overall warnings: oddness and supernatural implications

further warnings for this story: mild battle violence

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Were-Cars Diptych Five: Full Moon

Story Two: Flaws

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Optimus was not oblivious.

Jazz could literally drive circles around his own larger truck form. There had never been any question that if Jazz wanted to win a challenge race against Optimus, he would. With that knowledge firmly in both their processors, it had always been simpler for Jazz to submit to Optimus rather than going through a farce of a challenge race where his speed advantage would become irritatingly obvious.

So Optimus knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, when Jazz began on insisting on those farce-races every month, that something was up with his Second.

But if there was one thing Jazz knew how to do (there were in fact many things Jazz knew how to do, but if there was one thing Optimus found both the most useful and the most irritating of all the things Jazz could do well) it was keep secrets. The silver car was being stubbornly silent on the subject. Optimus was about to start tearing the fragger's wires out in frustration.

Accordingly, Ironhide, Ratchet and Bumblebee had made themselves scarce by the time Optimus finally did snap.

Jazz had been driving - backwards - less than four feet from from Prime's front grill, the ragged moonlight gleaming off his silver form when it managed to peak through the patchy clouds. Teasingly he flashed his headlights and wiggled, sending desert dust spraying over Optimus's windshield.

With a growl of his massive engine, Prime lunged forward, transforming and leaping. Before they hit the ground, Optimus was holding a shrieking, growling, silver mech instead of a shrieking, growling, silver car. They went rolling across the desert floor, hissing, growling and clawing at each other. Prime ripped out a few wires and Jazz clawed his legs against the larger were-car's hip, ripping off the armor and exposing the joint.

By the time they pulled apart, the ground was littered with debris - bits of armor, wires, circuits and fluids.

Ratchet was going to murder them both, assuming both Optimus and Jazz came out of this confrontation in a repairable condition.

They circled and growled at each other, then Jazz tilted his head and several armor panels bristled up, then down. Challenge.

Prime growled and lunged, hoping to grab the silver mech before he could transform and speed away, but Jazz was faster than Prowl had been centuries ago, and all the larger mech could to was collapse into his vehicle form and try and catch up.

Not that Jazz was truly trying to get away from his First. He dropped back to scrape playfully against Prime's side, then rocketed forward and flipped around to repeat the teasing maneuver that had set Prime off in the first place. This time Prime only growled and waited for a better chance to pounce again.

It came when Jazz let Optimus pass him so that he could flip around to drive forwards again. They went tumbling across the desert floor again.

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Dawn found both mechs injured, energy-deprived, and somewhere in - Optimus checked his GPS - Arizona.

Jazz had submitted, as he had at the end of every one of these false challenges and now they both just sat in the rocky desert, trying to clean the sand out of their joints before they returned to the base in California and faced Ratchet's wrath.

"Are you going to tell me what that was about yet."

Jazz's optics glowed almost white in the dim morning light. Despite the damage, he looked calmer than he'd been since landing on Earth. "Nope."

Irritating fragger.

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End: Flaws

End: Diptych Five