Ep 1 - Running Battle (closed)

[Deleted]

Follow Gasket through the bridge and disperse as quickly as possible to make room for the frontliners. Simple, straightforward instructions, and surprisingly easy to follow with the vehicons scrambling in wild confusion at the mere sight of the giant mech. Jazz's team scattered, vanishing through vents and down corridors before any of the Decepticons gathered their wits enough to return fire.

Shadow split off from the others, folding down into her alt and accelerating down an empty - for the moment - corridor. Pure luck, giving her a few kliks edge on her projected timeline, but she knew better than to expect that luck to last. Alarms blared, nearly drowned out by the sounds of weapons fire echoing from the heavy hitters, and by rights every Decepticon on the ship should be converging on their entry point or moving to protect the most vital locations. Which meant getting out of the corridor while it remained empty.

The ship's schematics flicked up on her HUD, narrowed in to her location, and lit with ventilation shafts and maintenance tunnels. The entrance to one was literally just around the next corner; a quick check confirmed that it was the one which would give her a clear run almost to the labs she'd chosen as her target.

She slewed around the corner, fishtailing slightly on the deck plating, and that was when her luck ran out.

No faulting the reflexes of the mech she (almost literally) ran into when she rounded the corner; he opened fire before she'd even finished transforming. Shadow let her momentum carry her past him in a tumbling roll and came up shooting herself. He was easy to see, at least, paint almost glowing a lurid blue in the Nemesis' dark lighting, and they were fairly well matched for size. They were also, unfortunately, matched for speed, and even if she could take him, she didn't have time for a delay when her timeline was already tighter than most of the others'.

Well, if there was one thing she'd learned from Bumblebee, it was the value of cheating.

She fired her energy blasters at his face, intending to blind and distract rather than damage. No point in going for the maintenance tunnel now; he'd only follow her, and that would leave her trapped in a location where neither one of them could fight properly. Better to put some distance between them and use one of the alternate access points which her processor was flagging for her...and hope that she still had time to complete her part of the mission.


((OOC for the timeline: Shadow/Downforce thread))

[Deleted]

There were some days it simply wasn't worth it to pry yourself out of the berth, and this was rapidly turning into one of them.

The alarms. When was the last time the ship wide alarms had gone off? One did NOT, as the human internet was fond of reminding the foolish, simply walk into the stronghold of your enemy. The last time the Nemesis itself had come under direct attack - not "combat in the general area", or "combat taking place on the top deck plating outside" but actual attack aimed directly at the ship - well, it hadn't been in the atmosphere or gravity well of a planet, and it had been another warship doing the attacking.

This? This was something else. This was Autobots in the skragging hallways.

One of whom had frag near run Downforce over as he was racing to his post. Slag this.

It was a two way almost comical scramble to avoid actually tangling their plating up, and then both of them had weapons out and there was brief bursts of blaster fire scorching up the halls. The Autobot - a femme, jet black, roughly the same size as Downforce - took a cheap shot at his optics, slag sucking rusted scrap, and then turned tail and ran.

Frag that. In fact, the Cybertronian glyphs weren't sharp enough to express just how completely slagged this all was. Downforce, still cycling the burst glare of blaster fire from his optics, settled on an English equivalent as infinitely more satisfying to snarl out of his vents, the organic verbalizations staccato and repulsive. "Fuck this six ways from sunday."

Throwing himself forward, deck plating under his wheels, he peeled out after the femme.

[Deleted]

Scrap. Just her luck not to run into a vehicon or a flight frame, somebot who'd have a lot more trouble chasing her down. The slagging little blue rustbucket was fast, too, sticking to her aft like he'd been welded there, effectively stopping her from slipping into any of the crawlspaces she'd been aiming for. Probably without even realizing he was doing it.

Shadow gunned her engine, in spite of everything reveling in the grip of Cybertronian alloy beneath her wheels. That same alloy, of course, was making it utterly impossible for her sensors to pick up anything beyond the immediate area, which meant she was running blind in a way she never had to on earth, oblivious to what she might be running toward or what the Con might be calling for backup.

It was awesome.

She skidded around a corner with just enough of a lead to let the skid spin her completely around, transforming halfway through and letting momentum drag her the rest of the way around and backwards, old instincts spraying energy blasts scattershot across her pursuer's hood and windshield. Another transformation before she'd even caught her footing; she hit the deck plating heavily on three wheels and lurched forward, barely avoiding a head on collision with the Con. As it was, they impacted in a hard, metal-squealing scrape along the length of their alts; he massed more than he looked like he should, and Shadow rebounded off him, clipping the wall before she corrected and shot down the corridor in the opposite direction.

[Deleted]

Holy fragging Primus on a motherf#@$ing pogo-stick, the slag sucking @#*% had blown out his entire WINDSHIELD!

New languages always meant expansion packs for swearing modules, and if there was one thing the humans did well, it was swear. Some of them had raised it to a virtual art form. The lower ranks of the Nemesis had assimilated a lot of it, along with Pokemon, reality television, and soap operas. If ever there was a time for pulling out questionable organic vocabulary that earned censorship on most public networks, it was when Downforce's entire windshield exploded in a - PAINFUL - burst of shattered glass and the Pit spawned 'Bot femme blew a few more holes straight through his hood that narrowly missed his primary engine block. Insult to injury, the crazy femme jumped back into her alt and nearly front-ended him, scraped all down his side, and rebounded off the Primus fragging wall.

She was Pit slagging GLITCHED IN THE HEAD.

Well, two could play that game, but frag it all if Downforce was coming at her from the back and sticking to her aft if she was going to pull THAT kind of Immelmann turn slag off the damn wall. No thank you and f#@k that.

The corridors weren't wide enough to race proper, nothing to do but run around like turbomice on a track, no room to cut off or pass or any way to get ahead. It left Downforce with a great view of her wide aft and sucking exhaust off her trail, but that was beyond pointless and downright useless. Slag that.

There was a maintenance conduit coming up; Downforce let the femme get ahead of him, deployed blasters to chivvy at her back wheels, and herded the black 'Bot right past it. She was two car lengths ahead; he fishtailed around and slung himself sideways in a perfect drift straight into the crawlspace, taking out the hatch and part of the wall in a reckless crash, and was already flipping back into root mode, blasters out, to take out the next hatch under his feet.

It dropped him straight down to the next lower deck; Downforce caught the edge as he dropped, swung himself around, and hit the deckplating back on his wheels, peeling out in a roar; behind him the hatch he had come from exploded in an optic blinding burst. He'd have to apologize to the cleanup crews for the mess later; right now, the grenade he'd dropped should keep the 'Bot from doubling back and following him, and there was another hatch just ahead that he could reverse the trick on, swing back into the upper decking, and come at her where she wasn't expecting it.

And THAT, he thought, grin fierce and anticipatory as he exploded up onto his pedes to reach for the overhead hatch, was how you played THIS game.

[Deleted]

The stubborn little fragger opened fire just in time to force Shadow past one of the maintenance ducts she had flagged for an alternate route, and then the whole skragging thing blew, heat and shrapnel stinging across plates which had already taken more blaster fire than was comfortable. Shadow growled and slowed, processor pulling next-best alternates, plotting multiple routes at once and fine, with the Con vanished off her tail she wasn't paying the kind of attention she should have.

Then the slag-sucking rusted out scrapyard reject popped out of a vent ahead of her, just long enough to take out one headlight and most of her left front fender, before vanishing like the star of of an oversized game of whack-a-mole.

Smelt him; the blaster scorch marks she might have gotten away with, but she was never going to be able to sneak this kind of damage past Ratchet. Shadow skidded to a halt, alternate routes to her target forgotten as she focused on the scraplet-warren of maintenance tunnels and environmental ducts in this area. He could pop out of any one of them, and she wasn't going to go poking her head into vents looking for him...and besides, his little stunt meant the direction they'd just come from was clear (clear of him, anyway) minus some minor blast damage.

Shadow swung around, back the way she had come, and - because she didn't actually doubt the Con's ability to put two and two together - was utterly unsurprised when he tried his little pop-out-of-a-vent trick again, this time popping from the mid-wall to her right. She transformed before he had done more than chip her grill, hooking one arm around him and utterly ignoring the sensible processor threads which suggested either shooting or evading as better ideas than using momentum to drag him out into the open and slam him hard into the deck plating with a knee in his abdominals.

[Deleted]

Primus scragging SCRAP! Downforce hadn't meant to let the 'Bot femme get close, and he sure as Pit hadn't meant to let her get her claws (not that Autobots had any sort of proper claws as a general rule, but the principle remained) on him.

Well, he thought a bit dizzily as the world tipped end over end and collided with strut vibrating force against his backplates, only to be followed with the tank crunching impact of the damned femme's knee into his abdominal plates - and if her alt form had looked wide from the back it was nothing compared to the crushing weight of her on top of him and oh, yeah, 'Bot femmes didn't have pointy fingers, but slag, their knee plates were another matter - well, he supposed it could have been worse. She could have put her Primus slagging knee through the shattered remnants of his windshield, and that would have actually HURT, not just slammed all of his vents out of sequence.

And if she wanted to play like THAT... alright, then.

Downforce was no kind of close up scrapper or hand to hand combatant even on his best day, but there was fighting as most soldiers knew it and then there was "Primus in the Pit what the slag get the frag OFF ME" which Downforce was more passably proficient at then he was at combat. One elbow came up, slamming into her chin, clawed fingers scrabbling for her optics. While she fended that off he managed to twist and sink his dente hard into the seam at the wrist of the hand that was holding him down.

[Deleted]

For a fraction of a nano-klik, Shadow couldn't believe the little 'Con scrapheap was actually biting her - biting, the stuff of youngling squabbles, fights she'd gotten into with Viper when they were both barely more than sparklings - dente slicing through minor lines in a burst of irritating error messages. Painful but relatively harmless, unlike the hand which had already gouged scratches across her face plate and was going for her optics again.

She swatted that hand aside, taking the scratches across her forearm this time, grabbed, and twisted to yank his arm out and down. She trapped his arm under the knee not already planted in the center of his mass; not the most secure hold, but she only needed it to last a klik.

She slammed her fist into his face, already braced for renewed pain and error messages as the impact wrenched his head to the side, tearing more lines and crushing microcomponents. He got his arm free by the second punch, but with the third he finally loosened his jaw enough for her to pull free; her hand throbbed, and something in her wrist was jammed just enough to make trying to move it irritating, but the actual damage was...scrap, was going to make it impossible to bring up that gun without a few kliks to unjam it.

Shadow threw herself sideways to avoid another blow to her face, running a pain-suppressing script while she rolled off him and back to her feet.

[Deleted]

The head jabs had been unnecessary, honest to Primus' sparkplates, if she'd just have gotten her aft off of him he would've let go! 'BOTS, Primus frag on a pogo-stick. Couldn't take a joke, couldn't drive for scrap, and couldn't tell the difference between "I'm gonna kill you" and "get the frag OFF ME".

Close was bad. Close but not actually on top of each other was actually worse, because that was when guns and blades and scrap knew what all came into play. Downforce was rapidly losing his sense of humor. He liked his shooting from a distance, not when it was likely to pull a blaster and shoot back right in his faceplates.

The scout flung himself back down onto his wheels - and oh, scrap, slag, that hurt, those holes she'd shot in him weren't getting any smaller or any less hole like, frag it all to the Pit - and floored it.

Right at the femme's knees.

She hit his front bumper like the completely solid metal frame she was and Downforce ignored the pain of his own front end crumpling inward and kept going. She bounced off his hood, her elbow finished shattering what was left of his windshield, and then it was up and over his roof and Downforce was gone before she hit the floor behind him, peeling away in a shriek of tires on metal as he bolted down the corridor.

He could swing back, he thought, his processor already rapidly calculating - X nanokliks for her to get her pedes back under her, compared to Y nanokliks for him to hit another service shaft, double back, he could come at her from...

Except the pain, when he tried to flip back to his own pedes, ranked up there in the astonishing level, not least because he wasn't really expecting it. Downforce skidded to a fishtailed stop in the side corridor he had turned into and took rapid stock of his red-lit HUD.

Windshield missing, blaster holes punched thankfully around his engine block, and the whole block itself shoved two degrees upwards into the region of his spark chamber where the front mass of his bumper and hood was crumpled in around the shape of the damned femme's shins. SCRAP. Holes had been painful. Having his front plating buckled up and warped where the plates needed to move in order for him to stand up... scrap, frag, f%ck.

Groaning, Downforce rocked down on his wheels. Well. On the good side, this was totally NOT his fault. On the downside, it was one of the more embarrassing battle wounds he'd ever dragged himself to medbay with. Correction, drove. DROVE himself to medbay with.

Scrap.


<< exit DF to medbay! Shadow can wind her end up with heading to the labs if you want. ^_^ >>

[Deleted]

Frag. Shadow didn't think she could have anticipated such an utterly aft-headed move (though fine, maybe after the biting she should have figured out this Con didn't have a full processor array). From a heavier build, maybe ramming her would have made sense, but from a frame built for speed - and not one with any front-focused quirks to his alt's armoring, she discovered as she felt him hit the solid layers of hydraulics, strut, and plating in her legs and fold around them - the move was utterly, completely, processor-lockingly glitched.

The impact torqued one knee joint, and she left fresh streaks of paint (and a few more fresh dents, she hoped, since she was certainly picking them up) across his hood and roof as he shot past beneath her. Negligible damage, pain and error codes both easily shunted aside and buried beneath the disbelieving amusement that he'd pulled a stunt that did more damage to him than to her.

Scrap, if she'd had mass or magclamps to hold herself in place, the half-clocked suicidal glitchwit would likely have taken himself out for her. She hoped to Primus Jazz had gotten some really good footage.

Still, he'd slowed her down, she was badly behind schedule, and now she really did need a few kliks of quiet to get herself back in working order. Ignoring the grating sound coming from her damaged knee, Shadow pushed herself to her pedes, accessed her map of the ship, and half a klik later was back in the safety of the ductwork, prying bits of her own metal from delicate transformation systems, and planning the fastest way to get to the labs from this little detour.

<<fin>>