Cybertron's Outcasts; The Crash Landing

Chapter Twenty Four- Locate

    "There are so many ships on this Primus forsaken planet."
    Raistlin didn't reply to Raptore's random comments. They had been flying for several hours now, and Raptore made some comment or another every few minutes. Raistlin didn't mind, but the comments were never too encouraging.
    Tiger Lily had fallen asleep in her feline form near the foot of Raptore's console and Ferris was off fixing random damaged components around the ship. It was obvious, with nothing to do, they were getting bored.
    "Have you found any ships similar to yours?" Raistlin asked, walking over to the console and peering at it.
    "Nope," The dinobot replied.
    Raptore was looking at ships that had crashed into oceans, which wasn't unexpected, but it narrowed his search too much.
    "Why are you doing that?" Raistlin questioned.
    "Doing what?" Raptore seemed genuinely confused.
    "Narrowing your searches to the oceans."
    Raptore glanced at the map, made a face for a moment, then shrugged.
    "Well I assumed since I crashed in the ocean that my ship would have crashed in the same terrain."
    Raistlin understood the method that Raptore was using, but at the same time he didn't. He knew where Raptore was coming from on this, it was right to assume such a thing, but it was ignorant.
    "Didn't you get flung from your ship?" Raistlin questioned after some thought.
    "I think so." Raptore replied, "Why?"
    "I believe that the ship continued further after you were flung. You could have fallen into the water when the ship was just entering the atmosphere."
    Raptore nodded in response. Why hadn't he thought of that? Maybe all of the excitement of the past two days had been muddling his processor's function.
    "What do you suggest I do?" Raptore asked, typing another set of coordinates from another crash into the keypad of the console.
    "Widen your search to areas around where you fell." Raistlin suggested, "There is a possibility that it is on dry land."
    Raptore agreed, so he decided to look closer into the coordinate list that the old knight had given him. Instead of searching the oceans, he built a method that he called himself stupid for not using before. Though it was reasonable that he hadn't thought about it.
    On the map, he plotted the approximate point where he had crashed and where had met Raistlin. He vaguely remembered where Beelzebub had said they were when they crashed and plotted that too. Soon, he had a vague flight path of the Fire Light and the areas where it could have crashed.
    Luckily for the dinobot, there were very few charted crashes near the area that he had mapped. And only a few matched the description of his ship. It only took him a few minutes to find what he assumed was the crash site of the Fire Light.
    The description was very vague. Someone, most likely Ferris, was obviously too lazy to actually look into the crash. They probably didn't even visit the site. But he wasn't going to judge whoever wrote it right now, he just wanted to know if this was actually the ship or not.
    What was written is as follows.
The ship crashed earlier in the tenth cycle. Couldn't figure out how it crashed, but decepticon signals have been fleeting about it for weeks now along with a few bounty hunters from the Toxic Moon. So far there have been no signs of the commanders of the ship or life in general. I suspect that the ship was shot down in the atmosphere and was partially destroyed as it went down.
    Report unfinished, further investigation needed.
    Raptore looked closer into the location, seeing that there were, at that moment, several signals around the site.
    He clicked on the signals. There were three decepticon signals, four autobot signals, and five unknowns. Raptore looked into the unknown signals, which were only marked with identification numbers. One of them being GW-342408, which he recognized. He had memorized it years ago. It was Gearend's identification number.
    "Raistlin," Raptore called, causing the old knight to turn from his post at the control panel, "I think I found our ship."
    Raistlin raised an optic ridge and walked over again, looking at the map.
    "What makes you so sure?" The knight questioned.
    "See that signal right there?" The dinobot asked, pointing to one of the signals displayed on the map, "It belongs to one of my team members. I memorized his identification number."
    "Why did you do that?"
    "I kept forgetting it."
Raistlin rolled his optic.
"Where?" The knight asked, Raptore stepping aside so he could look at the map closer.
"I marked the coordinates." Raptore replied simply.
Raistlin tapped a few keys on the keypad, Raptore didn't quite catch the movements that he had made, but he assumed that he was saving the coordinates to his main computer.
He moved quickly, from the console to the control panel. He quickly typed the coordinates into it, a hologram of the same map appearing behind the console.    "Well, would you look at that," Raistlin mumbled, "Another unfinished report..."
    The knight momentarily glared at his minicon, who stepped underneath one of the control panels awkwardly.
    He continued to type into his keypad, pulling up another map beside it.
    "What are you doing?" Raptore questioned, shutting down the console that he had been using.
    "Running the coordinates through my ship's locator."
    Raptore  walked over and stood beside the old knight, looking at the locator map. The old knight lined them up, marking almost the exact point.
    "There are decepticon signals down there." Raistlin said.
    "You don't think that I noticed that?" Raptore asked, "Do you think I'm that blind?"
Raistlin rolled his optic.
"No," Raistlin said, "It is simply an observation. We may not be able to take them on our own."
"I know you're missing an optic, but can you not see the autobot signals down there? Not only that, but my friends are down there; they aren't too great with weapons, but they can kick aft."
Raistlin didn't like the language that Raptore was using, but he knew that he may have been right. There was never only one autobot anywhere, and Raptore seemed to have faith in his mock team.
                                                                   -!=!-
    The Court landed behind a rock about a mile away from the site. He assumed that the organic structure would shield his ship while they searched for Raptore's ship and team.
They stepped off the exit ramp, a cloud of heat smacking them in the face. Raistlin made a face at the heat, but Raptore didn't seem to mind it. It was to be expected, he was a dinobot, they naturally enjoyed warmer weather. The mysteries of dinobot biology would never be solved for the old knight.
    "Do you have a mobile scanner?" Raptore asked, his heels sinking into the sand of the desert as he stepped onto the terrain.
    "No," Raistlin said, "It was crushed when we were fighting the decepticons earlier."
    "Don't worry about it,"
    Raptore pulled an old looking datapad from his subspace and turned it on.
    "What is that?" Raistlin questioned.
    "It's and X-ray thing that Beelzebub gave me," Raptore said, "Have had it for years. Don't remember having to actually use it."
    Raistlin nodded. They could have used that earlier, but he decided not to question the scatter brained dinobot.
    "How does it work? You did say that it was an X-ray."
    "Well, if I type the conditions of the terrain, an identification number, or the formula for cybertronian alloy into here," Raptore explained, pointing to a small submission box in the top right corner of the datapad, "I'll be able to see anyone who is here."
    Raptore clicked in the submission box, typing in what Raistlin assumed was a formula and the identification number that he had listed earlier. The datapad took a few moments to process the information, when the information got through the results amazed Raistlin.
    The datapad displayed a 3-D map of the cave system and where and who were omitting signals. Five of them were recognized by the system and listed on the side of the pad's screen. They appeared in the forms of orange silhouettes, but who they were was quite obvious. There were a few autobots, only two that Raistlin recognized.
    He recognized two of the three decepticons. Starscream and Megatron. Why were they here? Raptore never mentioned anything about the two leading decepticons.
    "Who are they?" Raptore asked, "You're making a face."
    "Megatron and Starscream Raptore." Raistlin replied, looking at the youngling as if he blew something.
    "Oh no." Raptore mumbled.
    He looked at the X-ray again, seeing that some of the life signals were fading. His friends and the autobots seemed to be engaged in battle with the decepticons, and were losing.
    "Slag!" Raptore yelled, "They're aren't doing so good."
    He glanced at the data pad again, seeing that who he assumed was Megatron had hold of one of his team mates.
    "We need to do something..."
    "Don't be brash," Raistlin said, his battle mask slipping down over his face, "You obviously don't know what you are dealing with."
    "You're right," Raptore said, "I don't know what I'm doing or what I'm dealing with, but whoever that is, they are hurting my team. I'm quite sure that they have been through enough and are already injured. They could die!"
    "I'm aware of that, but we can't just go in blind."
    Raptore didn't agree with Raistlin, but there wasn't too much he could do. Raistlin was much older and much more experienced than he was, and there was not much he could do to wrangle the mech. Unless....
    Raptore knew he was going to regret this later... He side kicked Raistlin in the chassis, knocking the old mech over. He shifted form as he brought his pede back down. He was much faster in his alt mode.
    The dinobot bolted away from the ship and the downed mech and ran towards the mountain where his friend's signals were coming from.
    As Raptore disappeared in the distance, Raistlin righted himself, his minicons rushing out of the ship to see what had happened.
    "Damned youngling." Raistlin mumbled.
    "Are we going to follow him?" Tiger Lily asked.
    Raistlin nodded, transforming into an old cybertronian build tank. Tiger Lily and Ferris did the same, changing into their feline forms and sitting on the pieces of armor above the tank treads. Raptore was quick, it would take a while for him to catch up.
    Luckily for him, his old tank form was faster than others gave him credit for.
    He just hoped he would reach them in time.

(Hey everybody! Hope you are doing well!
Sorry that this chapter was so redundant, I needed to move the story along and couldn't just magically teleport Raistlin and Raptore into the desert.
Raptore is about to kick aft, or at least we hope. Someone is in danger and we need an update on how Prime and Beelzebub are doing.
I hope you liked the new chapter!
Love y'all!
-Smoothie)