Partnering with someone has different meanings. For most (and normal people), it's working with one another until the job at hand is complete. Separate ways are made afterward.
For some, partners are people in a team or group; they work together to come out on top, win an award.
But expectations of both her trainer and her father are different. For them, it's you work with your partner until you die in combat, they die in combat, or your faction comes out on top.
And there was no glimmer of hope in any of those options for Ryanna. She had no plans of dying of a combat-related cause, she certainly wasn't going to intentionally or even accidentally let him die, and the Decepticons are all more powerful than ever. So she told herself to just suck it up and be glad that he was only a couple inches taller that her.
Sure, he was a Mini-Con, she didn't have anything against Mini-Cons. She actually was good friends with a few.
It was just that he was new. There was no, 'Oh, by the way, we have a visitor coming over today and he's bringing his Mini-Con,' like it was when she met Jetstorm and Slipstream.
It was more of a direct order. Optimus had taken in a large group of refugee Mini-Cons and was assigning partners. Something crossed his processor that Ryanna, who was 5'4" and nowhere near a Deployer, needed one to be paired with her.
So she was assigned to Buzzstrike as a combat partner. Optimus would act as his deployer, even though he was an Ax Weaponizer.
Ryanna never questioned it.
Training is long and extensively for those two, however.
It was a matter of Ryanna getting awkward about a move or having some trust issues, or Buzzstrike getting nervous and feeling like he'll fail the trial movement before even getting halfway through instructional periods with their trainer, Cliffjumper.
They weren't training today. Cliffjumper cleared them for partial time in the field.
And they got separated from Optimus in the middle of a mission to steal Energon from a Decepticon base.
So that partial time just turned into full-time.
"Watch our flank." She whispered.
Buzzstrike nodded, gripping onto her hand with his servo as he carefully placed his footing and watched their behind with Ryanna watching the front. They both agreed that she could better navigate than he could.
Of course, her listening wasn't that good. She so used to giant footsteps that it sounds quiet to her. Her lack of attention to sound almost got them caught at least twice.
She was praying to Primus that she would magically get better at hearing.
She stopped them at a corner and did her best to look. At that moment she saw one of her worst nightmares in battle: Shockwave. And the glint in his one red eye said that he was ready to kill something, and he would be more than glad to make it a recruit Mini-Con and the daughter of a Prime.
She wasn't going to let that happen.
She sucked in air when she whipped back around to the other side.
"Who?" Buzzstrike asked as quietly as possible.
"Shockwave." She replied, blinking hard a couple of times. Ryanna was about ready to just go to sleep for millennia. She hasn't slept in 3 days.
She looked around the wall again. Shockwave was too busy working to notice the curly blonde haired 12 billion-year-old with random faded blue streaks in her hair that she was dying to get rid of.
