Disclaimer: Don't own Transformers

Nature's Protest

Mirage was not a happy mech.

The orn had started off very promising, but something happened and Mirage was still trying to figure out when it went wrong.

He had been given the coordinates to Hound's whereabouts and at the start of the orn had come across the correct planet. Preparation for landing went smoothly, but the gravity was slightly stronger than expected, and the pod he had been traveling in hit the planet's surface harder than it should have.

Due to the hard impact, he found himself having to crawl up and out of the imprint in the rock to reach the official surface of the planet.

Once dragging himself out of the rather deep hole, he found himself alone with no one to greet him as expected. After searching around in the cramped area, forcing himself through tangled messes of plant life and squeezing himself through tight spaces, he ended up losing the location of his pod.

He had ingeniously convinced himself that he knew where it was and was simply backtracking his way towards it just to make sure he remembered where it was. On his way back, on the bark of the trees that he noticed something that immediately irritated him.

Streaks of blue and white paint showed where he had squeezed his way through the trees.

It helped make sure that he was going on the same direction, but the knowledge that his paint job was now missing on various parts of his frame got him annoyed. What would Hound think?

Hound would most likely laugh at him… It wasn't something he was looking forward to. That was, if he could even find his bondmate.

After Primus knows how long of searching, he located his pod. It had been much harder to find it than he originally thought since he had actually passed it several times in his search due to it being in a hole, unlike when he usually landed on planets.

He climbed back into the hole and accessed his equipment, pulling out anything that he figured he should put into his subspace for later and checking the coordinates to make sure he was at the right planet before climbing back out.

Mirage heard a shuffle in the leaves, the sound of peds heading towards him. Going invisible, he poked his helm out of the hole and looked around, spotting two Decepticons walking past him, most likely on patrol. He made sure they were far enough away before climbing out, feeling something small invade the joints of one of his servos.

He lifted his servo, examining it closely before giving it a good shake, watching with narrowed optics as small creatures fell onto the ground. Where his servo had been a mere breem ago was crawling with the same kind of organisms, swarming out of a small hole on the ground, intent on attacking his peds now.

Mirage turned his helm to see Hound staring intently in the direction of his invisible form, standing right next to him. He could easily hear the tracker's vents. Becoming visible to the world once again, he greeted Hound in the appropriate manner before becoming once again focused on the problem in the joints of his servo. Bending his fingers in a variety of different ways, the movements stopped and he knew he had crushed the small things. Mirage knew he'd have to thoroughly clean his servo. It was something he added to his mental list of what he'd have to do later.

He looked back towards Hound who was staring at his paint job, an amused grin crossing his bondmate's faceplates.

"What happened?"

Frowning, Mirage pointed at one of the many trees that now showed off his paint.

A hearty chuckle escaped Hound's lips as he doubled over in laughter. As far as Mirage could tell, it wasn't a joking matter and there was still the issue with the creatures trying to attack his peds.

"What are they?"

Hound looked down where Mirage was pointing. "Ants. There are a lot of different types of them in the jungle. What'd you do to them to get them so angry?"

"They attacked my servo."

"You crushed them? Mirage, you need to show a bit more self control for the organisms of this planet!"

"There are enough of them to go around. Are they all this small?"

Hound laughed, "Nah, those are just some insects."

"Where are we going?"

"That way." Hound pointed, starting to head off in that direction.

Mirage started walking after his bondmate, grateful that not only was he going away from the ants, but also that he was now with Hound. It had been quite some time since he had last seen the tracker and from what he had heard, Hound was a big fan of just about everything having to do with Earth. A 'tree hugger,' as he had heard from a few rumors, whatever that meant.

He suddenly heard something squish underfoot. Looking down, he lifted his ped and examined the bottom of it, grossed out at the sight of an organic sticking to him.

Hound turned around, wanting to know why he had heard a horrified gasp coming from Mirage. His jaw dropped as he saw the organic. "Mirage! How could you step on a panther?"

"It got in the way of my ped." Mirage said in a matter of fact tone.

"It still doesn't mean you can crush it!"

"I didn't mean to." Mirage found a dead log that he then proceeded to scrape the dead creature off of his ped with.

"There's a problem with this planet having so many threatened species."

"Only because they allow themselves to get stepped on." Mirage mumbled.

"Even more are endangered!"

"Only because the gene pool is being bleached."

"Mirage, how could you say such a thing?"

Mirage sighed, "I'll try not to step on any more. It wasn't as if I meant to step on the organic on purpose."

Hound seemed to change to a cheery mood as he went on discussing about the various organics, the 'Green Movement', humans trying to live more sustainable lives, saving organics from extinction, classifying new organics and studying them all.

Mirage half listened to the rambling of his bondmate and wondering how much longer it was until they had reached the base that he didn't register Hound's warning until it was too late.

Hound whipped around, optics widening as the quicksand quickly dragged Mirage down, not slowing until he was up to his chassis in the stuff. The feeling of quicksand infiltrating his seams and working its way under his plating wasn't something that he knew he wouldn't forget any time soon.

Mirage couldn't quite remember what happened next other than Hound had prevented him from going any further and at one point or another, Skyfire, who had been in waiting for them in a clearing nearby, had came to them and picked him out of the quicksand.

Mirage and Hound had been sitting Skyfire's alt mode for a while, side by side, they waited for the message that they were going to land at the base. The rest of the trip had been a bit quiet, the two sitting side by side as Skyfire continued on his path through the sky to where Mirage knew the bots there would give him a hard time about his current appearance.

Mirage had a lot of scrubbing to do. Then he'd think about getting his paint job redone.

At least he had Hound to help him.