Disclaimer: Forgot this the first chapter. No, I don't own anything. Haven't you heard? I'm a college student and everyone knows money is an extinct species for us. More torture for poor Ratchet ahead.
Two human weeks later and the visions of the strange creatures had not faded. Unfortunately for Ratchet, they seemed to have increased. The "horned snakes," as he had dubbed them for lack of a better name, seemed to be ubiquitous. They were literally everywhere, getting into everything and hissing at him and the other 'bots as they passed. Both the humans and the other 'bots seemed to completely oblivious to them though, and Ratchet afraid to mention anything about any of it. The others would either think he was losing his processor or laugh at him. Knowing Miko, it would probably be both, and she would most likely throw in a snarky comment about how he was feeling his age.
Other, stranger creatures were scattered throughout the base. And all of them seemed to dislike Ratchet and his fellow Cybertonians. They would hiss and make other noises of discontent as the 'bots would pass through the hallways, and would often make rude comments. Ratchet himself had endured quite a few insulting catcalls as he moved about the base fixing things. The most common insults directed his way included his weight, which he surmised was from his rather heavyset build compared to the others, to his hygienic habits, and the hygienic habits, appearance, and intelligence of his parental figures. He did have to snigger at the comments directed towards Prime. Optimus did have a rather, ahem, feminine figure.
The odd thing was that the creatures didn't seem to realize that he could see them. The more he thought about it, he supposed that it could be because he had given them no real indication that he could, but he would have thought that by his reactions they might have realized that he was able to perceive them.
Today, Ratchet was making some modifications to the groundbridge. He was digging through the internals of the machinery, trying to ignore some of the horned snakes as they skittered out of his way while he stripped out more equipment from the groundbridge internals. They slithered over his pedes and Ratchet tried to keep from shuddering from the feeling. It was uncomfortably reminiscent of the time that one of the medical students back at the University that he had taught at before the war thought it would be funny to drop some glitch mice in his armor during a lecture.
The relative peace was abruptly shattered as Bumblebee and Bulkhead came roaring in, followed seconds later by Arcee, and they discharged their yammering, annoying passengers. The young humans gave a cursory, half-hearted greeting to Ratchet and then immediately moved towards the "Human Corner" of the base and set up to play one of their irritating and noisy games. From the sound of it, it was the car racing game. Strange, Ratchet thought absently to himself, that for a species with such a short attention span, that such a boring and repetitive exercise could hold their attention for so long. Especially the two younger ones. I would have thought that they would have tired of that game within a day. Quite frankly, he couldn't see the appeal to the game, which was two cars racing side by side on a relatively straight track, but it kept both the children and Bumblebee engaged and not bothering him.
Today though, it was the loud cheers and whoops that attracted his attention. Usually the children didn't get that into the game. Looking up, he noted that both Arcee and Bulkhead didn't seem to be paying attention to the game. Turning to look at the game setup, he realized that there was a veritable horde of small, feathered, owl-like creatures perched all over the humans' area, ones that he had caught glimpses of around the base. They were on the back of the nasty old couch, the railing that kept wayward organics from becoming an oily splat on the concrete floor, and the old door on concrete blocks that served as a "table." Some of them were even perched on the shoulders of Jack and Miko, and one was firmly installed on Raf's head. They resembled oversized Barn owls, about two and half feet tall, with extremely long legs and arms with hands on the ends as well as small wings. They were the ones who were making so much noise, and they appeared to be just as engaged by the racing game as the humans were. There was also a conspicuous absence of them around Bumblebee.
A week later and the "peanut gallery" had not only stayed, it had increased in size, volume, and sheer irritating ability. The audience that the humans seemed to attract was immense, and the small creatures tended to follow the children around base. Ratchet eyed the creatures angrily. "Stupid organics," he snarled. "Don't know when to shut up. When will this misery end?" He was still hanging onto the thin hope that the visions of the creatures would fade, but that hope was fading with each passing day. Even after twenty-seven processor scans and various other tests, he could find nothing wrong with himself, and the visions continued.
At least he had figured out what was happening to his tools. The small owl-things appeared to be kleptomaniac. They would go for anything shiny, and would often take off with all of his metal tools. He had also witnessed some of the horned snakes, and some sort of strange, ephemeral hawk-looking things stealing various other objects, sometimes even brazenly venturing out in plain sight during the day. The tools would usually show up again in odd or inconvenient places. Just last week one of his crowbars had gone missing, and had showed up again rammed in Bumblebee's shoulder. Poor 'Bee hadn't even known it was there until he tried to transform into his car form and ended up stuck halfway. It was a very uncomfortable, embarrassing, and time-consuming task to get him unstuck, and by the time he was done untangling the mess, Ratchet was ready to shoot or smash any of the creatures that got too close to his feet. Unfortunately, they seemed to intuit his intentions and stayed well away from him for several days, well out of squishing range.
The other 'bots didn't seem to lose nearly as much of their stuff as he did. At first he surmised it was just because he had more things, being in charge of the medbay and tinkering around all the time like he did. It was only after he recalled the conversation between the two horned snakes on that first day that he began to think differently. The little organics seemed to take an unholy glee in making his day-to-day life a misery.
He had also discovered one of the reasons the computers were so glitchy. The horned snakes seemed to enjoy the heat the computer equipment gave off, and every time he took a panel off of something, they would come scurrying out. Ratchet had a sneaking suspicion that the small creatures also probably messed with the wiring in the base, and he felt his hunch was confirmed when he found small teeth marks on the wiring of some of the leads heading towards the main computer that he had replaced not but a week prior.
The small inhabitants of the base were not the only ones present. There were other, larger creatures that inhabited both the inside and outside of the butte, and the area around it. There were the strange human-like ones, like family of flying deer-headed eagle men and women that lived in the cave high up the side of the butte. They had deer heads and wings and feet like raptors, but the body and arms of humans. There appeared to be seven of them, a pair with their three children, a female grandparent, and the mate of the eldest offspring, who was fully grown. There were also several pairs of humanoids with the lower legs of some sort of antelope and what appeared to be horns that could often be seen leaping from rock to rock on both their butte and the neighboring ones or jogging across the desert sands. There were also coyote-like creatures that would run on all fours but could occasionally be seen walking in a bipedular manner and who appeared to possess human-like hands. Unlike the smaller ones who inhabited the inside of the base, these seemed rather benevolent. They still acted standoffish and scared when the Cybertronians came near, but they didn't seem as meddlesome as the smaller creatures. These seemed content to mind their own business and make no trouble, but they were no happier about the 'bots being in the area then the rest of the creatures.
By far, the worst were the large birds. There was the pair that lived on top of their butte that had shocked the living daylights out of him twice that day. There was also a pair nesting on the opposite butte, but of a different variety. These, thank Primus, were unable to generate the lightning and storms that their cousins were, but they were not without dangerous weaponry. Ratchet had discovered this the hard way when he had climbed up to the top of their butte. The idea was that since the lightning birds were on the top of the base, he could put proximity sensors on the other butte and not bother the angry, dangerous parent birds, and therefore avoid being zapped.
Unfortunately, Ratchet had not realized that this butte also had a pair of oversized raptors nesting on it. Turns out that these didn't shoot lightning, but they were able to "sling" the large feathers on their wings at intruders. The feathers turned as hard as stone when they left the bird's body, and were deadly sharp. It didn't help matters that the birds were extremely accurate in how they threw the feathers, and the fact that they released a veritable storm of them. The feathers also had the added benefit of shattering into a thousand little shards upon impact with the ground that were just as sharp as the feathers and twice as bad . The unfortunate medic had barely had time to turn and run away as fast as he possibly could.
Turns out you can't run very far on a butte without falling off. Ratchet managed to catch himself before he got too far down the side of the butte, but it was a long way down, especially since splinters from the shattered feathers had hit him and worked their way into all of his joints. He walked back to base because it was far too painful to transform, and spent the rest of the day picking the shards out of his armor and joints. And he still hadn't gotten all of them out.
It was because of the stone-slinging birds that Ratchet again found himself one morning on top of the base trying to fix the proximity sensors. They were far more territorial than the lightning birds. As long as Ratchet stayed on the opposite side of the butte, the lightning birds ignored him. If he crossed the "invisible line" and ventured too close to their chicks, they would get riled up, and he immediately backed off. As a result, the west side of the base had a greater concentration of the sensors. It made the sensing systems less accurate, but it worked, and had the added bonus of making the maintenance safer and zap free, as well as keeping both parties happy.
It was already topping out in the upper nineties, and the sun was beating down on Ratchet mercilessly. The air was completely still, with not even a small breeze to dispel the oppressive heat. He crouched over the malfunctioning sensors, grousing to himself about the various environmental conditions, and the fact that there were still some slivers buried in his backside courtesy of the stone-slinging birds that he had been unable to get out. He attempted to coax a favorable response out of the sensory system.
Today though, the stubborn system was just not in a mood to cooperate. Finally slinging the tool he was holding into his toolkit with a muffled curse, Ratchet snarled, "Fine! Stay broken! If Optimus wants to know if Fowler is going to drop in, he can just fix the fragging thing himself! I quit! Let's see, groundbridge still needs maintenance, the electrical system is fritzing, and the main computer is glitching again...Why is it for every thing I fix, three other things screw up?"
Three hours later, and Ratchet was in a worse mood than when he had started. Nothing he had attempted to fix was in any better shape than when he had started. He decided to try and catch up on some recharge, but the chittering of the owl creatures kept him up for hours. Finally falling into recharge, he was awakened by a scraplet gnawing at one of his legs. Some of the vermin still infested the base, despite their best efforts, and they seemed to be reproducing. No one was sure how the scraplets had not infested the entire base, or what was controlling their numbers, but as the humans say, you don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
With a muffled curse, Ratchet snagged the nearest tool, a wrench, and brought it down on the unfortunate creature's helm. The scraplet fell off of his leg, staggered drunkenly a moment, and then toppled off the edge of the berth, with its sense of equilibrium completely shot and a severely dented helm. It continued to stagger around the room like an inebriated drunk, while Ratchet quickly scanned the room for something heavy enough to turn it into a scraplet pancake.
The crate he had dropped over the grate to keep out the snakes seemed to fit the bill, and Ratchet snagged it and turned, only to gape in astonishment as one of the little owl-things finished disemboweling what remained of the scraplet, which it had obviously deactivated. It chirped once, and then ate what remained of the wretched vermin. It then snagged a second, more unfortunate scraplet and took it up to feed to its nest of chicks, alive. Ratchet stared in horrified fascination-he had, over the course of the last few weeks, deduced that the small owl-things could and would eat absolutely anything, including non-organic compounds and metal, but it hadn't occurred to him that the little creatures would eat a scraplet. "I guess that's why we haven't had a problem with the scraplet infestation," he muttered to himself. Unable to fall back into recharge after watching the voracious little predator and its young, he decided to go and see if he could fight the evil washrack long enough to get a decent shower.
Today, the washrack seemed to be cooperating, and clean, non-odorous water flowed out of the pipes. At least something is going right today! he thought. Humming to himself, Ratchet stepped out of the shower to locate the ever elusive scrub brush that migrated around the washroom. He found it after about ten minutes of searching instead of the usual twenty, stepped back into the shower, and turned.
A minute later he was running down the hallway screaming in terror.
There was apparently a giant Predacon-like organic as big as Prime living in the washrack drain. Somehow, defying all physics, it had come up out of the drain and was enjoying the spray of water, presumably while he had been looking for the scrub brush. Ratchet wasn't sure who had been more terrified, him or the monster, as he had screamed and it had given a bellow of terror before diving back into the too-small drain.
Ratchet sat on a crate, trembling as he tried to get over the terror while clutching the scrub brush to himself like a child would a stuffed animal. He didn't even notice that he was still dripping wet and the water was running all over the floor and into the banks of computer terminals and power converters. With a fizzling, popping noise, the power in the base abruptly went out and everything was plunged into darkness.
It was too much for the already traumatized Ratchet. He took off and ended up outside the base. "Primus, I can't take this anymore!" he all but shrieked. A loud cry made him look up. One of the lightning birds was returning to it nest. " #$ you!" he yelled at it. "If you hadn't freakin' zapped me, none of this would have happened..."
Ratchet trailed off as realization struck him. All of the visions of the freakish creatures had been AFTER he had been struck by the creature's lightning. Maybe it could work the other way around...
Five minutes later, he was striding across the top of the butte straight towards the nest, only to realize that neither one of the adults were there. "Scrap." The only thing on top of the butte besides him were the two wide-eyed chicks as they gawked at him. Ratchet lost what little control over his sanity he had left and began to rant and rave as the two younglings stared at the crazy metal man who seemed to have lost its mind. One of them looked up. "Oh good, Momma's home!" it chirped happily. Ratchet was cut off mid-rant as he was hit with enough voltage to power a small factory.
He woke with a groan. As his optics came into focus, he realized he was staring at two extremely large and deadly looking bird feet. Twisting his helm around slightly, he came face-to-face with two extremely pissed off parent birds. It looked like he was going to suffer the same fate as the unlucky scraplets from earlier. "Well, that didn't work..."
A/N: Creatures that show up in this chapter (and as for any mistakes, we all know the internet never lies):
Achiyalatopa-bird that flings "stone knives" at its enemies; I modified it by making it throw feathers (albeit dangerous ones!); originally from the Zuni tribe.
Avanyu-horned serpents, as mentioned in last chapter.
Chickcharney-little "owl men" from the southeast tribes who are said to be mischievous spirits; their description in this story is merely me taking creative license.
Cetan-hawk spirit (these are the "ephemeral hawks") from the Sioux tribe.
Pamola-these are the deer-headed eagle people from the Abenaki tribe.
Adlet-the coyote people. Originally a humanoid wolf from the arctic tribes, but you don't see many wolves in the desert...mostly coyotes.
The antelope people don't really have a name other than "Deer People" and they come from the Great Plains tribes. As for the water dragon, his name was given in the last chapter, and I'm too lazy to type out the full name, and he is also Sioux.