A/N: I am no linguistics expert but from what I've looked up online, there appears to be no hard and fast rules regarding language drift.
This fic is crazy AU for both fandoms. I do not own either of the respective franchises.
X
Electric Sheep
Riddick had been in a lot of crazy situations in his life and figured he was at the stage where little could genuinely surprise him.
Though, he did have to admit, the stalemate with the big robot guarding the ship? New and kinda weird. He'd slink along the hillsides, the dog by his side, as he tried to figure out an approach that wouldn't set the thing off. It never moved again from its spot in the distance but Riddick figured it had to be aware of him. Occasionally, he would catch movements from its arms, it was repairing itself.
All in all, situation was fucked.
So he withdrew.
Headed out across the plains and decided to forget about the ship. So long as the giant robot didn't come after him everything would be good.
…so of course, the giant robot had to come after him.
X
The human was gone.
It hadn't shown up on the edge of Jazz's sensor range for about a decacycle and the Autobot was getting kinda worried about it now. It seemed to be alone, which was good for Jazz. But he'd observed plenty of other organics on this planet that could prove to be a threat to the human. Which wasn't really all that good for the lone sentient.
So when the message finally pinged against his processor, he was ready to start searching.
Energy levels: 43.6%
Repairs completed: Left canon available
Right canon available.
Long range comm systems available.
Full dexterity and mobility restored to left hand.
Full dexterity and mobility restored to right hand.
...
...
And, at the very end of a long list of repairs, there was:
Alt-mode now available.
First though...there were things he needed to do. He finally gave in and went back into the Ark. It had been a small crew and by the time they'd crashed, maybe only six of the original fifteen had definitely been alive. He gathered up the frames and dragged them into the med-bay. It was possible that some were still recoverable but if so then they were so deeply into stasis, hanging on a narrow point between life and death that their sparks could not be detected by Jazz or the Ark's damaged spark scanners. Cybertronians were hardy, it took a lot to put them down permanently and even with near fatal damage, they could survive extended periods of time in stasis.
His comrades could be in such a state, so deep into stasis that it'd require a med-bot to get them out. And Jazz knew his way around frames -specially his own- knew how to push beyond the limits most mechs didn't know they had, but he knew fiddling around with these ones could push them beyond all recovery. If he managed to make his way back to the Autobot forces and found a medic…then, maybe they would have a chance. But right now, he didn't have enough data, didn't know enough about the situation to make a judgement call. He could be ages away from the closest Autobot forces and the longer he waited, the higher the chance that they might never awake. So, to act now and try to repair them himself or wait and hope to find a medic...he needed more information about the situation.
But good, skilled medics were in short supply from what he could last recall. Theirs had been killed soon after he'd completed his preliminary repairs onto Jazz's frame.
With an unhappy grimace, he started to hook the frames he hoped were in deep stasis up to the med-berths. A slow influx of energy couldn't hurt them, it would stabilize them indefinitely until he made the decision.
Next came setting up the convertors. It took a few orns of delicate rewiring, but he finally got power routed to the doors of the cargo holds. He dragged out the convertors and set them up outside the Ark. From the cargo holds supplies, he was also able to rig up a connection to the ship. It would take time, but eventually there would be enough power to get the Ark running.
As for flying...well.
He wasn't that optimistic.
And it could have been his imagination or not, but it was entirely possible the Ark computers had actually scoffed at him when he'd requested a diagnostic.
Jazz finished up and surveyed his work, checking over the accessible portions of the ship for any threatening damage and then checking to see if the ship's consignment was still secure, which it was fortunately. They'd lost a lot of lives on the last mission recovering the valuable cargo from Decepticon forces and he was pleased to see it hadn't been for nothing.
The convertors and the Ark would be fine to leave unattended. The Ark would monitor the med-bay for him and alert him to any changes in the offline frames. Now, it was time to explore the planet, find the human and hopefully find out more information about the world he was stuck on and how fragged he really was. If he was really lucky, maybe he wasn't all that far away from civilization and would be able to figure out a way to get off-planet. Then again, neither he or the Ark had been able to detect any communication signals that indicated a technologically advance society.
Except, there was the lone human. It had to come from somewhere.
He set off in the direction he'd last picked the human up on his motion trackers.
X
The dog heard it coming long before Riddick did. They had been travelling across the plains, Riddick dragging a travois behind him when the animal started barking at him. Barking and pacing back and forth in the direction behind them.
Riddick stopped immediately. "Something coming, huh?" He glanced down in bemusement before scanning the hills back the way they had came. He couldn't see a thing but he didn't doubt the dog had keener senses than he did. He didn't like the situation, they were out in the open, with no cover in sight. Fight or flight warred within him for a moment, his lips pursing before he came to a decision and relented.
He dropped the travois, scavenging it for a few homemade knives, a water skin and a few slices of meat. The bulk of his kill and their dinner for the next couple of nights, they abandoned and set across the plains at a run. There were a few caves a couple of kilometers north where he'd made camp on occasion.
Then, he heard it, the unexpected sound of a high performance engine. That almost brought him up short and cost him a few precious seconds before adrenaline kicked in and gave him a fresh burst of speed. The dog kept pace with him easily and Riddick envied him for his speed. Whatever their pursuer was, Riddick had no intentions of facing it unless it was on his own turf and rules.
Riddick heard it when the vehicle changed direction, it had found the travois and now it was undoubtedly heading towards them. The caves were still several kilometers off and he slid to a stop. They weren't going to make it and would have to stand their ground. Riddick surveyed the uneven terrain for an advantage but there were no hiding places in sight.
The engine thrummed in the distance.
Riddick swore.
X
Jazz was increasingly convinced that there was no sentient life on this planet as he swept across the planet in his hovercar altmode. Sure, there were organics, an interesting variety of them but no signs that any of it had made it to the free will and intelligent thinking stage. The only thing he had going for him was a sensor scan he was beginning to believe was the result of a glitch and he'd imagined the whole thing.
Then he found the travois. Low key tech but there was no mistaking the look of primitive human made construction. There was the carcass of a dead organic on top of it and from the freshness of the heat scans, he figured he'd just chased off the human away from his meal. Jazz regretted the inconvenience but all would be explained soon. He paused momentarily as he tried to decide what to do with the travois. From what he could recall of humans, offering food could be construed as a peace offering. Unfortunately, access to his subspace was locked, fixing the emitter was something he hadn't got around to doing. He left the carcass there, uncertain how long it would remain unattended in these wilderness.
A fresh set of scans revealed the path the human had taken, a light trace of pheromones in the air, a track left in the grass. Jazz altered his course and set off again.
It didn't take long to catch up, he came over a rise and the human and an organic that resembled an earth canine were waiting for him. Jazz stopped immediately at what he thought was a safe distance away that wouldn't spook the organics.
He waited a moment to let them calm down at his sudden appearance, monitoring their vital signs. The man's hands never strayed from their position on his crude weapon but when they reached a state he thought was reasonable for the situation, he shifted through the information he had on humans and decided upon an appropriate greeting.
Of course, he couldn't resist.
"Greetings Earthling!" Jazz said. "I come in peace. Take me to your leader."
The human shifted at his voice but gave no recognition at his voice. Jazz tried again. After several failed responses in English, he switched to French, then Chinese, then through his entire database of human languages.
None provoked a response, the human kept suspicious watch on him and unobtrusively tried to back away. Jazz scuttled forward, maintaining the distance between them and noted the spike in the human's hormonal system. He moved back a bit as he pondered the communication failure. Just how long had it been since he'd left Earth? It would seem that enough time had passed that his language files were out of date.
Well. This was going to be problematic.
X
The hovercar spoke the most fucked up version of English he'd ever heard and he'd been grown up in the penal system. Riddick had heard some truly mangled forms of the language but this vehicle took first prize, not only for English but a few others Riddick had picked up over time. He flat out did not understand the car and that, in itself, was quite an achievement. Learning to recognize what some asshole psychopath was muttering right off the bat was an invaluable survival skill in slams across the galaxy.
As things stood, there were only a few words he'd recognized, not enough to know what the car was on about. Maybe its processor was as damaged as its exterior and it was glitching. Riddick wasn't entirely certain but he was pretty sure that this was the defense drone that had been guarding the ship, only it had shifted shape into the most interesting hovercar he'd ever seen. Which made him revise his initial impression of the ship, if the robot knew English, then maybe the ship had human origins somewhere along the line. A forgotten culture hidden somewhere out in the big black, just like the Necromongers. It wasn't too far out there, it could have even been from a divergent line of Necromonger faith, they had the tech for it.
But-no.
No. The tech was possible. But the feel the ship had given him, that intangible measure he'd taken away from it had formed a definitive impression on his mind, it was not human. It was alien.
Maybe the ship made contact with humans before it crashed, a long time ago. He wasn't all that informed on history, a lot of things had slipped through his education but the basic necessities he needed to know to keep himself alive. A chance encounter with an alien race that occurred centuries ago? Not something that would get discussed a lot back in the slam, except by the well-education, the paranoid and the delusional and no one listened to them.
It was however slightly reassuring that the thing was trying to communicate instead of attacking him immediately. Unless it was trying to inform that he'd committed a transgression against its programming and it was about to terminate him.
Riddick decided to back away slowly. The hovercar immediately moved forward then backed away just as quickly. Riddick was acutely aware of just how little effort it would take for the vehicle to reduce him to a red mess on the ground. Just how to take it down if it went for him….? There were a few ragged holes punched in the outer body. Maybe he could get at some inner wires with his smaller knives. Provided he could dodge the thing and that his knives didn't break on it…
The car backed up a bit further then it exploded into a flurry of parts, shifting and moving as the vehicle took a vaguely humanoid shape. Riddick hadn't been expecting that, he watched as pieces moved. The process wasn't fast, Riddick suspected this was due to the damage the hovercar had taken...
He didn't hesitate, a knife slid into his hand and he threw it straight into the shifting mass of parts. Then he threw himself backwards and ran.
X
Holy fragging Primus.
That was a bad move.
Body language, Jazz had been thinking, body language. He could mimic human body language to some extent in his root mode and maybe establish some sort of basic level of communication. Or he could try his hand at written communication, that normally took longer to drift. He really just needed to get the human talking long enough to update his files and account for the language drift. So he'd backed up and then transformed. No problem, he'd thought. That would cause no problems. The human was small and lacked high tech weapons. He pretty much sat on the bottom of Jazz's threat list. If anything, the amount of agitation and fear that was going through him would keep the human still, Jazz figured.
And then the human had thrown a knife right at him midst transformation, a move that had outright stunned him with its craziness. The man was either incredibly lucky or he knew what he was going for because it had struck an energon line. Hadn't slice it, thank Primus no, but Jazz had immediately halted the transformation, didn't dare risking forcing the knife deeper, somewhere it could do actual damage. If he'd had ready access to a medic, he wouldn't have though twice about it, would have continued on, secure in the knowledge that someone would be around afterward to pick things out from underneath his armor and fix the rest of himself up. He'd taken searing plasma blasts and worse mid transformation during battlefields after all.
But right now, there were no medics, no second chances if he fragged things up. Couldn't afford to take the risks, couldn't take any extra damage when he wasn't even in top condition.
The human had made a break for it. Jazz let him go, focusing on himself. He ran several scans to find out where the weapon was exactly and then began the slow, arduous task of transformation, shifting parts to and from his root mode to his alt, all in a careful effort to remove the knife from his internals.
When it was done, he straightened up, focusing on the direction the human had disappeared to. He hadn't got far, Jazz would catch up quickly in his alt mode. Grimly, he transformed and then set off after the human.
The human had just moved up several levels on his threat list.
X
Pissing off the hovercar had probably been a bad move.
The thing came hurtling after him quicker than he'd expected. Riddick had jumped out of the thing's way, and ended up be launched further than he thought he would when the vehicle turned an anti-grav booster in his direction. This time, when it changed, it did so quickly. He was still recovering from the fall and then he wasn't facing a hovercar. It was the big robot from before and its metal face -which was surprisingly emotive- looked deeply unhappy.
The robot had pointed a finger at him. Riddick had stared back, entirely unimpressed as it again tried and failed to speak English.
He got the impression it was scolding him.
X
"That was so not cool," Jazz glared at the human. "So not cool at all. The frag you do that for?"
He had to give him credit, the human had seen a weak spot and gone for it. It was just deeply frustrating that violence still appeared to be an engrained response to humans, because it meant that it was going to take a long time to establish communication with the man. Every move Jazz made would be analyzed and cross-examined for suspicious motives until the human was satisfied that he meant no harm.
From Jazz could recall of the species, that process sometimes never finished.
With an annoyed exvent, Jazz pointed a finger at the human. "What's your name?" he asked. After getting no response, he pointed at himself. "Jazz. Jazz. Jaaaazzzzz."
And now to see if the humans written language had changed as much as their spoken language.
X
When the robot pointed its finger back at him, Riddick had already figured out what the robot wanted. "Johns," he grunted shortly. He would have preferred not to have given it a name at all but the robot, or Jazz, as it called itself, had already proven that it would not be trifled with and was rather forgiving, considering Riddick had stuck a knife in its insides. Most people tended to get rather upset about that. And then they died.
As it was, the thing had been buried underneath the planet's skin for so long that it would be impossible for it to know Riddick's name but he wasn't going to give away information that could come back to bite him in the ass later.
Then the robot crouched down, dragging its long fingers in the dirt. Hello, it scrawled in massive letters. Nod if you can read this.
Riddick blinked in surprise at the coherency. From the robot's actions up until this point, he was certain it had some major glitches in its system. The spelling was a bit off and the shape of the letters were kind of weird but no matter, it was recognizable. He looked up at it and gave it a sharp nod.
X
So he had a name -false, probably- and a way of communicating. That was good. First step in the right direction. But he needed to get the human talking so that he could update his language banks. First things first though, those meant assurances to get the human to trust him.
I come in peace, Jazz couldn't resist scrawling. Then, I mean no harm to you. My people have never sought to harm the human race.
The human peered intently over his words, but made no response. The goggled face remained intently focused on him, watching him cautiously for any sudden moves. Jazz ran a discrete scan over the organic, he wasn't certain how much time had passed since he'd last seen Earth but there had to been some changes within the species. He was half expecting to find cybernetic enhancements, surely the contact between Cybertronians and humanity had to have had some impact on the species but was surprised to find that Johns seemed to match the records he had.
I don't know how long I've been buried on this planet but I would appreciate anything you have to tell me about it.
Johns slowly read over the words but when he reached the end of them, he made a scoffing sound with a shake of his head. Jazz's spark sunk at the refusal. Persuading the organic would be difficult, humans did not respond to things in a manner he could confidently predict. The way that goggled face was looking at him now, careful consideration mixed with pure cunning, Jazz had a feeling Johns was challenging him. Testing his claim that he meant no harm.
….frag.
Johns took one defiant step back and Jazz did not react. The human took another step backwards, the canine creature following his footsteps. Calculations spun quickly though Jazz's processor before he came to a snap-decision. He crouched down in the dirt again.
There are many hazardous lifeforms on this planet. Allow me to accompany you and help you.
Writing that had brought the human a little bit closer again, Johns peered cautiously at the message. Then, his head snapped up and stared -or Jazz assumed, it was hard to tell with those goggles- straight at the Cybertronian. He waited for the human to decide.
X
The giant robot wanted to follow him.
Riddick glanced down at the words, then back up at the enormous machine. The choice loomed ominously over him.
On one hand, a giant robot would be useful for protection and as a means of getting around. It also meant possible access to the mystery ship.
On the other hand, he didn't know anything about it. Who built it, where it was from. It wasn't human-made, the words it had scrawled had confirmed an alien origin. It had no hard coded programming to protect and serve humans, therefore this offer sprang from some indecipherable alien motive. Evidently, it had some self-awareness, it had a name and it referred to itself as I. That made Riddick wonder just how much it was capable of, could the robot lie? Could it plot?
On the other, other hand, it had a fucking huge gun that could reduce him to a smear on the ground. Riddick didn't know what it would take to prompt the robot into using that on him but he wasn't about to risk it.
He nodded reluctantly.
It seemed to take that as permission, it backed away from him quickly. Riddick watched it in confusion but it all became clear when the robot -Jazz- changed back into a hover vehicle. Jazz had been getting out of his range.
A very thin smile graced Riddick's face.
Good. Apparently, he was still able to strike fear -or caution at the very least- into giant alien robots.
"Well boy," he addressed the canine companion by his side. "Looks like we've picked a stray."
