A/N: Hot dang! Two in a week! I'm on a roll! (I legit opened my personal fics because I closed my browser, decided to try reading something I wrote, stumbled across this one fic [no, not this one] and started formulating the A/N in my head, then was like "OMG did I ever post that one other story I was gonna post?" [yes, that's this one] and no, I didn't. Oy, that's a long sentence.
So! In celebration of surviving Jun 2nd SATs (Shout out to everyone who did, go us!), here's some acrophobic killer kitty because I read this one fic one time involving acrophobic Ravage and thought it was the most entertaining thing (no clue what the name of it is or where I found it, but it's good), so I was like "Hey, I can do that too!"
(And side note, I'm gonna be revising Nikki's Team and posting the updated and hopefully better story over the next week or two, and yes, I will actually do this cause I'm gonna leave the doc on my desktop so my OCD will demand I do it; keep your eyes peeled for that.)
Another big piece of news (I swear, this is the last one and then I will release whomever of you are left reading this long A/N), Starimus and I have been working on a fic over the last couple months and I'll be posting that soon...but I'm not sure where.
See, Starimus suggested last night that we get A03 accounts, and since I went there out of desperation for good Fem!Bilbo/Thorin fics (though the obsession started here with a DANG good one called All I Ever Was), I've been kinda adoring the site. I love the search engine, and it has everything (except a decent amount of fics with Ripclaw in them, but I guess that's just another thing I can call my niche, so Imma shut up and leave that topic alone), AND the temptation of adding whatever tag I want is, like, the strongest siren song since finding this site.
So it's possible that in the upcoming months, there may be an Ao3 account under this name as well. Now, I promise that whatever I post there, I'll post here, and vice versa, so the libraries will be complete copies, and hopefully it'll encourage me to post more of my stuff, but thata's just a friendly warning.
(Also, who else saw the new Game Theory FNAF video today? Because I did. And I binged the FNAF theories. Hence, why my mindless and boring rambling is a poor copy of MatPat's intelligent and interesting rambling. Okay, now I release you. Enjoy the show!
It was such a normal occurrence that when someone came into her office to tell her that Ravage had somehow managed to get to an impossibly high and hard-to-reach perch at the top of the main room, she simply smiled patiently, thanked him for notifying her, and promised to come deal with it in a minute.
It was much the norm for her, nowadays, that Ravage got himself stuck somewhere too high, and his Acrophobia kicked in. Usually, Soundwave would handle it, climbing up and retrieving him or coaxing him down to a level where he thought he could climb down himself. Soundwave, however, was currently out of commission, healing from a leg wound sustained in their last fight about a week ago. If it had happened tomorrow, Nikki might've been more inclined to convince Ratchet to temporarily release him and let him climb up to get Ravage down.
As it was, it was her problem today.
She closed the file she was working on, tucking it under her arm as she left the room. She slipped it into the outbox slot as she walked by one of the many small mail drops scattered around the business side of the NEST base. She strode into the main room, where a crowd – some armed with cameras and phones – were watching the frightened cybercat cling to the support beam. He was about 50 feet up, looking down at everyone with wide eyes. They only rarely blinked, and as he wasn't threatening or shouting at everyone below to leave him alone, Nikki concluded he was well and thoroughly freaked out.
"Agent Skylar," Optimus Prime greeted neutrally. She smiled and offered him a nod back. She then stood below Ravage and looked up. "If you would like assistance in reaching him, I would be happy to help."
"Nah, it's alright, big guy," Nikki answered, placing her hands on her hips. "If I could get him to jump into someone's hand, we'd never have problems with this." She let her hands drop, then spoke to Ravage in a calm and relaxed tone. "Ravage? You okay up there?"
Her question was answered with a fervent helm shake. "Okay. Want me to come up there and get you?" He hesitated, then gave a fervent nod.
"Okay. I'm coming up now!" Nikki walked to the staircase to the catwalk used when politicians had meeting with the Autobots in the hangar. It would get her close, but not all the way. For that, she'd need to use one of the access ladders. She climbed the staircases with speed and ease, and once at the base of the ladder, spoke to Ravage again. "Okay, I'm at the bottom of the ladder. Think you can come to me?" He shook his head. "Then I'm coming all the way up."
It wasn't like he wasn't aware of her presence or purpose. They both just knew it was more calming for him if she backed up her approach and intent with spoken words. His grip on the bar tightened just a bit more. Nikki huffed a quiet sigh.
She ascended the last bit of height between them on the ladder and found herself a couple bars away from him. His frightened gaze flickered between her and the floor 5 stories beneath. He remained fixed firmly to his position.
Beneath them, the other four Minicons, whom most expected to be laughing at their brother, were actually working on crowd control. They tried shooing people away from the area while Megatron – now in proper form – waited below the two to catch them in case they fell. Optimus did the same. The crowd backed away, but didn't actually disperse, instead spreading around the room in order to watch without being caught.
Most of this was lost on Nikki as she nimbly and fearlessly traversed the distance between her and the feline ex-Decepticon. She leapt from one beam to the other, drawing an exasperated and stressed sigh from Megatron. She landed where she intended, gripping the vertical support to keep her balance. From there, she walked around the vertical support to the horizontal one connecting her beam with Ravage's. In all, getting up to him took about 5 minutes, and she was only slightly winded.
Nikki them crept along the beam Ravage was on to where he was. His gaze now rested on her more often than the floor beneath them. She saw down and made soothing noises, stroking his head slowly. After a couple minutes of reassurance, she let her hand rest on his back. "So," she said conversationally, "how do you suppose we get down?"
"Knock me out and take it from there?" he asked, voice wavering fearfully. Nikki shook her head with a slight frown, and he glanced back down, closing his optics with a groan after doing so. "Why do I think these things are a good idea?"
"Because you're a cat," Nikki replied. This time, the glance she got from him was annoyed, not just freaked out. "You're getting better. Now, ready to get down?" He shook his head vehemently. "Ravage," she replied in a slightly scolding tone. "We can't stay up here all day. It'll be fine!" He shook his head again. She sighed patiently, turning toward him slightly. "Okay, I'm gonna make a slide, and then we're gonna count to three, and we're gonna get down. Okay?" He shook his head again. She proceeded regardless.
"One…" She created a massive ice slide, with rails and a curved bottom, allowing a route down with little space take up. Ravage dug his claws in.
"Two…" She found the nerve that controlled grip function and relaxed it, freaking Ravage out all the more. He began repeating 'No, no, no' at increasing volume until she shouted "Three!"
She leaned forward, dragging him with her as they slid downwards. The room was filled with a cacophony of Cybertronian swearing, freaked out screaming, and yowling, all coming from one cybercat.
Upon reaching the bottom, Ravage immediately sunk his claws into the floor and went completely straight and stiff, eyes staring unseeingly into an empty wall. "There," Nikki soothed, stroking him. "That wasn't so bad." Ravage didn't respond. In fact, it was well into ten minutes before he relaxed enough to release his death grip on the floor, choosing to sink into Nikki's side while she stroked him. The slide was long gone, evaporated by its user, and no trace remained of why the cybercat was shaken.
Well, aside from the claw marks going all up and down the column, and the various videos of the incident.