Archive of Our Own

Back in the day, there had to be two pilots for every mech. That was the only way to handle the neural load of a massive kaiju-killing machine; two humans to split the load, to act as separate hemispheres of a combined brain, to work together as one.

They didn't have that luxury anymore.

Training two fully fledged pilots for one mech? Finding pilots that were compatible with each other, getting the time them to train together so that they could exist—drift together—as one whole? They hadn't had the time for that in a long, long time.

No, by Jazz's time the scientists—driven by desperate need—had finally advanced the technology enough to solo-pilot. Then there was no drifting with another person because the mech could handle the rest. Starting with Proto-1 and Orion, the Org could cut all sorts of corners in training and compatibility, because all that mattered was throwing as many people and mechs out into the grinder as possible. To push back the alien threat.

That didn't stop the whispers among the pilots, though. That you were still drifting with something. It just wasn't something human on the other end. Not anymore.

No, now you drifted with the machine itself.

Jazz tried not to worry about that. He tried not to worry about most things, most days. (He knew that was a coping mechanism, so sue him. He would probably die soon. The life expectancy rates of mech pilots were not good.)

Still, he could admit when he was having a bad day.

He wasn't having a fighting bad day, that was for sure. Jazz didn't fight the same way that the other mechs did, rigid motions and economical moves. No, Jazz was fluid, moving to the beat of his own drum, hitting kaiju precisely and swinging away, a great choreographed improvisational dance of hulking metal and carnage.

So when he zipped when the kaiju clearly expected a zag, it was just another step in the game. The portal was there, just to his left, and the best way to gain the upper hand was through it—and—

And, honestly, Jazz was mostly just surprised that he actually went anywhere else. He had been trained on the videos from early in the war, when Jazz was barely a kid. He'd seen the earthly mechs just phase through the kaiju portals like they weren't even there. He, in the back of his mind, had expected the same as soon as Bebop had crossed that threshold. A swirl of blinding light and he'd be dancing through the other side to jump on the kaiju's back and stab all the important bits hiding there.

That's not what happened. Instead the spiral of light and color stretched and pulled like a tube, or a hallway, and Jazz stepped through a space that should not be, because it was like a corridor appearing in a blank wall. Space that could not exist. The two dimensional gaining extra impossible dimensionality.

(Had they tried to go through one of the portals, recently? Had the game changed, without them realizing it?)

And then Jazz was on the other side, but not. Because that fancy light show had obscured something a lot bigger than just a step.

Jazz didn't think he was in Kansas anymore.

There was a great barren expanse of red sand in every direction. The sky was white at the horizon, thinning to a dull blueish-grey above.

And three kaiju were spaced in a perfect circle just in front of him.

Jazz moved with that preternatural instinct that all pilots either learned or died. He ducked to the left for cover behind a massive spire. The aliens stomped forward and Jazz cycled his gun and readied his blade.

He came around swinging, digging his sword into the neck of a kaiju just as it came up to the pillar. A burst of green kaiju blood followed the arch of his arm as he shot at the next kaiju just behind. The kaiju (a scout, probably screecher class) made a terrible racket, and Bebop obligingly upped the volume on Jazz's battle playlist to drown it out.

Jazz ducked behind another massive spire (there was very little cover here), popping up to shoot at the last remaining kaiju. It had ducked behind some kind of console, it's creepy tentacles gliding over the surface.

Behind Jazz the portal whined and sputtered and died. He cursed. He needed that to go home, so he abandoned his cover to race towards the console.

Something hit the kaiju from behind before he could get there. Jazz cursed again, scanning the area, looking for the source of the shots. A black and white mech stepped out from behind the curve of the platform, some kind of massive external mech-sized gun held in his hand.

The mech regarded Jazz cooly, his gun raised and ready but not pointing at Jazz.

Jazz raised Bebop's hands in surrender. "Uh," Jazz said. "I come in peace?"

The mech just stared at him. He had a funny red chevron on his forehead, and—actual genuine lips, made of metal. His plating was oddly geometric and flat and boxy.

"Uh," Jazz said eloquently. "Habla espanol?" The mech continued to stare. "Francais? Deutsch? Russkiy?" Jazz was rapidly running out of the few words he spoke in a handful of languages. "Ni hao? Konnichiwa?"

The mech was silent. He didn't have any of the marks of the Org. In the center of his chest, just over where the cockpit should be, was another red mark. It looked like a stylized geometric face. Glowing blue-white eyes regarded Jazz silently.

Then the mech straightened and shot his gun. Jazz couldn't completely hold in his flinch, but it hadn't been aimed at him. He turned Bebop's head to find the screecher-scout closer than it should have been, a new smoking hole in its head.

"Okay..." Jazz said a little shakily. "Thanks for not shooting me?" He said to the mech.

And then the mech finally opened his mouth and said something insane. "Bah-w[screech][pop]. Graa[droning]gnah wh[screech][pop] ni ni bong."

Except it didn't really sound like that, because all the 'ni's were basically high pitched beeps that no human voice could have made, and the 'bong' sounded like a genuine gong and all the vowels were weirdly over-layered with different tones.

"What?" Jazz asked. He was only partially asking the other mech, because that was like no language he'd ever heard, so really that was more of a question for the universe.

And the weird mech just regarded him cold and alien in both his manner and his construction.

"Okay..." Jazz said slowly, taking a step towards the console. The mech tensed, his strangely dexterous fingers tightening on his gun. Jazz gestured at the console. "Can I have a look at that?"

The mech backed up as Jazz stepped forward. He looked at the console. The kaiju that had hidden behind it was melting into it. The entire thing was completely and utterly wrecked. There was no way that he could fiddle with it to try to reactivate the portal.

"Oh, come on," Jazz shouted with exasperation. That had been his only hope. He kicked at the completely melted panel, and the weird boxy mech said something fast and sharp and alien. Jazz spun on him, and he lunged towards Bebop's leg with something in his delicate, human-like hands.

Jazz started to flinch away, but the mech was surprisingly quick. He was shaking some sort of powder out over the pointy foot of Bebop, which was—oh god, it was smoking.. Holy shit.

"What the fuck," Jazz screeched, trying to pull back, but the mech had a firm grip on Bebop's ankle. The smoke was sputtering out.

The mech said something again, something completely inhuman, and Jazz got it suddenly.

This black and white mech wasn't a mech at all. He was an alien. A robo-alien.

Jazz crouched on Bebop's digigrade legs, staring at the dusty alien sand. The robo-alien backed up and away. Watching him closely with glowing alien eyes.

Okay. Okay. Jazz needed to evaluate the situation. What did he need? He needed to not die before he could make it home.

Air. Bad air would kill him the quickest.

Mechs were meant to be able to handle any conditions that the kaiju could throw at them. And given that Earth was truly a water world, that meant that they were able to fight completely submerged in the ocean for as long as any deployment, with oxygen generators and sealed cockpits and everything a human could need. Jazz had sensors telling him the oxygen and CO2 levels everywhere that was pressurized. And he was so so glad that the principle worked in reverse. Who knew what kind of atmosphere he was dealing with here?

Well, he supposed he could find out. He vented an emergency airlock to the planet's atmosphere, filling it with the mystery gases. And he watched the sensors in the airlock closely as it resealed with a hiss.

It wasn't good. 94% carbon dioxide. 3% nitrogen, 2% argon, fractions of a percent of oxygen and water and carbon monoxide and other molecules that the sensors weren't calibrated to detect.

Earth had about 20% oxygen in the atmosphere. He needed that 20% to live.

He looked out over the barren dusty landscape. Less than a percent oxygen. This was a dead world. How did the kaiju survive here? The platform that the portal was generated on, it was just open to the sky, and there was nothing around it. Was this why they were attacking Earth? They'd destroyed their own planet so completely that they needed to invade another?

Jazz stared at the thin white sky and desperately wished it would morph into something familiar. That this reality would warp like a dream from alien to the comfortable. He thought of blue sky and a gentle breeze and tried to will it into being. Fluffy white clouds and the distant sounds of life. Of birds chirping, of laughter and singing, of the warm golden sunlight.

All at once Jazz was hit with the acrid ache of missing home. Of missing Earth. He watched the alien mech march towards him across alien soil under an alien sky and an alien star, and wished that he could wake up.

But reality reasserted itself as it often did. He couldn't just emerge on Earth from this alien world like he could disentangle his psyche from Bebop. He had to find his own way home. And this portal was busted.

The robo-alien said something that was like a modem fucking a chainsaw, gesturing towards the destroyed portal console. Then he rotated his arm in a great arch to a point on the horizon. Then he repeated the motion, saying the same weird modem-chainsaw-tango-phrase. It was all double layered and complex and absolutely impossible for Jazz to mimic without a synthesizer, a bass, a bootleg copy of Garage Band, and at least an hour alone with them all. Jazz looked between the two places that the alien had pointed between.

Again, the gesture was repeated. Jazz stared for a long minute into the distance. The robo-alien stared at him in turn. He zoomed in as far as Bebop's optical sensors would allow. And, there, just above the edge of the horizon, was the peak of another spire. A spire that looked a lot like the ones that towered above the portal platform.

"There's another portal generator..." Jazz whispered. He looked at the robo-alien, who was still staring at him expectantly. "There's another portal generator! We, we should go, there," he pointed with both of Bebop's hands.

The robo-alien stared at him for another moment before he just—started walking in that direction, with his head still turned unnervingly towards Jazz. Jazz whooped, shouted, "Yes!" and followed. The robo-alien finally turned his head forward, in the direction he was walking.

"You know, I can't keep calling you robo-alien," Jazz mused as they walked. Robo-alien glanced at him out of the corner of his optic, but didn't reply as he kept up his brisk pace.

"C'mon, we can do the caveman thing, right?" Jazz asked. He deepened his voice to say, "Me, Jazz. You, screech-chitter, or whatever."

Again, no response. Jazz jogged Bebop ahead a few paces and stopped right in front of the robo-alien, forcing him to stop short to not collide their mechs.

"Jazz," Jazz said, bringing Bebop's hand to her chest, right over the cockpit. The robo-alien's optics dilated as he watched Jazz's motions closely. "Jazz," Jazz repeated, with the same motion.

The robo-alien hummed (even that was harmonized with at least three different notes, shit, he needed to get some kind of sound analysis going to see if he could pull apart the layers), then... wait. Was that?

It wasn't quite Jazz's name. There wasn't a hard consonant at the start, just a droning vowel falling into something that sounded—like a swarm of angry bees. But it was almost Jazz's name. "Jazz," he repeated, and the robo-alien repeated the droning-vowel-to-angry-bees.

"Jazz," Jazz said as slow as he could over all the sounds.

"Dyah-[angry-bees-buzz]", said the robo-alien.

"Juh, juh, juh," Jazz tried, "Jazz."

"Dyah, jyah, jah," the robo-alien replied, "Jah-[angry-bees-buzz]."

"You know what, that's close enough," Jazz said. He looked back out over the barren wasteland. There was no cover anywhere, no trees, no structures. It was like the Mojave. He turned to the robo-alien, gesturing at the alien's chest. "Your turn."

The robo-alien was undeterred by his tacit acceptance. "Jah-[slightly-less-intense-bees]."

Jazz sighed. At this rate his name would get worn out, which he'd never thought could be possible. "Jazz," he said, trying to emphasize the totally-bee-less hiss that was the sound of his actual name.

"Jah-ss," the robo-alien said. Jazz winced. Apparently there needed to be some amount of buzz, otherwise his name sounded like it rhymed with ass, which he hadn't even realized was possible.

"Jazz," Jazz said.

"Jazz," the robo-alien agreed.

"Yes!" He exclaimed, nodding Bebop's head enthusiastically. The robo-alien just stared. "You got it, good job! Yes!"

"Jazz," the robo-alien said again.

"Yes, Jazz," Jazz said, bringing Bebop's hand over his chest again, then gesturing toward the robo-alien. "Your turn."

"Jazz," the robo-alien said, pointing his hand toward Bebop (with all his fingers extended). He brought the hand to his own chest and said something in that synthesizer language. There were so many layered sounds, high pitched pops and low pitched growls and rolling trilled purrs. It was short, but even then there was no way that Jazz could replicate all the components at once.

"Shit," Jazz murmured under his breath. "Uh..."

The robo-alien repeated the same sequence again. The closest sound that Jazz could even conceivably attempt was the popping noises, and maybe a growl. He gave it his best shot. He popped his mouth then growled, then trilled. Pop-growl-trill (and didn't that just roll off the tongue?) inclined his head slightly and repeated his name.

Jazz was starting to feel bad about giving the guy such a hard time about pronouncing his own name. "I can't do all that multi-layered shit with my mouth, man," Jazz tried to explain, but of course Pop-growl-trill didn't understand. "I might have to give you a nickname. Hope you don't mind."

He thought for a second. And then he just decided, in the great American spirit, to anglicize what he already had. "P'grr-ll." It needed a vowel. "Pr-ol." That sounded almost like, "Prowl."

The robo-alien just stared at him. "Prowl," Jazz said, pointing at the robo-alien's chest, then, "Jazz," as he pointed towards his cockpit.

There was an awkward pause. "Jazz," the robo-alien said as he pointed at Jazz. "P'grr-ll," he said as he pointed at his own.

"Yeah. Prowl," Jazz said, somewhat apologetically. "Sorry, man, there's really no other way."

The newly nicknamed Prowl stared at him with no comprehension. Then he said a long sentence in the robo-tongue as his dexterous fingers fiddled with something on his wrist. Jazz could only stare back as he unspooled some kind of rope or cable from just beneath his palm.

"What is that, some kinda winch?" Jazz asked, even as he knew he'd get no discernable answer. He leaned closer. Prowl obligingly showed the end of the cable, and Jazz recoiled a bit in horror. It looked like the mouth of a leech, hollow and cylindrical and covered with rows and rows of little metal teeth. Prowl pulled the cable back, likely sensing his hesitation.

"Okay..." Jazz said a little freaked out. He pointed one finger delicately at the leech cable. "What's that about?"

Prowl pointed towards the wrist opposite the cable. A small panel retracted (which was a very neat trick!) and there was what appeared to be a port, the inverse of the leech-mouth-cable. He slotted the cable into the port, waited a few seconds, then pulled it back out. Then he pointed at Jazz's wrists (wait, no, Bebop's wrists). Either way, Jazz was starting to get the gist. He raised his (Bebop's) hands in surrender. "Yeah, no, man, I don't—my mech doesn't have any of that."

All of the connections into Bebop's computers were safely inside the cockpit; there were no exterior ports. And Jazz was not about to open up the cockpit to let the alien insert his leech-cable (not to mention that would depressurize the cockpit to the poisonous atmosphere), because he had some respect for operational security. This alien was still an alien, despite his seemingly helpful demeanor.

Prowl reached for his (no, Bebop's) wrist anyway. Jazz let him, and Prowl ran his dexterous fingers (seriously, Jazz was so jealous) over the same areas, obviously hunting for similar panels. When he (as expected) didn't find any, he was undeterred. He pointed at Jazz's (Bebop's) neck, and Jazz let him poke around Bebop's collar for a minute. After he had failed to materialize anything that would mate with a leech cable he withdrew and retracted the cable into his wrist neatly, obviously stumped.

"Let's just keep going," Jazz suggested. He turned toward the spire on the horizon. "We got a long way yet to go, and not a lot of time to get there."

They started walking again.

Jazz was used to maneuvering Bebop for sort walks, but most of the time the support crews got them out to an incursion then picked them up. He adopted the most efficient lope that he could on her strange legs, though it took some trial and error. Prowl walked with easy precision, constantly scanning the surroundings. His flat wings were always held at attention behind him.

Then, fifteen minutes into their journey, just as the platform of the portal behind them was disappearing behind the horizon, Prowl stiffened and stopped.

Jazz immediately became alert. He didn't see anything—

And then a kaiju erupted from the ground.

Jazz grappled with the digger, startled. He had to keep a hold on the thing's shoulders while it snapped sharply just in front of Bebop's optical suite. After a moment of struggle Jazz managed to wrestle the digger up and tossed it away.

He engaged his blades just as another kaiju snapped its jaw around Bebop's forearm. A land-shark, taking advantage of the digger's distraction. Jazz manuevered its head to stab down its spine, narrowly missing Bebop's other arm in his haste to get the damn thing dead.

Damage warnings had sprung up in Bebop's HUD and Jazz held in a hiss; they were all minor armor reports, nothing to compromise anything important, but that didn't mean it didn't—

Behind him Prowl made an awful grinding sound. Jazz spun, pulling his blaster out. Another land-shark was clamped on to one of Prowl's wings, and the robo-alien was obviously struggling to get it off his back.

Jazz ducked, swinging under the flailing land-shark to grab onto its legs with one hand, bringing his blade up slice through its spine with the other. The land-shark fell limp to the ground.

Prowl had materialized his gun from somewhere and shot another encroaching land-shark dead before it could jump and clamp its teeth into either of them. The land-shark fell over with a smoking hole between its eyes.

Jazz glanced around, slowly standing, but there were no immediately visible threats.

No immediately visible threats.

"Wait, Prowl, there's—" Jazz looked around frantically for the digger. "There's one missing."

Prowl said something. "We missed one," Jazz hissed. "Missing, look," he finally spotted the hole; it had been hidden behind a rock. "There's one missing."

They stood regarding the hole for a long moment. Did Prowl understand the significance of the digger hole? Jazz looked around frantically: sometimes you got lucky and they disturbed the surface for a few meters before erupting from the ground—

Prowl spun abruptly. He took out a small glowing blue cube from a pocket(?) in his side and threw it precisely at the digger that had sprung from the ground a few meters behind him. Then he shot the cube just as it entered the diggers mouth and the cube exploded.

Digger bits rained down around them in gross gloopy globs.

"Ew," Jazz said elegantly. He rose from his crouch. "Okay, I think that's all of them, I don't think we missed any more."

"'iss'd," hissed Prowl. He was staring intently at Jazz.

"What?" Jazz asked, gesturing an exaggerated questioning shrug with his shoulders. Wait.

"Wha," Prowl said, copying Jazz's (Bebop's, he needed to remember that they were separate, that they weren't really one) shrug.

Jazz stared at Prowl for a long second. Prowl repeated, "Wha," with the questioning gesture. Then he pointed at one of the dead kaiju. He said, "Wha," without the questioning gesture, pointed at Jazz and said clearly, "Jazz," before pointing at himself and saying, "Wha. P-grr-ll." Then, "Wha," with the questioning shrug and pointed at the dead kaiju.

"Are... are you asking me something?" Jazz asked. Prowl repeated the sequence again. "Are you asking me 'what word?'"

"Wha," Prowl gestured with an exaggerated questioning shrug at the dead body.

"They're the enemy. What word," Jazz said, pointing at the dead kaiju. "Enemy."

"Een-mee," Prowl said, though the vowels had a distinctly screechy quality.

They did the back and forth a bit until Prowl could say it. Then Prowl said, "'iss'd. Enemy. Wha' wo'd." And he made the shrug gesture again.

Jazz stared at him for a long moment. "What word... Missed?"

"[hum]'iss'd," Prowl said.

They repeated the back and forth to get Prowl's pronunciation right.

"What word," Prowl said. "Missed."

Jazz thought for a second. He gestured at the digger. Prowl's cool gaze followed his line of sight. Then Jazz mimed struggling with the digger and tossed the imaginary kaiju towards the hole they found. Jazz pointed down the hole, then made the questioning shrug and gestured vaguely around before shrugging again. "We missed one. Missed."

"Missed," Prowl said. Jazz couldn't identify if there was any expression on the robo-alien's face, but he was tempted to classify the alien as contemplative.

Then Prowl gestured towards the horizon and the slowly growing portal spire, and they started on again.

Jazz watched his companion closely. One of the wings on his back—the one that the land-shark had hung from—was hanging low and occasionally sparks would descend from it. Could the robo-aliens feel pain? Sometimes, mech pilots would develop sympathy pains with damage in their mechs; it was a thing whispered about it hushed tones. A sign that someone was drifting too far and too long into the machine.

But Prowl was an alien. All pain really was the body telling informing the consciousness that something was wrong. Jazz figured that it was probably some mark of sentience, and that Prowl was probably in pain.

He didn't act like how a human or an animal would act. But that made some amount of sense; why would a robot hiss or shout? Jazz had vague recollections of a theory that the human pain-shouting reflex was a communal act to warn the tribe of danger and potentially scare off the attacker. Did robo-aliens have community, or were they like octopus, intelligent but individualistic? Prowl was working with Jazz towards the spire, but he probably had his own goals for going there.

Still, Jazz couldn't shut off his sympathy. He scanned their environment as they walked for another half hour or so before (finally) some small amount of salvation appeared.

"Hey, Prowl, look," Jazz said, pointing at a small crevice in the ground. Prowl jerkily followed the line that Jazz's arm made and froze. "I'm gonna go check it out, might be a cave."

Jazz jogged forward (leaving a lightly swaying robo-alien behind), sure enough, there was a (relatively) small cave in the crevice. It looked like a place that lava might have flowed once, like those great lava tubes that Jazz had heard about in Hawaii. He ducked inside to scout it; the cave was cut off about fifty meters in by a collapse. No kaiju hiding out! Finally, a stroke of luck in this endless day.

He jogged back out to find Prowl swaying dangerously to one side. "C'mon, follow me," he said as he caught Prowl by the elbows. He pulled on Prowl's arms lightly. "That's it. Follow me."

Jazz kept murmuring, "Follow me," as he walked backwards towards the cave. Prowl stared at him with those big blue-white optics. It was crazy: this close up Jazz could pick out the little metal irises in them that contracted and moved as Prowl scanned around. He could see the little interconnected intricate plates that made up Prowl's face. He had eyebrows that moved and accentuated his frown.

They got into the cave. Prowl looked around. Jazz gestured at a big rock. "C'mon, rest up a bit."

Once Prowl had settled on the rock, Jazz backed off. He wasn't entirely sure what to do next, just that they needed to get some cover to recuperate.

"[hiss]-[trill]ow [screech]," Prowl said, looking intently at Jazz. His hands went for his hip, and a small box appeared in it. He didn't actually dip his hand into a pocket, just passed it over a part of his hip and the box fell into his palm.

"What?" Jazz asked, still staring somewhat dazed at the magically appearing box. Prowl was pulling out strange silvery fabric squares from it.

"[hiss]-[trill]ow [screech]," Prowl said again. He looked at Jazz's (Bebop's) arm, where one of the land-sharks had bitten her.

Jazz brought the arm forward and Prowl pulled it into his lap, leaving Jazz awkwardly crouched next to him. Prowl laid one of the silvery fabric squares out over the worst of the damage. He tugged on two opposite corners and suddenly the fabric melted and fused into the armor underneath, covering up the damage. Jazz pulled back and ran the opposite hand over the surface; it was like it was new metal, a patch.

Mech first aid.

Jazz looked up at Prowl, grinning. "Oh, man, that's so cool."

"[hiss]-[trill]ow [screech]," Prowl said to him. "What word."

Jazz hummed as he tried to figure out what Prowl was trying to say. It almost sounded like... "Follow me?"

"[hiss]-ollow [hum]-ee," Prowl said.

They ran the phrase back and forth a few times before Prowl got the pronunciation down.

Then Prowl raised on of the silvery first aid patches. He looked over at his damaged wing and tried to reach the damage but it was an awkward angle. He just couldn't reach the flat panel of the wing with his opposite arm.

"Hey," Jazz said. "I can get that."

Jazz took the silvery patch from Prowl's hand and ducked around behind him. Most of the damage to the wing was concentrated in a big semi-circle where the land-shark had bit down. The single patch wouldn't cover all the damage: Jazz estimated that he'd probably need three for each side, six total.

Prowl made a painful sounding grinding noise as Jazz touched the wing and he immediately backed off. Jazz revised his earlier assessment: the robo-aliens did feel pain, and did express it, it was just that Prowl was a stone cold badass. "I gotta touch it, Prowler," Jazz said.

He came back to gently press the patch against the top of the damaged area, pulling it taunt gently against the surface. The patch melted and covered the damage. Prowl handed him another patch when he gestured to the pile.

It took about fifteen minutes to patch up Prowl's wing, but it looked a lot less worrisome once covered in weird robo-bandages. Jazz hoped that the patches had some kind of anti-septic in them, assuming that robo-aliens worried about that sort of thing.

Jazz retreated away once the patching was done, settling against the wall opposite Prowl. The robo-alien slumped slightly on his rock.

Prowl pulled another one of those glowing blue cubes from a pocket in his hip. Jazz started, looking around for the threat, but Prowl didn't throw it. Instead he brought it to his mouth and ate the explosive.

Jazz rocked back in shock, but then it made a certain amount of sense; Prowl was a robot, of course he ran on something explosive. Bebop ran on a nuclear generator herself. It was kinda crazy that Prowl had a doubled used for explosives in his pockets, though (Jazz wished he could have pockets in Bebop).

He figured that he should also try to get some fuel. He absently checked the inventory files in Bebop's computers, a number appearing in his HUD.

Jazz read the number once, then once again for good measure.

Eighteen. There were eighteen packages in storage. Even if he rationed them to once a day—maybe once every two days?— he'd barely last a month. And despite joking with Hot Rod about starting a Watney Contingency, he'd never actually stashed a potato in Bebop's cab, not that that'd help because he had no idea how to farm potatoes, he wasn't a botanist, not to mention the fact that he was stuck in a barren wasteland with nothing but an experimental mech suit and a robo-alien who would be no help because he seemingly subsided on bright blue florescent turbo-fuel that doubled as explosive—

A part of Jazz realized he was panicking. That part had no idea how to stop and started to panic, too.

"Jazz!" A loud shout came from what felt very far away, and Jazz automatically jerked back in surprise. Prowl's white-blue optics were right in front of Bebop's, the shining centers roving frantically over Bebop's face in circles.

"Eighteen!" Jazz gasped, and then he rocked forward out Prowl's hold, his hands going up around his head, his torso scrunching into a ball, his head between his strangely jointed knees.

"Jazz!" He could still hear Prowl's frantic calling from above, but he could only gasp, pushing with all his might on his head (and his fingers felt all wrong) and oh god, he was going to die out here, he was going to starve because eighteen wasn't enough! He would starve, a slow, painful wasting away, on an alien world with nothing and no-one to mourn him—

Except—the frantic robo-alien companion that was still calling his name, and calling something else—something like, "Jazz! What wood! Ee-teen! What wood!"

And the absurdity of that, for a moment, was a shock—it was such a shock that he jolted upright and laughed. He sat uncomfortably straight with his oddly jointed fingers and his double jointed legs and laughed until he sobbed. And then he took a long moment to just sit in this situation.

There were still repeated calls of, "Jazz. What word. Ee-teen," from his surroundings. It was a rhythm, a loop, a regular beat. Jazz hummed along with Prowl for a minute, and then he relaxed back against the wall of the cave.

Jazz's sensors came online (when had they turned off?) to Prowl crouched just before him. His wide flat wings were flat against his back, framing the side of his head. It made him look alert, like a dog with their ears perked. He was still repeating the phrase, "Jazz. What word. Ee-teen," like a mantra.

Jazz cleared his throat and said, "It's a number. What word: eighteen." He enunciated as clearly as he could.

Prowl blinked. "Ay-teen."

"Eighteen," Jazz said.

"Eighteen," Prowl said. "What word. Nuhm-er."

"God, you're relentless," Jazz grumbled. He was tired, but this was a good distraction from the niggling anxiety that still wormed in the back of his brain. "It's a... Actually, maybe it'll be easier with a demonstration."

Jazz sat up, folding his digigrade legs the best he could. He smoothed out some of the sandy dust on the bottom of the cave to make a flat canvas. "One," Jazz said, making a single tally in the dust. Prowl diligently crouched to his side, watching Jazz's clumsy fingers carve into the ground. "Two," he said, adding another next to it, then again for three and four, and then on five he put a slash through the first four. Prowl sent him an unreadable assessing look at that, but continued to watch without interrupting.

When Jazz got to eight, Prowl twitched slightly, his wings perking up. "Eight-teen," he said, making the question gesture.

"No," Jazz said with a little laugh. "Jesus, you're impatient. We'll get there. Eight," he emphasized, pointing at the eight tallies in the dust. Then he continued on.

When on ten he added another slash through the four proceeding marks, and started a new row of tallies for eleven. On thirteen, Prowl started to make a little whirring noise, which became louder the further Jazz got into the teens. Prowl said, "Eighteen," with Jazz on the eighteenth tally, and Jazz responded with a delighted "Yes!"

They paused for a moment. Jazz was grinning, Prowl emitting his little whirr that was almost like a purr, and then Prowl said, "Eighteen. Un. What word."

"Impatient!" Jazz admonished and they continued. Jazz gave up on the tally marks after thirty, and insisted that they stop reciting numbers after one hundred. He felt like a little kid again, getting excited about learning all the numbers up to one hundred. He had the abrupt sense-memory of being a little kindergartner on the bus, excitedly regaling the driver with all the numbers that he knew.

But Prowl was determined to learn human numbers. Once Jazz had refused to recite higher and higher numbers, he started drilling Jazz on his pronunciation. As always, he struggled with stringing vowels and consonants together.

"You're lucky I'm such a good friend," Jazz said indulgently, shaking his head slightly, after correcting Prowl's pronunciation on all the numbers up to fifty (he was very thankful that English was relatively formulaic in the way it treated numbers, unlike the horror stories he'd heard of French).

"What word," Prowl said with the question gesture, "ren."

Jazz mentally replayed what he'd said in his head, trying to work out which word Prowl was asking about. "Ah, friend," he enunciated slowly.

"What word, [static-hiss]-rend," Prowl asked with his question gesture.

Jazz waved a finger between their chests. "Jazz, Prowl, friend."

Prowl watched the gesture closely. "Pr-wl, Jazz, f-riend," he said, copying the gesture.

"Yep, yes, together," Jazz made the same waving gesture, "we are friend."

"Friend," Prowl repeated slowly.

"Yes, Prowl, friend. Jazz, friend," Jazz said. Then he laughed. "Jesus, we are such cavemen." He deepened his voice. "Me, Jazz, Prowl's friend."

"Friend," Prowl agreed.

Jazz laughed, feeling strange and lightheaded. "Yeah, friend. I—" he sighed. "I need sleep. Rest. I don't suppose you sleep, huh?"

He mimed resting his head on hands. Prowl watched him closely, but otherwise didn't indicate that he understood. Jazz sighed again. He settled down on the dusty floor of the cave, disturbing a great plume of dust up as he did. "I need a break, Prowler. For at least an hour."

Prowl looked him up and down for a moment, then settled against the wall by the cave entrance, mirroring his posture. Jazz took that as some kind of acceptance, and started to—shit. He hadn't realized quite how drifted into the machine he'd gotten. Bebop felt like his body; he couldn't disconnect. His brain literally didn't know how. It was like consciously trying to fall asleep. He flexed his (Bebop's) fingers. Shit, shit, he needed to run through the mental exercises...

Meanwhile, Prowl was disconnecting something from his head and setting it up on the ground at the entrance of the cave. He pulled a little telescoping rod out, and then unfolded a strange shaped bit of metal from it. Then, suddenly, it started to produce sound. Prowl fiddled with the device some, adjusting the angle of the rod and tapping at the sides of the device. Suddenly the device produced a voice. It was garbled, the distinct sounds of robo-tongue barely distinguishable over the static.

They listened to the voice for a moment. Like all robo-tongue he'd heard the sounds were harsh and alien. Jazz was just starting to tune it out, starting to run the exercises in his head (he could feel his toes, separate from Bebop, how he had less joints in his legs, in different places) when a sound caught his attention.

In the middle of the staticy jumble of robo-sounds, the device very distinctly said the word, "Earth."

Jazz sat bolt upright from where he'd been slumped against the cave wall. Prowl looked at him over his shoulder from where he was hunched over the little device. But Jazz was staring at the thing that had said the name of his home. The device was still saying something in robo-tongue, and then, again, in the midst of static and robo-talk it said, "Earth."

He scrambled over towards the speaker. Prowl startled, picking up the device and holding it protectively to his chest. "Get it—repeat that!" Jazz exclaimed.

Prowl stared at him, the device cupped in his hands just emitting static now. Jazz groaned in frustration. "Earth! It said, 'Earth!' Earth!" Prowl looked down at the device in his hands, then back at Jazz. "Earth!" Jazz said insistently. "Earth, that's home, Earth! Please Prowl, please, play that again! Repeat it! Earth."

"'r[hiss]," Prowl tried.

"No, not you, get that," Jazz pointed at the device, "to repeat it again!" He made a spinning motion with his hands. "Repeat!"

"[trill]ee[pop]eet," Prowl said.

"Repeat," Jazz said insistently, making another spinning motion by revolving his hands over each other, then pointing at the device, "that!"

"[trill]eepeet," Prowl murmured, looking at the little device. He slowly lowered it to the ground at the entrance again. Then he looked at Jazz for confirmation.

"Yes!" Jazz said. "Repeat! Earth!"

Prowl fiddled with the device, laying in out flat in one palm, and then the same sound started up again. It might have been a recording, it might have been a message, but exactly what it was didn't really matter. Because again, in the middle of the screeches and pops and trills of robo-tongue was the glorious sound of the name of home.

"Earth," Jazz breathed.

"'rth," Prowl tried, staring intently at Jazz.

"Earth," Jazz said. "Home. Earth."

Prowl sat against the wall of the cave, staring alternately between Jazz and the device that was still repeating the same message over and over. Jazz could only stare at the little device, listening to it.

He'd been operating under the assumption that this was First Contact with the robo-aliens, but that was evidently not the case. How could it, if Prowl had a message that contained the most quintessential terrestrial word. But yet... Prowl hadn't known any English when they'd first met, and he seemed just as shocked by Jazz's connection with the message as Jazz was.

Jazz slumped against the wall opposite Prowl. The robo-alien tapped at the side of the device and the message stopped repeating.

Prowl said a word. Or... it was less of a word and more a short musical phrase. It was a... leitmotif, more than anything. When Jazz looked at him and made the exaggerated question gesture, he puffed up his outer plating (Jazz was still so jealous of that, what the hell, it was so expressive) and a blast of air came out the sides of his torso, blowing up little puffs of dust off the ground. Prowl said another, longer musical phrase, which contained the first. It, like all robo-talk, was many layered and complex. Jazz's musical ear could pick out multi-toned harmonics on each note. It sounded like a... major third, maybe? It was hard to distinguish with the clipped way that Prowl talked.

Jazz tilted his head, confused. Prowl was staring at him rather intensely. Then he said, "One. Two. Three. Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen. What word," and made the exaggerated question gesture.

What? "Repeat," Jazz asked. He listened intently.

Prowl did the puffy sigh out his sides again. Then, he repeated, "One. Two. Three. Five. Seven. Eleven. Thirteen. What word."

Jazz listened carefully. It was obviously a specific sequence of numbers. But Jazz had never been the best at keeping track of sequences of numbers; he'd always had to have people repeat themselves when giving a phone number verbally. "One, two, three, five, seven, eleven?" he murmured to himself, but loud enough that Prowl evidently heard.

"Thirteen," Prowl supplied. The question gesture. "What word."

"Right, what word, you impatient sonuvabitch..." Jazz had to think. "One, two, three..." which was just the first three numbers, but then it skipped four to, "five..." then skipped six to, "seven..." Why the skips? Then a big jump to, "eleven," skip twelve to, "thirteen..." Maybe, the next number in the sequence? What did the numbers have in common? "Fifteen," Jazz guessed, with the question gesture.

Prowl said, "Seventeen. Reepeet, one, two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-seven, forty-one, forty-three, forty-seven—"

"Stop!" Jazz interrupted. He was sure Prowl would stop reciting numbers only when he exhausted his limited list of English numbers, now that Jazz had apparently opened the floodgates by saying the wrong number in the sequence. He had a feeling that Prowl could have kept going for a while, as if Jazz heard enough numbers that he'd suddenly understand what Prowl was getting at. The rule must be something that could go on forever, and wasn't just about skipping numbers in a specific sequence. God, he was really regretting not paying more attention in math. If it wasn't the next number in the sequence, then... They were all, what, odd after two? "Is it a special name? For the sequence?" he mused to himself. To Prowl he said, "Repeat."

"One, two, three, five, seven—" Prowl started reciting diligently. Jazz joined him on, "eleven, thirteen, seventeen—"

But he interrupted him with, "Stop," after that. Then he groaned in frustration, lifting his hands to his face. His weird inflexible digits wrapped strangely around his head. Oh, the weird ghost sensations were back (he felt like he could feel pressure in his fingers when he pressed, unlike the usual mech feedback of motor torque); he really needed to decouple soon. But this was obviously important to Prowl. He had to figure this out before he disconnected and slept.

Prowl could see him struggling and obviously decided on a new tactic. He smoothed a flat surface in the dust of the cave, he poked a single dot (with his middle finger; Jazz had to hold in an inappropriate hysterical cackle at the absurd visual of a mech flipping him off). "One." Next to it, two more, "Two," and then in the same line a little triangle for, "Three." But then, he put two sets of two dots in a little square off to the side for, "Four." But then five dots were in a pentagram next to the triangle for three for, "Five." Six was two triangles next to each other, in the same row as four. Seven was placed in a circle in the first row, but eight was two little squares next to six, and nine was three triangles next to it, then ten was two pentagrams next to that. Eleven in a circle of dots next to seven. Twelve was a little stack of four triangles next to ten, and thirteen was another circle next to eleven.

And that's when Jazz got it, and felt like an idiot. God, he was overtired and starting to crash. Now he just had to remember the word—"Prime! They're prime numbers, what word: prime."

Prowl stared at him intensely. "Pahm," he said, struggling as always with vowels.

"Prime," Jazz repeated, exaggerating the flow from the hard popping consonant into the sharp note of the vowel, the smooth glide into the final humming consonant.

"Prime," Prowl mimicked the same exaggerated slowness.

"Prime," Jazz said, faster.

"Prime," Prowl agreed, getting the inflection perfect. Then he pointed to the speaker on the floor and the staticy, garbled message played again. Jazz felt a pang of longing when he heard the word 'Earth' spoken again in a voice that was not his own nor Prowl's. "What. Prime." His strange intense blue-white optics were digging into Jazz.

"Prime. Miss'd." Prowl said. "Prime. Ea-rth."

"Prime, enemy?" Jazz suggested with the question gesture. Dread was pooling in his core. Was this a message from some kind of kaiju outpost on Earth that they'd missed?

"Prime, friend. Miss'd." Prowl exaggeratedly looked around. "Prowl, follow me."

"It's a message from a friend..." Jazz murmured to himself. "Prowl follow missing Prime?"

"Yes," Prowl confirmed, though the end was a little hissy. "Prowl follow me-ss-ing Prime. Miss-adge, what word," with the question gesture.

Jazz pointed to the little speaker device and said, "Repeat." Prowl obligingly started up the garbled recording again. "Message," Jazz said as the recording warbled and hissed.

"Prime mess-adge," Prowl said, soft.

That seemed to be it, seemed to be all Prowl had needed to convey. He settled back against the wall, cupping the little device in his palms. Jazz ran through his exercises, finally managing to remember that he was human, separate from the machine. He disconnected from Bebop's body. He stowed the connections away so that he could use the harness as a bed. It wouldn't be a comfortable sleep, but it was better than nothing. He ate one of the rations, resolving to spread them out, to save them for as long as possible.

What a strange thing, Jazz mused as he drifted off in his harness, to be named after a numbered sequence...

Jazz woke up to the world shaking him in his hammock—that wasn't a hammock, not really, but Bebop's mech harness. He shot upright as the harness swayed. Then he scrambled for the stowed connections; the only way to see what might be happening (be it an attack or an earthquake or a mechnapping) was to connect up.

Once he was in, though, the shaking had stopped. And there was an unfamiliar mech standing before Bebop's slumped frame, regarding her with a critical red gaze.

The mech was terrifying. And huge. The only Earth-mecha that could even sort of rival his mega-ginormous size was Orion's Proto-1, and even then, this guy was broader and spikier. His red optics smoldered in the spike-lined pit of his face, and when he talked Jazz could swear that even his robo-teeth were pointed.

Jazz initiated all of Bebop's weaponry automatically. He kept his eyes on the threat even as Bebop's systems murmured to him about the status of his ammo and his blades.

Prowl stepped between them, his back to Jazz, his hands raised and obviously empty, held straight out from his shoulders in some sort of T-pose. He said something in robo-tongue to the massive mega-spiky mech, and Mega-spiky responded in kind.

"Jazz," Prowl said, gesturing waving his hand between his own chest and Mega-spiky. "Friend."

Mega-spiky growled something, and Prowl responded sharply.

"Right," Jazz said slowly. "Prowl, friend. Mega-spiky... also friend."

"Friend," Prowl repeated, gesturing between himself and Mega-spiky (that was too much of a mouthful, Jazz resolved to call him Mega from now on).

"Where the fuck did he come from then?" Jazz asked. Prowl just looked at him in incomprehension, and Mega did the same over Prowl's head. Mega hissed something, and Prowl responded shortly. Jazz groaned. Their shared vocabulary was so limited. "Missed." He made the question gesture, and pointed to Mega.

"Prowl," Prowl gestured towards his own chest. "Mess-adge," Prowl pointed at Mega.

Jazz finally relaxed. "Oh, okay, we're in an 'E.T. phone home' situation."

Mega turned abruptly and left the cave. Strapped to his back was an absolutely massive sword that stretched all the way from his shoulder to his knees. It was badass.

"Jazz, follow me," Prowl said, turning to follow Mega out of their temporary shelter.

"Okay, less of an E.T. phone home situation," Jazz said, jogging Bebop forward to catch up. "Why am I coming with?"

Prowl glanced at him sidelong.

"Are we—woah," Jazz stopped short.

Just to the side of the cave entrance was some kind of squat vehicle. It had wings and huge rocket engines, but compared to Mega it looked small. He had to duck down to walk into the interior, hunched nearly in half.

"Are we—alright," Jazz muttered to himself as Prowl just kept moving forward. Prowl likewise had to duck slightly, but not nearly as much. Jazz crouched, trailing one of Bebop's hands on the ceiling of the low space (that was likely at least four meters tall; he had to remember that mechs were huge) to keep track of where it was.

Mega was storing his super-sword off to one side. There was some kind of custom made mount for it that popped out from the wall. Then he claimed the only chair-like spot in the entire rocket ship, behind what looked like a control panel.

"Are we hitching a ride to the portal?" Jazz asked Prowl with the exaggerated question gesture.

Prowl gestured towards a bench next to a narrow window behind where Mega was settling. Alright, so Mega had piloted this rocket ship to run a little rescue mission for Prowl, and now he was giving Jazz a lift to the portal home, to Earth. Jazz could roll with that. He sat.

Some kind of safety harness automatically deployed over Bebop's chest as soon as Jazz sat down (awkward as ever, with Bebop's leg design). When he looked at Prowl, mildly alarmed, Prowl gestured to the connection in the center. When Jazz touched it, the harness released. Then Mega snapped something and the harness redeployed. Alright, this was a seatbelts on adventure.

Prowl settled into the bench opposite Jazz, and didn't flinch as his harness auto-deployed around him. There were even special straps to accommodate his wings; robo-aliens had fancy seatbelt tech. The ship rumbled to life a moment later, and Jazz settled back into his harness as he felt the acceleration increase. Then the acceleration kept increasing for an alarmingly long period of time.

He glanced out the little window next to him. They were going straight up, not moving toward the portal spire.

Jazz pointed towards the portal spire disappearing in the distance as they rocketed away. "Wait, where are we going? Prowl. Portal. Earth," he insisted.

"Enemy," Prowl said insistently. He said something to Mega, who said something offhand in response as he piloted. Prowl pointed down at the rapidly shrinking portal spire. "Twenty-six enemy. Three friend." He gestured in a circle to encompass the three allies in the little rocket ship. He pointed in the trajectory they were moving. "Twelve friend."

"What?" Jazz asked. "Are we... going to go get back-up?"

Prowl just stared at him.

"I guess I am just gonna have to trust that we are going to get back-up," Jazz said. "I guess I am just gonna have to trust that twelve more guys are going to be able to take on twenty-six kaiju, holy shit, that's a lot of kaiju."

Mech pilots generally had to take kaiju one-on-one. The newer models were better; most mechs built after Orion's Proto-1 could handle small groups, maybe two of the big guys, and even tag-team a Commander. Jazz didn't know what the demographics of those twenty-six kaiju were, but fifteen mechs against that number... that was a difficult fight, but winnable.

Jazz watched the portal planet shrink slowly into the distance. From space it had a few distinctive features, like a big canyon that carved across its north flank.

They were silent for the rest of the trip. Slowly out the front viewport a shape grew larger and larger. A massive ship hung in the perpetual twilight of the stars (it hit Jazz then, all over again, that he was in space, that he was where no human had gone before, suck it Neil Armstrong). The ship honestly matched Mega's vibe; it was purple and kinda spiky. Menacing, in a strange alien way. Mega docked the little shuttle in a bay, shut down the systems, got up and transparently pressured them down the ramp. Jazz hastily hit the disconnect on his harness and followed Prowl out.

At the bottom of the ramp were two more robo-aliens. They were both skinny and lithe, but in different ways; one was very arms heavy, the other had sharp wings jutting from his shoulders, framing his pointed face. Sharp-wings said something (his robo-tongue was decidedly on the screechy end of the spectrum), stepping forward.

Prowl said something sharp to him, and Sharp-wings back off slightly. The other new mech (who was mostly arms and a disturbingly blank face) gestured with one massive arm off towards a door. Prowl stomped off in that direction. Jazz followed close behind, watching the two new mechs carefully. Long-arms said something to Mega, and as he spoke a little wave formed on his face to match the noise: it was like a screen! Oh, Jazz was so jealous of that, that was so cool. If Bebop had that, he could do so much! Ticker-tape rolling messages or emojis. He immediately upgraded Long-arm's name to Wavy, in appreciation of that neat trick.

They all marched down a massive metal lined hall. The ceiling was easily tall enough to accommodate Mega's tall form as he skulked menacingly just behind Bebop. Jazz deliberately tried to tell himself that they were not capturing him, or taking him to some kind of lab to dissect, or whatever other little anxious thought that his brain could come up with. And even if they did he had the nice, comforting heavily armed Bebop surrounding him, protecting him.

Prowl turned suddenly into a room. It was dark and gloomy. The walls were lined with what looked like blank screens. He took up a position against the long table that dominated the center of the room, tapping at it. Suddenly a hologram appeared above the table; it was a sphere. On the lower hemisphere there was a large scar, almost like a canyon...

It was the portal planet, rendered in soft red glowing light.

Jazz crept closer. The robo-aliens all took places around the table, talking amongst themselves in their screechy and rumbling robo-tongue, but Jazz was entranced. Finally, some cool sci-fi tech!

Prowl gestured at the red holographic representation of the planet, and little spinning pyramids appeared magically following his fingers, spaced at regular intervals along the equator. He was explaining something in robo-tongue, and the other robo-aliens were listening intently.

One of the pyramids lit up a sickly green the same color as kaiju blood as Prowl pointed at it.

Sharp-wings whined something, and Prowl's response had that Prime leitmotif in it. Jazz perked up from his appraisal of the hologram as Prowl turned to him. "Jazz," Prowl said. "Earth."

"Yes!" Jazz said, animated. He pointed excitedly at Prowl. "Yes, Earth, home! Prime, your friend, his message said 'Earth!'"

Prowl turned back towards the others, as if to gauge their reactions.

Mega growled something from the opposite end of the table. Wavy straightened ever so slightly and replied in the flattest intonation that Jazz had heard yet from the robo-aliens, even flatter than Prowl.

There was some heated back and forth between Sharp-wings and Wavy (with most of the heat coming from the Sharp-wings side), but Mega interrupted them with another growl. That mech had a special way of making even the screechiest parts of robo-talk a menacing rolling rumble.

Wavy turned his blank screen of a face towards Prowl and said nothing. Jazz flicked his attention between them, feeling like he was refereeing a tennis match where he didn't know the rules. Prowl said something, and then Mega growled something, then Prowl snapped something harsh, his hand slamming down on the table surface. The hologram of the planet flickered, and everyone froze, staring at Prowl.

Point to Prowl, Jazz supposed.

Wavy said something that caused Prowl to stare at him for a long moment. Then his sharp regard turned to Jazz. "Jazz." Prowl said. He gestured at the table. "What word," with the question gesture.

"What word: table," Jazz responded, confused.

Instead of the typical back and forth of drilling pronunciation, Prowl just pointed at the hologram of the planet. "What word," with the question gesture.

"What word: hologram," Jazz said. "Or maybe planet?" But Prowl had already moved on. He pointed at the wall next, a screen on the back wall after that, the door. Jazz was so confused. What was going on? Prowl didn't try to drill any of those words, instead gesturing at a variety of things around the room and demanding their English names.

"What word," Prowl repeated. "What word. What word."

He'd run out of furniture and was now running through anatomy. Jazz was starting to get frustrated; what was the point of this little exercise? It wasn't like these were immediately useful, and Prowl wouldn't be able to point his way into fluent English in a couple of minutes.

"Do you want me to just talk?" Jazz finally blurted out. At Prowl's blank look, his frustration finally crested in a wave. "Have I ever told you how bullshit it is that y'all don't have a damn universal translator?" Jazz said, waving his arms about in exasperated frustration. The robo-aliens all watched him move impassively. "This is so annoying! You're super advanced alien robots, and you're telling me that you can't just plug into Bebop and learn English? Did you just—not have a Hoshi Sato? Where's my gay space communist utopia, where's the humans with weird foreheads and an allegorical society that we can learn an important sociological message from in forty minutes?! Why has all my favorite sci-fi lied to me about alien encounters?

"Nah, instead, I get caveman talk and—and—an impatient prick and Mega-spiky over there, and freaky Wavy, and—at the very least the assurance that you all understand absolutely none of this, thank god," Jazz finished with his head in his hands, Bebop's fingers wrapping strangely and familiarly all at once. He'd never spent such a long continuous stretch connected to his mech. There were usually gaps between deployments of at least a few days, and fights rarely lasted more than a few hours.

"Prowl," Jazz whined into his (Bebop's) hands. "What is going on?" He looked up to stare desperately between the mechs around the table. "What?" He gestured around the table with a desperate confused shrug. "I thought we were going to get back up? I thought I was going home. Earth." He looked at Prowl insistently. "Earth."

Prowl stared at him in that way he did, all alien intensity and incomprehension, finely tiled face nothing but a blank mask. Why make the face so detailed if he wasn't even going to use it? And it hit Jazz all over again: they were aliens. Who could say what they were thinking behind those expressionless faces? Did they even really understand him at all? Did they feel anything—anything at all—for his plight? Jazz supposed he should feel grateful that he wasn't spread out on a slab somewhere, Strange Encounters of the Third Kind style.

He didn't feel grateful. He felt small and scared and lost, surrounded by expressionless hard robo-faces without an ounce of humanity in them.

But that wasn't fair. There was just as much humanity in them as any mech. They felt pain. They felt some kind of comradery: Mega had come when Prowl called, and Prowl was obviously searching for his missing friend. There was something there, and maybe it was an alien sort of compassion but did it really matter what source the compassion came from, in the end?

Jazz took a deep breath, held it for a long moment, and let it out as slow as he could. He couldn't quite disentangle his body enough from Bebop to really feel his chest expand, or the air enter his lungs, or the breeze on his lips. Still, the familiar motion helped.

The robo-aliens were conferring amongst themselves.

Prowl abruptly dismissed the holographic representation of the planet. He then took a finger (his middle finger, again, and again Jazz had transform his delighted shout into a cough; it really looked like Prowl was flipping Mega off) and traced a glowing trail of light in thin air. Three lines made into a perfect inverted equilateral triangle, then another three made an overlapping triangle the same size, their top faces perfectly aligned and their bottom points spaced apart. Prowl poked a dot just under of the bottom point of the first triangle and said, "Prime." He stared intensely for a moment at Jazz. Then he poked a second dot next to the first, under the point of the second triangle. He pointed with a flat hand at Mega, who glared at Jazz with smoldering coals across the table.

Prowl said something, another short musical phrase not unlike the Prime leitmotif. It sounded like it could have come from the same composition.

Just above the Prime dot, inside the first triangle but not in the overlapping space of the second, Prowl placed another dot and intoned, "Prowl." Then another dot next to it inside the second triangle, just above the Mega dot. He gestured at Sharp-wings and said something (a name?) in robo-tongue. Then he started another row of dots inside the triangles above the first row of two, gesturing to Wavy (with another name?) after he poked another dot above the Mega one.

Having run out of mechs in the room but not out of space in the triangles, Prowl started another row. The dots were spaced oddly, and after the fourth row Jazz realized why: each row had a prime number of dots in it, each with one dot solely within one of the two triangles, like some kind of strange triangular Venn diagram. The first row (with Prowl and Sharp-wings) inside the point of triangles had two, the second (with Wavy) had three (with one dot in the overlapping space), the third five (with three dots in the overlapping space), the next seven (with five dots in the overlapping space). Prowl perfectly fit the final seventh row of thirteen dots just under the flat line that made the top of the two triangles. He said something in robo-tongue.

Jazz stared at the triangles full of dots. He... he didn't get it. The bottom row, with Prime and Mega, they were outside the triangles? Because Prime was missing? But Mega was right there? Were they... supporting the triangles? Inverted triangles, rested on their points like that, would be unstable. That would make a certain amount of sense, Jazz supposed. Mega had come to pick them up, he was significantly bigger than the others: maybe he was the robo-equivalent of a support crew.

Prowl was staring at him. Jazz didn't know what to say, but it seemed like he was waiting on Jazz to do something, so Jazz made the question gesture and asked, "Okay...?"

"Prime, missed." Prowl slashed through the Prime dot and it disappeared. The little diagram looked unbalanced now. Prowl slashed through the line of the triangle that didn't cross any of the others, and it disappeared. The dots that were inside the Prime portion of the Triangle Venn diagram looked exposed. He slashed through a few more of those exposed dots, now outside of the remaining closed lines, making them disappear as well.

"Prime," Prowl said, adding another dot back in place at the bottom of the unbalanced triangles missing a side. He drew the side back, a perfect straight line, reconnecting the lines into a triangle again. Prowl didn't redraw any of the other dots though.

"Prime. Earth," Prowl said, staring at Jazz intensely.

"Yeah..." Jazz said slowly. He was so confused. "Prime is on Earth?"

"Jazz. Earth," Prowl said.

"Sure," Jazz said, tilting his head. "Jazz is from Earth?"

"Prowl. Earth," Prowl said.

"What?" Jazz asked, his head fulling tilting over onto his shoulder. He was so lost.

"Prowl. Follow me. Jazz," Prowl said. "Earth." He tapped a button on the table and the little drawing of the triangle and the dots disappeared. They were replaced with the little hologram of the kaiju planet with its distinctive canyon. "Prowl. Follow me. Jazz." He pointed with his whole hand at the little pyramidal representations on the equator of the planet. "Earth." Prowl snapped his hand away, behind his back. Like it had disappeared through a portal.

Jazz stared at the little representation of the portal planet. He wanted—oh how he wanted. He wanted to go home. There was still a problem though. "Twenty-six enemy," Jazz said, pointing to the pyramid.

"Fifteen friend," Prowl countered. And that settled it, then.

The mechs around him suddenly started moving. Sharp-wings was doing most of the talking as he marched out, his screechy voice grating on Jazz's ears. Mega said something low and rumbling in response and Sharp-wings strutted away in a huff, his—he had little heeled feet, how had Jazz not noticed that before, that was hilarious—his heeled feet clacking sharply against the deckplates.

"Jazz," Prowl called from the door. "Follow me."

"Right," Jazz said, starting forward abruptly.

They walked out down the massive halls towards the same bay they had originally landed in. Some mechs joined them along the way. It was kinda nuts how... not crazy the shapes of the robo-aliens were. They were all mostly constructed along the same basic shape, though their sizes could range wildly. But, for the most part they were all humanoid, with two arms and two legs and the same amount of joints.

And Jazz kept on thinking that thought as a little robo-cat appeared out of nowhere to twine around Wavy's legs as he walked. Did... the robo-aliens have... robo-pets? That were allowed to free roam?

Jazz had to check his oxygen levels in the cab, just in case he was hallucinating.

They came out in the same large hanger bay, though now there were half a dozen robo-aliens milling around. Two looked very similar to Sharp-wings, and he went to stand with them. One even looked like a darker version of Prowl. Mega towered above them all, and he stopped in front of what looked like a large rocket-shuttle. Prowl stopped off to one side of the ramp into the shuttle, and Jazz joined him.

Another couple robo-aliens came in after them until the full count of fourteen robo-aliens stood before Jazz. It occurred to Jazz that this seemed like a small number of people to crew such a large ship, but maybe Prowl had already discounted the people who would need to stay behind to tend to the alien vessel.

Mega said a long phrase in robo-tongue, and the gathered robo-aliens perked up. He then said something with Prowl's robo-name in it, a long and intense sentence, the harmonic undertones some of the lowest tones that Jazz had ever heard a robo-alien say, nearly completely outside human hearing. At the end there was the lilting Prime leitmotif, transformed to a somber bass by Mega's rolling rumble of a voice.

It was a speech. Or orders? It was hard to say.

Sharp-wings said something short, and there a electric hum, like a generator starting up, came from the small crowd. Mega regarded them all with his intense red eyes, then he said something short. It another lilting phrase, sounding more like music than speech. He turned and marched onto the shuttle.

The some of the robo-aliens with the sharp wings by Sharp-wings went off beside the shuttle. Jazz watched them, confused, as other robo-aliens shuffled onto the shuttle behind him. Then Sharp-wings folded up, the plates and components that made up his body twisting and contorting until there wasn't a humanoid shape at all but a small angular alien plane.

Jazz startled back as Sharp-wings' companions did the same thing. The thrusters on the back of the planes revved playfully, and the robo-aliens took off out of the shuttle bay, phasing through some kind of barrier into space.

Prowl said, "Jazz."

"Can you do that?" Jazz said, pointing at the disappearing planes.

"Follow me," Prowl said in reply (which didn't answer the question at all) as he started walking up the ramp to the shuttle.

"Can you fly, Prowler?" Jazz asked as he jogged after him. "You've got the wings, they might not be as sharp as those guys, but you can't leave me hanging here, c'mon!"

Prowl pointed to another bench and Jazz settled next to a bright red robo-alien. The harness auto-deployed again over his shoulders and Prowl settled into a bench opposite.

The red robo-alien next to him was looking at him with apparent curiosity. As the shuttle shook around them (presumably taking off) Jazz looked back. Now that he was looking for components... the guy next to him seemed to have wheels on his ankles. Prowl didn't have anything that immediately screamed plane besides his blunt wings.

Red said something to Prowl, and Prowl responded mostly in robo-speech, with Jazz's name mixed in.

"Hi," Jazz greeted Red. Red just stared for a long moment, before turning back to Prowl. He said something with the Prime leitmotif in it and Prowl responded short and sharp. Red settled back into his seat then, regarding Prowl for a long moment. Then he turned back to Jazz.

"Dyah-[angry bees]," Red said.

"Better than when Prowler was just starting out," Jazz praised. He over-enunciated, "Jazz," for the robo-alien.

They spent the rest of the shuttle ride working through pronunciation of a few English words. Jazz had to hand it to Prowl: he didn't generally take very long to pick up what he was saying wrong and change it. Red was much worse at hearing his own mispronunciations and took a lot more repetitions.

Eventually the shuttle shook. There were no windows, but Red stopped testing out his English pronunciation in favor of looking intensely at the door. Jazz figured they must be getting close.

The shuttle shook a few more times. Mega stood from where he had sat in the rear of the shuttle. He rocked with motion of ship. The shuttle settled down with another shake and a whine and the rest of the robo-aliens shed their harnesses and joined him silently by the doors.

Jazz hastily stood with them. He took up a place next to Prowl.

"Jazz," Prowl said. Jazz turned to look at him. "Follow me."

The ramp descended. Jazz joined the battle cry of the robo-aliens around him as they ran into chaos.

The planes were flying past overhead, making strafing runs against the kaiju horde, breaking the ranks and sending them scattering. That gave the mechs on the ground enough cover to advance on the portal platform. Jazz rushed forward, the robo-aliens moving in formation like a wedge against the kaiju line. A small red and blue robo-alien with a large tube on his shoulder stayed at the center of the wedge, and Prowl kept dragging Jazz in just behind him, so Jazz figured that was were he was supposed to be.

It felt wrong though, to stay in the protected middle while the robo-aliens around them roared and fought. They were quickly surrounded, caught away from the shuttle, though the robo-aliens didn't seem concerned about that.

He did get some action when a vaulter lived up to its name and jumped into the center of the formation, causing some confusion. Jazz managed to get behind it and vault up onto the kaiju's wiggling back, stabbing his blade in between two vertebra in the vaulter's spine. It gurgled unpleasantly beneath him. Prowl caught his arm and dragged him on.

Big-tube had made it to portal platform and was messing around with the buttons. Prowl dragged Jazz up beside him. The robo-aliens had made a protective circle around them on the platform.

Jazz took the chance to catch his breath and take stock.

Mega was in the center of the fighting, an absolutely massive cannon on his arm blasting huge purple bursts of light out at the snarling horde of kaiju. Red was gleefully jumping on kaiju backs not unlike what Jazz had done with the vaulter, a golden yellow robo-alien helping tag-team his victims. Sharp-wings and his formation of planes kept up the strafing runs in the air, bright yellow bursts of light exploding against kaiju and the ground. Prowl had taken up a protective stance by the console and took potshots at any kaiju that got too close.

They were doing alright. They were doing okay.

And then another portal opened. It wasn't the same bright white as the usual portals, rather a sickly green.

Through it came another half dozen kaiju, and then. And then a Commander. The bulbous egg shaped body covered in tentacles and strangely human-like masked faces contorted into extreme expressions of anger and despair sent a shiver of cold fear down Jazz's spine.

Big-tube shouted something behind him and Jazz tore his eyes away from the terrifying sight bearing down on their squad to see the portal behind him had activated.

Prowl shouted, "Jazz! Earth!" He pulled on one of Jazz's arms, dragging him toward the portal, shooting at the kaiju that had spread out in a line in front of the Commander. The battle lines were shifting to account for this new threat.

He needed to go home. But he couldn't leave them in such dire straits.

Prowl didn't give him any choice, the grasp on his arm firm and unyielding as they stepped backwards towards the portal.

Just before he passed the threshold, Mega roared into the coming onslaught, like a beast, like a dragon, like a tyrannosaur. He drew his massive blade, and it glowed with an intense orange light that lit the fearsome face of the Commander before him. And that was the last thing Jazz saw before his vision was consumed with swirling colorful light: a massive spiky mech holding a glowing sword to ward against the horror.

Jazz stumbled out of the portal, unbalanced, into a beautiful vision of blue sky and green trees and chirping birds. Prowl pulled up short next to Jazz, staring at the familiar landscape that was likely completely alien to him.

Jazz—Jazz was home.

He let out a delighted, hysterical laugh. God. He was home. They had just abandoned those robo-aliens, those allies. He turned, half tempted to—

The portal sputtered out behind them with a whine. Prowl looked at it with his inscrutable alien face before turning to Jazz.

"Welcome to Earth, Prowl," Jazz said. He stared at where the portal had been. "I hope that they'll be okay..."

Prowl just turned to regard Jazz, then looked out over the landscape. "Prowl. Follow me. Jazz." He gestured out with his flat palm, slowly spinning in a circle.

"Nah, we're good, we're good," Jazz said, pushing Prowl's arm down. "The portal, it should have triggered the alarms." He looked around at the trees. "If I had to guess, we're in the Southeastern United States, which is good, that should be Orion's territory. He'll be here shortly."

Prowl just regarded him in that cool alien manner he had.

"Hey, since we're on Earth, let's get you some more English, ey?" Jazz asked. He couldn't think about just abandoning those allies to their fates. Mega seemed to be a capable warrior, and Sharp-wings had turned into a fighter jet. They had to be okay. They had to. He pointed at a tall pine tree. "What word: tree."

"[Trill]-[screech]," Prowl said.

They drilled words for about five minutes before there was the loud crashing sounds of an incoming mech. Jazz perked up from where he'd been trying to get Prowl to distinguish the difference between a stick and a tree. It was hard to audibly determine who it was.

Prowl summoned his gun from his pockets, but Jazz stepped in front of him. "Nah, it's okay. Friend."

And it was, because the distinctive blue head of Proto-1 was loping through the trees, bending them with his great ground-eating strides. Proto-1 was nominally more human shaped than the mechs that came after him, but his proportions were strange and stretched in a way no human really was: his legs were relatively narrow, and easily slipped around trees.

"Jazz!" Orion's voice rang out from the impressive height of Proto-1. "Oh, thank god, you're alright, we've been worried sick—"

"Orion!" Jazz shouted, jogging forward. Proto-1's massive blank mask of a face was a welcome sight, the glowing blue optics shining over the metal sheet that made up the mech's face. They didn't hug with the mechs, but Jazz was so ready to get one of those big bear hugs from his Captain. "Oh, man, you have no idea how good it is to see you!"

"Who's your friend?" Orion asked, looking over Jazz's shoulder.

"Oh, this is Prowl—" Jazz started, turning but Prowl interrupted him with a grinding noise, like he had when he was tending the wound on his wing. He stumbled forward with an aborted, jerking step, saying something in robo-tongue. It ended with that little musical phrase, the leitmotif that meant Prime.

And then—Orion spoke, but it wasn't English. It was robo-tongue. His voice was deep and resonant, and he rasped out Prowl's robo-name, the one with all the layered pops and growls. Orion stumbled slightly and Prowl caught his elbows. Then a small panel on the mech's wrist retracted and his dexterous thick fingers pulled out a leech-mouth-cable.

Orion—or Proto-1—plugged the leech-mouth-cable into the Prowl's wrist, even as they traded more words in robo-tongue. Then, just as fast as it started, Proto-1 disconnected the cable and put both hands on Prowl's chest—and pushed him away.

Something in Prowl was roaring with how fast the motors were going. His optics were bright white, all the blue bleached from them, as he rocked back from the shove.

Orion cried out with pain under the voice that ground out from Proto-1. It was like the overlapping harmonics of the robo-talk, a grotesque duet of human and alien pain. Proto-1 shouted in a voice that was not Orion's in a language that was not spoken by any Earthling. He pushed against Prowl's chest again. Prowl stumbled backwards away from the massive mech.

The support teams were swarming past the tree-tops, helicopters and tanks and trucks. Prowl glanced frantically between them and Jazz and Proto-1. And then he folded up in that strange way that the robo-aliens could, into a sleek alien car, and shot off into the tree-line.

"Wha—" Jazz took a few stumbling steps after his friend, but behind him Proto-1 made that painful sounding grinding noise, and Orion shouted with pain. Proto-1 was slowly collapsing like all his strings had been cut, his knees meeting the earth with a thunderous clap. Jazz could hear Orion panting through the speakers and the comm.

Jazz looked back and forth between his fleeing friend and his collapsing Captain, caught in indecision. A snapped, "Lieutenant Jasper!" had him looking automatically at the encroaching trucks, away from where Prowl had disappeared.

The support vehicles circled them. Roving helicopters buzzed above, and jeeps swarmed below, full of human shouts and human sounds.

General Silas was sliding out of the seat of a jeep, his green uniform crisp as ever. "Lieutenant Jasper! Report, soldier!"

Jazz looked between his collapsed Captain, the furious General and his fled robo-buddy, feeling confused and lost and scared. Even when he was far from home, even when he was alone among aliens, even when he faced a horde of kaiju with nothing but him and a friend and his wits, he hadn't felt this terrified.

Just what the fuck was going on?