Work Text:
Ratchet watched the little bird hop closer, inspect the object of his observation thoroughly with one eye, then the other, and then finally, finally pecking the corn grain. He slightly relaxed his shoulder and leaned back.
The little valley he was in was nested between two mountain peaks and sheltered a little lake, sometimes visited by jet black birds that a cursory earth net perusal revealed to be the alpine choughs. These particular choughs were also extremely diffident towards strangers, and reacted badly to any trespassers.
Or maybe they weren’t used to giant metal aliens emerging from swirling green portals, but that was simply preposterous.
The bird continued to peck at the corn grains ignoring the barley and the wheat (the little glutton) and was soon joined by another. And maybe, tentatively, a third one approached, observing and studying the new arrival with wary eyes.
A tremor shook the earth and the birds took off with startled cries.
“Good going, kid”
Soundwave didn’t answer and stalked closer, sitting on the same rock where Ratchet was.
“You know, this is my rock”
Ratchet pointed at the little circus with a sweep of his arm.
“There are plenty of other nice rocks to roost on”
Soundwave, in response, looked at him and undocked Lazerbeak. The cassette chirped and bumbled towards the lake, chasing some choughs away.
“They’re never gonna come back,” Ratchet sighed, watching as the birds flew some meters away in the lower meadow. Soundwave cocked his head and extracted a little packet from his subspace. The packet, as the green lettering proudly proclaimed, was filled with PREMIUM CORN SEED, 100% BIO, FORTIFIED WITH NIACINE. Ratchet scoffed.
“Of course. How in the pit were you able to procure that?”
“Soundwave superior”
“Sure”
He watched as Soundwave’s thin digits tore open the package and methodically scattered the seeds all around them. The choughs hopped closer and started inspecting the new and improved corn seeds.
One started pecking.
Then two.
Three choughs.
“You scrap bastard” he muttered, as the birds were soon joined by the rest of the flock.
“You’re a real glitch sometimes, you know that?”
Soundwave turned to him and showed an image of Ratchet’s face on his visor.
“A real glitch”
“Oh, that’s funny. You know what’s funnier?”
Soundwave tilted his helm in a silent plea to continue.
“Last week” Ratchet started, throwing a handful of seed in another direction, “Smokescreen was all plastered on a local news station because he tried to ask a car where it found its giant shrimp costume, and got huffy with it when it didn’t respond, thus drawing the attention of the particular litigious owner of said car, who emptied a shotgun blast in his car door”
Soundwave nodded once and he and the medic watched silently as one chough hopped near Ratchet’s seeds, sampled a couple, and then rejoined the rest of the flock feasting on PREMIUM CORN SEED, 100% BIO, FORTIFIED WITH NIACINE.
“Stop grinning. I can feel it from here” Ratchet drawled, not giving the other bot the satisfaction of looking at him in the face.
They watched Lazerbeak drawing lazy circles on the lake surface with the tip of her wings.
“Vehicon ST3V3: smuggled a crocodilian specimen on the Nemesis. The animal: performed a death roll on vehicon M4RK. Knockout: most displeased. He eloped the premises for: four megacycles. Megatron: blamed Soundwave for allowing the smuggling to happen”
Ratchet leaned back and folded his hands over his mid-section.
“That’s sounds like a pit of an afternoon. Is this why the Stack-of-novel bot that you are is MIA from work?”
Soundwave distributed another generous dose of his stupid fortified seeds, that in Ratchet opinion were a bit too pompous, thank you very much.
“Starscream: affirmed that Soundwave services are no longer necessary. Soundwave: withholding his services. Estimated time of collapse: two vorns”
“Yeah, that’ll show him”
Ratchet stretched and scratched the side of his pede.
And if by doing that he read the label of the premium seeds, well, that was between him and Primus.
“You over-estimated the time of collapse. Wheeljack is out pouting because we banished him from the base, so he’s going to take his frustrations out on some mines”
Soundwave move imperceptibly his head, which meant he was most likely cross-referencing the operating mines and Wheeljack’s last known coordinates.
“Query?”
“The idiot brought the kids to an “explosion demonstration” and they almost chocked on dust particles. I gave him an earful, even if Miko defined the whole thing “punk rock!””
The last two words were accompanied by a double horn gesture crossed on his chest.
Soundwave simply stared at him for a moment.
“What” Ratchet deadpanned.
Soundwave crossed his arm (as best as he could, anyway) and curled his digits.
“Punk rock!”
“Oh you think you’re really cute”
Soundwave showed a picture of an anime boy with purple hair.
“Bitch, I’m adorable”
Ratchet snorted.
“Yeah yeah, sure”
He gave Soundwave a pointed look with a side eye.
“You can’t close your digits fully. What happened?”
The other bot didn’t answer. He stared at the sky, where Lazerbeak was fooling around with some cloud wisps.
“Soundwave. You’re hurt. I’m a medic, I can tell”
He slowly lowered his helm and curled his left servo, making his joints creak.
“Soundwave: was working on the decoding of the Iacon database. The system: malfunctioned. Work lost: five megacycles”
Ratchet stared at the void for a klik, then connected the dots.
“You punched a fragging monitor?!” he yelled in the midst of the choughs flock taking off.
Soundwave pointedly looked at the lake, apparently absorbed by the local wildlife’s acrobatics on the surface.
“Soundwave!”
The TIC suddenly stood up. On his visor appeared a string of code and then an audio spectrogram. “Soundwave!” yelled the shrill voice of Starscream.
“Mine 6-XC is under attack! We think it’s the wrecker! You have to report back to base immediately!”
The transmission stopped abruptly as it arrived.
“I guess that’s your cue to leave” Ratchet said. He leaned back and relaxed on his rock, now that he had a little bit more of maneuvering space.
Soundwave turned to him. And then, unexpectedly, leaned down and cupped the back of Ratchet’s helm with a servo. He softly bonked their chevrons together, and then took off.
The medic stared dumbfounded at the little spot in the distance, joined by Lazerbeak, trying to parse what the PIT that was about.
He curled his digits and something in his servo crinkled. He looked down at the object in his hand.
PREMIUM CORN SEED, 100% BIO, FORTIFIED WITH NIACINE.
Motherfragger.