Bingo Challenge Fic: Lost in Translation
And now for something completely different. For my third prompt in this set...
Title: Lost in Translation
Author: zea_taylor
‘Verse: Animated
Rating: T/PG-13
Characters: Jazz, Prowl
Warnings: None
Author’s Note: A TFA fic! Written for the prowlxjazz community’s Anniversary Bingo Challenge. Inspired by a prompt posted by wicked3659.
Comments and suggestions for improvement are always very welcome!
Prompt: Scat Singing
“Shu-ba-de doo-wop ba dada dada, doody ba-da doo ba-de.”
The stream of syllables stopped Jazz in his tracks. The tall, white-armoured Elite Guard paused, helm cocked to one side as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing. The words didn’t have a translation in any Earth language he had a data pack for. Each phoneme was distinct, and each vocalised on a different note. The result was… odd. It was undoubtably music but quite unlike any he’d heard before, whether on Cybertron or beyond.
Interest piqued, Jazz followed the sound to its origin.
Of all the rooms in Optimus Prime’s Detroit base, the one Prowl had chosen for himself felt most like home to Jazz. On first sight it shared nothing in common with the dojo where both cyberninja had spent their youngling vorns. Master Yoketron had trained them never to trust that first impression. Beneath the surface veneer of human materials, human décor and organic vegetation, there was a very familiar sense of tranquillity, acceptance and understanding.
All sentiments, Jazz mused as he leaned on the doorframe, noticeably lacking from the faceplates of the room’s inhabitant.
Prowl sat, cross-legged, beneath the branches of the tree that dominated his chosen space. The lithe mech had folded his slender frame into a basic lotus position, his servos resting on his legs and his optic visor dimmed. Usually that would be a meditation pose, designed to minimise sensory input and allow focus on whatever the cyberninja wished to contemplate. Today, there was no relaxation in the black and gold frame. Prowl’s expression was closer to a grimace than the small, accepting smile Master Yoketron instilled in his pupils.
“Sha ba de da-de, sha ba doo de.”
Jazz hummed along with another stream of nonsense syllables, his deep voice providing a harmonic counterpoint to the human tones spilling from the vid screen. No point in hiding his presence, after all - the concentration Prowl was putting into listening, he’d probably heard Jazz arrive at the base, let alone in the doorway.
The recording ended, a scattering of applause greeting a vocal finale that left Jazz more than a little awed.
“Whoa,” he murmured. “That’s one rocking tune.”
Prowl’s visor brightened. The mech sighed heavily, one servo coming up to massage his brow-ridge as if to ease an incipient processor ache. The look he directed at his visitor was rather less friendly than Jazz had come to expect.
“Hey, hey, there.” The white-clad cyberninja straightened from his slouch against the doorframe. He raised his servos in front of him, palms outwards in a defensive gesture. “Throttle down, mech.”
“It makes no sense!”
“Yeah, I kinda got that, y’know?”
“Do you have any idea how long I have been trying to interpret that lyric?” Prowl unfolded from his pose, his restless energy manifest in the way he paced the room. “How can humans listen to - and applaud! - a verbal performance that entirely lacks coherent speech?”
“You gotta admit it’s kind of fun. Pretty far out.”
“Far out of reach of rational interpretation? Why would anyone invest such effort in anything so devoid of meaning?” Prowl paused, servos crossed across his chest, to raise a cynical brow-ridge. He vented hard, the sound escaping as a heavy sigh. Shaking his helm at his guest, his expression softened, a wry smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “I might have known you’d enjoy it.”
Slipping further into the room, sure of his welcome despite everything, Jazz let his confusion show.
“Scat singing is a form of jazz, after all.”
“Oh.” Jazz’s expression wavered for a moment, his glee at the discovery fighting against his awareness of Prowl’s frustration. The glee won, showing in the white ninja’s broad grin.
That was probably a mistake. Prowl’s half-smile faded into a reprise of his earlier scowl. His narrow visor brightened slightly, his expression profoundly unimpressed. Throwing his servos up, he strode to the vid screen and restarted the track. The improvised scat filled the room, as bewildering as it had been the last time, and through Primus-knew-how-many repetitions before that.
“You asked the kid, I’m guessing?”
“Apparently such music is ‘boring’ and only ‘old fogeys’ listen to it. Having delivered her opinion, Sari had no interest in discussing the issue further.” Prowl groaned, dropping his faceplates into his servos as the warbling sound went on. “It’s like some kind of alien code, arcane to the point of meaninglessness for any listener not initiated in its secrets!”
There was no way for Jazz to hide his chuckle. He couldn’t help wondering how long Prowl had been perfecting that phrase, just waiting for an audience to use it on. Dropping into a lotus position on the woven fibre mat Prowl had vacated, he patted the space beside him in invitation.
“You do realise that’s exactly what it is?” he noted. Prowl just glared and deactivated the vid-screen with an unnecessarily fierce jab of his servo. Jazz still didn’t know the younger cyberninja as well as he’d like to. One thing he was pretty sure of though: nothing upset the cycle-bot faster than meaningless waste. Whether that was of lives, property, effort or some more nebulous potential, it troubled Prowl to the core of his spark. After what happened to Master Yoketron, Jazz could dig that. “Ease up on yourself. Give it time, Prowl. We are aliens here, and, for all our trying, that’s not gonna change anytime soon.”
Prowl flushed his vents, the sound frustrated and angry. Jazz didn’t let that ruffle him. He hummed, keeping his vocalisor output low and even. The blue glow faded from his visor, his processor concentrating instead on the basic calming meditation that was always the first step towards tranquillity.
It was several long klicks before Prowl joined him on the mat. A second hum rose in harmony with Jazz’s, a little higher in pitch and lacking the resonance of the Elite Guard’s heavier frame.
Achieving calm wasn’t a quick process. Prowl had spent a million stellar cycles on the effort, and not got all the way there. Just now there wasn’t time for that kind of endeavour. Jazz held the level hum until he heard Prowl’s engine ease down and his vents become more regular. Their own systems were the only sounds in the room, those and the soft music of birds in the tree that towered above them.
Visor still dimmed, Jazz let his hum subside and chuckled softly.
“Did Master Yoketron ever tell you about the day I met Kup?”
Prowl revved, surprised by the question.
“The Autobot drill sergeant?”
“That’s the one. Drab old mech, colours scuffed and cygar in servo, rolls up to the dojo, and asks me if the ‘old coot’ was done with ‘the hand-waving mystic mumbo-jumbo’ for the orn.” Jazz paused, aware of Prowl’s sharp gasp, but not letting that affect his own relaxed frame. He’d made peace with the memory, and the mech, long before. “Yeah, can’t say I was impressed. Nor was he when he handed me my aft a breem or so later. I’m telling you, Prowl: soundest beating I ever had, short of the cycle Yoketron took me in.”
“But Master Yoketron always spoke of Kup in the warmest of terms!”
Colour bled back into Jazz’s visor, the Elite Guard cocking his helm as he caught Prowl’s confused gaze.
“Best of friends, mech. I spent half the night fetching drinks, and the other half learning more about life than anyone younger than Unicron should know.” He shook his helm. “Taught me a lesson though. Words aren’t everything. You got to listen to what people are feeling. What’s in here...” He raised a servo, resting it over his own spark and then stretching a little to tap the chest-plates above Prowl’s. Pulling the servo back, he let a smile quirk his lips before gesturing to them. “…Not here.”
The expression on Prowl’s face was one of deep chagrin. The younger cyberninja got the point, Jazz was pretty sure, even if his frustration and incomprehension remained.
Raising one servo, Jazz gave a soft whistle. The birds in Prowl’s tree were long since accustomed to his presence, as well as their host’s. Mostly they ignored the two cyberninja, and that was cool, but a generation of chicks had hatched in Prowl’s presence and taken flight in Jazz’s. One of those fluttered downwards now, settling on the white armour of his outstretched servo. It chirped, its head tilted in curiosity, and ruffled its wings. Tucking them away, apparently satisfied, it tilted back its head and launched into glorious song.
The sound, like the scat singing of a few breems before, was utterly alien to Cybertronians, and utterly enchanting.
“Say you’re human.” Jazz kept his voice low, his murmur barely disturbing the tiny creature. “You think you can catch the vibe of this with a la-la-la, or a mmm-mmm-mmm?” Venting softly, the white cyberninja shook his helm. “Yeah, even a tweet-tweet-tweet is gonna kill the moment, dig?”
The little bird flared its wings, its throat extended as its voice rose in a soaring arpeggio.
Jazz let the sound fill him, let his spark resonate with the simple joys of sunlight and sustenance and survival.
“Hey pah de shoop da, sha da-de ba da.”
The bird paused, letting its wings subside and giving a shiver of uncertainty before cocking its head again and warbling a tremulous query.
“Sha ba de doo-da, sha diddy ba do.” Jazz’s soft response carried apology and encouragement that needed no words. The bird chirped and responded, his song rising once more to tempt Jazz into another reply.
The exchange went on longer than Jazz had dared hope, and he let every morsel of his pleasure and satisfaction find expression in the shaped tones and nonsense words. It wasn’t perfect, the cyberninja knew that. It lacked the fluidity and natural tone of the human singers, but it wasn’t bad for a first attempt.
Exhilarated and more weary than he had any right to be, he watched the bird flutter away before turning back to Prowl.
Other birds had perched on the cycle’s black and gold frame, all as fascinated by the singing mech as Prowl seemed to be. They dispersed slowly, returning to their perches in the tree, filling the silence that followed Jazz’s improvisation with the everyday chatter of their chirps and tweets.
Prowl was watching Jazz with a pensive expression, but the frustration and anger had faded along with the music. Jazz allows his back struts to relax, flexing his shoulders and arms and revelling in the warm sunlight as he waited for the younger cyberninja to speak.
Prowl shook his helm, his own low chuckle filled with weary self-reproach.
“Meaning without meaning. I could have analysed the words for megacycles and never heard what was being said.”
“Everything has a meaning in this world, Prowl.” Jazz leaned back, his visored optics on his host. “But only Primus knows them all. There’s no shame in taking a while to catch up.”
“Prowl!” The door to the room burst open, Bumblebee tumbling through in a blur of yellow plating. The young scout caught sight of Jazz and his blue optics brightened. “Guys! Even better! You gotta come - Sari’s scored a beta of Mega-Death Super Whack, and it’s got a dozen new NPCs and an FFA and a deathmatch, and a whole load of new missions with HPs and PLs, and MMORG capability and all, and it looks slagging awesome, but Bulk’s stuck on patrol so I need so someone to pwn before he gets back!”
The scout left as quickly as he’d come, their agreement apparently taken for granted. Prowl vented softly, glancing back at Jazz.
“And for your next interpretation challenge…?”
Jazz laughed deep and long. Unfolding in a graceful movement, he offered Prowl a hand and pulled the slighter mech up beside him.
“Man, some things even Primus would take a cycle or two to figure out. What say we go take a look?”
Prowl chuckled, leading the way as they set off in search of Bumblebee and the answers only he could provide.
The End
Title: Lost in Translation
Author: zea_taylor
‘Verse: Animated
Rating: T/PG-13
Characters: Jazz, Prowl
Warnings: None
Author’s Note: A TFA fic! Written for the prowlxjazz community’s Anniversary Bingo Challenge. Inspired by a prompt posted by wicked3659.
Comments and suggestions for improvement are always very welcome!
Prompt: Scat Singing
“Shu-ba-de doo-wop ba dada dada, doody ba-da doo ba-de.”
The stream of syllables stopped Jazz in his tracks. The tall, white-armoured Elite Guard paused, helm cocked to one side as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing. The words didn’t have a translation in any Earth language he had a data pack for. Each phoneme was distinct, and each vocalised on a different note. The result was… odd. It was undoubtably music but quite unlike any he’d heard before, whether on Cybertron or beyond.
Interest piqued, Jazz followed the sound to its origin.
Of all the rooms in Optimus Prime’s Detroit base, the one Prowl had chosen for himself felt most like home to Jazz. On first sight it shared nothing in common with the dojo where both cyberninja had spent their youngling vorns. Master Yoketron had trained them never to trust that first impression. Beneath the surface veneer of human materials, human décor and organic vegetation, there was a very familiar sense of tranquillity, acceptance and understanding.
All sentiments, Jazz mused as he leaned on the doorframe, noticeably lacking from the faceplates of the room’s inhabitant.
Prowl sat, cross-legged, beneath the branches of the tree that dominated his chosen space. The lithe mech had folded his slender frame into a basic lotus position, his servos resting on his legs and his optic visor dimmed. Usually that would be a meditation pose, designed to minimise sensory input and allow focus on whatever the cyberninja wished to contemplate. Today, there was no relaxation in the black and gold frame. Prowl’s expression was closer to a grimace than the small, accepting smile Master Yoketron instilled in his pupils.
“Sha ba de da-de, sha ba doo de.”
Jazz hummed along with another stream of nonsense syllables, his deep voice providing a harmonic counterpoint to the human tones spilling from the vid screen. No point in hiding his presence, after all - the concentration Prowl was putting into listening, he’d probably heard Jazz arrive at the base, let alone in the doorway.
The recording ended, a scattering of applause greeting a vocal finale that left Jazz more than a little awed.
“Whoa,” he murmured. “That’s one rocking tune.”
Prowl’s visor brightened. The mech sighed heavily, one servo coming up to massage his brow-ridge as if to ease an incipient processor ache. The look he directed at his visitor was rather less friendly than Jazz had come to expect.
“Hey, hey, there.” The white-clad cyberninja straightened from his slouch against the doorframe. He raised his servos in front of him, palms outwards in a defensive gesture. “Throttle down, mech.”
“It makes no sense!”
“Yeah, I kinda got that, y’know?”
“Do you have any idea how long I have been trying to interpret that lyric?” Prowl unfolded from his pose, his restless energy manifest in the way he paced the room. “How can humans listen to - and applaud! - a verbal performance that entirely lacks coherent speech?”
“You gotta admit it’s kind of fun. Pretty far out.”
“Far out of reach of rational interpretation? Why would anyone invest such effort in anything so devoid of meaning?” Prowl paused, servos crossed across his chest, to raise a cynical brow-ridge. He vented hard, the sound escaping as a heavy sigh. Shaking his helm at his guest, his expression softened, a wry smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “I might have known you’d enjoy it.”
Slipping further into the room, sure of his welcome despite everything, Jazz let his confusion show.
“Scat singing is a form of jazz, after all.”
“Oh.” Jazz’s expression wavered for a moment, his glee at the discovery fighting against his awareness of Prowl’s frustration. The glee won, showing in the white ninja’s broad grin.
That was probably a mistake. Prowl’s half-smile faded into a reprise of his earlier scowl. His narrow visor brightened slightly, his expression profoundly unimpressed. Throwing his servos up, he strode to the vid screen and restarted the track. The improvised scat filled the room, as bewildering as it had been the last time, and through Primus-knew-how-many repetitions before that.
“You asked the kid, I’m guessing?”
“Apparently such music is ‘boring’ and only ‘old fogeys’ listen to it. Having delivered her opinion, Sari had no interest in discussing the issue further.” Prowl groaned, dropping his faceplates into his servos as the warbling sound went on. “It’s like some kind of alien code, arcane to the point of meaninglessness for any listener not initiated in its secrets!”
There was no way for Jazz to hide his chuckle. He couldn’t help wondering how long Prowl had been perfecting that phrase, just waiting for an audience to use it on. Dropping into a lotus position on the woven fibre mat Prowl had vacated, he patted the space beside him in invitation.
“You do realise that’s exactly what it is?” he noted. Prowl just glared and deactivated the vid-screen with an unnecessarily fierce jab of his servo. Jazz still didn’t know the younger cyberninja as well as he’d like to. One thing he was pretty sure of though: nothing upset the cycle-bot faster than meaningless waste. Whether that was of lives, property, effort or some more nebulous potential, it troubled Prowl to the core of his spark. After what happened to Master Yoketron, Jazz could dig that. “Ease up on yourself. Give it time, Prowl. We are aliens here, and, for all our trying, that’s not gonna change anytime soon.”
Prowl flushed his vents, the sound frustrated and angry. Jazz didn’t let that ruffle him. He hummed, keeping his vocalisor output low and even. The blue glow faded from his visor, his processor concentrating instead on the basic calming meditation that was always the first step towards tranquillity.
It was several long klicks before Prowl joined him on the mat. A second hum rose in harmony with Jazz’s, a little higher in pitch and lacking the resonance of the Elite Guard’s heavier frame.
Achieving calm wasn’t a quick process. Prowl had spent a million stellar cycles on the effort, and not got all the way there. Just now there wasn’t time for that kind of endeavour. Jazz held the level hum until he heard Prowl’s engine ease down and his vents become more regular. Their own systems were the only sounds in the room, those and the soft music of birds in the tree that towered above them.
Visor still dimmed, Jazz let his hum subside and chuckled softly.
“Did Master Yoketron ever tell you about the day I met Kup?”
Prowl revved, surprised by the question.
“The Autobot drill sergeant?”
“That’s the one. Drab old mech, colours scuffed and cygar in servo, rolls up to the dojo, and asks me if the ‘old coot’ was done with ‘the hand-waving mystic mumbo-jumbo’ for the orn.” Jazz paused, aware of Prowl’s sharp gasp, but not letting that affect his own relaxed frame. He’d made peace with the memory, and the mech, long before. “Yeah, can’t say I was impressed. Nor was he when he handed me my aft a breem or so later. I’m telling you, Prowl: soundest beating I ever had, short of the cycle Yoketron took me in.”
“But Master Yoketron always spoke of Kup in the warmest of terms!”
Colour bled back into Jazz’s visor, the Elite Guard cocking his helm as he caught Prowl’s confused gaze.
“Best of friends, mech. I spent half the night fetching drinks, and the other half learning more about life than anyone younger than Unicron should know.” He shook his helm. “Taught me a lesson though. Words aren’t everything. You got to listen to what people are feeling. What’s in here...” He raised a servo, resting it over his own spark and then stretching a little to tap the chest-plates above Prowl’s. Pulling the servo back, he let a smile quirk his lips before gesturing to them. “…Not here.”
The expression on Prowl’s face was one of deep chagrin. The younger cyberninja got the point, Jazz was pretty sure, even if his frustration and incomprehension remained.
Raising one servo, Jazz gave a soft whistle. The birds in Prowl’s tree were long since accustomed to his presence, as well as their host’s. Mostly they ignored the two cyberninja, and that was cool, but a generation of chicks had hatched in Prowl’s presence and taken flight in Jazz’s. One of those fluttered downwards now, settling on the white armour of his outstretched servo. It chirped, its head tilted in curiosity, and ruffled its wings. Tucking them away, apparently satisfied, it tilted back its head and launched into glorious song.
The sound, like the scat singing of a few breems before, was utterly alien to Cybertronians, and utterly enchanting.
“Say you’re human.” Jazz kept his voice low, his murmur barely disturbing the tiny creature. “You think you can catch the vibe of this with a la-la-la, or a mmm-mmm-mmm?” Venting softly, the white cyberninja shook his helm. “Yeah, even a tweet-tweet-tweet is gonna kill the moment, dig?”
The little bird flared its wings, its throat extended as its voice rose in a soaring arpeggio.
Jazz let the sound fill him, let his spark resonate with the simple joys of sunlight and sustenance and survival.
“Hey pah de shoop da, sha da-de ba da.”
The bird paused, letting its wings subside and giving a shiver of uncertainty before cocking its head again and warbling a tremulous query.
“Sha ba de doo-da, sha diddy ba do.” Jazz’s soft response carried apology and encouragement that needed no words. The bird chirped and responded, his song rising once more to tempt Jazz into another reply.
The exchange went on longer than Jazz had dared hope, and he let every morsel of his pleasure and satisfaction find expression in the shaped tones and nonsense words. It wasn’t perfect, the cyberninja knew that. It lacked the fluidity and natural tone of the human singers, but it wasn’t bad for a first attempt.
Exhilarated and more weary than he had any right to be, he watched the bird flutter away before turning back to Prowl.
Other birds had perched on the cycle’s black and gold frame, all as fascinated by the singing mech as Prowl seemed to be. They dispersed slowly, returning to their perches in the tree, filling the silence that followed Jazz’s improvisation with the everyday chatter of their chirps and tweets.
Prowl was watching Jazz with a pensive expression, but the frustration and anger had faded along with the music. Jazz allows his back struts to relax, flexing his shoulders and arms and revelling in the warm sunlight as he waited for the younger cyberninja to speak.
Prowl shook his helm, his own low chuckle filled with weary self-reproach.
“Meaning without meaning. I could have analysed the words for megacycles and never heard what was being said.”
“Everything has a meaning in this world, Prowl.” Jazz leaned back, his visored optics on his host. “But only Primus knows them all. There’s no shame in taking a while to catch up.”
“Prowl!” The door to the room burst open, Bumblebee tumbling through in a blur of yellow plating. The young scout caught sight of Jazz and his blue optics brightened. “Guys! Even better! You gotta come - Sari’s scored a beta of Mega-Death Super Whack, and it’s got a dozen new NPCs and an FFA and a deathmatch, and a whole load of new missions with HPs and PLs, and MMORG capability and all, and it looks slagging awesome, but Bulk’s stuck on patrol so I need so someone to pwn before he gets back!”
The scout left as quickly as he’d come, their agreement apparently taken for granted. Prowl vented softly, glancing back at Jazz.
“And for your next interpretation challenge…?”
Jazz laughed deep and long. Unfolding in a graceful movement, he offered Prowl a hand and pulled the slighter mech up beside him.
“Man, some things even Primus would take a cycle or two to figure out. What say we go take a look?”
Prowl chuckled, leading the way as they set off in search of Bumblebee and the answers only he could provide.
The End