Chapter Text
Ironhide saw her first both times.
The first time was fleeting and bitter. A face and a name burried under a burning anger at the entity that had stolen away the elation of knowing they— the miners as a whole— had proved something real. And later, a hazy memory to direct his grievances at with the announcement that she had stolen from him more than that. Two of the bots he tried so hard to keep alive in the mines, swept away in the noise of the crowd and crushed under the ambition of some nebulous, malicious creature that roared like a sparkless beast at the victory.
The second time was a little different.
Iacon was a storm of noise and light and destruction. Everywhere Ironhide turned there was another jet to throw himself out of the path of or rubble to throw himself into the path of. He'd already seen a few of his charges shot down, but Primus damn him if he was going to let any of them outright die. Ironhide had always been one of the sturdier members of the mining crew anyway. Unless you asked Elita. She'd tell you he was just overprotective, and she'd say it with the disdain of someone who'd seen him edge far too close to breaking protocol for her rule-obsessed comfort. Ironhide would accuse her of being callous, and he had. What was the point of being above anyone if you didn't care about those below?
That, he knew, was the true reason he'd joined that reckless charge that had been proposed. Orion, inexplicably now twice their size and colored in bright, unchipped paint, had knelt for them. And told them how little Sentinel cared.
And so he fought. It was a fool's errand, he knew. Most of Orion's ideas were, but something had changed in the kid since his supposed death. A weight in his tone, a clear wound on his ever-empathetic spark. There was a maturity there that made him impossible to ignore.
Ironhide glanced up at the shattered tower where Orion had disappeared. Nothing he could do to assist him now, but he still worried. The flickering light there looked suspiciously like blasterfire.
He was distracted from this thought by a clash and shreik of metal against metal and a blaster shot much nearer going just wide of his head.
He snapped to attention, shifting in a blink to face his assailant, but the sleek, golden drone had already been engaged in a fight by a tall femme. She was about twice his height, armor colored aquamarine and pearl and almost entirely unmarred. Cogged, Ironhide realized belatedly.
Ironhide thought he recognized her from somewhere, vaguely, as two more identical drones swept down from above. Maybe she'd passed through the mines or- or run into him on the road or... no, this felt too familiar.
The two jets split off from eachother as they reached the ground, one to aid the first and the other streaking towards him in attempt to take him cleanly out of the fight.
Adrenaline and overwhelm and apprehension. He caught her victorious smile in the edge of his vision as he shifted out of the flight path of his assailant, and it was like a recursive memory.
Chromia. That's what came to him first. Her name was Chromia. She was a racer. She'd won... She'd won the Iacon 5000.
Ironhide's spark nearly spun to a stop.
She'd killed Orion Pax and D-16. Or he'd thought so for a time.
For a halting moment, Ironhide looked back. She almost looked different in this light. He remembered how ugly she'd looked then. Her face filled the screen as she cried out her victory with pride. She celebrated without even bothering to look back at what it had cost.
Did she regret it? Was that why she protected him now with her larger size and her electric-sharp racing reflexes? Penance? Pity? Did she even remember it?
He didn't have much time to ponder it. A fist connected with his jaw, snapping his head back and his attention to the present. He ducked out of the way of the next blow, sliding just under the edge of a wing and tugging it just right to send the flier into a spin. With a screech, the other bot grabbed at him, but ended up giving him no more than a scratch as it careened into a shining wall. Ironhide winced at the damage, but didn't linger on it, eyes instantly turning to roam about the suddenly empty-feeling plaza. Another flyer spotted him, looked past him at the crashed jet, and came at him with hardly an expression. Ironhide braced himself—
And was taken cleanly off his feet from the side, pinned to the ground by a much heavier frame, already shoving herself off him to engage her weapons at the offending bot. Ironhide couldn't help but feel insulted, but then, why was he surprised? Racers always thought big of themselves.
Suddenly, every screen in Iacon went dark, and then lit up. Sentinel's voice rang out across the city. Ironhide paid it no mind, seeing as Orion had already told him what the traitor had done— was doing even. He was much more fascinated with the way Chromia stilled, head turning so slowly that Ironhide knew without even seeing her face that she was hesitating in fear of what she might see. But it didn't matter whether she watched Sentinel kneel (though she did, and so did everyone else, and the whole of the city seemed to gasp at once judging by the beat of silence) because the truth rang out nonetheless.
(What truth? That I plucked the cogs from your newborn chests? Forced you to mine so I could pay off the Quintessons and live like a king?)
It occurred to Ironhide that she'd protected him despite having not known any of this. For all she'd known, the miners were on the wrong side of it. He didn't know what to think of that, and he didn't have time to decide. Chromia recovered much slower than the drones that must have already known all this, and Ironhide moved on instinct. It took him until he'd intercepted her attacker for him to think it through and wonder if he really wanted or needed to. He regretted this immediately.
"I had it under control," she hissed in his ear as he struggled.
"Consider us even then," he grunted, shoving the drone back.
"What?"
Ironhide heard clicking behind him. He spun just in time to meet another blur of gold.
"Had it under control, right? So did I."
She scoffed.
"Some thanks!" She paused to deliver what sounded like a kick to the third drone, still behind him and then said over her shoulder at him, "I was trying to help. You're half my size."
"And yet I can handle twice the physical strain," he replied as the drone caught one of his wrists at the joint and then proceeded to repeatedly catch his fist with it's face in violent fashion.
Crash!
"Do you know who I am?"
Ironhide wanted to laugh, but managed to keep it to a dry puff of air.
"I expect all of Iacon knows who you are."
"Yes, well—" A clash of metal on metal and a shriek of sharp edges stripping paint away. "You're not from Iacon." Crack— Smash! "Are you?"
Ironhide paused to quickly rifle through his memory banks and replay their conversation, searching for how she came to that conclusion, but to no avail. Something exploded above them in a rain of debris, tearing Ironhide out of his thoughts, and he raised one arm above him to sheild himself while Chromia deftly shifted just barely out of the way of each piece and not-so-surreptitiously into his line of sight.
He glanced breifly at her and then took off in a dead run towards what appeared to be Arcee and Springer caught in the center of some kind of encircling maneuver. Chromia caught up immediately, pacing herself a few steps ahead of him, which was to be expected, racer that she was.
Ironhide asked, "what gave it away?"
Chromia replied without skipping a beat, "Your accent."
Scrap. Ironhide hadn't realized he was slipping.
"Alright, ya got me," he said, and then he lept for the nearest drone, tackling it away from Arcee. He had just reached in between two plates to grasp at internal wiring and tear it out when Chromia asked over his shoulder, "Friends of yours?"
"Could say that," Ironhide said, glancing at where Arcee had sprung to fight in a blur of pink and gold.
"Oh so— ngh!" Chromia cut off with a startled grunt.
"Chromia?"
He almost turned to look at her, but this time he caught a blaster bolt on his shoulder and that stung plenty enough to divert his attention.
"Fine," came the femme's voice as Ironhide turned a duck into a roll, closing the distance between him and Springer.
"Friend of yours?" Springer echoed cheekily.
Ironhide scowled, throwing a quick punch at the bright green miner's adversary and then kicking at the drone's legs.
"'Quiantance more like."
"Look!" Arcee called out suddenly.
Ironhide punched the drone in his grasp to the ground and crushed it's head underfoot before glancing up to where Arcee pointed. Springer swore through a vent and ran before Ironhide even knew what he was looking at. Tumbling across the sky was a blazing comet of blue and gold— Sentinel? And silver. Silver? Ironhide didn't believe it.
"D-16!" Arcee cried joyfully.
D-16. So that glitch made it too.
Ironhide was running the moment he saw the impact. A flash of pale teal hovered on the edge of his vision, telling him Chromia was keeping up.
"Another friend?" she called out from a few feet away over the sound of crunching metal and blasterfire.
Ironhide did not reply. Of all the bots he'd ever imagine taking on Sentinel Prime alone, he'd never in a hundred lifetimes expect D-16. The world really had turned upside down.
"Ironhide!"
A flash of red and black caught his eye, and he shifted his path just a little to meet with Sideswipe.
"Hey, kid."
"Have you seen Sunny?" Sideswipe cut in immediately, running backwards to face Ironhide as if this was a simple jog rather than Ironhide's top speed.
"Sunstreaker?" Ironhide was surprised Sideswipe had lost track of the golden miner— the two of them were practically welded together— but that was beside the point. Orion. D-16. Sentinel. "No, I haven't."
Sideswipe sighed, dropping his speed and falling behind Ironhide.
"Arcee!" Ironhide heard him call, "Do you know where—"
Ironhide tuned him out and looked up at the monument where Sentinel stood facing D-16. Or he was pretty sure that was D-16. The silhouette was similar enough but the colors and size were off. Based on Orion's transformation though, that wasn't entirely surprising.
"Somebody move," Ironhide hissed as he watched the stand-off from too far to intervene. But nobody had to. Whatever had happened after his supposed death, D-16 had apparently picked up some kind of battle protocols to go with his new look. Sentinel, already clearly worse for wear, was quickly thrown to the ground by the former miner, who wasted no time in pointing his— where in the world did D-16 get something as powerful as a fusion canon from??
Ironhide stood frozen. From what he wasn't sure. Shock or awe or maybe even— loathe as he was to admit it— fear forced him to simply watch as D-16 snarled something vicious at the scrambling Sentinel, the false Prime moving more like a prey creature than a noble Prime. D-16's first shot went wide, canon knocked aside just in time by a flash of red and blue. Ironhide hadn't even seen Orion coming, and clearly neither had D-16.
Whispers and murmurs began to float around as the two figures argued, D-16 trying desperately and somewhat hysterically to push past Orion while Orion himself took a much more placating posture. Ironhide, for his part, was with D-16 on this one. But then Orion was always an over-optimistic scrap of a bot. Of course he would campaign for mercy, even for those who didn't deserve it. And then there was a flash. The world turned into a stutter-stop flash of frozen moments. One second it was Orion and D-16 face-to-face, the next they were lost in a violent violet flash and then they were too far apart too fast. Orion was missing an arm and a good deal of his left side. Scorched scrap hovered in the air around him as D-16 stood with his arm still raised, the line of fire clear. And then he was on the edge. Off the edge. Hanging by a his best friend's hand.
No. Not again.
For a horrible, slightly too long, almost unreal moment Orion hung. Sentinel climbed to his feet, but D-16 only had eyes for his friend. Ironhide couldn't move. Even if he could, what would he do? Sentinel would get to D-16 long before Ironhide did. He was going to watch them both die again. Helpless.
D-16 couldn't hold on. Orion slipped, tumbling listlessly into the pit below, swallowed up by Cybertron itself. Ironhide watched him disappear. When he lifted his head again, it was far too heavy. D-16 rose as if in slow motion and turned to face Sentinel with rage and grief written into every motion.
Ironhide tore his gaze away to watch his fellow miners as they stared transfixed at the violence. Arcee with her normally bright eyes pinched in sorrow and Sideswipe with his face painted in shock and Jazz standing with his neck craned and an unreadable expression behind his visor. And Ironhide registered, however faint and fleeting before the chaos set in, before Sentinel was torn asunder, before Iacon began to fall, that Chromia was nowhere to be seen.