Summary: Jazz convinces Prowl to do something he's not entirely comfortable with, and they both find a bit of home on an alien world.
For the prowlxjazz livejournal community anniversary challenge.
Prompt: Our oreos need to recharge like all other Cybertronians. Now in this world, recharging involves plugging yourself into the main computer system for proper defragmentation. While your processor gets recharged, your consciousness is put into a virtual reality world created by the main computer system. (Think holodeck on Startrek, except instead of walking into a room they're plugging themselves in directly). Cybertronians can interact with others plugged into the system or choose not to interact with any other recharging mech/femme by changing the settings prior to entering recharge (important if a mech/mechs want privacy). This system is controlled by artificial intelligence and reacts according to each mech's needs/wishes/desires.
In this VR world, Cybertronians can use their holo avatars to become anything/anyone they want. Animal, human, organic, go wild, be creative!
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Velvet
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"Are you certain about this?" Prowl looked at the dark crack in the earth almost hidden at the bottom of a rough, rocky pit. She secured her hair in a short tight pony tail that would keep it out of the way. She had resisted the temptation to color her human hair the same black as his plating and chosen a rust red color instead. At first after waking on Earth, she'd kept it cropped close to her head, then had crafted it into a curly mane that went almost to her knees, then finally she'd settled on a conservative shoulder length. Praxans weren't flyers and did not have either sky-hunger or claustrophobia. That didn't mean she was comfortable with the thought of any space too small for her doorwings. Even in a dream. "If we—youdecided to do something else, Teletraan would accommodate us."
Jazz continued checking the buckles and straps of their safety equipment. Several legs of this journey, including this first, would require climbing gear. "If you don't want to go spelunking, just say so."
"It's not that I don't want to," she hedged. "I'm…" she steeled herself. "No. We're going. It took years to secure permission for a surveillance drone to scan the cave system so we could do this." They hadn't told the government precisely how the 'bots intended to use the scans, save that saying that they were interested in exploring the caves and were understandably much too large to do so personally. The geologists among them were already using the scans in what the humans would consider a much more conventional manner, but this VR rendering was normal for Autobots. Jazz, Bumblebee and the others who were more social with the inhabitants of their borrowed planet had all agreed that it was not a good idea to let on to the average human just how close the Autobots had to a hive mind in the form of the VR worlds they shared each night. "I'm just… Praxans don't do well underground."
Jazz's silky, curly short hair the color of obsidian fluttered even now in every stray breeze (which kept anyone from considering the style conventional) as he fussed with Prowl's headlamp. It gave her an excellent view of the exquisite detail of Jazz's eyes, which she knew Jazz had spent months carefully rendering in a dozen minutely different shades of green to appear precisely human. Prowl's own eyes were the more flat blue that had been common among the Autobots' human renderings when they had first experimented with human forms in the VR realm, though she kept thinking she should spend a night or two making them appear more realistic. She never did because she liked the role reversal. Jazz's exquisitely detailed eyes were expressive in a way his visor could never match, and Prowl's flat blue eyes more visor-like than her natural optics, especially after she'd chased that thought thread down and heightened the effect by adding a pair of gold-rimmed glasses to her favored human appearance.
Which right now were replaced by a thicker, heavier pair that were more easily secured for the descent.
"Fortunately," his hands roamed over Prowl in one last check of the equipment. If something went wrong, it wouldn't actually harm them; they'd just be stuck until morning when their recharge cycles ended, but that was not a desired outcome. "Polyhexians are built for underground. I'll keep us safe. Check my harness for me?"
"Of course." Jazz's helmet had a light, and he had the same number of spares Prowl did, but she doubted he would turn them on. He was too used to sight in perfect darkness, and to hearing good enough to turn every accidental echo into a map of their surroundings, Teletraan could not override that certainty even when Jazz was dreaming of being human or anything else. It was no coincidence that Jazz had a tendency to choose forms that naturally had both exceptional night sight and hearing. Once down there, Jazz would be able to hear walls in the air currents around them and see perfectly well by Prowl's light.
His own senses were more focused toward deriving information from the winds that swept across the Praxan plains, and were too tied up in his doorwings for Teletraan to translate to this human dream-form.
Why Prowl had agreed to this was not a mystery. He and Jazz had been in the rec room, himself having been convinced to take one of his rare breaks. For once there had been little enough going on. The weather was hot, the Oregon desert deciding to suddenly remind them all that this was a desert. Temperatures of a hundred degrees, inside the base, had not been uncommon over the week. As usual this was making tempers flare, potentially into outright violence. Arranging patrol schedules had been an exercise in social compatibility that never failed to give Prowl an aching processor.
As not-usual the temperatures were so hot that everyone was hiding from the heat when not on-duty. Those who'd managed to install cooling units in their personal quarters didn't come out except during mealtimes. Those inclined had taken to "exploring" the caves beneath the Ark. The Dinobots, whose systems actually seemed to like the heat, sunned themselves on the rocks outside.
All this meant the rec room had been unusually empty except Prowl and Jazz. And Hound.
Hound didn't mind the heat so much, but most of the creatures living around the Ark did, so he had been taking advantage of the unusually empty rec room to constantly marathon his favorite documentaries. This was fine with Prowl. Better than cartoons.
Prowl's own systems also didn't mind the heat as much as those from Iacon did, but preferred that heat come with the stinging winds that would help cool his systems via his doorwings. In absence of that, he flapped the appendages gently to keep the heat evaporating away. He was more worried about Jazz, whose systems hadn't been designed for even the normal range of temperatures Earth had to offer. He didn't doubt the other black and white was one of those taking refuge beneath the Ark. There were times Prowl thought that the only reason Jazz had ever come up out of those caves after the crash was because he was a social bot at spark; with so many of the other Autobots joining him down there it was a wonder he'd come up long enough to pester Prowl into taking his energon outside his office.
Jazz's gasp had been what drew his attention to Hound's program.
Thousands of delicate white crystals spilled across the screen in a montage of images. Fragile branching trees of rock. Rainbows from the camera's lights glinted off of a tumble of clear crystal — quartz? There was no way to know from the footage — of exquisite quality. Gypsum (apparently, though he was not used to thinking of that rock as being clear) grew from the walls in surprisingly organic shapes that nevertheless caught and held a Praxan's attention. Still pools of water produced yet different shapes and colors growing at the edges. Someone had been narrating, but Prowl hadn't the processor to hear.
Alien and wild though they were, it was like looking at images of the crystal gardens again. A pang of awe, homesickness and longing went though his spark. A pang that had not gone unnoticed by Jazz.
And of course, unlike the Praxan crystal gardens, this was a cave. Jazz would never be satisfied by mere images on a screen. It had taken the charming 'bot years of negotiation to get permission for Teletraan's surveillance drones to scan the cave system and he'd had to both demonstrate that the little things were capable of doing so without disturbing so much as a drop of water and promise to have them map additional passages too small for humans to venture.
The most beautiful of all caves. Lechuguilla. Prowl didn't want to settle for mere images either.
"Ready," she said, finishing the check of Jazz's climbing harness, lights and other equipment.
Together they descended into the dark.
This wasn't really the first time Jazz had convinced her to go caving in the VR realm with him, though all those times before had been back on Cybertron with Jazz sharing memories of Polyhex's half above-ground, mostly below buildings and courtyards and workshops. Praxans were considered religious by the more "liberal" Iaconians and more "practical" Kaonex, but in Prowl's experiences, through Jazz's, his own people had little devotion in comparison to the strange Polyhexians, though on the surface it seemed the other way around. Surface being the most salient term of that statement. Praxans built grand temples and diligently observed every one of the holy holidays of Primus and the Primes with more dedication than all but the most strict cults of other cities; Polyhexians built down to feel closer to the spark of their god and dedicated every work, large and small, to their patron-Primes. Few holidays were observed, but there was a day-to-day devotion Prowl had admired.
This was the first time Jazz had taken her into an Earth-cave while in human avatars, though surely this could not be the first time he'd done this himself. Those memories of Polyhex had conditioned her to expect quiet in the absence of mechanoid traffic in the unworked tunnels that twisted and winded around and through the city, and the Earthen cave was quiet compared to the living caverns of Polyhex, but not silent. Rustling and surprisingly loud squeaks echoed in the dark as their feet touched solid ground.
"Bats," Jazz whispered. With a touch he unerringly guided Prowl's light to the large cluster of furry bodies on the wall opposite their climbing gear. This wasn't the first time Prowl had seen the little nocturnal mammals, but never in such detail. Up at the Ark they were always in motion when he saw them, which had a tendency to confuse his doorwing sensors, so he avoided them, watching only from a distance. Jazz, though, sought them out, going out to stand in their swirling clouds of wings at dusk. In no hurry, Prowl watched, fascinated for a while. She listened to the clicks and chirps knowing these were communication sounds, not those made for their famous echolocation. Maybe one of these nights she'd have Teletraan create a bat avatar for her. A bird's knowledge of air currents was the closest an Earth creature could come to seeing the world as Prowl did with his doors and Jazz had taken those forms several times; a bat came the closest to seeing, or more specifically, hearing the world as Jazz did and seeing their wriggling little bodies now made Prowl curious.
Of course she could just have Teletraan craft a Polyhexian avatar for her, but that had always seemed invasive somehow, even when they'd been back on Cybertron.
A chuckle drew her attention. She had apparently been staring transfixed at the bats for so long that Jazz had finished securing their climbing gear for the rest of the descent. Sheepishly she followed her companion deeper into the dark.
The upper passages of Lechuguilla were dry, bare rock. The climbing gear was needed to descend to the next level of caverns, from the dry, bat-filled caves connected to the surface, to the stillness that was their destination.
It was much cooler inside at the bottom than outside, or even than it was in the upper portion of the cave, but also much more humid. Prowl wasn't used to the idea that humidity that wasn't acidic would be bothersome but as a human avatar she was keenly aware of how sweat gathered under her clothing and soaked her hair. It wasn't hot but even the slightest movement was a tiny breeze that brought no relief.
In contrast to the movement of the bats above, down here it utterly silent. Thick oppressive silence. All she heard was the beating her her heart, her breathing, the blood rushing in her ears. In that silence the walls closed in and pressed against her skin. With nothing to see and nothing outside her own skin to hear, panic slowly sank its claws into her mind.
"Hey," Jazz broke the silence and almost desperately she focused on him. He was outside herself, and that pushed the walls back. "You okay?"
It was obvious she was not, but she answered, "Yes," anyway. "Just… keep talking."
"Yea… I get ya. Happens sometimes to newsparks and visitors." He drawled gently. "Too little outside yourself and your own senses trap you. Let's sit." They leaned against the wall, or rather, Prowl did. The texture of the rock against her hands grounded her. Jazz started pacing around the space, tapping the rock walls. Not echolocation, she nevertheless started painting an image based on those taps. "Actually grew up in a place not too different than this. My creator was a geologist. We checked the stability of the uninhabited caverns for future building projects. Very quiet."
"Was that what you did before becoming an Autobot?" Jazz's records lacked that particular detail.
"Nope. Quiet was fine, but I liked music better."
Prowl was calming. The conversation gave her something to focus on. "That's not an answer."
"Was too. You gotta ask the right question."
Alright. She could do that, if only so Jazz would keep talking. "What were you doing before joining the Autobots?"
Jazz looked back, framed by the beam of light from her headlamp. "Lot's of stuff. This and that…"
"Unemployed?" That made some sense. There weren't any records of employment and clever Jazz could have learned much on the streets.
"Uh…" Jazz shifted back and forth in the headlamp, tapping the wall almost indecisively. "Not really." Why was he so reluctant to talk about it? "You ready to press on? First crystals shouldn't be too far up ahead."
She wanted to continue asking Jazz about the past he so rarely hinted at, but was reluctant to press when he so obviously didn't want to talk about it. And the panic had fully receded. She was ready to press on.
Her battle computer was shut off for recharge, but she couldn't help but calculate how long it would take for her to get back if something went wrong. If she could get back. They squeezed through some incredibly tight spaces and used the climbing gear several more times to rappel down passages and over cliffs and she could see and hear Jazz flitting back and forth, exploring shallow side passages with a daring Prowl could not afford. Perhaps he could find another way out, but for her the only exit was the way they'd come in, with all its attendant squeezes and climbs which she was certain she could not navigate on her own. If something went wrong, she would be stuck until Teletraan woke her in the morning.
This was different than crawling through the Polyhexian passages on Cybertron. So much could go wrong. Earth was unstable; she only had to look at the volcano beneath the Ark, and their imprisonment in the crust after the crash, to extrapolate that much.
She was almost getting ready to panic again, when she saw it.
Beautiful and and more delicate than any Praxan crystal, tiny branches of calcium carbonate spreading outward from a central stalactite. It looked like a snowflake.
"Prowl? Not panicking on me again are you?" Jazz came even with her, "You—oh. Well, isn't that wonderful?"
It was all she could do to breathe out an agreement.
"Worth it?"
Prowl tore her eyes away from the delicate crystal and looked into Jazz's human eyes. "Of course."
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End