Work Text:
"Okay, let's give this a try," Mikaela said, shaking her arms and legs a bit like she was about to run a race, completely at ease with her nudity, a precaution for the first trial of the invention.
Ratchet tried not to let his anxiety blossom out into his field. She was far too adept at sensing their energies now, and he did not wish to detract from her excitement. Wheeljack's field was all giddy anticipation, his head fins flashing merrily as Mikaela touched the sequence on the epidermal terminal on her upper wrist.
Instantly, the air around her appeared to shimmer briefly as the nanite symbionts in her cells accessed the subspace dimensional pocket Wheeljack had developed. Just as suddenly, the organic member of the medic's cohort was covered head to toe in living Cybertronian alloy, thin enough for her frame to carry, but still providing a great deal of protection thanks to the energy shielding the armor's nanites provided.
The visor over her eyes lit up bright white and then settled into a brilliant blue.
"Whoa," her voice came out sounding slightly more resonant through the vocalizer of the helm. "This is so weird."
"Define weird, Mikaela. How do you feel?" Ratchet asked, initiating several dozen different sensor scans of both her own organic systems and the complex Cybertronian systems of the armor that now enveloped her.
"I didn't expect it to feel so much... a part of me. Like my own skin."
"It should, if everything is working optimally," Wheeljack said, speaking fast in his excitement. "The microfiliments that connect the armor to your brain and central nervous system should give you just that feeling. You should be able to access numerous armor functions on your HUD just by thinking about them. Try accessing the chromonanites."
"How...oh, just by thinking about it. Wow!"
The surface of the armor blurred, and suddenly the basic silver had shifted into a gunmetal grey that was almost black.
Ratchet cocked an optical ridge at the choice.
"What? Flattery will get me bigger guns," she said, and then laughed brightly as she added a set of v-shaped stripes in a brilliant blue that bordered on indigo.
"Very nice!" Wheeljack said enthusiastically. "Prime will be so pleased."
"Notice she didn't pick anything from yer color scheme, doc" Jazz said, sauntering in as though he had not just raced across the Mars base when he'd gotten the comm that the test had begun.
"Nor yours, I'll note, you cheeky slagger," Ratchet retorted, his field pulsing briefly with annoyance.
"What? Lady already has a visor like mine. Two hot silver bods with visors would be too much sexy for this system." Jazz ducked deftly out of the way when Ratchet swatted at his helm.
"Okay, I'm going to try moving," Mikaela announced when she had finished adding details and highlights to the armor that wrapped her, giving her the streamlined appearance of a deadly little femme. Ratchet felt his spark spin faster in response.
Her first couple of steps were hesitant, but soon she was walking, and then jogging around the room as though she'd always had metal skin, the solid sound of her footfalls on the floor a comfort to all three of the mechs present because of what it represented in terms of protecting the organic member of Prime's cohort.
"Try something acrobatic, Mikaela," Wheeljack suggested. "The tension cabling in the armor can amplify your movements."
"It will still hurt when you fall," Ratchet cautioned. "Though not much unless you are in danger of doing something that could breach the protective layers or injure your actual body."
"When I fall? Thanks for the vote of confidence," Mikaela complained before starting across the room with a loping stride toward the wall, with the intention of launching herself into a backflip off of it. Only she didn't realize how much 'assistance' the armor would give and ended up with an added half rotation, landing flat on her back with a loud crash.
"Ow," she said, giving herself a shake as she got up. "But not as much ow as that would have been," she added.
"Do that again," Wheeljack urged, clearly pleased. "The proprioceptors are still calibrating to your own systems. That shouldn't happen a second time."
Mikaela gave the inventor a salute and ran for the wall again, this time executing the flip with the same grace she had learned in Jazz's training, only with a far bigger motion. She launched into a back handspring as soon as her feet hit the ground.
"Yes! That feels amazing!" she pronounced, this time running toward the three mechs and, with a brief burst of code through the comms that had years ago been implanted in her brain, signaled Jazz to launch her from his clawed hands up to Ratchet in a coordinated move she could use to inflict a quick and deadly strike in battle. Except that as she got close, she suddenly stumbled as the silver mech's field hit the receptors in the armor and an electric shiver of pleasure raced all over her new outer layer.
"What is that?" Mikaela gasped, falling against Jazz who crouched and wrapped his arms around her helpfully.
"Your suit's EMF sensors are teeking his field, and transmitting the data in a form your nervous system can recognize" Wheeljack explained helpfully, even as Jazz gave a low purr into her audio, modulating said field so that another warm rush washed over her, then deepened and seemed to push into her core and up her spine.
Her own sense of those fields had been growing with the changes her frequent exposure to spark energy had wielded in her ever so receptive subatomic particles. But this was something completely new.
"Ya like that?" Jazz said in a low voice as he pushed his field into her again, running a claw along her plating with far less caution than he would normally need to touch her with.
"I... oh slag yes," she moaned, before extracting herself from the deadly silver embrace. "But I promised someone else that he'd get first go at testing the haptic sensors," she said shakily.
"Prime ain't here," Jazz crooned.
"She didn't promise Prime," Ratchet interrupted, static lacing his tone as his optics took in the form of the lithe femme with near feral intensity. "I have the proper sensor suite to be sure that the suit's haptics and EMF sensors are properly... calibrated to Mikaela's central nervous system."
Mikaela gave her commander a cheeky wave and winked her visor before taking a leap to climb up her former mentor's chassis, who ushered her into one of the medical bay's private rooms without a backward look.
"What do the humans call that? Getting pwned?" Wheeljack asked innocently, his head fins laughing with color.
"Mute it, Wheeljack," Jazz pouted.