Ep 1 - A Frontline Distraction - Open

She had just wandered around the ship's corridors and hallways, without nothing else to do. Her latest fight on earth, had once again left her nothing but dissapointment. And as the time was as it was, she felt unsafe to even leave Nemesis, to find some new energon deposits. She simply felt she shouldn't leave Lord Megatron even once, before his state would be stabilized. She had had the feeling after her latest fight, feeling of something might happen if she would leave.

And the instinct, still tickling her processor, seemed to be right, once in a while. All of sudden, her audio sensors picked up sounds of firing, metal twisting, teared apart. Was it rebellion, Starscream, or something else, didn't matter. Only thing that mattered, was, that it could be danger to her master, who she felt, she had to protect, no matter the cost.

As Arma made it to detect the direction, she prepared her main gun, loading the mid-strong ion shot. She wasn't that ignorant, that she would've used her main cannon's full power inside the ship, it would pretty soon cause some serious damage, possibly even blow up the engines. These shots still would do damage, but not penetrating through the strongest hull, around the most vital points.

As she finally found the ruckus, there was pack of eradicons, blocking her sight. But it was clear that it wasn't Starscream, causing this, he would've not been able to cause this kind of mess, alone at least. She stood there, trying to catch a glimpse of the enemy, but drones made it impossible. Just suddenly, one of them was punched in the midair, hitting her chestplates with loud crash. She started to get impatient, and grabbed the drone's head with her left hand, and letting the hydraulics of her arm to clench her hand into the fist, crushing the drone's head into the piece of scrap, eradicon's whole torso falling limp.

Releasing her grasp, she targeted her cannon, into the middle of the fray, and fired. Eradicons, who got into the way, were the necessary sacrifice, to get the enemy exposed. The exlplosion tored the hull, causing the walls to bulge, but they didn't yield, yet. The mass of eradicons were thrown into the air, as she loaded her weapon again. The real enemy was nowhere to be seen, they got pretty surely covered before the blow. Some of the drones got standing, and were pretty much prepared to pursue the enemy. "Get lost here, you're just gettin in my way." With that, her battle mask snapped shut, as she advanced, corpses of Eradicons crushed under her feet. She was prepared to fight anyone, who just dared to came against her. Her cannon was loaded, prepared to fire another round, anytime.

Frag. 'Switch' meant something bigger than Bulkhead could safely handle coming up on their rear - 'bigger' meant either a known threat, like Megatron, in which case there was going to be slag to pay all around, or an unknown 'Con that just looked - might be, might not be - like more than the younger frontliner could take out.

The data flash as they swapped places was a 'Con Ironhide hadn't rumbled with before, but Bulkhead had - tall, big, well armed. Broad shot cannons meant to mow down drones with clicked back, larger concussive single shot rounds spinning up in their place.

"Alright," Ironhide growled, taking aim. "That's far enough, yeh ain't gettin' any further!"

Ironhide flared his plating to protect joints and sensitive gaps as the large femme opened fire - rapid automatic solid state, and he cut tactile feeds from his plate mesh with a snarl as the bullets rained in a hail of sharp impacts. ::MOVE,:: he snapped in a close feed to Bulkhead, giving the younger frontliner a shove, back to back. ::Take it down th' hall, Ah'm gonna need room!::

::You got it!:: Bulkhead shot back, and this time instead of waiting for the 'Cons to come to him the green mech smashed through the current batch and threw himself into several pounding steps to meet the next wave coming. It cleared enough space between them for Ironhide to move if he needed to, without automatically catching the younger mech in the crossfire. If they had had more time to practice - more battles spent on the field together, more time spend learning each others moves - if it had been Chromia, or Jazz, or even Prowl, anyone he'd served with before, but it wasn't and there wasn't any point in wishing for what you didn't have. Bulkhead had enough sense to get the frag out of the way, which was good enough.

The femme closed in hard and slag if she wasn't taller than Prime, full head and shoulders and then some over Ironhide. Her overhanded bladed strike, on top of that, almost made him laugh - Megatronus' first recruiting grounds had been the gladiator rings and it showed. It was a flashy gladiator move, a crowd pleasing finisher, and on any mecha that big...

He ducked as she struck, his own arm twisting to bring out his reserve blade as he raised it to block - Primus, she was heavy and strong, she had the advantage in pure mass and the best he could do was deflect, letting the blade of her axe come down in an angled shear across his shoulder instead of on his helm, damage reports flaring across his HUD and just as quickly dismissed - and stepped into the blow, bringing his off-arm cannon up into the unguarded curve of her side and opened fire.

Overhanded strike. Flares, deployed after solid state artillery, when he had already twisted to let the machine gun rounds hit his plate, optics shielded and his armor already angled forward to take the brunt of any strike.

Rookie. Large, well armed, dangerous rookie, but everything the femme did struck Ironhide as either something learned in the gladiator ring, or else an honest mistake of inexperience.

Which was his luck, because she had head and shoulders on him, a better reach, and some very meaningful artillery, as well as a wickedly strong swing. The cut across his shoulder had sliced clean through outer and inner plate both - angled better, it could have sheared through most or all of the entire joint. As it was, he'd twisted to take it shallow and her blade had only clipped into endostructure beneath the plates at the deepest point. He'd already deactivated sensors to keep the pain from distracting him, but the damage report coming back showed an alarming drop in fluid levels in a main lubricant line that made him snarl and cut the feed to that line. He couldn't see it, which meant she couldn't either, the draining liquid trickling down the inside of his plates; he would have most of the mobility in the arm for awhile longer before it drained dry and, Primus willing, it would be more than enough time to finish up this fight.

To which the 'Con femme had just brought a much larger gun. Slag.

Ironhide flung himself to the side to avoid the shot, the heat of it scorching hot against his plates in the tight confines of the corridor. ::Duck!:: From the startled but unhurt yelp he guessed that Bulkhead had followed instructions; he couldn't take his optics from the femme long enough to verify, his own cannons cycling up to a matching caliber. Primus, she could take out a good sized chunk of an inner ship wall with a shot like that, but she wasn't the only one. Roaring, Ironhide came up firing, aiming low at hip and knee joints.

Breakdown got the comm on an emergency frequency. The message was nothing more than one of his Eradicons sending him on-ship location coordinates, and cut off. What is your status? he demanded from dead air. The coordinates were nothing special, a hallway in the upper decks. That could mean anything. There was no way to tell which drone it was who commed him, but they all knew better than to abuse that emergency frequency. It'd either be real, or worth it. He took off, only a few rooms away.

From the next hall over he could hear what they meant: Eradicons' guns, guns that he didn't recognize, and all the punches and grunts and rhythms of a fight. He rounded the corner, ready.

Breakdown pushed his way through a line of Eradicons at the back, guns out and firing -- and took it all in, grinning when he saw. A nasty-looking fight on the far end that he hoped Arma had under control because from what he could see he'd be way outgunned... and, in his corner, Bulkhead. "You again?" Getting Bulkhead's attention, he pounded his fists together, then transformed his hammer.

He didn't know what Bulkhead was doing on the ship, and it didn't matter, because he wouldn't be here for long.

He ran forward, pushing Eradicons back as he went. The ones who got close enough were just getting pounded into scrap by Bulkhead anyway. Breakdown fired a shot of his own off his shoulder as he got within range. He didn't slow down to see whether it even hit or not. It wouldn't make much difference to Bulkhead. The explosion of the shell clouded up the air in front of them. Good. If he couldn't see, Bulkhead couldn't either. But Breakdown's artificial optic could pick up Bulkhead's EM field and his heat, and in the few nanokliks of cover he had, he rushed in, swinging his hammer where that told him Bulkhead was.

Gladiators. Primus save him from up-close in-your-faceplates slag sucking gladiators who wanted to turn a perfectly good gun fight into a Pit fragging blade fight, smelt and rust her sorry innards.

Ironhide had blades, to be sure. But they were not and never would be his primary weapon, or secondary, or tertiary, or anything except a last ditch holdout when all else failed. Blades, hand to hand, and anything that involved being too fragging close to effectively use a gun was not his principal style. Gladiators, though… rusted slagging gladiators had to be up in your faceplates, close enough to rub paint, and the 'Con femme was reminding him of every fragging reason he hated that.

He had to twist hard to avoid her swing and she shaved a layer off the shoulder armor she hadn't hit last time, very nearly giving him a matching set of cuts that he couldn't afford, not with lubricant rapidly draining out of his shoulder assembly and into his wrist rotorcuff.

The give and take in close combat was how open every move left you. Ironhide brought guns to bear as he twisted aside - and it was slagging hard to miss at this range - aiming for the easy disabling target of joints rather than try to blast through her chassis armor. A burst of pressure force from behind nearly threw him right into her - frag and rust, what in the Pit was Bulkhead doing?

A comm ping got back a garbled ident, but that was all Ironhide needed. Frag. Two close combat brawling Wreckers at his back and an oversized gladiator at his front.

They'd better be causing a big enough distraction, frag it, because this little dance wasn't moving anywhere anytime soon. Forsaking one blaster for hard state armor piercing rounds, Ironhide laid down fire to drive the 'Con in front of him back.

::Incoming - DUCK!::

That was going to get really old really quick, what with the interruptions of their own doings from fallout by the two trigger happy glitches who couldn't aim. It was a corridor - how hard was it to AIM in a straight shot down a corridor, for Pit's sake? Apparently too fragging hard and for the second time Ironhide's comm nearly blasted out Bulkhead's circuits.

Blue and grey plating was nearly on top of him and for one nanoklik mesh memory that was ingrained to near autonomic levels took over in a rush. Bulkhead threw himself forward in a tackle that tumbled them both to the ground. "GET DOWN!"

The explosion was impressive and audio ringing in the close confines of the ship, cutting visibility to nil as the smoke billowed up. Bulkhead choked on the acrid taste before he got his intakes closed, the feel of the blast vibrating through armor and strut. The crazy walking gun had to have taken out the entire far end of the corridor, if not several walls of the ship. His audials were buzzing with the aftershock and he did a quick system check, then yelped - his own voice vibrating through his helm - as more heat traces tracked another handful of shots that barely missed them. The comm channel he opened was old, and as familiar as the plating under his hands, accessed on instinct. ::Stat check - ok?::

It was in mid comm pulse that he realized just how stupid, not to mention slag sucking inappropriate, the check request was. That he had, in fact, tackled Breakdown to get the other mech to safety and was half laying over his former teammate as enemy fire - or indiscriminate friendly fire, in Breakdown's case - whizzed overhead. Oh, frag me.