Predatory

If You Give a Vos a Skirt

The sound of the vehicle's engine roared in the distance, getting ever closer.

"Right," Tarn said. "Kaon, you take the left, Helex and Tesarus take the stairs, Dreadflight and Vos take the vents."

"What about you?" Kaon asked, his empty sockets narrowing.

"I'm taking the ladder, now move!" Tarn shoved Kaon roughly in the direction he was supposed to be going, while everyone else scattered. Turbofox was nowhere to be seen, if his name was any indicator he had probably already slipped into a safe space by now. 

Vos, while tiny, was incredibly fast. I would equate his reactions and general persona to be very much akin to that of a cyber-squirrel, which made him hard to keep up with. Not to mention his extremely rushed Vernacular was often completely unintelligible. He was already waiting for me from underneath the vent opening, his unusually long pedde rapping against the floor as he tapped it impatiently. I grabbed him and threw him unceremoniously into the vent. He landed with a light thump, then scrabbled into it, his small servos making creepy scratching noises on the pipes as he did so. 

The transport vehicle was getting closer and closer. I quickly jumped, grabbing the two sides of the opening to the vent, and swung myself inside. I quickly covered the opening with the grate we had moved aside to get in, before crawling after Vos. 

A word of advice? Never let the tiny person lead you through a series of pipes, tubes and tiny crawlspaces inside of a ceiling. They don't realize how big you are and I guarantee that they will lead you to a dead end that you can't fit through. 

Vos was already on the floor above me, and I was just trying to noiselessly pick my way through the pipes to get higher. The sound of shouting and gunfire below me made me extremely nervous. I was sure Tarn knew what he was doing, but I worried anyway. What the heck were we going to do if something happened to him? He's Tarn of the D.J.D.! You can't just replace him!

I gritted my teeth and focused instead on catching up with Vos. I hauled my frame up from a gap between two pipes that felt like they were mainly for transporting energy through the building. I reached for the one right above me without looking and put my full weight on it before realizing my mistake.

 It was a heating pipe, and it was burning red hot, making the paint on my servo melt and the metal they were made of began to bubble and make awful sizzling noises.

 I hissed in pain, immediately grabbing a ledge of something and pulling it away. I glanced down at my hand and swallowed hard to keep from hurling. The paint had completely melted off, and it appeared to have several energon filled bubbles all over it that were charred a nasty black on the surface. I cringed, then looked up at how far I still had to go. It was just a little longer, I could do this. I survived the conditioning week back at the opera, I could most definitely survive this.

I pulled myself up using the ledge, and very carefully avoided the evil pipe of death. Then I found a series of tubing along a wall that served wonderfully as a ladder. 

Not two minutes later I had caught up with Vos, and we slipped out of a grate inside of what looked like a mech's washroom. Could be worse. 

We rushed over to the door to the station, opened it, and quickly shut it again. Outside, the crowds of people that swarmed the station was teaming with the elite soldiers that Tarn had been "chatting" with earlier. Only here there were much, much more of them. Vos and I exchanged glances, this was not good at all. 

After a few moments of deliberation we agreed that we had to leave the washroom before any mechs walked in on a femme with a two pistols strapped to her hip and a tiny gunformer whose gender isn't entirely clear at first what with his slender build and very feminine eyes. 

We counted to five, before opening the door and trying our hardest to appear nonchalant. Vos slipped one servo into mine and we proceeded to walk down a row of shops that were available while people waited at their respective gates. 

One of the soldiers began to come closer to us, carried by the crowd. I grabbed Vos by his servo and whisked him into the nearest shop, which just so happened to specialize in femme armor for both adults and sparklings. The whole shop was coated in a rather nauseating shade of blinding pink. Glitter shone from every side of the room, from both tacky armor and even more tacky fake jewelry.

We pretended to be interested in the little femme's armor section while the guard passed without a single look. Well, I pretended to be interested anyway. Vos seemed genuinely perplexed by a tiny pink and glitter painted skirt that he had found and kept showing me in slightly different colors of pink. I wondered if he had never been to a shop like this for any reason. He probably hadn't.

I checked again into the station to make sure the coast was clear, then went to drag him out of the shop. He sighed and put the skirt down with a quite a bit of evident disappointment. 

"What?" I asked, in Neocybex of course, Tarn and I were very adamant about trying to break him of the Vernacular.

 Vos held up the glitter skirt in a very bright pink. So bright I had to blink a few times to adjust my optical sensors to the unwelcome change of color. 

"Do you... want that?" I asked, pointing to the offending piece of armor, a little afraid of the answer. That color was a crime to my species. 

Of course, Vos nodded very enthusiastically. I sighed, looking at it a little more, though my optics really didn't want to.

 "Okay, but can we find something that matches your paint a little better?" He brightened quite a bit at this, and we proceeded to dig through several different shades of pink before we found one that actually complemented his paint and didn't feel like it was attacking your optics with a chainsaw.

 The thing was overpriced but Vos was happy. While we stood in the checkout line I also found a cute little bow that matched the skirt. I figured if he was going to wear a glitter skirt we might as well get the whole look. I also found myself a black skirt looking thing to hide the pistols I had very conspicuously been carrying on my hip. They didn't scream civilian enough for some reason.

Eighty five shanix later, Vos was rocking a skirt and bow combo that only someone his build could pull off with any form of grace, we were once again in crowded station. I kept a firm grip of his servo the entire way, partially so he wouldn't get dragged away by the crowd, and also for my own sanity to remind myself he was there. We kept our heads down and didn't look at the many soldiers that were patrolling the gates and blocking certain security exits. But even so I felt their eyes glued on us. Vos' skirt and bow were working wonders as far as camouflage, yet they did still cast us longer than normal glances. I gripped Vos' servo even harder and began counting down the gates until we got to the door on our way out, I could see the exit dead ahead. We were almost out if we could just- 

"Oh my gosh! Your little femme is so cute!" Two very bubbly and very shockingly pink femmes suddenly came out of nowhere and into our way. A couple of soldiers that were busy patrolling suddenly cast glances at us, and then proceeded to say something to each other and approach us at the same time. We were cornered.

Scrap. 

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HEY GUYS! I apologize for not publishing last week! But this weekend I am doubling up so don't worry! You'll get an extra portion of Dreadflight and D.J.D antics this weekend!

Anyway, I don't have much to say this chapter, but I hope you enjoyed!

Keep it Classy! Make Good Choices! Have a great week! And God Bless!

~swordsandroses