Shadowfire

Chapter 9

I crouched low, finding cover in the form of the crumbling wall of an abandoned building.
"Spread out, sweeping search pattern, wedge formation" Lennox ordered. I pushed myself further out of sight, modified cannon at the ready. Ratchet and Ironhide had combined their knowledge and created a modification that could be used so our weapons would fire paintballs for the purposes of these training exercises in the mock battlefield that had been set up for us.

The NEST team had been split in two, me and my team were pretending we were being hunted by 'Cons, while Dad's team was pretending to be hunting 'Cons. Somewhere nearby shots were fired and Ironhide sprinted into view, a deluge paintballs ambushing the advancing Alpha team, who took cover as he gave away his position. He threw himself down beside me.
"What are you doing?" I demanded, irate "I had them"
"You were taking too long" he smirked at me and I grinned back.
"Nice to know you've forgiven me"
"Yeah, no harm done I guess" he shrugged before changing the topic "you ready to kick some Alpha butt, Bravo style?"
"Slag yes, thought you'd never ask"

Dad and my uncle Optimus were on one team, along with Bee and Jazz. Dad was in command of the humans on the squad while Optimus controlled the Autobots.
Uncle Epps was leading my team, like Alpha team Epps and I shared command.

"We need to get back to the rest of our team, taking as many of the Alphas with out as we can" I said.
"No we should hit them hard and knock 'em out now while we're close" he argued.
"We can't take them all on our own, we need backup" I pointed out. He went to reply but we heard a foot scrape on stone and knew we were out of time.
"I'm pulling rank" I announced "we're getting out of here, now" scowling but following my orders Ironhide began running backwards, firing at the advancing Alphas as he went.
"Hide! Look out!" I yelled, seeing Jazz spot him and take off in pursuit. I fired a few rounds at Jazz, sprinting towards him myself. As if waiting for me to break cover Bee appeared and began firing at me. I dropped to the ground as a paintball whizzed past me.
"Scrap!" I cursed, getting to my feet and retreating into a dense tangle of foliage.
"You out here 'Hide?" I could heard the sounds of branches snapping off trees and followed the noise, finding Jazz and Ironhide engaged in hand to hand combat, both too close to activate their cannons. I grinned and snuck up behind them, wrapping an arm around Jazz's torso the paint marked him from point blank range. He cursed as I let him go.

Ironhide and I took off running, heading towards the rendezvous.
"Took you long enough. Finally decide to show up?" Epps asked when we eventually made it.
"Ambush. I took out Jazz" I explained.
"We gotta plan? Or are we just gonna sit around on our afts doin' nothin'?"

Epps outlined what he had planned, looking to me for confirmation.
"Sounds good to me Uncle"

Splitting up we raced through the trees in our alt forms, humans in our interiors. Getting as close as we could to where our intelligence had indicated the Alpha base was.
"Time to move" Epps said, as the humans exited and Ironhide and I transformed. Waiting until the humans were in position and Epps had given us the signal we smashed our way into the warehouse, bringing down the east wall to facilitate our dramatic entrance. We went in guns blazing, a distraction that allowed the human members of our team to infiltrate the warehouse from the west, attacking the members of Alpha team that came to confront us. We didn't aim our modified canons at the humans, despite now shooting paint balls they would still do a lot of damage to a human, instead we painted fellow Autobots in blue, avoiding their answering red.

The fight was over within 15 minutes, Bravo team emerged victorious. Epps gloating as Lennox rubbed at the bright blue stain on his vest. Optimus survived without any "life threatening" hits, Bee had paint splattered across the side of his helm and chest, Ironhide and I didn't survive our distraction mission. Him being gunned down shortly after Alpha team opened fire, me surviving him by mere minutes.

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"Nice job out there today" Sam said, leaning against my bonnet. My holoform shoved him off.
"You got time to lean you got time to clean" I told him, throwing a soapy cloth at him. It hit him in the shoulder and he made a rude gesture at me, but joined my holoform in scrubbing the red splatters off my paint job.
"So the Decepticon threat's over right? You're all just training for... Some other reason?" I stared at him. I wanted to tell him that there wasn't a Decepticon threat, that my sire wasn't evil, but I held my tongue, instead saying
"I guess they're still out there, why?"
"Just worried that there's going to be another attack, that you'll get hurt... Or Mikaela"
"Or you" I said softly. He started but slowly nodded "that fight really scared you, huh?" He nodded again.
"You got anything against learning to defend yourself?" He gave me a quizzical look and I continued "getting some training, how to use a pistol for one"
"What? So I can fight?"
"No nothing like that" I said hurriedly "so that if someone- human or cybertronian, tries anything you'll be able to get away"
"That... Actually sounds like a good idea"
"I'll talk it over with dad and some of the 'bots"
"Thanks Leah"