Title Unnatural Wildlife
Characters Hound, plus some surprises
Summary Hound encounters something unusual during a normal patrol
Warnings None
Author's Notes Another Vocabulary Drabble. This one might be Nowhere to Turn compliant. Extra note below fic. Hope my line break thing works.

Hound slowed to a crawl, his warning system fritzing with alerts. He stealthily transformed and traced the scent that had set his alarms off. Unable to find it again, he crouched down with his face to the ground like a cyberwolf on the hunt. There, only a soupcon, the merest hint of a whiff. It wasn't age that had taken this trace away, no... For around it he could smell the electrical field only left by cloaking shields, the type that could efface a scent until nothing of it remained. Hound lifted his head, bright optics peering critically around him.

He crouched in the shadow of a cliff, plenty of places to hide to the fore and behind. But something drew Hound's optics up, and he met the snarling visage of a photovoltaic cat.

Hound stiffened at the sight of those red, red eyes, unusual to any naturally occurring Cybertronian wildlife. His fingers twitched and closed on the gun he pulled out of subspace.

The cat tightened his stance, snarl deepening.

The two stood like this for several breem; neither taking their optics, their sensors off the other.

Hound had never seen a PV cat built quite like this one. In any other situation he would have simply walked away. But he remembered Bluestreak jabbering about the turbohawks he'd sworn had purposefully targeted him with their talons. They, too, had unnaturally red optics. Hound's fingers tightened, anger sparked through his motor relays. Hadn't the Decepticons caused enough damage without turning the planet against the wildlife that used to flourish all over. Hound narrowed his optics, and brought up his targeting systems.

This was not a photovoltaic cat..

Damn them.

Hound brought his gun up and the cat leapt at him with a piercing yowl.

The shots hit dead on target, aimed for central processing unit.

But it didn't seem to phase the cat at all. It sank its teeth right through his armor and severed the servomotor cables to his hand.

Hound cried out and knocked the cat aside with a shake of his arm. He pounced on the cat, determined to capture it and take it back to base for examination and possibly spark interrogation.

It shrieked and yowled, chomping at whatever part of him it could reach, and raking its claws down Hound's chest.

Hound hissed in pain, but didn't loosen his grip. "You're not getting away that easy!" He wrenched the head away from his bidraulics. "I'm not Tracks, and I don't care how scratched up I get."

One of the hind claws caught between the torso plating, ripping the entire section away.

With a pained shout, Hound slammed the cat bodily into the ground. He retrieved his gun from the ground, certain that he had the time.

A turbohawk dropped on him suddenly, screaming wildly as it went for his optics.

He yelled and batted it away. He didn't even take the time to aim, but shot at the retreating bird. He ran his hand over his face, and came away with coolant smeared fingers. Nothing major his diagnostics told him, nothing like the rents in his...

FRAGGIT! The cat!

He whirled, gun held up and ready.

But he was too late.

The cat had disappeared and not even a joor of searching would avail Hound of its trail.

Unrelated Note: I have finished editing another chapter of Star-crossed and am posting this in celebration. I should have at least one chapter updated come June, unless I forget, or finish the next xx amount of chapters sooner than that. I'm just excited to finish this one. If it weren't for this bonus arc, SC would have been done already!-end unrelated note-