She couldn't believe that this was happening! Of all the times, why did he have to pick today to fertilize the fields?! Ruth Anne couldn't believe her rotten luck. She was supposed to be at the movies by now with her best friends, watching one of the BEST movies out there. Transformers. But nooooo, her dad had to decide that today was the perfect day to spread a fresh layer of manure over the fields. And guess who was the lucky gal who got to drive the tractor. You guessed it, Ruth Anne.
Speaking of which, the stupid hunk of rusted junk had decided not to start today. But Ruth Anne's dad wouldn't have it. He sent her out to the local, 15 miles away, Tractor Supply to RENT a tractor. Apparently, he was determined to ruin her day.
-Ruth Anne's POV-
'I can't believe him,' I angrily thought as the truck gave another lurch over the roughly paved road, 'I mean, just what does he have against me!' So far, the only highlight of my day had been when the toaster hadn't burned my toast. Which was extremely abnormal, ever since I (accidentally) set the thing on fire, it had succeeded in burning my toast. EVERY. TIME. But, only MY toast, no one else's. I guess the spiteful thing was out for revenge. Oh well, back to the task at hand. The small town of North Carolina had FINALLY come into view. That was the only downside of living 15 miles away from town, it took FOREVER to run errands. Besides that, it was pretty good.
Pulling up to the Tractor Supply, I put the truck into park and switched off the engine. Hopping out of the cab, I noticed that my favorite employee was working today. *Cue Sarcasm* I mentally sighed as I walked into the store, the musty smell of cattle and horse feed filling my nose.
"Oh, look who it is. Little Miss Ruthy Anny, here to cause me trouble. Am I right", called Christopher from behind the counter.
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. What do ya have in way of tractors in stock for rent right now," I asked grouchily, in no mood to deal with this prick right now.
"Well, you happen to be in luck, a brand new Ford showed up just last night."
"Yippee for me," I muttered under my breath as I followed Chris through the store and out the rear door, right into the tractor and trailer lot.
Scattered around the fenced-in area were several trailers and 4 or 5 tractors. But, what caught my eye was the Cherry Red Ford sitting smack-dab in the middle of the lot. The paint was flawless, not a scratch on it. The tires were midnight black, like they'd never even TOUCHED the red North Carolinian soil.
"Well, I can see that you've already spotted the new Ford," Chis chuckled.
"I'd have to be blind not to, I mean it's kinda hard to miss," I replied.
"Yeah, she's a 'bute all right. Sorta weird though."
"Oh, and how's that," I asked.
"Well, when I showed up this mourning, she was already here. I hadn't been told to expect a new tractor, so I called the employee who was on shift yesterday. He said that he didn't know nothin' about it," Chris explained. All the while, we were walking closer to the Ford so I could have a look at it.
"Yeah, that is weird. She sure is the best looking tractor here though," I said as I glanced around at the other 'tractors'. If you could call those hunk of junks tractors. I'd bet you 5 bucks that half of them wouldn't even turn over.
"And just what are you getting at." Chris sneered at me. 'Ew', I thought, the few teeth that he had left were stained yellow and riddled with cavities.
"What I'm getting at is you should rent it out to me and my family for the week and let us 'break it in' for you," I replied.
"And just why should I do that," Chris snapped at me.
"Because, you still owe my brother and I for rewiring all of the the lights on the trailers in this lot. Which, may I remind you, was off the books, and wouldn't be very
good for your boss to hear about," I coyly answered him with. I knew that I had him there, because it was his fault that the wiring went bad in the first place. And to save his hide, he had come to my brother and me to rewire them. If word had gotten to his boss, he'd have been fired before he could say, 'But!'
"Alright, alright. And before you get any ideas, you'd best get that tractor and your butt off this lot! Now, here are the keys, and the tank is full of gas. Pull your truck and trailer around here and load it up," Chris told me as he tossed me the keys and took off back to the main building.
'Wow, that was easier than I thought it would be. Oh well, fun's over now, better get that tractor loaded up and get back to work,' I thought to myself.
I walked through the gate and back around to the front of the building and hopped into my truck. Throwing it into reverse, and being mindful of the trailer behind it, backed out of the parking space and drove back around to where the lot was. I carefully backed into the lot so that the tractor was lined up with the trailer.
Hopping back out of the truck, I walked around to the back of the trailer and let down the ramps.
'Uh, either these things are getting heavier or I am REALLY out of shape from sitting around the house during the winter,' I thought as I struggled to lower the 50 lb. ramps.
Alright, now for the some-what easy part. Walking the few feet to where the Ford sat, I climbed up into the driver's seat and thought, 'Daaaamn, you talkin' about a comfy seat.' Placing the key that Chris had given me in the starter, I twisted my wrist and the engine started right up. 'Weird,' I thought, 'Normally they kinda grunt when they're started for the first time. And this thing purrs like a kitten. Oh well, we'll just have to see how this goes.'
Reaching down and twisting on the park brake, plus giving the actual brake a stomp, the tractor once again became mobile. Shifting the tractor into low gear, first gear, and then finally forward, the tractor blew a little smoke before finally rolling forward. The Ford then eased up the ramps onto the bed of the trailer I'd brought with me. Looking at the bed of the truck hooked to the trailer, I could see it lower down about 5 inches under the weight of the tractor and trailer. 'Wow,' I thought, 'This thing must weigh half a ton to make it lower THAT much.'
After cutting the tractor off and putting it in park, I hopped off of the seat and landed on the trailer. 'Well, there went my knees,' I thought with a grimace. After quickly strapping down the tractor to make sure it wouldn't move or shift during the ride home, I limped towards to the back end of the bed and gingerly stepped off. With that taken care of, I proceeded to raise the ramps back up and latch them in place.
'Yeah, these things are definitely getting heavier,' was my only thought as I grunted and strained to lift the heavy ramps.
Finally latching the ramps in place and taking a moment to sag against them for a short rest and thought to myself, 'Great, it's not even 10 AM yet, and I'm already breaking a sweat. Well, might as well get this thing back to the farm and put it to work.' Getting up from my resting spot, I walking around to the drivers door and
hopped in. 'Well, off we go into the wild blue yonder,' was my only thought as I started the truck up and pulled out of the lot and got on the road to home.
-A Few Hours Ago – Tow-Haul's POV-
"Damn all of this organic scrap to the Pit," I shouted angrily.
'This is disgusting; it's getting in all of my joints and under my plating! If I rust because of this, there's going to be hell to pay,' was only thought as I drug my self out of the lake.
'Great, this is just getting better and better. My location system has been knocked out, so now I can't even triangulate my location and send it to Optimus so that he can come and get me.'
I then proceeded to look around at the small clearing that surrounded the lake and tried to see if there was anything in the vicinity that could be a possible threat. Seeing none, I started to move towards the 'forest' that seemed to cover a lot of the landscape in this area.
There were a lot of these tall things that started as one large cylinder at the bottom and then expanded and 'branched out' towards the top. Attached to the little branched out parts were little triangle shaped things that let the moonlight shine through them. I couldn't help but think,'What a strange and unique place this is.'
After wondering around for a while, I exited the forest and came upon a long strip of black material. Looking back and forth between the directions and seeing a few lights on one end, I decided to walk that way and investigate.
'This sure would be going a lot faster if I had a vehicle form,' I thought as the lights slowly got closer and closer, 'Hopefully there will be something near these lights that I can scan so I won't have to stay in my bipedal form.'
About half way to the source of the lights, I saw a group of small buildings (When I say small, I mean big enough that I could stand in the biggest one and might be able to crawl into the smallest with the proper motivation) off to one side, which was connect to the main black strip by a long path of small rocks. And my day seemed to be getting just a bit better, because sitting right in front of the largest building was a type of vehicle.
The vehicle is what would be known as a 'tractor,' if you knew what it was. I couldn't help but admire the way that the moonlight gleamed off of the slick red paint. Giant black tires would assure that I wouldn't get stuck up in mud and other undesirable Earth substances. (Even though I wouldn't have much trouble getting out if it anyway.)
'This is perfect,' was my only thought as I started to scan the machinery, 'and I'd better hurry too, the sun's starting to come up and it'll be light soon.'
After completing the scan and quickly transforming, I took off in the direction of the now disappearing lights. 'This is definitely improving my time.'
Within 5 minutes I had reached the source of the lights. It turned out to be a small town of sorts. Little buildings were scattered all around one main strip of the black pavement. And to my utter joy, sitting a little off behind most of the buildings was a little drive-through 'sanitation station.'
'Oh thank Prime! I can finally get this muck off of me before I rust,' was my only thought as I quickly accelerated towards the structure.
With a little persuasion and a little shock, the thing quickly started to squirt out water and some type of cleanser. Driving into the little structure, I couldn't help but let out a groan and settle heavily on my shocks. The warm water felt amazing! After finishing with that, I exited the little hut and drove through a blast of air that removed all of the remaining water from my form.
Though when I got over the great experience of finally being clean again, I realized to my horror that is was now almost light. I looked around frantically for a place to wait the day out and not be noticed.
After a moment of looking around, I spotted an area that had several other vehicles that looked liked my current form, thought they were eaten through with rust.
'Uh, to think that that could be me if I hadn't of happened across that cleansing station'.
After quickly making sure that there was no one around to see me, I quickly transformed and jumped over the fence that surrounded the small area. Quickly assessing my surroundings, I determined that the best way to stay out of sight from the main 'road' would be in the middle surrounded by all of the other vehicles.
'Well, this ought to give me plenty of time to ponder my predicament and try to think of a way to contact the Autobots, seeing that my comms aren't exactly operational right now,' was my sarcastic thoughts on the situation.
Though, to my surprise, another vehicle soon arrived and parked behind the small lot. A small organic then exited the 'car' and proceeded to unlatch the gates that led into the lot. After a quick scan, I determined that the fleshy was a male human. The human then entered and latched the gates behind himself.
It was to my dismay that when the human turned around, his gaze immediately landed on my form.
'No no, little fleshy. Just pretend that I'm not here,' I quietly thought to myself.
It was no use though, because after he noticed my presence, he started to advance in my direction. Once he reached me, he proceeded to circle my form like some kind of predator and I suddenly felt uneasy.
'What am I afraid of, it's not like this small organic can actually hurt me,' I tried to convince myself. It didn't help though, because the feeling of unease just continued to grow.
The male then had the lug nuts to climb onto me and take my key out! Apparently satisfied with what he found, the human then turned and entered the building which the lot was behind.
'HOW DARE HE,' I thought, 'HOW DARE HE TOUCH ME!'
My anger didn't last though, because not too much later, another human arrived.
'Just how many of these things are there,' I thought with a sigh.
This one appeared to be different though, and my scan proved that to be correct by telling me that she was a femme (female). She spared me no glance though and just continued on into the building which the male was currently occupying.
It wasn't but just a few minutes until both of the humans exited the building into the lot that I was currently in. And just as before, the humans' gaze both immediately fell upon me. 'Must be because I'm so sexy,' I thought with a silent snicker.
And apparently that was the case, because the female walked over to my form and, just as the male did, circled me. Though there was something much different to the way that she did it, her stance was a lot less...predatory. She seemed to actually appreciate the way that the sun gleamed off of my paint and glimmered in the light.
The two humans then engaged in a conversation that, I had the feeling, I was the topic of. To my chagrin, I hadn't been able to tap into any of the human databases and 'learn' any of their languages. I was pretty much left in the dark about their little chat.
Their conversation didn't last long though. It reached an end with the male handing what looked like MY keys over to the female before sulking back into the building.
The female then went and retrieved her 'truck' which was pulling a contraption similar to some of those around me. She carefully backed up too me and got out to lower the ramps on the 'trailer.'
'What just happened here,' I wondered. But my wonderment didn't last long as the female approached me again and proceeded to climb my form and sit down. The weird thing was, I didn't quite mind her sitting on me. Though if that male tried it again, he'd be in for one BIG surprise.
While I was lost in thought about what I'd do to the male if he tried that again, the female proceeded to insert my key into me and I was yanked back to the present. Deciding that I would actually play along and cranked when she turned the key in the ignition.
When I heard her give a small gasp at the roar of my engine, I couldn't help but feel my manly pride swelling. (Not THAT manly pride swelling, you bunch of nasties!) It felt good to impress a femme after all of the centuries adrift in space.
I proceeded to slowly creep forward up the ramps and onto the bed of the trailer. I heard it moan as my heavy weight settled upon it. After turning my motor off and making sure that I wouldn't roll anywhere, the female made the unwise decision of jumping down from her perch on my seat.
To my disgust, I heard several pops as her knees bent to absorb some of the impact.
'That was NOT a pleasant sound,' I thought in disgust.
After recovering from the jump, the female then strapped me down to the trailer.
What, did she think that I was going to try and get up and walk away? Well...never mind.
When that was apparently done with, she lifted the ramps and once again got in her vehicle. We slowly started to accelerate and pulled away from the building and lot that I had been occupying.
'Well, here we go. This might actually be a little fun,' I thought as we began to pick up speed and pull away from the small town.