Chapter Text
The town of Iacon wasn’t really something to be marvelled at. Sure, it was one of the smaller parts of Cybertron but it wasn’t overly small either. Buildings still reached to touch the stars at night and craned to gather sunlight during the day. Mechs mulled about the streets. Bitlets played in the park during the warm summer days. Families waltzed to and from diners in the town. Free to do whatever they wanted with school out for the summer months.
The fact that it was a hot muggy day didn't really help when traversing around town. Neither did the fact that it had been a hot summer. Or that time had stopped. Jazz didn’t mean that metaphorically, or spiritually or in any other way that he (or you) could possibly imagine.
Time had stopped. Literally.
Jazz had woken on the fifth cycle of the eighth orbital cycle. When summer was at its peak. Went to berth, and woke up again on the fifth of the eighth.
And did it all over again.
In truth, it took Jazz an embarrassingly long time to even realise it was the same day on repeat. And even then he didn’t even clock it properly until there were no more funny mechanimal videos to scroll through. It got boring fast by the time he had reloaded the app connected to his visor to come across a ginger mechcat falling off the table. There’s only so many times you can laugh at these things before you start to feel bad for the animal.
Theoretically, Jazz could do anything he wanted to. Each cycle repeating, one after the other. The same minutes, the same sixteen hours, the same cycle. Again and again and again. One after the other. With no mech the wiser.
I mean, sure, he could go to the shops or the archives, but he could go to those places with elaborate, embarrassing mods or completely stripped of his armour and it wouldn’t even matter. Because it would all be erased the next day like a shaken etch A sketch.
He could, I don’t know, rob a bank or hop on a freight train and ride out into the middle of nowhere and look up at the galaxy that the light pollution had snatched from them. Jazz could do anything he ever wanted to. Go anywhere and do anything and everything. Anything that he thought of doing in the past, he could accomplish. (Within the sixteen hour timeframe of course, that's a very important fact. Very literal as well.)
And for some reason, that thought seemed more restricting than he wanted it to. And besides, in this heat? Who actually has the energy.
He stopped counting the days a while ago. The last time he actually kept track was for thirty cycles and even then there were at least fifteen- (sixteen? Oh, whatever) before that. So eventually he kinda just gave up in that retrospect and let the days slip by. The fifth kept spinning and spinning and spinning like a merry go-round made from hell. Eventually you knew which figure and which horse and which jumpscare would come at which bend.
And, at the end of the day, it got kinda boring.
Jazz knew who to talk to and what to ask. He knew that one of the cycles he just stayed in berth all day. Didn't really feel like he was missing out on anything. Not when he knew what time the sprinklers would come on and who fell into the pool that day and how many tickets one guy had on the front of his windshield.
Each day Jazz awoke to the sound of his creator getting ready to go to work. She would beep her horn twice before getting ready to move off. Whether or not he was startled by the horn was indifferent. He awoke at the same time every day. 8:15 on the dot. Never earlier, never later.
The hours that he had spent during the first few cycles just laying in bed must have broken a record somewhere in the galaxy.
Music sheets littered the floor of the berthroom. Notebooks filled to the brim with ripped out receipt pages and song lyrics. Posters of bands were hidden underneath sticky notes of song lyrics that needed rearranging. A keyboard stuck out in the right hand corner and a guitar had settled itself against its side. During the first couple of cycles Jazz had recovered all of his burnt out musical talent that the academy was sucking out of him. He had strong dreams to be a musician and had come up with many wonderful lyrics. They were, however, lost to time. Literally.
The warmth that filtered through the window warmed his plating as he turned in his berth, the comforter fell below his bumper and Jazz took a moment to vent, letting his systems come online, before climbing out and heading downstairs.
His sire was sitting downstairs at the table with Ricochet. Their black plating and morning expressions are almost identical. Jazz could tell that Ricochet was scrolling through the internet by the way his gaze kept flickering under his visor. His sire looked up as he entered the kitchen and acknowledged him with a small "Morning Jazz” before going back down to his word search.
“Loser” Ricochet mumbled half heartedly while Jazz copied him at the exact same time. Making his way round the kitchen island and picking up a dropped mug on the way to the toaster. Opening the top cabinet to grab a cube of energon and a couple of copper flake shakes.
He grabbed the toasted energon crusts and flipped them onto the plate beside his sire before heading back to shake an over generous amount of copper flakes into his energon.
“You know that’s not real fuel right?” Ricochet raised an optical ridge.
“I know.”
His sire looked over slightly “Jazz have something healthy.” He tried.
Jazz smiled and hummed “To be fair sire, you’re going to be eating an entire pint of frozen energon by yourself in approximately eight hours, so…”
His sire rolled his optics playfully “you know you have class at the academy today, right Jazz?”
Jazz’s engine let out a small whine at the reminder “I know” he grumbled.
“Are you coming to loserly cheer me on today at the cube court?” Ricochet asked as Jazz made for his exit.
“Who knows? The cycle is full of possibilities!” He called through the open door.
—
Jazz turned on his Mixtape as he headed for the road. Playing a popular tune as he quickly transformed and began to make his way towards town.
The best part about all of this, Jazz thought, was the comfort in knowing that he could blast his mixtape out loud and everybody would forget about it by the next morning. No grudges to be held and no annoyances to be reminded of. Similarly he could drive however he wanted to. There was a small freedom in having your wheels swerve slightly with each bounce in the road. Granted it was not a large freedom but every bit counted.
His wheels swerved on the quiet roads, taking the small joys in the way that his tires ran against the smooth tarmac.
As he got to the busier parts of Iacon, Jazz pulled up into a slip road and transformed. Making a smooth transition between the pavement and the road. A skip in his pedes as Jazz walzed around other mechs on the pavement.
There was a mech to his left in front of an apartment door, searching through his subspace with a purple bag wrapped around his servo. As Jazz passed he called “Uh, the keys are in ya bag!”
He heard a small “oh” as he passed and Jazz smirked a bit. He circled round a large Mech with grey plating and said “bless you.” A moment later a sneeze sounded from behind him and Jazz let a large grin spread across his faceplates. Skipping forwards to a crossing, Jazz transformed his pedes to allow his bottom wheels to replace the edge of the stabilisers.
As he did this a large truck came round the corner and Jazz gently skated forwards before gripping the edge of the spoiler and allowing the truck to pull him forwards for a short while. Waving at a couple of giggling femmes down the road Jazz turned and spied a mech looking around and checking a data pad before looking up again.
He was lost. Clearly.
This was, however, irrelevant, since this mech had been lost for…however long the Timeloop had been going on.
Jazz gently detached himself from the truck and made his way over. The mechs optics looked up at him as he approached. His blue and white frame hunched in confusion.
“It’s straight down that way, then you come into one of these things” Jazz made a circular gesture with his servo “then it’s your first right.”
The mech looked up at him with a small smile and a confused frown between his optics. Jazz continued walking around the mech and over the road.
“H-hey wait- how did you?”
Jazz laughed as he crossed the road, puedes moving backwards to the other side of the street “I’ve kinda got a detective thing going on!”
“Oh! Well- thank you!”
“I got you mech!” Jazz laughed and turned around quick enough to dodge a lamppost when he reached the other side of the street.
——
The thing about time loops, or more realistically being stuck in a Timeloop is that once you get over the whole “oh my Primus I’m stuck in a time loop! What do I do? How can I cope? Wahhh!” It’s actually pretty cool.
You get to unconsciously set your whole day to the same 16 hours from the moment you wake up to the moment you get the day reset.
For a mech who doesn’t struggle much with routine the universe sure had a way of forcing one on him. Jazz couldn't really complain much however. He had made his way through 20% of the fiction section in the archives, learnt how to predict the weather forecast and won the lottery more times than he could count.
Maybe… maybe this was like a second chance. Maybe he did something atrociously bad and now he has to live this day over and over and over again as punishment. However if this really was eternal punishment, he mustn’t have done something that bad.
Jazz muddled through his processor as he made his way through town. Back towards his neighbourhood but instead of going straight ahead he took a left and headed to the house at the end of the street. Climbing on top of the building using a nearby crystal tree (precariously, might I add) Jazz clamoured his way through an open window and over a couch.
“Hey mech”
Jazz stared straight ahead at the holoscreen in front of him. A gruesome scene of death and war rages, accompanied by the sounds of gunshots.
“Hey”
The mech on the couch beside him was none other than Jazz’ best friend since they were sparkling’s. Blaster’s frame was a mix of bright reds, yellows and oranges. Unlike Jazz however, Blaster’s alt mode was not a car, it was a boom box. He always told Jazz that one day he would get a whole gaggle of cassettes. He would love each and every single one of them. Jazz always knew that Blaster was made for caring for a bunch of trouble makers. He was also promised the title of ‘uncle Jazz’ so… he wasn’t complaining.
Jazz watched as Blaster, well more accurately Blaster's avatar, walked into a room with a bunch of elite ‘decepticons’ (that’s what the bad people were called in the game) and frowned.
“Dude those guys have really strong armour”
Blaster scoffed slightly (probably at Jazz’s video game incompetence) “nah, gotta use a shotgun, watch!”
“No, no that’s not going to work, Blast!” Jazz tried to grab the game controller out of his friend's servos. (Unsuccessfully, might I add)
“Just a little bit of spider rifle.” Blaster grinned even though the health percentage on his ‘Autobot avatar’ depleted.
“That isn’t going ta work.” Jazz mumbled and sat back as Blaster got his aft handed to him.
“No! No no no!” Blaster grimaced “not in the face! Not in the face! Not in the face!”
His character died with an aggressive display of blood and drama.
Jazz grinned after a moment of silence “he got you in the face.”
“Yeah ah know jazz! He got me in the face” Blaster groaned “Primus, I’m never going to find that key.”
“What if your whole life was like that?”
Blaster snorted “what, where do you die and respawn?” His character came back to life in an extravagant array of sparkles and light. Seemed a lot better than just waking up every morning. A lot more magical.
Jazz hummed in response “yeah, or when ya go to berth and then wake up and it’s the whole day again on repeat.”
He turned towards his Blaster “what would ya do?”
He hummed and gestured towards the holoscreen “besides this?”
Jazz ‘eeh’d’ “or in addition.” He hummed slightly and shuffled in his seat “you know? Switch it up a little every now and again.”
There was small silence for a nanoclick before Blaster stated “get laid”
Jazz snorted incredulously “really?” He looked at his friend “out of everything thats what you’re going with? Getting laid?”
“Hey hey hey, I could hook up with some mech really hot. Like, really hot! You have that much faith in me, right?”
Jazz looked away and pulled a face jokingly.
“Mech!” Blaster shoved Jazz to the side as he cackled.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I was joking, ah promise!” Jazz grinned “mostly.”
“Okay but seriously” Jazz smiled “you wouldnt, I dunno tie a bunch of ballon’s to a chair or something?”
“Dude, no ah’d defiantly take the hot mech.” Blaster solidifies hus answer with another shotgun sound and a decepción on the holoscreen drops to the ground.
Jazz hummed “sure, but it might be harder than you’d think.”
Jazz’s processor reminded him of the many, many failed attempts at flirting with mechs and femmes across town. Thank god the time loop made mechs forget the previous cycle.
“Mech, you’d get like, infinite do overs!” Blaster turned to him “you’d just iterate, straight A-B testing.”
“Mm okay, so if there’s infinite do overs then sooner or later it has to happen, right?” Jazz turned to fully face him “just, like- mathematically?”
“Maybe it’s like pi though, it just goes on forever.” Blaster frowned and turned to look at Jazz in the optics “there could be infinite ways for ya not to get laid, or me.”
“Then it would just be a really sad Timeloop because all of ya offers just get smashed on the ground.” Blaster groaned as his character died once again and turned to Jazz “what if that was the key though, to get yourself out of the Timeloop?”
Jazz frowned “what? Get laid?”
Blaster shrugged a bit “yah”
Jazz’s face pinched “right… but why would you want to get out of the loop? You’d be the centre of the universe!”
Blaster hummed and grimaced slightly “yeah but it could get boring or… lonely” he turned back to his game as his character respawned for the tenth time.
“No- dude, you would be like- the king- of everything!”
Blaster snorted “sure you will, but say that it’s you and you’d tell me.” He looked at Jazz in the optics “I’d just forget.”
Sometimes in times like this, Jazz thinks that there are higher powers playing with him. Taunting him. No matter how many times he told Blaster about the Timeloop he always forgot the main story. However, he remembered bits and information of the conversations they’d had beforehand and used it in his own speech on the next cycle.
“Right but you’d never believe me anyway.” Jazz commented and Blaster looked downright hurt and turned to Jazz with a mocking play of disapproval.
“I would too!” He looked up “we could, however, have had this conversation like, fifty times already.”
Jazz hummed and turned his body to the side as he let Blaster prattle on about time loops.
“The repetition…”
In reality, Jazz has probably had more than fifty conversations with blaster about this.
“The isolation…”
More like… fifteen hundred. (Jazz doesn't actually know how many conversations he's had with Blaster about timeloops. They all seem to blend together at the end of the cycle.)
“You’d be like the last man on cybertron.”
Jazz didn't think his friend was all too wrong.