We are a literate, intermediate to advanced AU Transformers RPG Based off of the first season of TFP with dashes of other incarnations sprinkled here or there. Characters from any continuity are welcome however must be restyled to match the TFPrime universe.
Active, with ongoing plotlines, we are always willing to integrate new characters into storylines once incorporated into the setting.
The offer may not have been made in full seriousness, but it was still a comforting thing, cohort watching out for one another. Shadow relaxed a little, until it didn't take conscious effort to hold the sound of her engine steady and soothing.
"I have faith that you are an irresistible force of nature," Shadow said with matching solemnity. "Don't think I won't use you against Ratchet, if he comes back, too. Or if he gets on me for coming back with salt caked in my vents." She grinned. "Ratchet will be a true test of your abilities."
Soledad grinned. "Ratchet and I have come to an understanding." If 'understanding' meant 'multiple instances of verbal fisticuffs that left Ratchet actually cracking a smile and Soledad breathless with laughter.' "I can handle him, no problem. He's no match for my powers of snark and puppy eyes."
She nudged her friend playfully. "Besides, he's nothing but a big marshmallow on the inside, you know. Have you seen him helping the other kids with their homework? And he clucks over Optimus like a big mother hen." She paused, thoughtful. "...Well. If you read between the lines, that's what he's doing. I guess to the uninitiated it sounds like scolding."
Shadow shot another quick look around the room, then ducked her helm closer to Soledad. "I am," she admitted, in the tone of someone confiding a great secret, "slagging terrified of Ratchet."
It wasn't something she had said aloud before, and she suspected Soledad might not believe her, particularly if Soledad viewed Ratchet as 'a big marshmallow'. If asked, Shadow couldn't even have explained what she was afraid of. She knew perfectly well Ratchet would never willfully harm a patient, and Labyrinth's admonitions against medics had been to ensure their less-legal modifications never came to official notice, a situation which hadn't applied since Barricade had gutted half of her weapons and Ironhide had cheerfully ripped out the rest.
That Ratchet in a temper reminded her of Labyrinth building into a fury was not something Shadow was yet ready to admit to herself.
Shadow shrugged a little sheepishly. "I've done pretty well at avoiding him so far. This is going to be the first time Ratchet's actually cornered me one on one."
Soledad felt herself blink in surprise. For a moment she didn't believe her friend, but it wasn't as though she believed Shadow was lying. She didn't think Shadow ever would.
Somehow... I got the impression she wasn't afraid of anything. Soledad smiled softly, mostly to herself. What am I, five?
"...two on one." Soledad's hand curled around Shadow's fingertip, gave it a squeeze. "If he gives you any crap, I'll kick his ass. Yeah?"
The thought of Soledad - who would fit in Ratchet's palm as easily as she did Shadow's - defending her against the medic drew a soft laugh out of Shadow...which was, she suspected, the intended reaction. And the offer, as improbable as it was, was also strangely, comfortingly, cohort.
"Thank you," she said, voice filled with warmth rather than irony. "Two on one, we can probably take him, but I'll still let you take the lead."
Soledad nodded firmly. "And you'll be my backup. Between the two of us we can handle anything." She leaned against Shadow's chest again, offering comfort instead of soaking it up this time.
And she really was preparing herself to be Shadow's defender, verbally at least. She didn't think Ratchet would hurt Shadowrunner, but she knew how nervewracking it was having someone else in your intimate space. She could tell Ratchet to go jump off a bridge just as well as anyone else, even if she couldn't back it up. Or she could distract the medic, make fun of him or banter with him, whatever would work. Whatever would reassure Shadow.
Ratchet would never know what hit him.
((OOC: Should we see if Ratchet wants to jump in at this point?))
((OOC: I agree this is a good place for Ratchet to show up, and Shadow can then demonstrate that she will, indeed, freeze like a deer in headlights when she's the focus of his full attention.))
The first thing any decent base medic did, when presented with a patient, was pull up-to-date medical files for said patient... and it had taken Ratchet half of the morning to verify both that he did NOT have anything even remotely like this for Shadowrunner and that the data-loss error was not (a fleeting thought that had prompted a full diagnostic on himself) his own.
It had, he remembered, been a clusterfrag when Shadowrunner had come to them - her, and Sniper, Bluestreak, Ironhide, and one medic with not nearly enough appendages to go around as he'd been hauled from one case to the next. Sloppy, which made him growl at himself, because it was worse practice then he'd pulled off since his residency, or possibly that time he'd been on shift for eighteen rotations straight after Tyger Pax, running on fumes and circuit speeders until he literally hadn't been able to see. It was sloppy, it was inexcusable, and he had, in a moment of fast-encroaching processor rust, apparently patched the femme's most visible damage and not gotten any in-depth scans or data from her then or since.
No time like the present for correcting his own glitched stupidity, but it probably did nothing for the irritated set of his expression when he stalked into the medbay. Shadowrunner, at least, was there, perfectly on time, without any of the tracking down, threatening, wrangling, or whining that medical checks with some of the others entailed. It mollified him somewhat, and smoothed some of the snap from his vocalizer when he addressed her. "Excellent, you're on time. This is going to take a bit longer than I initially thought - unless you have a current medical record? I neglected to get that from you before, and I know you and Ironhide have been slagging about with your systems; I need to know what he's done and..."
Ratchet cut himself off, because there was a human - the femme, Soledad - on the berth beside Shadowrunner and the incongruity made him pause, verbally and physically as he focused on the organic. "...and why are YOU here? Are you injured? Do you need Nurse Darby?"
There was a moment, when Ratchet stalked in scowling, where Shadow genuinely would have bolted if Soledad hadn't been tucked so close to her frame that sudden movement would put the little human at risk. She certainly didn't have an answer for him, even if she could have initialized her vocalizer, which for a sparkpulse she couldn't.
She ducked her head. Labyrinth hated failure to meet his expectations. He hated it more when you couldn't provide some sort of explanation for your failure.
Vents whined as she abruptly dragged in air to cool heat-spiking systems. "I don't have a medical record." There was a dummy file, intended to fool anyone who got access to her long enough to attempt forensic analysis of her movements and activities - Ratchet had tersely appended it in the wake of the Nemesis raid, obviously without ever scanning it - but that would be worse than useless.
"I have the basic schematics for the changes Ironhide intended to make, but not the details." She'd watched the entire procedure, of course, but she doubted she could remember any of it under the circumstances. She looked up cautiously. "Is it really necessary?"
Despite Shadow's warning and her own assurances, Soledad was shocked to feel Shadow suddenly go rigid against her. When she looked up, Shadow's face was wiped clean of all expression, as blank and neutral as - as a robot, Soledad found herself thinking, and she was too worried about Shadow to explore that thought any further. Far from just your run-of-the-mill nervousness around doctors, a feeling Soledad well understood, it seemed Shadowrunner had a full-blown phobia. Whether it was of all Autobot medical officers or just Ratchet in particular was all academic at this point.
She settled in determinedly, one hand on Shadow's hip. "I'm just moral support," she informed Ratchet. "I won't be in the way." But just try getting me to leave, she added silently, and hoped Ratchet was wise enough to pick up on her unspoken message. Shadow would be embarrassed if Soledad had to tear a verbal strip off the medic.
Ratchet vented, eyeing the femme - and the much smaller organic femme - on the medberth like a puzzle to be solved. 'Moral support'? Shadowrunner was an experienced scout and member of spec ops; 'moral support' for as simple a thing as a routine medical checkup seemed unwarranted...
...unless he was going to find some highly illegal and questionably moral modification beneath her plating. He turned that idea over for a nanoklik and filed it under "possible" though the femme was either a consumate liar or hadn't been the one black market parts shopping herself.
Which still left the puzzle of just what the little human femme was trying to accomplish. Coupled with the the rigidity and nervousness of the Cybertronian femme he was supposed to be looking over, and Shadowrunner's inability to meet his optics... no, it wasn't the twitchiness of someone engaged in illegalities and it seemed to be genuine from what he could feel of her field. Organics didn't have fields to parse, but Soledad looked like it would take an act of Primus - or physically picking her up and lifting - to get her away from Shadow. Rather like...
The memory clicked into place and it was utterly ludicrous but once thought Ratchet found he couldn't shake it. It was like getting Bluestreak in for physicals - even when the youngling had been a proper youngling, perfectly capable of walking in and conversing with Ratchet, there had forever been the struggle regarding the hulking red frontliner cluttering up his medbay in the name of 'moral support'. It had gotten better once Bluestreak was big enough not to require holding in Ironhide's hands, but it was still predicable enough that Ratchet had taken to viewing it as a two-for-one gambit - call one, get the other in for a quick scan before Ironhide could protest.
Which was completely ridiculous but there they were, and there was Soledad pressed up to Shadowrunner's hip, and Shadowrunner herself was overly bright and torqued looking around the optics and through her field. Member of spec ops or not, she wasn't the first mechanism Ratchet had seen with a (justified or not) phobia of medics.
Ratchet sent a few choice curses after whatever medic had probably botched something with her once, making her skittish and thereby compounding the problem for all further medical personnel. His own bedside manner had never really extended to 'comforting', but he cycled his systems down and kept his voice remarkably level. "I'm going to need you to move to the side, then, Soledad - Shadowrunner, up on the berth and stretch out, if you please." He hesitated, not used to explaining himself, but twitchy patients often responded well to knowing the why and what came next. "I'm just going to run some basic scans. In the event you ever get half your chassis wrecked and are carried in here trailing fluids, I need a baseline to work from to put you back together."