Two notes of Things to Not Expect:

a) the dreaded OC- she's a one-time thing in this story. All others will be canon characters.

b) fast updates- I am a nitpicker. I will go over everything before I post it with a fine-tooth comb- which is frustrating since I almost always end up missing something. The only reason this is going up so fast is because my laptop is going in to be repaired again and I wanted this up before my only Internet lifeline became my mother's clunky old desktop.

Kudos to whomever can guess at the identity or our oh-so-mysterious voice, and to whomever can explain to me what a kudo is and why it's an acceptable reward system.

And to those who noticed- balance is an evil thing. It will be coming soon. --insert evil cackle here--

Disclaimer: No own, no sue. Seriously. It would suck.

--

Pain.

Ah yes, good old pain. It had been missing for a while now, leaving a hollow chasm in its place. An eerie sensation, knowing he should be hurt, should be in agony, yet feeling nothing. Maybe he was a masochist, maybe he was just an idiot, but he found it easier to deal with the pain than the nothingness. Pain meant he was alive.

He shifted his aching body ever so slightly, testing it to see how much it hurt. The response was sufficient to make him grunt. All right, some pain was a good thing, but this was a little much. He frowned, trying to shut off the offended pain sensors, but something was wrong. Very wrong.

A little trill of alarm was building up in the corner of his mind. Unyielding pain. Sensors and systems that weren't responding, almost as if they weren't even there. Other sensors he hadn't known he possessed picking up on stimuli normally too minute to perceive. No soft whisper of even his most necessary support systems- instead a rhythmic thumping he could just barely feel. A definite pressure welling up in his torso, complete with a black panic beginning to claw at his consciousness as he realized some vital process was malfunctioning-

Breathe, Jazz.

And he did, although he had not the faintest clue how. Something within him seemed to click and he gasped deeply, drawing in the much-needed oxygen. He coughed convulsively and curled onto his side, drawing his knees up and pressing his face against them in a display of flexibility no mech could have managed. The little trill was changing rapidly into a full-out clamor and the feeling of wrongness was climbing exponentially.

Slowly Jazz rolled back over, holding one hand up in front of him and almost fearfully activating his optics to see his hand.

His human hand.

Jazz watched, torn between amazement and abject horror, as his fingers curled into a fist. The skin was extraordinarily sensitive- he could feel the deeper lines in his palm clearly, felt the wind as it gently brushed past. He shifted his weight forward, leaning on his other elbow as he peered down at himself. Human, every last inch- and he could see every last inch, too, for whatever had dumped him here hadn't bothered with the inconvenience of clothes.

Something feather-soft brushed against the back of his neck and he jumped, most of him leaving the ground before coming back down in a much less organized manner. His elbow jarred itself against the ground and a peculiar sensation swept over his entire arm, pain overlapped by bright spangles and the odd feeling of the flesh of his arm trying to go in eight different directions at once. He gritted his teeth- now he was glad he'd watched that marathon of House while in orbit because he knew what everything was, if not what it did- and waited for the residual tingling to stop. As he waited the touch came again, this time along his left shoulder blade. He reached back, already knowing what he was going to find now that he actually thought about it, and tangled his fingers into his hair. The texture of the individual strands sliding over his skin made him grin.

He was human.

Jazz wedged both hands under him and shoved himself to his feet. The maneuver took a good deal more coordination than he had originally thought and he overcompensated horribly. Instead of standing gracefully he found himself still propelling forward, arms pinwheeling madly, and a stray thought ran across his mind- it'd be a shame if I trashed this body 'fore I even got to see it, never mind use it.

But humans were an agile race; he managed to twist around and land on his left shoulder in place of a full-on face plant. The impact slammed his breath out of his lungs and sent a fresh wave of sharp-edged tingles through his arm. Jazz merely lay there, waiting for his breathing to even out again and the pain to stop. After a few moments the pain took on a different note, duller and deeper and throbbing in time with his heartbeat. He carefully sat up and scowled at his shoulder, where a viscous crimson fluid was slowly welling up. One little slip was all it took to break his skin and make him bleed? Humans were more fragile than he had first thought.

Out of curiosity he touched the red stain on the ground, feeling the warmth of the blood. He also felt something else and, with a bemused frown, ran his palm over the ground. The surface was rough, made of some form of mineral composite that left tiny sharp points jutting up. An odd little shiver worked its way down his spine as he felt the coarse material grab at his skin. He could easily imagine how much damage this stuff could do to the sensitive skin of his face or- other areas.

"Oh, for God's sake."

Now Jazz jumped again, landing much less painfully this time, and twisted around to peer over his shoulder. A human stood there; it looked female, but the only way to tell was removal of her clothes and Jazz doubted she would appreciate that. She already looked annoyed, if he was reading her facial expressions correctly. Her stance certainly warned of her temper- hands on her hips, chin tilted down and slightly to one side, weight rocked forward onto the balls of her feet. She looked just like Ratchet did right before the medic unleashed holy hell upon his unfortunate victims.

Jazz's charm and his way with words normally kept him from being on the receiving end of such kind treatment. Time to see if those talents had been lost in translation.

"Uh, hi." He grinned at her, mentally cranking up the charm and praying she didn't turn out to be violent.

"What are you doing up here?" the woman snapped irritably. Bad start, Jazz mused to himself. Then he replayed her words and frowned, looking around himself. Transfixed as he had been by his new body he hadn't spared a thought to his surroundings. 'Up here' was, in fact, a correct term as he appeared to be sitting on the roof of a fairly tall building.

"I have no idea," he answered honestly. The last thing he remembered was… what? He frowned down at his hands, trying to think. The fight in Mission City, but something told him there was more than that.

Not everything that happens is actually meant to be.

"So you have no idea how you wound up butt-naked, sitting on the roof of my apartment building?" She rocked back onto her heels, her words a clear challenge.

"Apart…?" No, he didn't, but he could bullshit with the best of them. "Oh, man. What's th' name of this buildin'?"

"Terrace Apartments." Her words were clipped now, prepared for an elaborate story. This would be a hard woman to lie to.

"I got a friend who lives here," Jazz informed her. "Loves prankin' people. This is prob'ly his idea of a joke."

He didn't want to make up a story too full of holes, but if he didn't give her enough information he had a feeling she would quite cheerfully escort him to the street and leave him standing there, still naked.

"What apartment number?"

Slag. Apartment number? Since when did apartments have numbers? And how could he be expected to know? He'd studied the human culture, not memorized every facet of it.

"Seven?"

"There is no apartment seven." She folded her arms across her chest, looking thoughtful now.

"I dunno, but it's got a seven in it." He beamed at her, reciting the words cute and harmless in his head. As though his thinking it hard enough would make her believe it. "I've only been here once before, an' it was a long time ago, so…"

"The building is six months old." Oops. She was back to suspicious now. As there seemed to be nothing he could say to that, he merely laughed weakly and shrugged. She huffed out an annoyed breath and turned away, muttering something about teenagers as she did so. Jazz frowned as he considered that- he was by no means an expert at judging human ages, but he would guess she was less than a decade outside of teenager-hood herself. "Just… stay here," she ordered briskly before vanishing down a stairwell near the back of the roof.

Jazz waited until he heard a door slam before delicately trying to stand up again. He would need to be able to handle at least one set of stairs, and he had no desire to fall flat on his face in the process. He managed to balance himself, silently mourning the loss of his stabilizing servos, and had actually taken several trips around the roof before the human returned. She tossed a large piece of cloth at him- a sheet?- and he wrapped it around his waist.

"All right," she said after studying him for a few moments. "I'm gonna let you use the phone in my apartment, cause I can't just kick you out onto the street like this. And maybe my roommate will have clothes your size." She gestured for him to follow and started back towards the stairway. "And just so you know, I just finished a tour in Iraq, so don't go thinking I'm a weak little girl."

"Never crossed my mind," Jazz assured her. True, she was small- she barely came up to his chin- but something told him this girl could bend him into a pretzel without trying.

"Good. By the way, I'm Jade."

He considered making a smart-ass comment about the similarity of their names but instead answered simply.

"Jazz."

--

The roommate wasn't home, so Jade called him to ask if he didn't mind some of his clothes disappearing. She got put on hold and gave Jazz whispered orders to go see if he thought anything would fit.

Upon entering the roommate's room, Jazz decided that several items would indeed fit, but there was no way he was wearing them. After a moments' stunned disbelief he picked out a particularly aggressive number- rhinestones and sequins and pleather- and stared. Then he peered back into the closet.

Last time he'd checked, not that he checked often but this wasn't exactly the sort of thing that changed overnight, it was the female of the human species that had what men affectionately called 'boobs'. Jade had said several times that her roommate was male, yet the clothes in the closet were designed for a woman. A very generously proportioned woman.

There was an odd noise from behind him, a sort of shuddering chunk-chunk, and he turned to see Jade holding up her cell phone and smirking at it.

"I got through, and he says you can take something as long as I took a picture first." She waved her phone at him. "I figured you weren't really in a position to say no."

"Uhh…" Jazz tried to word his question in such a manner that wouldn't set off Jade's hair-trigger temper and failed. In lieu of words he jabbed a thumb towards the clothes hesitantly.

"Yeah, he's a showgirl at the MGM Grand," Jade answered his non-question in a very matter-of-fact tone.

"Show girl?" Jazz found himself grinning at this. Cybertronians had no genders and therefore didn't have set standards for them. Humans, on the other hand, had an invisible but strict line between male and female, a line which Jade's roommate apparently ignored. Somehow this appealed to the former 'bot. Not that he was about to go running around in high heels and sequined miniskirts, but still.

"Yeah. I'll find you some guy clothes, why don't you go wash off your shoulder?"

So Jazz wandered into the bathroom, scuffing his feet against carpet and tile. Even the most sensitive of his sensors wouldn't pick up the textural difference, but to human skin it was blatantly obvious. He turned on the water after a moment's hesitation and scooped up a handful of it, intending to wash off the tacky blood, but stopped when he saw himself in the mirror.

Cobalt-blue eyes stared back at him. Human eyes.

There had been no other option, Jazz rationally knew. But finally seeing himself as human forced him to accept basic facts. He was an organic creature now, a being with a very limited life span and no fighting skills. Was he stuck this way, or could he go back to being a mech? And exactly how often did murdered 'bots come back as a different species? He was an Autobot first and foremost, so joining up with the others was inevitable. But could he do any good once he got there?

Something else in his reflection dragged him away from his musings. His skin was a shade similar to the human dessert called chocolate. His mind supplied the images of several other humans he had seen- in this country they were called African Americans. It simply meant they were of African descent, as opposed to the Eurasian people. There were more races but these were the big two in America- and not too very long ago something as simple as this would have radically altered how people like Jade treated him. Even today there was still a wall between the two that few managed to breach.

Jazz shook his head and began to gently probe the wound, his mind still churning over the facts. He was still a saboteur, still knew how to work a computer even though he was now limited to human technology. He was also still an intelligence expert, and while he was no tactical genius like Prowl, he was clever enough to handle himself in most situations. Between his natural skills and the vast amounts of information he had downloaded about this planet he could certainly survive being one of its natives long enough to reach Prime.

The MGM Grand was a hotel in Las Vegas, about twenty miles northeast of Mission City. If Jade's roommate worked in Vegas odds were he lived fairly close to the city. The Autobots, on the other hand, were probably settled down fairly close to the small town of Tranquility, home of Sam Witwicky.

Assuming they hadn't headed back to Cybertron.

That thought chilled him and he went ramrod stiff, staring at the wide-eyed face in the mirror. If the Autobots had taken the Allspark back to Cybertron- and there was no reason not to with Megatron dead- then Jazz was left to the rest of his too-short human life, made all the shorter because up until twenty minutes ago he hadn't existed.

Wait… Megatron dead? How do I know that? Last I heard of 'im he was in fine form, rippin' Autobots in half and havin' the time of his life.

… saw him? Where?

I have to maintain a balance, so you won't be the only one.

Jazz opened his eyes at that, a soft voice that was so familiar despite the fact that he could swear he'd never heard it before. Once again he felt that he was missing something, that he had forgotten an important event…

Whatever the case was, he knew Megatron was dead, the same way he knew his name. He had a sickened feeling that the evil mech had managed to take the Allspark with him, one last defiant gesture of how much he loathed the Autobots. So Prime and the others were still here.

Another chill chased itself down his spine as a different thought occurred to him. How was he even alive? He'd already written off his return as something he would most likely never understand, but the fact that he had retained all of his memories and his personality implied that he still possessed his own spark in place of a human soul.

If that were true he was in a whole different world of trouble. Without his safeguards to protect and shield himself his spark would be a neon target sign hanging over him- anything with the basic scanners could pick him up. And he had no idea who else had died in Mission City save Megatron- for all he knew Starscream could fall out of the sky and land in his lap at any second.

Conversely, this should make him easier for his teammates to find as well, although last he'd heard an F-22 fighter jet was just a smidge faster than a semi and a Camaro.

A brisk rapping on the bathroom door jarred him out of his meandering thoughts. Jade pushed the door open just far enough to slide a handful of clothes in.

"There's a brush and some hair ties in the drawer if you need them. Keep the clothes; nobody's worn them in forever anyways."

Getting dressed was a lesson in pain tolerance. He decided to brush his hair first and quickly arrived at the conclusion that whoever thought tangle-free hair was necessary was most likely bald. His eyes were watering at the sharp tugging pains before he declared himself through with that. The hair tie- a small elastic hoop- required a bit of fumbling, including several loud snaps! against his hands before he got it to cooperate, leaving him with a ponytail just long enough to brush his shoulders. All of that, however, had nothing on the clothes themselves. After a few moments of trying to work the zipper on the jeans he yanked a little too fast and got a fair amount of skin caught in the metal teeth.

It took Jazz several minutes before he realized those odd whimpering sounds were coming from him.

Jade was in the living room, flipping through channels on the television when Jazz finally left the bathroom. He frowned at her irate muttering and glanced at the TV screen.

"More meteor sightings. Ya know, last time this happened a town near here got trashed by some government experiment gone wild and… what's with the goofy look?"

Jazz supposed his elated little grin did look a bit demented, but he couldn't help it. Those 'meteors' looked exactly like the ones he and his teammates had caused. If his fellow Autobots were arriving on-planet- and he highly doubted these were Decepticons, not with Prime in this general area- then he was in luck.

"And when did this happen?" he asked, mostly because Jade was scowling at him.

"'Bout a month ago. Just like with the full moon- one weird thing happens and the governmental crazies go wild and end up dancing naked in the corn fields. Or destroying small cities. Whichever works best for them."

Jazz considered this for a moment, then decided. Reinforcements or not, he couldn't take the chance of a 'con picking up on his energy reading and getting the brilliant idea of attacking.

"So… thanks for the clothes," he said finally. Jade glanced at him and nodded.

"Well, it's been real," she drawled. "What with the voices in my head and all," she added in a much quieter tone. Jazz started at that but before he could ask she went on. "Don't let the door hit you on the way out."

Jazz padded over to the door, pausing only once to frown at his feet. She had given him a style of shoe called a 'flip flop', and he simply didn't like them. Still, he couldn't exactly explain that he might need to run for his life from a fighter-jet-turned-giant-robot so he stayed silent. At the door, he paused.

"Hey, Jade? What'd that voice sound like?"

She sent a sharp look towards him, then softened slightly and shrugged. "Like a voice. Like a kid fresh out of a private school with a million-dollar vocabulary."

Like the voice he kept hearing.

Jazz thanked her once more and left. He was halfway to the elevator when his midsection issued a strange growling noise. The sound stopped him dead in his tracks and he stared at the offending area, in which an odd gnawing sensation was growing. Was that hunger?

Clearly this being human thing was going to be a good deal more difficult than he had expected.