[ti]Ep 3[/ti]Impact Damage [Avalanche,Patch]

[Patch]

'then I scream my name and charge.'

A warm, throaty chuckle filled the young femme’s chest. Intake closed as her optics shuttered a little and her helm shook loosely. Patch was genuinely enjoying the Commander’s company. Relatable, down to earth- and she was proving to be an absolute model patient. It was easy to laugh with her. Easy to listen... Primus, if only it could always be a little more like this...

At the guidance, small, rounded digit-tips carefully eased beneath, and searched the underside of the larger shoulder-pauldron. Exploring with small taps, and brushes, just study enough not to tickle until- Ah! There were the bolts. With a practiced servo, Patch gently pinched around one to estimate the size, then turned back around and fit an appropriate wrench head to a small rotary device.

As Avalanche spoke of her own experience with grenade kicking, Patch listened intently. Continuing her work as innocuously as possible, she placed the temporarily-a-wrench beneath the armor plate in question. Carefully fitting it’s head to the bolt. It wasn’t anywhere near so loud and squeaky as the actual filing down of plating could be. The device designed to specifically not be unbearably noisy. It did however, still make a lower rotational rumble, it’s speed amongst its lowest settings. They were in no rush, after all, and like this it wouldn’t hinder conversation too terribly.

As she listened, the young femme’s face contorted in sympathy. Chin angling slightly as she let out a low, soft "ahh." Immediately, her processor jumped to all the worst parts of a wound like that- the mess, yeah, but the noise while someone dealt with it most of all. Plasma meant melted, and melted meant burns, even well beyond the edges of the visible wound. Burns could be so painful- and they rarely did well to restrict movement. Frag, the borderline wrestling matches she’d had under fire just to get someone down and comfortable...

With the first bolt gone, she shifted to the next, then the next. Placing her other small servo beneath as well, to catch them each with a small ‘tink’. Once through, she retracted the rotary tool, and reached to set it down. Placing the bolts in a small container she’d prepped on the tray beside it.

Oh that was mean… She may have pulled some slag in her day, but Patch couldn’t imagine inscribing a replacement part with an insult… Something to tuck away for later, she mused to herself- not that Ratchet would EVER let her get away with it, but… Six planets. Primus, she’d really been around.

“You did what?” A grin of surprise spread across Patch’s features as her attention suddenly snapped up to the other femme’s face. Oh, this was a story she wanted to hear. As the other femme hopefully continued, the young medic placed her servos beneath the plating once more. She unhooked the catches with practiced ease, then carefully lifted the first layer of plating away. Prepared for the weight- and yet still slightly surprised as it was gently eased off, then hefted up, and placed on the next rack over.

[Avalanche]

The bolts locking the armoured pauldron to Avalanche's chassis were a bit stiff, but nothing that the torque of the tool couldn't manage. She hadn't been handled for a while, not since Frosty's final examination before they parted ways - that was an aching memory she didn't want to dwell on right then - but the gentle, careful touches of Patch's small hands were kind of pleasant.

Like any old soldier, Avalanche had a tendency to delve into war stories, but she was at least self-aware enough to know that, and pull back when it started to get excessive. She would have left the little self-deprecating comment as it was, had it not been for the medic's sudden, genuine surge of amused interest that encouraged her to keep going.

Patch really was easy to talk to. That was a good trait in a field tech.

Looking up at the smaller femme, a wry smile on her lips, Avalanche considered for a moment, then began, "This was way back, long before I left Cybertron. Still a dumbaft boot. Hadn't got the hang of thinking tactically. It took me a long time to put together how important it is to work with your squadmates, even if you really don't like each other, and I hadn't got there yet. So I did my own thing, they did theirs, and none of us were being proper soldiers."

Construction class, and a former neutral? Cold shouldered at best, treated like a potential spy at worst. Nevertheless, the battlefield was no place for hot shots that couldn't work in a team, and her tone indicated just how little she thought of her past attitude.

The heavy off-white shell of her shoulder armour lifted away in Patch's hands, exposing a thick, deeply-treaded tyre embedded in layers of squared-off black plating. Exposed bolts and catches allowed for another couple of lighter slabs of metal to be stripped away, before finally reaching the complex contours of her mesh, tracing the outline of the mechanisms beneath. Interstitial fluid pulsed beneath the sheath with each beat of her fuel pump, wide-bore fuel lines flexing as the interior pressure rose and fell.

"...it was out on the plains around Kalis. The Gauntlet Runners were involved around there somewhere, later on, weren't they? Back then, the city was intact, but the outskirts were rubble. My squad was dumped in a light industrial sector, out by the old orbital roadway. More standing ruins and half-intact factories there. Real mess to fight through."

Avalanche grunted thoughtfully. "Should have bombarded it flat. We had the numbers to push back head on, there. Command still thought the area could be rebuilt and used, though, so we made do. Battle lines had steadied for a while, relatively static. Plenty of sniping, not a lot of heavy missile fire. Seems like they wanted what was left of the place intact too. I was a bulldozer back then. Didn't have a lot of patience for that."

[Patch]

As Avalanche spoke, Patch shifted her servos to un-hitch one latch, then the next. As each chunk of plating came off into her grasp, she turned around and placed each segment in a nice, orderly fashion on the same slab which held the outermost layer.

Now that they were gettin’ down to more vulnerable components, Patch’s focus was honing a little farther on her current task. Carefully watching the lines, and plotting their courses. Her current wants for treating this were clear; get into the shoulder, and try to adjust the kink in the shaft manually if she could- using traction most likely; Traction and heat on the bend, if necessary.

Whether or not they had something around here she could USE to yank it into place was a question… Patch was willing to bet there’d be SOMETHING- though even still, that was a gamble she’d be strong enough. If not, she could call Ratchet in, have him take a go, and if neither could manage it, refitting would have to be the option; which again, would be easier with a second, more experienced set of servos. In the meantime, however, taking care of a bit of that flack in the cogs would likely make things move a bit better regardless of repair method.

‘Later on’ oh Primus. Nothin’ like a seasoned soldier’s re-hashing to remind ya just how much of a protoform ya are… At the mention of Kalis, Patch’s audials perked right up. Optics snapping- lighter this time- back around from the other slab to those of her patient. The young medic fought to place the area Avalanche was speaking of in her mind. Considering the terrane she spoke of, throwing out the familiar (albeit likely outdated) mental map. Patch was just about to speak, and mention where she figured they might have been… Though…

She was quickly shut up by the notion of the place being leveled...

Suddenly quiet in a slightly different sort of way, Patch turned to her tray to fiddle with instruments a little more. She took up a hemostat, as she continued to listen. Opening, and closing the small jaws around a sponge, as she was quite sure there’d be some build-up within the joint. Attempting to lubricate itself, as it struggled both against the mis-aligned components, and the splinters- likely suspending much of the debris she saw on her scan.

Oh slag… This story probably happened before she was born...

“Oh, frag, I think I know exactly where you’re talkin’ about.” The femme tentatively started. Trying to keep her tone nonchalant, even as the idea of such damage to her first home touched her spark. Quietly, she turned from the tray and began fiddling with whatever else was necessary to fully expose the shoulder. Tapping at invisible pressure-points to retract the final layers.

“I was uh... I was raised and trained at Kalis.” the femme spoke lightly, a quiet fondness in her voice. Optics softly focused on her work. “My buddies and I would sneak off to screw around in that rubble… Found industrial grade in the walls of the old data-pad place? Starving lil’ idiots we were, we tried to drink that slag.” She shook her helm a little, mild smile on her lips. “First time in overcharge, first time on intravenous absorption blockers, second lecture from Klaxon about overcharge poisoning… Primus, that was a sucky day.”

“But anyway, you promised a minefield?” The grin came back. It came back with a vengeance. “You mean the old thing out past the spires? Or- slag maybe this was before they cleared out the big field. By the time I came around we used that place for drill and training, but they always said it used to be full of mines.”

[Avalanche]

Avalanche's brows lifted, and she cocked her helm. The young medic was raised at Kalis. She couldn't help but wonder how intact the city and its surrounding area were at the time - the region had gone through several cycles of warfare followed by partial reconstruction before it was finally given up as hopeless. Letting the thought go for the time being, she broke into a grin at Patch's story, letting the smaller femme's voice distract her from the odd feeling of having her chassis opened up.

Stripped down to her bare physical structure at the shoulder, the medic's careful touches to Avalanche's panel locks disengaged the final protections. A large panel lifted up on segmented struts, dripping with oily residue, and rotated backwards out of the way to expose the core of her shoulder joint. The compartment was filled with thick, dirty lubricant fluid, far more than there should have been, flecked with suspended metal fragments. Under the intense lights of the medical bay, the fluid was a dull, semi-transparent blue-brown, lending an oceanic quality to the structures it immersed.

Beneath the surface, the slight kink in her main load-bearing rod was clear to see. Deeper into the compartment, less clear to the inquisitive optic, the rack of shoulder actuators could be glimpsed, skewed out of position. Failed bolts had sheared, and the remnants of them were embedded both in the rack and the mounting platform. Self-repair had clearly tried to fuse the base of the rack to the platform several times, but without sufficient structural integrity to hold against the forces involved, leaving overlapping rough patches that traced the gradual migration of the rack further and further out of true.

"Hah! Find me one squad who'll tell you that not one of them tried industrial grade, I'll show you a squad full of liars. Wouldn't have tried it on purpose; I used to work with it, that stuff's no good. But some Primus-damned fool takes it into his processor to bulk up the party supplies with some suspicious stuff he got cheap, and... well, I don't have to draw you a picture."

Avalanche pulled a face, an ancient echo of long-ago nausea in her gut. "We buried him waist-deep, head down, for a day and a half. Anyway. Minefields. Yeah, I know the ones you mean. Helped lay some of the big one; I was punching holes for the layers. But this wasn't that.

"The battle lines in that region of the orbital road were fairly static; every few days, one side or the other would make a concerted push forward, instant hail of blaster fire, they'd fall back, status quo. My squad wasn't involved in any of that; ranged support. I didn't have any ranged weapons; they handed me a little pistol I could barely use. Wasn't making a bit of difference.

"There's a push coming, further up the line. We know it, they know it. I walked out from my post the night before - I know, I know. Dereliction of duty, whole raft of things; I'd have locked myself up for pulling that slag if I was there now. I was an idiot. Got lined up down where the advance was going to happen, and when our troops broke cover, I charged out with them. Right at the front, big shield, howling my name. Yeah, I drew a decent wedge of fire. Think they'd scouted our lines; weren't expecting a heavy runner like me right there. Threw them off. Spent too much time shooting my shield, not enough time shooting the people beside me. Managed to get to melee range, and then it was all over-excited smashing. It went well. Didn't deserve to, but it did."

Avalanche paused. "Where I went wrong was thinking that I could keep pulling that trick."

[Patch]

With the last layer of covering out of the way, Patch reached up to the surgical light above, and flicked it on. She adjusted it slightly, drawing it down to both increase it’s intensity, and draw its edge off Avalanche’s face. It was one thing to see the evidence of damage on a screen. It was another entirely to see it physically, with one’s own optics, on a moving, living being.

It looked fraggin’ painful… It was worse than Patch had thought…

Thankfully, the first step was always clear; whenever remotely possible? Start by cleaning.

She took up the smallish, curved tube she’d prepared earlier once more. A quick inspection of the tip, before fiddling with a control, and prompting it to hiss just slightly as it drew in air. She leaned forward to watch what she was doing, as her other servo came up to steady the surrounding components. With cautious efficiency, she allowed the tool to dip in, and begin slurping up the sludge. It was not a pleasant sound, though at the very least Patch hoped it brought relief. Small taps as the blunt tip softly met edges, then shifted to a new spot. Azure optics softly focused as the medic only took what she could see.

A subtle snicker at the comment on how common the mistake was. A mild outward snort at what the guy had gotten for it. A glance up, with softer, almost wonder filled optics as Avalanche mentioned being among those spoken of in basically legend to Patch’s unit so long ago. Primus, she'd heard about a lot of this from her sergeant back in the day... Usually as a reason to push harder in PT, but occasionally as low spoken stories to warm up colder, hungry nights...

“Aw, man.”

It was really cool to have this sort of relation to someone. To have the ground she ((as close as their species could come, at least)) grew up on defended, once upon a time, by someone she’d get to work with today? Who’d be a leader in the new place she called home? No wonder Patch liked her. The young femme may only have carried a subtle inkling of belief in destiny, but if ever something poked at the thought…

With the majority of the gunk gone, Patch set aside the suction, and took up the hemostat once more. With a practiced motion, she lightly smoothed across the joint in question, taking up a bit of the remaining fluid; splinters glinting in it under the light as she turned to drop, and replace the sponge. Once this action was repeated a few times, all the way round, Patch began soaking the new pads in cleanser before she applied them.

The fluid was cool to the touch, though not terribly harsh. A distinctly ‘medical’ sort of smell. Almost sweet, with a slight sharp edge. Something to cut through grit and grime, while also being some semblance of gentle to the metal; rather than the stingy, astringent stuff Patch might have used on something threatening rust.

Damn, the femme was brave too. Patch would have gone so far as to say she was a Primus-fraggin' hero that day. Actions like that? Roll the dice- could get you a court-martial or a metal depending on your CO’s mode of operation. Patch almost felt like she was getting a cheat sheet, as to what Avalanche would come to expect from the lot of them.

“Oh Noo…” A grave tone, as Patch’s optics quirked up from the work. A sort of engaged side-eye of concern as she eased her current instrument over to drop the sponge, and pick up a new one.

[Avalanche]

Strange sensations.

Avalanche kept talking as Patch worked on her, focusing on the story and enjoying telling it, but she couldn't deny to herself she was using it as a way of distancing herself from the feeling of having her internal workings exposed and touched. It wasn't painful; the numbing program would have seen to that, even if Patch weren't working with exquisite care. It was just...

...strange.

The hissing of the vacuum wasn't an entirely surprising sound. As the joint had degraded, she'd grown grimly accustomed to the thick, slow sloshing of liquid from within her shoulder subframe. It had eventually tapered off; something she'd taken as a promising step at the time. Instead, it seemed that the compartment had simply filled as densely as it could.

Maybe it would feel lighter, when this was done.

A subtle shiver ran through her frame as the pad smoothed over her exposed workings, wiping away the sharp little fragments left behind after the fluid had been drained. The strong scent of antiseptic filled her olfactory senses. She ached to try to move, to get a sense for how the joint felt to move, but she disciplined herself. Patience. She had to give Patch time to work.

Avalanche blinked, realising she'd fallen quiet, her optics lingering on the medic's face as she worked. "...so."

She hesitated, trying to recapture the thread. "That went well, even though it shouldn't have. My officially assigned squad were ranged support, and I couldn't hit the side of Iacon's Spire from ten paces. They'd have been happier if I'd deserted, but throwing myself at the enemy lines would do. They ignored my absences. I was glad, at the time."

Avalanche suppressed the urge to shake her helm, not wanting to risk jarring Patch's hand. How well she remembered that unpleasant estrangement! Ignored by her assigned squad, who had no interest in her. The pistol assigned to her that was so blatantly of no use, barely large enough for her to pull the trigger. Every little thing telling her to just go away. She'd seized on their deliberate lack of oversight, and called it freedom.

Idiots. All of them, idiots, pretending to be soldiers. Her most of all.

"So I tried it again. Looked for somewhere the ground between the lines was wider, with less cover - somewhere you wouldn't expect a frontal assault. The next wave, I tried my luck there. Got across intact, but didn't achieve as much; the main thrust was to my left, so I just made a lot of noise and mess on the flank."

She paused, then added thoughtfully, "I think that's when I became enough of a nuisance for the enemy to notice. A heavy hitter could have done a lot of good, deployed correctly, and most troops in the region were mid-range move-and-shoot fighters. Integrated into a formation... anyway, I wasn't. So it was time to get rid of me while I was still dumb enough to go blundering around on my own."

A wry smile tugged at her black lips. "Lovely bit of bait, if it was intended for me. I was about a klick and a half from where I was assigned to be, under the towers of an old transmission array. Triangular mesh, three masts, north-west of the city? Sort of bronze-green? Crossed the highway, charging up the northern embankment, and I saw the enemy lines pulling back right in front of me. Should've wondered why, our attack front hadn't even hit home yet, but... scream and charge. Didn't look at the ground. Remotely activated minefield. Think I just recognised the disturbed ground as I ran in, but once I get going, I don't slow down fast."

"...that was that, for that battle. The first mine blew, tossed me onto another. Damn near stripped me of my entire outer plating. Remember being on my back, seeing the second mast falling down from a stray missile strike, then stasis lock. Down to Solus's grace that I survived, because I sure didn't deserve it."

Her orange optics turned towards Patch again, a kind of rueful humour in her field. "What I'm saying is, you don't have to get fragged to learn to do better, but if you're a dumbaft, it sure speeds up the process."

[Patch]

Once the edges of the joint were satisfactory, Patch moved on to the walls of the chamber. Carefully running one pad, then the next up and down the back, and sides, and edges. Doing all she could to remove the bio-fluid, and the debris within before continuing.

An old transmission array… Didn’t sound familiar, though damn near every structure had been bombed, or blown down and put back up in so many different configurations… She did somewhat recall a green-bronze hill of scrap, out on the very edge of where it was safe to be… Embankment too… Hauled past it every cycle on the no-alt runs...

By the dusty fraggin' Allspark; Patch knew the spot!

The young soldier listened earnestly, as she glanced up every so often from the cautious swipes, and dabs with fascinated optics. A small, split smile on her face as she eased between the cautious work and the story. She chucked a little when the femme mentioned her difficulties with mass and physics- Oh the memories of some of the bigger warriors she’s watched speeding in, being heroes, when suddenly something important got underfoot; the dances they would do… It was kind of endearing, in all honesty…

It was at that point, the medic’s smile faded… Though the earnestness remained.

She slowed her work some on the shoulder; not stopping all the way, even if she was done… She didn’t wanna alter her workflow too much, or walk away for this bit of the story. Nothing to distract. Even if the re-telling was for entertainment’s sake, injuries, hard lessons like these were always worthy of respect.

With steady optics, Patch eased the hemostat out from the components, and set it gently on the edge of the small basin she’d been placing the pads in all the while. Two little ticks as the tip hit the bottom, and the side met the edge. As the commander turned to look up at her, Patch looked back, listening… Then she was suddenly stricken with a one liner.

Patch giggled. She didn’t really mean to, it just sort of fell out. A light, almost whisper of a chuckle. A quiet sort of silenced-whistle that spread straight to azure optics. A sort of true and genuine… Well, feminine, that Patch didn’t let herself be very often. It was simpler, and realer, and she didn't seem to notice, it was… Effortless. Not quite graceful, though… smoother as she shook her helm a little.

“Oh by Primus, the lessons I’ve learned gettin’ fragged by my own mistakes…” The last-sparked spoke a bit different than before. Voice a little bit higher, and a little bit easier as it fell from her chest. The change unconscious, by all indications. Not younger, per-say, though more clearly young. More naturally her. Not putting on any sort of hard-aft act anymore in the other femme’s company.

“Could you go ahead and move your shoulder a little bit, so I can see what’s goin’ on? How far up it can lift, especially; I wanna know what’s in the way.”

[Avalanche]

Avalanche broke into laughter alongside Patch's giggle, nodding in profound empathy with the smaller femme's words. "Few things teach you a lesson like the school of 'Oh frak, I shouldn't have done that'," she agreed.

While the armour-plated femme didn't quite register the shift in Patch's voice consciously, the warmth and sincerity, the ease with which the medic spoke, did reach her. A matching warmth kindled in her chest; she was as thoroughly at ease as if she'd known Patch for years, and it eased the sting of ancient stubbornness about her old injuries.

"Sure. Let me see what movement I've got right now."

Flattening one hand against the medical bed for support, Avalanche began to push herself up into a sitting position where she could move more naturally, then stopped and eased down onto her back again with an apologetic smile. "Sorry about that. Instinct."

Straightening her left arm, Avalanche slowly and carefully began to move it up and down, not yet trying to lift her arm too high, careful not to strike Patch. Thick metal wedges attached to the main shaft gave leverage for the actuators to push up and down, rotating the shaft.

"That... does feel better," she allowed cautiously. Even through the pain dampening, she could feel the difference; no more ground-up fragments of metal stabbing into the joint and scratching against the moving mechanisms. "Let me see how high I can get it."

Flattening her left arm at her side, she began to lift it slowly and smoothly. The multiple actuators extended slowly, pushing against the metal fins to rotate the shaft. Even before Avalanche began to have trouble, however, the impending mechanical failure was easy to see: the rack of actuators, skewed sideways at an angle, were forced closer and closer as they lengthened, twisting with the shaft's rotation.

As the actuators began to grind against each other, Avalanche's hand just about reached straight up. Her actuators jerked and flexed a couple of times as she tried to push through it, but all that she achieved was to grind them against each other. It just felt wrong, a deep, shuddering wrongness as her mechanisms struggled, and she hated showing that vulnerability. Avalanche's lips parted, her denta showing, and despite the medical program running within her system, she couldn't help the hiss of discomfort that escaped her.

"...that's as much as I've got," she admitted after a moment, venting a sigh that was coloured by frustration. Her arm twitched as she tried to lower it, the actuators partially jammed in their entwined position, before she reached up with her other hand and gave her arm a couple of quick little jerks, breaking the deadlock enough for them to retract. Wear spots on the sides of the actuator shafts where they had ground together betrayed that this was hardly the first time she'd tried to muscle her way through the structural malfunction and had to restore movement by force.

The kink in Avalanche's shoulder rod, by comparison, wasn't as immediately crippling. It was making things worse, causing the actuators to begin colliding a little before they otherwise would have, but by itself, it wouldn't have stopped her arm rotating. It'd take a keen optic to understand that the kink had caused the actuator rack to be put under lateral stress, providing the initial off-balance load that had kicked off its slow migration further and further out of true.

"Guess it's your turn to tell a story. Major chassis-altering frak-up optional. Or if you need to concentrate on this instead of reminisce, I can keep going."

The big femme didn't want to bore Patch, that was for sure. And unlike a lot of her compatriots, she did know when to shut up. On the other hand, delicate surgical intervention might be something that required too much focus to simultaneously shoot the breeze about cycles long gone.

[Patch]

Patch took a small step back as the other femme moved. “Aw, naw. Don’t worry about it. You can sit however you’re comfortable. For a minute at least.”

“Okay.” The young medic said lightly as Avalanche pushed herself. “That’s okay. That’s pretty damn good actually.” A fighter through and through it seemed. Patch didn’t even wanna think about how hard it was gonna be to keep her down, if she ever needed to recover from something big.

At the mention of another story, Patch offered “Well, first things first I can tell ya my current plan of action.” The young femme eased forward slightly. Servo rising to point with her digit into the components.

“I don’t know how much of this you can see, but uh… Looks like you’ve got a bit of a bend right here." She lightly traced her digit over the shoulder rod, so weather she could reach see it or not, she could sense. "probably happened over a good while of work. Something like this doesn't just kink from one hit. It’s pretty deep.” She glanced to the commander’s faceplate, trying to get a bead on weather she was following. How she was taking the news.

“Now that on it’s own wouldn’t be too big of an issue. The part that’s slagging’ it up, is your frame’s started tryin’ to compensate for it by shifting the mount for your actuators; which is good. Means your self-repair is active and fighting. The bad news is… It’s started dragging back in a way that might take a while to adjust for once the kink is out.”

The young femme stoped gesturing to the internals, and looked back to Avalanche. Expression blank, though casual as she shook her helm just slightly. “I can’t move the mount itself. That’s much too deep, too complex, sits well above my pay-grade.” A slight smirk infected her professionalism for a moment, evidently amused by her own choice of words, as… She wasn’t paid. None of them were at this point, Patch figured. This was about survival now. Much more than a profession.

“What I can do, what I’d like to do, is start by un-bending this bit here, and see if once things are back to normal, your shoulder will heal on its own.” She looked back down to the injury, as small freckled servos were placed palm down on her hips.

“If it turns out to be a problem; if it’s painful, or stiff, if it’s still not at least a little better after about a week or so of letting it try to brace itself back into position? We’ll re-evaluate, get Ratchet -our surgeon- involved, and probably adjust the mount manually.”

The red-crested helm perked up again to look at her. “That all sound okay to you?”

[Avalanche]

A little uncertain of what could be done for her and what came next, Avalanche nodded slowly, settling back to listen to what the younger femme intended. Her helm turned, trying to get an angle where she could see into the opened compartment, and a shiver ran through her heavy frame as she felt the delicate touch of fingers along her primary shoulder rod, a sensation that her body couldn't accustom itself to.

"...not surprised. The stiffening up of the joint happened slowly. Got worse when I hammered something hard and didn't get better." She paused, then glanced away, her lips tightening. "...I was wondering whether I'd lose movement completely."

It wasn't hard to tell how much even that admission cost her to dredge out into the light of day. She listened intently, her brow furrowed, determined to fully understand the implications behind Patch's description. Despite her increasingly claustrophobic grip on her own emotional reactions, there was a flicker of dismay at the notion the mount was too deep in to fix, a flash in her EM field before it was snuffed out.

Patch kept going. Some repairs could be made, and maybe her biology would attend to the rest. If not... the official surgeon would take a look. The one she'd mentioned before that'd have to look at the lingering wound beneath her fuel pump. It wasn't bad news, not at all, but still... while the hard edge of Avalanche's dismay ebbed, it left behind a deep and profound wariness. An unwillingness to take any kind of improvement for granted until it happened.

It wasn't that she didn't trust Patch's work. Not for an instant; she wouldn't be letting the other femme work on her otherwise. It was just that, like a lot of older mecha, her long life had been rife with sufficient disappoints to ensure she never counted her scraplets before they bred.

"...sure. That sounds okay to me," the big femme agreed, letting her helm sink back to be cradled by the medical rack. "If you get in there but don't have the leverage, I might be able to help. If you guide me. Got a decent range of movement in my other arm; reaching my shoulder's not a problem."

Did it sound fun to try to bend her own load-bearing axle back into place? It did not. But she wasn't sure what kind of traction equipment Patch had at her disposal, and she sure as hell didn't want to end up dragging this Ratchet out of whatever he was doing just to see to her.

Avalanche's optics dimmed slightly as she gazed up at the ceiling. Was she going to be needed in the next few days? How often did skirmishes happen? If something went wrong with the procedure, would she put herself out of action right when she was needed? The joint wasn't working properly right now, but it was working enough...

"When was the last hostile contact?" she asked after a moment. Maybe if she had a baseline, she'd have a better idea of how long she could risk being worked on.

[Patch]

“Duly noted.” Spoken through a sly smile. The young femme liked that Avalanche would offer. An extra level of security that A) the commander was gung-ho for the procedure, and B) that they’d be able to accomplish it alone.

The medic did not, however, intend in the slightest to ask for the help.

Not only because it felt like a profoundly awful thing to have to DO as a patient -performing one’s own adjustments was never fun- but because… Patch… kinda wanted to impress Avalanche if she could.

Patch was small- she knew she was small for a frontliner. She’d been made abundantly aware by all too many, FAR more times than had surely still been entertaining. Did it bother her? Not really. Not usually, unless it became a hindrance. Though the young femme knew, she was strong for her size. Heavier than many expected too, given her density.

Not a party trick anywhere near so much as simply… Something she wanted the commander to be aware of. Not for any particular reason. Just… To know. She was strong- just to know.

At the more direct question, The femme muttered lowly. “Ooh. That’s a good one… Lemme think.” She began crossing the room to the countertops across the way once more.

“We haven’t really had a lot lately, to be honest. Not that I know of at least.” A frank admittance. It may have been a small base, but Patch was still willing to accept, there may have been things she was simply not told. She bent slightly to one of the lower cabinets, the very bottom shelf, tucked away in a corner. After a few small clunks, there was a light shift of a bin pulled into the light, and rifled through. “Things tend to be quiet around here; it’s nice...”

“I think… a mine raid was our most recent adventure. Usually those are voluntary.” The young medic slid the container back in place, then began to unfold what looked to be a quite sturdy cybertronian cloth. Immaculately stainless, though thoroughly worn, and well used. A small washcloth for the likes of many, though a decent size dishtowel to the femme.

“Besides that we’ve got patrols, sometimes those turn ugly. Constant contact with base is maintained, so backup’s always available.” She popped up and turned her face to the commander.

“You want a local?” A casual question.

[Avalanche]

Avalanche's helm turned as Patch moved away, watching the smaller femme as she rummaged through a couple of containers in search of what turned out to be a rectangle of tightly woven cloth. Odd. It had to have a purpose, but Avalanche couldn't yet figure it out.

Rather more pressing was the other femme's assessment of the garrison's likelihood of coming under attack, which turned out to be... almost none? That couldn't be right. But if Patch was saying it was so, then it was so, which led to the obvious follow-up question: why?

The medic's offer of local anaesthesia pushed Avalanche's internal musings to one side for a moment. The natural tendency of stubborn, frontline mecha like her, as she well knew, would be to refuse any such aid and tough it out while pretending to feel as little as possible. But... she wasn't putting on a show here. She didn't have an audience to be impressed by her resilience, nor a queue of injured mecha behind her that needed it more. And... she didn't want Patch to think of her as some macho idiot, like the field tech must have dealt with many times before.

"Down to what you think is best," Avalanche answered after a tiny pause. "If unfiltered reactions are useful to what you're going to do, leave it. Otherwise, go ahead and apply some."

She settled back against the rack, consciously relaxing her frame for what was to come, a small frown on her faceplate as her thoughts turned back to what Patch had told her.

Their last combat had been a raid that they'd carried out, with no visible concern the outpost might be attacked in turn. That was... very much not what she was accustomed to. Every staging post or fortification was permanently under the expectation that the enemy would come. To think that the world where the Prime and Megatron were facing off might be so secure, so... quiet.

She was missing something, and as soon as that thought crystallised, she knew what it was. "Oh. The space bridge," she murmured to herself.

That changed everything. If the portals couldn't be traced - she had no idea, and she'd have to check - then there was no reason a base couldn't be hidden indefinitely. No supply runs, no scouting missions leading inexorably back to the main fortifications. No such thing as hard battle lines with contested turf; a portal allowed your forces to bypass minefields, leap behind fortifications... breach armoured walls without touching them. Coordinates were all that were required.

No fixed zones of combat, either. Avalanche grimaced. Forces could be deployed anywhere, and if they were detected by the enemy, opposing forces sent in to meet them... pitched battles with hundreds of combatants playing out where, barely a beat of the fuel pump before, there hadn't been a Cybertronian within a hundred klicks. Permanent ramparts were worthless.

Avalanche exhaled a soft vent, her lips twisting. My tactical knowledge is utterly obsolete. Damn.

"The 'cons. They've got a space bridge too, right? There any way to block one from forming?"

If there was such a thing as an area-denial field, at least a fortress could be built to withstand assault. Otherwise... "Does the garrison run invasion drills?"

[Patch]

At the approval, Patch nodded slightly, and turned back around to the cabinets once more.

Honestly… the medic had a lot of respect for Avalanche’s answer to the pain meds. Again, the commander was proving she wasn’t afraid of pain, though was strong enough to trust, and be vulnerable in the hands of a pro. That was hard. She also wasn’t demanding resources for herself. Keeping the door open, though not stepping through it on her own. All around a good reaction in the smaller soldier’s book.

Though the impending quiet of the room, the young femme opened a cabinet, and drew out a quite small vial, a bin, which was dug through a moment, before she found a syringe, then another bin to find a good needle. A light turn of helm over her shoulder at the mutter. As she listened to the other femme speak, she attached the needle to the syringe, and poked through the overturned bottle.

“Ground-bridge.” The young femme corrected mildly, as she drew up a carefully calculated amount of fluid- the syringe about a quarter way full. “Ours, at least. They’ve got a space-bridge. I think we stretched ours to low orbit once though, nearly did the thing in.”

At the next question she began to make her way back over with the cloth and the medication. “Not as far as I know- not besides standing in the way.” Patch may not have been an engineer, though she'd learned a lot from Ratchet’s muttering, and was very much prepared to flaunt it.

“Enclosed spaces though, they’re dangerous. Multiple safety measures need to be disabled just to make the thing show up.” The young medic leaned down above the commander's shoulder. A little prick, then a wash of painless tingling in the area that quickly silenced to numbness as it spread. “They don’t like walls, they don’t like solid objects. And the nice thing about space-bridges, is, no matter how much better their reach is, they’re larger. Less stable.”

Yet another question...

“Uhhhh…” A guilty sound as she capped the needle and lightly tossed it on the tray left over from earlier. Sure, drills weren't Patch’s responsibility, but… She didn’t wanna accidentally tattle on anyone it did belong to. “Not frequently.” An honest answer. “But the whole place is shielded.”

Life signals, radio communications, even the kids’ ‘cellular phones’ couldn’t seem to escape- though they could penetrate. Constantly picking up, taking in signals, though allowing none to wander away. A barricade of safety in a world in which they were otherwise constantly exposed. A haven.

“I got here during the truce, so I might be given’ ya the swayed version, but… So far, it’s been... Almost stupidly peaceful.” She looked over, shaking her helm a little. Mild smile on her freckled face, as though even she didn’t believe the words. “We’re safe here, there are good people… Don’t usually fight unless engaged… Like I said, there are patrols at almost all hours; bridged out all around the world to track loose energon signals.”

“I’ve been here almost three months, not one person's died.” The wonder in those words was clear, in the last-sparked’s voice. A ‘can you believe it?’ sort of tone.

[Avalanche]

Ground bridge. Not a term she'd ever come across before, but it got the message across; smaller portal, limited range. They were at a disadvantage, then... though if they could make use of the smaller, more stable mouth, that could prove pretty damn useful in a pinch.

There was a subtle tremor through her frame as the needle went in, less from discomfort than an instinctive little flinch, then tingling numbness spread out through her shoulder, fading into a simple nothingness. It felt... strange. Not bad, exactly, and the relief from the strut-deep ache there was almost pleasant, but she couldn't help but feel a little unsettled at the complete absence of sensation.

Stupidly peaceful, though. There was a sentence that stood out. Perhaps the local mecha were accustomed to it, but it was obvious that neither she nor Patch were capable of trusting that it would last.

“I’ve been here almost three months, not one person's died.”

Avalanche blinked, looking up at Patch's faceplate from where she lay. There was something behind Patch's hushed astonishment that spoke of a truly traumatic casualty rate in her past. The heavily-armoured femme's expression softened, a deeper, gentler tone underlying her voice. "Sounds like you've been through Kaon's own smelting pit. Before you came here, I mean."

She vented a soft sigh, letting her gaze drift upwards towards the ceiling of the medical bay. "Back in my early days with the Prime's forces, big, big battles. The spark toll was foul. But where I've been... it's thinned out. The war's still going strong, but it's more measured. Paced. Like a marathon, not a sprint. There were some stretches where we could hole up, dig in, and survive without much attrition for a while. Patrols and supply runs get ambushed, but if you're careful and you're lucky... no one has to die for a while. Then the stars turn on you, and you lose whole squads in a single assault. Not much you can do about that."

Or at least, that was the sane attitude to take to the inherent unpredictable violence of it all. It didn't stop her from mulling every fight over, in her lower moments, every memory picked apart, every teachable lesson drained, leaving a bitter residue of guilt and regret. Sometimes it felt like that was what had slowly filled up her frame, bringing those aches and pains with it.

"But if this place isn't living on borrowed time, it'd be the first place I've been that wasn't. Guess neither of us know how to deal with that."

[Patch]

Quiet optics danced to the other femme’s faceplate for a moment. A loose, sheepish smile on her lips, a little pain beneath. “Eh.” A soft sound. “Ya get whatcha’ get."

At the hospital, it varied. After a battle, they could lose two, four, ten, depending on how many dozens showed up. Out in the trenches, well… Ya took what you could get. Not many died, not right away. But the wounds were grizzly and the sheer NUMBER that fell… They didn’t have anywhere near enough surgeons, their evac route was slagged to the pits…

Primus must have shuttered to listen on the days it rained...

But the days before all that, back on the honest to goodness frontlines, like during Patch's first ever assignment… The commander's experience sounded a little like that to her. Sounded familiar.

Patch was utterly thankful to listen as Avalanche continued to speak. Grasping onto the gentle, knowing words like a life-preserver in the midst of her own murky, stagnant thoughts. With a new quiet in her optics, a hard, heavy field the child shifted the cloth around the bent bit of Avalanche’s shoulder.

Borrowed time…

This was still an outpost… Earth didn’t make energon, didn’t have all their elements. Now granted, in the later days, Cybertron didn’t… really either. But, Patch couldn’t help but think for a moment about the phrase…. She’d never really considered an alternative herself. People just moved around a lot, that’s how life had always been. She liked Earth, it felt more stable. Safer. Somewhere deep down in that warm and fuzzy place in her spark, Patch almost felt she could genuinely talk about concerns with her officers here, and not get utterly decimated for it… She was still… yet, to try with a few of them. But… The fact it COULD BE even remotely an option was…

Nice...

Often the young femme fought with herself not to get too comfortable with it. Not to get too attached, to prepare for the worst, some big betrayal; or worse yet an invasion. A bombing, a shooting, a raid gone wrong that would result in the loss she was accustomed to. But… It was beyond tempting some days, some nights to lie steady, and stare up at the ceiling and believe and wish and hope and pray to Primus that it could all be real. That there really could be people who gave a shit in charge, that she’d really have people she could lean on again.

So far it had been… So nice… Her spark lit up sometimes at the sheer notion of it all.
Patch was terrified of losing it... Above anything else.

“I guess.” Soft words, spoken through a half-meant smile that slipped out of her grasp near as quick as she caught it and shoved it in place on her lips. Swiftly slipping back to concentration, the young femme looped the cloth around her hands, and began to tug against the bend in Avalanche’s load bearing rod. She was quite cautious about it, especially at first. Putting weight down slowly, more getting a feel for just how stuck it was, before then twisting the cloth around her palm a bit farther, and gradually leaning back upon it slightly. Weight still fully supported, watching with utmost caution for even the slightest edge of straightening, or -Primus forbid- any sounds of distress from the metal.

“Where were you before this?” A simple question, spoken through a slight smile, a little break in her now concentrated expression. She eased up on the traction a bit as well, a quick glance at the other femme before shifting the cloth’s position, then falling back against it a little more.