The Intergalactic Highway

((OOC: heheh, I was actually waiting to Ven to catch up so I was lurking instead. I'll make one anyway since her route doesn't cross ours until much later.))

Booms echoed ahead of him as Orcariner gripped his carbine. He felt a mixture of nervousness and confidence at the same time. Kneeling down, then eventually entering a prone position, the Maximal raised his weapon to his right optic. Not only would laying down be more stable for his hands, but only his head and shoulders would be visible. His energon blades could easily act as shields should the Predacons returned fire. Two holographic rings appeared lined up together as makeshift sights due to the range. He kept the switch on the burst fire option as a precaution for his amateur-like marksman abilities.

"Heads up," radioed Orcariner to Icebreaker.

He took aim at the larger of the two Predacons, Steelclaw, and proceeded to exhale. He pulled the trigger three times.

Steelclaw was glad to see the Maximal had gotten away from Starshadow and the pod, and with his guass rifle to his optics, he followed Icebreaker's form with precision. He noticed Icebreaker shoot off his missile, but decided to let it go when he made a split-second decision about its trajectory. Then he pulled his own trigger- just a little too late it seemed as Icebreaker made a sudden turn and Steelclaw's rifle trained just enough to the right to miss. Then he saw the missile make a slight curl in the air and suddenly come at him with absolutely correct aim. Slag- that Maximal had used a heat-seeker.

He thought fast enough to deploy his PPC and fire it into the air to create another heat source, and even to jump desperately to his right, but the missile still came barreling into his left leg. Ah, well, at least it would have been a lot worse if he hadn't done anything. Ice quickly spread over the limb and even climbed a little bit up to his hip. It also managed to spread onto the hot ground- but most of that began melting with astounding immediacy.

Well, that was a mistake Steelclaw wasn't going to make again. Aiming his PPC to just skin past his leg, he quickly shore off the ice on the outside, and then he repeated the procedure for the the inside. Standing up awkwardly, he brought his left hand back and sent it crashing behind his left knee, cracking the ice in that joint that he could and could not see.

"Sir," he shouted to the Maximal in the distance as he pumped his rifle one-handedly, "I must thank you for the manner in which you keep choosing to cool me off." He brought his weapon back up to his optics and trained back on the penguin. Satisfied with his shot, he pulled the trigger once more. "You're not... considering defection are you?"

Steelclaw then noticed, to his surprise, the sound of a shot somewhere behind him accompanied by an ominous puff of sand going into the air just to his right. He didn't have much time to consider this before he was knocked over by a shot somewhere near his right shoulder- and this surprised him enough to not notice the third shot kick up sand to his left. Fortunately, he'd been hit where his beast mode leg rested on his back, so there wasn't too much that was hit vitally. But the second Maximal had definitely arrived.

He lifted himself to a kneeling position, and then, with his head still facing towards Icebreaker, he shouted to Ocariner. "You see? You've got this figured out." Then he ran with a slight limp (the ice had undoubtedly done something to his left leg's components, but he had no idea what) for a higher crest in the sand, a little bit behind the stasis pod. On the way, he looked over his shoulder to confirm the killer whale's position. When he made it to the crest, he positioned himself behind it, though with his head over the top for a vantage point on the battlefield. This had already become very interesting.

Starshadow snarled as the penguin did it again. "IT IS, YOU MORON!!" she pulled out her gun and fired as many times as possible and did a roundhouse kick at Icebreaker."NOW SCRAM, MAXIMAL!!"

"Yes!!!" cheered Orcariner, pumping his fist into the air.

This was truly the first time since the start of the Beast Wars that he had successfully landed a shot onto his target. Granted, it was a cheap shot from behind and only one out of three bursts hit their mark. It was quite possible that only one bullet in from that burst of three struck Steelclaw. Nevertheless, it was still a hit and Orcariner was planning on celebrating it. The Maximal looked back down his holograghic sights and his smile disappeared.

"Oh, blast," he said.

During Orcariner's moment of glory, Steelclaw had already gotten up and moved out of view. The giant continued looking around desperately for the Predacon but all he could see was Icebreaker and Starshadow fighting. Well, that and lots of sand.

"Hey," he radioed, "I lost sight of the bear!"

This was bad.

Valkyrie managed to dodge one of Frilla's acid charges, while using her wings as a shield to catch the rest.
She winched in pain as the organic material burnt of a large part of her armored wing.
The Maximal landed on her feet, and slid across the ground for a few meters, until she was right next to the crater which held the crashed pod.
The Maximal flier inspected the pod, while the 2 Predacons where still firing at her position.

Valkyrie called on to her wrist vulcans to pop-up, and fired multiple bullets at both Frilla as Sonar in short bursts.
She knew the Predacons wouldn't wait to rush her position , and she needed to use the time she had to activate the pod.
Quickly she connected an interface cable to the pod, with the connection suddenly kicked in one of her more common flaws in her system.
Her black-out caused one of Sonar's blasts hit the top of her right shoulder.
When Valkyries systems where rebooted after a few moments, she grabbed her shoulder, and realized she had connected fully to the crashed pod.
Without wasting a single moment, she activated the activation procedure, but noticed the DNA scanning program was damaged beyond her ability to repair it in the time she had.
It would just have to do.
If it would give the Maximal inside a fighting chance, anything was acceptable. So she started the program.
The Maximal flier disconnected the pod and reloaded her wing missile launchers and her wrist vulcan machine guns to help her to defend the pod against the Predacons, while it runs through the activation sequences.
She stood up briefly and fired a missile at Frilla and Sonar, before ducking into the crater again for cover.

Icebreaker watched and listened. He was rather surprised how quick Steelclaw was to use his Particle projection cannon against the missile, seemed it didn't need a charge time. He raised an optic ridge as Steelclaw asked if he would defect "I have no idea what your talking about, but if I had to listen to those screams all day.. I'd probably start soliciting about new teammates as well!" he stated, then made a rough turn as the sudden barrage from StarShadow flied towards him.

His optics dimmed under his visor as he turned towards her in a very low arc on the board again, suddenly seen falling off his board from a shot to the shoulder and chest. He slid along the ground, his chest feathers burned off from the plasma bolt with electrical sparks coming from the hole that had formed, his shoulder seemed shredded open along the edge, both points already weakened earlier from Frilla's acid attack."Ug!"

He raised his optic ridge as Orcariner radioed, bumping his gun on his hip he then pointed it towards StarShadow as she threw her kick in the air, not entirely sure why she did that. He then gripped the gun with both hands and fired off a ice blast at her upper torso aimed at her gun carrying arm and chest.

" How the...Calm down! You have the best sensor array out of all the Maximals. From what I saw he was heading for the rocks." He responded into the radio, it seemed the heat wasn't only getting to him and he was still far from used to battling with assistance. He gripped some sand as he got up slowly with creaking and sparking noises coming from his body, it hurt but he was the last to be willing to quit from a few flesh wounds or critical hits.

_____________________________

Glowstick floated into the area of battle, it wasn't exactly hard to find with the smoke from the crashed stasis pod and variety of gunfire. Glowstick, terrorize! he then shouted, his body transforming to robot mode in the air. He pointed his Feeder tentacles firing two wide laser blasts towards Valkyrie's missiles, causing them to overheat and prematurely explode. From what he could see, Valkyrie had reached the pod before the others, he looked in the air noticing Skyfire, his tentacles moving the rather heavy Laser Minigun which he was borrowing from Steelclaw toward's his right shoulder pointing it towards her. Ah.. So it's you. I was wondering when we'd meet, after all..

His voice then suddenly changed sounding like Cheetor's It was so much fun toying with you last time! he then chuckled darkly, the gun barrels then starting to spin and fire.

Starshadow looked at her frozen chest and arm and laughed. "Are you asking for a death wish?" she smirked and fired her plasma beam to melt the ice then switched her gun from her right hand to her left hand.

"Zira's training does wonders..." she smiled then fired off a large violet plasma ball from her mouth.

Icebreaker watched as she burned the ice away, then as she fired quickly pointed and fired his gun at the plasma ball flying towards him "Like I care!" he then shouted, the sudden impact of the Cryo energies with the plasma striked rather violently, the effects causing a sudden large explosion knocking the two away from each other with the stasis pod sliding away, the wind starting to pick up from with dust and sand from the explosion brought into it.
Icebreaker slides on his back,he leaned up at first, then fell over with his head then falling back,his red optics turning black under his visor. His body going into stasis lock.

The predacon femme took the impact of the explosion but managed to land on her feet like a cat. Starshadow smiled as she walked towards Icebreaker. "Don't take it for granted just because I'm a fembot." she went down on one knee and kissed his cheek.

"Steel, where the slag are you? the heat is burning my optics." she radioed the bear.

It was so much fun toying with you last time!

Hearing the Predacon speak in Cheetor's voice took Skyfire by surprise. 'So he was the one who deceived Cheetor and I back at the base. That creep! But then her thoughts were interrupted when she had to dodge the shots coming at her, and she barely managed to get away in time. She then continued with syagery of moving and shooting at same time like Valkyrie told her. Though of course she aimed some shots at the Glowstick, hoping to hit him at least one.

Steelclaw looked through the scope on his sniper rifle, inspecting the area he had known Ocariner to be in, but Steelclaw's defensive position had, unfortunately, put him at a very weird angle to the Maximal, and all he could see of Ocariner was from the knee down of his left leg and maybe... yeah that was his other foot.

Steelclaw quickly weighed his options. He could attempt to move further southwest to actually get behind his target and thus have a shot on much more vital areas, such as the chest or the head. But Ocariner would probably detect his movement on his scanner and move to make the fight too close in to worry about lining up shots with his scope. And at any rate, Ocariner would almost certainly detect Steelclaw's current position in a very short time, so he couldn't hesitate.

So he lined up a shot on his opponent's knee and fired. Then he picked up his weapon, and hunching low to ground, he moved further north to stay as far away from that Maximal as possible. He wasn't going to survive a hand-to-hand fight.

Starshadow wrote:Steel, where the slag are you? the heat is burning my optics.

"I'm northwest of you, hill-hopping." he responded back on his com-link on his way to the next bit of elevated cover, still limping all the way. Stupid bird.

Sonar snarled his teeth bared, the Maximal was about to activate the pod. Cursing quietly and flew straight for her, he easily dodged her bullets that she fired. He then slammed into her getting her away from that pod.
"That pod is ours, Maximal." He growled before throwing a punch he was going for the gut.

Checking his radar, Orcariner searched desperately for Steelclaw's signature. According to his systems, the Predacon was -23 degrees ahead of him but the Maximal saw nothing in his optics. He considered getting up from his prone position and bull-rushing the blip until a loud pang sounded from behind him. Looking over his shoulder, Orcariner saw nothing but his curiosity had gotten the best of him. He rolled over and leaned forward with his carbine still in his hands.

"Huh," he muttered.

His left knee had something wedged half-way into it, and looking closely, it appeared to be a high caliber bullet. Frowning, he knew that Steelclaw was responsible for this injury. Orcariner simply pulled it out and inspected the hole. Perhaps from the angle of the penetration, he could estimate the exact location of his attacker. The scanners indicated that Steelclaw was now on the move but there still was no visual on him. The downward slope of the bullet's trajectory inferred height advantage, and the Maximal nodded his head in understanding.

"Must've been why I couldn't see the guy," he said to himself, "Well, time to fish him out."

Standing up, Orcariner proceeded towards his foe's coordinates. Being built like a tank desensitized the iron giant to the degree of pain that would normally slow down others in combat. However, he knew the extent of the damage since Steelclaw sniped this very same knee in a previous battle. Running was out of the question for now. Sending a quiet command to his systems, Orcariner transformed back into his killer whale form. The gravity boosters hummed as they pushed him towards the hills. Steelclaw was moving pretty slow and the Maximal did not know if it was due to his attack or Icebreaker's. Either way, Orcariner was approaching pretty quickly.

Valkyrie noticed her missiles explode after that flying Pred made them overheat.
She aimed her wingst at him, but before she could lock on to him and fire, the bat knocked her away from the pod, before landing on her back.

"That pod is ours, Maximal."

She saw his attempt to strike at her gut., and caught his arm, and used his own power, to role her back towards his chest, before she threw up her elbow at his chin, without letting go of the arm he used to attempt a strike at her.
"That, inside, is a Maximal, and he, or she, will stay that way. You're attempts to aquire the pod are futile as long as i still function morron."
She knew she needed more time to defend the pod, so keeping this Predacon in melee distance would work until he would leave himself open for her to knock him to the ground, or blast him with a missile, so she could go back into the crater and keep covering the pod till its done.

Sonar growled getting to his feet, he would have to be careful with this one. Unlike the others, she knew how to fight.
He attacked her again this trying to knock her feet out from under her. But at the last second jumped behind her and kicked her in back getting her away from the pod. He then thought of some thing and smiled, it was risky there was a chance that the protoform inside wouldn't be able to be reactivated but it was worth the risk.
"If the Predacons can't have this pod then neither can you." He growled.
He then turned to the pod opened his mouth and shot a sonic blast at the pod's controls and the pod its self, only he knew how to fix a blast caused by his own weapons.