[ti]Ep 3[/ti]Aces High [Thundercracker and Sundance]

[Thundercracker]

He had expected that blast to slam her into the dirt.

Turns out he had miscalculated slightly. Had they been closer to the ground, it most likely would have done that and left nothing for the rest of the Autobots to clean up. As Thundercracker saw that femme come up and begin to open fire on him, he activated his heel thrusters and leaned off to the side, using the momentum to dodge out of the way. In an instant he changed into his alternate mode and applied full throttle to rocket up and away, using his speed and power to gain space.

He was worried now. As he came up and leveled out at about ten thousand feet, Thundercracker weighed his options with a bit more care. He had expected blasting her with the shockwave would have rattled her enough to either take her out of the fight or get her to leave the battle. Now he was down to less than half of his energon reserves and to half of his available missiles, plus out a few hundred rounds of gun ammo.

Part of him thought that he should run, use his superior power and speed to climb to where this femme couldn’t get at him and bug out back to Blackridge. But if Starscream found out, the arrogant bastard would have a field day...

Gritting his dentia, Thundercracker swung his nose back around to face towards the smaller jet and lit up his radar so that the two remaining missiles under his wings would begin looking for targets. Damn Megatron and his war for forcing him to kill his own kind. Damn Starscream and his cowardice for throwing in with the warlord who bombed their home. Damn himself for not having the spinal structure to make his own choices.

After getting a solid independent radar lock, Thundercracker fired the two remaining missiles tucked under his wings at his opponent.

[Sundance]

Thundercracker was quick. true to his skill and experience, he fled back into the air when he saw Sundance come pouncing. To have her opponent seemingly retreating was just enough to bring her back to her senses, enough at least to make the call.

::Sundance to base, Sundance to base. I am engaged in combat with Thundercracker. I repeat, Thundercracker is here on Earth!. I am unable to safely disengage. Over:: Her voice over the Autobot com channel was noticeably strained from the pain she currently endured. 

She was already at her maximum speed and gained quickly on the blue seeker all the while pouring energon into her lguns at the fleeing target. But the seeker had vastly more power than her, quickly matched her speed and then proceeded well past her ability to give chase. Still she pursued as much as she could.

Suddenly he turned back towards her and fired a pair of long range missiles. Sundance, already relying on radar, picked up the target lock on herself easily. She tried to launch the first of her two flares but something jammed due to the shrapnel already buried in her chassis. 

"Oh no...no no no.." Sundance cursed to herself fighting against panic. Shooting down missiles headed straight on was hard enough, she needed an edge. Sundance transformed mid flight.

Ordinarily, transforming in the middle of air combat was suicide, but she was laready staring death head on. With every iota of skill, she fought the turbulence tearing at her as she air braked hard buying precious seconds. Energy poured from the three functional barrels of her four guns, finally exacting destruction on one missile. But only the one.

::MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAY...::: She screamed into her comms as she swung up her feet to take the impact of the second missile. 

From the wreckage of the explosion gently fell a barely conscious Sundance hanging from a white parachute. Her best had not been good enough. 

[Thundercracker]

She almost made it.

But when Thundercracker saw the second missile explode just close enough, he knew that he had won the engagement. When he was younger, more of a foolish bot, he would have whooped for joy, maybe did a victory roll to celebrate his success. But now, after four million years of fighting, he was tired of it all. He rolled to the side as he passed by the corpse that was floating down by some kind of parachute, letting out a long sigh that he had been holding inward before rolling upward and gaining altitude.

It wasn’t right that she be left here to rust away. She deserved better than that for having fought so well. Not knowing she had sent her own distress signal, and without thinking too much about it, Thundercracker keyed up a known Cybertronian frequency that he was sure the Autobots would be listening to.

:Any Autobot unit listening, female flier shot down at my grid coordinate. She fought well, till all are one:

Thundercracker was not religious by any means, but he figured it was an appropriate thing to say on this occasion. As he reached about twenty thousand feet he rolled his wings level and applied full throttle, egressing the area at around Mach 2.1. As he calmed down from the adrenaline rush of air combat, he suddenly became aware of the damage done to his wings, tail surface and nose from the femmes laser cannons. Not really advisable to fly home in his condition.

:Soundwave, this is Thundercracker. Bridge me back:

A few seconds later, the green vortex of a space bridge opened up about two miles ahead of Thundercracker, who angled in and cut his speed just as he flew in and transformed to land in the control room, startling some of the vehicon drones that were on duty. The spymaster himself was nowhere to be seen, but that just meant that Soundwave would find out later than sooner. Thundercracker rose to his feet as the space bridge portal closed up behind him, then slowly began to walk down the hall to the medbay.

[Avalanche]

It wasn't an especially eventful day at the Omega garrison. And for a few more precious little moments, it would remain that way.

Avalanche had spent time getting accustomed to the control centre since she arrived; so long as she wasn't familiar with how the tactical displays and monitoring systems worked, she was a liability. She was, by now, up to a working knowledge of what it all meant, though her ability to work the ground bridge was still severely elementary, and not something to be executed in a hurry. She'd have liked to blame her difficulty with the thing on the bizarre mismash of Cybertronian and native technologies represented by the system, but in truth, she was simply deeply uneasy about handling a machine meant for ripping apart reality. An old construction machine like her had no business meddling with such things.

On this particular day, she was on duty in the control room with Rain, the femme that had been on duty she arrived. The damage the old regime had done to her was writ plain across her entire frame, and she had to be used to being treated like a freak or an outcast because of it. Avalanche was always... if not gentle, then considerate around someone bearing such scars. And careful not to show it.

In the dying seconds of the tranquil afternoon, they were discussing traffic through native cities. There was something fascinating about a race constructing vast transport networks, then so choking them with individual transport vehicles that they became borderline nonfunctional again.

And then a voice broke the quiet, whose radio-harshening couldn't disguise its burden of pain and fear as it crackled from the console.

::Sundance to base, Sundance to base. I am engaged in combat with Thundercracker. I repeat, Thundercracker is here on Earth! I am unable to safely disengage. Over::

Avalanche surged to her feet, her fuel pump rumbling in her chest as it whirred up to full operational capacity. The massive femme lunged across the control room to grab hold of her tower shield where it rested against the wall, slamming it against her back.

"Bridge to those coordinates, now. Then call the garrison to arms."

Damnit. She knew the infamous name, and she knew Sundance's altmode too. An aerial fight was something she just wasn't equipped to intervene in, but it was better than nothing.

::MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAY...:::

"The bridge!" Avalanche snarled, in a tone of voice that made the innocuous words a virulent curse. Heavy sections of white and black plate broke apart, rotating and twisting in a ballet of reconfiguration as she transformed, broad tyres slamming down against the smooth concrete of the silo floor as a battered road sign locked into place on her front grille. Crackling energy snapped across the nearby wall as Rain manipulated the controls, white and green swirling into existence, then ripping open to reveal an unnatural vortex of light.

And another voice spoke, unfamiliar.

:Any Autobot unit listening, female flier shot down at my grid coordinate. She fought well, till all are one:

"PATCH! GET AFTER ME RIGHT NOW!" Avalanche roared over the thunderous rumble of her engine as she kicked into gear. She wasn't a sports car; there were no squealing tyres, or strips of rubber left across the concrete. She lurched into motion, plunging into the otherworldly horizon of the bridge still accelerating, plumes of smoke trailing from her stacks as she came up to speed.

It was hard to tell how long the bridge lasted; seconds, or even mere instants. But it felt like forever. Then, without warning, bright sunlight burst over her, and her tyres hit dirt. Instantly she was surrounded by the rending crash of splintering wood as her front grille ploughed a wide furrow through a grove of young spruce trees, multiple axles bumping and jerking across the uneven ground. Her attention snapped upwards, hoping against hope to see an Autobot jet pass overhead but expecting to see the column of smoke that marked a crash site.

Instead, she beheld the white bloom of a fabric canopy, not far above the ground and descending fast, with the limp, smouldering chassis of a diminutive femme swinging beneath it.

Deeply treaded tyres gouged into the earth as Avalanche turned, bulldozing a path through the slender trees. Second by second, Sundance's tattered frame neared the ground, the heavy truck drawing a straight line through the landscape towards her. Nearly. Nearly.

There.

Avalanche transformed, surging to her full height as her momentum hurled her against the trees, boots kicking up great clods of dirt and roots as she fought to keep her legs under her. She came to a stop in a spray of shattered wood, earth and gravel, reaching up to the sky as the frayed parachute descended towards her. Her huge hands closed around Sundance's frame, cradling and slowing her as gently as she could, dropping to one knee as she soaked up the falling flier's momentum. The shroud settled across her shoulders, like a cloak, tangling in one wheel housing and draping across the shield braced against her back.

Cradling Sundance's mangled form against her as gently as possible, the big femme said quietly, "I've got you. Hold on. Just concentrate on staying awake." Her optics flickered assessingly over the wounded flier, her denta gritting behind closed lips.

Oh, it was bad.

Her comm system lit up, broadcasting on Patch's personal frequency with hard urgency.

::Sundance recovered. Legs destroyed beneath the knee joint. Heavy damage to upper faceplate and optics. Chassis-wide perforation from bullets and shrapnel. Low to moderate bleeding; looks like burns sealed the worst wounds. She's going into shock.::

Avalanche glanced up at the sky again, unable to pick out anything else moving up there.

::Decepticon presence unknown. Tell me what you need::

When it came to casualties, nobody outranked a medic in a hurry.

[Patch]

Only moments after Avalanche’s voice boomed through the now thin air of the control room, a thickset flash of white and red slipped sideways through the half open doors of the medibay. Once BARELY clear, the femme transformed far too soon, and, with a sharp young bark of her engine, squealed across and around into the bridge.

Patch’s tires did leave black marks as she fishtailed around- a scanner tucked safely on the floor of her backseat, medical kit sat away within her trunk. With an internal string of potent curses, the petitely robust young medic scrambled after the larger combatant, catching the very tail end of her silver trailer in view as she tore through the whirling blue bridge behind her.

In a disorienting few blinks, their world was suddenly consumed by newly flown, now sharply scented wood chips, and leaves and sap. Idly the medic winced to think what would have become of the surrounding organic fauna-beings had they been combatants. Thankfully, however, the smaller soldier’s speed was not nearly so diminished by the rough terrain; as she had the luxury of following in her commander’s tracks.

Once she reached the spot in which Avalanche transformed, Patch had little choice but to do so herself, her own chassis much lower to the ground and smaller. Unable to traverse the rough terrain, or break through the nearly helm-height trees in alt mode.

Usually sure peddes wobbled swiftly over newly fallen, cracking logs as she entered the brand new, very tight clearing. Like a nest of pungent, sticky organic trees, still bleeding from their own wounds, as glowing blue no doubt began to drip upon their carcasses.

She steadied herself upon the unsteady forest floor, and lifted the scanner to cast a beam across Sundance’s frame. Helm to pedde, it’s blue light flickered red as it draped across her injuries, and against their commander's arms. Patch broke from the small device’s screen, and drew close to bend over her patient. In a soft voice far too gentle for her grave expression, she spoke lowly.

“Let me see her-”

Her round face softened as darts of light blue flicked over the damage. Gingerly she touched the smaller femme’s face in the largest spot she could find that appeared un-wounded. The other palm fell to her orange chest and shook her ever so gently. A cautious mutter slipped from Patch’s own, as she focused.

“Sunny can you hear me? I need you to talk to me, what’s goin’ on?”

A soft flinch pricked the medic’s freckled features as she EVER so carefully drew upon the top of her patient's clearly damaged optic with her thumb- the other servo rose to steady the bottom as well.

"Try to hold still okay? I'ma looket'cher eye."

Come on Primus, just give me a little bit of light here...

[Sundance]

Sundance floated down, hanging from her ‘chute and fighting to keep shock at bay. Everything below her hips just felt wrong in the worst way, like every nerve was trying to scream but getting in the way of the others. It felt like any moment the cloud would burst and the expected wave would crush her. Even through the void of pain, she still heard Thundercracker’s departing eulogy. Though she was thoroughly beaten in the skies of combat, the winner proved to be courteous in victory. “Rematch!” She laughed and spluttered to the departing Jet with a voice too quiet and broken to be heard.

She expected a hard landing, literally strut jarring but it never came. Somehow she settled in a strong embrace that she couldn't fathom and didn't question. With secondary instruments registering a halt in her descent, the smart wires embedded in her parachute began the task of folding itself back into its programmed scarf form. The contraction was gentle and when the parachute pulled firm against the tangle caught in Avalanche’s form, it simply stopped rather than tear.

Voices? She heard familiar voices. Part of Sundance wanted to relinquish her spark to the dark depths, the unending pitstop, but such a feeling to give up was anathema to the feisty challenger. But simply more than that she feared death itself. The idea of oblivion pressed against her phobia of stillness and in the that moment of fear, her left hand began clenching and unclenching, rhythmically, deliberately.

“Patches? Ava? Fancy meeting you here.” Sundance wasn't sure where here was. “I don't feel so good.” Her voice was quite, strained, and stilted as delirium started to soak in. 


Suni's face was a mess of shrapnel and shrapnel wounds and burn marks. Fresh energon leaked and dripped slowly where it hadn't congealed. Her delicate sky blue optics were pulverised and the underlying mechanisms ruined. Two of the three swept finials on her right side were clipped off as the line of damage had swept across. The corundum laminar chain-glass of her cockpit canopy that centered her chest was punctured in several places and was otherwise a chaotic art piece of fractures. Her shoulders, chest and abdomen showed where the spray of bullets had entered.

The outer plating of her right forearm had a long deep gash that had terminated with an outward explosion of twisted metal from either the explosive round or catalytic detonation of energon. The gash bisected the half-Autobot sigil there.

But the worst was below her hips. Both knee actuators were burnt and exposed, surrounded by a twisted petal work of curled torn plates. They exposed the fractured and splintered shafts of her shin struts with the haphazard mangle of destroyed compression shock absorbers that nominally took the brunt of the flier landing.

She had in total taken eleven hits from Thundercracker’s canon. One punched clean through a wing, four leaving long glancing wounds on her body and tail, and the remaining six she had taken full force. Had she not reacted to kick the missile, she would have been annihilated.

[Avalanche]

It never got easier.

Avalanche had seen a lot of wounded allies in her time. As she'd ascended the ranks, more and more often those mecha had been wounded in the pursuit of her own orders; an extra burden that made the weight heavier. Sundance hadn't been under her command, and she hadn't known the femme for that long. One might think that that would make it easier.

It didn't.

Very slowly and gently, Avalanche uncurled her arms, offering Sundance's shattered form to Patch to be scanned. The big femme settled into immobility, as sturdy and stable as a bridge support, still down on one knee. The very best thing she could do was effectively be invisible, let Patch concentrate fully on her patient.

Patch had impressed Avalanche since their first meeting; attentive, professional, skilled. The easy temptation was to believe that Sundance could be fixed, that all this was just temporary. But... no. No. Damage of this magnitude couldn't be so easily wished away.

Sundance stirred, just a little, enough to speak. She didn't 'feel so good'.

"I know, Sunny. I know. I've got you. Just listen close to Patch and do what she says." Avalanche's voice was quiet and soft, a low murmur.

There were two images, overlaid in Avalanche's optics. A bright, energetic femme with brilliant blue optics, agile and enthusiastic. The kind that would pull together a bunch of strangers and semi-strangers for cards, help everyone get to know everyone else. And the shattered remains of that same femme, optics shot to pieces, lower legs gone, armour pulverised and ruined in a dozen places.

A crushing tightness settled around Avalanche's fuel pump. Her field contracted against her hull, locking away her reactions to avoid broadcasting her emotions to the damaged femme in her arms.

She stayed still, and didn't interfere. It was all she could do.

[Patch]

She was barely pain responsive...

Her right eye appeared far worse, the light inside entirely dark, the glass which would otherwise shield it from dust shattered to white webs, and crackling. Patch’s digits shifted a bit, the sides of her hands dancing carefully around cuts and pieces of shrapnel as she cracked and examined the other optic.

Didn’t look much better off… It may have been an illusion (perhaps hopeful imagination) though the young medic wished to believe there was at least some glimmer of a dot behind the crumbling mess of translucent lens.

Regardless- that wasn’t the most dangerous thing now. Whatever the outcome; she likely couldn’t see. Patch looked up and off a moment as she realized this, her digits leaving the other femme’s face. Her right palm cupped top of Suni’s helm in distracted act of care, as her own lips curled a bit. The sort of not-a-smile one gave when they didn’t agree with the reality fed to them.

She was blind.
And she may never have not been again.

Her voice was very low and mild. Deliberately steadied, and pushed through a wall of other thoughts. Not condescending, though… Sharply light, through the next few words.

“You’re gonna be okay Suni, can you tell me where you are?”

Small freckled digits quickly shifted to fold behind the flier’s helm and gingerly brush along the segments of her spine- making absolutely doubly sure there were no cracks or displacements the scanner had simply fuzzed over or missed.

The tops of her shoulders, the sides of her chest- unflinching of burning or the light blue glow which now began to dance across her digits, Patch began Actively searching for spots her patient would dislike pressure on, or segments that collapsed beneath the light weight of a palm with too much ease. She pushed on her stomach, the sides of her waist- pushed her hips together, then down to see nothing was fractured.

One she got to the legs, however…

Her lips rolled together a bit farther, catching the words before they fell out. Sundance’s damaged, opened knee joint all but collapsed beneath the medic’s gentle grasp- prompting her to lesson the already very minimal pressure even farther before following down; where it only grew worse…

Patch knew what this likely meant… But she wasn’t giving up yet.

Suni was small, she was light, and she’s been flying for a while; energon loss would be the first thing to kill her. Patch wanted the bleeding as under control as it could possibly be in a matter of seconds, and a wide open line in her stat.

As she lowered herself to her bag, she softly commanded “Tilt her back a little bit?”

Patch’s digits brushed Avalanche’s arm as she went down- that which held Sunny’s shoulders and helm, as if to indicate she wanted that part lower. Raising her legs above her pump would both slow the energon flow to her burns- and bring more fuel to her spark and her brain. Though that in turn may make her face bleed more, the medic deemed that evil worth it. Those wounds could be controlled with greater ease than the mangled mess of her legs.

As she dropped, Patch noticed Suni’s rhythmic tic. One swift, additional glance was cast up towards the two, before dipping back down into her pack to find a means to stop the fuel.

“Hold her hand, if you can reach it.”

[Sundance]

"...I always know." Sundance forced the words through tight dente. Her soft voice bubbled just slightly with the wet sucking sound of a punctured fuel line. For a moment, her already tense features took on a sharper expression as she focused on something at the edge of her jumbled mind. After a moment, she muttered a string of digits representing her GPS coordinates.

"North West Wyoming." She added on the end with a great deal of uncertainty. Even in perfect health Sundance struggled with official state boundaries of America. Sundance always knew her position on the globe but not always the labels for the ground below her.

Sundance's reactions to Patch’s gentle touch was minimal, the occasional tensing or venting, but otherwise she tried to stay still for the medic. Either getting herself upgraded, or repaired after a crash, the flier had spent a good deal of time in the care of medics. She wasn't made to be a racer so her augmentations had been voluntary. She was a good patient.

“How okay is okay?” She whispered to the pair. As long as there was any hope at all, Sundance would fight. There was a distant future rematch to be met after all. At the moment though she was fighting to remain lucid but calm. Moments of clarity between the pains brought with them the onset of panic she strove to keep at bay. Sundance knew her legs were beyond saving and the potential loss of mobility truly scared her.

[Avalanche]

"How okay is okay?"

The words were a whisper, and Avalanche was deeply, profoundly grateful all the way down to her spark that this time, she wasn't the one that had to answer them. The answer would either be a comforting lie or a harsh truth, and she already bore the weight of many such choices.

Once, such damage would have been repairable. Whole new frames could be constructed for talented frontline fighters, raising them from the wreckage of defeat to fight again. But easy access to such materials, to the necessary tools, were now a thing long past.

Patch's hand brushed her arm, with a murmured verbal instruction that made her intent crystal clear. Avalanche barely nodded, slowly lowering her left arm and raising her right to tilt Sundance back, helm lower than her legs. The half-folded parachute tugged free of her smokestack and resumed reeling itself in, folding neatly into its scarf configuration.

Shifting her grip carefully, Avalanche slid her right arm further under Sundance, gently taking hold of the femme's small fingers in her heavy, blunt-fingered hand. The flier gripped and squeezed, and Avalanche was suddenly seized by the fear that at any moment, she'd feel that grip slacken as Sundance's tormented frame gave up its spark.

"We need to get out of here," she murmured to Patch, a low-pitched thrum. "Calling for the bridge." Opening a comm channel on the same frequency Sundance had initially broadcast her distress call on, Avalanche broadcast a terse message.

:: Retarget the groundbridge to my current coordinates. Plant it at bearing 295, as close as you can get it without opening it on top of me::

Presuming Rain did her job right, the stated bearing ought to plant the bridge behind her, where it couldn't accidentally catch Sundance or Patch. There was no sign of the Decepticons yet, but that didn't mean some mecha wouldn't be by soon enough to finish the job.

[Feldspar]

A duo of pale grey jets streaked through the open sky.

Beneath them, the Wyoming landscape rushed by. The wind and bend of long rivers were surrounded by trees and spreading green that had taken advantage of the steady source of fresh water. Clusters of tall lodgepole and whitebark pine were rooted firmly to the slopes, dark green and lush. They thrived out here in these lands, perfectly adapted to their environment of poor soil and harsh wind.

Out beyond the massive forests, the sharp rugged mountain terrain scoured was bare in places by the weather.

Alpine meadows nestled between, where thriving populations of wildlife browsed and hunted.

There was a glance down from the pilot of the left craft, who had grown up in these parts. He'd hunted these hills and valleys all his life too, but never like this.

However, the pilot's musings were only brief before he was immediately scanning the air once again. Quickly, he glanced down at his instrument panel and eyed it, his breath reverberating in his mask. His hand was steady on the stick as he banked. Mist curled back over the aircraft's wings, curling back before it vanished once again into the air.

Once again, his radio offered up a sharp burst of words.

"Copy," he replied after they'd finished. "Understood. We'll be converging on those coordinates shortly."

[Patch]

Sweet Solus Prime, she was coherent.

Not only did she know she was “In the woods” the flier knew her position down to the COORDINATES! Despite the laxness of her tone, her mental status was still clearly fantastic considering the circumstances. The fact she KNEW to worry for herself was also brilliantly promising. Shock was shock- but Sundance was still here. Still present with them.

A light sigh of relief was breathed, at this.

“You’re hurt real good Suni.”

A low phrase. Practiced, less guarded than before. Patch was a scrap liar- she knew it as well as anyone, and now she knew her patient was well enough to comprehend the words, the medic wouldn’t dare be dishonest about something so intimate as one’s own status.

“But Ava’s right, we got you. Looks worse than it is.”

The punctures appeared messy, but they hadn’t pierced through to her organs. The worst of it was her wing, and legs, and those could both come off if it came down to the wire.

No. Suni would likely survive- it may be a fight, but Patch could cope with those odds.
What she feared was the long term…

She simply… Didn’t have the SKILL to fix this much broken, and integrate it again. Attach limbs again once they were repaired... There was… Not much left of her legs. She had books, but slag for resources… And no teacher...

Not the time to dwell- Sundance may have been holding on, but she was FAR from out of trouble… And this would get worse before it got better.

She rose once more from her kit with a thick hardy pad and some tape- drawing out the latter she stuck the large dressing solidly down over the gash through Suni’s arm. A rip of the adhesive, another practiced stroke and it was down with shocking speed. That alone would make a big difference, she figured.

She wasn’t sure how to begin to approach the legs without clamping the lines- and it seemed the capillaries had already sealed themselves off with the heat of the blast. With luck, both stumps would come off cleanly at the joint without leaking first, though it wouldn’t be much more trouble to pinch the arterials at the ends if they opened with whatever shifting would be needed form Avalanche’s arms to the slab.

"Calling for the bridge."
“Copy.”

Patch swung up her bag once more, and attached it to her back, prepared to walk at the commander's side as she went through the bridge- staying close to Suni, watching her face, looking for leaking wounds to hold.

“How’s your pain? Can you tell me what hurts worst right now?”

[Sundance]

What hurt most? Had Suni not been so injured, she might have flippantly replied My pride hurt when I fell from heaven. Heck, even in defeat her pride was really only marginally bruised. Against the mighty Thundercracker, it was almost an honor to lose to one of the greatest seekers ever to fly.

"My face." She finally replied with sincerity. The delicate nerves were still mostly intact around the lacerations. The emotional pain was still yet to fully hit regarding her legs. The damage was so extensive that the nerves were just as ruined as everything below the knees. Her consciousness kept sliding away from accepting her true fate in that regard. The self defense of denial. 

With sight gone, Sundance still maintained pinging her radar every few seconds. After Four Millions years of combat, she would have been dead a dozen times over if she had not kept situational awareness even in the most dire of circumstances. Even through the miasma of pain, the broken flier still registered the pair of jets approaching.

"Two bogeys inbound fast." She croaked out as she turned her head to face the skies in the direction of the two jets. 

Ready to move on, Sundance brought up her damaged right arm to better hold Avalanche. "Onward noble steed." A light pained giggle, mental gears free spinning. The embrace of her Commander gave her strength. Sun was down, but not out. 

"Ey Patches, no anesthesia 'kay?" Sundance asked the medic, her voice barely more than a whisper. She somewhere in the back of her mind knew that Patch would undoubtedly put her fully under, but even this she had to fight. The flier hated induced unconsciousness. Stupid phobia. 

[Avalanche]

Patch seemed reassured by what she was hearing; that was good enough news for Avalanche. A little of the fear that Suni was about to give up her spark right there in her arms ebbed. Squeezing Sundance's hand with the care of one handling something small and delicate, the big femme's gaze flicked back up to scour the sky.

If the bridge had been kept open - it probably had - then Rain would have had to shut it, enter new coordinates, then reopen... Avalanche shook her helm, giving up on the attempt to estimate how long it'd take. She simply didn't know how long those procedures took, nor knew Rain's familiarity with it sufficiently to factor that in. All she could do was watch, wait, and be ready to shield Sundance with her body if it came to it.

Avalanche stifled a small vent of frustration as she listened to Patch and Sundance talk. Scant surprise that the flier's face hurt the most. All that sensitive, delicate mesh, sprayed with shrapnel and gouged by bullets. All she could do - all any of them could do - was hope for the best and trust in the medics to do the best they could.

"Two bogeys inbound fast."

Scrap, scrap, scrap.

It was a classic ruse, one she'd seen deployed effectively too many times before. Cripple an enemy combatant. Make certain the enemy knew about it. Draw out a rescue party, then ambush them. All the more effective here, if the enemy were hoping to catch them with a bridge open and too many distractions to fight effectively.

Normally, Avalanche would have faced the brunt of any renewed assault, but she couldn't do that while holding Sundance. Patch was too small to carry the fallen femme, and too vital to the garrison to be allowed to hold off an attack herself. All that could be done was for all of them to retreat as fast as possible. She bit back the urge to radio Rain to hurry up; one more distraction wouldn't make the bridge come any faster.

And then, finally, the boom and rumble of reality twisting apart behind her.

"Now! Patch, in front of me. Go."

Avalanche turned and kicked off towards the swirl of green and argent light, trusting that Patch's smaller, lighter frame would get there first. All she could do now was trust in the heavy slab of her shield that protected her back, and run.

[Patch]

“Oh-ho-ho-kay, we’ll see about that bridge when we come to it.”

Whether she meant general anesthesia, or any pain relief at all Patch had no clue, though the latter -and still likely the first- was almost certainly not up for discussion. Amputations were noisy, they were stressful, they were messy. Even at the best of times, the sparks they could kick up were enough to make near anyone queasy. Patch had already gotten a big enough sample size for how people responded to that trauma conscious for a lifetime. She didn’t want to put Sunny through that.

“Right now I want you to focus on keeping as still as you can, okay? You’re doin’ great.”

Between her patient, her bag, and what hearing damage befell her back home, Patch had not noticed the entities. Not until Sundance pointed them out. At which point she whipped around-

“-Cons!”

She snarled in disgust, looking back and up suddenly as she curled a fist in anger. Weather it really was the Cons, or some human surveillance entity was unknown- and so, of course, the young soldier jumped to that conclusion which she knew. That which it had Always been constant for her.

But in that case… Where was the third?!
There was always a third...

No time to find out, as it was then the groundbridge ripped into existence. At Avalanche’s command -and with the new information- Patch BOOKED it. After all, if she was to be in front, the last thing she wished to do was get in Ava’s way.

Patch may have been smaller and lighter, though she was hardly small nor light. Though she likely could have taken Sunny from Ava in an emergency- at the very least dragged her by the shoulders, it would absolutely make her wounds MUCH worse to do such a thing. Avalanche had become Suni's stability, become the ground in catching her. It would more than likely jostle what fragile cauterization was keeping her alive within the remnants of her legs.

Churning padunks rang out across the wooded path, as Patch pulled off and around towards the swirling, churning vortex. Listening behind her for the heavier strides of her leader- and by extension her charge. With a flash, her white and red frame was gone as she disappeared into the bridge.