Disclaimer: Hasbro owns Transformers and the author claims no rights to them.
Chapter 14: Jazz
"Hey, everyone, this is your favorite DJ, Jazz, giving you non-stop tunes to shake your adorable aft to, can I get a shout from those mechs on the dance floor having a fun time tonight?"
Below him, the numerous young bots dancing on the flashing colored light floor below crowed to show their approval. Jazz grinned, the laser lights flashing off of his silver visor, and slid a mix music data pad into the sound system's slot.
"Alright then, here comes another hit, heading your way!"
The crowd cheered and began to dance to the music. Jazz cut off the microphone connection to and from the club's dance floor and let the smile slip from his face as he sat back in his chair and turned to another computer. The DJ booth Jazz was in had practically become a second home to the hansom, friendly black and white Transformer; he still had empty cubes of energon lying in the corner and under the counter from a long time ago when he had first bought the club and opened it up. Admittedly, he had never expected the club to do so well, and he was glad it had; it had done well enough that not only did Jazz had a cozy love nest above the club, but he had the coolest laser light shows and awesome sound systems to pump the music from. The problem with that was…
The music sucked.
Jazz had used to love it at one time, but constantly mixing and matching it in the DJ booth he had come to see the same dull pattern in all the electronic tones that made up a Cybertron music track. Looking at the young mechs dancing below his high-perched booth, Jazz couldn't help but grimace sometimes and wonder where they found the energy in this slag; it was dull, repeating, and lacked something, he didn't know, more.
He stared at the computer where he had been trying to make his own music track to fulfill the hole of creativity in him. Of course, no matter what he mixed it seemed like the club comers liked it, and that was what ultimately mattered in the end. Still, he wanted to create something he could truly be proud of, something that would make him a legend all over Cybertron. Something that spoke without words, something that told a story with its different sounds: something that had a Spark.
Sighing, he leaned back in his seat, linking his fingers behind his head as he stared up at the ceiling.
He had heard that on certain organic planets, organics were actually evolved enough to have developed their own instruments and styles of music. Maybe one of these days he would take a vacation and sink a bunch of money in a private trip to one of these planets and check them out, get some inspiration…
As Jazz drifted into recharge, a rare deep bass note began thumping outside as the laser light show became more and more bright, now drawing closer to a red and white color scheme. The cheery shouts of the dancers became screams of pain and roars of violence and the comfortable DJ chair became a hard bed of rubble while the DJ's dim darkness turned into a night sky.
"Soldier, soldier! Wake up, soldier! Now is not the time to recharge, mech!"
Jerking awake, Jazz sat up and looked around, but laid quickly back down as he placed a hand to his head to cover the leaking hole there. His squad leader was kneeling beside him and quickly placed his hand on Jazz's chest to keep him from sitting back up into the line of enemy fire.
"You alright, soldier?" his squad leader asked. "You took a rather nasty hit!"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm cool," Jazz replied. "A little shaken, but I'm cool."
"That's nice, because we have to shove the Decepticons out of here if we want to go home!" his squad leader said, peeking out at the battlefield.
Jazz and his squad leader were hiding behind a dismembered wing of their sabotaged starship in the flat land between the mines and the town of the asteroid they had been shipped to in order to defeat the Decepticon infestation there. A double agent though had sabotaged the ship; causing it to crash and scatter the Autobots to fight the Decepticons in lonely, tiny groups.
"So, getting your share of energon, soldier?" the squad leader said with a small smile.
"Join the army, I said," Jazz growled, sitting up enough to adjust the settings on his weapons. "Protect everyone you love, I said. It'll give you a refreshing draft of energon, I said. Yeah, right! My first day out of boot camp and I've been flung out of a sabotaged starship, crashed into some back-space mining asteroid, gotten shot at…"
In the distance, a giant brown metal Transformer creaked and groaned as he stomped over a force of Autobots.
"And that is not helping!" Jazz yelled, pointing at the giant.
"What is that?" the squad leader gasped.
"That's Goliath."
The two Autobots turned around to see a brawny dark red-blue femme and her slim, cerulean and silver mate had snuck up behind the two. Both looked worse for wear, but judging by the common weapons in their hands, they were locals.
"Hey, nice chin extension," Jazz said to the cerulean-silver mech. "Where can I get one?"
"It's called a goatee," the mech chuckled. "Special ordered. Want me to get you one?"
"What do you know about this Goliath, madam?" the squad leader asked the femme.
"The name is Shiva, and this is my husband-unit, Slicker. Goliath used to be the scrap yard hauler up on the mountain," the femme replied. "Then these vagabonds appeared and talked him into working for them. Gah, we're screwed."
"Ah, yes, now I recognize him," the squad leader said, watching as the distant Goliath transformed into an enormous crane. "I saw him in his alt-mode when I arrested a black market dealer a few months ago…"
"So, how are we gonna bring the big boy down?" Jazz asked.
"With this," Shiva said, holding up her fire-gun arm.
A giant jet of flame leaped from the femme's arm and the other mechs stared with wide optics.
"Well," Jazz said. "That works."
"He's getting in range, shall we all shoot together and hope for the best?" the squad leader asked.
"Sure," Slicker snickered, rubbing his hands together. "I got to help install mines in this section of ground earlier. When the slagger's about to step on 'em, I'll give you the signal and you can all open fire."
"Sure hope this works," Jazz muttered as everyone turned to Goliath as he slowly rolled towards them on his path of destruction in his crane form.
"And… now! Now! Now!" Slicker yelled.
"Open fire!" the squad leader ordered.
The four mechs stood up from their hiding place and opened fire, shooting up at Goliath to aim for the exposed wiring in between his enormous armor plates. In the sand down below, red lights briefly flashed before enormous puffs of flame leaped up, devouring the lower half of Goliath. Goliath half-transformed, wailing in pain before falling onto his back, becoming helpless to the Autobots and town natives who swarmed forward to finish the job.
"Wow!" Jazz exclaimed, "How much fire power was in those mines!?"
"Enough," Slicker chuckled. "So, we finished here or what?"
"We won't be finished until the Decepticons are," the squad leader said. "In the mean time, we can use all the help we can get."
"No can do," Slicker sighed. "Shiva and I are retired from the battle scene. We're just gonna go to one of those refugee camps on Kyron 5 and watch you fellahs kick can from there. Oh, speaking of which, we gotta scram before the shuttle leaves!"
"My mech here and I will escort you to the shuttle," the squad leader offered, transforming into his alt-mode.
"The name's Jazz, sir," Jazz said as he and the couple transformed.
"I'm Prowl, soldier," Prowl replied. "Come along, Mr. Slicker and Ms. Shiva. Let's get you to safety…"
AN: Any origins left unexplained in the Transformers' G1 series may be requested at anytime.