Chapter Text
The first thing Jazz heard when he came back online was static.
Not the clean static of a weak transmission struggling through distance, not the familiar hiss of old Cybertronian comm bands bleeding between encrypted channels, not the pleasant fuzz of an overdriven speaker right before the bass came in and turned a room into a living thing.
No.
This was ugly static.
Atmospheric interference. Torn signal. Planetary magnetics scraping across damaged receptors. The shriek of systems trying to reboot without enough power, without enough cooling, without enough of anything they were built to have. Jazz lay still for 0.73 astroseconds and listened to his own frame complain in seventeen different diagnostic languages, most of them red, several of them orange, one of them flashing white in a way that would have made Ratchet say something creative and deeply unkind.
His optics flickered.
Dark.
Then white.
Then dark again.
Then a broken slice of sky.
Blue.
Jazz stared at it.
For one brief, dazed nanoklik, he did not know what he was seeing. Cybertron’s sky had not been blue in so long that the color registered first as an error. Then as archived memory. Then as something almost indecently alive. It stretched above him, enormous and clear, layered with drifting vapor formations lit gold at their edges by a nearby star. Atmospheric gases, his processor supplied, because his processor was very committed to continuing work even while half his sensory feeds were screaming.
Blue sky.
That was new.
Jazz tried to move.
Pain went through him like a hard bass drop in a room made of broken glass.
“Ah,” he said, voice dragging out of his vocalizer in a rough, distorted rasp. “Yeah. That tracks.”
His own voice echoed back to him from nearby stone and metal, too small against open air. The sound made something shift at the edge of his memory. The last good transmission. Prowl’s voice, clipped and sharp, cutting through the chaos. Enemy lock. Evasive pattern. Jazz, break formation. Jazz, break formation now.
Then heat.
Then the long, impossible tumble through atmosphere.
Then trees.
Jazz turned his helm by a degree and saw the damage.
His ship had not landed so much as introduced itself violently to a mountain.
The scout craft had carved a wound through a forested slope, ripping up trees and soil and rock in a long black scar. Steam rose from its hull. One wing was gone entirely. The other stuck up at an angle that looked personally offensive. Emergency foam had sealed portions of the breach, but not well enough. He could smell energon. Not much, thank Primus, but enough that his spark pulsed once, cold and hard.
He pushed himself up on one elbow.
The world tilted.
His gyros threw out a warning.
Jazz ignored it.
The mountain range stretched around him in overlapping dark shapes, peaks rising under the late day light. A thin layer of snow clung higher up, white against stone. The forest below was green, dense, and soft in the way organic worlds always seemed soft until they tried to kill you. His crash path steamed behind him. Birds, very small and very offended, scattered from the trees.
Earth.
That had been the designation in the long range files. Sol 3. Young organic planet. Pre interstellar. Radio loud. War fragmented. Technologically uneven. Strategically inconvenient. Native species carbon based, tool using, socially volatile, fond of combustion engines and argument.
Jazz had skimmed the file because skimming files was how he survived Prowl’s briefings with his sanity intact.
He was regretting that now.
He brought up his internal map. It fizzled, stuttered, and rendered a charming little field of nothing. No orbital support. No Autobot signal. No ship to ship ping. No known base. No bounce from the Ark, no relay, no friendly chatter, no distant Cybertronian presence at all.
“Huh,” Jazz said.
His vocalizer clicked.
“Love that for me.”
He tried comms. The first attempt came back as static. The second gave him a burst of something local, a messy flood of electromagnetic noise, voices and tones and pulse signals packed tight enough to make his audials twitch. He cut it down, filtered, caught fragments.
A woman speaking fast in a language he did not know.
A man laughing.
A burst of music.
More static.
Something about traffic.
A commercial jingle.
Jazz froze.
The music fragment had lasted less than a second. Distorted by distance and the poor condition of his receivers. Still, his processor caught percussion, brass, a walking bassline, something bright and alive under layers of atmosphere and local transmission.
He stared at the blue sky.
“Well,” he said softly. “Maybe the place ain’t all bad.”
Then the ship gave a low groan behind him, metal settling under its own damaged weight, and one of the aft stabilizers collapsed with a crash that sent birds shrieking out of the forest again.
Jazz sighed.
“Right. Priorities.”
He got to his feet.
It was not graceful.
Jazz took pride in grace. He liked clean movement, smooth transformation, a step placed exactly where it needed to go, momentum turned into style because anything worth doing under fire was worth doing with a little rhythm. He had crossed battlefields under Decepticon fire with less trouble than it took to stand up on this organic mountain. One knee nearly buckled. A seam in his left side flared hot. His right doorwing was jammed halfway open and scraping against the edge of his shoulder assembly. His visor glitched twice before stabilizing.
Diagnostics crawled across his HUD.
Armor: compromised.
Left hip actuator: strained.
Right shoulder rotation: limited.
Fuel lines: stable, for now.
Energon reserves: low.
Transformation cog: responsive, but misaligned.
Comms: degraded.
Ship: don’t ask.
Jazz dismissed the diagnostic list before it could get poetic about his impending failures.
He limped toward the craft.
The ship recognized him when he got within range, though it took three attempts before the side hatch opened. The hatch dragged upward with a protest that sounded like a dying animal. Inside, the cabin had become a narrow corridor of fallen panels, exposed wiring, floating dust, and the faint blue glow of emergency systems. Jazz stepped in carefully, one hand braced against the wall, and tried not to think about how close he had come to being smeared across the mountain instead of standing inside a wreck complaining about it.
“Status,” he said.
The ship answered in Cybertronian, but the voice clipped in and out, syllables broken by static.
“Primary drive offline. Navigation offline. Long range communication offline. Shielding offline. Hull breach in sections two, four, seven, and aft drive compartment. Emergency beacon active at reduced output. Power reserves at twelve percent.”
Jazz’s visor dimmed.
“Twelve?”
“Eleven point nine.”
“Don’t get cute with me. That’s my thing.”
“Confirmed.”
“Any chance you’ve got a secret fully functional transwarp cell hidden somewhere?”
“Negative.”
“Yeah, figured.”
He made his way to the cockpit and dropped into the pilot seat, which creaked under him in a way it had never been designed to do. The display before him came alive reluctantly. Mostly red. Some black. One cheerful blinking icon indicating that the aft storage compartment had survived intact, which was either very useful or deeply insulting depending on what had not survived.
Jazz pulled the crash log.
The scout craft had entered atmosphere uncontrolled after taking a hit from a Decepticon pursuit vessel near the edge of the system. Jazz remembered the ship. Sharp nosed, black hull, engine signature masked but sloppy around the left ventral side. Not one of Megatron’s heavy hitters. Not Starscream. Not Soundwave. Someone lower down the chain, probably hungry for promotion, probably thrilled at the idea of taking out an Autobot officer caught far from backup.
They had clipped him just enough.
He had clipped them back harder.
His last recorded sensor sweep showed the Decepticon craft breaking off in orbit, leaking plasma, unable to follow him into full descent. Good. Not dead, probably. Unfortunate. But not on the ground with him either.
That gave him time.
Maybe.
He checked the emergency beacon. It pulsed weakly from the fractured comm array, sending a Cybertronian distress call into an atmosphere thick with human radio noise. It might reach someone eventually. It might not. If any Decepticon signal scouts were closer than Autobots, it might bring the wrong kind of company.
Jazz turned it off.
Silence settled.
Not complete silence. Organic worlds were never silent. Wind moved outside. Cooling metal ticked. Somewhere in the forest, something small made a high nervous noise and then stopped.
Jazz sat there for a moment, one hand still on the console.
He thought of Cybertron, briefly.
Not the Cybertron that existed now. Not the burned streets, ruined towers, dead cities, endless war zones, and the gray hollow places where music used to live. He thought of Cybertron before that. Clubs tucked beneath Iacon’s higher levels. Improvised stages in places officials did not like him going. Sound systems built from salvaged parts and illegal converters. Bots dancing in bodies made for labor, for war, for flight, for speed, for delicate work, moving anyway because rhythm did not care what you were forged for.
He thought of Blaster laughing through a set. Mirage pretending he had not come to listen. Orion Pax before he became Optimus Prime, standing near the back of a crowded room, looking like he had never seen anything so strange or so holy as people choosing joy while the world sharpened knives around them.
Jazz exhaled.
Then he stood.
“Alright,” he told the ship. “We got ourselves a mountain, a busted ride, no backup, and a planet full of tiny radio enthusiasts. I’ve had worse nights.”
The ship did not respond.
“Rude.”
He spent the first solar hour securing the crash site.
The work kept him moving, which was useful because stopping meant feeling every damaged part of his frame. He sealed the worst energon leak with emergency resin. He pulled camouflage netting from aft storage and spread it over the most reflective parts of the hull, adjusting the outer surface to mimic local stone and vegetation. He deployed three perimeter sensors, each no bigger than a human vehicle engine block, and calibrated them to detect electromagnetic signatures, heat, motion, and anything Cybertronian.
He also checked for organic casualties.
There were none. The forest had been empty when he hit, unless one counted trees, and Jazz was trying very hard not to count the trees because the number was embarrassing.
“Sorry,” he told one uprooted trunk as he moved it away from a sparking section of hull. “My bad.”
The tree did not accept his apology.
By local sunset, the sky had turned colors Jazz did not have convenient names for. Gold first, then orange, then pink bleeding into violet at the edges. The mountains darkened into heavy silhouettes. The air cooled quickly. His frame adjusted, vents whispering.
And then the perimeter sensor pinged.
Jazz went still.
The signal came from below, winding up along a narrow mountain road nearly three klicks away. Heat signature. Combustion engine. Human vehicle. Small by Cybertronian standards, fast by local standards. It moved with confidence through switchbacks, engine note rising and falling with each turn.
Jazz crouched near the edge of the crash scar, visor narrowing.
He could see the road through gaps in the trees. A sleek red and gold vehicle climbed the mountain, headlights cutting through dusk. Its engine sound was tuned beautifully, not factory smooth but personally adjusted, responsive and almost smug about it. Jazz tilted his helm.
“Well now,” he murmured. “Somebody cares about their ride.”
The human vehicle slowed where the road curved near the bottom of his crash path.
Then it stopped.
Jazz held perfectly still.
The door opened.
The organic stepped out.
Jazz had seen humans before in data files. Small. Soft exterior. Endoskeleton. Mostly water. Limited natural armor. Clever hands. Bad survival instincts. This one matched the basic template, though the file had failed to mention that humans moved like they were constantly negotiating with gravity and their own impatience.
This one wore dark trousers, a jacket too expensive for wandering around mountains, and tinted glasses even though the sun had mostly gone down. He had a small glowing device in one hand and a posture that suggested he had never encountered a warning sign he did not consider personally optional.
The organic looked up at the crash scar.
Then at the torn trees.
Then at the mountain.
Then, very slowly, he said, “That is definitely not a meteor.”
Jazz’s audials focused.
English. Local dominant language, one of many. His translation systems caught it, mapped it, and began working through accent, tone, rhythm.
The human stepped closer.
“Also not military,” he continued, mostly to himself. “Unless someone got extremely creative and forgot to invite me, which would be rude. Possible, but rude.”
Jazz did not move.
The human lifted the glowing device. It made a soft chirping sound.
“Radiation’s weird. Not gamma. Not cosmic. Not Chitauri either. Thank God, because I was really hoping to avoid another alien invasion before dinner.”
Jazz’s visor brightened a fraction.
Alien invasion.
That was in the skimmed file somewhere. Earth had experienced recent extraterrestrial contact. Violent. Public. A city called New York. Local defender groups. Armored human. Enhanced individuals. One Asgardian presence.
Jazz had, perhaps, skimmed too much.
The human walked another few steps up the crash path, shoes sliding in loose soil. He looked small against the damage. Fragile. Absurdly vulnerable. Also completely unafraid in a way Jazz distrusted on instinct.
Bravery was one thing.
Not recognizing danger was another.
The human stopped suddenly.
His head tilted.
Jazz’s perimeter sensor had hidden itself well, but apparently not well enough.
The human crouched and stared at the device half buried under leaves.
“Hello,” he said. “You are not from around here.”
Jazz considered his options.
He could stay hidden. Let the human poke the sensor, shock himself, possibly call local authorities. Not ideal.
He could scare him off. Easy. Stand up, loom, produce deep terrifying alien robot voice, say something dramatic. Humans probably scared easy when confronted with fourteen feet of injured Autobot in a dark forest.
He could capture him. No.
He could kill him.
The thought appeared because Jazz was a soldier and soldiers had processors that offered ugly options even when the spark recoiled from them. He dismissed it before it formed fully. Organic. Civilian. Curious idiot, but civilian.
The human reached toward the sensor.
Jazz said, “Wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”
The human froze.
To his credit, he did not scream.
He did straighten very slowly, one hand lifting away from the sensor, the other still holding his device. His head turned, searching the trees.
“Okay,” the human said. “That’s new.”
Jazz stepped out of the shadows.
He did it deliberately.
Not too fast. No weapons visible. Hands open. Still, he knew what he looked like. Tall even by Cybertronian scout standards. Silver and black armor scratched raw from the crash, visor glowing blue in the dark, one shoulder sparking faintly, frame half lit by the dying sky behind him.
The human looked up.
And up.
And up.
For 1.4 seconds, he said nothing.
Then he pushed the tinted glasses down his nose and stared over them.
“Huh,” he said. “Robot.”
Jazz cocked his helm.
“Organic.”
“Technically human. Sometimes people argue.”
“Do they win?”
“Not usually.”
Jazz stared at him.
The human stared back.
Then, impossibly, the corner of the human’s mouth lifted.
“I’m Tony,” he said. “You crashed on my mountain.”
Jazz looked around at the wilderness.
“Your mountain.”
“Technically the federal government would have opinions. Also the local county. Also probably environmental protection agencies. But I have a house near the bottom, and possession is nine tenths of the law when aliens crash within a fifteen minute drive of your workshop.”
Jazz’s processor took a moment to decide whether the translation system had failed or the human was simply like that.
“Jazz,” he said finally.
“Jazz,” Tony repeated. He smiled a little wider. “Seriously?”
Jazz’s visor narrowed. “Problem?”
“No. No problem. That’s actually kind of fantastic.” Tony slid the device into his pocket, as if freeing his hand made this conversation less insane. “Are you the reason every radio in my house briefly started playing what sounded like a dying fax machine having a religious experience?”
Jazz stared.
Then he laughed.
It came out rough, his vocalizer still damaged, but it was a laugh.
Tony’s eyebrows rose.
“Oh, good,” Tony said. “Sense of humor. Love that. Was really worried this was going to be a solemn first contact situation. I’m not dressed for solemn.”
Jazz should have ended the conversation there. He should have moved the human away from the site, wiped whatever local digital traces he could, and focused on repairs before the Decepticon in orbit licked its wounds enough to come looking. He knew this. He had survived too long by knowing when a room was dangerous before the first weapon came out.
But Tony Stark looked at him like a problem.
Not a monster.
Not a god.
Not even a soldier, yet.
A problem.
A fascinating, complicated, probably explosive engineering problem that had interrupted his evening and therefore belonged to him now.
Jazz did not trust that.
He liked it anyway.
“You need to leave,” Jazz said.
Tony nodded.
“Sure.”
He did not move.
Jazz tilted his helm. “That means go.”
“I know. I speak English. Several kinds. Also legalese, drunk MIT, and enough German to be insulting at conferences.”
“Tony.”
“Oh, first name already. We’re bonding.”
Jazz took one step forward.
Tony did not step back.
That was interesting.
Stupid, but interesting.
“My ship is damaged,” Jazz said. “There may be hostile forces tracking me. Your planet isn’t prepared for what follows if they find this crash site.”
Tony’s expression changed.
Not dramatically. Humans had small faces, tiny muscles, soft skin shifting over bone. But Jazz had spent lifetimes reading body language across species, factions, and political rooms where one wrong twitch meant someone had decided to shoot. Tony’s face sharpened. The amusement did not vanish, but it moved aside, making room for something colder and much more focused.
“Hostile aliens,” Tony said.
“Yeah.”
“Big? Small? Tentacles? Hive mind? Metal?”
“Metal.”
Tony looked him over.
“Like you?”
Jazz’s smile thinned. “Not like me.”
Tony nodded once.
The wind moved through the torn trees.
Somewhere, far below, an animal called out in the dark.
Tony looked past Jazz to the hidden shape of the ship. “Can it fly?”
“No.”
“Can it communicate?”
“Not far enough.”
“Can it explode?”
Jazz paused.
Tony pointed at him. “That pause was very informative.”
“Not planning on it.”
“Comforting.”
“You always ask this many questions?”
“Yes.”
“People like that about you?”
“No.”
Tony smiled again, but this time it was quick and edged with something Jazz recognized. Defense mechanism. Humor as armor. A familiar song in an unfamiliar instrument.
Jazz found himself reassessing.
Tony Stark. The name had been in the Earth file. He pulled the relevant data from damaged memory. Human inventor. Industrialist. Armored combatant. Involved in repelling extraterrestrial invasion. Public identity. High intelligence. High risk tolerance. Unusual energy signature associated with chest mounted reactor technology. Politically disruptive. Media saturated. Psychological profile incomplete but probably exhausting.
Jazz looked at the glowing device in Tony’s chest.
Even under the jacket and shirt, there was light.
Faint. Circular. Blue white.
Not Cybertronian.
But not primitive either.
Tony followed his gaze and tapped two fingers against his sternum. “Eyes up here, Jazz.”
Jazz’s mouth twitched. “That power source yours?”
“Very.”
“You build it?”
“Also very.”
“Huh.”
Tony’s expression became insufferable in the span of half a second.
Jazz pointed at him. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were gonna.”
“I have a very expressive face.”
“You got an expressive everything.”
Tony laughed, a short surprised sound. It echoed up the slope and bounced off the damaged hull somewhere behind Jazz. The ship creaked in response, as if offended.
Tony looked toward the sound.
“Right,” he said. “So. Jazz. Hostile metal aliens may be tracking you. Your ship can’t fly, can maybe explode, and I’m guessing you don’t want the government crawling all over it with clipboards and bad decisions.”
Jazz said nothing.
Tony lifted both hands. “Not my first classified mess.”
“That supposed to reassure me?”
“God, no. It should worry you deeply. But I have a workshop, fabrication equipment, private security that knows how to not ask questions, and a very complicated relationship with every intelligence agency on the planet.”
Jazz stared down at him.
Tony stared up.
“You offering help?” Jazz asked.
“I’m offering mutually beneficial interference.”
“That mean help?”
“Basically.”
Jazz laughed again, quieter this time.
“You haven’t even seen what needs fixing.”
Tony’s eyes flicked to the crash path, the hull shape beneath camouflage, the exposed vapor, the scorched soil, the direction of impact, the broken wing assembly barely visible through the trees.
“Primary propulsion’s toast,” he said. “Navigation probably ate itself on impact. You’ve got some kind of power bleed, low but steady. Hull breach in at least three places, more if the mountain got intimate with whatever your version of an engine is. You deployed sensors, which means internal emergency systems are functioning. You’re standing but listing slightly left, so either your internal gyros are damaged or you’re doing a very committed impression of a guy who got thrown through a forest.”
Jazz went very still.
Tony’s face did something smug and bright.
Jazz hated, immediately, that he respected it.
“You get all that from looking?”
“I’m gifted.”
“You’re tiny.”
“I contain multitudes.”
Jazz barked a laugh so sudden it hurt his side.
Tony looked pleased.
Then his pocket chirped.
Not the scanner. Another device. Communications, local. Tony pulled it out, glanced at the display, and made a face.
“Speaking of people who ask too many questions.”
Jazz’s shoulders lifted slightly.
Tony looked at him, then at the phone, then held up one finger. “Don’t shoot me. Or step on me. Or whatever your cultural equivalent is.”
Jazz crossed his arms.
Tony answered the call.
“Hey, Rhodey.”
A voice came through, small and compressed. Jazz could hear it easily.
“Tony, please tell me the energy spike in the mountains was you testing something stupid.”
“Define stupid.”
“Tony.”
“Okay, first of all, I’m alive.”
“That was not what I asked.”
“But it’s important context.”
Jazz watched the human wander two steps away as if privacy mattered when Jazz could hear a sparkbeat from a hundred meters.
“No, I didn’t blow anything up. No, don’t send anyone. No, absolutely do not call SHIELD.”
Jazz’s visor sharpened.
Tony glanced back at him.
“Because I said so. Because I have it handled. Because when have I ever not had something handled?”
The silence on the other end of the line had weight.
Tony winced.
“Recent examples don’t count.”
Jazz decided he liked Rhodey, whoever he was.
Tony turned away again. “Listen to me. There is something here, and it’s not hostile, at least not to me, which is a refreshing change of pace. I need a few hours before the usual three letter circus starts sniffing around. Can you buy me that?”
The voice on the phone dropped lower. Jazz adjusted audial gain.
“Is this dangerous?”
Tony looked at Jazz.
For the first time since he had stepped out of the car, Tony did not make a joke.
“Could be,” he said. “Not because of him.”
Jazz’s spark gave a slow pulse.
Him.
Not it.
Not thing.
Him.
The distinction should not have mattered. Jazz had been called worse by better and better by worse. But Earth was cold around the edges now, and his ship was broken, and he had woken under a blue sky with no friendly signals anywhere in range.
Him mattered.
Tony listened for a moment, then nodded. “I know. I will. Yes, I’m aware I’m not wearing armor. No, I did not come up here to pet the alien machine. That’s hurtful and oddly specific.”
A pause.
“I’ll call you in an hour.”
He hung up before the other man could answer.
Jazz tilted his helm. “Friend?”
“Colonel James Rhodes. Best friend. Conscience. Occasional adult supervision. Don’t tell him I said that.”
“He know about me now?”
“He knows something is here and that I’m being impossible about it.”
“Good friend?”
“The best.”
Jazz nodded.
The mountain wind hissed through torn branches.
Tony put the phone away and looked toward the ship again. “So. Are you going to show me the wreck, or do we keep flirting in the woods until the military arrives?”
Jazz stared.
“Flirting?”
Tony spread his hands. “Too soon?”
Jazz laughed, despite himself, despite the pain, despite the fact that his life had become objectively worse in nearly every measurable way over the last few hours.
“You got a mouth on you, Tony Stark.”
“Yes,” Tony said. “It’s a whole thing.”
Jazz should not have let him into the ship.
He knew that.
Every protocol he had ever ignored in his life came back suddenly and stood in a neat line in his processor, waving little warning flags. Earth was not Cybertron. Tony Stark was not an Autobot. He was a local power with unknown loyalties, unknown allegiances, unknown long term intentions, and a level of curiosity that should have been legally classified as hazardous.
Jazz let him into the ship anyway.
Partly because Tony was right. Jazz needed resources. He could patch certain things himself, but the drive damage was extensive and his tools were limited by what had survived the crash. Earth’s technology was young, but not useless. Humans had metallurgy, digital systems, aerospace engineering, particle research, nuclear power, and, apparently, one tiny man with a chest reactor and no self preservation.
Partly because if Tony was going to call authorities, he would have done it already.
Mostly because, when Tony stepped through the half open hatch and saw the interior of the ship, he went quiet.
Not silent from fear.
Silent from reverence.
Jazz knew that silence.
He had heard it from young engineers seeing their first starship engine. From musicians stepping into a venue with perfect acoustics. From soldiers looking at a sunrise after believing there would be no next morning. From Optimus, once, in the ruins of an old archive, his great hand hovering over a broken data column containing poems from before the war.
Tony Stark looked at Jazz’s wrecked, sparking, half dead scout ship like it was a symphony with half the instruments missing and the rest waiting for someone stubborn enough to hear the song anyway.
Jazz leaned against the wall and watched him.
Tony moved slowly now. Not cautious exactly. Respectful. He did not touch anything at first. His eyes moved everywhere, fast and hungry. Console layout. Exposed conduits. Damaged panels. The pilot chair. The emergency foam. The power distribution spine visible through a ruptured floor section.
“Oh,” Tony said softly. “You are beautiful.”
The ship gave a faint warning chirp.
Jazz smiled. “Careful. She’s had a bad day.”
“I’m not talking to her.”
Jazz’s smile froze.
Tony looked back at him.
For once, there was no smirk.
“I mean, she’s beautiful too,” Tony said, nodding toward the ship with easy sincerity. “But you. Your engineering. You’re not a robot.”
Jazz’s visor dimmed by a fraction.
Tony turned fully toward him, excitement overtaking caution now. “That’s the wrong word. I knew it was the wrong word when I said it, but I was improvising. You’re mechanical, yes, but that’s not enough. You’re not remote operated. Not artificial intelligence in a shell, unless the shell came first, which it didn’t. Or maybe it did. Damn. I need a whiteboard. You’re a person.”
Jazz said nothing.
The ship ticked around them.
Tony looked a little embarrassed then, though he hid it badly under speed. “Sorry. That was probably rude. Was that rude? I don’t know alien etiquette yet. I usually offend people after I understand the rules.”
Jazz studied him for a long moment.
“You always figure things out that fast?”
Tony shrugged.
“Yes.”
“Must be lonely.”
Tony’s expression shuttered.
Ah, Jazz thought.
There it is.
The human looked away first, which was answer enough.
“Workshop,” Tony said briskly. “I have one. Actually several. But the nearest one is at the house. I can bring equipment up here. Drones, tools, materials. The big stuff is in Malibu. The bigger stuff is in New York. The ridiculous stuff is in storage because Pepper uses words like accountability.”
Jazz allowed the subject change. “Can’t move the ship.”
“Wasn’t suggesting we do that tonight.”
“Tonight?”
Tony gave him a look. “Jazz. Buddy. This thing ate a mountain. I’m good, but I’m not magic.”
“Met magic once,” Jazz said. “Didn’t care for it.”
Tony pointed at him. “We are coming back to that.”
“No, we’re not.”
“We absolutely are.”
Jazz shook his helm, amused despite the ache in his frame. “Need the drive core stabilized before anything else. Then comms. Then navigation. Then propulsion.”
“Power?”
“Low.”
“How low?”
Jazz hesitated.
Tony’s eyes narrowed. “Jazz.”
“Eleven percent.”
“Eleven?”
“Point seven now.”
Tony closed his eyes. “Of course. Of course the alien crash landed in my backyard with a dying spaceship. Why would the universe send me a normal problem. Normal problems don’t sparkle.”
“Your problems usually sparkle?”
“One of them has a cape.”
Jazz filed that away.
Tony stepped toward the exposed power conduit and stopped just before touching it. “This energy system. It’s not electricity.”
“Not only.”
“Plasma?”
“Some.”
“Nuclear?”
Jazz made a face.
Tony saw it and grinned. “Judgmental alien. Great. Love that.”
“You power your tiny cars by burning dead organic sludge.”
Tony lifted a finger. “I personally do not.”
“Your species does.”
“Yes, well, my species also invented reality television. We’re complicated.”
Jazz did not know what that was, but the translation system suggested entertainment and social collapse in equal measure.
Tony looked at the conduit again. “Can my reactor help?”
Jazz’s attention snapped to him.
Tony tapped his chest.
The light there pulsed faintly under cloth and skin.
“It’s clean energy,” Tony said. “Compact. Stable most of the time. Arc reactor. Palladium originally, now not poisoning me, long story, dramatic, lots of property damage. If you need power, I can rig an interface.”
“No.”
Tony blinked. “No?”
“Not without knowing what it’ll do to you.”
The answer came out too quickly.
Tony noticed.
Of course he noticed.
Something like surprise crossed his face, then curiosity, then the beginning of a smirk that softened before it reached full force.
“Aw,” Tony said. “You care.”
Jazz pointed at him. “I care about not killing the first local who didn’t run screaming.”
“That’s still caring.”
“It’s operational caution.”
“Sure.”
“It is.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Jazz stared at him. “Do you always argue with injured extraterrestrials?”
“Only the handsome ones.”
Jazz laughed so hard the pain in his side flared and he had to brace a hand against the wall.
Tony looked deeply satisfied with himself.
“Frag,” Jazz muttered.
“Was that alien swearing?”
“No.”
“It was absolutely alien swearing.”
“Keep working, Stark.”
“Bossy.”
Tony worked.
That was the second surprise.
The first had been that he had found the crash site at all. The second was that he did not merely talk.
He worked like someone who thought with his hands.
Jazz knew plenty of brilliant minds who loved the idea of machinery more than the machinery itself. Mechs who could design a system, diagram a system, argue theory around a system for three cycles straight, and still look offended when asked to pick up a tool. Tony Stark was not that. He removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, muttered to himself, asked questions too fast for most humans to answer, and adapted even faster when Jazz corrected him.
He did not understand Cybertronian systems. Not really. Not yet.
But he understood shape.
Flow.
Heat.
Stress.
Failure.
He understood that a machine was not a collection of parts but a body of intention. Someone had wanted something when they built it. Speed. Survival. Efficiency. Elegance. Power. Redundancy. Sacrifice. Every design decision was an old conversation between need and imagination.
Tony read that conversation better than he should have.
Jazz watched him kneel beside a cracked stabilizer interface, hair falling messily over his forehead, tiny hands moving carefully near components that could kill him if he touched the wrong thing.
“No,” Jazz said.
Tony stopped instantly.
“Not that line.”
Tony shifted his hand two inches left.
“No.”
Another inch.
“There.”
Tony glanced up. “Blue to silver?”
“Silver to black. Blue line carries pulse memory.”
“Pulse memory?”
“Data imprint. System remembers previous energy states and uses them to smooth transition.”
Tony stared at him.
Then his face lit.
“Oh, that is disgusting. I love it.”
Jazz laughed. “You would.”
“It’s like if a capacitor and a neurological pathway had a very angry baby.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
“Is that how you think?”
Jazz tilted his helm.
Tony kept his eyes on the component, voice trying for casual and failing because curiosity burned through it. “You said pulse memory. Your systems remember energy states. You’re mechanical, but you’re alive, and your ship has responsive feedback like it’s less tool and more partner. Is that normal for your species? Are all machines like this where you come from? Or is this because you built it? Did you build it?”
“Modified it.”
“Of course you did.”
Jazz crouched on the other side of the panel, ignoring the way his knee protested. “Cybertronian tech is responsive because we are. We don’t separate body and machine the way organics do. Not cleanly. A ship can be just a ship. A tool can be just a tool. But there’s always interface. Always conversation.”
Tony was quiet.
Then, softly, “Yeah.”
Jazz looked at him.
Tony’s hand drifted to his chest before he caught himself.
Jazz pretended not to notice.
Outside, night settled fully over the mountain. Tony left once to bring equipment from his car, then again to call Rhodey, then a third time to curse at something called reception. Jazz monitored every transmission. Tony did not betray him. He lied beautifully, though. With the ease of long practice. Jazz listened as he told Rhodes he was investigating debris from an experimental satellite, then told someone named Pepper he had not forgotten dinner so much as rescheduled eating as a concept, then told an AI named JARVIS to route several private drones to the property under weather survey protocols.
Jazz’s audials sharpened at that.
AI.
Tony returned carrying a case of tools that looked local, sleek, expensive, and heavily modified. “You’re making a face.”
Jazz touched his visor. “Don’t have one.”
“You’re making one spiritually.”
“You built an AI?”
Tony’s hands paused on the tool case.
“Yes.”
“How intelligent?”
Tony looked at him carefully. “Very.”
“Independent?”
“More than he admits.”
“He?”
“Yes.”
Jazz leaned back against the wall.
Tony’s mouth tightened. “Problem?”
Jazz thought of Cybertron. Of cold forged politics. Of functionist arguments. Of constructed cold sparks. Of disposable drone armies. Of sentience debated by committees that had never met a form of life they did not try to categorize into obedience.
“Maybe not,” Jazz said.
Tony heard what he did not say.
“JARVIS is not a weapon,” Tony said.
Jazz looked around the inside of the ship, then at him.
Tony grimaced. “Okay, he controls weapons sometimes. Because I control weapons. Bad phrasing. He’s not disposable. He’s not property. He’s family.”
Jazz’s spark pulsed again.
Family.
Tony said the word too fast. Defensive. Like someone had questioned it before, or like he had questioned it himself and hated the shape of the answer.
Jazz nodded once.
“Then maybe not,” he repeated.
Tony studied him, then went back to work.
The first repair took three hours.
Not a full repair. Not even close. But they stabilized the drive core enough to stop the power bleed, rerouted emergency reserves through the least damaged conduits, and got internal temperature regulation back from alarming to merely unpleasant. Tony learned Cybertronian numbers by pattern faster than Jazz expected, though he still referred to glyph clusters as “angry geometry” and one warning symbol as “the triangle of don’t lick this.”
Jazz found that funnier than he should have.
At some point, Tony brought music.
He did it by accident.
Or maybe not. Jazz was beginning to suspect Tony Stark did very little entirely by accident. He had his phone braced on a piece of ship plating while he worked on adapting one of his tools to interface with a Cybertronian coupling node. His fingers were smudged with grease. There was a small cut near one knuckle that he had ignored twice. His heartbeat had been fast for hours, but not frightened fast. Focused fast.
Then the phone lit up.
A sound spilled from it.
Guitar.
Not the clean ceremonial strings of Vos, not the mathematical harmonic structures of old Iacon concert halls, not the metallic percussion of Kaon underground fights. This was rougher. Electric. Human. A riff with swagger built into the bones of it, blues bent through amplification until it had teeth. Drums came in. Bass followed. A voice, organic and raw and impossible, rode over it.
Jazz stopped moving.
Tony did not notice at first. He was still working, head bobbing slightly with the rhythm.
Jazz’s entire world narrowed to the tiny device making sound.
Human music.
Full signal, close range, no static.
The song strutted.
That was the only word for it.
It moved like someone walking into a room knowing everybody was going to turn and look. It had grit under the nails, smoke in the air, a smile too sharp to be innocent. It was not perfect. That was why it worked. The imperfections were alive. Micro fluctuations in timing, the organic strain of voice, fingers on strings, the drummer pushing against the beat and pulling back like conversation.
Jazz sank slowly onto a crate.
Tony looked up. “What?”
Jazz did not answer.
The chorus hit.
Jazz’s visor brightened.
Tony looked at the phone, then at Jazz, then back at the phone.
“Oh,” Tony said. “You like AC/DC?”
Jazz looked at him. “This is local music?”
Tony blinked.
Then his entire face changed.
It was not smugness this time. Not exactly. It was delight, immediate and unfiltered, as bright as the blue sky had been when Jazz first opened his optics.
“Oh my God,” Tony said. “You’re a music guy.”
Jazz straightened. “Music guy?”
“You are. Look at you. Huge alien robot, crash landed, possibly hunted by evil metal cousins, and this is the first time you’ve looked happy.”
Jazz looked away.
Tony’s voice softened, but only slightly. Enough that Jazz heard the choice. “Hey. That wasn’t an insult.”
“I know.”
“Do you have music? Where you’re from?”
Jazz’s spark twisted.
For once, no joke arrived in time to cover it.
“Yeah,” he said. “We had music.”
Tony did not miss the past tense.
He picked up the phone and tapped it a few times. The song stopped.
Jazz almost objected.
Then another began.
Different. Faster. A bassline with bright movement, brass stabs, rhythm that kicked at Jazz’s processor and demanded an answer. Human again, but older. Funk. The file supplied the genre after a moment. Jazz leaned forward before he meant to.
Tony smiled.
“Okay,” he said. “So you like groove.”
Jazz gave him a slow look.
Tony held up the phone. “This is Earth. Not the whole thing, obviously. There are a lot of wars and taxes and terrible coffee and people who think putting raisins in cookies is acceptable. But also this.”
The horns came in hard.
Jazz laughed under his breath.
Tony leaned against the console, suddenly less like an engineer at a crash site and more like someone sharing contraband behind a locked door. “We’ve got blues, jazz, rock, metal, funk, soul, punk, hip hop, classical, country, industrial, synthwave, whatever the hell Thor thinks tavern songs are. Some of it’s terrible. Some of it’s transcendent. Sometimes both.”
“You said jazz.”
Tony grinned. “I did.”
“That a kind of music here?”
“Oh, you are going to love this.”
He changed the song again.
The first notes were piano. Then horn. Then a rhythm that slipped around expectation instead of marching toward it. Improvisation bloomed through the tiny speaker, complex and playful and alive with choices made in the moment. Jazz went absolutely still.
His name had not come from Earth.
Of course it had not.
The word had been his long before this planet had broadcast sound into space. It came from Cybertronian roots, from speed and variation and a concept of movement too layered to translate neatly. But listening to Earth jazz for the first time, Jazz understood with a strange, quiet ache why the translation had chosen that word and not another.
Conversation.
Improvisation.
Structure used not as a cage but as something to dance against.
He sat there in the wreckage of his ship, hurt and stranded and light years from anyone who knew how to say his name properly, and listened to an organic with a brass instrument argue joyfully with the universe.
Tony said nothing.
For once, the little human managed to be still.
The song played through.
When it ended, Jazz realized his hands had curled loosely around the edge of the crate. Not gripping. Holding on.
Tony cleared his throat.
“That was Miles Davis,” he said. “Kind of entry level, but in a good way. I mean, not entry level intellectually. Just iconic. Gateway drug. Don’t start with the weird stuff unless you want to scare people.”
Jazz looked at him.
“Play another.”
Tony’s smile came back slowly.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”
They worked through the night with music playing.
Not constantly. Sometimes they needed quiet. Sometimes Jazz had to explain a component three different ways before Tony made an offended sound and understood it all at once. Sometimes Tony needed to call JARVIS and have parts fabricated under names like “experimental irrigation support” and “definitely not alien adapter ring.” Sometimes Jazz had to stop because his side hurt badly enough that his vision blanked at the edges.
Tony noticed that too.
“You need rest,” he said after the third time Jazz’s hand slipped on a panel.
“I need my ship fixed.”
“You need your hands steady to fix your ship.”
Jazz gave him a look.
Tony gave one back.
It was absurd, being glared at by something so small.
More absurd that it worked.
Jazz sat down.
Tony climbed onto a section of reinforced plating opposite him, settling with the phone between them like a tiny campfire. The music was softer now. Blues guitar. Late night sound. Human voice low and worn in a way Jazz felt in his frame.
For a while, neither of them spoke.
Jazz looked through the torn cockpit window at the dark beyond. Earth’s moon hung above the trees, pale and cratered. The local star had set fully now, leaving the mountain under silver light. The world smelled of soil, pine, oil, heated metal, and Tony’s coffee, which he had brought in a dented travel mug and seemed to consider both beverage and personality trait.
“You have a war,” Tony said eventually.
Jazz did not look at him. “Yeah.”
“Long one?”
Jazz smiled without humor. “You could say that.”
Tony nodded. “The hostile ones. Same species?”
“Cybertronian.”
“Civil war.”
“That’s one name for it.”
“What’s another?”
Jazz turned a small piece of damaged plating between his fingers. “Endless.”
Tony absorbed that.
Humans were noisy creatures. Even quiet, they were noisy. Heartbeat, breath, fabric shifting, tiny muscular adjustments, electrical signals in primitive nervous systems. Tony made more noise than most because he moved even when still, thoughts translating into fingers tapping against his knee, thumb worrying at the edge of his mug.
But he knew when not to speak.
Jazz appreciated that.
“It started before I had a say in it,” Jazz said. He did not know why he continued. Maybe the music had loosened something. Maybe the mountain was too quiet. Maybe Tony had looked at his ship and called it beautiful. “By the time I was making choices, all the choices were inside the war. Who to follow. What to do. What lines not to cross. Which orders to question. Which people to save. Which parts of yourself to keep when everything wants to turn you into a weapon and call it duty.”
Tony’s fingers stopped tapping.
Jazz glanced at him.
The reactor glow lit Tony’s face from beneath the collar of his shirt. It made him look haunted in a way humans should not look. Too young for some things. Too old for others.
“Yeah,” Tony said quietly. “I know a little about that.”
Jazz believed him.
Outside, wind moved down the slope.
Tony took a drink from the mug, then grimaced. “Cold.”
“You been drinking that all night.”
“I make bad choices.”
“Noticed.”
Tony pointed at him with the mug. “You crashed into a mountain.”
“I was shot.”
“I’m sure the mountain feels better.”
Jazz laughed.
Tony smiled, pleased but tired. There were shadows under his eyes now. Humans needed sleep more urgently than Cybertronians needed recharge. Jazz knew that from the files, and from the way Tony’s reaction times had started to slip by small increments. Still, the man did not get up.
“You should go,” Jazz said.
Tony made a dismissive sound. “I’m fine.”
“Your body disagrees.”
“My body is dramatic.”
“Tony.”
Something in Jazz’s voice made Tony look at him.
“I’ll be here when your star comes up,” Jazz said. “Ship ain’t going anywhere. Neither am I.”
Tony studied him for a long moment, suspicion and fatigue warring with something softer.
Then he nodded once.
“Fine. But I’m leaving drones. And sensors. Mine, not yours. No offense, but yours look like they were designed by someone who thinks subtle means only slightly missile shaped.”
Jazz smiled. “They work.”
“So do mine, and mine have better branding.”
Tony stood, then swayed just enough that Jazz’s hand twitched instinctively. Tony caught it, of course. His eyes flicked to Jazz’s hand, then back up.
“Aw,” he said, voice gentle with mockery. “You almost caught me.”
Jazz leaned back. “Almost let you fall.”
“Liar.”
“Tiny menace.”
“Giant diva.”
Jazz laughed.
Tony collected his tools slowly, reluctantly. At the hatch, he stopped and looked back at the ship, then at Jazz.
“I’ll come back in the morning,” he said. “With better equipment, more coffee, and a playlist.”
Jazz tilted his helm. “Playlist?”
Tony’s grin flashed in the dark.
“Right. Alien cultural education. Very important. Critical to repairs.”
“Uh huh.”
“You mock now. Tomorrow you meet Black Sabbath.”
Jazz considered the words. “That a person?”
“A band.”
“Sounds like a Decepticon.”
Tony laughed. “They’d love that.”
Then he hesitated.
The laughter faded, not completely but enough.
“Jazz.”
“Yeah?”
“If something comes looking for you before morning?”
Jazz did not pretend not to understand.
“I’ll handle it.”
Tony’s jaw tightened.
The glow in his chest seemed a little brighter.
“We’ll handle it,” he said.
Jazz looked at him.
The human stood framed in the broken hatch of an alien ship, exhausted, fragile, stubborn, brilliant, ridiculous. A creature of water and bone and terrible survival instincts. A man who had walked toward a crash in the mountains because curiosity had outweighed fear. A man who had looked at Jazz and seen person before weapon, music before threat, repair before ownership.
Jazz should have corrected him.
There was no we.
Not yet.
Instead he said, “Get some rest, Stark.”
Tony smiled, hearing the concession anyway.
“Yes, mom.”
Jazz blinked. “What?”
“Nothing. Human thing. Very funny. You’ll get there.”
“I’m already regretting meeting your species.”
“No, you’re not.”
Tony disappeared into the night before Jazz could answer.
Jazz listened to him make his way down the crash path, muttering to himself when he slipped, cursing softly when a branch caught his sleeve, then talking to someone named JARVIS through his phone as he reached the road.
The red and gold car started with a gorgeous low growl.
Jazz’s audials lifted.
Tony revved the engine once.
On purpose.
Jazz laughed alone in the wrecked ship.
The car drove away down the mountain, sound fading through trees and switchbacks until only the night remained.
For a while, Jazz sat in the quiet.
Then the ship’s console flickered.
“External transmission detected,” it said.
Jazz was on his feet instantly.
“Source?”
“Unknown. Orbital. Encrypted. Cybertronian.”
His spark clenched.
The display stuttered, then rendered a partial signal pattern. Faint. Fragmented. Not close enough for a lock, not yet. But there.
Above Earth, somewhere beyond the blue sky and the thin silver moon, the Decepticon ship had come back online.
Jazz stared at the signal.
The music on Tony’s forgotten speaker had stopped, but the last song still lived in Jazz’s processor, rhythm looping softly under the cold edge of incoming danger.
He smiled.
“Well,” he said. “Guess morning’s gonna be busy.”