Ep. .5 - 'Dead Mech Walking' - Closed

"'fraid t'say I came lookin' fer you."

Watching a weapons specialist at work was fascinating in much the same way watching a pack of scraplets devour their unfortunate prey was. Neither endeavor was particularly wise to undertake, neither could promise much in the way of safety for those involved, and both left said watcher wondering just how dramatically they'd shortened their lives by doing something so incredibly dense. On the bright side- and Legion was determined to find the bright side of this increasingly-unnerving situation- a gun that was jammed wasn't terribly good for shooting unfortunate new arrivals. Unarmed, irritated mechs with scores to settle were a hell of a lot easier to survive than armed, irritated mechs, too.... right?

"Th'Prime said I was t'come t'you fer assessment," He clarified, stepping out of the doorway and into the sharkticon's tank. "Sommat 'bout seein' what I could really do an' where I'd fit in." Perhaps twenty feet away from Ironhide he paused, servos loose and easy at his sides, shoulders slumped in the careless fashion he'd perfected over a lifetime of playing at nonthreatening. The pose and its 'look at lil' old me, I'm no threat!' connotations had worked wonders on triggerhappy madmechs in the past; maybe, just maybe, they'd achieve the same ends here. "That, an' I was told y'know yer way around guns better'n most mechs this side o'Vos."

...that said recommendation had come from Bluestreak Legion was wise enough not to mention. For now, anyway.

His first impulse was to laugh, laugh long and hard at the thousand and one emotions that first rippled, then roared through the red mech's field like hard-pressed battle lines breaking and rallying. Bluestreak had once referred to his guardian as 'as subtle as a brick', an appellation Legion had never really stopped to think about. Now... well, now he owed Blue a cube of high-grade and the Kaonese boomstick he'd been lording over the little gunner since Teyonu. Fok all if hir every last detail hadn't been spot-on, right down to the split-nanoklik of murderous intent Ironhide couldn't quite completely tamp down.

His second impulse- and, thank Primus, the one he acted upon- was to snap into a guard position clean and clear enough to make his old commanders beam. Even down a primary weapon Ironhide had him outgunned by a frankly-frightening margin, and every damn projectile-launcher the old battlemaster had was probably rated against armor thicker than anything Legion could boast. Speedwise... well, neither of them was meant for dancing around subjects or enemies, either. In the end it would come down to a matter of reach, hold and sheer stubbornness, and at a glance he couldn't quite decide which of them had more of any of those vaunted characteristics.

...Oh this is gonna hurt a lot.

"...Ain't done this in vorns, sir," Legion admitted lowly, that last rarely-heard word accented with the kind of self-abasing modifiers favored by trainees and the hopelessly out-of-practice. "Least not in practice, an'... well, y'ain't a 'Con." A lifetime of serving with proud mechs kept him from pointing out the obvious- tricks you used against the mechs in purple weren't nice, weren't pretty and weren't something you used against your teammate's guardian, or anyone else you didn't want to completely incapacitate. "Do me a favor an' don' set yer expectations too high, arrigh'?"

((Feel free to handwave the actual sparring if it's easier for you, Neko.))

Like misjudging a step or flubbing an easy shot, this entire farce felt backwards, felt off-kilter, felt subtly, irreparably wrong. There were flaws in his defenses so obvious they rubbed and grated like grit in his joints, great gaping holes large enough to drive the Prime's alt-mode through, but he'd be fokked if he could do a blessed thing to plug them up. Ironhide was good- duh, weapons specialist?- but some of the arena combatants he'd sent packing vorns before had been just as good. Something- or perhaps several Somethings- had changed since then, and Legion had a sinking suspicion that said Somethings had precisely nothing to do with his choice in allegiances. Somewhere along the line the Wrecking Ball had grown a conscience, and while said conscience had its uses, it played merry havoc with his ability to fight back where snarling Autobots were concerned. Give him a Decepticon to beat up and all was well, but this? This was different, and not the good kind of different either.

The throwdown came sooner than he'd expected it to, and a Pit of a lot harder to boot. Score one for Ironhide- the last time he'd seen this many stars he'd been soaring through the outermost reaches of the Milky Way. By the time the pretty lights faded said can-of-whoopaft-in-mech-form was right up in his face and snarling reminders that stung almost as much as the big damn pede bending his chestplates did. By all rights he shouldn't have needed them, not after Gunny and Blazewing's vorn of beating sense into him the hard way, but here he was making every fokkin' newbie mistake on record and inventing some where conventional idiocy failed-

-Oh. Right. Blasty things. That, at least, he could manage with some suggestion of skill, however vague, if only because target dummies didn't have damnably blue optics to send his processor into code-mangling lockup. It took a klik or two to peel himself off the floor- fok all if Ironhide didn't hit like the ton of bricks the humans kept chattering about- but by the time he regained his pedes he'd slapped his dumb grin back into place and shoved all his misgivings back into the neat little box they belonged in. TO BUSINESS, THEN.

"Looks like y'got some scrap t'din inta m'head all over again," He muttered, shaking a last few stubborn error messages off his HUD. Calling up targeting protocols felt almost as awkward as sparring had, but despite misuse and more than a bit of mistreatment they were in fact still there. His guns, paltry as they might have been in comparison to Ironhide's, hadn't kited off either. Legion was not and would never be Bluestreak, but he locked on, aimed and fired all the same.

((Same handwaving rules apply. lol how do i combut? /flails))