Chapter Text
“What the hell, man? Give a guy some warning before you— what even was that!?”
Prowl listens to the panicked tilt of the alien’s voice with a frown. He’s retreated a couple steps away from him the second Prowl was out of his systems. His doorwing tilts away from the exit tunnels and towards the mech, tracking his movement through the dark as his single optic struggles to recalibrate.
“I did,” he says slowly—calmly—trying not to agitate the alien further. He’s struggling to understand the negative reaction.
Light receptors catch the flash of the mech’s visor as it pops up from where he was cradling his helm. “Whuh?”
“Warn you,” Prowl specifies patiently. “I showed you the cable. You opened your panel willingly and expressed consent.”
“Well—” The alien throws his hands in the air indignantly. “I didn’t know you were gonna get all up in my business like that!”
Prowl tilts his head in confusion. At first, because he’s trying to process the turn of phrase. Then, when the meaning clicks, because it still does not make much sense. He assumed the mech understood his intention to copy the language packets he uses, which required Prowl to know where they were, first. When they were not freely offered, he went looking himself. He made no move to delve into any personal data, stored memories, or even system specifications. He could have, and easily. The alien’s internal firewalls were flimsier than even that of quintesson tech. Unusual (<33%), for a mechanical life-form, but not impossible, especially for those in early stages of evolution.
“…what did you think I was going to do?” he asks, unable to fully rid his voice of the note of doubt.
The alien, having slid down the wall opposite of Prowl, shrugs. Another overlapping body language element. Pattern, or coincidence?
“Dunno.” He seems calmer. Prowl gauges that there’s minimal (12%) chance of him drawing weapons at this point, and cautiously tilts his doorwing back towards the entrance. “Not that.”
“Does your species not practice interfacing between individuals for data exchange?”
“Not… really,” the alien says, unhelpfully. “Why are you British?”
Prowl’s processor blanks at the sudden change of topic. “I am not. I can not belong to any of your planet’s nations,” he says meaningfully. Perhaps he overestimated his ally’s intelligence after all.
The mech waves his hand impatiently. “Nah, man, I mean— You sound British. Posh.”
Another second where Prowl’s processor catches up with the word choice. “Ah. The… accent, is it? Your internal dictionary provides two ways to pronounce and/or spell various words. I defaulted to the first one provided.”
There’s an amused huff from the other side of the room. “You sound like Brainstorm. ‘s weird.”
Prowl resets his language module, this time using the other listed accent. “Is this preferable?” he asks, trying to keep his impatience in check. They should be focusing on other things, but he cannot risk alienating his only viable companion, even if he seems strangely opinionated.
The mech hums his appreciation and leans forward. Prowl can just barely register the movements of his head fins rising back up into their default, inquisitive tilt.
“So, you just… know English now?”
“Yes,” he answers easily, stapling his fingers together. “I took the liberty of downloading other language packets marked as essential in your database.”
“…there’s like thirty of them.” The mech considers him for a moment. Prowl keeps his gaze to the best of his blurry vision’s ability. “¿Hablas español?”
“Sí. ¿Preferirías este idioma?” he asks.
The mech leans closer still. He does not have an expressive faceplate, but Prowl can hear the smile in his voice. “Wie steht es mit Deutsch?”
Prowl suppresses the urge to roll his optics. “Ja. Zufrieden?”
“Eine mehr!” the alien insists giddily. “Something more obscure… A po polsku umiesz?”
“Tak. Czy to naprawde jest konieczne?” Prowl says, exasperated. “Powinniśmy skupić się na priorytetach. Na przykład, na opracowaniu planu działania. Also,” he adds as the mech finally decides to inch closer to him again, “your pronunciation of most of those languages is barely legible, so let us continue in English.”
The mech makes a snorting sound that Prowl has never heard before. “I’ll have you know I had straight A’s in Spanish class.” He sits down in front of him, not as close as he originally was, but whatever distress the connection has caused him seems to be largely gone.
Still, it does not escape his notice that the alien chooses the spot on Prowl’s right side. Opposite of the hand he used to initiate the interface. Accidental, subconscious or deliberate? There’s still no EMF to judge his ally’s emotional state by. Prowl begins to suspect that he does not posses one. It’s… frustrating. Not knowing his companion’s attitude towards him makes it harder to calculate how Prowl should approach their interactions.
He decides to play it safe.
“I apologize for…” he wavers. “…startling you. It was not my intention.”
“How about this.” The mech leans back on his arms, helm tilted towards Prowl. “You forget I did… whatever it was I did earlier to get you so trigger-happy, and I forget whatever it is you just did that put the fear of God in me. Deal?”
Logically, Prowl knows that it’d be much more advantageous to properly discuss why both of those situations were upsetting to prevent them from repeating in the future. He’d also much rather not have those conversations, so he nods his agreement.
“Deal.”
“Awesome,” the mech chirps and leans towards him with renewed vigor. “And on that positive note, I’d really love to stop referring to you in my head as ‘the alien robot’, so let’s get the introductions out of the way.” He extends a single hand. “Name’s Jazz.”
Prowl stares at the limb. More overlapping body language. The likelihood of it being coincidental is rapidly lowering (<40%). The reasoning still escapes him, however. While not unheard of, it is not common (19%) for species originating from different planets to share similarities in their non-verbal communication, even in those with similar physical forms. In Prowl’s case, it is more likely (45%) that whatever this ‘Jazz’ is might very well be a different evolutionary branch of a Cybertronian life-form. Prowl’s ancestors were spacefarers, and natural social and physical chameleons. Adaptable by design. They could easily integrate into a society that wasn’t originally theirs. Many old legends speak of those mechs settling on their planet of choice, initially due to scholarly inquisitiveness, only to eventually decide to never move on, or to return to Cybertron, for that matter. That period of their planet’s history is often considered as the—
“Uh, you okay, man?”
Prowl’s head snaps up. He quickly cordons off the logic tree that was eating up his processor power. “Affirmative. My designation is Prowl.” He takes the offered hand. “Apologies. I have quite a backlog of data waiting to be processed. It is proving rather… distracting.”
The blur of Jazz’s visor sweeps up and down his frame. Prowl’s doorwing twitches in discomfort. “That why you’ve been tripping over your own legs?”
He lets out a long vent. “In combination with my physical injuries, yes. Loathe as I am to admit it, I am of little use until I take some time to recuperate, at least mentally.”
There is a beat of silence. “You mean like… sleep?”
Prowl checks his internal dictionary. “I believe that is the closest equivalent, yes.” He sits up straighter and puts more confidence into his voice. “I may be a liability in my current state, but the data waiting to be processed has a significant chance—” (67%) “—of being relevant to our potential routes of—”
Before he has the chance to finish, a loud, echoing clatter sounds out through the cave system. Prowl freezes, doorwing hitched up high as his audials strain to pick up any further noise.
“What was that?” he asks once the echo subsides, voice pitched low and careful.
“That—” Jazz says, uncharacteristically grim, “—is our cue to get the hell out of dodge.” Similarly stock still thus far, he climbs to his feet soundlessly, visor pointed in the direction they originally came in through. “We’ve got two C-fours hot on our trail.”
Prowl strains his audials, but the only thing he can hear is the sound of his own vents cycling louder as TacNet starts to analyze the exact dimensions of the room they’re in. “I’m not picking up anything. What is a C-four?” He needs more data.
“Category Four. Can feel them scurrying around further out, trying to dig up the tunnel I collapsed.” Jazz taps his foot lightly against the ground. “C’mon, up we get,” he urges, turning back to Prowl, frame coiled with stress and ready to spring.
“I still don’t know what a Category Four is,” he says, frustration seeping into his voice. He can’t plan if he doesn’t know what he’s planning for.
“Four legs, nasty yell and an even nastier attitude.” Jazz, for his part, starts to get similarly exasperated when Prowl doesn’t immediately follow. “Like to call their friends over when they catch you, make it a real party. I’m not feeling too festive right now, though, don’t know about you.”
Quadrupedal with a distinctive yell acting as alert for other quintessons. He’s talking about Scouts. “How many?”
“Two. Do you need me to carry you, or…?” Jazz makes a hurried motion towards the exit.
Prowl ignores him. “We should stay here and fight.”
Jazz lets out a frustrated sound, feet skipping in place. “Man, don’t get me wrong, I’m good, but I’m not ‘take out two C-fours without either of them setting off’ good.”
Prowl gets up shakily, his balance still disrupted by his second wing remaining folded against his back. “You do not have to be. I will take out the other target.”
“Yeah, okay, no offense, but—” Jazz slumps. “Actually. I ain’t got the time for your sensibilities right now. Your balance is shot, you keep zoning out on me and I’m pretty sure you’re at least half-blind. Your not taking out nothing, my man.”
Prowl redoubles his efforts to stop his frame from swaying. “My optic is undergoing self-repair. It’s functioning at more than 50% capacity already.” It’ll hardly be the main sensor he’ll rely on to make the shot, anyhow.
“Uh-uh,” Jazz says. “If your accuracy with a gun is about the same as you looking me in the eye rather than over my shoulder, then sorry, but I ain’t taking those chances. We run.”
He grabs Prowl by the arm and starts pulling them towards the exit. Prowl bristles, plates rising reflexively at the sudden touch. “You’re making a tactical mistake. There is a 71% likelihood of the Scouts catching up with us, which will inevitably end in a confrontation.”
“I’ve worked with worse odds,” Jazz grunts, trying to get Prowl’s arm around his shoulder in order to get them to move faster.
Prowl plants his feet and forces the mech to face him. His optic recalibrates, making sure he looks down directly into the blue visor. “But we don’t have to,” he stresses. “If we stay on familiar territory and prepare, we have 84% chance of dispatching the enemy without giving them a chance to call for reinforcements. Compare that with our odds out in the open—” (23%) “—or in a tight tunnel—” (7%) “—and the choice should be obvious.”
As if to accentuate his point, another crash echoes behind them. Jazz stares at him, unmoving, faceplate expressionless and frame tight with stress.
For a moment, Prowl thinks he will turn around and leave. Prowl might have, were he in his place. They are still virtually strangers, and Jazz has no guarantee that his earlier statement about finding a potential escape route is anything but a lie meant to preserve his safety. What he can guarantee, however, is that leaving Prowl behind will buy him precious time to escape.
Jazz sighs. His visor momentarily turns to the ceiling with a soft curse before he jabs Prowl’s chest plate with a single finger angrily. “If we die here, I’ll find your metal ass in whatever version of the afterlife y’all have and haunt it until the end of time.”
And then, before Prowl fully processes all the words, he slides away towards the entrance of the cave, back plates scraping on rock faintly. A blade slides out of an invisible compartment on his wrist before his whole frame stills completely, visor dimming.
“You’ve got three minutes until the cavalry gets here. Two until they’re in hearing range, so if you’ve got any pointers, let’s hear them now, Numbers.”
Prowl doesn’t question how the alien knows this, nor the validity of the data. He doesn’t have any other information to work with. “The tunnels are slim enough that two Scouts will not be able to enter at the same time. You take out the second one after it passes the border, I shoot the one in the front.”
“You make it sound so simple,” Jazz hums, voice pitched low.
Prowl walks past him and takes position a dozen steps further on his left. Blue visor tracks his movements closely. He resists the urge to flick his doorwing in discomfort.
“It is.” Prowl retrieves his gun from subspace and assumes proper form, hand extended, hip cocked, before locking the joints in place. TacNet feeds him potential bullet trajectories, simulations of enemy movements, predictions about where and how Jazz will strike. “In theory, it is very simple. Cause and effect. We just have to choose one that favors us.”
Jazz scoffs. The blade on his wrist retracts, and whips out. The motion repeats again, and again. Prowl’s internal clock ticks down. 26 seconds until audible communication will alert the enemy of their presence.
“Try to stay low to the ground,” Prowl mutters just as his audials pick up the first footsteps down the tunnel. Jazz doesn’t get to answer.
They wait. Four pairs of legs continue steadily making their way towards them. Jazz’s visor dims further, frame motionless. If he has vents, Prowl can not hear them. He cuts his own off momentarily and dismisses the system alerts notifying him about his core temperature rising to dangerous levels. He doesn’t bother dimming his own optic. Quintesson Scouts are effectively blind. They rely on smell and hearing to track their prey.
When the first alien clicks reach his audials, Prowl unlocks his left doorwing and lets it flare out. Instantly, he’s flooded with pain pings, but not enough to shut him down. The room becomes clearer, rock edges sharper in his mind, the planes of Jazz’s plating less blurry. TacNet eagerly accepts the new data and spits out ballistics with far higher accuracy ratings.
The first Scouts’ muzzle peeks out of the entrance tunnel. Nostrils flare. With a wet snort, more of the creature emerges and Prowl suddenly recalls that he has never seen a quintesson Scout in person.
(The closest he’s gotten was the decapitated head Sideswipe brought back to base as a war trophy, and which promptly ended up in deep space when Red Alert was made aware of the fact.)
He’s read detailed reports on the beasts, however. In fact, some of them were written by him after many hours of studying footage recovered from front-line fighters. And now it stood within reach of his own sensors. Sleek, scaled body with a whip-like tail and a triangular head lacking any optics. Quadrupedal, each limb ended in a set of cloven hooves. Thick whiskers run along its snout, twitching occasionally as it smells across the dusty ground. It comes to around Prowl’s midsection, although its entire body length trumps his, even in alt-mode.
It stops briefly just outside the entrance. Two sets of scaly folds peel away from the back of its head, revealing thin, delicate cartilage reverberating inside. Listening. Prowl’s joints strain under the stress of having to stay in one place for too long. He does not unlock them. A couple steps ahead, Jazz’s frame stays perfectly still despite the creature being within hand’s reach of him.
Sensing no movement or sound, the Scout stalks forward with a series of insect-like chitterings, hooves clacking on rock. Slowly, its broodmate follows it inside.
It arches its head up, nostrils flaring. The movement bares its vulnerable throat perfectly for Jazz’s blade to sink through and pierce the creature’s brain.
Prowl unlocks his joints just as the first Scout spins around at the sudden movement. The folds on its head peel away violently, and its snout splits into three sections that flare out, pointing at Jazz who is still attempting to retrieve his blade from the second Scout’s corpse.
The creature’s chest expands as it draws a deep breath, ready to let out a scream loud enough to alert every other quintesson on this planet. Prowl’s doorwings tilt towards it, his optic recalibrates. TacNet draws a course from his gun, above Jazz’s shoulder, and into his target. Then it draws ten more possible angles of entry and calculates which one will prove the most likely to be lethal.
All Prowl has to do is adjust the position of his gun slightly to the left and squeeze the trigger. Recoil rattles the joints of his wrist. The bullet finds its target through the creatures open mouth, piercing its hard palate and lodging in its brain. The blood splatter is minimal. The Scout crumbles to the ground lifelessly, ears and mouth still flared out.
Prowl opens his vents and hot air rushes out of him with a relieved hiss.
“Huh.” Jazz is inspecting the exit wound on the back of the Scout’s head curiously. “So you weren’t lying.”
“Why would I lie about a situation in which failure results in both of us dying?” Prowl asks, too tired to sound angry.
The mech abandons the quintesson corpse and stretches leisurely, blade slinking back into his writ. “Dunno. Still half-expecting you to sprout tentacles and try to eat me alive or something.”
Prowl musters up a scowl as his vents start to finally slow down. “That makes no sense.”
Jazz just shrugs. “Kinda par for the course when dealing with aliens.” He walks over to Prowl while he stores his gun back in subspace. “So, now that we’ve taken care of that, let me reiterate,” he says, faux-polite. “Let’s get the hell out of doge.”
“I still need time to rest,” Prowl protests. “We could stay here for just—”
“Nuh-uh!” Jazz interrupts him with a finger against his faceplate. Prowl flinches back. “I listened to one of your plans against better judgment, now you listen to me, Numbers.”
“That—” Prowl’s processor spins with several different things to refute. “—is not my designation,” he settles on, sourly. “I will only be able to provide us with an escape plan once I organize my deep memory, and I cannot do that while conscious.”
“Well, tough. We’ve got to keep on the move or the search party sent after this search party—” Jazz kicks one of the corpses. “—is gonna catch onto us. No use for an escape plan if we’re dead, yeah?”
Prowl chews on that fact for a moment, mouth pressed together. “I have to rest,” he insists. He does. He needs his processor to work properly.
Jazz considers him, head fins tilting back slightly. They’re both quiet for a time. Prowl is trying to come to terms with the fact that they might realistically not be able to stop for long enough for him to recuperate mentally. It doesn’t cohere. He needs his mind functional. Needs it. Everything that makes him even remotely useful in this situation depends on his processor. He can deal with being physically compromised, with being carried around by a stranger if need be, with relying on him for protection. But the idea of not being able to think clearly for the remainder of this fiasco is highly distressing. He has to know what is happening, what should happen next, how to get them to that point, how—
“Alright, man, chill out before you blow a gasket,” Jazz says finally, snapping him out of his spiral. “For all I know you actually might, too…” he mutters quietly. “We’ll figure something out, yeah? Order of things: get out of the corpse room, then find a way to get you your beauty sleep while on the road.”
Clear directions. Specific tasks. He can do that. Prowl nods absently and when Jazz urges him to follow through the exit, he does. His legs move without much thought, headlights flickering on. System check comes back green in most areas, or at least functional. He folds his injured doorwing against his back again to give the limb more time to heal. The joints lock in place and the pain pings trickle down into nothing.
“You can carry me,” he proposes as they walk. Jazz is choosing tunnels seemingly at random. Prowl has no choice but to trust him to know his way.
“Believe me, Numbers, if I could sweep you off your feet and walk us out of here like a bunch of happy newlyweds, we’d already be halfway across the planet,” he says easily. “But you’re heavy and I need the energy in case we have to fend off something bigger than a bunch of C-fours.”
Prowl frowns, ducking under a low-hanging stalactite. “Half of that first sentence is incomprehensible. Why are you calling me that?”
“You clearly like statistics.”
“Only 11% of all our conversations thus far have included statistics. Hardly a reason for you to assign me an arbitrary nickname.”
“And you just made that number higher! Isn’t that something.”
“I accounted for my mention of percentages in that sentence in the number I provided.”
“…’course you did.”
Prowl squeezes his way through a particularly narrow passage, plates held close to his body. His doorwing scrapes against the ceiling with a flare of pain pings. On several occasions he has to partially transform in order to continue. Ahead of him, Jazz navigates the tunnel with an ease of someone who’s done it a hundred times. Prowl tries his best to follow the alien’s exact steps, but his frame is taller and not nearly as flexible. He doesn’t have retractable claws to grip onto rocks, either.
Prowl’s plating rattles as he finally clears the passage and lets it shift back to its natural position. “I have more emergency rations in storage. Is your frame fit to consume energon?”
“Maybe,” Jazz says and vaults over a wall almost as tall as he is in a single, fluid movement.
“A frustratingly vague answer,” Prowl points out, taking much longer to pull his frame over the ledge. He hurries to catch up with his companion.
“It might power me up, it might make me explode. Might do nothing but clog fuel lines.”
Prowl scrunches his brows in thought. “Are those odds evenly split?”
Jazz gives him an incredulous look over his shoulder. “Man, I’m not drinking something that might make me explode, even if the odds are low.”
“Technically speaking, all fuel is combustible,” Prowl points out absentmindedly. “We could start with a low dose, see how your systems react to it.”
“Pass,” Jazz says and skips up the tunnel faster. “Shake a leg, Numbers. We’re almost out.”
Sure enough, the first vestiges of natural light are making their way into the dimness of the cave. Prowl switches off his headlights and follows them to the surface eagerly.
The last stretch of the tunnel is almost horizontal. Jazz scales the ascend with little trouble, clawed fingers digging into orange rock, and extends a hand to help Prowl up. He ends up practically dragging him out of the tunnel and into the open with a scrape of plating against the hard surface. Prowl manages to keep himself from flinching, at least externally.
And then he’s lying on his back, doorwings pressed uncomfortably against the ground, single optic staring up at a blue sky with two suns, the first hanging low on the horizon, and the second still high. The result is a word that is bright, with almost no shadows to be seen anywhere. Especially where the two of them find themselves: a rocky, flat expanse with no protrusions to cast shadows in the first place. There is no vegetation, no fauna. Just orange rock stretching as far as Prowl can see. Which, admittedly, is still not very far.
He can make out the quintesson Flagship in the south, just as colossal as he remembers it. Their traveled distance has done nothing to diminish its size. Before Prowl’s processor can get caught on catastrophizing over it again, Jazz claps his hands together with a ‘welp!’ and starts walking the other way.
“Where are you going?” he asks, alarmed.
Jazz turns around and continues walking backwards, arms spread. “Away from the big-ass alien ship. Duh.”
Prowl hesitates, shoots the Flagship one last glance, and hurries after Jazz. “But do you have any idea where you’re going?”
“Nope,” he says, popping the ‘p’.
“Do you have any course of action, or do you always just do the first thing that pops into your head?” Prowl asks, frustrated, finally matching his step.
Jazz turns to him, head fins at high mast and voice largely unaffected by the criticism. “I’m more objective focused.”
“And those would be?”
That blue visor sets its sights on the horizon. “Keep myself alive, get off this planet, keep you alive. In that order of importance. Right now number one on the list takes precedence, meaning we put as much distance between ourselves and the quints as we can.”
“We can’t just run forever,” Prowl points out. “The longer we dally in regards of constructing a plan, the less energy we’ll have on executing it, thus, less likelihood of success.”
“Okay,” Jazz agrees easily. “Let’s hear that brilliant plan of yours, Numbers.”
Prowl feels the first signs of real anger and kills his engine before it can rev out his frustrations. “As I’ve already said, I can’t formulate a plan until I rest.”
Jazz stops in his tracks and faces him, matching Prowl’s tone. “And as I’ve said, we can’t plan for shit if the quints get us while you’re catching some Z’s!” He sighs and continues, calmer, “We walk until we find shelter, or at least a place that’s easier to defend.”
“There’s no guarantee we will,” Prowl says.
“Still waiting for you to give me a better idea.”
Prowl considers their environment. Flat. Mostly even. Empty. “You could haul me.”
Jazz gives him an odd look. “Like… on my back? I said, man, I can’t waste energy—”
“No, I mean on the ground. The road is suitable for it,” he explains patiently, despite feeling anything but. “Do you have a rope of some kind?”
Jazz, still looking dubious, raises his right arm. A panel below his wrist slides open to reveal a four-clawed grappling hook. “And this will be easier, how, exactly?”
Prowl stares at him. His optic recalibrates, bringing brief clarity to his vision, and he realizes that Jazz does not seem to have any elements on his frame indicative of a mobile alt-mode. For all Prowl knows, he might have no alt-mode in the first place. It would explain his confusion.
TacNet feeds him simulations of the conversation he’s about to have. Prowl quickly cordons them off and decides it’ll be much more time proficient to simply give a practical demonstration.
He transforms.