Some Things Never Change
By: Vierge
A Transformers: Generation 1 Fan Fiction Piece
Gift Fic for: Kenyastarflight
DISCLAIMERS: Transformers belongs to HASBRO and Takara. I'm just borrowing them for the meantime, and they'll go right back where they belong as soon as I'm through. Anything and everything else that I may have mentioned here belongs to their respective owners.
NOTES: This story was written as a gift fic for Kenyastarflight for hitting the 1.5K mark on my profile page on DevArt. She challenged me to write a story featuring Jazz and Swoop, and the prompt was "A Day at the Beach." This challenge had a couple of advantages: first, it involved Jazz, and I'm fairly confident with writing him. It involved the beach, and the country where I live is an archipelago – meaning there are plenty of beautiful beaches for me to make use of, and I've been to some of the prettier ones and hence can write about them with ease. The primary challenge here was Swoop. I had never written the Dinobots before, and hence was completely unsure as to how to portray them. This challenge, then, was rather timely: it got me to move my butt and attempt to write the Dinobots – or at least one of them, at any rate.
REFERENCES: The idea that Swoop is training to be a medic is something that I yanked out of Shades' massive funny-fic Communiqué.
RATING: PG/K
TEASER: Jazz and Swoop are on vacation, and Jazz sees a whole new side to the Dinobot.
Some Things Never Change
Warm sun, white sand, and clear waters: all the hallmarks of a beautiful, tropical island – and this particular one, so he had been told, was one of the most beautiful. Sure, it might not have been as isolated as, say, Matinloc Island, but hey, he wasn't about to complain. At least he didn't have to swim underwater to get to the beach (1), and besides, this island had a pretty thumping party scene at night.
It was the party scene and the presence of people that Autobot saboteur Jazz could appreciate the most about Boracay Island (2). He come across information on it one day while randomly surfing the Web for vacation spots he might like to go to, but whereas the others were too isolated or too popular, Boracay met the requirements of being isolated enough that he wouldn't have to worry about getting in trouble with the 'Cons, but still populated enough that he wouldn't feel too lonely.
And he did not regret coming here at all, nuh-uh. The people were friendly and cheerful, and as warm in their personalities and hospitality as the sun that drenched their island home. Nothing could be better, really.
Too bad the others ain't here, Jazz mused as he looked around, grinning to a veritable army of giggling, suntanned children (the sons and daughters of the local islanders, so he had been told) who were putting all their efforts into building a fantastically large sandcastle out of the powdery-fine white sand that was one of Boracay's trademarks. He knew that Bumblebee would have loved it here, and he knew that Ratchet, Prime, Ironhide and Prowl could have used some time away from their usual duties at the Ark. Sadly, Bumblebee had gone off to San Francisco with Spike and Carly, and the others… Well, they were just a bunch of work-addicted slaggers who believed the Ark would fall apart without them – and Jazz had to grudgingly admit to himself, that was probably the truth.
That left him with only one companion on this whole trip, and while Jazz had his own misgivings at first, after the first three days, he ended up having to change his initial ideas.
Another Autobot came up from the surf, seawater gleaming on metal arms and legs, only to accrue sand as said Autobot sat down beside him. "Me Swoop never thought swimming fun till now."
Jazz grinned at Swoop. "Changed your mind about bein' in the water huh?" He chuckled as he looked out to sea, waving his hand at some people who were sailing in a little white outrigger with a blue sail. "Swimmin's real nice when the water's warm and the sun's out."
"Me Swoop think that true only here." The Dinobot, for his part, was watching some of the children dig some more sand for their sandcastle. "Water too cold where we Autobots from, even when sun out."
Jazz nodded, but didn't say anything, which was perfectly fine, considering that Swoop was distracted by the children, who were still building their sandcastle and seemed eager to show off their handiwork.
Swoop was not exactly the first 'Bot Jazz would have expected to take up his offer of accompanying him for this week-long vacation. He'd thought maybe the Twins would want to come, maybe even Bluestreak. But Bluestreak was in too deep in a shooting competition with Mirage that involved who had the highest average over the course of a month, and as for the Twins…when Sunstreaker found out that they were going to an island, with seawater and sand, he thought the better of going for the sake of his paint job. And, since his brother wasn't going anywhere, neither was Sideswipe. The other Dinobots thought it might be a nice idea, but then Prowl reminded them that they had something to do for him, and the only one who had any right to some vacation time amongst them was Swoop. And so, Swoop it was who joined him for this trip.
At first he had been worried about the Dinobot. After all, they weren't quite as used to interacting with humans as the other 'Bots were, and he thought Swoop would scare the humans into a panic. As it turned out, what happened was completely the opposite: the humans, especially the children, seemed drawn to Swoop, asking for rides over the ocean or (as some of the more daring ones were wont to request) to drop them from a relatively safe height over the water, allowing them to dive in with many a joyous shriek and squeal.
Jazz didn't think he had ever seen Swoop so…well, happy was the word that came up in his processors. He was so used to seeing the Dinobots as a bunch of gruff, hardened warriors. Pit, even if Swoop was supposedly the gentlest of all his brothers and was training to be a medic, there was no denying that Swoop was possibly one of the most dangerous aerial fighters the Autobots had. That Swoop could possibly have a soft spot for human children had never really occurred to Jazz, but now that he was seeing it, well, he couldn't really deny it, either.
Fact of the matter was, it made him see a whole new side to Swoop. He knew that he and the rest of the other 'Bots had a tendency to keep away from the Dinobots, but maybe they weren't so bad a bunch after all…
Screams and cries for help snapped him out of his thoughts, and when he turned to the source of the sound, he felt his tanks grow cold. A blue, white and yellow parachute was drifting away in the wind, the line that attached it to the boat that had been towing it trailing behind. It was drifting farther and farther away from the sight of the shore, and given the wind conditions that day, it wouldn't take too long for them to disappear from sight of even his optics.
The first thought that registered in his processors was: parasailing accident. The second, which came less than an astrosecond after that, was: go and help. But even as he got up and started running towards the water, he suddenly remembered one crucial factor: he was just not built for this rescue, since he could not fly.
"Slaggit!" he swore, and he looked around, trying to figure out a way to get out there and help out, but the sound of moving gears and servos made him look to Swoop, who had transformed and was airborne before Jazz could even ask what he was doing. Jazz made for the water, but then stopped himself. He wasn't equipped for this rescue, and there was a very high likelihood that he'd only make things more complicated for Swoop if he got involved. And so, he decided to simply stay back, and see how Swoop handled this on his own.
Swoop rode the air currents carefully, controlling his speed and his trajectory so that he didn't overshoot his target, or even worse, crash into them – a difficult proposition, given the variable air currents that usually occurred over oceans, and which were likely the reason why the cable holding the parachute to the boat had snapped in the first place.
But Swoop, as Jazz well knew, was a master glider, and was able to reach the parachute without any problems. What came next, though, nearly made his fuel pump stop.
Swoop had two options to save the humans. The first was that he could get a hold of the severed cable and tow them back to land, but that was problematic, because that left the question of how they were going to get them back down to the ground safely. The second was that Swoop would cut the parachute away, and let the humans freefall for a little bit before he dove and caught them on his back, but that was even more dangerous than the first one, because there were just too many risks involved. Jazz might have liked taking risks, but only with his own hide. When humans were involved, he preferred to play it safe.
He had hoped that Swoop would keep that in mind too. But when Jazz saw the way that Swoop was approaching the parachute, and at what angle, he knew that Swoop had decided to go for Option Number Two. "Swoop, no!"
Of course, Swoop didn't hear him, and he watched in horror as the outer edge of one of Swoop's wings smashed into the thin, fragile cords that connected the bell of the parachute to those riding underneath it, and the thin, sharpened metal cut through them with ease. As the humans began to freefall, Jazz remembered something: something about there being a certain height at which a human striking water would be the same as a human striking concrete.
It was not the image he wanted to see in his processors.
He moved towards the water, intending to transform into his alt-mode and then bring out the hydrofoils that Wheeljack had installed way back when, but he was barely ankle-deep in the water when he saw Swoop dive down and then pull up just as fast, catching the humans after they had fallen only a couple of meters from their original position before the parachute strings were cut.
The cheers that erupted from the humans around him brought him back to reality, and he watched as Swoop flew back to land, the whole event not registering in his processors until Swoop had landed and deposited the humans safely on the ground, and transformed back into his primary mode.
Jazz took over from there. He knelt down so that didn't appear so tall to the humans. "You two all right, miss?" he asked – apparently Swoop had rescued a mother and daughter pair.
"Yes, thank you," the woman replied, but the little girl beside her was laughing with glee as she looked up at Swoop.
"Again!" she cried, jumping up and down in her excitement. "Let's do that again!"
As the woman tried to calm her daughter down and explain to her that they were most assuredly not doing that again, Jazz stood up, and looked at Swoop. "Why'd you cut the strings instead of towing 'em back here?"
Swoop looked at him, and shrugged. "Them humans like to fall. But then me Swoop notice that them humans too high, so me Swoop had to catch them humans. Not good for them humans to hit water hard. Might break something real bad."
Jazz flickered his optics in confusion, and then realized something: Swoop had thought that this was all just another variation on the "drop the humans into the water" game that he had been playing with the children. He started to chuckle, but those chuckles turned into full-blown laughs that brought smiles to the faces of the humans around him, and made Swoop stare at him in confusion.
Some things, Jazz mused then as he looked at Swoop, just never changed.
NOTES:
(1) Matinloc Island is a very pretty island located near Palawan, and features a gorgeous beach with matching lagoon. However, to get to that beach, one has to swim underwater through a narrow crevasse in the rock, or paddle a canoe through the gap when the tide is low enough. It is rumored it was Matinloc Island that provided the inspiration for the isolated island paradise in the novel The Beach by Alex Garland.
(2) Boracay Island is a resort island located near Aklan, and is one of the most popular vacation spots in the Philippines. It's famous for its white-sand beaches, crystal waters, and a lifestyle caught somewhere between Bohemian and Surfer. One more thing: you know they say in the United States: "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?" Well, Boracay acts in a similar capacity: whatever happened there, never leaves the island.