a bigger, more heavyweight mech to pry the doors open.

It takes a second for somebody to figure out they have to, but the job does get done. The doors have to be forced open because otherwise, they open painfully slow on their own, so it’s just easier to just get your mech’s claws in there and pry rather than waiting. Nobody has any time to wait.

Its intended purpose of defense barely comes up, anyway, most combat is actually fought a pretty significant distance from the Rock and even the surface of the asteroid RK is lodged on- that’s right! They fight in space! 

It’s less interesting than you’d think. It’s mostly just thrust calculations and trying to locate things in a ridiculously large space and worrying about air content. In other words: a lot of new things to juggle.

You get used to it, because you have to, but it’s hard to get used to it at first. There are a lot of things about piloting like that, where if you don’t figure it out as you go you don’t keep going. The average pilot is an exception to the real average- the real average is the layer of scrap metal beneath everyone else’s feet.

The doors are finally open enough that everybody can force their way out. The Owl pilot, (a sniper model, Sunny thinks their name might be Lemonade) already has their rifle aimed to the sky, scanning for activity that’ll actually make this excursion worthwhile and not only a gigantic waste of time. The twins had things to be doing! They were gonna be doing things that were important and productive!

Sideswipe walks off and starts absentmindedly kicking the outside wall of the base. His foot was already dented, nothing new there. He can do a bit of attempted property damage. As a treat. It won’t actually do anything. The walls are built too solidly for that.

Sunstreaker, standing next to the Owl, is sheathing and unsheathing his arm sword over and over again, folding it in and out of its little rotat-y compartment in a fairly steady rhythm. It’s as close to a nervous habit as anybody has around here.

“Clear,” the Owl says.

Everybody groans. Lemonade(? Sunny still isn’t clear on their name) shrugs. “Not my fault,” they say. “I don’t control ‘em.”

Everybody knows that, but everybody also wants to complain. That’s just how it goes- if there’s a false alarm and everybody links in to go do the usual because nobody could tell it was just the kaiju sensor being stupid again, everybody wants to just directionlessly complain about it. Because they’re mad.

It’s mostly just a cycle of people being annoyed, around here. Annoyed or dead.

Sideswipe is just about to turn around and walk back into the hangar when his comms click on. 

It’s Ratchet. 

Great. 

That means everybody’s about to hear whatever bad news he has now. (Ratchet doesn’t do one-on-one comms.)

“Well, since all y’all are already out here,” Ratchet starts, “I figure now is the best time to break. Jazz is dead.”

Sideswipe whacks his face against the very conveniently placed outer base wall that happens to be directly next to him. Ratchet isn’t known for his bedside manner. It’s a wonder he made it as the base mechanic before he got very suddenly promoted to base-com.

“Or, rather, to be more specific, his file says MIA. I’ve set a timer to declare him officially dead in however long they’ve decided the timespan is now...” Ratchet sounds only slightly more miserable than he always does. He’s probably got a lot of practice dealing with sudden losses.

Sideswipe doesn’t really bother to stop and hear what everybody else’s reactions to all of that were. Jazz is kind of infamous for that other time he vanished off the face of existence, but the thing is, he came back wrong that time.

He and Sunstreaker joined up at RK during the first time Jazz was gone. They didn’t really ever get to know him so much as they learned, in great detail, the space he left behind. 

Even once he was back they never properly learned what he was like. Quiet, maybe? More like taciturn. It seemed a bit like he’d just given up on talking to people. It’s not like Sunstreaker can blame him.

Neither of the twins know what happened to Jazz before they got to base. There’s rumors and stories, but there’s always rumors and stories. Those are nothing new, and probably not even a quarter of them have anything approaching the truth in them.

But all the same they wonder. If Jazz was so good at what he did, then how did he get lost, both the first time and now? Is he just that unlucky? Or did he find a way out and just leave everything behind? 

Is there even a meaningful difference between the two?

If he did, the twins wouldn’t blame him. He’s gone either way. Nothing to be done about that. Take it in stride and move on as best you can, fighting space monsters on a base stationed on an asteroid-shaped moon flying around an airless, dry, burning rock.

Pilot life is bleak, but at least it’s life!