So the Mech AU is something and it's captured me too.
Set sometime after Prowl discovers Jazz is a pilot but before they go to Earth
"Do they all look the same?"
Sat in a makeshift chair made from a tarp thrown over a spare tire, Jazz was in the middle of refueling from a small plastic baggie when Prowl broadly gestured to the inanimate body of his mech.
"The mechs? Naw, at least not the ones that last. I've had mine long enough that it's gotten all sorts of unique design changes and upgrades. There's no other mech that looks or moves just like mine."
The reassurance that Jazz's mech form was an individual creation was pleasing for some reason. Perhaps Prowl didn't like the idea of a dozen identical blank visors, the body of his friend replicated and filled with someone else.
"There's like. three or four classes of mech I think?" Jazz continued unaware of Prowl's secret anxiety.
"There's Rescue Class, those are the smallest, and they actually aren't built for fighting but for digging through rubble and cleaning up chunks of alien. Plus, sometimes those tentacle freaks have parasites that drop off when they die so the R-class kill 'em before they can become an invasive species."
"I thought you said they weren't designed for combat?"
Jazz finishes their fuel and shrugs.
"Its a war. Nobody gets out of fighting completely. Before I left I heard they were sticking a medic into- into fuckin' Vortex."
There were, many questions Prowl had concerning that last sentence. How desperate were the humans to be making their caregivers into soldiers? Why was this Vortex so infamous?
Why did Jazz sound angry at first, but by the time he got to saying "Vortex" the name came out as a rush of breath rather than a proper word?
What stopped him from pressing further on the topic was how Jazz seemed to shrink. And sink.
And stare at nothing at all.
It was so nauseatingly not Jazz that Prowl nudged the tire a bit and guided the conversation back to familiar territory.
"So what class are you?" Prowl said, while crossing his arms on the table and resting his chin on them. It was, very off model posture for the Praxian, but without the ability to pick up EM fields, exaggerated body language seemed to be the best way to get through to his human.
On a hunch, Prowl lightly waved his door-wings as well. Jazz smiled at them, and at him and Prowl preened with a modest smile back.
"I happen, to-just-so-be-the-Top-of-my-class-a-thank-you-veeery-much!" Jazz said popping each syllable like a song, resting his chin on his knuckles to match Prowls gaze.
"In terms of mech?" He nodded in its direction.
"I'm Striker Class baby, we're the fastest, the most agile and in my personal opinion the the most effective fighters in the whole program."
"And you do not personally feel as though you are an outlier bringing up the average?"
Mouth agape in mock shock, Jazz placed a hand over his spark- Flesh? Flesh-spark? Prowl deleted the line of thought and focused on the performance.
“I assure you Prowler, there are plenty of other Striker class pilots out there that do good for our name. I mean, there’s Blur for one thing. The guys basically the poster child of the whole program. Ridiculously fast mech. There’s also Hot Rod. His mech had the funny little quirk of CONSTANTLY CATCHING ON FIRE, buuut he turned it from a bug into a feature and now that’s just his thing.”
Jazz sat up straighter and pointed a finger at Prowl, “Look. I don’t know the full story and I shouldn’t be the one to tell it either, but trust me when I tell you this guy earned it.”
Leaning back, Prowl processed the new layers of insanity humans would apparently subject themselves to before filing it under “Bizarre conversations with Jazz” in his processor and carrying on.
“So what’s your special quality?”
“Me? I’m freakishly good at syncing up with my mech. Like, Blur is faster, but I’m smoother. Like, like that really is me. It just, I dunno, feels right. Fits me.”
Jazz looked over to his mech for a long time. Frowning at the fuel packet in his hands and solemnly crushing it into a ball.
“In terms of mech?” Jazz looked looked over to Prowl, smile returning with ease.
“I think I might be the only one that’s built for the stars.”
Their conversation continued into the evening like a leisurely dance. Discussing Pool Time, the war, cultural differences , the quintessons, their homes, what remained of them, and all the people they know and once knew.
Prowl never brought up Vortex again, though perhaps he should have.
__________________________________________
"What," Prowl choked out, his voice more static than sound. "Is that?"
The sky was green. The quintessions were in chunks. A mech, matte black with a blank visor, caaaarved into the body of the last living invader. A blade that massive was too big to keep a clean cutting edge, so the mech made up for the lack of delicacy with brute force.
It. It wasn't killing the damn thing. It was vivisecting the aliens spinal column from its body, each rib snapping off with a supersonic POP that shook Ratchets hangar and barely carried over the fucking awful sound of the thing screaming in terror.
Prowl would have never thought a Quintession could be a Victim before that moment.
Spine and brain case finally extracted, the mech lifted its prize to its opening vi- mouth.
That is its mouth. It's head was the size of his entire chassis. Inside, a stranger. Over bright eyes, straining and shaking against restraints within to get a better look at what was being held up to him. The mech moved without any input, tilting its helm back and cracking the skull to fill its open maw with cerebral fluid.
A funnel cloud touched down in the distance.
"That.? Jazz said, leaning against Prowls good side. “Is Vortex.”
Man……I think Cybertronians would consider themselves big and scary compared to primitive earth life. And then meet Vortex. And then see Vortex in their nightmares for the next five million business years
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