[ti]Ep 3[/ti]Shop Talk [Closed, Avalanche]

[Avalanche]

Judging from the subdued frustration Prowl was giving off, he was of the same mind as her on this. That didn't necessarily mean anything would change, but it was a good sign.

"I'll write something up," she agreed. "Some of it will be easy enough. Drills are annoying, but they're not hard to implement. Red Alert might have a secure warning system; if not, we'll get that done. But the biggest thing is establishing a secure fallback position if Omega is found, and protocols for abandoning the base. That's going to be a hard sell."

As the ground grew rough and broken at the foot of the hills it was becoming impossible for the patrol car to make good headway, and clearly Prowl judged the time had come to drop the pretence. Avalanche followed him down into the narrow gully, her wide tyres making short work of the uneven ground, and it was only as they began to dip beneath the level of the surrounding hillside that she began her own transformation sequence.

The toned, athletic woman in her cab fizzled out of existence as the projector shut down, blocks of armour-plated mechanisms reconfiguring into Avalanche's towering root form. Burning orange optics surveyed the quiet gully, and she strolled over to a rough, exposed rock face. Blunt fingers brushed across the rocks, sweeping loose earth and a couple of tenacious little plants, exposing the banded, folded stone. A deep, thoughtful sound rumbled from within her chest.

"I know stone like this. It starts out as sediment, then melts and crystallises. Very hard, rough on drill bits. Sometimes, when you crack a stone, it explodes; they can be under a lot of stress. Have to be wary of shrapnel. But it'll support its own weight, shouldn't need much bracing."

She turned, glancing over her shoulder at him. "Unless you've got other plans, I'll get started here."

[Prowl]

Hard sell...this femme hadn’t been working with a Prime during a planetary wide civil war.

“Leave that part to me.”

Oh yes, Prowl was used to having to make the ‘hard sell’ to Optimus Prime. While he was a loyal soldier, the sad truth was that while Optimus Prime had massive amounts of combat experience, even more than what was seen if the whole story about the Matrix was to be believed, Optimus Prime was no soldier. Optimus Prime was a historical archivist who got himself caught up in a war for self determination that had been simmering for millions of years.

Yet somehow he had survived this long, and had the loyalty of damn near a third of the surviving population. Well, he could be made to see reason sometimes. Because Prowl knew what his job was.

Good soldiers followed orders...

As Avalanche transformed and began a preliminary inspection of the dirt, Prowl had his eyes on the scanner which began to beep in ever increasing intensity. He listened half mindedly as he scanned the skies, seeing if any seekers were coming in for the attack. Seeing none, he turned his attention to where Avalanche indicated that she would begin her excavation operations.

“Very well, I shall be on over watch.”

He stepped back a bit towards the way they had come, right servo shifting into a blaster cannon.

[Avalanche]

Avalanche glanced back at Prowl as he took up a watchful position, noting the transformation of his arm. Between the blaster and especially the missiles resting on his back, he leant the scouting party some useful ranged options that alone, she didn't have. Didn't seem like their viewpoints were too far apart, either, at least so far.

Useful.

She turned her attention to the rock face in front of her, running her hands slowly over the folds and seams in the stone that weathering had exposed, seeking the best angle to come at it. Find a good shearing surface and half your work was done for you.

She nodded to herself, brushing a little more loose earth away. Yes, this would do.

Her knuckledusters locked into position, their hard, blunt spikes tempered to concentrate the force of her arm, then she drew back one fist. Her body surged into the blow, boots grinding into the dirt as she pushed off, the underslung forearm piston slamming down like a hammer on an anvil.

The heavy clang of metal meeting rock rang out across the hillside, followed by the whispering patter of small stones falling. Avalanche grunted thoughtfully, running her fingers over the fracture in the rock, then drew back her fist again. She began pounding steadily at the cliff face, bracing her body with her fists against the rock and letting the twin pistons in her forearms slam back and forth like a never-ending drumroll. Here and there, she hit harder outcrops, pulling her full body into slamming her fists home. A rapidly growing pile of rubble grew about her pedes as she hammered her way onwards.

It wasn't quiet, or subtle. But it was efficient.

[Prowl]

Prowl found himself a good spot on the side of the hill where he could both keep watch on Avalanche as she went about her work, as well as keeping an eye on the sky for any airborne Decepticon threats.

That was one thing they had always lacked during the war, decent air power compared to the Decepticons. Sure, they had some talented Aerialbots who could fly rings around most of the Eradicon aerial drones, but should one of the Vosian seekers show up then it was a fifty fifty shot. And should Starscream himself or one of his senior lieutenants show up? Well, Prowl advised the Aerialbots to attack all at once. If not...

...run.

Fortunately for the Autobots, it was a documented fact that Starscream had an ego about as big as Primus. It was a weakness that could be exploited when facing the Seeker, forcing him into a position that was more advantageous to whom he was facing.

Hell, with him always apparently going on about replacing Megatron, maybe the Warlord of the Decepticons would do Prowl a favor and kill Starscream one of these days.

...if only...

Time passed slowly for Prowl, given that he was just watching the sky and ground for threats that never materialized. But that wasn’t an issue for the Praxian. Prowl could wait through to the end of time if the strategy called for it. But he did not want to be out here and exposed any longer than he needed to be. Without turning to look at Avalanche, he called out loud enough to be heard over the hammering.

“How’s it going?”

[Avalanche]

The digging was almost... tranquil.

There was something beautifully simple about putting her body to work in the way it had been made for, a rhythm that verged on brutal poetry. Over and over, shining pistons slammed back and forth, hammering her fists deeper into the splintering rock. The spikes of her knuckle dusters opened the way, concentrating the force of her blows, splintering the rock ready to be shattered by the blunt trauma of her heavy fists.

Yes, there was a rhythm to it. An old song came to mind, summoned by the drumbeat of inconceivably stubborn alloys against stone, and drowned out by the hammer of her excavation, Avalanche began to hum to herself. Broken rock began to pile up around her calves, something she occasionally paused to sweep aside with flat swipes of her wide hands.

A true miner would have had more finesse. Tider walls, less wasted force, drill bits that augered into the rock instead of shattering it. Still, it was far from the first tunnel Avalanche had had to dig out, and pairing experience with plenty of brute force went a long way to close the gap. A rough tunnel slowly formed , cramped enough that Avalanche had to stoop.

There was a strangeness to the folds of rock to her left. She pursued the fold, using it to make shearing layers of stone easier. And then...

Within the shaded tunnel, a sudden blue light. A chest-high seam of crystal, enclosed tightly by the rock.

“How’s it going?”

"Struck crystal. Going to see if I can get it out," Avalanche replied, in a slightly preoccupied tone.

Crystalline energon did not like direct impact. She'd never mined the stuff herself, but she knew that much. Instead, she began hammering above and below the seam, trying to open up cracks that she could pry her knuckle spikes into, then her fingers. Bit by bit, she wrenched chunks of crystal energon loose, the lumps coming free with a messy encrusting of raw rock. Tidying them up to be properly refined was a job for a mecha with a far lighter touch than her. All she had to do was retrieve them.

Kicking aside a crumpled pile of loose rock, she began carefully stacking up the knotted clots of stone and crystal as she extracted them. Glancing out towards Prowl, she finally said, "Think I've tracked this seam as far as it'll run. There's probably more here if we go deeper, but I don't want to push our luck."

Emerging from the shallow tunnel, Avalanche shifted modes, her shield unfolding under the urging of her internal mechanisms, her body reconfiguring into a long, broad-wheeled chassis. "Load me up, and let's get back to see how usable they are."

[Prowl]

“Be careful.”

Many bots might be surprised to hear Prowl say those words. But despite the cold, scowling, calculating exterior Prowl did care. For one, he didn’t want Avalanche to blow herself and possibly him into orbit by being careless while extracting raw energon. Two, no matter how small the amount of energon extracted here, anything that they managed to get would buy the Autobot cause time. Maybe not days, maybe not hours, hell maybe what they got here would give them just an additional five minutes of life. But that was all Prowl needed.

Five minutes might be what it came down to in the end.

As Avalanche continued to work, Prowl kept scanning the skies and ground for any approaching threats. A small helicopter type vehicle on the horizon kept his attention for a few seconds before disappearing out of Prowl’s sight down to the south. Decepticons? Unlikely, any cons would have been detected in the region by Bulkhead who was watching from Omega One. Humans? More likely. Had they been spotted?

Also unlikely, as any humans might have tried to fly in for a closer look. But still, Prowl wasn’t going to take any chances. He was about to call out for Avalanche to hurry up but she beat him to it, informing him that she had likely gotten all that anyone could get from this vein. Well, at least without precision mining equipment. It would have to do. Prowl noted their location in his processor to make a note to possibly come back here at a later date.

“It will have to do.”

As Avalanche transformed into her alternate mode, Prowl turned down the tunnel and activated his chest mounted headlights to enable him to see better, then deactivated his targeting systems and shifted his blaster back into a servo. With both hands, he began loading up Avalanche’s dump bed with the energon crystals, taking his time in a hurry.

“Call Omega One, have Bulkhead open a ground bridge as close to these coordinates as possible.”