Chapter Text
Prowl is not, by any means, a naturalist.
He is an investigator, but the mysteries he ponders are far more often questions of precedent and cause and tax criteria than of ecology. The only time he interacts with nature is when ruling out ‘natural causes.’
At least, this was the case before he annoyed the Prime and found himself sent to the middle of nowhere assigned to investigate the disappearance of the Rust Sea. ‘To the best of his abilities’ had been the exact specifications. Not only is it a dismissal, it is a mockery.
The disappearance of the Rust Sea is somewhere between the coldest of cold cases and a cosmic prank of absurd proportions. If the records of the sea did not predate Cybertronian history itself, it would be far more reasonable to assume the series of basins and gaping caverns was never filled with liquid in the first place.
It has been dry for a lifetime. Perhaps a lifetime and a half, if you measure it in Prowl’s lifetime. The dry seabed has long since been meticulously mapped, measured, mulled over, and meddled with to the point of exhaustion, and still no one can answer where to or how the water disappeared to in the space between the planet completing one orbit and beginning another. Perhaps the theory with the least to disprove it is that it simply got up and walked away.
Prowl had taken this theory as a personal offense when he initially examined the records of this outpost he has been exiled to at the sea’s former shore, but as he conducts his investigation further he finds himself forced to conclude its dubious merits. The greatest evidence against it is that the sea left no footprints behind when it went.
He spends a great deal of time reviewing the ecology records and expanding his knowledge of natural matters in general. It takes him a while, given that he is not, by any means, a naturalist and must educate himself on matters such as “brackish plateaus” and “oxidization rates” and “erosion effects” to more fully understand the subject of his investigations. He does so.
This strange event happened. Therefore, there must be some cause and effect in the world to be found and potentially reversed. Prowl will find it, however long it takes, and make his return to court and the ranks he has fought so very hard to climb.
The same focus and determination that allowed him to advance at court further his investigation now. With a stipend guaranteeing his fuel supply as long as he is continuing to act in the capacity assigned to him by the Prime, Prowl drives lonely expeditions along the desiccated seafloor. He stops at towns that still follow the coastline—some abandoned, some less so. One is practically a tourist destination, elegantly stacked houses subject to lax building codes rising ramshackle into the sky. It seems to be the only route of expansion they are willing to take, cramped for space on a series of mesas that rise out of a canyon—what once would have been islands, when water rushed between them.
Prowl inquires about it, idly, while drawing on the credit of the Prime. With the space of the seafloor the city’s inhabitants would not need to resort to their precarious current living arrangements.
“Bless you, no,” the establishment’s proprietor laughs. “I’ve been around long enough to remember the moods of the sea. He’ll be back one day. Only thing we can do is stay out from under him.”
“He?” Prowl asks, sensing a vein of new information with the instincts of many investigations. “The sea?”
The innkeeper possesses a wealth of information, and is able to direct Prowl to those who can offer him a treasury more. He extends his stay in Polyhex longer than intended, gathering stories from those old enough to recall the ocean. They speak of it like a person—a capricious, moody, wild person, but a person nonetheless. Someone to be remembered fondly or foully through tall tales and drinking stories. Prowl finds himself slipping into the familiar and personable as well. It is almost easier to think of the missing sea as a vanished suspect than stolen goods. It certainly has the benefit of novelty.
Over and over, what Prowl finds more than anything—more, even, than the anecdotes of personality—is faith. The steadfast conviction that the Rust Sea will return. Prowl is willing to entertain the possibility that whatever animating spirit these people remember caused the drought they now live with, whether through malice or boredom or distraction or something else entirely. History is full of precedent regarding the choices of those with more power than sense. The more he learns, however, the less he believes that whatever, whoever, once called this vast pit in Cybertron’s surface his habitation will return of his own accord. The lifetime that has passed is long enough to do anything, except run away for good.
With the data collected and his parameters set, Prowl sets out to find a runaway.
Jazz has been drowning since the day he was born.
He woke up a lifetime ago on the shore of an empty sea, frame incandescent with wild ocean-light and the taste of rust. The moment he knew he had a body was the moment he could feel the pressure of the Rust-Sea-that-was weighing on him, every liter of it. He had leapt to his feet anyways, light as a ripple, and transformed to drive over the hills and away. Jazz had been young, then. Bursting with the need to see the world.
Now, on the other side of the planet, Jazz is just bursting.
Most of the time he can contain himself, or burn the energy some other way. Dancing all night. Driving too fast. Playing in a pickup band. Finding a beautiful person (and they’re all beautiful, their bright little sparks, burning so fast) to go places with.
But always, eventually, none of that is enough. It always ends up with him back here, or one of the seemingly infinite places like here, out of the way garrets or miserable basements or secret back alleys built over and roofed up years ago, lying on the ground and watching the watery light dance while his spark floods out of his chest.
Water corrodes. Everyone knows it. Jazz knows it better than most.
Whatever his frame is made of, it endures better than anything else he’s subjected to the light of his spark. The walls of the alley oxidize away before his eyes, rust building up and eating the metal to bits. Barnacles sprout crustily along the corners. Ghosts of ferrofish swim above the ground, visible only within the rippling shafts of light and not the shadows in between them. Jazz doesn’t know if they’re actually there, summoned from within himself, or only a trick of his brain.
Once upon a time, before Jazz was born, the Rust Sea covered a swathe of Cybertron bigger than the territory of any city-state except Iacon. The sea had been more powerful than any engine besides the one at the heart of the planet itself, big enough to swallow a metrotitan in its depths, the birthplace of storms.
Thing is, none of that was Jazz. He doesn’t remember those days, before he was himself, except in his dreams.
And his dreams are terrifying.
As usual, the night after he’s vented his spark and done some property damage in the process, Jazz dreams. He dreams of tsunamis washing away ramshackle homes. Storms blowing tall enough to reach low orbit. The depths of crevasses where even the light of the closest stars never reach, and the strange shelled creatures that live there. Mechs with boat alts cutting across the surface, whooping and laughing at each other. Mechs with submarine alts diving into the depths. He sees some of them die, when they make bad choices or don’t learn how to move to the rhythm of the water.
He sees a lot of them die, and the dreaming Jazz can’t muster up anything but disappointment. No grief to speak of. He is under them, and above them, and around them and they are only trespassers—a thousand voices pleading, murmuring, mumbling, laughing, crying, screaming, praying—let us float let us flee let us live—
Jazz wakes up, in a cold sweat of condensation and a ring of rust. His transformation into vehicle mode creaks a little more every time, sounding weathered despite how much he shines. Everything is harder than it once was.
The road out of town leads right back towards the distant, empty ocean. Jazz cuts cross-country until he finds the highway that will take him somewhere else, and doesn’t look back.
Prowl begins his search in cities and destinations he only knows by reputation. Or by name, from past investigations into corruption, when they were frequently signals to check closer for the acquisition or laundering of ill-gotten gains.
Progress is slow. These cities seem made for the restless and nameless wanderers who drift in and out on a schedule that is patterned, but inconstant. There is little record of anyone’s comings and goings, so Prowl finds himself resorting to looking for stories again. Even more embarrassingly, he finds himself looking specifically for urban legends. Tales of the fantastical. Things that would sound like drunken ramblings from bartenders overindulging in their own stock if they did not leave obvious, visible traces behind.
Few of these stories lead to concrete evidence. Some are over-exaggerated. Some are recollections of events too long ago to corroborate. Some are absent reminisces of youth with no useful specifics.
Still. Prowl is patient, and willing to buy drinks, and bit by bit his missing person profile accumulates data. Five different establishments in the same city who had a customer clean out all of the rust sticks they had in stock in the same night. A story of a city-wide party lasting three days and three nights, where none of the revelers found themselves tired until the music ended. Shifts in the weather patterns, barely noticeable on a local scale but mappable on a global and longterm level, a series of storms moving across the planet as though pushed by a very slow moving low-pressure front. This leads him to his most vitally useful lead: a string of curious incidents of vandalism, water damage in places where no water could be. Water damage that spreads if unattended to, reported in a majority of locales later beset by unexpected storms. Infrastructural damage must be reported on far more regularly than passing partiers. Prowl pursues it, and it bears fruit, leading him to cities with fresher and fresher damage in more and more corners. The data he gathers becomes comprehensive enough to allow him to predict where he will find further evidence of what he seeks. An excellent sign of progress.
He keeps a record as he goes of his investigation. Should this succeed as he intends for it to succeed, his documentation must be impeccable. To lose the credit that he has at this point more than earned would be galling.
Prowl keeps no record of his speculations, though like any investigation, he finds himself reflecting on the person who does not know he is following behind. They must be scared, with how far they have run from where they began.
Surely the sea wants to follow its nature—at least, Prowl can only assume so, given the reoccurring water damages. He wonders how it happens. Under carelessly brushing fingers? Spreading from unstudied footprints? Exploding out of whoever-they-are like some kind of fit? He can’t imagine anyone doing this purposefully.
It is not only likely but probable that whoever he is after has no idea what’s happening to them. No idea what they are. Prowl barely believes it and he is a trained and experienced investigator with the resources of the Prime’s data network at his passkeys. Even he had to take vorns of work and a global sense of scale to apprehend his suspicions. How could anyone not only starting on but confined to a personal level ever hope to come to the same understanding?
Prowl allows himself the luxury of compiling improbable simulations during his long drives between cities, running what it will be like when he finally finds the target he has pursued for so long. Because this is a theoretical speculation, and the drive is very boring otherwise, he allows himself the indulgent premise that he will be able to recognize the mech on sight. This allows him to further construct a scenario where he walks up to a crowd, selecting from among them an unassuming mech who has no idea how different they really are. In the scenario, Prowl begins to explain himself and the stranger listens attentively, absorbing Prowl’s explanation like their tanks are empty and the words are energon. They have been afraid for so long, yearning for their true nature, and what Prowl has to tell them answers not only their questions but the prayers they never knew they had. Prowl escorts them back to their rightful place, the sea flows once more, he returns to court not as a begrudgingly pardoned exile slinking in from the cold but in full triumph. All his enemies are forced to compliment him. His report is distributed around the entire planet and hailed as brilliant. Et cetera.
He is aware of the many unlikelihoods of this scenario. The drive is very boring.