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Entry tags:
Flightless!fic, part 3
Title: ((Still nothing))
'Verse: G1 Transformers
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: TF cussing
Smokescreen stared at the group of seekers clustered around Bluestreak. This was not good, there weren’t many seekers who weren’t Decepticon, and much of the destruction of Praxus (and, for that matter, much of Cybertron) could be laid on the fliers’ wings. Beside him, Prowl was checking his rifle and frowning.
The diversionary mech knew that his trinemate was formulating a plan, and left the black and white to his plotting. When Prowl needed time to strategise, Smokescreen was usually responsible for obtaining the precious nanoclicks and watching his back (not that it needed watching, but he did so anyway). It was comforting to fall into old habits, when his spark raged and sobbed at the devastation of their city all about them, the familiar patterns gave him something to do, something that wasn’t despair or pain to focus on.
But right now, the seekers were not acting hostile (one seemed to have ripped off his faction symbol, and the other one looked like he’d taken a blade to his, curious). It looked like they were helping Bluestreak, and here he bit back a suspicious growl as Prowl flashed across yet another calming pulse, this one tinged with irritation, at him, an unspoken request for him to keep a hold on his emotions. With his customary tactics not needed in this situation, he watched instead, keeping his optics trained on the scene before him and his sensors on their surroundings.
Now more than ever he wished he could speak to the other two through the trine link. Getting info in the situation before they went in would have been invaluable. As it was, all they’d known getting in to Praxus was Blue’s emotional state, which swung from uneasy to terrified, prompting them to respond with as much reassurance as could be shared over the bond, after which their third had calmed somewhat.
A brief spike of elation and relief had puzzled them, and the fear and disorientation that followed had made them pick up speed towards the grey mech’s location, leaving the rest of the Autobots in their dust and paying less heed to the dangers than perhaps they really ought to have.
No more than a few sparkbeats had passed when another pulse across the bond drew his attention, and he flicked a sensor panel at Prowl in query. A succession of rapid flutters gave him the gist of the plan, and the black and white gestured briefly, questioning expression on his faceplates. Smokescreen nodded, and his trinemate slipped away while he readied his attack.
As soon as he sensed that Prowl was in position, he struck.
= = =
The skirmish (and Prowl was reluctant to even call it that, their opponents had been completely unprepared, making it a simple task to ‘nudge’ them away from Bluestreak under the cover of his trinemate’s magnetic smoke) was quickly over, and as the obscuring effects of the haze faded, he eyed the three seekers, frozen in place by the diversionary mech’s circuit-scramblers.
The expressions of two of the jets told him that they’d been recognised, but for some reason, the two were keeping it from their third, who just looked confused. At the purple jet’s statement, the dark faced one snapped back, and the two squabbled away while the blue one (the one he determined was probably their leader) looked like he wanted to be any where else but there.
Bluestreak’s call had him by the gunner’s side in a flash, physically and mentally reassuring him, trusting Smokescreen to hold his own against three paralysed seekers (and if he couldn’t, Bluestreak was holding onto Prowl’s rifle, and they would laugh at their other trinemate in private later). The gunner’s wounds were troubling, and he couldn’t reach them all. He managed to patch most of them, but they still needed to get out of here, fast.
“Wait… Doesn’t he outrank you?”
He hid his smile at the question from the jet with the distinctive voice, and again at the argument the blue flier presented to Smokescreen (Primus knew, his trinemate hated it when Prowl used logic on him, mostly because he rarely won those arguments). That these seekers were from three different triads (he’d been surprised by that, the three had struck him as a whole trine, newly joined perhaps, and still getting used to the group dynamic, but complete nonetheless) was a matter of concern, their wingmates would likely be coming for them.
He spoke now, deliberately using seeker tones and inflections, reinforcing the fact that yes, they were kin. With Bluestreak in his current state, anything that spared them a fight was welcome. If these seekers followed the code, it was a possibility that their wingmates did too.
Smokescreen was getting worked up again, and Prowl had his hands full just keeping Bluestreak aware and collected (something had struck the grey mech’s CPU, all the more reason to leave quickly), and the other tactician calm. The black and white sighed and moved to take control of the situation, sending Smokescreen to work off his tension by fussing over Bluestreak.
A comm. warned him that seekers were incoming, and he tried to get the three still with them to leave so that they wouldn’t have to deal with nine of the fliers. Wing kin they might be, but the combined weight of two Autobot tacticians, one of them the Autobot SIC, presented too tempting a bounty, and Prowl had been fighting this war too long for him to depend on the code alone to protect them.
But it was not to be, and as he’d predicted, the code held little sway over the tangible presence of a hefty reward for their capture. Drawing back to flank Bluestreak with Smokescreen, he prepared for an impossible fight.
“Correction. It’s six on six now.”
Well, that was unexpected.
= = =
Later, when he had the time and the wits to consider the matter, Thundercracker would wonder at the way the two Autobots had fought. Their movements were swift and perfectly in step, and neither mech could be moved from Bluestreak’s side. And even Bluestreak dealt out frighteningly accurate damage (especially for an immobilised seeker) with the plasma rifle one of his trinemates had shoved into his hands.
Frag. They were intimidating enough on their own, but as a team… he knew long fledged trines that couldn’t have coordinated flight patterns as well, much less group combat, though he supposed Prowl being the head of Autobot tactics (and Smokescreen being ranked not that far below him in the plotting stakes) certainly helped.
For now though, he was occupied with staying alive. Starscream and Skywarp were no slouches, but their opponents were their own trinemates. Mechs who knew how they fought, thought, and exactly how to bring them down. The only thing keeping the three from getting knocked out of the fight early was that they had the same advantage.
He took to the air now, followed by Dirge, who was sounding his trademark terror inducing engine howl. Thundercracker gritted his denta, less affected by the noise due to long association with the other flier, but he could see Skywarp’s wings tremble, and Starscream was faltering, letting Acidstorm get a hit in.
Snarling, he let loose a sonic boom right into his trinemate’s audios, shorting them out. As Dirge peeled away, shrieking, a shot from the mechs on the ground took out one of the dark blue jet’s engines, sending him spiralling uncontrollably down with a fearful wail. Watching his wingmate crash into the ground, Thundercracker dipped his wings in thanks to the Autobots, and dove back into the battle.
'Verse: G1 Transformers
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: TF cussing
Smokescreen stared at the group of seekers clustered around Bluestreak. This was not good, there weren’t many seekers who weren’t Decepticon, and much of the destruction of Praxus (and, for that matter, much of Cybertron) could be laid on the fliers’ wings. Beside him, Prowl was checking his rifle and frowning.
The diversionary mech knew that his trinemate was formulating a plan, and left the black and white to his plotting. When Prowl needed time to strategise, Smokescreen was usually responsible for obtaining the precious nanoclicks and watching his back (not that it needed watching, but he did so anyway). It was comforting to fall into old habits, when his spark raged and sobbed at the devastation of their city all about them, the familiar patterns gave him something to do, something that wasn’t despair or pain to focus on.
But right now, the seekers were not acting hostile (one seemed to have ripped off his faction symbol, and the other one looked like he’d taken a blade to his, curious). It looked like they were helping Bluestreak, and here he bit back a suspicious growl as Prowl flashed across yet another calming pulse, this one tinged with irritation, at him, an unspoken request for him to keep a hold on his emotions. With his customary tactics not needed in this situation, he watched instead, keeping his optics trained on the scene before him and his sensors on their surroundings.
Now more than ever he wished he could speak to the other two through the trine link. Getting info in the situation before they went in would have been invaluable. As it was, all they’d known getting in to Praxus was Blue’s emotional state, which swung from uneasy to terrified, prompting them to respond with as much reassurance as could be shared over the bond, after which their third had calmed somewhat.
A brief spike of elation and relief had puzzled them, and the fear and disorientation that followed had made them pick up speed towards the grey mech’s location, leaving the rest of the Autobots in their dust and paying less heed to the dangers than perhaps they really ought to have.
No more than a few sparkbeats had passed when another pulse across the bond drew his attention, and he flicked a sensor panel at Prowl in query. A succession of rapid flutters gave him the gist of the plan, and the black and white gestured briefly, questioning expression on his faceplates. Smokescreen nodded, and his trinemate slipped away while he readied his attack.
As soon as he sensed that Prowl was in position, he struck.
= = =
The skirmish (and Prowl was reluctant to even call it that, their opponents had been completely unprepared, making it a simple task to ‘nudge’ them away from Bluestreak under the cover of his trinemate’s magnetic smoke) was quickly over, and as the obscuring effects of the haze faded, he eyed the three seekers, frozen in place by the diversionary mech’s circuit-scramblers.
The expressions of two of the jets told him that they’d been recognised, but for some reason, the two were keeping it from their third, who just looked confused. At the purple jet’s statement, the dark faced one snapped back, and the two squabbled away while the blue one (the one he determined was probably their leader) looked like he wanted to be any where else but there.
Bluestreak’s call had him by the gunner’s side in a flash, physically and mentally reassuring him, trusting Smokescreen to hold his own against three paralysed seekers (and if he couldn’t, Bluestreak was holding onto Prowl’s rifle, and they would laugh at their other trinemate in private later). The gunner’s wounds were troubling, and he couldn’t reach them all. He managed to patch most of them, but they still needed to get out of here, fast.
“Wait… Doesn’t he outrank you?”
He hid his smile at the question from the jet with the distinctive voice, and again at the argument the blue flier presented to Smokescreen (Primus knew, his trinemate hated it when Prowl used logic on him, mostly because he rarely won those arguments). That these seekers were from three different triads (he’d been surprised by that, the three had struck him as a whole trine, newly joined perhaps, and still getting used to the group dynamic, but complete nonetheless) was a matter of concern, their wingmates would likely be coming for them.
He spoke now, deliberately using seeker tones and inflections, reinforcing the fact that yes, they were kin. With Bluestreak in his current state, anything that spared them a fight was welcome. If these seekers followed the code, it was a possibility that their wingmates did too.
Smokescreen was getting worked up again, and Prowl had his hands full just keeping Bluestreak aware and collected (something had struck the grey mech’s CPU, all the more reason to leave quickly), and the other tactician calm. The black and white sighed and moved to take control of the situation, sending Smokescreen to work off his tension by fussing over Bluestreak.
A comm. warned him that seekers were incoming, and he tried to get the three still with them to leave so that they wouldn’t have to deal with nine of the fliers. Wing kin they might be, but the combined weight of two Autobot tacticians, one of them the Autobot SIC, presented too tempting a bounty, and Prowl had been fighting this war too long for him to depend on the code alone to protect them.
But it was not to be, and as he’d predicted, the code held little sway over the tangible presence of a hefty reward for their capture. Drawing back to flank Bluestreak with Smokescreen, he prepared for an impossible fight.
“Correction. It’s six on six now.”
Well, that was unexpected.
= = =
Later, when he had the time and the wits to consider the matter, Thundercracker would wonder at the way the two Autobots had fought. Their movements were swift and perfectly in step, and neither mech could be moved from Bluestreak’s side. And even Bluestreak dealt out frighteningly accurate damage (especially for an immobilised seeker) with the plasma rifle one of his trinemates had shoved into his hands.
Frag. They were intimidating enough on their own, but as a team… he knew long fledged trines that couldn’t have coordinated flight patterns as well, much less group combat, though he supposed Prowl being the head of Autobot tactics (and Smokescreen being ranked not that far below him in the plotting stakes) certainly helped.
For now though, he was occupied with staying alive. Starscream and Skywarp were no slouches, but their opponents were their own trinemates. Mechs who knew how they fought, thought, and exactly how to bring them down. The only thing keeping the three from getting knocked out of the fight early was that they had the same advantage.
He took to the air now, followed by Dirge, who was sounding his trademark terror inducing engine howl. Thundercracker gritted his denta, less affected by the noise due to long association with the other flier, but he could see Skywarp’s wings tremble, and Starscream was faltering, letting Acidstorm get a hit in.
Snarling, he let loose a sonic boom right into his trinemate’s audios, shorting them out. As Dirge peeled away, shrieking, a shot from the mechs on the ground took out one of the dark blue jet’s engines, sending him spiralling uncontrollably down with a fearful wail. Watching his wingmate crash into the ground, Thundercracker dipped his wings in thanks to the Autobots, and dove back into the battle.