Tarantulas leaned against the wall of the empty storage room. He was in the middle of the Ark, surrounded by Maximals, locked in a secure room, and he still didn’t feel safe. Admittedly, most of the Maximals had left to go fight the rest of the Predacons over the new arrival, but that just made him even more nervous.
The new arrival was Overdose, and if she found out that Lt. Tarantulas of the Predacon Secret Police was around, he would most likely find himself in excruciating pain for the rest of his short life. Not even the Maximals would be able to stop her. Surrendering to them had been a delaying tactic by Tarantulas. As it was, he was surprised to still be alive. The deranged femme must not be aware that Tarantulas was on the planet.
It was too much to hope that she would stay ignorant, and Tarantulas savored what life he had left, even to the point of having a polite conversation with Blackarachnia. She had attempted to pry into his reasons for surrendering, but he had stubbornly not told her. Blackarachnia hated him so much she might just inform Overdose of where he was out of spite, and he couldn’t risk that.
Not when every moment he lived was with borrowed time.

Rampage was getting exasperated. "Overdose, you have to go to the base to get repairs!"
She gave him a loony smile and kept walking along the shoreline. "No I don’t," she insisted. "I have a self-repair system! See?" Overdose held out her arms and turned around, showing off her damaged fins. She got distracted by something, tripped on a half-buried rock and would have fallen if Rampage hadn’t grabbed her arm. The femme giggled as she hung from his grasp and began swinging herself around.
"See what?" he sighed, setting her back on her feet. She gave him a disappointed look.
"Huh?" She thought a moment. "Oh, yeah. My fins are already partially repaired!" She giggled and skipped ahead of the crab. "So I don’t need to go back to the base!" she called over her shoulder. "Besides, that last batch of pills took care of the pain!"
"But--"
"I wanna find my fawn!" She turned around to pout at him as he caught up with her. "I don’t think Dinobot would have bothered to take it back to base, so he probably left it behind. So I have to find it." She ran up ahead again.
Rampage sighed again and went after her. If Overdose wanted to do something, nothing he could do would change her mind. He just hoped that Dinobot had left the fawn behind ALIVE. If not, there might be dire consequences. It was more likely that he had killed it, but Rampage was allowed to hope, wasn’t he?
"Ooo, look what I found!" Overdose interrupted Rampage’s thoughts.
He looked at the object she was holding up for him to see. "It’s a rock," he said in puzzlement.
She nodded eagerly. "Yeah, but it’s so cool!" She stared raptly at the bland, gray lump of rock. "I think I’ll keep it."
Rampage blinked as Overdose stuffed the stone into one of her over-full subspace storage compartments. "Overdose..."
That daft smile again. "What?"
"...it’s a ROCK. They’re everywhere," he said, trying to be reasonable.
"So?" She tilted her head to the side, waiting for him to get to the point.
He just groaned in exasperation. "Oh, nevermind."
Overdose shrugged. "Okay."
They traveled farther towards where they had left Dinobot babysitting Overdose’s fawn, the sea slug transformer innocently marveling at everything. She constantly asked Rampage questions while the crab tried to be as patient as possible. She skipped up in front of him. He kept grumbling to himself.
After a moment, he finally noticed that her constant chatter had stopped.
"Overdose?"
The multi-colored femme was standing up ahead, silently staring at something on the ground. She slowly knelt to touch it, her shoulders bowed with sorrow. Rampage came up behind her and looked down.
A congealed puddle of blood was pooled around the mangled remains of a what might have been a fawn at one time. A couple of smaller puddles filled in the distinctive raptor footprints nearby, leaving no doubt as to what had happened.
"Rampage?" Overdose’s voice was bleak with grief. "Why did Dinobot kill my fawn?" Pain-filled shimmering eyes lifted to meet his own. "Why?"
"I..." Rampage awkwardly shrugged, hurt by the shattered innocence in those eyes. "He was hungry?" He flinched inside with shame for his association with Dinobot as Overdose’s fins dimmed to a bleached gray. "Overdose, I..." what could he say?! "I’m sorry," he finished softly.
Something behind her eyes snapped, and her fins dulled further to a lifeless black. The swirling light of her eyes died. Rampage edged back cautiously as something that belonged in nightmares flowed to her feet, her fingers still etched in blood.
A flat voice with no inflection at all asked, "Where is Dinobot now?"
Rampage shuddered at her tone. He had heard it before... "He’s probably back at the Predacon base," he replied carefully.
Overdose transformed to her motorcycle mode, her fins tattered but serviceable along her sides. "Let’s go."

The Maximals and Predacons faced off in front of the Predacon base. Rhinox was missing again since a guard was doubly needed in the Ark because of Tarantulas’s presence, but everyone else was there except for Rampage and Overdose.
"Where is Overdose?" Optimus demanded to know.
Megatron smiled at the Maximals’ tenseness. "She is coming."
The sound of engines made the assembled transformers turn towards a ridge as a battered motorcycle topped it. A tank pulled up next to it, and they both transformed.
Both factions stared in astonishment at the blank-faced Overdose’s fins, which were better than they had been, but were still torn. Rampage stood a little behind her, but if looks could kill, both Dinobot and Depth Charge would have been dead. Depth Charge flinched at the sight of Overdose’s injuries.
Dinobot stood transfixed as Overdose’s frigid gaze swept over everyone to settle on him after only pausing at Depth Charge. She stood still, just looking at him, for a moment more before she started walking down the ridge. She never took her eyes off him, and Rampage wasn’t the only one who watched her uneasily.
When she finally stopped in front of him, Dinobot had to fight not to back away from her. Indifferent eyes cooly regarded him like an insect, or something less than worthy of her attention.
"Why?" a cold voice asked.
Dinobot knew exactly what she was talking about, but he couldn’t find an answer. After a moment, he shrugged helplessly. Anger sparked in her deadened eyes, and suddenly something hit the side of his head, tearing thin lines of pain across his face.
Overdose withdrew her flame-colored glove and examined the sharp nails at the tips of her fingers. They had a slight amount of fluid on them, and she wiped them off on a fin. Then she looked up at Dinobot again, but her eyes held satisfaction in them now.
Rampage’s eyes widened as Overdose contemplated her nails. A memory nagged at him about a strange habit the femme had acquired in prison. It had cost a lot, but Overdose had managed to bribe a guard to buy her a special type of nail polish. The guard would have never accepted the bribe if he had known exactly how special the polish was...
Now, as the crab stared at Dinobot, who had a taloned hand pressed to his face, he wondered if Overdose had kept the habit of painting her nails with poison. A moment later, he got an answer.
The Maximals and Predacons jumped in startlement as Dinobot convulsed in agony as the cuts on his face glowed green with a chemical reaction. He shrieked and clutched at his face while his systems began to shut down. Unfortunately, his TM2 form attempted to heal the damage being caused by the tiny flecks of poison in his mech fluid that had scraped off of Overdose’s nails. All the healing did was prolong the pain.
Overdose stood impassively as Dinobot went into statis lock. The poison was a torture tool, so it wouldn’t kill the raptor. All he had experienced was what her fawn had gone through, except for the dying part. She looked up at the stunned transformers around her and shrugged.
A shudder went through her, and her fins and eyes resumed their swirling colors. A cheerful smile lit her face, and she stepped over the raptor to walk back towards Rampage.
"What did you do?!" Megatron demanded angrily.
Overdose blinked at him. "Um, stuff," she said vaguely. She tilted her head to the side and blinked again. "There was something else I was gonna do..." Her tongue poked out the side of her mouth as she concentrated. "I just know it..."
Optimus stepped forward, interrupting her thinking. "Overdose, would you like to join the Maximals?"
"Huh?" She looked at him in bemusement. "Join a faction? Why would I want to do that?"
Megatron and Optimus both frowned and opened their mouths to speak, but she kept talking.
"After all, neither of you seem to have a lot to offer me. The Preds have Dinobot, who killed my pet, and the Maxis, um, they have someone..." She concentrated again. "...Oh. I remember now." Her eyes narrowed, and she turned to glare at Depth Charge.
Blackarachnia looked between the battered femme and the ray-bot, who was studiously not looking at Overdose. "What happened?" the widow asked.
Overdose slowly stalked towards Depth Charge. "Why don’t you answer that?" she hissed. Her fins darkened to angry reds and yellows, and her eyes swirled faster.
Their whirling caught Depth Charge’s eyes as he glanced up, and he couldn’t look away. Full of broken trust and innocence, they hypnotized him. His world narrowed to those shimmering pools of betrayal and pain.
"Go ahead, tell them."
He heard Overdose’s soft order distantly, and despite himself he answered. "I shot you."
The Maximals and Predacons, who had been silently watching the confrontation, gasped. Depth Charge had come into the Beast Wars to STOP things like that from happening!
Optimus looked at the ray-bot in shock. "Why?"
"Why?" Overdose gave a bitter laugh. "Yeah, Depth Charge, why did you fire on me? I was only defending a friend!" She smiled humorlessly, never releasing Depth Charge’s eyes from hers. "Or couldn’t you stand that my friend was Rampage?"
"I--" The ray-bot shook his head, but it seemed like the words were being dragged out of him. "You were in the way...you were defending a criminal..."
"That’s no excuse!" Overdose stopped in front of him. She searched his eyes, and her anger grew. "And you know it." Hardness entered her voice. "When?" she asked. "When did you stop defending the innocent?" Her tone was harsh with emotion. "When did they just become obstacles in your path of revenge?"
Depth Charge shook his head, his confusion rising in him as she put what he had known but had pretended not to into words. "I--" his voice cracked.
She snapped her voice across him like a whip. "Tell me!"
All he could see was the shimmering of her eyes. "A long time ago," he whispered hoarsely. Both factions of transformers recoiled from him as his words admitted that Overdose’s charges were true. An illusion was shattered, one of someone seeking justice to save others, and even the Predacons fell back at the shock of suddenly seeing what was revealed beneath. Someone who wouldn’t hesitate to kill whoever got in his way. They stared at him in dazed disbelief.
Bitterness swirled a final time in Overdose’s eyes, and then she looked away, releasing Depth Charge from their intense gaze. He gasped as his world snapped back into focus, and he realized that his face was wet with tears. He began shivering with the spark-deep revelation that had been forced on him by the rainbow child in front of him.
"Wh-what did you do to me?" he managed to say.
She sounded tired now, her voice echoing with the memories of too many shattered dreams. "I suppose I just forced you to see something that was there all along." She turned around slowly, sweeping her gaze over the assembled Beast Warriors. They shuddered at the emptiness they saw in her eyes despite their wild colors. She shrugged as they drew back, accepting their automatic rejection, and turned to walk away. With her typical absentmindedness she didn’t notice the half-buried rock in the ground in front of her, and she stumbled over it.
Rampage moved to help her and ended up supporting her in his arms as she collapsed against him, tears of pent-up pain from an old memory that had been opened like a badly healed wound pouring down her face soundlessly. Rampage couldn’t know that the confrontation with Depth Charge had been eerily like the confrontation that had driven her insane so long ago. He couldn’t know that inside she hoped desperately that the ray-bot wouldn’t do what she had done, and that she hated herself for caring about what happened.
He didn’t know. All Rampage knew was that his friend was hurt, and that hurt had been caused by his enemy. Glaring at Depth Charge over her head, he almost growled, "At least I don’t pretend not to be a murderer."
That woke the others from their shock. Optimus gazed down at Depth Charge. "Is what she said true?" he asked quietly. Depth Charge just looked up at him silently, his face still streaked with tears.
"No way!" Cheetor burst out. "It can’t be true!"
"Yeah," Rattrap said uncertainly. "She’s lyin’, right?"
Blackarachnia gave Rattrap an incredulous look, like she couldn’t believe that he had asked that. He ignored that and looked at the ray-bot. "Right?"
Depth Charge flinched, then suddenly transformed into his flight mode and took off, leaving the questions unanswered behind him.
Megatron watched his form fade off into the distance with narrowed eyes. "Well, that was...unexpected," he said slowly. He glanced at where the stunned Maximals were looking after the ray-bot, but turned to where Overdose had listlessly started walking again. "Now, my dear Overdose..."
She glanced over her shoulder with a bit of her normal sparkle. "I’m not your dear."
The tyrant frowned. "Ah, yes. Um, anyway, since you have seen how the Maximals are--"
Optimus cut in, "We are not--"
"Shut UP!"
Everyone turned in surprise to see Blackarachnia looking extremely angry. She shook off Silverbolt’s hand and marched forward to stand in the middle of the triangle formed by Megatron, Optimus, and Overdose. She turned to glare at Megatron first. "You want to possess Overdose’s firepower and possibly get another way to control Rampage out of the deal." The widow then turned to look at Optimus. "You want another person in the Maximal ranks, and you might possibly make her feel more welcome, but your motives are ultimately the same."
Both factions gaped at her as she turned around to look at the now-grinning femme they were fighting over. Blackarachnia sighed and shrugged. "I really don’t think you’d be comfortable in either the Maximal OR Predacon ranks," she said frankly. "Your ruthlessness would make the Maximals nervous, and, well, pets?" Blackarachnia shook her head. "The Predacons wouldn’t accept that."
Overdose’s grin faded as the widow spoke, but she considered her words carefully. "So what are do you suggest?" she asked curiously.
Blackarachnia glanced between the Maximals and Predacons, and looked back at Overdose. "Well, don’t listen to them," she said, pointing at Megatron and Optimus, who bristled indignantly. "Everything they’ll say is slanted towards getting you into their ranks, anyway." The widow thought for a moment. "What do YOU want to do?" she asked finally.
Overdose smiled sadly and looked at the two faction leaders. "I don’t want to join either of you, really," she said in a soft voice. "I just want to be left alone for now." Her eyes returned to Blackarachnia as the Maximals glared at the widow. "I think you’re in trouble," she giggled.
Blackarachnia shrugged resignedly. "It’s happened before."
The crazy femme laughed and turned to go, but Rampage’s hand on her shoulder stopped her.
"Overdose? You’re leaving?"
She gently removed his hand. "I’ll see you around," she whispered, and transformed to her motorcycle/hang glider mode. Her fins were still damaged, but she sped off and lifted into the air anyway.
Speechless, the Maximals and Predacons watched her go. Optimus and Megatron exchanged a considering look, but there really wasn’t anything to fight about anymore. It was just too pointless at the moment. Optimus called for a return to base, and the Predacons went back into their base.
They all had a lot to think about.

A sea slug slowly tugged the last bit of colorful metal up the underwater passage. When she reached a dead end, the slug transformed and hoisted the metal up through the ceiling, laying it on the ground above. She climbed up after it, emerging into darkness.
"Computer, bring up some lights, will ya?" Overdose asked absently, and then squinted as various lights flickered into existence. She glanced around at them: the ‘moving’ string of Christmas lights, the glowing teddy bear, a Buddha nightlight, a floating blob...
The combined light showed the cavern to be full of strange things from various places in the galaxy, some useful, some merely interesting to Overdose. She arranged the last bit of her dismantled ship into the semi-organized chaos. With a knowledge that she had picked up at some random point in her life, she set up a connection to her ship’s power core, and the running lights on the part switched on.
Overdose walked farther into the cavern complex, looking over her collection and pulling more stuff from her subspace compartments to shove into the mess. She took out the rock she had found with Rampage earlier and put it in a prominently displayed area. Everything she owned, even illegally since some of it was stolen, was here. She had emptied all of her hide-outs for her vacation, but had decided to unpack it here, since she hadn’t ended up at the resort.
She came to one cave that had her ship’s power core in it, along with a small box. Her star hopper, Fitzgerald the Great as she had decided to call it, had been out of fuel when she had landed, but everything but maneuvering and propulsion was powered by the core anyway.
"Computer?" Overdose checked the connections to the box one more time.
"Dude?"
"You need a name," she mused. "How about Bob?"
"Dude!"
She smiled. "Okay then, Bob it is. Bob, shields up, please."
"Like, online, dude." The box glowed, and beyond the cave a green bubble came into existence around the island. Overdose frowned and adjusted a couple dials on the box, and the bubble shrank until it just surrounded the cave complex. She nodded in satisfaction after checking the readouts on the box, and the bubble faded out of sight.
Overdose left that cave and entered another, where she flung herself down into the seat from her ship. She leaned back and closed her eyes, thinking about Rampage, Depth Charge, Dinobot, and her fawn. She remembered her burst of self-hate at her interest in someone else’s life when she had confronted Depth Charge, and the brief flash of thanks and friendship directed at the black widow, Blackarachnia. The crazy femme remembered it all, and then she made herself not care.
After a long moment she sighed and opened her eyes. They sparkled with brilliant colors as she looked around the room. "Now this is my new home," she whispered quietly.
"Dude?"
"Shaddup, Bob."

Depth Charge stared at the floor between his feet, numb with shock at the events of the day. He had come back to the Ark and locked himself in his quarters, and he had refused to let anyone in or speak with anyone since. Optimus was furious, he knew, and the rest of the Maximals probably were, too.
He couldn’t deal with that now, though. Instead, he looked at the past with new eyes, recognizing what he had done. He wasn’t any better than Rampage!
Horror and shame shook him, clawing away at his fragile sense of right and wrong. If he chose to face the consequences of his actions, he had a lot of amends to make, wrongs to set right, and trust to rebuild. If he chose to take the easy way out, he could continue on as he was, steadily getting worse. Any sense of right and wrong would disappear.
Depth Charge was torn between his choices, desperate for some reprieve. It would be so simple to let go, to refuse to take the blame. He didn’t have anyone that really mattered to him that would make that choice hard.
But, he realized, he did. Overdose’s sad eyes had looked up at him, forcing him to realize what he had done. She had cared enough to show him the truth, and, he found, he felt he owed it to her to find a way to rebuild her trust in him. But what if he was wrong? What if she didn’t care at all?
Depth Charge started as his door suddenly swished open, revealing Blackarachnia’s form. She walked inside and silently looked at him.
"Go away," he whispered harshly, turning his face away from her.
She didn’t leave. "Was it true?" she asked softly, coming over to sit beside him on the bed. "Was what Overdose said true?"
He swallowed hard, fighting himself. He let out a pent-up breath as he came to a decision, at least for the moment. "Yes," he said roughly. "Everything," he hesitated. "Everything she said was true," he made himself finish. He glanced at her, afraid of what he would see.
Blackarachnia thoughtfully looked at him. "Well, what are you going to do about it?"
"I-I don’t know." Depth Charge shivered as he recalled things he had done in the past. "There are things I can’t just apologize for," he said, and the broken innocence and trust in Overdose’s eyes came back into his mind.
"But you can try." Blackarachnia watched as tears of grief and repentance began to flow down the ray-bot’s face as he made himself face his past actions, accepting the blame. She sighed and reluctantly reached out, bringing him down to sob on her shoulder as she wryly wondered why females, in this case her and Overdose, were always the ones who had to clean up the messes made by males.
After a while Depth Charge pulled away and scrubbed at his face. "Thank you, Blackarachnia," he said hoarsely. "I’m sorry if I--"
She gently covered his mouth with a pincer, interrupting him. She looked at him seriously. "I’m not the one you have to apologize to."
He nodded, shimmering eyes full of bitter sadness still haunting his thoughts.
Blackarachnia got up and walked towards the door. "I have to go," she said with a slight smile. "I’m actually supposed to be confined to my quarters at the moment, so..."
Depth Charge nodded again and paused awkwardly.
She sensed his search for words to express his gratitude. "Don’t mention it," she said and winked. "And remember, you didn’t see me!"
The door closed behind her, leaving Depth Charge to begin his search for Overdose.

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