A/N: It's 10:15 PM, and my muse has decided to grace me with her presence, so strap in, y'all, cause this isn't even gonna be checked!
It was always fascinting, watching him work. The way he skunk from shadow to shadow, invisible to all but the quickest and most trained eye. It was as if he melted into the shadows themselves, using then as a nearly impenetrable cloak to shield him from all watchers. Nikki had to admit, it was a bit eerie, especially when she temporarily lost him.
It was a very simple training exercise. It was, at this point, also something of a game. Her team would try, one by one, to sneak up on her. Whoever could manage to tap her would win. If she turned around and caught them, she would win.
JARVIS probably had some kind of record on who won and how many times they did. Nikki didn't bother to keep score. This exercise was to test how good they were at sneaking up on her and how good she was at catching them.
She focused her attention back on the monitors. She was allowed to track them via camera and limited telepathic abilities. Thus far, only two had been able to completely elude get telepathy: Soundwave and Ravage. Soundwave, she could understand. He was a telepath himself. A powerful Outlier wit extraordinary mental abilities. Him hiding from her was hardly a stretch. It was Ravage that was the real trick.
She supposed that it might be expected. He was the oldest of the siblings and had grown up as an only child in the tumultuous environment that was the Cybertronian city of Kaon. Back then, Soundwave had been much more cautious, and had - as reported by Ravage himself - trained the cybercat to hide himself from telepaths. It was a skill he clearly still had mastery over.
A flicker in one of the closer cameras once again wrenched Nikki's attention from her musings. She caught only the barest glimpse of Ravage's tail. She watched the corner closely, but saw nothing else for almost four minutes. Then she saw another tail flick. What was her waiting for?
Unless he wasn't there at all.
She flipped through the rest of the camera feeds on the other monitors, looking for any sign of him and finding nothing. The tail flicked on the first monitor onc again, proving without a shadow of a doubt that the footage was looped. It was one of Ravage's favorite tricks, and if it hadn't been so long since the two had played this little game of cat and mouse, she's have remembered.
The very first little licks of paranoia starting to take hold, Nikki swiveled the chair around to examine the entrances to the security room. The grate remained untouched and the door lazily swing back and forth the same four inches as usual, blown by the circulation of cool air that regulated the building's temperature. There were no signs of the felinoid, and that made her even more nervous.
She reached out telepathically, but was unable to find him. She simply sat in near darkness, listening for even the barest tap and jumping at every noise. This went on for a good ten minutes before her nearly shot nerves calmed enough to allow her to rationally plan her next moves.
She continued to flip through the camera feeds on the off chance that he might appear. He never did. It was nearly half an hour before she heard anyone, and when she did hear someone, it was simply Skywarp dashing by the door. She looked, listened, heard nothing, and turned back to the desk.
It took no more than a minute to catch the glowing red optics under the desk, and they gave her such a fright that she shrieked and fell straight out of the chair, instinctially putting distance between her and what startled her. Her shock wore off quickly, and the fear left with it. After all, it was only Ravage, and he would never intentionally hurt her.
"I win," was all he said. Nikki chuckled.
"You sure did," she agreed. There was a sharpness in his optics, a fierce edge to his smile, a thrill in his field that spoke of his love of the hunt. Not for the first time and not for the last, a shiver ran down Nikki's spine as he silently strode out of the room, tail flicking with pride. She was very grateful he was on her side.
She was honestly scared of what might happen if he wasn't.
A/N: So, apparently, I can't post anything from my phone, so...yeah. Have this at 12 in the afternoon instead!