The absurdity of the whole situation numbed Strongarm, sending her reactions into a lag of at least three nanoklicks behind reality. By the time she remembered to panic, Fixit's plating was already shifting around her waist as he clung to her hips.
"Fixit! What the Pit- get off of me!" She hopped frantically on one leg, then the other as an eerie glow started encasing them both. The light wooshed up all along her body, a blinding cyan chamber of energy building up around her that cut her off from everything else. The helium screech of the pink femme only barely managed to pierce through the fizzing veil.
"NO! No, no you weren't supposed to... take that off right now! You have no idea what you're dealing with!"
Even if Strongarm knew what the Pit she was shrieking her glossa off about, she was too distracted by sensation of strings constricting tight around her limbs, locking her in place in the middle of the rushing void. Looking down at her servos, over her whole body in a frenzy of confusion as her armour started... dissolving, almost melting away in the beams of light erupting all over her bare protoform. Then came the tiniest of pricks in one of her servos, something leeching inside her and starting to bleed into her fuel lines. She couldn't see Fixit anymore, wherever he was, but the blinding blue lights covering her were starting to fade into a slick overlay with vacuum-sealed tightness over her skin. They breathed out the more the glow retreated from her limbs, the invisible ropes holding her eventually dropping as the light was sucked into her chest, only lingering on the biolight patterns shimmering over her new plating. She could only see her legs propped up on heels and gloves covering her servos, but her abdomen and chestplates felt... very exposed. There was a new heavy weight on her back as well, one that almost dragged her down with no bulk on the rest of her body to counter-balance her.
Fixit was still nowhere to be seen, but his voice chirped sheepishly from somewhere under her helm. "I... know this feels weird, ma'am-"
Any apology he might have had stashed away in his hiding place was thrown aside by Strongarm's outburst to nothing. "Fixit, what the frag just happened?! Where are you?!"
Reality was slowly bleeding back in as the chamber fell apart, giving an audience to her anger and... something that made Sideswipe's optics almost pop free of their sockets, not to mention the bolts of his jaw joints almost falling out from how quickly his mouth dropped out.
"S...Strongarm!?" Staring at her, he struggled to speak in his helm-over-peds entranced way, the same thing that would have made him endearing if it wasn't for the fact he'd used it constantly with not-Windblade.
Speaking of whom, the femme looked ready to burn into the ground, dainty fists balled up by her sides and eyeridges digging into her oscillating optics with how forcefully they creased. Even her wings were out of her control, twitching erratically as another screech tore past her mask.
"You took mistress' kamui!" she whined, pointing at Strongarm as if she could direct a laser beam onto her. "Do you have any idea how long it took her to find it?!"
"The only thing I have an idea of is how Primus damn crazy you are!" Strongarm threw back, shifting her blasters out-
Or, trying to. Whatever had just happened to her, it had completely gutted her ranged weaponry and left only smooth curves in place of all the circuitry and plasma chargers that powered her guns.
'Fixit, you better have a damn good reason for this slag...' She wasn't even sure if it was his fault- or, all his fault at least- but he was the easiest one to shift blame on. Throwing her servos back uselessly and trying not to topple on her back, Strongarm was locked again into a staring match with the furious femme.
Somewhere off to her left, Sideswipe was being no use at all. "Uh, Strongarm, you might wanna look..." If he pointed to anywhere about her, Strongarm never saw it, too focused on how to best send the Windblade impostor sprawling back in the dirt.
"Be careful, ma'am," Fixit said out of nowhere again. "She's a lot deadlier than she looks...'
She didn't even know who or what she was, but Strongarm had gathered that much already. She just wished she knew where to glare.
"You just shut up. You're distracting me," Strongarm hissed, but that was all the distraction the enemy needed; she already had a plan thrashing in her shark tank processor and pulled her servo plating back into a malicious pair of knives.
"If you won't give it up willingly... I'LL JUST SLICE IT OFF YOU!"
Faster than her optic could track, Pinkie leapt forward and stabbed out where Strongarm's chest would have been a nanoklick fraction earlier. An echo of Fixit's warning even earlier before that, "Sidestep!", still rung in her processor.
Not feeling a spark fizzling out around her blade, the femme seemed too confused to notice Strongarm still barely an inch away from her in her own state of shock. "How the... how the Pit did you know-"
Another warning from Fixit cut her off. "Quick, sweep her down while she's not looking!"
Strongarm brought her leg out slightly too late to catch her, fighting against the dizzying weights on her back and only skidding against the back of the impostor's kneeplate before she twirled out of the way. She stabbed with both blades this time, crossing them over in an aim for Strongarm's servos. Feeling the knives rush out just under them as they snapped upwards, Strongarm didn't need Fixit's voice telling her to slam them back down on Pinkie's helm. A leg was already up to kick her back while she was dazed, the force of it almost sending them both flying in opposite ways. Pinkie was dazed, but still close enough to snap up if she had the strength to.
With a few nanoklicks bought for herself, Strongarm whirled on Sideswipe as he milled at the sidelines like a spectator at a gladiator match, optics practically plastered on her. She might have been flattered if she was still a teenspark.
"Sideswipe, don't just fragging stand there!" she yelled, tempted to abandon the fight altogether to smack some sense into him. "Get your blasters out or something!"
Blinking, finally taking his optics off her frame and bringing them up to her faceplate, Sideswipe shook his helm with a conflicted look. "I can't shoot her-"
"What?" Now she definitely wanted to smack something into him- a wrecking ball would have been her preferred choice. "You've still got your damn little infatuation with her?!"
Sideswipe shook his helm again with bunched eyeridges. "No, cause-"
Strongarm turned away, uninterested in the answer. "Forget it. At least be useful and comm Bumblebee to get over here." Any sensible Autobot would have summoned their leader first of all, but she'd been too occupied with keeping all her armour, no matter how weird it was, intact to follow protocol for once. In her defense, they was only one protocol for dealing with impostors ("The Wheeljack Approach", one of the less damning ordinances named after her sire), and it certainly did not apply here.
"Watch your left," Fixit advised as a primrose ped came flying a centimeter from her faceplate, just barely missing Strongarm's shoulder with all its aching weight, and sending Pinkie rolling into a crouch behind her. Her mask hid whatever scowl or manic grin she might have been giving off, but her optics brimmed with enough hatred to give her expression away.
"This would be so much quicker if you'd JUST!" Stab, then duck. "STAND!" Swipe, then dodge. "STILL!" Her screech brought down both her knives against Strongarm's servos, pushing against them with more strength than should have been allowed in such a slight frame.
Strongarm gritted her denta, struggling to hold the blades back from her faceplate. "It'd be a lot quicker if I had some damn weapons..."
She wasn't expecting her gripe to be answered, but Fixit's voice was whispering again. "Look around the scrap piles."
It sounded about as useful as advice for cleaning a pet turbofox, but for all the problems and mind-frag moments the Minicon had given her, he hadn't been wrong yet. She managed to move Pinkie around, skirting around her so she was facing one of the stacks of scrap scattered by Grimlock's rampage.
A long pole had rolled out from the nearest one, dimly reflecting the midday sunlight as it lay in the dirt. It wasn't flashy or sharp, but it was better than her bare servos. Off to the right of it, Sideswipe was looking lost and on the verge of a daring rescue that she knew he wasn't planning to do. Even so, she glared over Pinkie's shoulder to get his attention and, barely for a nanoklick, flicked them back over to the tip of the pole. The message was simple enough; 'Pass it over, scraphead'.
Still holding off the knives about to bisect her, she watched Sideswipe lean down and sweep the pole up, throwing it like a javelin right at Pinkie's helm. If it didn't knock her forwards and almost push her blades right into Strongarm, she'd have been impressed.
"Owww!" Pinkie whimpered, scratching the dented part of her helm with the very tip of a knife. "What the heck?! That huuurt!"
Strongarm kicked the pole up into her servos, staring down at her. "That's the point, dumbaft," she said, before sweeping the pole up in a ringing arc that connected with her chin. Her tiny weight carried her far up in the air to crash down in Grimlock's still unconscious direction, in a cloud of dust and scrap flying everywhere.
Despite the hard impact, she managed to lift herself back up in a weary lump of scarred pink armour, standing on shaky legs with wings almost hanging off their joints. "Why won't you just die?" she mewled like a sparkling at the start of a tantrum. "You don't even know how to use the kamui! You don't deserve to wear it!"
"Why won't you just shut up?" Strongarm muttered, readying her makeshift bludgeon for another satisfying crack at her helm. A sudden bolt of electricity got to Pinkie first though, shocking her into an immediate stasis lock. It was a hit from a Voltage Incapacitator, designed to overload the consciousness circuits of smaller bots and at least cause some discomfort to larger ones. And only one bot in the team had access to one.
"About damn time, sir!" Strongarm said only just below a yell, and only just remembering formality as she marched up to Bumblebee. "While Sideswipe did precisely nothing, I just fought off a deadly threat to Earth all by myself. With no blasters, thanks to Fixit." She was one more escalating rant away from saying "I told you so about Windblade."
Even with the resent in her tone, Bumblebee only seemed to be half-listening, hit with the same condition Sideswipe had where he couldn't keep his nosy optics up.
"I'm... gonna assume no-one here knows what just happened," he said slowly, turning around to face Sideswipe who gave a shrug at him. Strongarm scowled, sensing some kind of hidden silent conversation between them. Bumblebee turned back around before she could see any of it, now avoiding looking at her entirely with a servo rubbing the back of his helm.
"Well... this is a weird day even by Earth standards." He coughed, almost sub-consciously. "Strongarm, I'll... I'll speak to you shortly." He hurried off towards Grimlock, leaving Strongarm free to keep her glares on Sideswipe again. The crimson mech found it hard to look at her as well, drifting over to her side.
"You've really fragged up this time, Sides," she said, pointedly turning her back on him. She caught a flicker of self-pity in his optics before she refused to look at them.
"How was I supposed to know she was coco for coconuts?" he pleaded.
"That doesn't even matter!" Strongarm protested, whirling back around to stare her own brand of betrayal into him. "Even if she was an Autobot, you haven't even known her for a solar cycle and you were acting like you were going to propose to her!" She would have punched him, anything to wipe the guilty look off his face, but something (Fixit) kept her servo anchored to her side. She settled for another intense glare and keeping her servos crossed over her chest. "Couldn't even take a shot at her, just left me to fight her all by my fragging self," she muttered.
Sideswipe's frown deepened, his optics falling to the ground. "Well, I... I didn't want to accidentally hit you..." he mumbled, kicking at a patch of dirt. "I wasn't willing to risk..."
Whatever he was going to finish with vanished upon Bumblebee's return, with Grimlock slowly waking up and the pink horror left in stasis cuffs beside him.
"Alright, first things first," Bee said with a sigh, servos on hips and optics finally bringing themselves on her. "Strongarm; where's Fixit, and why are you half-naked?"
It was at that exact moment that, with a thorough glance downwards, Strongarm realised that yes, she was definitely half naked. And it was almost definitely Fixit's fault.
"For the record... I'm really digging it," Sideswipe offered with a lopsided smirk and his digits formed into tiny guns aimed at her. He ended up joining their pink nemesis in the dirt, cradling the crumpled plating of one of his servos. Fixit hadn't tried to stop her fist that time.