This is not the Kobayashi Maru
Feb. 17th, 2012 07:11 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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shadow_vectorTFA
Rodimus, Red Alert, Hot Shot, Brawn, Ironhide, Strika
no warnings (unless Rodimus is a warning?)
for
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wicked3659. Hope it brings you a smile.The lights strobed an urgent red, alarms wooping. Right. As if Rodimus needed those to know that they were hip-deep in trouble, as if he couldn’t feel the deckplates of the ship bucking beneath his feet, the way the altimeter lurched and whirled.
They were in trouble, all right: and that’s just how Rodimus Minor liked it.
“Right.” He stood up, activating his magna clamps—it wouldn’t do to get thrown off balance in the middle of a heroic pose—hands on those very hips. “We’ve got ‘em on the run, now. Don’t let up.”
“On the run? Are you glitching?” Red Alert, sitting primly and sensibly in a safety harness, in that perfect mix of sarcasm and seriousness. It wouldn’t surprise her if he was. She had her doubts.
Rodimus laughed, throwing his head back. Oh, the cyberdrenaline: he’d missed it! “They’ll be glitching when we run that energon torpedo up their exhaust.”
“How we gonna do that?” Ironhide bent over the weapons control, frowning. He hardened his hand, the red finish going shiny and silver, before whacking the console. “Weapons offline.”
“Temporary setback!” Rodimus said. “We can still take ‘em!”
“How?” Hot Shot, not doubting, unlike Red Alert. Nope. He believed! He wanted to see the master at work. Good kid. Lots of potential, if he didn't let Red Alert wet blanket all over him.
“Ingenuity!” Rodimus said. Which meant…gimme a klik. “SO.” He nodded to each of them in turn, taking in their faces, the mixed expressions: worried, afraid, confident, brave. “Let’s recap.” He shifted his feet, magna clamps clanking as he stepped. “We’ve got an operational ship—“
“Semi,” Brawn said. “Steering’s spotty.”
“SEMI-operational ship,” Rodimus corrected. “Right. So, that, and how many energon torpedos?”
“Two. But the left tube is jammed.” Ironhide whacked the console again, hopefully.
“One torpedo, then. Could be worse.”
“How?” Red Alert tilted her head.
“How? We could have none.” Red Alert was a great medic, but sometimes she lacked common sense. “Environment!” he barked, crispy.
Hot Shot bounced to his screen. “Minor hull breaches, but nothing venting to vacuum. Yet.” He sounded a bit eager with that ‘yet’. Good kid: that was the right attitude. “Gravity holding.”
“Great.” Rodimus flashed him that blinding smile that had earned him the nickname Hot Rod. Well, the first half of the nickname. The second half was self explanatory. He hoped. “Enemy.”
“A lot of them,” Red Alert said. “You want headings or should I just say ‘behind us’?”
“Good enough,” Rodimus said. Headings. Numbers. Bah. A mech could get bogged down in that kind of precision and end up sitting out his career behind a desk. No thanks. “Anything else we need to know?”
The ship jolted, sharply, taking a hit to the underside. Rodimus lurched to one side, before surfing back up to standing. Brawn fell out of his seat in a clatter of limbs. Ironhide clutched at the console, hard enough to dent.
Red Alert rolled her optics, the harness straining against her. “Gravitational anomaly to our starboard. “
“Anomaly.”
“Seems to be randomly bursting greater or lesser gravity waves,” she said. “In other words, bad news.”
“No such thing as bad news in a combat scenario!”
Another hit rocked the ship, the red alarms flashing faster, and the buzzing blare of the hull-breach alarm joined the chorus of other alarms.
“Hull breach,” Red Alert said, pointedly.
“…except maybe that.” Shake it off, Rodimus, he told himself. You can handle this. Primus never gives a mech more than he can handle. You can handle this. Somehow.
“Incoming transmission,” Hot Shot said. “Decepticon.”
“Play.” Rodimus braced himself, jutting out his chin, as the image of General Strika appeared on the screen. This was a moment that called for glory. No backing down in the face of adversity. “General.”
“Rodimus Minor,” the mouth curled into a grin, accenting the rank. “You are vanting terms of surrender, yes?”
“No.” He returned the grin with a cocky one of his own. “Not surrendering.”
“Surely, you must see zhat you have no options.”
“Plenty of options.”
A laugh, deep and hearty, the Decepticon general’s chassis shaking. “Oh, ho ho! Only options on how you are vanting to die, zhen.”
“Not dying today.” A shrug. “You might be, though.”
Red Alert reached over, pulling out of the harness, slapping the mute button, before hissing, “Seriously. Are you glitching? Did you hit your head or something when I wasn’t looking?”
Rodimus grinned. “You keep an optic on me? I knew you cared!”
“I care about not having a team leader who is off his diode!” She pulled herself up, outraged.
“I’m not. We’ll get through this. Have a little faith!”
“Faith? Do you even have a clue what you’re doing?”
“Not…yet.” He shrugged. “It’ll come to me. It always does.” He had faith in himself having faith. In...himself. Or something.
“This is a no-win situation, Rodimus,” Red Alert said. “We’re bleeding atmosphere. We have a grav anomaly that wants to pummel us. And several enemy ships. And we have…a torpedo.”
Rodimus grinned. “And me. You’re forgetting about me. “ He reached around her trying to reach the mute button. “I don’t believe in no-win scenarios.”
She clamped her hand over his wrist.““So, seriously. You think you can falcon punch astrophysics into doing your bidding?”
Rodimus’s optics brightened. That was it! “Red. You’re a genius.” He grabbed her shoulders, planting a hard kiss on her mouth. “Ironhide. Bring that torpedo tube around and lock onto the gravitational anomaly.” He ducked the swing of Red Alert’s hand, aiming straight for his head, the blow sailing harmlessly over his helm. Oh yeah. Rod was hitting his stride again.
“On it,” Ironhide said.
Rodimus grinned, and pushed past her, hitting the mute. “Thanks for the invite, General, but we’ll have to take a raincheck.”
The Decepticon general bristled. “You vill live to regret zhis.”
“Regret?” he laughed. “I don’t do regret.” He slapped the comm off, turning to Ironhide. “Ready?”
“I’m not!” Brawn said. “Do we even know what that’ll do?”
Ironhide nodded. “Worse comes to worst, we take ‘em all out with us.”
“Comforting,” Red Alert said.
“It’s not going to come to that!” Hot Shot huffed. “Rodimus knows what he’s doing.”
Red Alert dropped back into her seat, snatching for the harness. "At least he knows something."
“Strap on in, there, Red,” he said, giving Ironhide a sharp nod, “and brace yourself for awesome.”
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Date: 2012-02-18 12:50 am (UTC)I loved it, thanks so much for writing this :3 *glomps* <3
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Date: 2012-02-18 01:39 am (UTC)I totally flailed at 'no-win scenarios'
Genius!
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Date: 2012-02-18 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-02-18 08:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-18 12:48 pm (UTC)This. This sitting here nicely waitint for me to get out of bed before work? Oh yes, oooohhh yes. The laughs... so. Many. Laughs.
I must now go rewatch TFA now. XD
Thank you for putting a smile on my face and making me laugh so hard my husband woke up. <3
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Date: 2012-02-25 07:34 pm (UTC)hahaha! this was great! seeing Rodimus get his Kirk on was absolutely awesome and foiling him against Red Alert was just great! she was just the perfect Bones McCoy in the situation! :D and cute little Hot Shot! too trusting of Roddy to believe they were really screwed. <3 Strika was just the icing on the cake. she was awesome and right to think that Roddy was just batshit insane.
win. this fic was absolute win.