Chapter Text
“Hm,” Starscream says, though XL-917 only hears it because he’s standing pretty close. The sound is kinda drowned out by the weird zzt ztt zzt noise the groundbridge is making. “Should that be—”
“Starscream!” Megatron shouts from somewhere behind, making the assembled expedition squad straighten up. “What’s the delay?”
“What delay?” Starscream says, even though he definitely pushed to the front of the group and then stopped at the zzt-ztting bridge, which also has a trippy strobe thing going on in the lights. “Where’s this bridge supposed to go? Are you sure it’s right?”
XL-917 is maybe slightly distracted by the usual little Officer dramas, and barely registers getting grabbed. “Woah—” he says, because he doesn’t really have any time to think about it—Starscream’s kinda strong and it’s all a single motion to grab him, pull him forward, and throw him through the bridge. “—Ah.”
It feels—going through a groundbridge or a spacebridge doesn’t usually feel like anything, except for the sudden pressure change and maybe a dizzy little feeling like missing a step. There are stupid but long standing little tall tales warning you to shutter your optics as you pass through, on pain of seeing something menacing in the swirling green, but even if that wasn’t cometdust, he’s pretty sure the bigger problem would be being seen. Groundbridges are the main way Vehicons deploy though, and 917’s done it enough times to get used to it—theoretically. This time, everything flashes rainbow, all his parts seize up on contact with the portal as he tumbles through, his sense of gravity spins around wildly, and he falls through screaming—though he can’t hear his own voice past the now inescapable, horrible buzzing, rattling him down to his joints.
It feels like his metallic structure is shearing on every line at once, though, in the moment, it’s hard to identify coherently. His thought process is nearly identical, in fact, to what’s tumbling out of his voicebox—a mindless, unheard howl.
When the pain and the crazy lightshow disappear, 917 is pleasantly surprised to find he arrives at his destination on his peds and, not, in fact, in a thousand shattered pieces—just the one, dizzy and coughing on the tailpipe end of yelling himself hoarse.
“What was that?”
On the tailpipe end of yelling himself hoarse, and on a steel walkway a step or two away from a group of boxy mechs with weapons out, one of whom is spinning to point a gun at him. “Hey, who’re you!”
Frag him, the mechs are small but there are like four of them and they’re colorful mismatched builds—officers of some kind. Slag. “Uh,” 917 says, still not exactly on his A-game.
“That’s a Con!” Another mech in the group shoves around to brandish a pair of hand axes, and 917 takes a strategic step back and look around. He’s—he and a bunch of small angry Autobots are on a platform in what looks more like an oversized transmission tower but isn’t quite the weirdest looking energon mine 917 has fought in. They’re higher up than is entirely comfortable for someone who can’t fly, and there’s enough wind whipping through the structure that everyone is yelling, things like, “Watch out!” and “Stay right th—”
917 has a half-second to wonder why they’re not all attacking him yet, then a shot clips the mech who stepped out, and another group of mechs bursts around the corner howling a war cry and swinging melee weapons—more strangers, but these guys are bigger, and one of them’s got a huge friggin beam that he smashes wildly through the mechs in front of him.
As a surprise member of the ‘mechs in front of him,’ 917 joins everyone else in ducking, diving, and screaming just a little. But apart from that, this really seems like his opportunity and he needs to take advantage of any one of those he gets, so he uses the distraction and general chaos to grab the nearest mech and shove him off-balance at a railing. They’re just aiming blasters at each other—917 slightly faster—when he spots the familiar purple brand on the mech’s chest plate.
“Oops!” 917 pulls his shot just in time, and leaps to the side to dodge return fire, but also to get away from the newly pissed-off Con officer who hopefully, uh, didn’t catch exactly what happened. Either way, it’s definitely time for 917 to get out of the way of the main characters here and disappear into the other vehicons.
Still riding the element of surprise, he spots the nearest staircase, climbs over a stunned mech, and drops down to a lower level, shaking off a grab from a red Autobot who’s too distracted trying to comm to actually stop him. “Where’d you come from? Hey, you, get back here!”
“You got it!” he calls back, transforming as soon as he reaches a flat surface, to get away faster.
A quick drive around the level reveals no handy exits or obvious battle lines — there’s more dust getting into this section of the tower, and he can see hazy figures of mechs running around in the desert below. Okay, okay, he’s made it to the battlefield! Which is apparently some cramped industrial tower that’s under Autobot attack, sure.
Some of the shouting and crashing might be coming from vehicons, but he sure doesn’t see anyone who looks right, or any visible energon stores to defend.
People are yelling behind and around him, he can’t find the vehicon ranks or even the fragging exit—this is a stupid tower with stupid narrow pathways and an overall bad design.
Someone heavy lands behind him, 917 hears the sound of a weapon charging, and in sheer frustration, he revs his engine, accelerates, bashes through a railing, and drives off over the side of the tower.
It’s a big fall and for a moment he thinks he can feel the strange rattling buzz of the groundbridge again then he hits the ground hard enough to hurt, tumbles through a fence and into a little side building of some kind, and rolls back into root mode kinda to check whether he still can.
Transforming hurts, but it works, and 917 brushes himself off and gets moving, because there are still mechs all around and some of them are definitely taking notice of the big crash. He still doesn’t see anyone he recognizes and he’s probably not long for this world, so it’s time to go out swinging. Ideally, at someone he can get a hit or two on, which is probably not the bright yellow brawler (not Bumblebee, though it made his vents stutter for a moment anyways) doing a flip or the stocky red mech yelling one-liners or... who’s that one?
There’s a mech, with an Autobot-looking blue visor but more muted colors like a grunt, ducked out from the rest of the action, climbed up underneath the tower and doing something with some serious-looking generators set up there.
Well, for someone on a mission to defend this energon mine and/or stupid tower, that seems like a thing to stop.
“Leave that alone!” XL-917 fires a clip at him, and immediately understands why people were using melee weapons—his shots half fizzle as they hit increasing quantities of dust whipped around in the strong wind, and he hears maybe half of them splash against metal supports. Not that they would do much if they did, but none of them have hit the mech, disappointingly enough. He switches to his blade and starts to run in, but the mech is already gone, swinging and vanishing behind a pillar at the first shot.
XL-917 tries and fails to figure out where he went, has a brief moment of unease, and that’s about it before he’s slammed into from behind and twisted pinned into the ground.
So much for something kind of useful—someone obviously didn’t appreciate his completely ineffective attack on Visor, Primus he hates when officers get stupid-indignant that somebody dared to shoot at their favorite comrades, like it isn’t war and also a vehicon’s purpose in life. He tenses in anticipation of—getting stabbed, shot, killed somehow, and tensing does make his fall damage hurts flare in an obnoxious way, but—you know, you think you’re prepared to die, you watch a lot of troopers with your faceplates die, you expect it, but all the same it’s never actually happened to to him before, and the thrill of fear makes for a kind of demoralizing last moment.
The mech above him whirls with motion that isn’t, at least, immediately executionary. He thinks. Is that—it feels like a clawed hand on the small of his back has been rapidly and bafflingly replaced by a ped on the back of his neck, which seems less secure than the hand had been. Before the thought chases itself through his motivator into using it as opening to, maybe, free himself, and, maybe, not die right now, the presumed Autobot is leveraging his—struggling if you’re generous, squirming if you aren’t—leg against the ground, apparently to stab a sharp, hot something straight through the side of his ped. Which. Ow, but not the worst hurt he’s had in the last five minutes.
Autobot mutters, “Oh, what the frag?” at—his stab wound, maybe, but it’s not like he should be wondering how it got there, so maybe something else. His instinctive response to being stabbed is probably a good one—it’s kicking at the Autobot with his mobile ped—might not be a good instinct if it prompts him to double the stabbing, actually, but it doesn’t seem to.
“Easy, easy, easy there!” The weight on him shifts and neatly knocks down his flailing attempt to get up, a heavy push somehow twisting away any leverage from his legs and settling him firmly flat—but not, actually, tearing apart any of his joints or ripping into his plating, beyond the extra damage he’s doing to himself wriggling his skewered ped. The Autobot slaps a steadying weight on that, too. “Stop that, yeah?”
“Let me go!” 917 counters, mostly because he needs to make some kind of noise and it seems a little better than just screaming. He manages to work an arm free and swipes blindly at the mech on top of him. “Get off of me!”
“No can do—easy,” the Autobot insists, like he’s a glitching mechanimal. He grabs 917’s arm, twists it back to his other, and tightens something over both his wrists—is that a restraint? Is he being tied up?
His wrists lock together, all his strength seems to suddenly ebb, and XL-917 simultaneously registers: he is solidly pinned; this little mech is very good at this; and he’s being restrained. “C’mon. We good?” The weak feeling increases, and the Autobot bends his arm back a little more.
“Yeah!” 917 realizes he’s waiting for a response, for whatever reason. Yeah, yeah, he’s not going to thrash his way out of this—he has no leverage at all, and is kind of bracing for a blade through his neck or back or up into his side as clawed hands trace over him then abruptly grab on and haul him over.
A minor involuntary yelp makes it out of him from the surprise of being turned and the sharp flash of remembering the blade in his ped, and maybe also the realization that actually he still had leverage left to lose because now he has even less.
917 pinned and cuffed to satisfaction, the Autobot rolls him over and sits on him so he can’t move, can’t even really look away from the blue visor that peeks into view. The blue visor that—despite a moment of sheer desperate denial, 917 recognizes the mech that vanished like a second before coming up behind him, and he feels a rush of cold as he properly registers that he may have picked a bad fight. Up close, the Autobot still looks unassuming, or would if he wasn’t leaning down to study XL-917 like he’s a fascinating new project. He waggles a knife in implicit threat, which is kind of excessive, since 917 is completely at his mercy. “Are you dying?” he asks.
Well, it depends on what the Autobot does with that knife now, doesn’t it? Is that a setup? 3/10 banter. 917 squints at the Autobot, and can’t tell. “I was actually just wondering that.”
The Autobot blinks, and pauses for a brief moment. “Are you on something?”
Is he? Honestly, it would explain some things. But, “What?”
The Autobot leans back without letting up, and gestures vaguely. “Are you drugged, sick, or poisoned?” he clarifies. “About to explode?”
“I, uh.” 917 has had the usual nightmares about interrogation, but he always imagined more pain and less confusion. Never in his wildest concerns had 917 expected to have to hold a conversation with an Autobot. “...don’t think so?” Because he thinks there would be notable signs if he was on dark energon.
The Autobot’s head tilts slightly and for a moment 917’s confusion gives way to a rush of anticipation—then the Autobot shrugs. “Good enough.”
The Autobot looks up—and it feels so much like an opening that 917 knows it’s a trap—and glances around, taking in their surroundings with a distant look and a slight—is he humming? He’s humming a little, and it’s simultaneously kind of pleasant and possibly the scariest sound 917 has ever heard. The visor flicks around the steel and dust around them, and then back down to 917. “Got a des?”
‘Yes,’ queues itself in vocalization before survival instincts clamp down—given that he’s somehow still in one piece, he definitely has a lot to lose by pissing off the enemy officer sitting on him. On the other hand, unfortunately, giving information might also lead to a bad ending—from the Autobots or his own side’s officers, really. He tries to remember what he’s supposed to do in situations like this, and has absolutely nothing, because situations like this don’t really happen and he doesn’t entirely understand why he’s still alive and not being pulled apart?
The Autobot starts to frown, and 917 restarts his vocalizer, to buy a second of time. “Um,” he tries. “I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you.”
The weight on him shifts, and 917 braces yet again—which is aching more and more on his various injuries—but the Autobot just snorts, and nods. “Sure, fair,” he says, resettling to keep 917 pinned while freeing his knife-free hand to wave. “I’m Jazz. What should I call you, just for convenience?”
For convenience in identifying him and keeping track of him and every instinct and experience tells him this is a bad bad sign, but also fails to tell him what to do.
He twists and cranes to look up at the Autobot—at Jazz—despite how uncomfortable and possibly dangerous it is, to try to get some clue from his expression, which is blandly friendly. “XL-917?”
Jazz smiles politely. “Alright then, 917,” he says, and looks him over again. He tilts his head. “Warper, huh? Didn’t know y’all had another in the sector.”
“What?” 917 replies, intelligently. He’s never met a teleporter, only knows of them in passing, something something failed vehicon improvement trials that thankfully predate him, but also he’s never seen any of these Autobots or, he’s pretty sure, these Decepticon officers either, so, “We do?”
It prompts Jazz to flick his chestplate, which he flinches away from unreasonably forcefully for what is essentially just a brush of clawtip. “Cute,” he drawls flatly. “Not joining the retreat?”
917’s insides twist in dismay. “Don’t know about any retreat.”
Jazz’s glossa clicks at that. “Not on their comm channel, or what?”
(Given the badge and all, 917 doesn’t think Jazz is supposed to be on any such channel.) His comm receiver, when he checks, is just giving him static. Quite possibly he banged himself up worse than he thought in that fall, or maybe, and he’s not sure how this keeps slipping his mind even excepting the active danger he’s in, the nightmare groundbridge had some hand in it. 917 doesn’t have a good answer, and would really love to seem like he’s maybe not entirely abandoned. He tries to shrug—doesn’t really manage it, but it’s better than nothing. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Jazz snorts, which is impossible to interpret but at least isn’t stabbing him. “You gonna stay calm and sit tight while we finish up here?”
In no way is he going to be calm, but he physically can’t do much, and that seems more important. “Sure—uh. Yes sir?”
“Great!” Jazz pats him on the shoulder and leans back, looking over his shoulder. “Sides, can you get the last generator up there?”
XL-917 reflexively tries to jump at the realization that there’s apparently another Autobot in the under level with them, and manages to tweak a wire in his arm pulling against his restraints, but can’t move enough to see anything new.
“The generator? You got it, Jazz.” The other voice comes from a bit away, like someone coming in from the fight. “Are you okay?”
“Yep, all good,” Jazz says, still towards the other Autobot. “Just gotta keep an eye on the prisoner over here.”
On the—Jazz definitely means him. XL-917 wobbles for a moment, because on the one hand, no one ever bothers to keep vehicons as prisoners, but on the other hand, there’s no one else here he could possibly mean.
He’s being captured. Vehicon number XL-917. He’s being captured? Captured. Not just toyed with before execution, but captured alive. Well it could be both, but he’s currently, at this moment, being captured.