//------------------------------// // Chapter Five: Introductions and Interruptions // Story: Transformers: Deep Space Exploration Team // by TcogArchitect //------------------------------// Published December 4th, 2012 Chapter five: Introductions and Interruptions Dark Lance awoke from the re-energizer station to find the image panels that showed the exterior of the ship brightening his room with the sun that had begun to rise. He moved the various panels of his body, and went through his morning systems check before stepping out of the small chamber that he had gotten into the habit of calling his bed, after some lengthy discussions with the inhabitants of one of the previous worlds. He stretched, ensuring that he was fully mobile, and opened the door to the lodging corridor. Moving towards the bridge, he reminded himself of the meeting with the ponies, and wondered about the "cutie marks" that their previous conversation had ended with. ^Rainbow Dash said that their cutie marks symbolized their special talent, which explains why they each had a different one,^ he thought as he passed a group of repair drones working on one of the main relay conduits in the wall. ^But none of my team have one. Will this cause problems? How unusual is it for a pony to not have one? And most importantly, is it easily noticeable?^ Questions raced through his mind, one following right after the other, until he reached the bridge. There, he found Burnout looking at the holo-display, going through various parts of the ship, and occasionally typing on the small touch pad that was hooked up to it. Across the room, Bunker was laying on his back underneath the gun controls, engrossed in what he was doing. "Where's Skybreaker?" Dark Lance said. Bunker thoroughly ignored him, forcing Burnout to answer instead. "He's outside, working on the main weapon systems," she said, returning to her work. Dark Lance moved to the door, pressing the open button before transforming back to his four-legged disguise. He then took off, letting the door close behind him, circling back to find Skybreaker. It didn't take long for him to find the yellow and green scout, who was working underneath the main gun. "How's it coming?" he asked, landing a few steps away. "Alright," his subordinate's bottom half replied, the rest of him concealed by the panel he was under, and not stopping in his work. "The primary servos are bent, and there are a couple of busted hydraulics in here, but none of the load-bearing portions look like they're in imminent danger of breaking. I just want to get it back up and running so that we have it in case Bloodwing and his cronies decide to show up. Can you hand me that wrench?" He pointed to a socket wrench near Dark Lance's feet. The commander picked it up in his teeth, and spat it out underneath the panel Skybreaker was working on. "Well, I'm going into town to meet with the locals, and see what I can find out about this place," he said, turning towards the direction of the town. "Alright," the reply came from under the panel, along with the resumed sounds of repairs being made. "Tell 'em I said 'hi'." With that, Dark Lance took to the air, making a circle above the half-buried vessel to ensure that an attack was not imminent, before heading in the direction of the town. Landing just before he cleared the last of the trees, Dark Lance took a better look at the town which he had only seen so far shrouded in darkness. From his current position, he was slightly above the town, giving him a good look at the layout. There were a number of rather large, wooden structures huddled together, with a tree cottage set apart from them near the edge of the forest. Another tree with windows in the upper branches near an open area in the middle of town caught his eye, recognizing it from Burnout's description as the library. He could also see a larger, multi-story building a little ways in in the middle of another clearing. There was a barn visible on the far side of the town, which he guessed was part of Sweet Apple Acres, but the building that stood out most was a small, oddly shaped structure tucked into the south side of the town. It caught his attention because it looked like it was made of cake, frosting and other edible materials that looked strangely similar to sweets he had seen from other planets, both in person and in the records he had received from the other teams. He took a breath, using the fresh air to cool his circuits so he would be able to operate properly in case of an emergency. Then he started down the dirt path towards the town. When he entered the town itself, he became aware of a quickly growing number of eyes watching him. Glancing around, he realized he was getting numerous strange looks from the ponies in town. ^Uh-oh,^ he thought, worrying that his lack of a cutie mark had already given him away. ^I need to get over there fast.^ He quickened his pace slightly, trying not to look nervous, but he kept getting weird stares, and breathed a sigh of relief as the library came into view, releasing the air that had heated up as he had been worrying. When he got inside the darkened library, he closed the door behind him just before a loud bang startled him back to looking at the suddenly bright room, expecting to find one of the Decepticons who had also crashed holding the ponies hostage. Instead, a cloud of confetti and streamers drifted down onto his face, their source appearing to be a light blue cannon that Pinkie Pie was standing behind. Twilight, who was standing in a line next to the other ponies, the Cutie Mark Crusaders standing in front of them with a small, dragon-like creature like they were taking a picture, gave her an annoyed look. "Pinkie, I told you you weren't supposed to do that until we were sure he was okay with it," she said, obviously unappreciative of the pink pony's confetti cannon. "Aw, c'mon Twilight, you didn't even let me get a welcome party ready, and I couldn't just let such a perfect opportunity like that pass without doing anything," she replied to her friend, who still didn't look too happy about not being listened to. "Besides, he'll be fine, he doesn't even look worried." Which was technically true, but only because he had so much practice at keeping his composure in tense situations. He had already prepared his body to transform and begin combat between the time the cannon went off and he realized it was just party decorations coming from the muzzle. Shaking the confetti and streamers from his head, Dark Lance finally spoke. "It's alright, Twilight, she just startled me, that's all," he reassured her, returning his insides to their correct positions, allowing him to move freely again. "Besides, I'm more curious about why the ponies around here have been staring at me." Looking back at him, the purple unicorn then noticed that in addition to his horn, he also had wings, something she had not seen in the dark of the previous evening. "Well aside from your lack of a cutie mark, I'd say they were staring at the fact that you look like an alicorn," she said, studying this new discovery. "There are only three in Equestria, and they're all royalty," she explained, while Dark Lance cursed himself for choosing something so obviously less common than the others. Too late now though, since the ship didn't have the materials necessary to create a new form for him. He sighed, panels on the back of his current head allowing cool air to move across the circuits making up part of his main processor, letting him relax a bit. "So you said you aren't actually a pony, right?" Rainbow Dash said, breaking the silence. "Can we see what you really look like?" Dark Lance thought for a moment, making sure there wasn't a reason not to show them. Satisfied that he couldn't come up with one, he nodded, then took a step back so that he would have enough room. He transformed more slowly than he usually would, allowing the others to see more clearly how his two forms were able to change into one another. First, he stood up onto his hind legs, turning one backwards and flipping his foot down, then copying the motion with the other. His forelegs then extended away from his body, and the coverings on his lower arms flipped up, revealing his hands. Simultaneously, his wings refolded themselves back to their flight pack positions. Finally, the top of his head and horn flipped onto their storage space on his back, as the neck and head of his beast mode fell forward and compressed into his chest plate, the ears flipping up and back to give his shoulders extra protection. His tail plate was the last to change, splitting in the middle and moving to either side of his waist as the fibers reformed into his sickles. Now in his robot mode, the ponies in front of him gasped in amazement, looking up and down at him with awe as they tried to grasp how the pony that had been standing in front of them could turn into something so vastly different. ^Well that reaction could have been a lot worse,^ he thought to himself as the ponies processed what they had just seen. "Now that was pretty awesome. I've never seen anything like that before," Rainbow Dash said, obviously impressed with his transformation. The others had similar looks of amazement on their faces, telling him that the Changelings they had mentioned were not, in fact, anything like him. "Yes, bravo, bra-vo," a mocking tone called from Dark Lance's right. He snapped his body around, readying himself again for a fight. On top of the bookshelf, next to an open window, a red alicorn with a dark brown, slicked-back spiky mane and short, similarly colored tail, was laying comfortably, a mean smirk plastered across his face. Dark Lance's eyes widened in shock, a habit he had picked up from various species that he found was actually useful in ensuring that he knew what he was looking at. This time, though, he didn't need the extra confirmation. The smiling, blood red alicorn looking at him was, without a doubt, Bloodwing. He drew his shield and lance, preparing himself to intercept the Decepticon leader if he tried to attack the surprised and confused ponies a few steps away. Bloodwing, however, simply laughed. "Oh, please, Lance, do you honestly think I came here just to fight you?" he taunted, allowing one of his forelegs to dangle lazily off the shelf, the other supporting his head. "I want to make a deal." "What kind of deal?" Dark Lance asked suspiciously, the apertures in front of the blue lights in his eyes narrowing, making it easy for the tense, worried ponies that were now standing protectively around the fillies to see that he didn't trust the relaxed Cybertronian. "I want to help you leave," Bloodwing replied as he inspected his hoof for dirt and cosmetic damage. "I'm even willing to let you use parts from the Darksword to repair your ship." "What's the catch?" Dark Lance asked, fairly certain he already knew the answer. "You have to do so immediately," his enemy responded, now laying with his hooves crossed, like he was sitting at a business table. "Without further interference in our affairs." Dark Lance didn't have to think for even a nanosecond, his answer forming in his voice box before Bloodwing was even finished speaking. "No deal!" he proclaimed in an angry, indignant tone. "I don't know why you even bothered coming here, if those were your terms. Like I'd ever leave a planet behind, knowing you were going to have your way with it!" He moved into a battle pose, his right arm pointing his lance right at Bloodwing, the other arm, with his shield, ready to swing forward to defend or, if necessary, slash at his opponent with the blades fastened to the top. Bloodwing sighed, and turned around as he got up to move towards the window behind him. "Well, I *had* hoped you would finally be greedy and give up for once to spare yourself some pain, but I suppose that's not going to happen." The red alicorn spread his wings, and took off out the window, heading off into the distance. "You're slaggin' right it's not going to happen!" the unhappy Autobot leader yelled after him. He waited a moment before putting his weapons away to make sure he wouldn't have to defend the town from the turned-down Decepticon. After he had relaxed his position, the others turned towards him. "Who the hay was *that*?" a shaken Twilight asked him, worry coating her voice. "Bloodwing," he growled, grinding some of the smaller gears in his neck to produce the guttural sound. "He's the leader of the Decepticon Deep Space Exploration Team, and he's one of the most calculating individuals I've met. He and I have been fighting each other for a long time, and his ship firing on us was what caused my team to crash-land here in the first place." He glared at the open window, silently debating his next move.