Optimus stared at the beat up red jeep parked at the foot of the mountain where the Autobots space ship was and made a small sound of irritation in the back of his throat as he peeked inside of one of the open doors.
He knew that there was no one in it. He'd already checked everywhere in the vehicle, including the area where the spare tire was kept and the glove box (though he had no fraggin idea how a human might fit into a glove box) but he had checked it anyways simply for the sake of making sure that the human driving the jeep hadn't fallen prey to foul play.
He'd walked all around the jeep five times. Five!
Looking for any traces of it's driver and had come across nothing visible. Which was frustrating to the already irked Autobot and after several minutes of trying to figure out why the vehicle was abandoned at the base of the mountain without any traces of it's owner-
He changed tactics and instead started going through some of the owners personal effects.
He found a laminated picture pass under a small pile of papers and maps in the front passenger seat belonging to a young woman named Saya Evans. A lab tech at the local government labratory for the containment and study of alien technologies found in places like Area 51 and such.
To say that the little snippet of information was curious to him, would be an under statment. It was down right fascinating to him that such a human might be roaming around his mountain somewhere. And at the same time it was worrying.
If the woman somehow managed to get into the ship hidden under ground, the Autobots would be over run by humans and their government officals in a matter of hours. Optimus sighed and lifted a hand to rub at the area above his left eye. A nervous habit that he had developed when he had first taken his human appearance so that he could blend in more.
I need to contact Ratchet and the others and see if they can keep an optic out on the area around the mountain so that we can locate the woman before she stumbles onto something that we'll have to risk wiping her memory over. Optimus thought as he stuffed the picture pass into one of his leather jacket pockets and started walking towards the hidden ground entrance that would take him into the ship.
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Ratchet and Jazz were both fit to be tied.
They had been shutting down all but the required systems in the ship when they felt the ships engines fire up for the first time, then automatically shut down. The two went totally still, wondering what the slag had just happened when it happened again.
The engines fired up for all of two seconds or so, but it was more than enough to worry/enrage the two elder bots who quickly ran a system scan on the ships controls and mainframe before determining that someone had hacked into the controls for the engines and was playing with the damn things.
Jazz looked at Ratchet and made a vibrating growling sound as the word, 'Sparklings' slithered through their minds a second or so before they both turned and ran for the large door seperating the control room from the rest of the ship and all but prying the damn thing open in their haste while mentally going over the increadibly short list of suspects.
There was Hot Shot, Bumble-bee, Bumper, and Sunstreaker. They were the only four young ones on the ship that still qualified as sparklings. And three out of the four of them knew better than to mess with the ship and it's systems. Which meant that Hot Shot was in for a real ass kicking once the two older bots found him.
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Hot Shot was sitting on the floor of the ship, wires running from his wrist to the control pannel on the wall outside of the engine room. He couldn't believe that everyone was going to leave him and Sideswipe alone on the ship for the next twenty years or so while they all interacted with the humans.
What did he look like to them? A newly created sparkling?
Sure he had had Optimus and several others explain the reasons why he couldn't go. But one would think that if he couldn't go that Bumble-bee and Sunstreaker, and Bumper wouldn't be able to go either. They were all the same age for slaggin sake!
And yet why was it that Optimus and the other older bots seemed to think that he needed someone keeping an optic on him 24/7?
So he didn't function well in closed quarters with small lifeforms. Big fraggin deal. It wasn't like he destroyed things or shot at people on purpose. He was a defense bot. It was only common sense that if he got startled, he'd shoot at something.
He heard the pounding of heavy foot steps heading his way and quickly unhooked the wires from the control pannel and stuffed them back into the small compartment in his wrist and shut it as Jazz came running up and snarled, "Sparkling, what the hell do you think your doing?"
"Nothing." Hot Shot said in a defensive tone despite the fact that he knew that he was busted.
Jazz growled at him. "Don't. Attempt. To. Lie. To. Me."
Hot Shot shrugged his shoulders. "Okay. I won't. I was sitting here sulking."
"Playing with the engines, you mean."
"No. I'm pretty sure I was sulking." Hot Shot said, feigning innocence as he slowly got to his feet. Jazz opened his mouth to say snap at him again when they heard a peculiar series of thudding sounds a second or so before the vent over Hot Shots head crashed to the floor and something fell to the floor among a pile of dirt and rocks.
The two bots stood there for a second staring at the opening in the ceiling then at the little mound on the floor before looking at each other as Jazz practically shouted, "What the slagging hell did you do? Optimus is going to kill us!"