II. Stampede
She was a good shot.
No, he amended then; she was an incredible shot - for a human, at any rate.
She sat down hard, panting heavily as she reloaded her rifle with more tranquilizer darts. "One more," she muttered. "Just one more..."
It started out as a fairly routine day for them. They broke camp early in the morning, and were off after the herd just as the sun was beginning to rise. Though they talked while they were on the move, they kept quiet when they stopped to record the low-frequency sounds that the elephants made to communicate with one another over long distances. The equipment she was using was extremely sensitive, and the last thing either of them wanted to do was to skew the results with speech or engine-rumbles. Instead, Hound applied his own sensors to the task, coming up with recordings that he would later share with her, as a point of comparison with her own recordings. Cybertronian sensors, after all, were more sensitive than human-made ones, and she was able to get results that she normally would have found out only when she brought the recordings back to the lab.
But all of that had to be cut violently short when a small group of young bull elephants suddenly started charging at them with a rage that Hound never imagined could exist in other life-forms on Earth outside of humans. An astrosecond later, he knew that they had to move, or they would be crushed - or rather, she would.
"Addy! Get in here now!"
But apparently, Addy had other ideas. The moment she heard the telltale trumpeting sound, she reached into a long metal box that she had placed in the back, and pulled out what looked like a rifle, but she loaded it with ammunition the likes of which Hound had never encountered before. Not a moment later, she had lifted the firearm, and pulled the trigger. It made a soft hissing sound, nothing like the other human firearms that Hound had encountered. Something small and colorful - a dart, Hound realized - flew from the other end of the gun, and found its mark in the neck of the lead elephant, which slowed gradually before coming to a stop to kneel on the ground.
But the other elephants just ran around their erstwhile companion, and kept on charging.
That was the reason they were in their current situation: racing between acacia trees, with Hound doing the driving so that Addy could shoot down the elephants that were chasing them. After asking Hound to radio for help, she managed to down two more elephants with as many darts, missing only once when a bird just had to fly into her line of sight. There was just one more elephant, but she had to wait until she got a clear-enough shot, because they were currently running through a copse of trees and many of the branches were in the way.
And then she found it: an opening between the trees, just wide enough for her to see the elephant's gray skin as it passed by on the other side. She didn't let herself hesitate. She lifted the gun, and shot.
Hound did not feel her relax until that last elephant went down on its knees on the ground, as if drained of all its rage.
"Circle back," she murmured wearily as she set aside the gun. "We have to check on them, make sure that they aren't injured."
Hound did as she asked him, but it did leave him wondering as to why they would check on them when she had so recently shot them down in order to escape. "Why?"
"I have to make sure that they aren't reacting badly to the tranquilizer," she answered. "Until the park rangers get here, the elephants are our responsibility."
As they drove back to check up on the elephants, Addy explained to him what had just happened: young bull elephants had a tendency to get particularly violent and territorial, a phenomenon that had been on the rise as of late because many of the older bull elephants were being killed by poachers for their tusks. Without the older males to keep them in check and to act as examples (elephants, so she said, were like humans in that they learned much from example), the younger ones did not know how to properly handle the increase in hormones that came with maturity. This led to violent, unchecked rages against anything that happened to cross their territory, sometimes extending to other elephants.
"I'm rather glad that they charged at us instead of at the herd," she murmured when she finally heard the soft thudding that was the trademark sound of an incoming helicopter. "The little one wouldn't have survived."
Hound knew that she was referring to the baby elephant born only a few weeks ago. He sighed. "I know you're fond of the baby, but you could have been killed back there."
She laughed softly, and ran a hand on his dashboard. "Why Hound, I didn't know you were so concerned about my well-being."
Truth be told, neither had he.