Author's Note: I'm very sorry it's taking me so long to get to the juicy bits, but I very much want to establish an understanding between Jazz and the Morphobots before they really get down to business. Besides, I'm a hell of a teaser and enjoy drawing things out ;-)
Thanks to all of you for reading and reviewing!
Disclaimer: I do not own The Transformers, and I do not make any money with this.
Tangled
Part 2: Understanding
xxx
Jazz abandoned all resistance the moment one of those tentacles wrapped around his neck cables. As a Special Ops mech, he'd been trained to stay calm and focused in situations where other bots would long since have lost it, and that training was so deeply ingrained into his source code that it easily managed to override the first ticks of panic once it kicked in.
Fighting wouldn't get him anywhere, that much was obvious. At best, he would end up hurting himself. In the worst case, it would provoke the Morphobots into hurting him, and he had absolutely no desire to find out what that would be like.
Instead, he pulled a deep draught of air into his vents and willed his strained hydraulics to depressurize. The action caused him to sink even deeper into the tangled mass of tendrils and maws beneath him, but he registered no immediate response from his captors. Good. Some precious astroseconds more for him to find a way out of this literal tight spot.
He opened a comm. link on a general frequency, but quickly gave up any attempt to get through to his comrades. There was a strange interference in the line, probably caused by the Morphobots' bioelectrical field.
Well, never mind. The others would not be kicking their heels out there. All he had to do was to buy them as much time as possib-
A small vinelet curled around one of his sensor horns. He twitched at the unexpected touch, only slightly so, but the Morphobots clearly took notice and answered with a soft, rustling sound. The tentacles' tight embrace loosened to some extent; not enough for him to take advantage of, but it loosened nonetheless.
And then one tendril slipped in between the others and started to feel its way over Jazz' armor plating.
Jazz muted his vocalizer, dampened his pain receptors and braced himself for what he knew was coming. Primus, just let him hold out long enough...
To his immense surprise, the expected agony never came. Neither was his plating cracked open, nor were sensitive internal components ripped out and shredded to shards between alien jaws. The silvery appendage simply proceeded to glide over his frame, slow and almost gentle, touching each tiny spot on its way with meticulous care as if searching for something. Others had begun to join it; all across his body, Jazz' sensors reported to his CPU the soft tickling sensation of thin vinelets slithering over his armor.
He shuddered at the unfamiliar sensation and instinctively tried to shy away from the touches, confused and revolted, and yet at the same time increasingly curious. What on Earth and Cybertron did that pushy plant life have in mind? It did not seem their intention to harm him; they could long since have done so if they'd wanted. And Pit, they were coming across real sensitive places in their weird inspection, like the underside of his bumper, for example...
A crackle in his comm. system jerked his attention away from the Morphobots.
'...-azz, d-... -ead? Jazz... -ear me?'
He hastily tuned in on the frequency, trying to grab hold of the faint transmission. 'Prowl?'
There was an unpleasant, high-pitched whistle in the line, but then Prowl's voice suddenly sounded much clearer.
'Jazz, thank Primus! Are you fully operational?'
Jazz glanced down at the tendrils that kept exploring his chassis. One of them was just ghosting over his right headlight, and his intakes hitched slightly at the soft tingle this caused.
'Jazz? Were you damaged?'
'No, no,' he said quickly. 'Prowl, listen: Try not to torque them off, okay? I don't know what's going on here, but they haven't hurt me yet, and I'd rather it stay that way, y' know.'
There was a moment of silence as Prowl presumably fed this new information to his tactical subroutines.
'Alright,' he said. 'We're working on a strategy. Blaster is on his way here, but Jazz - I'm not taking any risks, do you hear me?'
Jazz did his best to ignore the tentacle around his sensor horn which had started to gently tug at the sensitive appendage as if to see what might happen. 'Gotcha,' he said.
Another moment of quiet ensued, then Prowl spoke again, very softly this time. 'Just hang on, Jazz. We're not leaving you. Prowl out.'
He cut the transmission without waiting for an answer, but Jazz felt a tiny smile pull at his lips. He knew their SIC would now be pouring all his computing performance into setting up a preferably non-violent plan for his rescue.
In the meantime, however, he had his own problems to deal with.
Some of those cheeky tentacles had detected one of the larger transformation seams in his side, right were his hip joined his abdominal plating. He tensed at the contact, but that was pretty much everything the Morphobots gave him time for.
A strange sound, almost a purr, emitted from deep within the plants, drowning out Jazz' shocked gasp as the first of the silvery appendages slipped under his armor plates.
xxx
Ah, this was it.
A small gap where two parts of the bicolored armor plating met, just wide enough for one of their stronger vinelets to fit through. The energy flow was potent here, hot and pulsating and so deliciously close. Their soon-to-be donor had tensed again, a shudder running through his frame, but their grip still prevented him from struggling. All they had to do was latch on to the wires inside and soak up as much of the precious electricity as possible...
A stroke of lightning crashed into their systems, a stream of liquid fire so intense it hurt. An agonized scream was torn from their maws as the pain rushed through their shared bodies and mind, leaving every muscle raw and twitching. They jerked away from the source of the discomfort, and only dimly registered their captive spasming beneath them, giving an equally pained cry as their claws wrenched away from his wires.
They sagged, shaking themselves in an attempt to get rid of the uncomfortable tremors that only served to increase the ache of the energy depletion. The black and white mech was pulling deep draughts of air into his ventilation system, his blue optic band glowing brightly.
Hot, frantic anger surged up inside them, fueled by pain and frustration. How dare that piece of scrap metal resist them, completely and utterly at their mercy as he was? They could grind him to dust if they wanted to!
Their tentacles twitched in the overwhelming desire to simply cut loose, to just tear that little hellion limb from limb...
And yet, a small part of them was still hesitating. Among all the raging emotions, there was a tiny little voice whispering to them that this short circuit had most likely not been a defensive reaction from their prey. It had hurt him, too, judging by his response, and a closer look at the small amount of energy they had been able to harvest quickly made it clear what had happened.
The respective patterns of their energy frequencies were not incompatible, but obviously dissimilar to a degree that had to make a direct transmission complicated - and, apparently, painful. Since they both stemmed from totally different worlds, that shouldn't be a great surprise, but in their haste to get what they wanted, they had clearly failed to make allowances for this issue.
They calculated quickly. Their energy levels were getting dangerously low, and their captive's comrades were undoubtedly bound to try a rescue maneuver sooner or later. What they needed to do, and fast, was to bring both their frequencies into enough of a harmony to enable a sufficient transfer.
Slipping their tendrils back inside, they took hold of the wires again and started to transmit a series of slow, low-current energy pulses, basic enough for pretty much every electronic system to tune in to and synchronize with. They'd used this technique before for various purposes, and it normally worked out pretty well.
What they hadn't reckoned with was that their stock-still prey would suddenly burst into motion.
Too late did they realize that, in their shock and pain, they had inadvertently loosened their grip on him. It was only ever so slightly, but he was taking advantage of it in every way he could. He bucked so hard he almost ripped a couple of tentacles out of their joints, tried to kick at them with both feet, tried to roll onto his front and very nearly succeeded in burying his dentae in a bundle of delicate vinelets.
"Get outta there, you sick fraggers!" he hissed.
Even if they didn't understand the words, the message was more than clear, and a cold, numbing fear began to take hold of them. No, no, this couldn't be happening... they had neither the time nor the energy left for another hunt; if he managed to escape now, that would be their death warrant...
They threw themselves onto their captive with a strength born of desperation, clamping down on him with everything they had while their claws locked on to his wires in a vague hope that their refusal to let go might make him rethink his intentions.
'No... please... not fight... energy... need... last chance... please...'
Snippets of thoughts and emotions tumbled through their shared mind, a frenzied stream pouring into the synchronizing frequency they were still transmitting. If only they could explain, could make him understand...
This fight had to end, and soon. If not...
They clung just a little bit tighter.
xxx
Jazz was beginning to tire.
Fighting the Morphobots was like trying to catch smoke in one's bare hand: For every tentacle he managed to escape, three others would appear and take the first one's place. And to make things worse, those obnoxious vines were still stubbornly trying to invade his personal energy network, a connection much too intimate to be tolerated. Connecting yourself to some external hardware to download data was one thing; that was perfectly okay and generally accepted. But to grant another sentient being access to your inner circuitry was a completely different matter, something usually reserved for either medical emergencies or as a way to share pleasure with a lover.
Jazz was pretty sure that none of those scenarios applied to his current situation.
In lack of a better defense, he diverted as much power as possible to his anti-virus programs, bolstering any suitable firewall to block the strange frequencies his attackers kept feeding him.
And promptly, as if the Morphobots had read his processor, the transmission pulses became notably stronger, their intervals shorter.
He shuddered at the sensation, but to his own dismay not completely in revulsion. Those frequencies, alien as they were, were also simple enough for his own to adjust to them without much effort, and that in turn rendered the sensation surprisingly pleasant, almost like a caress...
What the Pit was taking Prowl so long?
He was about to try and open the comm. link again when he suddenly noticed the change.
Not only had the pulses become more intense, but there was also a strange kind of urgency in them now. The Morphobots closed in on him, tightening their hold, but Jazz quickly became aware of the small, erratic jerks that traveled up and down their tendrils. The alien plants gave a low, keening sound, and another wave of their foreign energy crashed against his firewalls, fierce and almost desperate this time.
And with that last surge came a totally novel set of information, a sort of data that had not been there before and that bore a disturbing resemblance to emotions. Was that... fear Jazz was sensing in the transmission? Pain? A raw and frantic need for something he couldn't define?
For a moment he lay utterly still, dumbfounded. Could it be that, as the Morphobots had snatched him away from his friends, had tied him up, held him down and shamelessly molested him, that they had been trying to communicate?
It was an unwritten Autobot law that, if an enemy wished to negotiate, they should be listened to, regardless of faction or species. It was also an unwritten Autobot law that an SOS was to be answered, if possible.
Consequently, if this weird alien plant life wanted to talk, Jazz was bound by duty and by his honor as an Autobot officer to at least try to get into contact with them.
Not to mention that he was Pit-spawned curious by now.
It was one of Prowl's favorite sayings that when Primus had granted adventurousness to his creations, Jazz had probably been the first to step forward. So, living up to his reputation, Jazz decided to hazard a little experiment.
He cycled his vents slowly, and then cautiously lowered the first layer of his firewalls.
The Morphobots' reaction was clearly one of surprise. The energy transmission faltered, and a soft, rustling sound came from amidst the tangled vines. Some tendrils straightened and bent their claws as if to look down at him, but made no move to attack. They appeared wary, Jazz thought, but not aggressive.
He ventured a tiny smile.
"Hey there, gang," he whispered gently. "Designation's Jazz. Anything I can be of help with?" He wasn't sure if the Morphobots were capable of common Cybertronian, or of any language for that matter, but he figured that if he was going to have a chat with some alien plants, he might as well do it properly.
A tense moment of silence followed. The tendrils swayed gently from side to side, and Jazz had he distinct impression that they were debating among themselves what to make of this sudden turn of events. Granted, his behavior towards them so far did not exactly speak in his favor.
It stood to reason, he concluded, that if he wanted to succeed with this strategy, he would have to prove his good will.
Ignoring the heavy pulsing of his spark, he dialed down his defense system and then deactivated the remaining firewalls. About a handful was kept in place to protect his core programming and most private memory files, but the better part of his energy network was now effectively laid bare for the invaders to play havoc with it if they so chose.
The Morphobots chirred softly. Jazz pulled a deep draught of air into his vents and readied himself for the swift and relentless intrusion he was undoubtedly in for.
What he received instead was a single, firm frequency pulse, so different from what he'd expected that it took him completely by surprise. He pushed back out of pure reflex, sending a small amount of energy through his wires.
The Morphobots practically pounced on the tiny pulse, soaking it up with the voracious hunger of parched earth drinking the long-awaited rain. Jazz stared in fascination as the reason for his capture began to slowly dawn on his CPU.
"Is that what you need? Energy?"
The silvery vines gently tugged at the wires they were still holding on to, and when he didn't react immediately, they started to transmit their foreign frequencies again, in deep, heavy pulses this time, all the while emitting a rich, purring sound as if to encourage him to repeat the action.
A flush of heat suffused Jazz' circuitry, leaving his intakes hitching and his limbs trembling in its wake. With his firewalls gone, the transmission streamed into his systems with contented ease, and his own frequencies adjusted in a matter of astroseconds. He let it happen, marveling at how natural it felt once he stopped fighting it. The Morphobots chirred again in obvious delight, and when they started to hungrily absorb the electric current from his lines, the loop between their individual systems was finally closed.
The carefully balanced energy flow sent a pleasurable tingle through Jazz' whole frame and had his cooling fans kick in with a soft snick, slowly at first but quickly picking up pace. A soft, involuntary moan escaped his vocalizer.
A small part of him was still horrified, still trying to figure out what was happening to him and if all this was even real or just some kind of weird processor glitch. The greater part, though, the one that was firmly connected to his Spec Ops programs, had already adapted to the situation and was now offering the most efficient course of action: The Morphobots did not mean to assault him in any way; he even doubted that they were aware of the effects their feeding had on him. All they'd been seeking was a source of nourishment, and Jazz certainly didn't mind sharing some energy as long as the process did not entail any immediate danger.
And if there was a bit of pleasure to be gained from the procedure, then why not welcome it? It had been a while since he'd last enjoyed an intimate connection, and the close contact to another system, even one so alien, felt very nice...
He cringed when his comm. system suddenly jumped to life again.
'Jazz, this is Prowl. Do you read?'
He actually fumbled for the line briefly before he managed to tune in to it. 'Roger, Prowl.'
'I have Blaster here with me now, Jazz. You still alright?'
Some of the connected tendrils were resting on his abdominal plating so that Jazz could feel the gentle vibrations of their purring travel through his chassis. 'Yeah, yeah,' he replied quickly. 'I'm good.'
'We have locked on to your position,' Prowl informed him. 'I want you to keep this channel clear and remain calm until we've got you secured. We're going in now.'
'No!'
Strange. The glyph seemed to have taken a shortcut, firmly turning its back on his higher CPU functions. A puzzled silence filled the comm. line.
'What do you mean: No?' Prowl asked eventually, his tone somewhere between impatience and confusion.
Jazz cursed his hyperactive vocalizer as much as possible in view of the steadily building charge in his systems. 'There's... there's no need, Prowler, I've got things covered here. Think I've established some kind of... connection.' Oh, the irony...
'What in Primus' name are you talking about?'
The tendrils shifted slightly, moving wires and cables aside to make room for the slim, young vine that slipped in between them, probing deeper for more sensitive spots. Jazz fought to stifle a groan when his core temperature spiked in response, and briefly wondered if Prowl could hear the whirring of his cooling fans over the comm. link.
'Please, Prowler, I can handle this. Just need a bit more time.'
Oh yes, yes, just a little more, wouldn't take long...
'Jazz,' Prowl said, his voice strained as he clearly spoke against his better judgment, 'you know I hold your proficiencies in the highest esteem, but if I get only the slightest impression that your safety might be compromised -'
The Morphobots chose that moment to transmit a particularly heavy pulse, and Jazz gave up any pretense of speaking or even thinking coherently. He barely managed to fling a quick 'Thanks, Prowl; Jazz out' into the line before the connection crackled and died as the charge in him surged, turning all his hydraulics into water. He sank back into the plants' tangled embrace with a groan, trembling and carrying the vague hope that Prowl would find nothing wrong with his safety.
To be continued...