Bits and Bytes

Disclaimer: I only own my OC's.

'thoughts'

::Internal Com links::

AN: Wow, look, an update. Hopefully now this will have better flow because I now have a beta. Major hugs and thanks to crescent-moon-demon for agreeing to beta this.

Good grief, I never thought it would take this long to write this. Between the flooding, power failures and evacuation notices in my area, writing has been the furthest thing from my mind at the moment... But I finally managed to get this out. TF con was great for jump-starting the muses, though updates will probably be slow... really slow.

AN2: If you sent me a pm before the upgrade to the ffnet system and haven't gotten a reply, could you please re send it? It appears that the new upgrade to the site killed all my previous PMs.

Observations and conversations

Part 3

Hound abandoned his attempts at repairing his communication relays after a few quick tries, simply because without replacement parts there wasn't much he could do. Instead, he began reassembling his arm and tried to keep from looking directly at the woman that was watching him quietly. He hoped that she might be less agitated if she believed him to be slightly distracted.

"How are you feeling?..." He tried to keep his voice down in an attempt to keep from startling her and only half looked at her while putting his arm's plating back into place. After all, some humans were rather uncomfortable being around the Autobots due to their size alone, and being watched made some of them rather... twitchy.

Startled by the unexpected question, Meg jumped slightly and winced at the pain in her ribs. Really, she hadn't expected it to try and talk to her. '... Stay calm, take deep breaths... Ouch... or maybe not... damn... Now what?...'

Eyeing him somewhat warily, she licked her lips. 'I'm military, I should be able to deal with this... I have training... I... Oh.. Who am I kidding? Like there's training for this!' With no idea what she should say or do, her voice sounded more than a little dry and unsure when she answered. "...Sore..."

Mentally she added '... and scared half to death...' She tried not to fidget, wondering if even responding to it was a good idea. ' ... well... it's a little too late to change your mind about talking to it now... '

Hound couldn't help but feel somewhat guilty as he saw her wince in pain. "I'm sorry..."

Meg blinked. Whatever it was she thought she was expecting, that was not it. "What?" The single, confused word slipped out before she could stop it. '...It... it's ..apologizing?...'

"... If I had moved faster... neither of you would have been hurt..." She just kind of stared for a moment in disbelief as it spoke. Because really, who knew robots could look, or for that matter, sound sheepish... this was beyond strange to her.

"If you'd been any slower, we would be bloody smears on the ground... I'll take the aching ribs..." The second Meg's brain caught up with her mouth, she slapped her hands over her mouth and went completely still. 'Oh... crap... still might end up as a smear on the ground...'

Hound couldn't quite stop himself as he turned his head and stared at her with a rather perplexed look. Although fascinated with earth and the life on it, humans still baffled him quite frequently. Animals he understood, people... not so much.

Her face became pale and she started to shudder slightly while desperately trying to gauge his reaction. 'Rachel said my smart mouth was going to get me killed one of these days... I may have just proved her right... Mouthing off to something more than twice your size... bad idea...' Meg flinched and went completely still when he stopped working on his arm, put down the strange looking tool and turned his head to look directly at her. '... a really bad idea...' She hoped that her rather smart-ass response wouldn't provoke a violent retaliation.

Hound's look of mild confusion quickly morphed into one of concern when he saw her become pale and begin to shake.

Meg knew she was trembling, and it wasn't from just nerves either. Keeping herself in an upright position with her aching ribs was becoming difficult. Her body was telling her to lie down, but she was determined to stay alert.

Why? Truth be told, she wasn't sure. It wasn't as if it would make much of a difference if he were to attempt to kill her and she knew it.

After seeing her waver and nearly topple over, Hound shifted slightly and reached for her, using his hand to carefully give her some support, before she fell over and made her injuries worse.

Even though he was exceedingly gentle and took great care to avoid causing her any further harm, Meg cringed at his touch. Fully expecting that she was about to be hurt badly at the very least.

Ellie woke feeling a little confused and groped for Meg's hand blindly, her eyes snapping open suddenly as she only found empty space. Looking around bleary-eyed and somewhat groggy, she relaxed for a moment at seeing Meg sitting close by.

Unfortunately that relief didn't last long when she saw a very large metal hand reaching towards Meg. Panicking, she looked for a weapon.

Realizing the other woman was awake and looked to be getting upset, Hound attempted to reassure them they were fine. "It's alright, I'm not goi..."

Finding nothing, Ellie grabbed the closest thing she could reach with her good arm and flung it as hard as she could, smacking Hound directly between the optics... Meg blanched and Ellie felt rather stupid when she realized what she had thrown.

Pausing mid word, Hound's optics dimmed a moment in a manner reminiscent of a blink. He couldn't help but raise a brow ridge as he used his other hand to pick up the thrown object between two fingers very carefully.

"Well... You've got good aim..."

There, dangling from his fingers by it's laces, was an army boot. Hound just stared for a moment before chuckling slightly.

"... A boot?..." He glanced over at a nervous looking, but very red faced Ellie. "...Really?..."

He set the boot on the ground near Ellie, and reached up to rub off the muddy print that had been left behind. Seeing the way they were still eyeing him, Hound couldn't help but let out a small sigh.

"C'mon... give a 'bot a break will ya..."

'It sounds... he's... upset?... but...' Meg blinked and looked up for a moment, feeling quite confused, since neither of them had been hurt... '...It has emotions?...'

Their team had never had much luck with 'smart' machines, though Meg had to admit she had never seen a machine act so... human. '...Or at least a good facsimile of them anyways...'

Turning some to look towards Ellie, Meg paused a moment. She found it quite startling to notice just how heavily she was relying on the support from the large metal fingers to keep herself upright, and just how gentle they were.

'...well... I suppose I can't keep acting as if it's going to try and hurt us... He's had plenty of time and opportunity to, and he hasn't... but damn it all... this is so fucking strange...' Meg suppressed a sigh while feeling more than a little odd, and though she attempted to present a calm front, it was still obvious that she was quite leery of the metal behemoth.

Suddenly her thoughts came to a screeching halt. 'Wait... He? Since when did I start thinking of it as male?'

Meanwhile, Ellie wasn't handling the situation very well at all. Rapidly she went from staring at Meg and the very large metal hand that was between them, to shaking badly and becoming somewhat glassy eyed.

Hound noticed her reaction first and became very concerned, mostly because he had no idea what was wrong. "Are you alright?" He asked quietly, the worry and slight panic in his voice was quite obvious.

For Ellie, having large blue optics looking directly at her was the last straw. She grabbed her injured arm and pulled it close to her body, before curling into a ball on the ground and shaking badly. Meg winced as she saw Ellie panic and withdraw into herself.

When Ellie started to thrash and sob on the ground, Meg let out a few rather colourful words under her breath and muttered in a quiet and worried voice "Damn it... not now..."