That Afternoon, At The Garage...

The moment had arrived. After a day of repairs, eating ore and resting from last night's adventure, the dinotrux, reptools and Scratch were back in the garage. Scratch was sitting on the ground, leaning on a piece of rock wall at the back of the garage, the reptools and Ty were surrounding him and the rest of the dinotrux were watching from their bays. It was time to get inside Scratch and figure out how to make him speak English.

Revvit lead the operation. He and Ty were speaking to each other.

"So Rev, how are you going to do this? I mean, I still don't like what he did yesterday, but..."

"Do not worry, Ty. I am going to go slowly and carefully with this operation. I too do not want to accidentally hit something that may badly hurt Scratch. All I need you and the other dinotrux to do is keep him still, because he may squirm around."

"Can do. And what about you?"

"First, me and Click-Clack am going to drill open one of the panels on the top of Scratch's torso, which, if my guess is correct, is going to be where his main speech components are. That is going to be the easy part. The part that is going to be more tricky is finding the right components to adjust that will make Scratch speak English. My prediction is that I will be looking for some sort of wire in his voice box, then manipulating that wire so he will speak English."

Ty was unconvinced. "And how do you plan to change the wire to make him speak English? And where's it going to be plugged into to do that? This doesn't seem like a full-proof plan."

"I understand your lack of confidence, Ty, but there has GOT to be a way to do it. He can obviously HEAR us speak English, so there's got to be a way for him to SPEAK English too. I am willing to bet half of my ore on it."

"Heh. You're on."

With that sorted, the operation began.

First, as mentioned before, Revvit and Click-Clack unscrewed one of the panels on Scratch's chest. As suspected, this caused discomfort for Scratch. It felt weird and scary being taken apart like this. It was like someone was taking out his flesh as a human. The nervousness made him fidget around as Revvit was taking the cover off. He was almost tempted to stop the operation, but one look at Ty's face, that had a mixture of care and anger on it, and he decided to suck it up and go forward with this. Still, he couldn't help but hold his tail like a teddy bear for comfort.

Once the cover was off, then came the tricky part. Finding the speech center of Scratch. Revvit had Ton-Ton use his headlight eyes to shine some light inside Scratch to help him see. He saw a mass of wires coming from multiple parts of the body, mostly to the arms, chest and head. No sign of anything that may link to Scratch's speech yet, so Revvit climbed in a bit to get a better look. As he did though, his drill snagged a wire and pulled it. The pulling caused Scratch a jolt of internal pain which freaked him out, making him yelp and instinctively clutch the part which stung, which was right were Revvit was standing.

Revvit ended up getting pushed into Scratchs body and getting tangled in the wires that was Scratchs internal systems. The pulling caused even more pain for Scratch, making him yell even more and fall down back-first onto the ground (or at least as back-first as he could, with the pipes in his back). As he lay there, squirming in pain, Ty ordered Ton-Ton and Dozer to hold him down. Ton-Ton, turning off his eye headlights, held down Scratch's legs, Ty put a tread on Scratch's lower body, and Dozer held his frill against Scratch's head. This was terrifying Scratch. Flashbacks to the nightmare he had had before came to him, and he tried to escape. But the dinotrux were way too heavy, so all he could do was roar in pain and fear.

Once Scratch was held down, Ty called to Revvit. "Rev, are you ok in there?"

At this point, Revvit had managed to untangle himself from the wires and was now standing on one of the pipes in Scratch's back. "I am alright. A little claustrophobic from the lack of space in here, but alright."

"Can you see anything in there?"

Once Revvit's eyes had adjusted to the darkness of Scratch's inside, he saw something that no dinotrux or reptool had ever seen before. "Yes! Yes I can!" He said excitedly.

It was a reptools dream come true. The fully functioning insides of a scraptor and all of its components. As Revvit climbed around Scratch's body, he saw wires that went to Scratch's arms, legs, tail, body and head, all of them leading to a humming box held in place with metal support beams around it. He saw that the smoke pipes in Scratch's back were connected to what he assumed was Scratch's metal stomach, that had wuring noises in it. He even saw there was a small heat generator underneath Scratch's stomach, both of them ALSO connected to the box. It was fascinating stuff.

As Revvit continued to search Scratch's body, he found another box looking device that was held in place by metal support beams. THIS one was connected at one point to ANOTHER box attached to a pipe near Scratch's head, that diverged from another pipe in scratch that lead down to his metal stomach. Using logic and what he had learned from basic reptool anatomy at school, if the pipe that lead down to Scratch's stomach was for food, that meant THIS one must be for his voice. Jackpot.

The thing was, while all reptools and, Revvit suspected at least, dinotrux had just one box that allowed speech to function, Scratch had another box connected to it. Not only that, but the box was also connected to another box above it that had a small microphone on it, which was most likely the hearing center. Why?

Hmm...

All three of the boxes were connected by wire down to the first box Revvit had seen before, which probably meant that first box was the generator. So if that was the generator, and the other 2 boxes was the hearing and speech centers, what was this one?

Only one way to find out. Good thing these wires were plug-ins.

Meanwhile, Outside Of Scratch...

The dinotrux waited and continued to hold down Scratch as Revvit was exploring inside his body. Scratch himself had stopped trying to escape the dinotrux's grasp and was whimpering in pain and discomfort. Pain, because every time Revvit moved a wire he felt a small internal shock go through his body, and discomfort, because Revvit crawling around inside him like a bug in a human's blood stream was totally freaky.

Despite what had happened before, Ty couldn't help but be sorry for Scratch. It was obvious he was not enjoying this operation, but he wanted to go through with it so that he could explain himself. It was almost commendable in a way.

Eventually though, Revvit's voice was heard from Scratch's body. "Ty, I am about to unplug something! Tell me if anything happens!" He called.

"Ok, Rev!" Ty called back.

Scratch became worried. What was Revvit about to unplug? And how was he going to plug it back in if something went wrong?

As Revvit unplugged whatever he was unplugging, Scratch felt a sharp pain go down his body. Thankfully, the feeling quickly passed. There was a moment of silence as Ty got off Scratch to check to see if anything had happened. Nothing seemed to have happened. "Scratch, do you feel any different?" He asked.

Before he could respond though, he started to feel a burning sensation in his lower chest area. It felt like something was overheating.

Suddenly, the burning sensation got worse. It was like someone was poking him was a red hot poker. He yelled in pain again, only this time, the dinotrux and reptools had heard him. Ty and the others looked at Scratch in shock. Instead of a roar, Scratch was actually yelling! Whatever Revvit had done, it was working!

However whatever Revvit had done was also hurting Scratch. Ty quickly put a tread back on him and called to Revvit, "Rev, plug it back in! Something's hurting him!"

Inside Scratch, Revvit plugged back in the wire that linked to whatever the box was, and Scratch's burning sensation soon stopped.

However the moment wasn't without a bit of success. Revvit had caused Scratch to speak english for a moment! They were so close!

"Any other ideas, Rev?" Ty asked Revvit.

Revvit quickly assessed what had just happened and came to a realization. If unpluging this box had caused Scratch to speak English, that means this box must be some sort of feral language translator! It connects to the voice box to make him speak feral, and connects to his hearing center to help him hear feral!

As cool as this device was, he still had to make Scratch speak English. But now, he knew how to do it. "Yes, I do. Stand by." He called back to Ty. Scratch winced. Time for more pain.

This time, Revvit unplugged the wire between the feral translator and the voice box. More shocks down Scratch's body. Ty got off Scratch again. "Scratch, how do you feel?" He asked him.

A moment of anticipation.

"Like someone beat me up." Scratch replied.

Ty nodded and internally smiled. Revvit had done it. "Gotcha. Rev, you can get out of him now."

"Can do, Ty." Revvit replied.

Once Revvit was out of Scratch, he and Click-Clack screwed the pannel on Scratch's chest back on. Then Ton-Ton and Dozer got off him and stood back to give Scratch some room as he sat back up onto the wall, rubbing his face in relief that the operation was over. There was silence between everyone as Scratch took a moment to chill out after such a strenuous event.

"So..." Scratch broke the silence. "You guys can understand me now?" The dinotrux and reptools nodded. Another silence. Scratch looked between them. The dinotrux were looking very expectant. Scratch sighed.

"I'll explain everything tonight. Just... give me some time."

That night...

After a couple of hours of finding and eating ore, the dinotrux and reptools were back at the garage. The dinotrux were in their bays, the reptools were at the back of the garage, and Scratch was in his corner at the entrance of the garage. Scratch had had some time to rest after his operation and now the dinotrux were ready for some answers regarding him.

Scratch was the first to speak once everyone was in position. "Who's going first?"

"I want to." Ty said. Scratch looked at him expectantly. He had a feeling that Ty would be the first to ask questions. The question was, what question would he ask first?

Ty thought for a moment before figuring that out himself. "Scratch, ever since I found you, you've been acting like you know nothing about how to function, or anything about the world around you. Why?"

Scratch looked down sadly. "It's a complicated story. You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try us." Dozer challenged.

Scratch sighed. "Alright. The fact is... I'm not from this world." The dinotrux and reptools looked at him in disbelief. Then Skya laughed at him.

"Haha! Yeah right. Come on, what's the real reason?" She asked. Scratch just looked at her. Her expression changed from amused back to disbelief. "You're not joking, are you?"

"No, I'm not." Said Scratch, as seriously as he could.

"So, you're some sort of alien?" Revvit asked.

"I guess you could call me that, yes." Said Scratch. There was a silence among them all. None of them could believe this.

"Ok, let's assume you're telling the truth, Scratch." Ty said. "Where are you from, and how did you get here?"

"I'm from a world called Earth, where I lived in a population of things called humans. As for how I got here, I was brought here."

"Brought here by who?" Skya asked.

"A woman." The dinotrux looked at him confused. Scratch sighed, a little annoyed. "A female human." There was a collective "oohh" from the others. "I don't know her name, but she said she could help me."

"Help you with what?" Asked Ty.

"Ty, forget about that! Let's get to the main question." Dozer insisted. "Why did you betray us for a bunch of scraptors?"

"I had no choice." Scratch admitted. "After I got split up with Ty when his valley was destroyed, I was taken in by the scraptors we fought last night. They basically said I either work with them or die, so that's what I did."

"But how come they attacked you the night I followed you to the lake?" Revvit asked.

"They found out I was hanging out with dinotrux and wanted to kill me for it. But thankfully, I managed to coninve the leader, Ripper, to let me live if I provide them with scrap that I collect from you guys." The dinotrux looked at each other in understanding. This explained so much.

"So dude, that's why you couldn't help me out yesterday? Because you were part of the scraptors?" Ton-Ton asked.

"Yeah. The scraptors have rules about being a scraptor. One of them is that you can't attack or kill other scraptors without a good reason. If you do, you die."

"Scraptors have a set of rules for living too? Fascinating!" Revvit said, really excitedly. "What about their diets? Do they eat metal or ore? Do they drink water? How do they repair themselves? What are-"

"Ok, Rev, that's enough. We don't want to overload Scratch here with questions." Ty said, calming down Revvit.

"Oh, sure. My apologies." He said.

"So Scratch, what did that... woman want to help you with?" Ty asked, referring to the question he had tried to ask before.

Scratch sighed, again. "My life, Ty. I... haven't exactly had the best life."

"Oh." Ty said, immediately regretting asking that question.

Scratch saw the worry in Ty's face and chuckled. "It's ok." There was another silence in the garage, to which Scratch yawned. Seeing an outlet for the slightly awkward conversation he was making, Ty quickly piped up.

"You look tired." He said.

"Well, going through a voice changing operation can take a lot out of you." Scratch replied.

"Very true." Ty looked out towards the night. "It's getting dark anyway. We should probably all start resting for tomorrow."

The everyone else agreed, except for Ton-Ton, who raised his tread like he was in a classroom and said, "Oh! Oh! One more question, dude?"

"Go for it."

"Cool, uh, so, I know we call you Scratch, but... do have, like, your own name? Just wondering."

"Yeah... Joshua Marsh, Josh for short. But please, call me Scratch. I'm... kind of used to that name."

"Sure dude."

"Thanks." Scratch lay down on the ground and curled up into his cat-like sleeping position. "Goodnight everyone."

Everyone said goodnight back and went to their sleeping places in their bays. Soon, everyone was asleep, and all was quiet.

Meanwhile outside, dark storm clouds blew in overhead, covering the land in more darkness then there already was. It looked like a storm was coming in...

Hello, and happy (late) halloween everyone! Sorry for the even shorter chapter, but I didn't really know how to extend it, so... here you go.

The next chapter (which will probably be another shorter one then usual) is going to be back with Josh/Scratch's parents for some exposition, then it'll be back to the regular dinotrux stuff, I promise.

Until then, I hope you enjoyed, and have a great rest of your day.

P.S. In other news, I had my birthday last week, and I turned 19! Yay Birthdays!

P.P.S Also in other news, thanks to some luck, my twitch channel became affiliated! Yay Twitch!