At the autobot base things were all but quiet. . . .
"Get your aft back here!" a streak of a mostly white body followed closely by a neon yellow went through the main chambers of the large base.
"I didn't mean for that to happen!" WheelJack cried as he continued his mad dash away from Ratchet, his lights flashing with his words.
"I don't care if you meant it or not! You're going to clean the bay spotless, you loose cannon!" Ratchet hollered.
"Cannon?! Where!?" Ironhide appeared in WheelJack's path blocking his escape.
"No, no, no…. Ironhide move!" WheelJack whined in a desperate tone. Ironhide wouldn't move though, he was determined to know what cannon and where. Ratchet grabbed WheelJack's shoulder, making the younger mech yelp as he feared the medic would kill him. As much as he didn't want to go, he didn't really have a choice.
It was normal for WheelJack to have grease, burn spots, dust and ash on him from explosions and such, but when Ironhide saw the black on Ratchet, he demanded to know what had happened. After a short explanation of how WheelJack had been showing Ratchet a new form of energy booting liquid, which had been left on the edge of the table, it fell and exploded, taking half the med bay with it Ironhide threatened to demolish WheelJack if he didn't clean up his mess.
Needless to say he went without further fuss. Optimus, being close to Ratchet's quarters, had already guessed what had occurred. BumbleBee, on the other hand, had to go see for himself. Popping into the trashed room he wandered around picking up and dropping things, making the mess worse, as a constant stream of questions flowed from his audios bombarded Ratchet. It wasn't untill the medic got fed up and yelled at BumbleBee to get his aft out that Bee realized it might not be a good time to ask questions. Following his banishment from the med bay Bee told everyone that Ratchet was in a foul mood, everyone thought 'foul' was an under statement.
Chromia, having stayed in her room for the most part, decided it was time to for Ironhide to prove he hadn't gotten rusty over the years. She found him, with BumbleBee, in his room explaining how an energy blasting gun is assembled and what every piece 's function is. Knocking on the door jamb she caught their attention.
"How about a friendly game of target practice?" she asked them as she leaned her shoulder and hip against the frame, her arms folding under her chassis. Ironhide's cooling systems kicked in working over normal as he stared at the curves of the femme in his door, he could only nod.
"Sure!" Bee said delighted.
On their way out they passed Jazz and Prowl. The latter was trying to convince the former to hang from the tree upside down with him. As Jazz listed off reasons why he wouldn't Ironhide kept a hand over BumbleBee's mouth so he couldn't say anything to ruin the moment's playful air.
They continued down to the vacant valley where they could practice without endangering anyone. On their journey Chromia watched how her companions interacted with each other. With a smile she giggled thinking, 'They act like father and son. I wonder what they would say to being told that? Ironhide would probably act all gruff and deny it, even though he knows its true.'
"Who wants the first shot?" Ironhide's voice crashed through her train of thought, but she didn't mind as their optics lock to each other's for a brief moment.
"Bee, why don't you go first?" the femme called gently, acting as if she needed more time to assemble her gun.
"Alright!" he jumped up from the rock he had sat on and dashed forward a short ways, stopping suddenly as he aimed at a rock off in the distance. With a bright blast he shot, the recoil almost knocking him over. They all watched as the rock's side was blown off.
"Aw man…" Bee mumbled, it was slightly off center not a perfect shot. Chromia motioned for Ironhide to go next, the weapon specialist nodded and walked up to the mark heaving his large gun up to his shoulder where it settled allowing him to aim. He pointed his sight to a larger boulder a little to the left of Bee's rock. With a boom, almost sonic, the gun jerked the mech back a step, he quickly regained balance wanting to see if he made his mark or not. When the blast met the boulder it looked like a small nuclear bomb went off, a mushroom cloud was all that was left of the piece of earth.
Chromia raised her optic ridges, impressed at the power his gun gave, but she smiled coyly as she took her stance. Her weapon of choice was much smaller than Ironhide's, he actually scoffed when he saw her hold it up. Nestling its butt to her shoulder she looked down the nose looking for something good to aim at, rather to demolish. What Ironhide didn't know was that her gun, however slightly smaller was just as if not more powerful that his. The small orb that ejected from the nose of her gun made him laugh, until it impacted the stone and it seemed to implode before exploding, a wave of air came rolling back over them. The femme smiled sweetly to the open mouthed mechs sitting their, Bee recovered first.
"Wow!! That's beyond cool! Can I use it sometime!? Please, please can I!?" He tugged on Mia's free arm gently much like the Sparkling he is.
"Maybe," she laughed. Her optics flicked shyly up to Ironhide's who shook his head and gave a low whistle.
"What is that?"
"A modified version of the tracker shooter," she shrugged lightly.
"Mind explaining a bit more in detail later?"
"Not at all. Where and when?"
"My quarters, 18:00 hours." She nodded as they started back for the base.
"Dang… Remind me never to Piss Chromia off," Jazz told Prowl as he leaned against the tree they were in, Prowl still hanging upside down. On top of the cliff they could see the tiny group like miniature figures moving in a video game.