Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, nor am I am getting anything from this other than joy. Based upon the song Crawling by Linkin Park.
Ironhide fired rapidly his aim was slightly off, but he got the slagging job done and the Decepticons fell to the hard cold ground of Cybertron. He stood in the middle of the battle field looking around, none of his companions had seemed to have survived, or if they had they weren't near by. He sank down to the ground laying his head in his hands and felt something strange.
His head was spinning, had one of the drones actually managed to hit him? Was he malfunctioning? Yes, he must be that's why the ground was moving towards him, why the sky was turning odd colours and why he could hear the concerned voice of Ratchet. Ratchet was never one for the front lines, he was a medic, he healed and saved. Ironhide felt something…funny.
He tried to sit up, no that wasn't going to work, his legs felt heavier than normal, like they were made of leg instead of a heavy-duty polycarbonate. He twisted to look down at his legs, they were there and looked just fine, so why couldn't he get back up? He struggled for a few minutes more before resigning himself to a crawl as he made his way towards the echoing voice of his trusted friend.
Ironhide stopped mid crawl, something was moving that shouldn't be. It was crawling around under his armour, over the sensitive wiring and circuits causing him to twitch. He called out electronically, hoping that someone would hear him and come to him. He never backed down from a fight but this wasn't an enemy that he could see, he didn't even know what the glitch it was.
His optics went black with a flicker and the world as he knew it when black as well, Ironhide froze and sat back on his knees his large metal hands groping around in the darkness for something familiar. Nothing was there, just the ground beneath him and the sound of approaching wheels. He powered up his cannons and swung them around blindly.
"Stay back!"
"Calm yourself, Ironhide," it was a voice that he recognized, it belonged to Optimus Prime leader of the Autobots. Ironhide lowered both of his arms and turned his head to face the kneeling giant.
Optimus laid a hand on the soldiers shoulder in a manor that he hoped would calm down the fighter before he hurt himself, or them. He sent a message to the nearest medically trained Autobot in the area. Within moments Ratchet rushed onto the scene, pushing Optimus out-of-the-way he scanned Ironhide.
"I don't know how this happened. His internal circuits have been damaged, like they have been ripped. We have to get him back to base. Now."
Ratchet lifted Ironhide up by the arms, the weapons specialist couldn't move his legs regardless of how much he tried to move them. Concern flashed across the face of the medic only to be replaced a spilt second later by professionalism.
Four skidding ball bearings rolled out of the lower leg armour of Ironhide unnoticed by those around him.
