redcosmedic: (seventy-seven.)
Knock Out • тнe мad docтor ([personal profile] redcosmedic) wrote in [community profile] fateandfortune 2020-02-03 02:03 am (UTC)

His engine starts again, backing out of the parking space in front of the convenience store, and turns onto the road again. The lateness of the hour surprises him; at almost mid-July it's basically high summer, and sunset hadn't occurred until nearly 9pm.

Knock Out's set a course for De Chima that swings them southward before turning east so that they'll miss major population centers like Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus. They can skirt St Louis if they really need to -- he'll keep an audial on the radio and police frequencies -- but they're going to be passing through during the wee hours of the morning so he hopes it won't be necessary.

He doesn't let the silence fester this time, but he fills it with things that are easy for her to tune out or listen to, depending on what she needs. He keeps the topic away from their shared Porter world, recounting some of the more outlandish Vehicon repairs he'd had to do, sidelining into some scathing commentary on his fellow medical professionals within the Decepticon ranks, and then finally settling onto recounting the sets of events that led to his own arrival on Earth.

"So we've just set down the ship and I discover that what I thought was solid land is actually... a swamp. An absolute bog. My first steps on this planet and I sank about a meter down and it squelched. I wanted to leave right then! Of course Breakdown's having a fine time with it, and off he goes tromping through this decaying mire. Of course we're still in the process of integrating our planetary informational packets, so we've got some of the concepts but not all of them yet, and Breakdown comes back through the muck holding this thing.

'Knock Out', he says, 'I found a dog!' 'What's a dog?' I ask, because I'm still sorting out the fact that your planet is currently using three separate systems of measurement for the same things.

And he answers, 'A puppy! Humans keep them as pets!' and then he wants me to pet it. So I do. It should be noted that neither of us had finished disseminating the subfile on organic wildlife at this point, that kicked in about a breem later."

He pauses for effect. "... it was an alligator."

Post a comment in response:

This account has disabled anonymous posting.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting