WAruruu

“Wake.”

Lightning and ice shot through his frame, racing through every fan and circruit. Everything hurt. Being dead shouldn't hurt so much. He would really like to just go back into stasis and not have to feel how stupid he had been.

Cold pinpricks crawled up his arm. A warning if Jazz had ever felt one.

“‘M up.” His mouth felt fried, and there was a crackle of charge at the edge of his field when he took a moment to rest his optics. “Stop zapping me, I’m up.” Primus-damned doctors with their twitchy fingers. One of these days he’d get one that actually had a bedside manner.     

There was a nasty glare from the light above, when his optics came online. Black, static motes covered his vision. Slag, he was in bad shape. Cracked armor, fractured struts, his visor was damaged but that was nothing a reboot couldn’t handle, and his audials must be broken, too. There was some kind of weird reverb with the doctor’s voice.

“...I’m not dead?”

“No.”

Proximity alarms belated reported the figure sitting next to him. Jazz eyed the mech’s general direction after getting his racing pump under control. “You sure?” His short-term memory cache was giving off errors, but he was pretty sure that he remembered dying. It made his processor ache trying to put them in order.

He let his head thunk back to the berth when the other mech didn’t answer. Guess it didn’t matter that much. Someone had to have dug him out, if there was a doctor to patch him back together. Ugh, this was going to cost a pretty credit. Mechs that could bring someone back from impalement were way above Jazz’s paygrade. Ric was going to have an absolute fit once he found out-

“No.”

Jazz quick-reset his processor. “I’m sorry?”

“I am not a doctor.”

Ice poured down Jazz’s backstrut. “No?” he asked. There were all kinds of unsavory mechs that could have pulled him from the hole. Discreetly, he hacked away at his fritzing optical feed. “Nurse then? Concerned passerby?”

“No.”

“I hate to tell you, mech, but I don’t got anything of value on me.” Jazz was basically good as dead, sitting here with all these damages and no doctor. Frag. If he ended up in a chop shop, then Ric was the least of his worries.

“You, uh, got a name?” Jazz grabbed desperately for something to keep them talking while everything rebooted. If he could splice together a neural block and overcharge the capacity on his engine, he could get the hell out of dodge - broken struts or otherwise. His optics cycled back into focus. “Or something that you want? What’s the deal...”

Jazz trailed off in horror. His chest was a gaping wound, metal plating ruptured outward. Crystals clustered about the edges, and there looked to be a whole, solid sheet of it further in. He could see his own spark.

“Oh dear god-” The staticy figure that Jazz had thought was a mech, sharpened into a monster made of broken crystals. It loomed over him, eyes intently focused on his face.

The crystal grove on the southside of Old Praxus was absolutely off-limits to everyone. It was beyond dangerous. Acid sinks and sulfate brambles hid among the crystals, and even the most experienced crystal-cuter considered the area a death trap. Under no circumstances was anyone to cross past the clearly marked barricade. If you did see someone go in there, you were to immediately call Response Unit 413 to report and get the fragg outta dodge.

Fairies, Jazz thought. His processor scrambled for any clues on how to get out of this situation. Like he wasn’t supposed to be there, fairies weren’t supposed to even exist. One moment he was investigating some really weird tunes on this drive home, and the next he was on the other side of the barricade, knee-deep in sulfate.

Jazz did not want to be here, and he had every desire to leave. He’d opened his comlinck as soon as he realized where he was, but it fizzled into static and white noise before he could get one word through.

Fuzzy little critters, no bigger than his palm, held him in an iron grip. Other fairies floated about, illuminating sharp thorns along the path. He struggled with all his might, and could barely twitch a sensor. “I didn’t mean to intrude. Please, let me go.”  

You are so pretty. The fairies cooed at his distress. They tugged at his fingers, drawing him deeper into the dark. This way, this way.

We like you. Another one bobbed in front of his face. It was an adorable little bundle of fluff with silverfly wings that flickered rapidly between colors. Pretty one, we only want to take care of you.

The others sang, ever beautiful in their chorus: This way, this way. Their needle-sharp fingers plucked golden threads from the gaps in his armor. Cables and kibble rattled on his frame. He was shaking so hard...

“No,” he shook his head to clear it. His processor skipped in the discord. The crystals grew sharp and wild around him. The last thing he wanted was to go that way. “Stop. St-”

“Stop.”

The command rang out in the dark. The fairies’ grip slipped, and Jazz took full advantage. He spun, intending to take off back the way he came, but his whole system acted like it was uncalibrated and he stumbled wildly instead.

Prowl! He’d recognize that angry, red chevron anywhere. He must have picked up his comm for help, but how he found him this far into the grove, Jazz had no idea. His Enforcer decals could be seen clear-as-day, despite the gloom.

Prowl took in his appearance, angry fairies and all, and frowned. “You should not be here.”

Jazz would laugh if he wasn’t terrified for his life. He would take stiff, by-the-book Prowl over fairies any day. Even if that meant getting arrested. “Yea,” his vocalizer crackled with static. “I gathered it was a bad idea.”

Prowl looked sincerely unimpressed with him.  

Between one sparkbeat and the next, the soft fuzzy things turned into wicked-sharp balls of thorns. They reasserted their hold on him, and his frame locked with a squeal. Ours, ours, ours.

Prowl looked at the fairies like one would with delinquent first-frames. “You are trespassing. And that one does not belong to you.”

The fairies bristled. Pain raced along Jazz’s plating. He could feel on burrowing in between his plates like a scraplet. Ours, the fairies insisted. Found him, drew him in as required. We are within our right.

Hot air blasted through the grove. “You are thieves,” Prowl growled. “The mecha here are under my jurisdiction. Any claim you made is invalid and punishable by law.”

The fairies hissed and spat at Prowl, absolutely livid. “Look out!” Jazz wanted to yell. The last thing he wanted was for Prowl to get trapped, too. Unless the fairies were weak to blaster fire, he didn’t know what would protect him.

“Unless,” Prowl’s voice took a dangerous edge, “you want to fight me for him?”

Jazz’s engine sputtered. As he watched, Fire-bright, intricate markings danced along Prowl’s plating. It danced up from claw tips (Did Prowl always have claws??) and formed extravagantly honeycombed kibble. His doorwings shivered and shook, elongating into multifaceted panels that glowed fire-bright. Brilliant, amber-gold eyes watched them with unwavering focus.

Not one fairie answered his challenge. They ducked low and buzzed, pulling their needle-fingers out of Jazz’s plating. It hurt, but they let go.

“Wise choice.” The mantled wings behind Prowl flared bright. “Be gone.” Fire blasted over him, and the fairies scattered like cinders.

He trembled. The golden threads they pulled free from him snapped back like a cut sitar string. It even twanged. What was...what was wrong with him? He was shaking and falling apart and there was nothing he could do about it-

“Jazz,” Prowl’s voice cut off his discord. Fire dancing along his outstretched hand, lighting the way. “Come here.”

Fear rooted Jazz to the spot. What if he just went from one smelter to another? What he was seeing wasn’t normal. Everything was wrong.

“Do not worry.” Prowl’s optics found his, and his expression softened. “All will be well.”

Jazz took one step, then another. He was afraid, but...he trusted Prowl. His hand closed around Prowl’s, and warmth flooded his frame. Prowl drew him close, away from the dark.

“Let’s get you home.” Everything bled into blinding light and static-

Izabella wasn’t a stranger to weird things washing up on shore. A leyline passed by about twenty miles or so off the southern coast, and storms out at sea would shake it like a pop can and crack it open in their direction. They’d get things ranging from mermaids to Ziphius to (literal) flying fish.

But, she had never seen one of these--whatever it was--before. It looked kind of like a coconut crab at first. A big, blue one, maybe four feet tall, with a bowl for a head and a very colorful vocabulary.

“You're stuck pretty good there, aren’t ya?” Izzy leaned as far as she dared over the railing. She had no idea how he got there, all trussed up in a fishing net. The storm they had last night couldn’t have washed him up this far.

“Go ‘way!” The critter yelled. He really was trying hard to get loose, but the netting was also caught on some rocks and roots. It’d be a rough time trying to get that undone without a knife and extra set of hands. Lucky for him, she had both.

Izzy waited, chin propped up on her hand as she leaned against the railing. “You want some help?”

“Stuck, stuck,”  he wheezed, mad but resigned at this point. “Get me unstuck.”

She eyed the rocks over the edge. If she was careful, she should be able to balance between the them and that palm tree... “I’m gonna have to get close. You okay with that?”

Big, blue eyes, round like a camera lens, squinted up at her from underneath it’s bowl-shaped head. He looked as suspicious as her Aunt when she claimed to be ‘just friends’ with Raoul. The resemblance was uncanny. One hand was stuck outside the net, and it waggled very pointedly. “No funny business.”

She did not laugh, but it was a close thing. “No funny business. I just want to help.”

“...Fine.”