Flight Dynamics (Firefly/Open)

[Windshear]

Windshear shifted as Firefly dropped, screaming down through the air towards her in his altmode. Her first pistol shot was a bit lucky--it detonated the remaining missile as it was curving down to streak towards her. For a moment it almost looked as if Windshear had been caught in the blast, but then his wicked, bristling alt-mode came down through the smoke and fire. He was still trying to close, and she had unintentionally given him a chance to even the odds with their speed. She was free-falling, and in that one moment, Windshear had the power to dive, using his engines to push him faster, and to reach her.

He didn’t try to tag her with his weapons as she fired up at him, and his maneuver forced him to absorb a few hits, and two of these managed to penetrate his armor, wounding him further. Windshear was a little dizzy with the loss of energon, and internal clamps were doing what they could to stem the flow, but his internal damage had disabled one of his plasma rifles. The energy was being redirected to try and contain the wound.

He wasn't fighting the same psychological struggle that Firefly was. Retreat, for Windshear, had never been an option. He had been ambushed by this femme, and he believed that she fully intended to kill him. If he was going to die, he was going to die fighting. He didn’t care about any of that, though; he just cared about the struggle, the fight, and the fact that his risky dive had put him within arm’s reach for Firefly.

As she shot back into the air, Windshear was shifting, and he reached out with a single talon. He should have been able snag a portion of her armor and dig his talons in. His grip was formidable. He gave a low, guttural growl and tore at her with his free hand, attacking with blind ferocity. There was no skill here, just blind animal rage.

Blind animal rage combined with Windshear’s immense strength was pretty nasty, though.

That, of course, was provided that he managed to grab her at all.

[Firefly]

Windshear had managed to snag a portion of her chest armor, and was now tearing in at a fatal spot. Fortunately, she had a lot of armor there. Unfortunately, she couldn't turn off the sensors in that area. However, there were also a few less there, as most of her chest was comprised of the cockpit of her alt mode - which is what he'd snagged. It was harder to put sensors in the glass-like portion of her armor, but they were still there.

With a loud cry of pain, she suffered a case of whiplash as Windshear managed to drag her down, and many tears in the multiple armor layers as he started tearing in, directly over her spark. She raised her arm and fired at the target. Once. Twice. Three times. It was the only way she could react - all her thought processes were blinded by the pain.

Was she going to die? Hell no. With sudden clarity, she kicked him in the chest with her good foot, pushing as much force as she could, knowing that he still had a grip on her chest plating, knowing that it would be, as humans said, like ripping off a band-aid, but a lot, lot worse.

She did not want to lose to a drone. She still had to prove her worth to the Autobots, and losing was not the way to do it. No, she was a seeker. To accept loss was to deny one's own proud heritage, and that was unacceptable. This was her time now. She shot up, the air exaggerating the pain in the new hollows of her chest, her form having lost some of it's aerodynamic ability.

Her arm down at her side, she shot a few stray shots downward, not bothering to aim. She couldn't think clearly, and she wanted this to be over with, wanted to get out of here, preferably alive. In one piece wouldn't hurt, but she was pretty close to beyond that point.

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[Windshear]

Windshear was unaware of the tactical advantage of the particular aspect of Firefly’s anatomy that he’d snagged; he was barely aware of where he was gripping the femme at all. His HUD was clouded with error messages, and his processor was screaming at him to abort, to land and let his self-repair try and contain his damage, but his spark was crying out in savage hunger, and he surrendered to its ferocity, mindless of all of his other surroundings.

Until Firefly tagged him right in the wing joint. He roared in rage, the agony jolting through him and lending a manic strength to his limbs. The blow had knocked his off-kilter, though, and Firefly’s foot found the side of his neck. He grabbed tighter, determined not to let his prey go now that he had her in his grip. The formerly-impressive strength of his limbs was beginning to wane with lack of energon, and Firefly did manage to kick him free, but it would take four blows to do so, and he came loose with a chunk of ruined armor in his claws.

Airborne again, he shifted to alt-mode. The drone had no proud heritage to fight for. He had no heritage at all. He was just a created thing, a stray spark, but he seemed just as determined not to be snuffed as she was. His spark was still beating strong, the thrill of the struggle was pounding through every inch of him, singing in his ragged EM field. Windshear’s very soul was still more than game, utterly willing to fight Firefly.

His body, however, was finished.

The unusually-shaped jet listed to the side almost immediately. Firefly’s shot had done more damage that it had originally seemed. Windshear struggled for altitude, but he was unable to climb, to reach her, and the drone spiraled helplessly, slowly losing altitude. He wasn’t heading for the ground at a lethal velocity, but he wasn’t going up anytime soon.

[Firefly]

She wasted no extra movements. She knew she needed medical aid, and fast. She was only hesitant because she was shy of medics in general - particularly grounders, because they tended to misunderstand the intricate systems of a Seeker. Ratchet, he was good, she'd heard he could be nice, but quite honestly she was nervous. But right now, life was a bit more important.

<~"Ratchet? This is Firefly, calling for a ground bridge as soon as possible. I'm injured, and I'm not sure how much longer I'm gonna last in the air here."~> She wasn't good at sounding official, and her naturally melodic voice sounded off pitch and strained. She didn't bother speaking english, and her Paradronian - accented Cybertronian rang through the comm link instead. She was certain he would understand. She really wasn't sure, though, how much longer she could go. Her energy, and her energon, respectively, was running low.

Her armor was shredded, and the last thing she had from Paradron, her Paradronian armor, weak as it may be, was torn. She'd have to re-do a lot of the etching in it, even if it got repaired well. She sent her coordinates to Ratchet after comming him, hoping that she'd make it back to base. She had lost a good portion of her chest armor, too, and really didn't want to follow the drone down to get it, even if she could figure out how to land...

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[Windshear]

Windshear was going down.

He was able to slow his descent to a reasonable speed--he had that much control left in his systems--so while he did not injure himself when he finally met the earth, he still didn’t do so gently. Luckily he was over a wide patch of open ground (a field whose purpose he could not discern), so the first time he made contact with the ground, it really did more damage to the ground. The twin points on either end of the blunt nose of the Cybertronian jet dug deep furrows in the earth, sending sod splaying in either direction.

He was airborne again, skimming above the ground like a skipping stone, before a wingtip snagged the earth and spun him around, and the tumbling jet crashed properly, tearing wild furrows in the ground with his body as he collided and bounced, spinning crazily. When he finally came to a rest, his gleaming purple chassis was speckled with clods of dirt and grass, and a thin plume of smoke was rising from a seam in his transformation plates.

Windshear’s processor was too overwhelmed with damage reports and surges of agony to function properly, and initiated an emergency shutdown of pain receptors. Windshear felt rage surge dully through his spark. He hated it when this happened. He hated not being able to feel, not being able to revel in that glorious pain, that vicious ache that reminded him he was alive.

He was reeling from loss of energon, though, and he knew that he needed immediate medical attention. He activated his distress beacon. The drone on monitor duty, if they were paying attention, should notice it and get a bridge to him. He was furious that he could not fly to go after his prey, and humiliated to be down here in the dirt like a grounder. Ugh.

Still, he’d given as good as he’d got. That femme, for all her size, wouldn’t forget him in a hurry. He might not have carved some respect out of her hide, but he had carved a healthy bit of her hide out of her hide.

That had to count for something.

((Wanna call it? We could continue here if you want to RP Firefly looking for her armor, but her going to the Autobot base sounds more like a new thread to me. Whatever you please is fine, though. :3))

[Firefly]

((Then this'll be the last post, then we'll split. Mmmmkay?))

After a long, painful moment of trying to stay in the air, a space bridge opened up, and she shot herself through it thankfully, despite not knowing how close to the ground it was, how close the nearest wall was, or anything like that. She expected to find herself hitting the ground, hard, and sliding. As she moved toward it, though, she had a brief moment of panic.

She'd have to let a different medic handle her. A grounder, even. She didn't have anything against them as bots... She just felt a slight distrust toward them when it came to trusting them for much of anything other than a good crowd at a show and the filling of community spots. Even then, in her experience, they were annoyingly ignorant of Seeker kind.

But, it was either trust a grounder, or die. Ratchet was a great bot, but... Well, there was that wall to climb. However, that was not the biggest worry as the bridge closed behind her. Her biggest worry at the time was hitting the ground...

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[Jetta Windstar]

THREAD COMPLETE!