She transformed and held up the monitor. The needle was twitching madly. The femme raised an optic ridge. "Hm. Malfunction, maybe?"
Taking another look at her surroundings, she blinked.
Were Smokescreen's directions wrong? Or did he just forget to mention having to take a trip through a gigantic canyon? Nevertheless, the femme just tried to grin and bear it. She carefully leaned over the edge of the canyon and stared down. It couldn't be that bad, could it?
..Oh.
She forgot about her phobia of heights.
"Dear Primus, give me strength," she whimpered. The canyon was most certainly not a canyon. It was a fragging abyss. It would take days to reach safe ground! Maybe longer! It had to be a billion foot drop. The femme whipped out her data pad and hastily re-read her letter. She then re-entered the coordinates into her trusty monitor and waited.
The glowing trail lit up the grid, twisting and turning until it reached its small, dot companion, like decorations on Jack's christmas tree.
Suddenly, the grid fizzled and blacked out. The femme slammed the monitor on her hand and cursed, but sighed with relief when the trail reappeared.
In a completely different direction.
This time it led backwards.
Turning to admire the miles and miles and miles of endless terrain she had covered just to make it back to Nevada, the femme's optic twitched.
Haha.
No.
In response to her monitor's lovely little joke, she turned to glare and frighten it into correcting itself, when the screen hissed and shut down. The femme growled irritably, shaking it once before pressing the button to turn it back on.
Nothing.
"Okay, that's alright. You take a nap. I'll be fine."
She then proceeded to chuck the monitor as far as Cybertronian-ly possible.
When it plummeted down into the canyon- ahem, "abyss"- it shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. This did nothing to quell the poor femme's acrophobia, for she just swallowed and closed her optics, willing herself to sprout wings so she could just fly across the canyon.
Sadly, her efforts were in vain, and she was forced to scour the canyon wall.
Not without securely installing her grappling cable twenty five meters from the canyon's edge. Securely. Which means digging a four foot hole in the ground, planting the cable's hooked end inside like a seedling, and piling eighteen pounds of solid rock on top.
Just for safety measures.
The femme chanted to herself. "I'll be fine. Heights are good. Heights are lovely. My hook is stable. My cable is strong. I am going to survive. I will live through the thirty foot drop if I end up falling. I'll be fine."
She didn't take notice of how close she was keeping to the canyon wall, or how repeatedly and restlessly it was being scraped and dragged against the jagged edges of the wall. This only served to thin the cable, and after a few hours of baby-steps, the femme's cable was down to nothing but a skimpy piece of metal string.
"My hook is stable. My cable is strong. I am going to survive. I will live through the twenty seven foot drop if I end up falling. I'll be-"
She was cut off by a snap and the sound of wind. Not to mention the loud, harsh clank of her back hitting the canyon floor. Was it normal that she could no longer feel her legs? Or her hindquarters?
Groaning, she opened her optics, staring up at the broken cable dangling- about twenty seven feet- from her poor body. She hissed in pain, rolling over and staring forward at a pile of plastic and glass shards. Her monitor?
The femme was up and running after an hour or two of wallowing in her hurts on the dusty ground. From there, she kicked and stomped and squashed the remains of her monitor into the floor, cursing and screaming about how it was useless, good-for-nothing, and a waste of Ratchet's time.
She then started through the canyon. From whatever minuscule percentage of accuracy in positioning her monitor had displayed, the base was not too far from the canyon. She had simply meant to climb down and back up again, but after her little incident, she decided to walk off her mad adrenaline rush.
Trying to steady her shaking servos, the femme began to think of a happy place, feeling the walls of the canyon beginning to close in on her.
Like the suffocating aura of impending doom- Is that the sound of tires? Was that..? No, Smokescreen's engine didn't purr like that. Optimus had more of a growling rumble. Bulkhead had just a weird gurgling noise, and Arcee sounded like a broken record. No, by the sounds of it, the approaching car must be european.. European cars had that strange purr that sends tingles down your spine.
The only tingle that went down her spine was when the realization of the only european car in the entire history of the Cybertronian war was coming her direction. And fast.
Primus. She was having a really bad day, wasn't she?
Thoughts instantly turning to seeking out a hiding place, the femme managed to squeak, flail her arms about in the way of a struggling goose, spin in a few circles, and sprint forward through the winding canyon.
She approached a rise in the floor.
How much more climbing was she going to have to do?!
Deciding that she wasn't getting anywhere by standing around and panicking while making noises akin to that of a choking squirrel, the femme took a hold of the rocks and began to climb.
"Well well well, what have we here?"
No! She just started climbing!
"An Autobot, fleeing? I suppose I should be more surprised at the fact you are alone. Where is your human partner?"
The femme turned to look over at the talking red Martin, gasping when his purring engine quieted down, and he transformed. Stuttering, the femme replied, "Scrap."
"No, my dear Autobot, my name is Knock Out," he purred, snapping his teeth together- quite seductively- when she made a face resembling that of a frustrated kitten. "And you?"
"Skip the small talk, 'Con. Why are you here?" She was well aware that Knock Out knew her name- they'd met many times before on the battlefield prior to Darkmount's construction.
He chuckled, cocking out a hip and placing both of his servos on each side. "I managed to convince Megatron to let me investigate an anonymous signal. When I saw the snapped grappling cable, I thought it was you. The poor destroyed monitor only confirmed my suspicions. Your burial for it was a rather cute one, albeit sloppy." He examined a pointed digit. "I'm sure only I am the only one who knows about your little fear of unsupervised wall-scaling and distaste towards handheld technology." He smirked when the femme resumed her previous act of scrambling up the rise in the canyon floor. "I'm afraid I know you a little too well, dear Autobot."
"Yeah? Well, if you know me so well, bring me the marital papers, I'd be happy to sign," she snorted.
"I have them with me. Would you like to see?"
A shocked turn of the head.
"Ha, made you look."
"Why are you here?"
"The norm. Torture the location of the Autobots out of you until you scream out the coordinates." He chuckled darkly. "Well, then again, I wouldn't mind having you scream my name, either; beg for mercy while I pierce my drill through your side."
"Sick freak!" the femme squealed, scrambling faster as the medic began his advance.
"Your one and only." His servo on her pedes made her scream.
"Let go!"
Oh, hey look, an avalanche!
The femme was knocked to the ground by a rolling boulder. She slammed into Knock Out, who tumbled over. The femme screeched at the sight of more impending doom, shoving the Decepticon off of her before sprinting and transforming. He followed suit, yelling at the tops of his lungs.
The two factions sped through the canyon, backtracking as they were chased by an avalanche of huge rocks. Knock Out growled as he and the femme swerved around a wide corner. "Ugh! Why do all you Autobots have such a big mouth?"
"Excuse me? Say that one more time, you bikini-wearing quack! I will block this path!"
"Agh! Turn around! You're making me antsy!"
The femme whirled around and resumed driving straight, mirrors rotating around to gape at the boulders.
"Faster, Autobot! Do you want to be a rock sandwich?"
"Shut up! With our combined luck, your squealing will create a two-way rock slide!"
"Don't jinx it!"
The Autobot and Decepticon began to drive through a narrower stretch of canyon, and had only gone a few feet through it before the femme transformed, Knock Out driving into her legs and swiping them out from under her. She landed on her rump, still staring up into the wall of boulder ahead. Knock Out noticed it as well, because he transformed, too, gaping up at it.
Turning around to scold the Autobot for getting them trapped, he was met with said femme clinging to his form, sending him into the ground, narrowly avoiding collision with his head and a flying boulder roughly the size of Unicron's finger.
He grunted, listening with closed optics as a large, muffled rumbling noise occurred.
He sat up, ignoring the femme slung over his shoulder as he inspected the large, newly formed wall of boulders on the other end. The narrowed canyon path had stopped the rocks from crushing the two Cybertronians, but trapped them inside a dark dead-end with the length of about twelve Starscreams and a width of a vehicle-mode Optimus.
Knock Out then took note of the femme's thighs oh-so-close to his face. He was going to allow a sly smirk to grace his features, but decided against it, because, under no circumstances, was a Deception to fraternize with an Autobot.
So he then proceeded to flip the femme off of his shoulder and send her barreling onto her back.
She rolled and rolled, until she was caught in an L-shape against the canyon floor and one of the rocky walls, letting out a small "oof". She then blinked up at Knock Out, whose bikini-butt was swaying back and forth as he strode over to inspect the other wall of the dead-end. Was it just her, or was Knock Out's behind much more flattering upside-down?
She began to question whether or not this thought was a good thing, until she realized that- if his butt was good-looking upside-down, it was the epitome of grossness rightside-up. After this moment of putting her reality back in check, she rolled over onto her stomach and glared up at Knock Out.
He ran his skilled digits along the rock face while the femme stood and dusted herself off, picking the various odds and ends of earth out of her nooks and crannies. She then gasped and reached around to her shoulder-hold, where she pulled out a data pad- her letter from Smokescreen.
She let out a breathless laugh and hugged it affectionately. "Yes!" It was left unscathed from her day of hard activities, thank Primus. Then, remembering her current predicament with a certain red medic, glared over in his direction again, blinking when he turned around and peered at her over his shoulder.
..Okay, he looked really odd in that position. Both hands on the rock wall, a hip cocked to the side, his mouth hidden by his well-built shoulder, optics half-mast.. Wait. Maybe she should take another look at his position upside-down. She remembered Smokescreen looking like this when she was trapped in a dead-end with him. He looked drop-dead gorgeous. Was this an alternate-reality?
Why was she always getting trapped in dead-ends? With mechs, of all genders?
Knock Out just glared. "So, Autobot, I guess we're stuck."