Fallout
"Fifty Years Ago"
by Nan00k

All it takes is one small change in plans, and the entire world is changed forever…

This is NOT a happy chapter. (Because the other motto of this story is, "Canon characters? I call them body fodder.") If you don't like character-death, you may wish to avoid this chapter. Many thanks to Shantastic, as usual, for the awesome beta-ing!

This is a non-prompt inspired chapter, hopefully clearing up some questions about exactly what happened at Mission City and how Galvatron's arrival totally screwed Earth over, from Jazz's perspective. It won't clear up all the questions, but some. While this isn't really important for people reading Fallout… when I do the sequel for this, it is definitely something you have to read. Pay attention, kiddies~

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Disclaimer: Transformers © Hasbro/Dreamworks. The original characters in this story are mine, however.
Warnings: character death, violence, foul language, disturbing imagery

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Mission City, Nevada
Summer, 2007

It hadn't started with something unexpected. They had all known what the worst outcome could be. Death was part of the job. Devastation was normal. They were prepared for it.

Jazz only wished that when the worst had happened, Earth had been ready, too.

The human military had never really had a chance against the Decepticons. Even though the handful of soldiers to survive the destruction of their base in Qatar had quickly learned how to damage the 'Cons, it was clear that they hadn't had enough time, enough exposure to Cybertronians to be able to take the upper hand in battle yet. Jazz had realized too late that their weapons weren't strong enough, their armor was far too fragile. They had made a daring move to grab the All Spark and to get it away from the exposed Hoover Dam base—and they had succeeded. But it had turned into a chase—as it always did. For the last hundred vorns all they had done was chase or be chased. Mission City had been no different.

But it wasn't until Optimus was separated from the pack that Jazz really started to worry. He had enough experience with tactics to know that it could be their downfall. Megatron was alive and kicking, flying their way, and well, they really didn't have much of a chance without Prime. Jazz followed the human military vehicles into the unaware city, from which they hoped to be able to airlift the All Spark to a more secure location. Bumblebee had argued that he should get Sam Witwicky and Mikaela Banes out of there ASAP, but for the Autobots as well as the human military Sam's safety was no longer a priority. The Cube was of primary importance. If the Decepticons obtained it, the war would be lost for both humans and Autobots.

They got as far as the center of downtown when Jazz realized how bad things were.. He had been trying to comm Optimus to get his position, trying to speak to the human military but he was clearly being jammed. And then—everything went wrong.

Starscream attacked. The street was blown to Pit and back. Buildings were falling, cars flew through the air. Humans were screaming and running for their lives. Jazz stumbled out of the communication link and saw… well… Hell.

Sam was dead, killed by an explosion that rained debris down from the buildings around them. Bumblebee was severely injured, his last gesture to force the Cube into Jazz's hands. Jazz high-tailed it out of there, knowing they had to get the All Spark out of such an indefensible location, knowing that the Decepticons would follow the lure of the Cube. Ironhide and Ratchet came with him to run interference, but they didn't get far—and not without consequence. Ratchet died fending off a tank from hapless civilians. Attacked by Megatron, Jazz transformed to defend himself and the Cube was lost in the struggle. The next thing Jazz knew, Optimus had the Cube.

Optimus was fighting for life—not just his own—and on the other side Megatron was fighting for power. The leaders of both factions made that last battle a scramble to hold onto the miniscule metal box. Optimus got it first and did what he had planned to do all along—he shoved the Cube into his own chest. The resulting explosion killed him and took out Megatron, who made a last grab for it, and well, that was it. For that day.

Jazz had found Mikaela desperately trying to save Bumblebee, stop the energon loss and keep his spark alive, but without Ratchet, it was another losing battle. He had just waited with her until Bee's optics faded and his body grayed in death. And when she stood and walked away from him without a backwards glance, he went with her.

Once they reached a safe location, Mikaela had just looked at Jazz, looked at what was left of them all. Ironhide was rolling on damaged axles and William Lennox had to bury the majority of his squad, including his long time friend Robert Epps. Jazz himself was lucky to be alive; grappling with Megatron had been suicide, but the air force had saved his aft. Too bad they hadn't taken Megatron out right there, but well, Jazz knew what was done was done.

Mikaela just stood at Jazz's feet, staring up in shocked and disbelieving silence that first night. She had survived, because she was a warrior at heart. Jazz had smiled at her, even if his spark sang with grief. And they had grieved together.

He had been with her that night three weeks later when the President of the United States had finally bowed to the pressure and announced "We are at war." Jazz understood why it had taken so long—politicians were the same, no matter what planet they came from—eventually it became clear that the world wasn't going to be lied to, and the President had to give a call to arms. "We are at war, not with our fellow man on Earth, but with strangers from distant stars."

Of the Autobots there were only Ironhide and Jazz left, but thank Primus, they got the go-ahead to invite reinforcements. Megatron might have been dead, but Starscream had escaped and they knew it was only a matter of time before he would return. The nearest Autobot reinforcements were on the Hyperion and the Galaxus, but they were still a long ways off.

This would be a long wait.

It was as if they stood in the night watching a large storm roll in, teetering on the edge of something… greater than just another battle. Jazz drove up to a hilltop outside of her hometown at Mikaela's request. They sat, side by side, looking up at the stars mere days after Ironhide had sent the message to their brethren. Jazz liked to imagine he could see the Autobots flying through the inky blackness. The stars reminded him of pins, holding up the cosmos.

"What do we do next?" Mikaela had asked. Hope wasn't a thing she really had, at least, she didn't seem to. He hadn't known her before, he didn't know if she'd always been like this. But it was clear that now she was looking for facts. For a mission. For a reason to keep going.

Jazz glanced at her and then back up at the cold darkness. "We fight."

It went downhill from there.

00000

Spring, 2008

The Decepticons kept coming. Starscream had fled, vanished for months, and then returned just shy of the first year anniversary of the Qatar attack with a new team of fliers and grounders alike. It was just as Jazz had expected and the rest of the world feared. The war was on.

Jazz and Ironhide hadn't wasted that year. Jazz had seen glimpses of it in Mission City, and now that they were trained and equipped it was clear for all to see that the humans were admirable allies and deadly opponents in great numbers. If anything, they had their sheer multitudes on their side. The Decepticons made a series of mistakes, most likely not to repeat them, but the first few victories of pushing the Decepticons back gave humanity hope.

He was less than pleased when their own Autobot reinforcements were delayed again and again by stray attacks outside of the solar system. Starscream was no fool; he knew where to apply the pressure where it hurt. Jazz and Ironhide were the only mechs left on Earth, and even though the humans were learning rapidly (a survival skill it seemed), he knew strategically they couldn't keep coming out on top.

They kept their eyes peeled for the inevitable counter-assault from Starscream's side. Jazz had been hoping the Decepticon army would have been torn in half by Megatron's demise, with Starscream taking charge of one half while one of the "loyalists" like Shockwave or Soundwave would have taken the other. They hadn't heard a damn thing from either mech, so for now, it was assumed Starscream was in charge. That wasn't overly comforting, especially because the cunning strategist, for all of his cowardice, no longer had Megatron to hold him back.

"He's a planner," Jazz told the human military constantly. "Be on yer guard, because if he strikes, he might not hit hard, but it's going t' be a slaggin' good hit."

So far, it hadn't been too bad. Starscream's troops were surprisingly ground-based, so at least he hadn't gotten his trine in yet. The humans lost a good base in the Pacific and the Russians were finally getting in on the game after they took a rather nasty hit in Moscow. The American government was constantly bickering amongst itself and other governments on how to handle this, with only two Autobots left between them. Ironhide and Jazz decided that they just had to get used to jumping on planes and off of them until reinforcements arrived.

Wherever they went, Mikaela went with them. She quit school, insisting that she would be more useful if she put her skill as a mechanic to good use to become the new Autobot medic. Surprisingly, Lennox and Simmons had supported her, arranging for her to take something called an "equivalency exam" and then giving her as much useful information as they could glean from the Sector7 archives. Jazz taught her what he knew of field treatment protocols and Ironhide trained her on various Cybertronian weapons, helping her to design smaller versions for their human allies and in the process teaching her how to repair damage made by those same weapons. She blossomed into a fierce field medic; privately Jazz thought that Ratchet would have enjoyed working with her.

They got a lead about something stirring up trouble in Mexico. It had been the start of a covert operation, but they got there in time to stop the Decepticons from sabotaging a large electrical grid to steal energon from it. While there, Jazz found himself giving the same speeches he always gave on how to defend against 'Cons and how to prepare for the worst.

While training soldiers at the military base in Culiacan, Jazz heard a commotion over at a surveillance desk. When the radar tech pointed out the discrepancies, Jazz didn't know what to make of it. The small blip on the radar seemed innocent enough, but they couldn't afford to take chances.

"What was that?" he asked, looking up at Ironhide. The soldiers chattered on in Spanish about their own theories.

Ironhide hadn't been paying attention, but he did focus in on the readings. "What was what?"

"Incoming signal on the radar… small." Jazz frowned, downloading the data, but the blip had been far too small to amount to anything. A warship or an incoming mech would have been much larger. "Meteorite?"

"No way a mech's that small, right?" Lennox asked, insistent, as he looked at the computer screen.

Jazz shook his helm. "No. Probably just debris." Unless they were sending in sparklings as prototypes to be suicide bombers. He frequently prayed that the Decepticons would not learn any new tricks from human culture.

Lennox frowned. "Cripes… can't be too careful though." They would increase monitor surveillance back at NEST's main compound, just in case. The threat of Decepticon reinforcements coming in before more Autobots arrived was constantly on their minds.

For himself, Jazz forgot about the readings. They had more important things to worry about.

00000

Six days after Jazz got word from the Galaxus that they were approaching the solar system and would be there within a month, their worst fears were realized.

Their satellites had barely had the chance to react to the sudden appearance of a total of five mechs, non-friendly. Jazz knew that was bad in its own right, but over the course of the next forty hours, things went from bad to outright catastrophic.

Megatron lived.

He had no idea what had gone wrong. The U.S. military had done nearly everything they could to render Megatron's sparkless shell inert after Mission City. They had dumped it in the one place they had thought (the mechs had said nothing out of polite respect) was the safest place to store the body of the warlord. The Laurentian Abyss might be deep and cold enough to keep out organics, but Jazz knew it wouldn't be an issue for a mech to reach down to that depth. Ironhide had complained privately that it wasn't even the deepest part of the ocean. It hadn't been a real problem, of course, because the All Spark was gone and nothing else could bring Megatron back to life.

Or so they had thought.

The Decepticons had gotten hold of something. A weapon that apparently could reassemble sparks. Jazz didn't know what it really was and neither did Ironhide. It didn't really matter in the end, because whatever it was, somehow out of the depths, Megatron was reborn. The human patrol ships never stood a chance.

Jazz began to think their run of good luck had effectively strangled itself at that point.

Even though the attacks from the Decepticons on Earth weren't any worse after Megatron's resurrection, things were irreparably changed for all of them. The military of every country went nuts as the facts began to trickle through to them. People panicked over the idea that the one mech they had painted as the bogeyman was now alive again. Jazz had felt a little bit like panicking too.

The first thing they tried to do was to figure out what the hell had happened, but not much information was available. Only a few witnesses had survived the attack on the patrol vessels. A Norwegian fishing boat had been caught in the cross fire, and a few of those men survived. Their accounts were consistent, but none of it made sense. A few mechs had gone down into the abyss and brought another back up with them. It hadn't taken long, either.

"The witnesses mentioned something else, though," the reporting soldier said to them as they sat around, waiting for answers.

Jazz glanced at the man. "Oh?"

The human hesitated; Jazz knew it wasn't because they were speaking. He knew the man from NEST, so it wasn't Jazz's alien status that bothered him. "One of the mechs that fell into the water…" he began, clearly disturbed, "they said he was on fire."

"Fire?" Ironhide repeated, stepping close. "From his entry into the atmosphere?"

"I don't know," the solider admitted. He shook his head, eyes narrowed. "They… said it was like… part of the armor."

Jazz wasn't sure how that would even work. It was nothing like he had ever heard of, at least.

"That's impossible," Ironhide said. That didn't stop him from looking nervously over at Jazz, as if he knew an answer.

"Yeah," Mikaela muttered, looking uneasily at the others. "This is just too nuts. I don't like it."

Jazz didn't either. They did their best to find out exactly what fished Megatron out of the depths of the ocean, but there was nothing conclusive. A name, Fallen, was whispered by some of the Decepticons they managed to capture alive, but that meant nothing to any of them. Even the lower ranked Decepticons didn't know what had happened.

Megatron took back power surely and without mercy. Days on Earth grew dimmer.

00000

Fall, 2012

The Decepticon Nemesis was approaching the solar system, so the Autobot Hyperion had stayed back to hold it off. Galaxus had been destroyed, but several of its shuttles hadn't. Autobot reinforcements arrived in the States, Mexico and parts of the Middle East. Jazz saw faces he never thought he'd see again—one of the twins, Cliffjumper, a few mechs from Special Ops—

But no Prowl.

They could have used him. They needed the strategist and his plans. They could have changed the tide of the war. But no one, from either ship, had heard where the Second in Command had gone to, dead or otherwise. That left Jazz in charge and it would have scared him if he hadn't already been playing SIC for the last forty vorns or so.

Battle became commonplace, everywhere. It was centered in the places that posed the most threat to the Decepticons, as expected. The United States, Western Europe, the Middle East and Russia got most of the fighting. It seemed like every day Jazz heard about an oil field catching fire or another town getting wiped off the map. The humans began to really panic, but the military kept going strong.

Mikaela had officially become a member of Lennox's team. She barely looked like herself in combat fatigues and body armor, with a thinner, paler face. Jazz sort of missed her long hair, but he knew that vanity had long since ended as an option. She followed orders like any other soldier and did a damn good job. And after each battle she would repair any of the damage that he and Ironhide had sustained, and then check over the humans' weapons to make sure they were still in working order. Jazz was proud of her.

After four years there still weren't many mechs on the Earth. The numbers kept creeping upward, even as the fighting started to get nasty. Jazz hoped that whatever plans Megatron had, they would be just as foolhardy and easy to trip up as before. There hadn't been many sightings of the Decepticon warlord lately.

There were rumors, however. Whispered ones from unknown sources. He heard that Megatron was going by a new name: Galvatron. Jazz made a joke out of it to make the humans laugh, but in reality, that bothered him. Name changes were for those who actually had a reason to change it. Most humans didn't understand the meaning of names like mechs did. A name meant more than just an identity—their names defined them.

Equally concerning was the fact that no one ever saw the flaming-armored mech again.

The war continued, increasing in violence as it went. The Autobots were still spread far too thin, but at least Jazz could focus on staying in one place, with Ironhide as his only mech teammate. The Decepticons seemed to have the same idea, but now there were fights happening all over the globe. Jazz was glad Earth was as large as it was; when he considered the fact that mechs were used to fighting on smaller areas of land, he thought that perhaps even if the fighting continued it wouldn't be as devastating for Earth as it had been for Cybertron. There were more places for the innocent to run.

America was always going to be a hotbed for action. They had doomed themselves by stepping into the middle of the war from the start. They were the largest threat, thus the first place to strike, other than the oil-rich Middle East and the nuclear powers of China and Russia. Jazz was used to being roused from half-completed recharge to an alert of an attack happening somewhere on the North American continent.

It had been a normal fight that day, when the world changed forever. It wasn't until later that he learned it wasn't limited to the United States, or even the Americas as a whole. When their team got word of Decepticon movement in the northwest, they went to investigate. There were 'Cons to defeat or destroy, as usual.

But what was strange was that even as the Decepticons began to fall back, their friends didn't.

Jazz had grown used to drones and little fighting pests. Shockwave had been particularly fond of them back on Cybertron, when the war was still just their war and not one that pulled in random species that they encountered. This time, a new form of Decepticon drone helped to drive back significant numbers of the allied armed forces. But when Ironhide blasted through one of the last 'Cons standing, Jazz expected the drones to back off as well.

They didn't. They kept going. They kept slicing and killing and tearing through anything that dared to move. The wave of drones sliced through humans like they were made of butter, for Primus' sake. Jazz managed to get the unprepared humans away and Ironhide was slowly but surely pushing the flying creatures back.

They moved far too fast. Jazz had never seen anything able to move as quickly as they did through the air. And even though there were only two of them, they were somehow pushing back with equal intensity at the two Autobots.

Finally, Ironhide had the sense to grab one of the abandoned military jeeps and hurl it at one of the flying creatures. It hit dead on and the drone let out an unnatural screech, even for a mech's receptors, and collapsed under the weight of the other metal. Sparks shot out and there was an increase of ozone, but the thing stopped moving. Jazz stared down at the crushed creature, stunned, but before any of them had the chance to react, its single red optic flickered on again and like something in water, whipped back into the air. It and the other remaining drone took off.

Jazz stared after it, feeling more than just a little disorientated. "What th' frag were those things?" he asked at last, looking up at the older, wearier Autobot stepping up behind him.

"No idea," Ironhide said. He growled, watching the sky, but the drones never came back. "Clearly some new form of Decepticon."

Frowning, Jazz didn't know what to make of it. The drone didn't look like a mech. "I've never seen any like that b'fore," he admitted. It reminded him of an Earth creature called a squid. "Strange design, too. They didn't seem sentient b'fore…"

"Just drones," Ironhide shrugged in disregard as their human companions started to filter back, asking questions Jazz didn't know how to answer.

The drones, as the military began to call them outright, proved to be both elusive, and yet everywhere. They came up in small numbers with other Decepticons during raids and attacks. The only problem was that they couldn't find a way to kill the little fraggers. It drove Ironhide mad, trying to at least catch the slippery machines. The one they had managed to knock down was apparently just a fluke. Gunfire was ineffective and they were too fast for plasma canons.

But they were only drones, in the end. Jazz and Ironhide had more pressing concerns as the Decepticons continued to descend. Nemesis was getting closer.

00000

Winter, 2018

Something had happened to the satellites. Outgoing communication dried up to a bare minimum toward the end of 2017. At first they suspected it was some sort of tactical strike from the Decepticons, but as it turned out, the Decepticons seemed to have the same trouble. Squads of Autobots and Decepticons around the globe lost communication abilities with their superiors. Jazz had no idea where Galvatron had holed up; they hadn't seen him in over a decade. He knew for a fact that for the Autobots and humans the communication blocks were a mystery and a damning one at that.

He was certain that the Hyperion had reached Earth at last—it had been seen in Earth's orbit, but other than that, the facts of the situation were all unknown. The number of mechs on the planet, the Decepticon end game, the status of the war as a whole—Jazz didn't know a fragging thing.

The battles kept coming, but they were getting stranger. Less mechs, more drones. Jazz suspected Ironhide was losing his mind because of that. They'd lost a good number of friends because of those things.

The temperature began to drop as the nuclear attacks in Asia began to affect the environment of the planet. Jazz found himself looking at the sky more and more, trying to memorize the blue, until one day, he realized that what was blue was becoming less noticeable than the orange and gray smog slowly, slowly coming closer on the horizon.

Somewhere along the line, chaos began to slip into human civilizations. There were riots and civil wars popping up everywhere they still had communication with. Jazz knew there was nothing to stop it now. He stood back, watching from a distance, and prayed that someone out there was watching out for the rest of them.

When a bloody and tired Mikaela looked up at him and asked him, "What now?" Jazz really didn't have an answer anymore.

00000

November, 2024

Jazz had stopped praying.

The drones kept coming, even though the Decepticons had stopped all together. Jazz watched the weakened American and Canadian forces finally crumble, until they were more teams of militia scattered from city to city than anything else. Mexico was leveled, as was most of the South American continent, pushing them further north, where only death and a more hazardous landscape awaited them.

The nuclear fallout from several haphazard and unplanned Decepticon strikes had left most of North America in shambles. The government had collapsed two years previous, leaving what remained of civilization under martial law.

Jazz wanted to pretend they still had a chance to strike back, that reinforcements would arrive if they could just hold out, but he couldn't.

The topic of fleeing the planet itself was rarely brought up, because only Ironhide and Jazz really had that option. It wasn't really an option, though. They would never leave the mission, not after everything they'd gone through. More than that, they wouldn't leave their friends, comrades in arms. 'Kaela bitterly joked with them that they lacked the fuel to get out of the atmosphere anyway.

He stopped looking at the sky for blue. It wasn't there anymore, anyway. The more he tried to look, the more he was forced to realize that, this was it.

This is the home stretch, kiddies.

The last attack had been brutal. Drones had found their camp. Ironhide went down under a swarm. Jazz knew he went down fighting bolt and claw, though. A fitting end for a warrior. He would rather it have been a Decepticon, of course, but in recent days, Decepticons were rare sights indeed. Jazz sort of missed the fuckers.

He wasn't running from 'Cons as he ducked behind cars and pieces of mechs and machines. Drones, as usual, were their only company. The drones never tired, never ran out, and would always come while there were still lives to destroy. That day, after hours and hours of violence, Jazz found silence in the streets, the carnage they had left behind apparently sating the destructive needs of the unfeeling creatures.

Lennox had met the same fate as Ironhide that day, dying from the same attack. He had tried to go back for the Autobot, their camaraderie stronger than ever after two decades of fighting side by side. Jazz was grateful his wife and daughter had escaped to England all those years ago. He doubted they were alive, but he was glad Lennox could have the pretense of knowing they were somewhere better than the States.

It was still startling for Jazz, in the end, to be running now. He wasn't moving men or troops, acting as a guard, or on a special-ops mission.

He was running away, because that was the only thing left he could do.

The army was gone. Autobots—he didn't think there were any, not anymore. He had been so busy fighting for survival that he had barely noticed the shift the world had gone through in only a few short years, from being at war, to a place where the survival of the fittest translated more appropriately into survival of the fastest.

So, he ran.

He found a collapsed store somewhere away from the main action. He only carried a small load in his grip, but he carried it with care. A stray jet screamed overhead, but it kept flying, either to a final fight, or safer skies. Jazz wished the pilot luck.

Sliding back against one of the few remaining walls, Jazz tried to take cover as best he could. He could still move, but he knew he couldn't transform.

Not yet.

Mikaela curled on her side, her good one, dark red pooling out of her mouth and other wounds, and Jazz wished he could offer more than dulled claws to cling to. She hung on all the same. The attack had been their worst yet. It would also be their last.

"Bad, huh?" she asked after a little while, smiling with blood-covered teeth, shuddering. Jazz tilted his head closer and he smiled back, because it was all he really could do.

"You'll be okay, 'Kaela," he said, lying, and knowing she knew it was a lie. Mikaela smiled anyway.

The skies were getting darker, even with the fires burning in the distant cityscape. Jazz looked up as he saw a few last jets try to get away from the city. A swarm of drones descended upon them like locusts and he watched the planes fall from the sky like shooting stars.

Drawing back against the broken wall, Jazz stared down at his hands, where, drip-by-drip, his last friend faded away.

Her green eyes trailed upwards and found his optics. "I'm so tired, Jazz," she whispered. Pain left her face, but the confusion and despair remained as she tried to figure out, for the last time, why this was happening.

Jazz brought her closer to his chest in the only gesture of care he could offer anyone.

"Me, too," he said. He shuttered his optics. "Rest now."

When the coast was clear, Jazz dug the last grave he would dig for a long time, on the bank of a river he didn't know the name of. He didn't say a thing to Primus. He just wished his friend luck, feeling only partially jealous that she got to escape this world long before Jazz would let himself follow in her footsteps.

On the horizon, drones sang their song of murder, the buzzing the only thing left to hear in the empty plains.

He drove onward down the abandoned roads—because, in the end, it was all he could do.

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End Fifty Years Ago.

Next: Vortex's experiences after joining the other survivors.

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A/Ns:
I actually cut several scenes from this from the other mechs' POVs. I don't know if I'll add them in a future chapter, but we'll see. For now, Jazz will do.