"Run!" Chromia yelled, wrenching her servo from Ironhide's and sprinting across the rooftop, his heavy pedsteps thudding behind her.
The ship loomed behind them, sparks shooting off the metal rooftops as they dodged the ships's rounds.
One finally caught Ironhide on the back of his leg and he collapsed to the ground, cursing between clenched denta.
Chromia halted and looked back at him, optics wide and he shouted, "Don't just stand there like a moron! Run!"
"Like I'm leaving your aft behind." She muttered as she spun around, ran back to him and helped him up, half supporting half dragging him across the roof.
"Dammit femme!" He panted, closing his optics against the pain radiating from his leg, "Ya couldn't have just left me? Now we're both gonna get killed"
"'I'm not leaving you, 'Hide." Chromia said calmly, glancing about for some sort of escape, "We'll have to figure something else out."
There was a door on the roof, leading down to the rest of the building that they could crouch behind, and Chromia dropped Ironhide behind it.
"Frag." He groaned, clutching his leg as she scooted in next to him, "Could you have been any more gentle, ya think?"
Optics trained on the ship still firing at them, she said simply, "Gentle isn't really my style.". Then she did something completely unexpected; she : began firing back at the ship with her arm cannons.
"What are you doing?" He asked, astounded, "There's no way you can even damage the ship with those!"
"I don't need to damage it." She replied, one optic closed, "I just need to hit the pilot.". She squeezed off another shot, cracking a hole in the ship's windshield right where the pilot was seated.
Without a pilot at the controls, the ship lurched forward and plowed into the rooftop, crashing through a few stores of the building before reaching the ground floor in a fiery blaze.
"Ha. Got 'em." She turned back to Ironhide, her optics widening at the Decepticon holding the barrel of a gun to the back of his helm.
"I wouldn't move, sugar." A femme's voice drawled through the helmet, "Unless you want your pretty little Autobot boy toy to, ahem, lose his helm."
She was a slim, black and white flyer with pointed audio receptors that made her look a bit like a cat. Chromia analyzed quickly that she could probably take her if she injured her wings, but not without Ironhide getting shot in the helm.
Ironhide's optics pled with her to run, attack, do anything but give up. And even though it killed her, the fiesty femme sighed and retracted her arm cannons, "Fine. I surrender."
OooooooooooooooooooooooooooO
The Decepticon, who Chromia learned was named Hellcat through a long, one sided conversation the femme had tried to start with her, waited for the rest of her team to arrive with another ship before hauling them off.
The only time Chromia had spoken was when Hellcat had saucily run a digit from behind Ironhide's audio receptor to the base of his neck, making him shudder with disgust, and remarked "Quite a looker this one. You sure you wouldn't like to defect to our side? I'm sure I could find something for you to do."
Before he could respond Chromia had growled, "Touch him again and you lose a servo."
"Why?" Hellcat had laughed, the barrell of her gun never leaving Ironhide's helm, "You already got dibs?"
Chromia hadn't responded to Hellcat, or to Ironhide's questioning gaze, and Hellcat had let Ironhide be until her team arrived, dragging him aboard the ship.
Another Decepticon, this one scrawny and tan colored, struggled to drag Chromia onto the ship until eventually she got tired of it and shoved him off, walking into the ship herself.
Hellcat chained the both of them to the seats in the ship, guarded by a few Vehicons, and then took over the controls, yelling back, "Thistleant! Close up that fraggin' Autobot's leg. He's getting energon all over my ship!"
"You-you c-can't t-tell me what t-to do." The tan mech, who Chromia asumed was Thistleant stuttered, "I only t-take orders from St-Starscream!"
"Oh, I didn't realize." Hellcat said with fake sweetness, "In that case, why don't I just throw you off of my ship and tell Starscream that unfortunately you offlined during the Autobots' attack. It was just horrible to watch you offline!".She faked snivled and then sneered at the trembling grounder in her mirror, "Fix it you pathetic medic. I won't ask again."
Chromia almost felt something like pity for the small Decepticon, whose entire frame shook except his servos which were steady on Ironhide's leg, as a medic's should be. That is until he transformed one of his servos into a blowtorch.
"Whoa!" Ironhide yelled, scooting as far away from Thistleant as he could, "What in Pit is that for?!"
"C-cautersizing the wound." Thistleant said patiently, "F-fastest way to stop the bleeding."
"No way." Ironhide shook his helm vehemently
Thistleant raised an optic ridge, "Y-you're not in a p-position to object. I've g-got you chained to a wall. I w-would suggest you be a g-good boy and let me d-do my work so you d-don't bleed to death."
The sudden sarcasm in the tiny medic's voice made Ironhide narrow his optics, but he scooted back over complacently, "Yer not even gonna remove the bullet? Worst medic ever."
He ignored him and began burning his leg as Ironhide gritted his denta and fought back the scream of pain clawing at his throat.
Chromia gave him a concerned glance, "Want me to knock you out?"
"Naw." He puffed, clenching his servos, "It doesn't hurt-arggh-that much."
She studied him for a minute, "Liar.". His optics snapped up to her as she reached behind him and smacked the back of his helm with her cannon, effectively knocking him unconscious.
Thistleant gave her a funny look, one that was clearly questioning her knocking out her own teammate, and she bared her denta at him, "What are you looking at, Decepticreep?"
The medic just shook his helm and continued welding until the gash the bullet had torn through Ironhide's leg was sealed. His work finished, he sat back in his seat and waited for the ride to be over.
OooooooooooooooooooooooooooO
Chromia had never seen Darkmount, had only heard about the monstrous tower and the horrors that went on inside. Passing into the tower's cold embrace with Hellcat's gun at the base of her neck and Thistleant and a Vehicon behind them struggling to carry the unconscious Ironhide, Chromia wished she could go back to never having seen it.
"Home sweet home." Hellcat said sarcastically, and motioned to a round of Decepticon troops on patrol, "Hey, you! Take the femme up to this dweeb's lab and take the mech down to the holding cells."
"W-where are you g-going?" Thistleant called after her as she began to walk away.
She grinned a cat-like grin and said, "To tell Screamy of my success of course."
Thistleant sighed and began walking away, motioning to the troop to follow him with Chromia. She craned her neck to look at Ironhide, who was being dragged in the opposite direction by two more troops, until the other troop shoved his blaster at her and told her to get moving.
She didn't want to be sepparated from the silver mech, fearing that he would be tortured or killed, but she had no choice.
Reluctantly, she followed Thistleant to his laboratory, praying for Ironhide's safety and her own.