Depth Charge flew toward the Ark in vehicle mode, badly damaged.  Rattrap, Blackarachnia, and Silverbolt were a few nanoklicks behind him. There had been another battle, and most of the Maximals were damaged. Cheetor was in stasis lock on Depth Charge’ s back; he had gotten hit one too many times by Crossfire’s heat missiles.

 Depth Charge had had more than he could handle lately. Rampage had always been a handful, but now that he had Dinobot and Crossfire on his side.....

 The transmetal manta ray narrowed his eyes.

 Yet again that idiot Primal gets us hurt, Depth Charge thought. He sends us out to do his dirty work while he sits on his slaggin’ butt  and “keeps guard over the base.” There’s only been a few battles at the base and Primal knows it. Those autoguns should be able to take out anything short of a full-blown attack- that is, if we had someone competent manning the guns.

 It had been another battle with no real victors. Cheetor had been on patrol, as usual, when Rampage’s party happened to be near him and opened fire on the Transmetal II cheetah. Cheetor had managed to call for backup before he was shot into stasis lock. Reinforcements had arrived, as usual, and driven off the party, but not without getting badly damaged themselves. Blackarachnia couldn’t transform, Silverbolt couldn’t fly, and Rattrap had had his right arm blown off. Depth Charge was the luckiest; he had survived with only moderate damage.

 I’m surrounded by idiots; every single one of these Maximals, except maybe the cheetah, because he’s inexperienced, are all idiots. I can’t believe we took so long to drive off three Predacons; they were outnumbered, Depth Charge thought.

 The Maximal party flew, drove, or ran into the base; all transformed into robot mode, except Cheetor, who was placed into the CR chamber, and Blackarachnia, who couldn’t transform from robot mode until she was repaired.

 Depth Charge eyed Optimus menacingly as he had placed the cheetah into the CR chamber; after that, he had turned toward the leader, now smaller than him, and walked slowly toward the bat-bot.

 He pointed his large index finger straight at Optimus’ face.

 “I can’t believe you, Primal! You keep telling us to let the Preds go, only attack them when they attack us, but you slaggin’ well know that they just keep coming back for more! You expect us to stand here and take all this slag from the Preds while you sit on you butt?”

 Optimus looked hurt, but answered back somewhat angrily.

 “Depth Charge, I know it doesn’t make much sense to you, but we’ve got to take these Predacons back to Cybertron alive! We can’t just kill them all outright! Then we’d be as bad as the Predacons!”

 Before Depth Charge could answer, Rattrap cautiously cut in.

 “Uhh...well, uh...Optimus, I’d have to...uh...agree wit the fish here.”

 “Shut up, Rattrap,” said Optimus, glaring at Rattrap.

 Depth Charge ignored the small interruption and continued the argument.

 “Slag you, Primal! Even one of the idiots in your group agrees with me-”

 “Hey, wait a minute....” Rattrap muttered, narrowing his eyes.

 “- which shows how slaggin’ stupid you are! If you weren’t such a -”

 Optimus cut him off.

 “Depth Charge, watch your language! You don’t have to agree with my decisions, but you don’t have to act like this either! You know that I wouldn’t tell you to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself!”

 “Would you? Be truthful, Primal. You’re just caring about your sorry butt. You don’t care if anyone in this team gets slagged, so long as you bring Megatron back to Cybertron and get all the glory. I don’t know why I joined this team in the first place, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m leaving you sorry excuse for a bunch of Maximals- and since you’re smaller than me now, you can’t boss me around.”

 Without saying another word, Depth Charge transformed to vehicle mode and left the base.

 “Depth Charge, wait! We can work th-” Optimus stopped yelling, realizing it was useless. He sighed as Depth Charge blasted out of sight. He then turned toward Rattrap and narrowed his eyes.

 “You didn’t help, Rattrap.”

 All seemed normal in the valley with the stasis pod cache and force field. Then, all of a sudden, the shield flickered off for a nanosecond, then flickered back on. There were now two less stasis pods in the force field.

 Depth Charge transformed from vehicle to beast mode in mid-air and splashed into the warm waters of the rocky bay.

 He needed some time to sort some things out in his mind. Sometimes his temper took over; ever since X had leveled his colony it had been this way. He’d been bitter on the outside, but he wanted to change. He just couldn’t seem to do it; he didn’t want to make friends that he could lose again to some misled Predacon.

 He sighed and started to swim out into the open ocean. He liked the water; quiet, calming to the senses. It was the only place where he could have time to think.

 As he was lost in the world of the thoughtful, he didn’t see a pair of stasis pods on the ocean floor- until it was too late. He crashed into the stasis pods, and rubbed his head with his tail.

 Nice going, DC, thought Depth Charge as the stasis pods whirred to life and started to scan the area around for compatible lifeforms. Oh, well. Let’s see who these protoforms turn out to be.

 As Depth Charge maximized, the larger of the two pods’ computers began to roll off the standard system checks monotonously.

 “Compatible lifeform found....data tracks recoverable...match those of unit Cybersub.....”

 Depth Charge started in disbelief as the stasis pod.

 “Cybersub?”

 “...changing data tracks to suit those of protoform....modifying protoform...complete.”

 A large, grey-and-blue, Transmetal 2 tiger shark swam out of the stasis pod. It had small wires, heat sinks, and hydraulic pumps sticking out all over its outer plating. Its teeth were extremely sharp, from the looks of it.

 “Cybershark, maximize!”

 The shark’s gears whirred as the shark transformed into a large male robot, about up to Depth Charge’s chest. Most of this height was his extremely long legs. His fin came out of his head, looking somewhat like the human equivalent of a punk hairdo. His right arm was a normal hand with some fins on the backside of it, but his left arm ended in a four-pronged claw, which looked a little like a drill.

 Cybershark looked Depth Charge and himself over.

 “Whoa...Commander DC, that you? You’ve...changed,” said Cybershark in a voice not unlike Cheetor’s, but with a slight bubble-echo effect in his voice.

 Depth Charge chuckled a little.

 “Hey, you have too, kid. I’ve got a lot of explaining to do as soon as that other protoform gets out of that stasis pod.”

 As if on cue, the smaller pod’s computer started reciting its system checks.

 “Compatible life form found....data tracks recoverable....matches those of unit Claw Clash...”

 Cybershark’s eyelids(or the equivalent of them, anyway) jumped slightly at the last two words.

 “Claw Clash?! Looks like you got two lucky cards today, DC.”

 Depth Charge merely nodded.

 “...changing data tracks to suit those of protoform...modifying protoform....complete.”

 The pod’s lid popped open, and a small squid popped out.

 “Claw Jaw, maximize!”

 The squid twisted and turned into one of the most organic-looking robots Depth Charge had ever seen. He was mostly pink and red, and about the size of Rattrap. He had several tentacles coming out of his back, and his two arms ended in suction-pad-like structures. He didn’t really seem to have a mouth, but rather, a few suction cups in place of one. When he spoke in his deep, gruff voice, the area around his suction cups moved, but there was no actual mouth to be seen, much like Depth Charge’s mouth.

 “Commander Depth Charge?”

 Claw Jaw quickly saluted his commander before continuing.

 “Sir, Deputy Claw Jaw requesting permission to ask why we I was awakened from my stasis pod.”

 Just as Depth Charge was about to answer, Cybershark smirked and laughed.

 Depth Charge stared annoyingly at the Transmetal 2 shark.

 “What is it, Private?”

 “Heheheh....a squid? What kind of beast mode is a squid?”

 “I can’t choose my beast mode!” Claw Jaw growled as Cybershark continued to chuckle.

 Depth Charge sighed.

 “We’ve got a lot to talk about...”

 After Depth Charge had told Cybershark and Claw Jaw what had happened since they last met, Claw Jaw continued with his and Cybershark’s side of the story.

 “Well, sir, after you left the Cybertronian defense force, we heard about a employment opportunity on the Axalon. It was an experiment. We were put into stasis pods and turned into protoforms. SInce we were not guaranteed to come out alive, it paid a lot better than the defense force. We agreed and joined, needless to say. Now...we’re here.”

 Depth Charge merely nodded and transformed to beast mode. The others looked at him quizzingly. Depth Charge ignored them.

 “Come on,” he said, motioning toward the shore. “Show me what you got.”

 The Deputy and Private wordlessly transformed to beast mode and followed Depth Charge.

 Cybershark and Claw Jaw stood, both in robot mode, on the shoreline. Depth Charge was beached on the shoreline, in beast mode, because he still had some internal repairs to complete from the battle that morning.

 “Okay,” started Depth Charge, “This is important. Since there’s a lot of rocks around here, this is the perfect spot. I want you to show me what kind of weapons you can use against X and the others. Cybershark, you first.”

 “My pleasure,” Cybershark smirked. “First, my missle launcher..”

 Cybershark took out of his subspace a green, small, boxy launcher with two missles. He fired them at a large rock in the middle of the bay, breaking it in half.

 “Decent,” Depth Charge admitted. “What else?”

 Cybershark jerked his claw-arm back slightly, and a low “thump” could be heard as his internal gears were charging up his next weapon. Little sparks of electricity started to crackel around the tips of his claws, and then started to arc toward the empty center space of the claws, forming, within five seconds, a large, white, glowing electricity ball, almost as wide as the space in between the claws themselves. He pointed his claw-arm at the cracked rock, aimed, and fired the electricity in one huge glowing discharge, staggering backward slightly as he did so. Instead of it all going in one large ball, the ball seemed to stretch out as it was fired, making it look like an enormous beam. It made an almost-ultrasonic screeching sound as it rushed toward the rock, then hit it with one enormous blast, causing the rock in explode dramatically. Depth Charge and his two mates were showered with tiny pebbles for a few seconds.

 Depth Charge blinked and stared at Cybershark’s arm, his mouth agape. Even HE didn’t have a weapon as tough as that. Depth Charge was, for the first time in his life, speechless.

 Cybershark caught the look on Depth Charge’s face and interpreted it correctly. He frowned at his claw-hand.

 “Yeah, it’s great, not very rapid fire though.”

 Depth Charge looked toward the ground.

 Primus, this kid is pessimistic. Either that, or humble. Nah, pessimistic.

 Depth Charge went back to reality and glanced at Claw Jaw.

 “CJ, can you top that?”

 “Well...uh...my...uh...specialty isn’t long-range attack, it’s...uh....hand-to-hand combat,” Claw Jaw stated nervously. “My only long-range weapon is this one...”

 He seemed to suck in a breath for a second and then turned toward a medium-sized, jagged rock standing out near the center of the bay. What happened next surprised Depth Charge. Claw Jaw made a sound that was somewhat like a mixture of a machine gun firing and a person spitting and shot many machine gun bullets out of his mouth suction-cups into the jagged rock nearby, knicking off its jagged edges, making it look two hundred years older in two seconds.

 Depth Charge nodded.

 “Decent, eh? It’s not that bad. My main weapon, though, which I can’t demonstrate, is a energon-sucker in the middle of my chest. See?” replied Claw Jaw, and two small grey pincer-like structures came out of his chest, then returned back into the squid-bot.

 “If I can get close enough to a transformer, I can pierce his armor with these pincers and suck out all of his energon, storing it in my reserve tanks,” Claw Jaw said.

 “That’ll come in handy, to say the least,” replied Depth Charge as he transformed to vehicle mode in mid-air, hovering a few feet above the ground.

 Claw Jaw looked at him curiously.

 “Where’re ya goin’, sir?”

 “Gonna show ya my place. Need a lift, Claw Jaw?”

 “Yes, sir.”

 Claw Jaw jumped on the metallic manta’s back and kneeled down, holding on the the edges for support.

 “How about you, Cybershark?” asked Depth Charge.

 Cybershark just smirked.

 “Nah, ‘ve got my own. Cybershark, vehicle mode!”

 Cybershark jumped, and, in mid-air, he transformed back to beast mode, but with a few modifications. His tail fin had split into four smaller fins, which were all rotating at an extremely high rate to keep him aloft, and his side fins and the area around them had flipped upward to become wings.

 Depth Charge stared for a second at the shark/plane. Man, if this kid had any more surprises...

 “Okay, let’s go,” said Depth Charge, and flew out in the direction in the ocean, Cybershark in hot pursuit.

 About five minutes later, a mile or so away from the mainland, Depth Charge flew near a small island and transformed to robot mode, changing to robot mode and having Claw Jaw jump off his back as he did so. Cybershark soon arrived and maximized also.

 It was a very small island, in fact. It was only about an eighth of a mile wide, and a tenth of a mile long. In the center of this sandy island with a couple lone patches of grass lay a small lean-to, with a couple cubes of energon, a can of oil, and a sleeping bag under it.

 “It’s not much, but I call it home...well, now, anyway,” noted Depth Charge as he turned toward his comrades.

 Cybershark looked up at him curiously.

 “But...you didn’t tell us about this...”

 “That’s right, because someone might have been listenin’. This is my own little ‘secret place’. Not even X knows about it. I come out here whenever I get tired of Primal and his crew. I...guess this’ll be your home now too.”

 Claw Jaw scratched his head.

 “But...it’s only big enough for one...”

 “Nah, we can make it bigger. I know a forest nearby with some sturdy lumber, and we can always steal a few sleeping bags when Primal and his crew are sleeping.”

 Cybershark looked around, looking thoughtful as he did so.

 “Hmm....do you mind if we make a hammock, too?”

  Depth Charge chuckled and began to make room for the new recruits.

 Megatron, Scavenger, and Quickstrike all were digging around the alien force field. Megatron and Quickstrike were doing a decent job, but Scavenger had already dug almost three times as deep into the dirt as them, due to his sharp drills.

 Quickstrike was just about to complain again when he heard a dull clank, followed by Scavenger’s voice.

 “Royalty, I have found something! It appears to be an inscription!”

 Both Megatron and Quickstrike hurried out of their own holes and into Scavenger’s.

 “Be careful, you idiot! Don’t scratch it!” yelled Megatron as he came up beside Scavenger. He tried for a few moments to make it out, then finally succeeded.

 “By the Pit....no, they can’t be....not this soon.....NOOO!”

THE END

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