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"Come on, hit me!" Wheeljack said, with a wide grin and a strong stance.
Miko shifted her feet - the Apex Armor's feet - more solidly on the ground.
"You sure, Jackie?" she taunted, flashing a smile of her own to him from between her raised fists. The Armor's raised fists.
Wheeljack's mouth ticked a bit.
"Don't get cocky, kid," he warned, still playful. His swords came swinging in front of him, his guard sure and sturdy. To make him move would be no easy task.
Then again, easy was boring.
Miko grinned just for herself, and she launched forward, leaving only dust behind herself.
Wheeljack immediately, easily, sidestepped her assault.
"Too slow," he teased, simply pivoting in place then tapping the Armor's back with a sword.
Miko pivoted too, and Wheeljack evaded that punch with just a jump back, until his back was almost against the rocky cliff. She jumped too, crossing the distance with just a step. This time Wheeljack stopped the overhead strike of her arm with his two swords, crossing them in front of his face. The Armor's arm was stuck, unable to reach him.
"Nice try," he said.
So Miko drew the arm back and sent the other one towards his face. Once again, Wheeljack was faster. He ducked under her punch. Then he rushed forward when Miko was blinded by the falling pebbles. She had punched too far, too strongly, and her fist had met the cliff instead of Wheeljack's head.
But she didn't have the time to think about a cloud of dust. Wheeljack's shoulder met the Armor's front violently, making her stumble back a few steps. Then his sword entered her field of vision again, fast, swinging for her face. Miko hastily brought an arm up. The blade screeched against the plates of the Armor, slid against the large visor, and didn't even leave a trace on it.
Miko still took another step back when Wheeljack used the momentum to send his leg towards her shoulder. She tried grabbing him, in vain. She could only send a punch towards him. The punch barely brushed his side, and with a Oomph Wheeljack let go of the Armor.
He didn't stop the assault. Miko didn't step back again, but she couldn't gain the upper hand either. All her punches and kicks were parried with practiced ease, even those she made up on the spot.
"I'm getting bored here, kiddo," Wheeljack taunted after Miko's hook only slid against his sword. He ran towards her and planted his other sword on the ground. A move she had seen him do, once. He would use that sword as a support to swing and send his legs towards her and push her back again.
"I'll show you-" Miko smiled as she sent her foot to meet him in the air, "bored!"
Her armored foot smashed against Wheeljack with a Crack, and he went flying in the other direction, into the cliff.
"Ah!" Miko laughed. "Who's cocky now?!"
Wheeljack didn't answer. He didn't jump back at her from behind the dust cloud, either.
"Wheeljack?"
He must be waiting for her to drop her guard, surely. Any second now, he'd swing at her with his sword…
"…Jackie?"
He should have attacked again by now, right? He wasn't the kind of bot to lie in wait. Unless…
"Come on, it's not funny."
Unless he was trying to scare her.
Miko wasn't scared. She just… She just decided to meet him where he was. To spare the old bot a short walk. That was all.
The dust cloud was thinning, and Wheeljack still didn't appear.
She walked past the sword still planted on the ground, the one he had leaned on for that move. She took a few more steps, past it, until she could see the cliff face through the dust. There were quite a few misshapen forms at the bottom of it. Because there were always weird rocks at the bottom of cliffs. It was normal. There was no reason for anything to not be normal. At any moment Wheeljack would jump at her from some hidden position and she'd laugh at-
She stopped in front of another sword. The weapon was laying on the ground, alone.
How would Wheeljack attack her without his swords?
Another step, careful not to - eh - not to step on the blade. Then she couldn't pretend anymore that the dust was clouding her vision.
There he was. Crumpled at the bottom of the cliff face, surrounded with rocks and pebbles, under a large cavity in the rocky face.
Had she…?
He wasn't moving at all. Her feet were heavy when she approached, the sound echoing all around, and he still didn't move.
The little winglets on his back were all smashed. His chest plating was dented deep by the large imprint of an armored foot. Blue energon was sluggishly leaking from the seams.
Had she done that?
"Wheeljack…?"
He didn't even stir.
The following moments were particularly blurry for Miko. She scrambled for the communicator that Bulkhead had insisted was added to the Apex Armor. She reached out to Wheeljack to remove a rock from the gap between his shoulder plates and his necks cables. She talked to- someone. Ratchet, or Magnus. Maybe both. She tried to breathe and could only gasp.
The familiar whir and green light of a ground bridge behind her finally brought her relief.
"I- We- We were just training, I didn't mean-" she tried to explain. Ratchet barely took the time to glance at her, before he rushed to Wheeljack's unmoving frame.
"Miko?"
"Bulk!" Miko tried to throw her arms around him. "I'm sorry, it was an accident, I didn't mean to-!"
Bulkhead's hand came to rest on the Armor's shoulder, stopping her and steadying her. Then he brought his other arm to hold her and force her to look away from where Ratchet had gotten his tools out.
"I know, Miko," he said, and Miko knew he sounded distant because he was looking at Wheeljack's destroyed body. "I know."