Femme For Hire

Authors Note: I'm SO sorry for being so late! I hit a major stumbling block with this. It took a few hearty smacks of get-up-and-go to bring this back on track. I'm writing this for optimus prime007, and I hope it meets with her approval. She's battling fires near her home right now – be safe girl! On another note, I'm getting an Autobot tattoo done sometime in the next few months. Have wanted one for twenty years, and now I'm taking steps to make it happen. I've learned of some other authors that also have one. Onya guys! Very brave.

Chapter 3

Elita One groaned. A lucky shot... a lucky shot. Just one shot, and everything had gone to the pit.

Ironhide was right. She wouldn't tell Chromia that in so many words - she'd never see the end of the blue femmebot's indulgent smirks - but he was. The black mech had told her time after time that if you made one mistake in combat, no matter how small, it was often amplified and thrown back at you at ten times the magnitude.

One unfortunate encounter with a rogue re-wired Sentinel robot and she'd been badly damaged and barely escaped with most of her body intact. The huge servant-type robot had once been used by the Autobot Council to guard the Autobots before Optimus Prime had come along – that was until the Decepticons started capturing them, ripping out their logic circuits, and re-programming them to attack anything wearing an Autobot symbol.

Elita turned her head to run her gaze over the smoking twitching headless body of the Sentinel. She had won the fight, and despite being shot (the lucky shot); allowing her foe to get in several more blows that had ripped her badly before she fought back; she was satisfied with her performance (knocking out a Sentinel was a major feat; they were dumb, but several times her size and ten times as strong). But what good was winning when she was now in no condition to make it back home?

She drew a harsh gasp through her intakes and lifted her mangled right arm up in front of her face, rotating it to get a better perspective. The rose tinted metal was mangled. Sparking flashes of tortured and ripped blue circuitry hit her optics. Her forearm armor shredded and crushed. Her optics were having trouble focusing, so to really see what the damage was, she was peering at her wounds close-up, and if they appeared bad out of focus, close up was murder. She didn't know how Ratchet dealt with this stuff orn after orn. She'd go mad. Looking down at the rest of her messed up body made her cringe. Optimus wasn't going to be impressed with the state of his femme. He'd fritz. A torn arm, ripped midsection, split rotor cuffs in her hips, a misaligned left thigh so she walked by doing a strange hop and shove...

Shoving some of her worst thoughts into the back of her CPU, her head sagged between her knees, her elbows propped on each of her thighs. She shifted her weight on her aft, feeling the wall at the back of her hips. She knew the glittering stains on the floor were hers. Old stains didn't reflect light. Fresh ones did. She could track her own desperate path down the corridor by the twinkling pretty wet spots and it was actually very artistic. Pretty little spots.

Spots made of her energon... splashed in random patterns.

She released a jerky rush of air out of her intakes and wondered how angry Optimus would be when he took count of how much of a transfusion she would need when their base supplies were running so low. Her optics looked up to peer tiredly over her limp hands. Now she knew her CPU was fragged. Optimus didn't get angry with things like that. Concerned, yes. Worried. Solemn. A little fritzy. A weak smile graced her mouthplates as she thought that. Her giant, all-powerful, gorgeous, aft-wrecking, mech. Fritzing.

Currently she was allowing herself the luxury of one small 'woe-is-me' huddle on the floor while her systems cooled down and she raked through her CPU for what to do next. She was hazily remembering what Optimus had been teaching her about being a Commander. He'd managed to break her of making harsh hasty decisions when she first took command of the Femme Division, and he'd been coaching her into taking a step back, re-analysing, and not losing sight of her ultimate goal while blowing some Decepticon's head back to Primus. The massive mech had drummed into her that plans mattered, and they were not to be tossed aside in lieu of downing as many 'Cons as she could get in her target sights on the battlefield.

Her optics shuttered open and closed tiredly, an echo of how Prime often flicked his when he was under stress. Even when Optimus was recharging, if he was badly stressed his optic sweepers often started moving, his mouthplates frowning. It made him look like an upset sparkling.

Everything had been going so well. She'd made it to Kaon undetected. Broken through the feeble underpowered defences guarding the perimeter. Downloaded the information on Megatron that Autobot intelligence required. Then hot footed it out of there.

Maybe she'd been too hasty in thinking the mission was over with when she had left Kaon's perimeter...

"Hey... HEY! You're a femme!"

Elita lifted her head wearily, pulling her rifle across her lap with her trigger finger on the power trigger. Her optics focused blearily on the green small mech standing in front of her. It was getting harder to focus. A hand grabbed at her shoulder and jerked her towards him. A cry of pain was wrenched from her mouthplates, the sensation shoving her CPU into defence mode.

Snapping her rifle up to shove it under the chin of her assailant, she glared at him with a growl. "Let go – NOW."

Another hand reached out and plucked her gun away from her. Damn it. Why hadn't she paid more attention to what was happening around her? Maybe she'd blacked out for a moment. She couldn't be sure.

"She's a pretty one. Real pretty." An arrogant mech voice came from her left. Hands grabbed the sides of her head and whipped her around to face him. Her body screamed with pain. "I think I know this one... seen her before somewhere. Doesn't matter though, she's ours now!"

The two mech's – one small, one large, but both very ugly and wearing scratched and faded Decepticon insignia's – looked down at her, making comments and poking her occasionally. The weakness flooding her red physique made Elita angry. To come all this way, to go through so much, only to be downed by a slagged Sentinel and roughed up by some lowly 'Cons. She hated her luck.

"You know what?" The bigger one leered at her. "She does look good. Someone's roughed her up, but I don't mind damaged goods. 'Specially when they're cute Autobot goods."

Elita groaned. Great. Fragging wonderful. Nevermind what Optimus and the Council had been worried about; that she'd be terminated by a Decepticon party; she was going to be done in by an overzealous Sentinel bot and two slagged up bottom-of-the-heap Decepticons who stumbled across her by accident!

Well, she wasn't going to give in to these slagtards. Smirking internally, she activated her concealed shoulder-mounted missile launchers – and froze in disbelief when the left one spluttered and died before it had finished transforming, and the other refused to activate at all.

Oh Primus. This was embarrassing.

She tried shunting in a blaster from her subspace pocket. That refused to open too, and to add insult to injury, smoke rose in little trickles from her shoulder launchers. Not content to refuse to work, now they were smouldering at a high temperature in her shoulder compartment and threatening to melt her wires. She cursed silently.

...had Optimus ever had a day like this?!

"She's tryin' to shoot us, Dax!"

Her reactions were too screwed up and slow to stop them. One of the mechs threw a hard punch across her jaw, followed by ramming a foot into her midsection. Elita reeled sideways, hitting the ground. Her systems began shrieking with error messages.

"Femmes should know their place!" Daxis snarled.

He grabbed her by the throat and lifted her up. Elita was a big femme but the angry mech was bigger than her – and stronger – and he hadn't already gone fist-to-fist with a Sentinel. He swung her around and tossed her into the wall. Hard. She hit it and slid down to the ground in a disorganised jumble of broken limbs. By now Elita was hard pressed to stay coherent at all. She was leaking enough energon to make Ratchet have a fit, she couldn't stand, one optic had stopped working and the other was at less than thirty percent efficiency.

Daxis dropped to one knee in front of her with fake sympathy. "Awww, is the pretty femme all banged up? Does it hurt?" His hand reached out and acted like a claw as he closed his fingers over her upper chest plating and began digging his fingertips in. "I know who you are; Elita One, right?"

"Elita One?" The smaller mech said excitedly, bouncing behind him. "She's Prime's female!"

"Yes." Daxis narrowed his optics. "Optimus Prime's femme. It's our lucky moment."

Elita coughed on a thin stream of energon flooding her mouth. Her hands grabbed at his wrists, trying to wrench his hands off her body and away from her chest.

"That means we get to use his goods. This is gonna be great." Daxis leered at her. "Hey Fender, we're gonna be going where only the great Optimus Prime has been before! How ya like the sound of that, little whore? I bet you'll like us better than him. I can't see Prime as being a great interface! He probably does it in the dark, the fraghead." He thrust his hips back and forth crudely.

Elita's optics shuttered with pain. They were talking about raping her... She tried blindly to activate any weapons system she had left but nothing was working. Error after error assaulted her CPU. She had nothing left. The thought of these two delinquents touching her like only Optimus had the right to -

"NO~!"

Her scream and desperate writhing only made the 'Cons laugh. Daxis broke off his laugh when one of her flailing feet collided with his crotch.

Daxis dropped her and grabbed at his groin, "FRAG! Slag it... OWW!" His optics latched onto Elita crumpled at his feet. "You just ruined any chance you had of being treated with consideration, whore!"

Crouching down on the floor next to her, he held her down with one hand on her throat and shoved the other hand into her chest, breaking open her flaming red chestplates and partially revealing her pulsing spark. She arched up in pain, shuddering violently.

Gathering the last of her strength, Elita strained against him and let forth a scream of fury. It didn't stop him. He wrenched her fully open and cupped her lifeforce with his hand, squeezing hard, getting another scream from her; this time one of agony.

"How's that feel? HUH?!" Daxis demanded.

The thunderous report of a cannon at close range made Elita's vision go white.

"How's THAT feel, slaghead?"

From where she had been dropped onto the floor, Elita could see a pair of huge black feet and on the other side of them she could see the body of Daxis – with a smoking pit on top of his ribcage where his head and shoulders used to be.

Ironhide!

The black mech's famous cannons activated again – this time the smaller Decepticon was the target. He was blown backwards in a mess of parts and exploded limbs to land many lengths away from her. Elita curled up on the floor instinctively protecting her exposed chest. Her euphoria at seeing someone she knew in her darkest hour was fading into a strange sort of numbness.

"Primus... Elita!"

Thick black arms topped with spinning hot cannons cradled her up off the ground. Looking up at her saviour, the femme lay weakly in his embrace.

"H-Hide?"

Her hand reached up for him but couldn't make the distance. Ironhide bent his head down over her, pressing his cheek to hers and rocking on his crouched knees, "Yeah, it's me. I've got you."

His gaze ran over her chestplates, seeing the horrific damage to her upper section. He didn't understand how she was still functioning. He winced at her hot energon dripping over his cannons and sizzling. It was coming out from so many places on her body, it was terrifying him.

"...Ironhide..." Elita's hand gripped the outer rim of his chest armor, holding on so hard it was like if she let go, so would her grip on life.

"Hold on, alright? Just stay with me, don't you dare give in."

Something in her chest besides her spark hissed loudly and sent white sparks shooting over his face. Her hand fell back from his armor. Her lone functioning optic stuttering and blinking out.

"ELITA!"