Chapter Two: Comparisons and Contrasts

The drive from Cairo International to the outlying Wadi El Natrun was dry and dusty, but Jazz wasn't about to complain. The sights that he had seen along the way – from the busy streets of Cairo to the more sedate farming areas outside of the city – were fascinating, completely different from what he was used to seeing in the United States.

Gradually, the signs of life and habitation melted away and became sparser the further they went into the desert, until the only signs of human life were the other vehicles passing by them on the road, or the occasional village in the distance. Up ahead were the hills and valleys of the Wadi El Natrun: a sacred place since ancient times, or so Naila Saab explained as she told them about the history of the area.

-+-Fascinating,-+- Skids said, awed, over the shared radio link that connected all three of the Autobots, allowing them to converse with one another despite being in alt-mode, as well as allowing them to hear what Naila was saying. -+-So you say there are still monasteries up there?-+-

-+-Yes,-+- Naila replied from her place behind the wheel of Skids' alt-mode, and had Jazz been in his primary mode he would have smiled at the tone of amusement in the human woman's voice. -+-Some consider the Wadi to be one of the most sacred sites in Christianity, thanks in large part to the many monasteries that were established there. However, a lot of them were also destroyed during the Muslim Conquest, and now only four remain active. Those are quite old, though: established in the fourth century CE, if I am not mistaken.-+-

-+-Think you could arrange for us to see some of 'em?-+- Jazz asked, already looking forward to the chance to talk to some of the monks. He had always been fascinated by human culture, and the idea that some humans would deliberately isolate themselves from civilization for the sake of contemplation and self-discipline to be utterly intriguing.

Naila hummed softly: a sound she made when she was thinking about something. -+-I doubt I can take you to the active monasteries, but I suppose there would be no harm in taking you to some of the ruins. There is one near the excavation site.-+-

-+-So we won't be able to talk to any monks?-+- Skids' voice made his disappointment clear, and Jazz had to have a laugh at that.

Naila found it funny too, because she laughed, and replied: -+-Unfortunately, no.-+-

While Naila explained to Skids why that was, Jazz decided to switch to Sideswipe's radio frequency; the red Lamborghini had been quiet since they left the airport. -+-You okay over there, 'Swipe?-+-

Sideswipe's reply dripped with sarcasm worthy, so Jazz felt, of Ratchet himself. -+-Gee, let me think about that. I'm baking under this heat, with sand in my chassis and nothing interesting to do. You tell me if I'm okay.-+-

Jazz chuckled. -+-It can't be that bad 'Swipe. I mean, c'mon! We're doing something interesting for once, something that doesn't involve them 'Cons!-+-

-+-I'd like the 'Cons, thank you. At least I can use my pile-drivers on something that'll actually scream blue murder when I hit it hard enough.-+-

Naila's voice interrupted right then. -+-We are near the excavation site now.-+-

Jazz checked his coordinates, and found that, indeed, they were fairly close. -+-Where to from here, Naila?-+-

-+-We are not going to the temple itself, since there is no entrance there large enough for you to get into the caverns. Turn left at the next junction, and follow the path. It should take us to a larger cave close to the back that leads directly to the chamber where we found the statues.-+-

-+-I hear ya.-+- He found the path easily enough, and turned smoothly into it. It turned out to be a rather narrow gap between two hills, forcing them to drive in a line. Jazz took the lead, letting Skids stay in the middle with Naila, while Sideswipe took the back. It was only when they were all in the valley that Jazz realized they'd automatically fallen into a tactically-sound defensive formation when traversing such terrain.

The realization both amused and depressed him: amused him because it was something that Prowl would have thought of, but depressed him because it was another reminder of how dangerous the world was, and how that knowledge had become so ingrained in their processors that taking defensive formations was now practically second nature to them. He wondered if there would be a time when they would be able to laugh off such precautions…and thought better of it. For now, it was best that they were on their guard.

-+-There it is.-+-

At hearing Naila's statement, Jazz focused his external visual sensors up ahead, and sighted the entrance to a cave, tall enough and wide enough to allow even someone as large as Optimus Prime to pass through comfortably. -+-Do we just go straight in?-+- he asked Naila.

-+-Yes. You may transform when we reach the interior. There is room enough there for you to accomplish that.-+-

-+-Gotcha.-+- Jazz picked up speed, and soon he was past the archway and inside the cool interior, which was a lot wider than the path that led them to it. Safely inside, and a little glad to be out of the heat, Jazz transformed into his primary mode, giving himself a shake to dislodge the sand from his chassis.

Behind him, Sideswipe and Skids came in, and after the latter let Naila out, transformed into their own primary modes, shaking out sand from joints and underneath armor. Sideswipe, in particular, did not look the least bit pleased about the situation, muttering obscenities in Cybertronian that Jazz didn't particularly care to hear.

Skids, however, was looking all around him then, his optics glowing brightly in the dim light of the cavern. "Incredible," he breathed. "There's so much space!"

Naila nodded as she adjusted her headscarf, making sure that it did not slip off. "We presume that that was the reason why this cavern was chosen by the ones who made the statues."

"How'd you find this entrance, then?" Jazz asked as he did a quick, preliminary scan of the area, and finding nothing really dangerous or interesting just yet.

"It is rather ironic, now that I think about it. Tomb robbers were operating in this area, looking for gold and jewels that might have been hidden here. One of their explosives revealed this cavern – apparently the entrance was blocked by a very fragile covering of debris. This was just before we found the entrance behind the temple; we had not even known about the tomb robbers or this entrance until we found our end of the cavern." It was only then that Jazz noticed Naila was wearing sturdy hiking boots, perfectly suited for traversing rough terrain if need be.

When Jazz had first met Naila after Skyfire had dropped him and his team off at Cairo International, he had been a little surprised to see how small she was: five-foot-three, according to his estimates, and dressed in well-worn khaki cargo pants, and a white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She appeared to be taken aback by him and his companions at first, but she quickly warmed up to them, especially when Skids started firing questions at her about her work, as well as questions about ancient Egyptian history in general. They were barely out of Cairo before the three of them had established a friendly rapport, one that Jazz was more than happy to foster.

If Sideswipe opted to be left out, well, that was his problem for being such a grump.

He knelt down, holding his hand out to Naila. "Might be better if you rode on m' shoulder, li'l lady. You can tell us where to go from here."

Naila glanced at his shoulder, and Jazz, who was more or less familiar now with human facial expressions, saw doubt flicker over her features. In response, he grinned. "I won't let you fall off. Promise."

The woman gave him another look, but after a while she seemed to come to a decision. "Very well." She climbed onto his palm, and he carefully lifted her up onto his shoulder. Gingerly, she stepped off his hand and onto his shoulder, gripping onto the edge of his helm for balance before sitting down, albeit a bit stiffly.

"All right then, here we go!" Jazz stood up from his kneeling position, making the movement as smooth as he could for the sake of the human now perched on his shoulder. He scanned the area again, taking note that the chamber they were in continued straight for several feet, before it diverged into three different paths. "Where next?"

"Keep going east from here," Naila replied, her voice sounding just a little queasy to his audios. "It will take us directly to the Statue Chamber. The excavation team knows that you will be arriving anyway."

They started walking in that direction, the Autobots' considerably longer legs eating up a distance that would have taken Naila a long time to get from the entrance just to reach the Statue Chamber. Behind him, he heard Skids quiet sounds of exclamation, and Jazz had the brief image of his head doing a full 360-degree turn on his shoulders – an image that made him chuckle.

"Is something funny?" Naila asked then, still sounding quite tense.

"Nothin' much," Jazz answered mirthfully. "Just had this image of Skids' head goin' round and round on his shoulders from tryin' to see everything."

Sideswipe snorted then, and Skids uttered an offended, "Hey!" from behind, making Sideswipe laugh harder. Naila laughed softly as well, and but she sobered up quickly as they entered a large chamber. "We are here."

And indeed they were, if the statues nearby were any indication. They had appeared bigger in the pictures than they really were; in fact, the largest one was about the same size as Optimus. That one was standing in the center, while the two other, slightly shorter ones flanked it on either side.

No sooner had they arrived than Skids was in front of the center statue, peering up at it with intense curiosity. Even Sideswipe was looking at the one nearest to him with a certain amount of interest. Jazz did the same for the third, and frowned slightly. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the statues were not as detailed as he had thought from the photos. They lacked the details on the joints and joins that were typical to their kind, and there was nothing that remotely looked like wiring. They looked like Cybertronians on the surface, but many of the details that would have clearly marked them out as such were not there.

For some strange reason, the idea bothered him.

"I don't believe this," Skids uttered in amazement as he leaned in closer to the statue, his optics flickering and glowing in a pattern that Jazz knew meant Skids was running his higher-end scanning software. "There isn't a single seam on this thing!"

"Then these statues must have been carved from one block of stone each," Naila remarked, and though she did not sound too surprised, she did sound impressed.

"Truly impressive, especially since there aren't any tool marks either."

This time, Naila sounded surprised – apparently she wasn't expecting that. "What? That is impossible. There must be some tool marks."

Skids turned to look at her, shaking his head. "I've run some pretty thorough scans on this thing, and I don't see any tool marks at all."

Sideswipe shrugged. "Maybe they were polished out or something." He was leaning almost companionably against the nearest statue, and only straightened with a scowl when Skids gave him a withering look.

Naila frowned. "Even such a process leaves marks, particularly when we consider the fact that these were made during a time when technology in this area consisted of nothing more than a few bronze tools." She grabbed onto Jazz's helm again, standing up. "Please, let me have a look."

Jazz moved next to Skids, and lifted a hand to act as a platform between his shoulder and the theoretician's. "What d'you mean there's no tool marks, Skids?"

"I did a scan on the surface of the stone, and it's perfectly smooth," Skids answered while Naila peered at the part where the head of the statue met the neck. "Naila's right; there's usually tool marks on these sorts of things, even if they're supposed to be smooth. But there's none on this statue at all." He paused, and opened his mouth as if to say something more, but then stopped, and clamped his mouth shut with a click.

Jazz tilted his head. "Well? What were you gonna say?"

Skids glanced at Naila for a moment, but the archaeologist seemed too engrossed with something on the statue's neck. Jazz heard the familiar crackle of static in his audios that indicated someone attempting to make a connection on his personal frequency, and when he allowed it come through, he heard Skids say: -+-I don't want to say anything out loud in front of Naila just yet, but between you and me, I'd think that these statues were…well…they look almost organic, from the way they were shaped.-+-

+---+---+

-+-… Organic.-+-

Skids resisted the urge to wince at the tone of Jazz's voice over the radio link. There was no denying the incredulity there – not that he could blame him. Stone was hardly a material that one could consider organic, so to use the term in reference to the statue just didn't seem to fit.

-+-I know, it sounds stupid, but I've got no other word for it. It's as if someone had shaped this statue out of clay. You've seen how humans do that, right?-+-

Jazz frowned. -+-But that's not clay.-+-

-+-I know. It's granite, which can be hard to shape properly. But I've scanned it several times over, and there's nothing there: no tool marks, no nothing to indicate what was used to shape it.-+-

"Skids?"

He broke off the connection then, and focused his attention on Naila, who was now standing on his shoulder, her hand gripping the side of his head for balance. "Yeah?"

"Please put me down. I need to look at the inscription at the foot of the statue."

That got his attention. "Inscription?" The pictures she'd sent to the Autobots had only shown the statues themselves, and did not capture any inscriptions – not that Skids had noticed, since he'd been too focused on the statue itself. He knelt down slowly, letting Naila use his hand as a platform so that she could step down safely from his shoulder. "There's an inscription?"

"Yes, though the writing is not something we recognize, since it bears no similarities to anything that exists or existed on Earth." She looked up at him, and her serious gaze indicated that she would now have to rely on their expertise. "It was about these writings that I wished to ask for your help, aside from identifying the statues."

The thrill that passed through his spark was undeniable. He transformed into his alt-mode, since that was the only way he was going to get close enough to the ground to see the inscriptions, and turned on his headlights to get a good look at the writing.

And promptly felt something at the back of his processors nag at him. He had seen that writing before – or at least, he had seen some of the symbols. They looked familiar, like something he had come across way back when on Cybertron, when he had been delving in Iacon's massive library for whatever information he might have been interested in. But the question was: in what context had he seen them? He vaguely remembered a connection to a time when the Quintessons still used Cybertron as their personal factory for war and civilian machines, as well as something to do with planetary conquest, but the rest of it was just a little too-

His energy sensors suddenly screamed blue murder at him, alerting him to something very powerful within the vicinity. Almost immediately, he went back into his primary mode, glancing at Jazz and Sideswipe for confirmation. Apparently, they too had picked up the energy spike, and were currently looking around the chamber warily. Sideswipe had even gone so far as to pull his rifle from subspace, ready to fight.

"What is going on?" Naila demanded. "What is happening?"

"Don't know just yet, li'l lady," Jazz replied. "Still tryin' to figure it out."

Sideswipe turned to him then. "It's coming from this chamber," he said, his voice low and level, like it usually was when he was trying to pinpoint an unseen Decepticon. "Can't get a good fix on it though."

"You think it's a 'Con?" Jazz asked as he, too, took out his rifle.

Sideswipe shook his head. "Can't say for sure. Doesn't read like one, but still…"

"You can never be too sure," Skids finished as he, too, took out his own weapon: a liquid nitrogen rifle. It was difficult, trying to get a precise fix on the strange energy surge, or even to identify just what sort of energy it was. All he knew was that, whatever it was, it was very strong, and hence very dangerous.

The shuddering of the rock beneath his feet was mild, but it was more than enough to make Naila grab onto his foot to steady herself – and none too soon, because the shudder became stronger, and this time was accompanied by a deep, dull roar that, for some reason that Skids could not comprehend, seemed to come from directly behind him…

"Skids!"

Naila's shriek made him turn around, and he watched, with widening optics, as glowing bright green lines suddenly seemed to appear from out of nowhere on the statue's body, running through its arms and legs and twining across its body and up its neck until they disappeared, only to pool in the spaces where the statue's eyes had been carved, causing them to flare to life with a brilliant light. Those eyes seemed to focus on him, and then the statue emitted a soft growl that sounded like the rumble of boulders rolling down a mountainside as it stepped off the pedestal, and headed right for him. Next to it, the two other statues glowed with the same light, and stepped off their pedestals, their stances menacing and dangerous.

It was then that Sideswipe chose to utter the word that best described their current situation:

"Slag!"