Ep0: "Coping Strategies" [closed]

What he really wanted, if Ironhide was honest about it, was a proper scrubdown and some recharge. And some proper medical attention, if it didn't involve listening to one of Ratchet's lectures. And really, in the scheme of things, and given the day they'd all had, he didn't think it was too much to ask.

What he was getting instead was no recharge, his own patch job for medical attention, a wash that consisted of a bucket of water solvent mix and a scrub brush to get the worst of the grit out of his joints, and the first of the new batch of distilled highgrade. It was a far cry from ideal, but he'd take what he could get.

It wouldn't last. Ratchet would have heard the debrief by tomorrow, would know that Shadowrunner and he had both come in hot and dripping from combat, and then the medic would come looking and there'd be Pit smelt to pay. But for the time being, between League and Prime himself, the medic had his hands busy and Ironhide had managed to slip past him with none the wiser.

His quarters had been too quiet, though - nothing to take his mind off the ache in his struts and spark or the combat buzz still circling through his circuits. He'd finally ventured back out again, chanced the washracks just long enough to collect a brush and some solvent, and headed for the back recesses of the base - if he was going to be fragging awake and in pain then he might as well make himself useful and he was damned well going to be overcharged for it.

The newest distillation went down like nuclear waste, with a fission kick somewhere in a mech's fuel tank that burst heat through his lines. It tasted like the bottom of a slag pit, unseasoned and desperately in need of another run through the filters, but it certainly did the trick. He had settled himself to the floor, leg stretched out in front of him and cocked at the best angle he could get at. He'd grit his jaw until he could taste metal and scrubbed, ignoring the streaks of pain in favor of getting off energon and oils and all of the caked on grit. Half of the small cube of highgrade he'd allotted himself had gone towards that goal; the rest was being sipped more slowly, inbetween trying to twist himself into positions he hadn't been able to manage even when he was a youngling, medkit open on the floor beside him as he patched what he could.

Pit of an end to a slag sucking Pit of a day.

The sound of a light frame, steps in the corridor, jerked him upright. He'd ruled out at least half of the mechs he didn't want to see - or who didn't need to see his and Bulkhead's little project - and found he was less surprised than he thought when Shadowrunner's frame was the one that appeared in the door.

Femme looked as bad as he felt, though someone had been at her with a patch kit already. Ironhide vented softly, waving her in. "Yeh want some, help yerself. Just try not t' taste it on th' way down."

Ironhide grunted quietly and reached for the roll of sealant tape, tearing off another strip and huffing as he twisted to catch and tape down a line in the jagged mess of his leg. "Good enough," he rumbled, and he didn't mean the patch. "Debrief went fine." Funny how it got easier, the more times he said it. "Those codes th' slagger had are going to be key."

He dipped a rag in solvent, scrubbing at another spot where tape wouldn't hold over top of dried on fluids. He didn't have to watch the femme to see her twitch; she'd put herself as far from him as the little room would allow, and her field said more than she probably wanted it to. Young, it said to him. Young, and slag if she didn't feel somewhere between a youngling after their first kill and a grunt who'd lost their entire squadron.

Squadron. Lucky Thirteen. She was young and she had lost her squad and slag it, the death they'd given that scrap heap was too fragging GOOD for him.

He wasn't on top of his own game, knew there were fluxes and tremors still running through his own systems, but he was holding it together better than she was and for as much as she wasn't in his chain of command - something she'd proven very firmly with Barricade, because frontline and spec ops did NOT run together - she still kind of was. He ranked her, he was older, and she looked like she needed both.

He scrubbed and dried another spot, patching it, before wiping his hands off and reaching for his own cube, buying himself time to think. "Been wantin' t' ask yeh," he said at last. "Those guns of yers - primary or hold outs?"

Ironhide huffed in relief and stopped trying to reach - or worse, see - the back of his own knee. "Trust yeh do," he said, making the words a statement without any judgement; he did trust her, and trusted she knew her way with a patch kit as well as anyone who'd had to rough it on their own. He twisted a bit, stretching the leg out to give her better access. "Appreciate it."

Someone had done a decent patch job on her as well, though... no, she couldn't have reached all of her own damage any easier than he could. Ironhide called up and replayed the visual memory of the moments after coming through the ground bridge, automatic tracking of the mechs that had been clustered in the control room, and there, near the quick slide of Shadow's black- ah. Probably 'Bee.

She did know what she was doing though, and he let a little appreciation and approval seep into his field, the same sort he'd have shared in spades with Bluestreak (if his sparklet had been up - he'd snuck into the medbay while Ratchet was distracted, just long enough to check on the youngling and soothe some of the still whirling anger in his spark that even Barricade's death hadn't relieved).

Shadowrunner had been patched, but could use the washracks just as badly as he could. Ironhide kept the movement slow and clearly telegraphed - slaggit, he'd seen raw recruits with twitches like hers, though not in vorns - and redipped the rag in the solvent, returning the favor by scrubbing at some of the crusted energon he could reach along her shoulder. "Yeh ever think of better guns?" he asked mildly. It was the tone he'd used on some of their more skittish civilian recruits when first broaching the subject of weapons, and he could almost hear Chromia's exasperated reminder that not everyone had the same love of arms that they did. He berated himself even as he did it - she wasn't a recruit, or a civilian, or a youngling, and it'd serve him right if she clocked him one for implying she might be, but frag if she didn't punch half the same impulses he'd been using on Blue ever since they'd found the sparklet and someone had pushed the tiny thing into Ironhide's hands for the first time.

"Could take a look, maybe do some tweakin' t' get a bit more punch out of 'em," he suggested. "Or a whole upgrade, if yeh want." It slipped out without him really thinking about it, and yes, slaggit, alright, she was up under his plates already if he was outright offering the time and fuss a full upgrade would take. It was, he consoled himself, nothing short of fragging irresponsible to do otherwise, though. She could barely scratch a 'Con's paint the way it was. "Tell th' truth, Ah'd hesitate sendin' yeh out on patrol right now, not with those peashooters. Yeh ain't doin' just Ops here, we all gotta pick up some extras outside our functions." He hesitated a nano-klik, then added, "Yer good. Most of what yeh shot at yeh hit. Give yeh somethin' with some actual punch to it, yeh'll give some of these slaggers a run f'r their credits."

Ironhide let her keep patching for a minute, listening to the rhythm of her vents counterweighted with his own in the small space. Leaning forward, careful not to shift the leg underneath her hands, he tapped lightly on her shoulder. "Hold up for a klik."

The scan was a bit of an invasion of space under normal circumstances; he underscored it with his rank and specialty, as brisk as a medic's codes. The resulting image gave him a better idea of her internals and he hummed thoughtfully as he relaxed back, bringing up and discarding schematics as he considered.

Ignoring the way Shadow had stiffened, he quickly flicked through several ideas before settling on one, projecting a miniature model of it superimposed in red highlight across the blue of her own systems. "Power generation could be more efficient," he told her, pointing out the change with his free hand. "Tweak that, yeh'd get more juice t' yer lines. Route that here an' here, we could rig yeh something closer t' what Arcee packs." He shook his head slightly. "Ah'd have t' do a whole frame refit to outfit yeh with projectiles." He smiled a little wistfully. "Been awhile since Ah did one of those, an' yeh'd think Ah was smelting down sparklings, the way Ratchet goes on. Don't see why th' mech can't leave the gun mounts t' meh an' Ah'll leave th' medicin' to him."

He shrugged. She was listening, he could tell, and he kept his tone gentle and his field warm. "Yer choice. Or Ah've got some other designs that'd work for yer frame."

The little flare of anticipation and eagerness wasn't professional, but slag it, Ironhide had taken a specialist route because he was not only good at what he did but he enjoyed doing it. It'd been vorns since the last time he'd had a chance to do a proper refit, and the plans and options for it spun up through his processor like a chain reaction, one spinning into another as he contemplated different tactics.

"Power boost would be th' quick an' fast route," he told her. "Serviceable. Have yeh ready to go in a rotation, easy. But…" he shifted the image, displaying two schematics side by side, "…yer limited. Energon based weapons fire only, and without upgradin' yeh to a heavier frame entirely yeh'd be in Arcee's class. Enough t' do some damage, especially if yeh aim for weak spots - joints, optics, armor gaps."

He flipped the image to highlight the second schematic and… slaggit. He was leaning into her. He made himself stop, berated himself. She wasn't Bluestreak, she wasn't a youngling, he couldn't just scoop her up and tuck her against his own armor while he sorted out the best way to protect her. She was a full framed femme who was going to haul off and bust him one for everything at this rate, and rightly so, and just the fact that he was even thinking all of this was a slag sucking bad joke. Primus. The whole fragged up string of days had rattled him more than he'd thought. Cycling a ventilation, he made himself focus on schematics and highlighting frame changes.

"Yeh've got room - here, and here - for small solid state ammunition assemblies. Not too big; couldn't outfit yeh with missiles. Needle point armor piercing rounds, maybe. Not too many shots, but with good aim yeh wouldn't need it."

He projected a third schematic, pushing the first aside to display the next two beside each other. "Or go quantity over quality an' feed some of th' blaster juice into it, run a constant fire micro round clip. Not alot of force, but keep a mech busy protectin' his optics and hopin' nothing gets lodged anywhere. Either way, you'd have energy and solid state fire, an if a mech's armored for one he's sometimes not well armored for th' other."

Ironhide huffed, frowning, and dropped the cleaning rag in order to bring both hands up and broaden the displayed image. "Don't think of it as one or the other," he told her. The first image, with energy rerouting, duplicated itself and one of the duplicates shifted to superimpose over each of the hard-state options. "Assume th' blaster upgrade is a given." He put a little gruff sternness in his voice. "Ah don't want yeh out on patrol or off the base on yer own until we get that done."

He found himself leaning in, letting his field overlap hers in a brush of concern that underscored and emphasized the order. "So with that a given, th' other part's where yeh can choose. Quality... hm." He shifted the display back to one hand, lifting the other to catch her arm, his optics narrowing as he physically measured the span of her upper strut against his own spread fingers. "Call it ten rounds each side, twenty total. Strong enough t' crack most armor if yeh know where to hit it and can make th' shot, but after yer out it'll take a rotation for th' microassembly to restock th' full clip.

"Now, th' other one-" the image shifted, pulling the other layered array forward, "-is quantity. Maybe a hundred rounds each side, an' if we boost yer output a little more it can be refillin' itself every time yeh stop shootin'. Would eventually wear yeh down in a long fight, but yer not built for that in th' first place. Thing is, yeh could fire both - solid and energy - one right after th' other. Neither is that strong alone, but the mix can do some damage an' even if it's not up in yer internals it still stings like th' Pit."

He shifted his hand to her back, rubbing a comforting stroke along the length of her struts. "Yeh can think on that for awhile. It'll take time t' make an' install. System boost is easy, Ah can do that for yeh tomorrow if Ratch' doesn't slag us both first." He frowned, dismissing the schematics to touch a light fingertip to the edge of the patches covering her upper frame. "Yeh should let him take a look at yeh. Turn yer audios off if yeh have to"

Venting a sound suspiciously like a snort, Ironhide caught Shadow around the waist with one hand, pulling her in against his side as he used his other hand to flick a quick, ringing tap against her helm. "Ah can still walk, scraplet," he growled, but it was all bark and no bite, layered through with the teasing sort of affection he would have used on his own bitlet who would have been sassing him the same way.

Except that Blue wasn't and Shadow's field spiked. Ironhide caught himself but... scrap and Pit and rust. She needed it, that was as plain as the scratches on the wall, and frag if he didn't... didn't... something. Aching and hurt and cold and scrap, and she wasn't his bitlet but she was there, and she needed him, or something that he could give, and it was close enough. Ironhide pulled her in closer, wrapped an arm around her, and held on.