Ep. 2 - Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine - (Closed)

[Deleted]

Set on Day 1, Week 1, a little after 9am!

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As far as punishments went, it had been a mild one.

"We've been getting reports of strange lights northwest of Las Vegas these past two days," Fowler said. The big man stood outside of the hanger with a coffee in one hand, looking relaxed. "They've sent police helicopters over the hills in that direction and have come up with nothing. Not even idiots with laser pointers. Figured it couldn't hurt for us to step in and send someone like you out to take a look, someone with scanners actually worth a damn. Especially since we've seen MECH activity in that region in the past."

He sipped his coffee, and absently watched an empty ordnance truck drive past. "Consider this your last task for us before heading back to the Bots. I know I was supposed to send you back at the end of the day, but I'm cutting you loose early. Just don't tell Optimus. Do this milk run, see if you can find those lights or else whatever is making them, report back here with your findings, and then go fly around for a few hours. I won't tell anyone if you won't."

No lectures, no glares, no threats.

Much of Thundercloud's punishment had been like that.

It wasn't the deaths that chapped Agent Fowler's shorts, as he had put it. He wasn't going to cry into his breakfast cereal over a handful of dead MECH troopers. It was that it had been an accident. A deficiency of knowledge had led to a clumsy attack with the direct result being the destruction of an enemy helicopter. What if he had acted with careless disregard around a friendly American aircraft, out of a lack of appreciation for their equipment and tactics? Agent Fowler could put up with a lot of things - but blundering in ignorance was not going to fly with him. Not when his boys were on the same field as the Autobots.

What had followed had been an intensive, if informal, education into the workings of the United States Air Force and its equipment, with a little heavy lifting on the side.

And Agent Fowler had been determined that Thundercloud would learn something.

Fighter jets, transport jets, attack helicopters, reconnaissance aircraft, single and multi-engine, from sleek little twins to the massive fuel tankers, trucks and jeeps and ordnance loaders - their specifications had been drilled relentlessly into Thundercloud's head. Airspace, waypoints, fuel calculations, load outs, air combat manoeuvring, fighter tactics, weapons systems and navigational systems and radio commands - likewise.

"If Air Raid could learn this stuff, so can you," Fowler had said drily one evening, when he had stopped at the base to see how Thundercloud was doing. "And he once flew up alongside a Delta flight to Heathrow and did a barrel roll right smack in the middle of Las Vegas airspace. I got a lot of angry phone calls from the airport operations manager that day. I don't intend to see that sort of incident repeated. Not on my watch. If you can operate with my boys without stepping on a jeep or body-slamming a Globemaster, then I'm happy."

But sun and pleasant weather had reigned during Thundercloud's time at the Tonopah airfield at least, and its personnel had treated him with professional civility. One of the air traffic controllers had taken a shine to him, and flirted with him in a friendly manner whenever he was sent out on patrol. Most of the ground crews were entertained by his size and his crude, thuggish affability, and swapped stories with him when there were no officers looking.

And he had been allowed the use of an empty maintenance hangar to stay in. In the evening when the sun sank red and low over the western hills, the fading light shone across the desert and streamed through the open hangar door. Not a bad view at all.

Now, in the present…

It was a little after nine in the morning. The day was clear and bright. And somewhere outside of the city of Las Vegas, something lurked in the hills.

[Deleted]

Thundercloud had expected his little vacation to be filled with lectures, mind-numbingly tedious tasks, and copious amounts of pointless physical labors designed entirely to make his life at the outpost aggravating to the point where he would have no choice but bang his head against the nearest sturdy surface until his frustrations alleviated themselves, or he died, which would alleviate his frustrations in a much more permanent fashion.

He had only been half-right.

As it turned out, his forced-stay at the outpost was less of a punishment, and more of a forced-crash course in human machinery 101. Throughout the few weeks he was under Fowler’s supervision, Thundercloud had been given a run-down of the ins and outs, strengths, limitations, and most importantly the weaknesses of the earth-made machinery he’d likely encounter while working with NEST, and against MECH. The point of it all had been to ensure that he’d never again make the ignorant blunder which landed him in Fowler’s hands in the first place, and to Fowler’s credit, Thundercloud had actually learned a great deal.

Namely that Earth machinery was fragile as hell, and big blundering space robots could easily wreck NEST’s slag if they weren’t careful. Not that he hadn’t already found this out the hard way.

Truth be told, Thundercloud was a bit baffled as to how the humans went about their lives without living in a constant state of terror, knowing they were so fragile they could be cut by something as weak as paper. That they somehow had the courage to climb into giant metal death-pods and propel themselves through the air despite knowing full well they’d likely be turned into jelly if they crashed was almost too hard for him to fathom.

Either the fleshies were a brave bunch, or they were grievously stupid. He wasn’t really sure which, but after spending some time with Fowler’s crew he had the sneaking suspicion the human population just had a whole lotta Mikos - folks who saw limitations and took them as a challenge. He wasn’t sure how else to explain why the little squish-beasts were the way they were. They lacked wings, so they made their own. They were made of glass, so they made armored tanks.

They were inventive little bastards, Thundercloud had to give them that.

They were also pretty easy to get along with, despite species barrier - or at least Fowler’s people were. For the most part, everyone was civil and professional, though he had managed to chat up a few folks and get them to engage in casual conversation. He wouldn’t have gone so far as to say he made any friends, but there was one person in particular he had taken a shine to - an air traffic controller who responded to his good-natured ribbing in kind, and kept him entertained during his patrols by volleying insults and flirtatious dialogue back and forth with him.

Charlie was a good guy - Thundercloud made a mental note to drop by the airfield again sometime and harass him some more.

But first, he’d actually have to leave the airfield, and he still had a day left before he could be turned loose….or at least, that’s what Optimus had planned for him. Fowler, on the other hand, seemed to have other ideas in mind for him.

Thundercloud stood next to the man, arms folded over his chest as he chewed absently on a bit of scrap metal, which now and again he rolled between his teeth as if it were some sort of giant misshapen toothpick. Where he got said piece of scrap metal in the first place, few bothered to ask, and even fewer wanted to know. The point was, he damn near choked on the thing when Fowler told him his plans to let him leave early.

“--You serious?” He asked, pulling the stick of metal from his mouth before he took a leaf from Carbine’s book and wound up swallowing it.

“You’re just gonna cut me loose ‘n let me do whatever the hell after this?”

He paused, looking skeptical, before shaking his head, as if dismissing a thought.

“Y’know, normally I’d say “No”, thinkin’ this was a test or somethin’, but you’re actually a pretty chill dude, so...sure. I’m in. Unless this actually is a test, and you’ve just been usin’ some kinda reverse-psychology slag on me this whole time, in which case No, and also get fragged for jerkin’ me around like that.”

Realizing humans were incapable of reading fields, Thundercloud made a point to smirk to make it more apparent that he was joking about that last part.

[Deleted]

Agent Fowler chuckled.

He stood in the warm beam of light that slanted in through the hanger doors. It was bright enough that he had to squint into it. His sunglasses were folded into the breast pocket of his suit.

The past few days he had been in an awfully good mood. He wouldn't say why, but earlier that morning several drones had been launched on classified patrols. Whatever information they had brought back from their high altitude investigation had evidently put a spring in Agent Fowler's stride.

"I had a feeling you might think this is too good to be true," said Fowler. "But you've put in your dues here, you've worked hard, and from what I've been told you've more or less put in an effort to listen to what lessons people have tried to drill into your metal skull. I've seen a lot of washouts during my time in this man's army. Kids who couldn't hack the soldiering or the grunt work and study."

He absently took a sip of coffee and gazed out over the airfield.

"And from what I can tell, you don't seem to be one of them. So I'm not gonna keep you here for another seven hours hauling freight around or inspecting the perimeter lines. That's just busy work. And you're better off being busy elsewhere."

Fowler glanced up at Thundercloud. "So you do this run to find our mystery lights, and I'll call things square. But that's only if you don't accidentally mash another helicopter into scrap. Then I'm pretty sure Optimus will bounce your metal butt right back here again, with the proviso you don't ever leave - if he doesn't cook up a worse punishment."

[Deleted]

...Yep.

Agent Fowler was officially Thundercloud’s favorite Earthling.

He made this apparent by breaking into a broad, crooked grin, his wings flicking upward so that they would not scrape against the ground as he knelt down on one knee, so he no longer towered quite so much over the considerably smaller human.

“It’s okay if I smash ‘em on purpose though, right?” He asked, knowing damn well what the answer to that question was.

His grin didn’t falter.

“For real though, man, y’got my word on this. I ain’t gonna screw you over when you’re doin’ me a favor. ‘Sides, much as I like you and your crew, I got commitments back at Omega.”

He jerked his chin to the left, pointing in what was probably not at all the general direction of the outpost in question.

“I got a cop to babysit. The dog can only keep ‘em in line for so long before he goes off and gets himself into a heapin’ pile of slag, and if I ain’t around to bail ‘em out I’ll never hear the fraggin’ end of it.”

For all the harshness of his words, there was a slight but unmistakable fondness in his tone which took a bit of the bite out of his insults to both Carbine’s intelligence and his ability to look after himself like a mature, fully cognizant adult. Not enough for his words to stop being mocking, mind, but enough to make it clear he was speaking in a teasing manner, rather than with malice.

“For all I know he’s probably waitin’ for me to bail ‘em outta somethin’ right now.”

Which was all the more reason for him to get this job over with already, so he could head back home and check on the egotistical little gearslip he called a friend.

---Not because he actually cared how the other mech was doing, or anything. In the long run, the cop’s feelings were irrelevant, as were whatever troubles he might have called upon himself. Thundercloud just needed to make sure he wasn’t endangering that life of his, because Thundercloud didn’t really want to clean out all the ex-cop’s slag out of their shared room if he bit the dust, and he didn’t feel like teaching someone else the thousands of years worth of in-jokes they had between them.

Or so he would insist if anyone dared to call him out on his concern for Carbine’s welfare.

[Deleted]

That earned a snort.

"Yeah, I heard he's a bit of a flighty screwball," said Fowler. "Of course, I heard that from Ratchet when he was in one of his moods. So take it with a grain of salt."

Amused, he threw back the last of his coffee. He rolled over his wrist and checked his watch.

"Well, I've got to go to a video conference with USSOCOM to get this business with the 19th SFG sorted out," he said. "Thundercloud, you're welcome back here at Tonopah at any time. Just give us a heads up before you arrive so we can warn the controllers and the ground crews. No point in scaring some poor marshaller by dropping a giant robot out of the sky on him. Bring your friend sometime if you want, if you can keep him out of trouble. We'll get him cleared to operate out of the base as well."

Agent Fowler swapped his empty Styrofoam cup to his other hand and stepped back. He squinted up at Thundercloud and, in a rare gesture of easy going respect, threw him a salute.

"And good job," he said. "Suppose it's time for you to carry on, soldier."

[Deleted]

Fowler’s salute earned him a crooked grin from Thundercloud, who mimicked the gesture as he took a half-step backwards. His salute quickly turned into a wave as he skip-hopped backwards another step or two, clearly eager to leave, but reluctant to turn his back on Fowler before he had given him a proper goodbye.

“Thanks, man. I seriously owe you one. If you ever need a favor, you know who to call. I might be a wily son of a glitch, but I make good on my debts.”

And with that, Thundercloud finally spun on his heel, turning his back to Fowler as he broke into a dead sprint towards the runway. Under normal circumstances he would have just made a jump and transformed, bursting off the tarmac with a burst of heat from his thrusters and a little help from his anti-grav systems, but he didn’t spend the past week having procedures and protocols drilled into his head just to throw them to the wayside the minute he was given a little leeway.

Sure, it would have been faster to just take to the air the way he was accustomed to, but he was on the human’s turf, and he was gonna play by their rules. He respected Fowler enough to do that much, at least, which meant his take off from the outpost was uncharacteristically by-the-book.

He was just glad Carbine wasn’t around to see it. The mech would never let him hear the end of how he was “losing his edge.”

Once in the air, Thundercloud steered himself in the direction of those mystery-lights, intent on getting this job over and done with as quickly as possible so he could spend the rest of the evening doing whatever the hell he wanted -- which, as it turned out, was not really a whole lot more than doing aileron rolls out in the desert until it was time to head back to base.

[Deleted]

It was a good day to be out flying.

The high altitude air was crisp and cool. Unlike the lower altitudes, where the air baked with desert heat, it was dense enough that his wings could bite into it and offer a little extra lift for his heavy jet frame. The cirrus clouds were faint today, mere wisps against the deep blue sky above.

Below him, the desert was vast and brown. Las Vegas lay to the east, green around the edges where it's irrigated suburban sprawl made a patchwork quilt of lawns and parks. The heart of the city was grey. Even at his altitude he would be able to spot individual high-rises and office towers. They sparkled with glass beneath the sun, or at least what light was able to penetrate the layer of yellow smog that blanketed the city.

To the west was red sandstone desert. Beyond that rose a steep mountain range. It ran far to the north in an unbroken line of jagged rock before it curved into the La Madre Mountain Wilderness: a rugged complex of deep canyons, grey carbonate ridges and steep peaks thrust up from a buckling fault line. If something was hiding there, it was not difficult to see why it might have gone undiscovered for a long time.

Police helicopters, however, did not come equipped with alien sensors.

Sure enough, the moment that Thundercloud flew near the southern end of Vegas he would be able to detect an odd signal. It was a radio transmission, not a Cybertronian life sign or a military IFF or transponder code - but it was being broadcast on a Cybertronian channel.

Poorly. The signal was broken and weak.

It flickered in and out. It seemed to be coming from a steep hill on the northeast side of La Madre.

[Deleted]

Human settlements, like the humans which resided in them, were strange things. They were oddly shaped, they had arbitrary structures, and they were appallingly fragile.

They were also tiny, and never was that more apparent than when looking down at them from high above the clouds.

Little patches of green and gray dotted the landscape, peppering the dry, dusty terrain with signs of life. Thundercloud wondered why the humans did that, settle clearly inhospitable areas, despite the obvious difficulties they would face in attempting to live there. Maybe they liked the challenge; there was something satisfying in doing the ill-advised and somehow, despite all odds, still coming out on top. Thundercloud knew the feeling all too well; he could respect a species that took pride in doing things the hard way just because they could.

That much at least was to their credit. Their technology, on the other hand, left quite a bit to be desired -- though Thundercloud supposed they couldn’t be faulted too much on that front. It was really no wonder their scanners were so low-grade when their species had only existed for, what, a couple hundred thousand years? He wasn’t sure what the exact number was, but that was an unimportant detail. The point was, the humans hadn’t been around long enough to make Cybertronian-level technological advances, which meant even their best scanners couldn’t pick up everything.

That’s where Thundercloud came in.

He was by no means a professional when it came to tracking signals, but even the most basic Cybertronian sensors were leagues above what the humans had at their disposal. It was one of the more notable perks of being made of the sort of technology most alien races spent eons attempting to replicate.

That said, it didn’t take long for Thundercloud to stumble over that odd little blip that had been evading the local police. The closer he flew towards the mountains, the stronger the signal became - it wasn’t a difficult concept to understand. All he had to do was move in whatever direction he felt the signal coming from the strongest, until he finally found its source. Easy, nothing to it. He’d be able to check out the weirdness and report back to Fowler in nothing flat, then he’d be able to kick back the rest of the day and have free reign of the desert’s open sky.

Or so Thundercloud hoped.

[Deleted]

It was a good thing that Thundercloud had sharp optics. It was doubtful that the unassisted human eye would be able to detect what his sensors were drawing him towards.

Nestled on the east side of the slope, half hidden by a tumble of rocks and sparse brush, was a hard shelter. It was roughly square, perhaps eight feet high and wide, and painted a dull camo green. The lockable door was ventilated. Four red jerry cans of gasoline sat against it. Plugs for power ran from the shelter to a big generator that sat against the rear wall.

Its roof was coated in dust and dead litter, the walls spattered in mud. It looked as if it had sat there for a while.

Behind it rose a tall, thin antenna mast. It stood forty feet tall. A series of halyards, pulleys, and guy wires kept it upright. The guy wires were staked firmly into the earth around its base.

Fifty feet away from the shelter was a parked vehicle. It was difficult to make out what kind of car it was due to the dull green tarpaulins lashed over it to protect it from the wind and rain. Muddy tire tracks led away from the shelter to the north and east, where the hill was a little flatter.

At Thundercloud's altitude, the shelter was little more than a speck against the rock and grass.

There were no signs of life outside it.

[Deleted]

If he didn’t have the signal to work with, Thundercloud probably never would have spotted the hard shelter as soon as he did. It was little more than a green speck against a dusty brown canvas, and if he hadn’t been on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary, Thundercloud might have missed it entirely.

Upon spotting the shelter he muttered a victorious “Bingo” to himself, then began scanning the nearby area for a place to land. He needed someplace relatively flat, preferably clear of any trees or rocks, and far enough away from the hard shelter that he wouldn’t scare the hell out of whoever might be inside. It could have been a MECH agent, or it could have been some crazy old nutball in a tinfoil hat, living out in the middle of nowhere trying to contact aliens.

Realizing how ironic it would be for him to knock on such a person’s door, Thundercloud couldn’t help but snort in amusement. He almost wanted there to be an alien-obsessed weirdo in that shelter; the look on their face would be priceless.

But at the same time, that would be a nightmare for Fowler to try to keep under wraps, and he owed the guy a solid. As much as he’d enjoy the laugh, he didn’t really want to give the guy more work to do.

Finding a place to land had been relatively easy - not because the area was teeming with pristine flatlands, but because Thundercloud grew impatient about two minutes into his search and his sense of discretion suffered for it. He wound up landing a somewhat far way away from the Hard Shelter, close enough that he could still see it in the distance, but far enough away that his landing (hopefully) wouldn’t be noticed.

He wasn’t great, really, at the whole “stealth” thing, but he knew a thing or two about not drawing too much unwanted attention to himself.

After a few minutes of walking at a leisurely pace, he finally reached the slope where the hard shelter was nestled. The car was closer to him than the shelter was, and, on a whim, he decided to go over and check it out, on the off chance there was something interesting going on with it. Upon careful inspection (ie: glancing at it for a few seconds) Thundercloud determined that the car was in fact boring and he was wasting his time trying to stare through tarps. He did, however, have the sense of mind to check the car for plates, just in case the numbers could be run to find whoever owned it.

Once done with the car, Thundercloud dropped to one knee and ducked slightly so that he could hide most of himself behind the vehicle. He eyed the shelter, looking for any signs that it was rigged to blow, or had any sort of recording devices attached to it that he most certainly would not want pointed in his direction.

He frowned up at the exceedingly tall antenna that rose up from behind the little building, his brows knitting together in confusion as he wondered why the hell someone would be trying to catch or broadcast any kind of signal this far out in the middle of nowhere. He didn’t ponder this long, however, as he was a mech of action rather than musing, and he wasn’t about to strain his processor waiting on an epiphany to answer his questions, when he could just take the more hands on option and find out for himself.

All it took was a bit of concentration, and then a figure materialized beside Thundercloud, one much smaller than himself. The holographic avatar was that of a human male, in a police officer’s uniform. Thundercloud hadn’t really been creative with the design - he simply based the avatar’s appearance on a character from a movie he and Carbine had particularly enjoyed.

“Alright, buddy, lets go see if you get to “shoot a crackhead with a Kalashnikov.” He joked in a low whisper, before sending the avatar over towards the shelter.

Knock knock, is anyone home?

[Deleted]

Checking the plates was a clever idea, and it paid off: 8118. A vanity plate. It could be run through a national database later.

As for the shelter…

As soon as Thundercloud's avatar got within five feet of it, things happened.

The door flew open.

"Ahoy, alien!" thundered a voice. "I was wondering when you space robots would show up again! Heard you would be coming by while I was listening to the Swedish Rhapsody numbers station this morning! I get the signal thanks to the bullet lodged in my head! Also I got hit by lightning two nights ago. Been picking up your alien brainwaves ever since! Acht - eins - eins - acht! Achtung!"

A man in raggedy overalls and a dirty plaid shirt leapt out the door. His old fishing hat barely kept a lid on his bushy black salt and pepper hair, and his beard was wild. He stared at Thundercloud with an expression that was somewhere between suspicious and ecstatic. A pencil was clutched in one of his grubby hands.

"About time you got here!" he said. "I got things to tell you! Important things! You're not gonna roll a boulder through my shack though, are you? Because that's what that last fella did, and that sorta thing ain't gonna fly with me a second time, no sir."

Thunder would get a peek through the open door. Inside, the shack appeared to be crammed full of radio equipment.

[Deleted]

There were moments in Thundercloud’s life when he genuinely had to question whether or not he was unknowingly having an acid trip, or otherwise intoxicated enough to be hallucinating whatever bizarre, batshit insane thing he found himself faced with.

This was definitely one of those times.

Utterly baffled by the scraggly human who burst from the shelter, Thundercloud actually took a moment to flick his tongue against the roof of his mouth, testing for the taste of high grade, before reaching up to feel the sides of his neck for track marks. He couldn’t recall using any illicit substances in the past...well, ever since he came to Earth, really, but that didn’t mean anything. It would be far from the first time he was high and just didn’t know it. For all he knew his entire stay at Fowler’s base was some sort of fever dream, and this was the climax of his wild trip.

That, or he had never been sentenced to the man’s custody in the first place, and he was actually just having a strange coma-dream in the medbay after Optimus knocked his head off his shoulders for the stunt he pulled with the MECH copter.

Both possibilities seemed equally likely to Thundercloud, but something told him that despite all evidence to the contrary, the crazy man that popped out of the shelter was probably real.This just seemed like the sort of weird slag that would happen to him even if he wasn’t tasting colors and seeing sound.

Of course, the man being real meant Thundercloud was now in quite the predicament, or as he preferred to think of it, really deep slag. The whole “robots in disguise” thing was sort of the Autobots’ MO when inhabiting occupied planets, and Thundercloud had somehow managed to completely screw up that maxim even while actively trying not to.

It figured that even when he was following protocol, he still couldn’t help but frag up royally.

Grimacing, Thundercloud debated his options and found that he really couldn’t do anything other than address the man and his crazy, or just beat a hasty retreat and pretend like none of this ever happened. It probably wasn’t the smarter of the two options, but Thundercloud had never been one to run away from his problems, and he wasn’t about to start now.

He eased back up from behind the tarp-covered car, resting an arm on top of its roof for leverage as he revealed himself to the wild man, who somehow already knew where he was, and more concerning, what he was.

He’d be a little more worried about how the man knew all the things he did, if he weren’t more concerned with how much slag he was gonna be in once he reported this back to Optimus and Fowler.

“Uh...hey.” He began awkwardly, unsure how to address the human and his mad stream of consciousness.

“So, uh.This is weird. Not really sure what the protocol for this is.”

He gave a shrug, and tried not to focus too much on how utterly unprecedented this situation was. He knew he had joked with himself about finding a crazy hobo in the wilderness earlier, but he didn’t actually expect to find one.

In front of the man, Thundercloud’s avatar stood, looking just as perplexed as he did. Realizing there really wasn’t any need for the thing anymore, Thundercloud blinked the avatar out of existence.

“Pretty sure I’m breakin’ it, whatever it is.” He muttered a bit more quietly, more to himself than the man.

[Deleted]

Being a twenty-eight foot robot, Thundercloud did not so much as reveal himself when he sat upright than made it slightly more obvious that he was trying to hide behind a car whose rooftop stood five feet high, at best.

The man hooted.

"Since when did space robots care about pro-toe-call?" he said. "You need someone to tell you how to walk through a shed door? Crickey! It's no wonder you're nearly extinct. Look, you just do this."

The hobo jumped back and forth across the threshold of his shack in an exaggerated fashion, hopping from one leg to the other. He waved his hands in the air in a sarcastic little 'ta da' gesture.

"And that's how it's done, son," he said. "That's some official pro-toe-call right there, I'll tell you what. Now put on your real face, not your cop face, and come on inside."

This time, the wave was friendly. The hobo turned back inside the shelter. "Come on, AC/DC. Hoof it on in here. We'll have a good chin-wag. I got some cool stuff to show ya. You're after MECH, right? And other shenanigans?"

[Deleted]

As he watched the crazy old hobo dance in and out of his equipment-filled shack, Thundercloud found himself wondering if everything he was seeing was actually some sort of test. He knew Fowler promised him he wasn’t jerking him around with this task, but it seemed almost too coincidental that after a few weeks of being drilled on procedures and protocols, he’d find himself in a situation that would test how well he retained his new-found knowledge.

Granted, Fowler had never exactly run him through a drill about what to do when encountering a mountain hermit who somehow knew all about the alien presence on Earth, but still.

It didn’t take Thundercloud long to dismiss this suspicion, as he wanted to give Fowler the benefit of the doubt and trust that, whatever this was, he had no part in it. If he was going to be tested on what he learned at the outpost in those past few weeks, he figured it’d be something involving fewer hobos and more aircraft.

Standing, Thundercloud uncertainly followed after the strange human, a hand reaching up to rub at the back of his neck as he struggled to figure out just what to think about the situation he was in.

“Uh...Alright. It’s, ah, probably too late to say this since there’s nothin’ that can be done about it now, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to know about anythin’ you just mentioned.”

At least he wasn’t the one to let all that information slip - he was pretty sure Red Alert would have his hide if he revealed their business to yet ANOTHER human. Their base was crawling with too many of the little buggers already.

[Deleted]

The hobo cackled.

"No kidding!" he said. "Half the stuff I know the government ain't even supposed to know about! Not that I'm gonna tell them about it, not while they're poisoning our citizens with their chem trails and breeding lizard people in their black labs. Down with capitalism! Etcetera. You coming in here, or are you gonna stand out there gawping, son?"

He motioned for Thundercloud to follow him into the shack.

Inside, the shack was cramped.

That was putting it mildly.

An averaged sized man - or avatar - would need to duck his head just to fit inside. The back wall of the shack was made up of four metal shelves, upon which were mounted a bewildering array of massively complicated black radio transmitters, receivers, converters, and modulators. Two old bullet-sleek teletypewriters sat upon the middle shelf alongside a power distribution panel, with power supplies and motor generators resting on the lowest ones. Everything was studded in mysterious switches and dials. Needles shivered within glass gauges. Wires and cables stuck out in bundles everywhere.

There was a tiny metal folding shelf that could be used as a table on the right wall, upon which was mounted a handheld mic with a curly cord. Upon the table sat several thick spiral notebooks. A worn down pencil was parked on top of them.

His neck bent awkwardly, the hobo shuffled over to the notebooks.

"You know Agent Fowler, right?" he said. "'Course you do! He still trying to sniff out the location of potential MECH outposts for you aliens to go smash up?"