Fic: Alienated, Chapter 8a
Author’s Note: This whole story was based off a bunny prompt on the Cybertronian (LJ newsletter community), which said, “Write a story based off this line [McGee from Chimera]: "So pirates, who weren't really pirates, were actually Russian sailors, who were on a covert mission to steal a navy research ship, that wasn't actually a navy research ship, in order to get back nuclear weapons that we thought they didn't think we had retrieved?" Yeah. Blame them for this insanity.
So, I’ve gotten a little carried away with the whole NCIS meets the Autobots thing. But come on, can you blame me? We’ll get back to the plot during this chapter. Oh, and for those of you who have wanted to see Abby, I’m sorry. I just can’t figure out a realistic way in the story to get her from D.C. to Diego Garcia that works for the story and characters. Now, before you all throw rotten vegetables at me, know she’s my (already completed) epilogue and that I’m giving everyone’s favorite lab tech her own ‘I met giant robots’ story, which I’ll begin posting a week or two after I complete Alienated. Tentatively titled All Expenses Paid, it’s in the early stages of outline and development right now. I want to focus on the current story so I don’t keep my dear readers waiting forever. Like the previous two chapters, I think you’ll find both are worth the wait.
Finally, italics in this chapter represent the person on the other end of a phone conversation, the one the camera wouldn’t “see”.
Disclaimer: Oh, don’t I wish. Alas, neither franchise belongs to me. I wouldn’t mind having a giant alien robot as my car, though. Can’t find a parking spot? No problem! He’ll just make you one. Oh, you might be parking over a crater in the ground, but life would be sweet.
Chapter 8
Diego Garcia, NEST Headquarters
“Aha! I win!” McGee shouted triumphantly, smiling brightly. “We’re in.”
“You got it?” Maggie asked, rolling her chair over toward McGee and Glen. McGee nodded emphatically, his frustration at his inability to hack Mitchell’s defenses wearing on him. The large plasma screen lit up green and the voice of Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation wafted through the speakers with a curt, ‘Ah! I have access,’ as the program allowed McGee to pursue the contents of the final partition of Mitchell’s hard drive.
“Finally,” McGee added with sarcasm. “You’d think we were trying to break into Fort Knox or something.”
“Okay, let’s see what deep, dark secrets Petty Officer Mitchell was hiding, shall we?” Glen cracked his knuckles before beginning to type. Various files and folders popped up onto the screen. “Okay, we’ve got bank records, personal journal, chat logs, emails and it looks like lots and lots of porn. My eyes! Hmm. Any ideas?”
“Let’s divide and conquer. We each take one section. Erm, not the porn section. We’ll take care of that later. Much later,” McGee stammered, his face turning a lovely shade of crimson when he realized how that sounded. “I mean, we’ll go through it if we need to later. Ah, I’ll start with the bank records.”
“I’ll take the personal journal,” Glen volunteered.
“So, I guess that leaves me with the chat logs and emails,” Maggie said as each hacker moved to their own station to begin their work.
Glen squinted once again as he began his work. Clicking on Mitchell’s personal journal, he gave a cursory glance to the entire file. As he read and reread the information, Glen gave out a strangled groan.
“It’s in code! Are you serious? We’ve spent the whole morning trying to crack this egg, and now that we finally do, it’s in freakin’ code?”
McGee rolled over toward Glen’s station, the knot in his stomach growing rapidly as he looked at the screen. Mitchell’s journal entries consisted of nothing but random letters and numbers, strung together in no particular fashion. Clicking and typing furiously away, McGee felt his own frustration being to mount. “I’ve never seen anything like this before, but we need to solve it. It’s the only lead we have.”
“What do you suggest, Agent McGee?” Maggie asked.
“I need to make a phone call,” Tim said as he excused himself from the group. Digging his cell phone out of his pocket, McGee began to dial Abby’s lab. As he was about to press ‘send’, he realized how irritated she was bound to be with him. Sighing, McGee walked across the hanger to the communication room to use a secure, non-traceable satellite feed to call and ask for Abby’s help.
The phone rang in his ear and McGee resolved to sound cheerful. “Hey, Abby. How’s D.C.?”
“Oh, hey McGee. Well, D.C. is great, except my team up and disappeared in the middle of night without so much as a phone call. Then, once they finally call me again, no one can tell me what’s going on. But other than that, it’s been just peachy.”
McGee winced. Abby was not pleased in the slightest. Only when she was really upset did she lay the sarcasm on that thickly. “Abby, I told you already I’m really sorry about that. I’m under orders - the national security kind - not to say anything!”
“But McGee!” she whined pitifully. Tim could mentally see her in her lab, stomping her right foot and sagging in posture.
Tim began to pace, gesturing animatedly with his hands. “Look, Abby. Gibbs already asked. The leader of the special ops group in charge of where we are will not allow you to come! He said it’s too dangerous.”
“What do you mean, too dangerous? How could a piece of funky metal in a dead Petty Officer be too dangerous?”
McGee sighed. Apparently, Gibbs had spoken with Optimus the night previous regarding Abby, Ducky and Palmer. In addition to McGee’s request regarding Abby, Gibbs was genuinely concerned they may be in danger from the Decepticons since they all had some sort of contact with the Allspark shard. However, the two leaders came to the conclusion that the less the three back in D.C. knew, the better off they would be. Optimus had brought Gibbs’ team together to discuss the matter later that night and the group worked to hash out a cover story. Gibbs, Ziva, Tony and McGee decided their cover story was to be that the NCIS team found an experimental piece of metal, and that Prime’s team was special ops group. At least it wasn’t totally a lie.
“Abby, the big boss of this place says no, and that’s final. When he puts his foot down, he puts his foot down,” Tim said, praying Abby would forgive him if she ever found out what his words really meant.
There was a pregnant pause from Abby’s end of the line. Sighing, she said, “Okay. I understand, McGee. But that doesn’t mean I like it!”
“That’s more like it, Abbs.”
“Now, what can I do for you, Timmy?”
“I’m having some trouble with Mitchell’s laptop,” he said, sitting down in a chair in the corner of the sat room.
“You got in? How the hell did you manage that? I worked all freakin’ night on that thing, and I couldn’t even break the first partition!”
“It wasn’t easy but I did it,” McGee responded, not wanting to give away any details about Glen and Maggie and their involvement unless he positively had to. “The problem was, once I got in, I found the whole thing is in code.”
“Like HTML code, or ‘We are so screwed,’ code?”
“We’re more than screwed if we don’t figure this out, Abbs. I need your help. I can’t get clearance to send you any of this information because of security risks, but can you send me that code program of yours? You know, the one that deciphers code? I don’t have time to write another one, and yours is better anyway,” McGee said, thinking that by appealing to her geek nature, it might soften the blow.
“Augh! Tim! You call me, tell me nothing, and you want my program to solve your case?” A huff. “Fine, but you better believe you have some explaining to do when I see you again!”
The phone clicked in his ear. “That went well,” Tim mused to himself. McGee stood and walked back over to look at the information from behind Glen’s shoulder.
“Any luck?” Maggie asked, not bothering to turn around in her chair.
“Our forensic tech has a program she wrote that might help us. We’ve entered in every single code and it’s translations we could think of or that we saw. The program compares each code to the exemplar and gives us possible solutions,” McGee said. “I know it’s not much, but it’s better than sitting here and guessing.”
“And until that program gets here?” Glen asked.
“We sit here and guess,” Maggie answered despondently.
McGee sat back down at his terminal and started typing. Finding his concentration was most decidedly elsewhere, he pushed his chair back and stood. “Does anyone mind if I go explore a little bit? We’ve been working at this non stop, and I kinda - Well--,” he trailed off.
Maggie laughed. “Go ahead, Tim. It’s not every day you’ll get to see this. I think we can afford an hour’s break, don’t you?”
McGee practically bolted from the technology center and made a beeline straight for the Autobot hanger. He walked in the open doors and marveled at the sight. It was so big! Looking to his left, McGee saw a long hallway with several doors at varying intervals and what appeared to be a large recreation room at the end of the hall. A peek to his right gave him much of the same, though at the end of that corridor appeared to be a medical bay instead of a rec room. Though he was curious as to what Cybertronian recreation consisted of, McGee had wanted to talk to Ratchet. So far, the yellow Hummer was the only being who dared dress down Gibbs and subsequently lived to tell the tale. Secretly, Tim wanted some tips.
Finding the medbay devoid of all Autobots besides the surly medic, McGee hesitantly stepped in. Ratchet was in the corner, polishing and cleaning some tools with his back to the entrance.
“Hello? Ratchet?”
The yellow bot turned around and spied Tim at the doors to his domain, his optics narrowing. “Agent McGee. What trouble have you gotten yourself into today?”
Tim shuffled in unsurely. There was something about the intense blue gazes of the Autobots that made him feel like a wet behind the ears probie again, instead of a field agent with four years’ experience. He distractedly wondered if his comrades felt the same.
“Ah, no trouble. I’m just procrastinating. I was working on Mitchell’s hard drive, and I think my eyes are going to fall out of my head if I had to stare at those screens any longer,” McGee said morosely.
The medic in him took over primary functions instantly and Ratchet’s version of the Hippocratic Oath booted every secondary program to the back of his processor. Running a scan to be sure, Ratchet said, “Well, my data shows that you’re in no danger of that. However, I didn’t know that your species was able to shed body parts or organs and live.”
McGee chuckled, finding the tingly sensation of Ratchet’s medical scan not entirely unlike the after effects of a TASER hit. “It was an expression, Ratchet.”
The Autobot looked puzzled for a brief moment and then morphed to mildly irritated. “Oh. Slag it, I haven’t mastered human subtlety yet.”
“Don’t worry. Neither has Ziva, and she’s from this planet,” McGee jovially remarked. “You at least have an excuse and all.”
Ratchet finished polishing the last wrench and moved to sit at his desk. For once, he felt comfortable enough to drop the cranky medic routine and enjoy the company of a being who wanted nothing more than to learn from him. Tim McGee had a quality about him Ratchet hadn’t seen in a long time, and a character trait he’d seen only in a few select humans on Earth. The Autobot medic discovered most humans, though well meaning, always needed to receive something in return for services or goods rendered. Ratchet surmised that give and get mentality harkened back to humanity’s roots as a hunter-gatherer nomadic species, but it didn’t make it any less annoying when the Autobots encountered it.
For some reason Ratchet couldn’t quite pinpoint however, Tim reminded him of a dockworker he knew long ago named Orion Pax. Maybe it was eagerness or the pure naivety McGee possessed. Perhaps it was because the medic knew McGee couldn’t be manipulative or evil unless his life truly depended on it. Or possibly the reminder came because he simply wanted to believe in the good of the universe for once. Ratchet smiled sadly at the last thought to run through his processor. He hadn’t thought of Orion Pax in a very long time, and he doubted Optimus had either. Sometimes he wondered if there was anything left of the carefree Orion in Optimus, or if centuries of war had erased it completely.
“Ratchet?” McGee queried for the second time, the medic’s thoughts noticeably distant. “Do you mind I’m here? If I’m in your way, I’ll leave,” McGee half asked and half stated, still unsure what he should make of the Autobot medic.
“No. You’re fine. If I wanted you out, I would have thrown you out. Besides, after my last appointment, I wouldn’t mind a little company that doesn’t try to give orders back,” Ratchet responded as he lowered his hand. McGee looked with trepidation at the medic’s hand, and then stepped on. Ratchet brought him up to his desk and allowed the NCIS agent to walk off. Stepping on to an Autobot sized desk and over an appointment calendar, McGee couldn’t help but notice his last appointment was, ‘Service. Optimus. Overdue x three’. The snicker that escaped his mouth didn’t get past the yellow Hummer.
“Yes, Prime was my last appointment, and for good reason. That mech is the most obstinate I have ever met when it comes to his own health. Usually have to tie him down and offline him before he’ll let me take care of him.”
“Hmm. Sounds like Gibbs,” McGee agreed, shuddering involuntarily as memories of PinPin Pula, Gibbs and the Cape Fear just a few short months ago running through his mind.
Having a distinctly better view of medbay from atop Ratchet’s desk, McGee took a moment to look around. Five large beds, or berths, as he thought he heard them called, were set up prominently in the center of the bay. Each had its own set of equipment, lights and monitors. In fact, discounting the foreign looking equipment, the setup was very similar to that of a human emergency room.
“Do you run this place all by yourself?” Tim asked. “Looks huge, and hard, and a lot of work.”
“Yes is it, but I’d rather have it that way. No one to get in my way,” Ratchet answered as he plucked a human sized chair off the floor and set it on his desk for McGee.
“Or step on,” McGee added, then clamped his mouth shut when he realized how rude it sounded. “I didn’t mean it that way, Ratchet.”
“Hmm. You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. And, call me Tim,” McGee stuttered, sitting in the chair. Taking a breath to and scratching the side of his head, McGee said, “Ratchet, I have some questions, and I hope you wouldn’t mind answering them. I’d go to Ironhide, but I think he might just shoot me. I’d ask Optimus, but he seems so busy. Not that you’re not, but I just--,” McGee sighed and stopped himself before he made a complete spectacle of himself. “I’m screwing this all up.”
Ratchet chuckled. “Yes you are, but I might be able to forgive you. As far as squishies are concerned, you could be a lot worse.”
McGee beamed, his face lighting completely. “Cool.”
“Now, what would you like to know?” Ratchet asked, having information that a similar conversation had taken place between Ironhide and Ziva earlier that morning.
“You said you guys are at war. Why? And what’s Cybertron?” McGee started.
“Cybertron is, or was our home. And as Prime told you yesterday, we’re at war for a multitude of reasons, the main being the Allspark. We’ve been fighting a long time, McGee. It was once a beautiful place. Now it’s nothing,” Ratchet said sadly. McGee mentally booted himself in the head. Leave it to him to start with a question that would upset the yellow medic.
“I’m sorry, Ratchet. It wasn’t my intention to upset you,” McGee said.
“You didn’t, Tim. I realized Cybertron was lost long ago and I accepted it for what it was. Now, Earth is our home and I’m glad for it. Integration has had its ups and downs, mainly for Ironhide, but we’re learning.”
McGee chose to ignore the little snip directed at the Autobot version of Ziva. Even without being physically present, Ironhide flat out scared McGee. “So, how did you get here? I mean, I know you were here for the Allspark, but why are you still here?”
“We are here because Prime believes in protecting all life. He feels responsible for bringing our war to your planet, and because he’s a self-sacrificing glitch of an idiot, he feels we should redeem ourselves for jettisoning the Allspark into space, and conversely, to Earth. If the cube had not landed here, we would not be here, and hence would not have caused any disturbance to your way of life,” Ratchet grumbled.
McGee nodded again. “How hard has bureaucracy made your existence here?”
Ratchet scoffed. “Just say I’m glad Prime deals with all that slag. If it were up to Ironhide or me, heads would probably be rolling. No. Check that. Heads would be rolling. Prime just has an endless supply of patience.”
“I met the Chevy twins last night. To deal with those two, he’d have to!” McGee said as he and Ratchet shared a chuckle. “What are you guys made out physically? Are you, like, computers or how does that work?”
“We are not organic in any way. Our soul is our spark,” Ratchet began. “But, before I go any further, understand that what I’m about to show you few humans have been cleared to see. I know I can count on your discretion.”
“Yeah, of course. You know I’m just curious.”
Seemingly satisfied, Ratchet split his chestplates open at the seams to reveal a glowing blue orb nestled behind an area in the same vicinity of a human sternum. The medic gently tapped the support structure with the index finger of his right hand as he made optic to eye contact once again with the young NCIS agent. “The device emitting the light is my spark. Who we are: our personalities, likes, dislikes, memories, what drives us, makes us happy or sad; everything is contained there. Anything else can be changed or overwritten.”
“You mean Ironhide could do something other than just shoot things if he wanted to?” McGee’s voice jumped nearly an octave with surprise.
“Good Primus, no. There are some things that will never be able to be changed, and that’s one of them, though he’s more of an exception rather than the rule. Ironhide was sparked for war. He’s doing what he knows and what he’s good at. What I meant was that each bot had a designation if you will, a group of things at which he would likely excel. From those, his individuality would take over and he would decide what of those things would be the right one for him.”
“Well, that’s not unlike people. Certain people are better at some things than others. People can change their careers or their lives to better suit their personalities, and you guys are kind of the same.”
Ratchet nodded, his armor snapping back in place to protect his life source. “That’s right.”
“I get that your soul is contained in that blue thing, your spark,” McGee started, unsure once again. “But what happens if your spark…goes out?”
“We die,” Ratchet succinctly stated. “Whether it’s a heart ceasing to beat or a spark extinguishing, the end result for either species is the same.”
Tapping his finger on his chin thoughtfully, McGee looked to clarify what he’d learned so far from the Autobot medic. “So, you guys basically have super computers for brains, but that’s not what develops your individualism, right?”
“Correct, though the ‘super computer’ you think of and how we process are night and day. Human technology is so primitive,” Ratchet groused. “Haven’t even figured out nanotechnology yet, so I can’t expect you to understand how we operate.”
Tim’s jaw hit Ratchet’s desktop. Evolved past nanotechnology! Unbelievable! Shaking his head, he asked, “But the rest of you is like a car then, right?”
Ratchet paused, thinking how best to frame his response. “Yes and no, though like I said, I won’t even begin to try and explain it. You’d just be frustrated and very, very confused. Suffice to say we just have more stuff crammed into our forms than you would expect, and we can shift those things around on a molecular level.”
McGee let out a low whistle of appreciation. Wrapping his brain around all this alien technology was going to take some time and some serious effort. Tim was vaguely certain he’d never fully adjust, but he figured it was just as good to simply enjoy the ride.
“How did you guys come up with your car looks? I can’t imagine you would have known what a Hummer looked like when you were still on Cybertron.”
Ratchet chuckled. “Of course not. When we landed here, we all scanned alternate vehicle forms. My form is just one that happened to be convenient to the place I landed.”
“So, you guys could pick anything you wanted?” McGee looked puzzled, and stood to pace around Ratchet’s desk.
“No. It doesn’t work quite like that. We still have to adhere to the laws of physics, Tim. Let me explain,” Ratchet began, adjusting his armor once again so McGee could peer in. “Under our armor, we have what we call our protoforms. It’s our base, of sorts. Every bot’s form is different in size and shape, depending on what we were sparked to do. When we choose an alt form, we must find one that’s close to the mass of our protoforms.”
Tim thought momentarily, analyzing the dull grey of Ratchet’s primary structure. It was such a contrast to the vibrant colors of his alt form. “So what you’re saying is, there’s no way Optimus Prime could have crammed himself into a Dodge Neon. That’s why he’s a gigantic Peterbilt, right?”
Ratchet optics dimmed as he checked the reference with the internet before replying. “Correct, though I would have paid good credits to see Prime try that one.”
During the length of time Ratchet was answering McGee’s questions, Tim found himself inching closer and closer to the Autobot medic. He was so close in fact, all McGee had to do was just reach out. Without consciously realizing what his hands were doing, McGee’s fingers began to gently poke and prod at Ratchet’s armor and protoform in innate curiosity. McGee was transfixed, reverently admiring the mechanical work of genius that was Ratchet. He couldn’t even begin to comprehend the evolution of the Cybertronian species as a whole that brought them to the point they were currently at.
Ratchet stilled in his chair, clearing his vocalizer loudly. “Agent McGee, what on Cybertron do you think you’re doing?”
McGee’s eyes went wide in abject horror. Backing up as fast as his legs would allow, Tim tripped over the chair he was previously occupying, landing in a heap of limbs much like DiNozzo had done the day previous. “Ratchet! I’m sorry! I don’t know why I did that, but I--”
Ratchet cut him off with a wave of his hand and tucked his chin down to hide the smile that was ghosting over his faceplates. Much like Gibbs, Ratchet enjoyed scaring the slag out of the subordinates. Even more like Gibbs, the medic would never, ever admit he was purposely doing it.
“Just don’t do it again. Remember that while I look like a Hummer in practice, I am most certainly not one in reality. Where you might see only wires, know that I can feel exactly what you’re doing. It would be like me poking around your insides,” the medic groused, though his words were without their usual bite.
Deciding he’d embarrassed himself enough for a few hours, McGee stood back as he prepared to take his leave of Ratchet’s medbay. “Well, I’d better get back to work before my boss has my head. It’s been nice talking with you, Ratchet. I learned a lot,” McGee said, stepping on to Ratchet’s proffered hand as the medic lowered him to the floor.
“Likewise, Tim. Visit at your own risk next time.”
“I’ll take you up on that, I think. Either way, anyone who can pick and win an argument with Gibbs has my instant respect. I want to know how you did that, by the way.” Ratchet was nonplussed, his facial expression giving nothing away. Before he stepped out of medbay, McGee stopped and turned toward the medic one last time. “You know, you’re not nearly as crabby as you seem.”
Ratchet quirked a smile and put a yellow and grey finger to his lips. Turning back into the cranky, wrench-throwing bot McGee had initially met, he said, “And you’ll do well to keep that to yourself, Agent McGee. I’m only crabby because certain mechs make me that way.” McGee nodded in understanding, his mind flashing back to the note about Optimus on Ratchet’s appointment calendar.
McGee made his way out of medbay and down the hall of the Autobot building toward the exit. Hearing a familiar voice, Tim changed directions to find DiNozzo in the gigantic Autobot sized rec room with Skids and Mudflap. On the up side, no one was fighting, but the downside was that they were joking and laughing. Loudly. Coming around the corner, McGee saw DiNozzo, Skids and Mudflap all looking decidedly relaxed and enjoying themselves.
“So, let me see if I have this straight. Cars that weren’t really cars, but were actually giant alien robots, were on a covert mission to find a kid with a pair of glasses that wasn’t really glasses but actually a map to get back an object that creates life on your world that we thought they didn’t think we had found?”
Silence rang around the rec room. “Huh? Hey man, we don’t follow. Do we?” Skids said, his face contorting itself in confusion. “Did you get that, bro?”
“Naw. Dude lost me when he started talkin’ about ‘giant alien robots’ or something,” Mudflap said. He held up a couple of fingers and began ticking off points. Optic ridges furrowing, he gave up. “Nope. Still confused.”
McGee cleared his throat, announcing his presence. “Don’t worry. Tony rarely makes any sense. You’re not alone.”
“Oh, good. I felt dumb there for a couple of seconds,” Skids said. “Do you know what he meant?”
Tim shook his head. “No idea. Care to enlighten us, DiNozzo?”
“Oh, I was just asking Skids and Mudflap why you guys are here in the first place. I was trying to clarify,” DiNozzo said in response. “And apparently, I seem to have made it worse.”
McGee shook his head in exasperation. For such a skilled and competent investigator, DiNozzo surely had a knack for confusing even the smartest people. Now, he was moving on to a completely new race of beings to annoy. Secretly, McGee was happy Tony’s attention was focused on the Autobots, as that gave him a welcome reprieve from the day-to-day lighthearted teasing. It wasn’t that Tim hated it, but he could certainly do without it.
Surveying the room in earnest, McGee saw DiNozzo standing with one half of the Minor Twins, the green Beat. In Skids’ hand was a basketball, and about ten or twelve feet in front of the two were ten, five-gallon paint buckets arranged in a triangle shape. Behind the buckets stood Skids’ twin, Mudflap. Skids bounced the ball off the floor and though his brother tried to deflect it, the orange ball landed cleanly in one of the buckets with a ‘sploosh’.
“Aw, man!” Mudflap yelled as he grabbed the bucket and chugged the contents.
McGee shook his head. Clearing his throat, he said, “Beer pong, Tony? Are you serious?”
DiNozzo turned his head to the entrance of the room. “McGee, I’m under Optimus Prime’s orders to teach Skids and Mudflap here some things about life on Earth. Who better to do it? Beer pong is a time honored tradition of Earth beings around their age.”
“Tony, think. I know that’s a hard thing for you to do, but just think for once. Beer pong. BEER. PONG,” McGee said once again. “What’s wrong with football?”
“Just because you MIT geniuses think advanced calculus is a way to relax, it doesn’t mean the rest of us are that lame, McGeek. Go. You’re interrupting our game,” DiNozzo said, making a shooing motion with his hands.
“Whatever, DiNozzo. I don’t think Optimus’ idea of ‘cultural exchange’ was showing these two how to get loaded.”
Stepping around the corner, Ironhide’s gruff voice boomed through the room. “Indeed it wasn’t.”
DiNozzo gulped in fear as Ironhide fixed his intimidating glare down on the NCIS agent. Tony was loath to admit it, but he had finally found someone who scared him more than Gibbs. In fact, Gibbs was now a distant second on the DiNozzo Fear Chart, mainly because Gibbs just had a Sig with pinpoint accuracy. Ironhide had two cannons with independent targeting systems, infrared, night vision and a damn bad attitude to top it off.
Taking a deep breath, DiNozzo did his best to look unaffected. “I was just showing these guys a favorite pastime of mine.”
McGee snorted loudly. “I’ll bet.”
Ironhide crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his optics. “And what is this - beer pong - you’re teaching them?”
“Oh, it’s nothing bad, I promise. It’s just a little harmless fun.”
Mudflap chose that unfortunate moment to open his mouth. “Yeah, O Great Slayer of Decepticreeps. We’re just using regular energon, not high grade. No one would tell us the code to Prime’s quarters so we could go borrow some the good stuff.”
The green Beat smashed his brother in the face. “Dude! Shut up! What’s wrong with you?!” Looking back at Ironhide, Skids smiled innocently. “Don’t mind him. He don’t know what he’s saying.”
Ironhide scowled, not knowing if he should laugh or shoot something. “For the record, Prime does not have any high grade hidden in his personal quarters. Furthermore, any ideas to ‘infiltrate and liberate’ anything from your commanding officers’ private space is expressly forbidden. Are we clear?”
Skids and Mudflap nodded.
“And as for you,” Ironhide lectured as he looked straight at DiNozzo, his eyes boring into Tony like an x-ray machine, “what are you doing teaching my soldiers a drinking game?”
“Uh, I thought it would be helpful. You know, lighten the mood.”
“Yeah, ‘Hide. He taught us the boring stuff already. We wanted to see how humans party,” Mudflap happily added. “Besides, you missed the fun one. Hall Ball is the greatest game ever invented!”
DiNozzo cringed again. If Ironhide ever found out what shenanigans hall ball involved, the NCIS agent was sure he’d be toast. Literally.
The big black mech cycled his vents. “Cease this game immediately and clean this mess up. Agent DiNozzo, I think it’s time you returned to the human hanger, don’t you think?”
Tony set the basketball on the floor. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”
Clicky link to Part 8b