Cybertron's Outcasts; The Crash Landing

Chapter Two- To Ash and Dust

Beelzebub groaned as her systems slowly came back online. Her optics onlined to almost complete darkness, which confused the femme.  She was laying on her chest, a piece of roof paneling laying on her back, straining her wings. Beelzebub glanced around, just to see that there was water centimeters in front of her face.

Beelzebub gasped and threw her hands out in front of her, pushing herself up as quick as she could with the slippery floor. The piece of roof paneling slid off her back, scraping one of her wings. She let out a squeak as the sensitive appendages were damaged.

As soon as she stood up, she realized that the floor was tilted. No, not just the floor, but the entire ship was tilted forward! Beelzebub glanced around again. The once familiar walls of the Fire Light were no longer recognizable.

Water was dripping from the roof, a black substance forming in the trails on the walls. There were rock formations sticking through the floor and roof. The entire front of the ship was flooded with murky water.

Beelzebub shivered, she hated water. It was cold and got in all the seams of her armor every time she went in. The back of the ship was lit dimly by what she assumed was outside light, though it wasn't enough to see clearly. She was lucky that she had a flashlight. Beelzebub pulled the aging spotlight from her subspace and flicked it on. It made a buzzing sound and slowly came back to life.

She checked her chronometer, trying to see how long she had been out for. Beelzebub's chronometer, however, had stopped working due to the amount of moisture in the air, which caused some doubt in her own senses.

Beelzebub shined the light into the murky water in front of her, assessing what she couldn't reach. The water had filled the ship up to  the medical bay, which was almost precisely half the ship; Which also meant that the energon storage across the way was unreachable, either that or the stores themselves had been ruined in the crash.

The crash! Where had her teammates been when the ship was torn apart? Did they make it? Were they unconscious in a safer place? Were they hurt somewhere else on the ship? Beelzebub didn't know, but needed to find them as soon as possible.

She was panicking now and she needed to stop to formulate a plan. She paced the small area, being sure she didn't slip on the damp metal of the flooring. First of all, she needed to triangulate the location of her teammates and figure out how bad their injuries were.

Beelzebub was a training medic, so she could probably help with smaller injuries, but couldn't do too much about larger ones. Now, where was everyone when the engine blew?

Harvenger was using the turrets, so he had to be in the back of the ship somewhere. She didn't remember seeing him come out of the turret station, which poked out slightly from the roof of the ship. He was probably dead, they were obviously in a cave and there was a possibility that the turret station was crushed when the ship crashed.

Raptore was in the engine room, so he probably was going to be the more injured out of the five of them. Beelzebub didn't want to get her hopes up, there was a possibility that he was dead as well, the normal cybertronian wouldn't survive an explosion like that.  Raptore was smarter than he acted though, he probably evacuated the space before the first explosion. And he was a Velecitronian, meaning he was quick.

Hawthorn and Gearend were both in the command center, which brought up the issue of having to swim down to get them. Hawthorn probably would be the last person to retrieve, she was the closest to the front of the ship.

But Gearend wasn't strapped into anything like the other two, so there was a possibility that he had fallen into the watery abyss below the ship. That was only if the windshield was broken. Gearend could possibly be perfectly fine and stuck behind one of the consoles.

Beelzebub needed to look on the bright side when it came to these things, she wanted her team to be okay, but there were some many negatives in this situation. She needed her friends to be alive. How would she get through this without at least one of them?

-!=!-

Toxin was tired of waiting for activity on the Fire Light, nothing seemed to have happened since they crashed over a century ago. Maybe this wasn't worth it? No, those insolent bots stole from him and he would not stand for it! No one stole from him and got away without dismemberment.

His ship, the Toxic Moon, had been hidden behind Earth's moon to avoid being detected by any cybertronians that may have already been on the planet. The last thing the bounty hunter needed was interaction with the crazy brutes that were led by Megatron, or the foolish idiots led by the false Prime.

"Joltshot" Toxin hissed to one of the bots at a console at the very front of the ship, "Any activity on that primus forsaken ship?!"

"No, sir," Joltshot replied, "There hasn't been since it crashed! I'm beginning to think that this is just a wild goose chase!"

"Watch your tone!" Toxin hissed, standing up from his throne-like captain's chair and walking over to Joltshot's console, the orange bot had a scowl on his face.

"I'm just saying," Joltshot retorted, crossing his arms, "We've been doing this for overly too long! You haven't even been paying us for this!"

There was a mumble of agreement around the bridge of the Toxic Moon , which caused Toxin to scowl, silencing them.

"There is so much else we could possibly be doing!" Joltshot growled, "Like actually working! We're bounty hunters, not outcast hunters!"

"You're right, Joltshot," Toxin said, "But you forget your place. They stole something that may be of great use to us. We need it back, and trust me, you will all be paid in due time."

Joltshot mumbled something under his breath and went back to work. Toxin strutted back over to his captain's chair, the tank of drug-like stimulant attached to his back making an obnoxious sloshing sound. He sat back down with a clunk and glared at the group of mismatched bots manning the stations.

"Does anyone else wish to question my reasoning?" Toxin hissed.

There was a collective 'no, sir' as almost every bot went back to work, Joltshot working with less gusto than usual.

"We will wait until we see some sort of activity near the ship, then we will retrieve what was stolen from us." Toxin announced, looking towards the green and blue planet with a menacing smirk on his face.

( I just wanna take a second to thank Ann_DJD  for supporting my stories and liking my art! Thank you so much, friend!)