Disclaimer: Not mine
Rating: PG, I guess
A/N: From the fic prompt generator: Hound/Ravage, sick.
Predator and prey. A dichotomy as natural and known to Cybertronians as it was to the flesh beasts of this planet, locked into the vicious cycles of biological necessity.
Ravage's feet made soft, stealthy landfalls. To avoid detection was in his coding, but now, carelessly on purpose, he gave himself away. Nothing too easy or obvious. A noise here and there, just enough to keep the other following. Draw him in and along. Let him think he was the hunter, and Ravage the game.
He had made sure his signal would be picked up, letting the encryption slip from his transmissions for mere astroseconds and at carefully chosen coordinates, knowing he would be easily identified, knowing who would be sent to investigate. He'd left a print in damp, gray sand and waited under tree cover until the moment Skyfire had dropped the Autobot scout on the beach.
He'd watched the carrier depart, flying low over the water, and silently. He'd twisted in a long, graceful movement that had sent the tip of his tail glinting in filtered sunlight.
He'd drawn his mouth back in a silent snarl of pleasure at the barely-there whisper of leaves against the metal of Hound's chassis, at the no-sound of birdsong gone quiet and the pheromone screeching of organic creatures crouched, frozen, witnessing the chase.
Whipping through undergrowth, reveling in speed, he gave himself over to impulse and deep programming. An overload of information battered against his sensors, the ping ping ping of radar detector and proximity alarms, battle computer gathering data, projecting his pursuer's relative speed, location, trajectory. Hound dropped off Ravage's radar, reappeared, showed in two places at once, dropped off again. Ravage stopped short, balanced with ease on a vine-wrapped branch, head cocked in unconscious imitation of the Earth creature whose shape his own resembled, listening.
Nothing but sounds of the forest, muted and strange. This did not worry him, for Hound's skill was a given, just as the twisted obsession which led the scout to seek after him.
On either side, stereophonic, the rise and fall chirruping of insects. Behind him a bird took furiously to flight. There.
He leapt to the forest floor, feet casting arcs of dirt behind him as he sprang away, and then he was zig-zagging between tree trunks as thick around as Soundwave or Megatron were tall. There was the give and take of evasion, furious and exhilarating. There was the hard sparkpulse, the smooth working of servos translated with precision into every dash and bound.
He could draw this out for hours - he had the patience for it, as, he knew, did Hound. But instead, he decided on a quicker end.
He doubled back in a wide circle, now taking care to mask his position, to make no sound. He skirted the edge of Hound's sensor range. He picked up the other's trail and skulked along it, sensors attuned, watching and listening for the scout: a print in the dirt, a ping on his radar...
And there he was, flash of drab amidst too-green greens, sharp lines in gleaming metal, facing away from him. He was tucked behind and peering around a tree trunk, weapon out but uncharged, hanging in a loose grip at his side.
Ravage stilled entirely. This was the moment, the inevitable turn-around. How many times had this game played out since their respective factions woke on this planet? Since that day on the mountain bluff, guarded by Hound and that blue-and-white spy, when some glitch, some malfunction utterly without reason had gotten into the scout? A tremble ran through Ravage's chassis, his optics narrowed, his tail thrashed almost playfully, and then -
Behind him, an attenuated sizzle, water molecules trapped in magnetic field lines, resonating. He had only barely the time to register this before the hologram disintegrated, to twist himself around, none at all to indulge in shock that this time, Hound had managed to catch him out.
For skillful though the scout was, and for all his sick need, Ravage was born predator. Programmed for the capture and the pleasure that followed - not to feel a frisson of apprehension just as intense as the thrill of closing in on his prey.
Now he snarled in genuine dismay, reading intent in the blue-hot burn of Hound's optics, unsettled by the sensuality of his grin. His snarl was a raw binary information stream, wordless. Crouched in readiness to attack or flee, he said: angerchallengefear.
Hound seemed unimpressed. "Not this time, kitty," he answered in the borrowed language of this planet Ravage hadn't the vocal components to speak. This Hound held his weapon charged and trained. It was unmistakable, what he wanted. Always had been, but Ravage wasn't about to make it easy for him.
Somewhere in the distance, an organic beast shrieked.
Missiles impacted the ground at Hound's feet, sending a spray of dirt into the mech's face, and as he reared back with a startled shout, Ravage drew his EM field in to the point of nothingness, turned, and was gone.