New arrivals, new twists to plans; none of it really mattered in the large scheme of things. The Beast Wars continued no matter who was involved, and this time a rocky canyon was the newest setting for the battle. It echoed with the sounds of weapon’s-fire…

Optimus knocked Megatron’s tail-gun aside with one of his arms and punched out with his other hand. Off to one side, a missile exploded as Tarantulas targeted Silverbolt, who went flying from the force of the near-miss. The spider chuckled and flung his arms out, sending another four missiles towards the fuzor…only to miss again as Blackarachnia tackled her lover. Quickstrike was waiting, though, and Silverbolt howled in pain when a bolt of laser-venom hit him head-on. For once in his life, Waspinator was actually on the winning side of a fight with Rattrap (mostly because he was teamed up with TM2 Dinobot) while Inferno kept Rhinox busy.

The rhino was desperately trying to get to where Cheetor lay offline with one of Tarantulas’ devices strapped to his chest. It beeped every couple seconds, sending another charge of energy through the cheetah. The overload of energy had knocked him unconscious and would soon cause spark failure, just as Megatron had promised when he had caught the young Maximal. The Maximals had all known it was a trap the moment the Predacon tyrant had called their base to gloat over Cheetor’s capture, but if Rhinox couldn’t reach him before his spark failed…

"It is over, Primal!" Megatron laughed as he dodged the Maximal’s fist. "Surrender now, and there may be mercy!" He laughed again as Waspinator scored a lucky hit on the rocks above Rattrap’s position, sending an avalanche of boulders down on top of the rat and temporarily taking him out of the fight. Dust billowed, clogging air filters annoyingly and making everyone cough. Waspinator immediately turned his attention to Rhinox, but Dinobot advanced towards Rattrap.

Optimus ignored his enemy’s taunting, bringing his arm back across to slam into Megatron’s side. The Predacon commander staggered backwards as he shook his head clear of interference caused by the hit. "Depth Charge!" Optimus shouted. "Help them!"

"I’m a little busy at the moment!" Depth Charge growled back, grunting in pain as Rampage managed to kick him in the chest. That made him lose his grip on the crab’s missile launcher, and he spun frantically to shield himself with his fins as it came down and fired point-blank. The impact was still enough to knock him forward into the canyon wall, and Rampage cackled as the collision dazed the ray for a precious second.

A second Rampage used to slam the ray’s head forward again, banging him off the wall to stumble and fall to his knees helplessly. Blackarachnia saw it happen, but Tarantulas blocked her before she could try and help. Quickstrike was keeping Silverbolt too busy to even try. Rhinox was trying to fight both Waspinator and Inferno, Optimus was struggling with Megatron, and Rattrap was cursing as he tried to free himself from the pile of rocks in time to save himself from Dinobot. Megatron smiled while Rampage moved in for the kill. Things were going exactly as planned, and he had planned for every variable in the trap…well, except for the one variable that he couldn’t possibly predict. According to Murphy’s Universal Law, therefore, she chose that moment to arrive.

"BONZAAAAAAAiiiiiiiiiii!" Overdose yelled as she jumped off the canyon lip.

Rampage looked up in surprise just in time to see the femme drop on top of him, feet-first. "Slag," he muttered right before two flame-red boots smashed into his shoulders.

The Maximal on the ground in front of him recovered enough to see what would happen. "Slag!" Depth Charge seconded fervently, curling his fins around himself in defense as Rampage overbalanced and crashed forward.

The other combatants paused in shock as the fighting ball of sea slug, crab, and manta ray bounced down the center of the canyon, all three fighters yelling at each other. They rolled up against the side of the recent avalanche Waspinator had created, and Rattrap and Dinobot yelped as someone’s hand reached out apparently at random and yanked them into the brawl while the settling dust got kicked up again. It screened them off from the rest of the Maximals and Predacons until only voices emerged from the dust cloud.

"Get your hands offa me!" Overdose was screaming.

"Then get YOUR hands off of ME!" Rampage yelled back.

"Who’s hands are where?!" Rattrap asked as reasonably anyone could in the middle of a fight, then yelped. "EH! Get offa my tail!"

"If that was me, vermin, you would have more to worry about than your tail!" Dinobot snarled, then screeched in pain. "OW!"

Rattrap yelped again. "Capt’n Minnow, I could use a little help here!"

"I’m trying--ouch!--, but—BLAST!" Depth Charge’s voice cut off suddenly, and metal clashed loudly. "Overdose, don’t DO that!" the ray continued angrily a moment later.

Overdose giggled. "Alright!"

Metal clanged again, and the staring Maximals and Predacons jumped in surprise as Depth Charge hurtled out of the dust cloud without any effort on his part. From somewhere in the fight, Rampage laughed for a moment before the sound of Rattrap’s gun cut him off and made him roar furiously. Depth Charge hit the ground and slid to a halt, shielding his head in his arms. He sported several new slashes and burn marks on both of his fins and his right leg. He climbed back onto his feet woozily, and Megatron raised an eyebrow when he saw that the ray had a dented spot on his head, Rattrap’s disconnected tail in one hand, and a fistful of what looked like Overdose’s fins in the other.

But he realized that he had become distracted by Overdose’s arrival when he noticed Rhinox kneeling beside Cheetor, and he immediately powered up his tail-gun for a shot straight into Optimus’ chest. "Inferno!" he snapped as the Maximal leader staggered back, one hand clutching at his blackened chest. "Stop him!"

The ant turned away from watching the ball of dust that was Rampage, Rattrap, Dinobot, and Overdose, glancing down to where he had left the enemy of the colony. The rhino was gone, though, and he looked around frantically. THERE! On the ground, next to the weak Maximal cat! "Buuuuuuuurrrrrrrn for the Royalty!" he yelled, flying forward as he aimed his flamethrowers at Rhinox.

But then he stopped going forward, and he glanced back at his propellers in confusion…just in time to figure out what the webbing wrapped around them meant to someone flying at his altitude.

Blackarachnia smirked as Inferno plummeted towards the ground, shrieking the entire way down. She started to load another web-net onto her weapon to use on Waspinator, but Tarantulas managed to un-freeze himself from seeing Overdose enough to pop up over the top of a rock and shoot at her again. That kept her distracted, but Megatron snarled anyway. Inferno, Dinobot, and Rampage were effectively out of the fight for the moment, and even as he thought that, Depth Charge dropped his handful of colorful fins to reach into his subspace compartment and retrieve his remora-gun. Instead of diving back into the Rattrap/Dinobot/Rampage/Overdose fight, however, he took a couple shots at Waspinator. That ended the wasp’s usefulness, and right about then Optimus punched Megatron in the jaw hard enough to send him to the ground.

That decided him. Well, and the fact that Rhinox had just gotten Tarantulas’ device off of Cheetor’s chest. The day was lost. "Predacons—RETREAT!" he bellowed as he scrambled to his feet and transformed, lighting up his jets and launching himself into the air. He had to dodge a few shots from Optimus as he did so, but the Maximals were more concerned with making sure Cheetor was alright then chasing off an already-retreating foe.

The dust cloud was still going strong, and Megatron sighed mentally as he transformed again to fire his tail-gun into the middle of it. The explosion sent the four fighters tumbling out of it, which meant that Depth Charge got knocked over again as Rampage slammed into his legs. The crab’s optics widened when he looked up, though, and he curled into a ball defensively just as gravity regained its hold on Dinobot, Rattrap, and Overdose, letting them land on top of him. The Maximals and Megatron gaped in shock at the sight: Rattrap was on his back, the raptor straddling his chest in his beast-mode and biting him in the shoulder while the rat held his gun against the Predacon’s head. Overdose was sitting underneath Dinobot but on top of Rattrap’s chest, her arm clamped around Dinobot’s neck in a headlock while her other hand was apparently giving the raptor a noogie.

Megatron shook his head in amazement, deciding not to think about how the three ‘bots had gotten in that position during their fight and how exactly Rampage had fit into it. "Dinobot! Rampage! Retreat!" he ordered curtly as he turned to go.

Overdose laughed outright. Dinobot snarled softly into Rattrap’s shoulder. Rattrap’s gun remained steady against his head. How the slag was either of them supposed to get loose without one of them killing the other? Rampage solved the question by sitting up, throwing all three of the ‘bots on top of him into a tangle of limbs that ended up with Overdose and Rattrap underneath Dinobot somehow. The raptor was yanked off of the other two by the crab before either of them could do more than curse at him, and Rampage dropped into his tank mode quickly. Depth Charge was just sitting up again, holding his head in his hands, when he saw Dinobot running towards him in his beast mode. The raptor leaped over him easily and kept running, but the ray had turned his head to watch him go. He twisted back around as Optimus shouted a warning, but by then Rampage was too close to stop.

The other Maximals started forward belatedly, wincing as Depth Charge was flattened. The tank chuckled evilly and accelerated out of sight around a bend in the canyon, leaving the manta ray sprawled on the ground behind him with treadmarks decorating his unconscious form.

"Hey!" Rattrap’s puzzled exclamation made everyone look at him, and he glanced around as he struggled to his feet. "Where’d Overdose go?"

Quickstrike sighed in relief as Dinobot caught up with him. The raptor gleamed red from the sunset, but there wasn’t any obvious damage to him…which was more than could be said about Inferno. "Here!" he said as he shoved the ant at him. "Ya’ll can carry somebody!"

"I am NOT a worker drone," Dinobot replied coldly.

"Well, neither am Ah!" The fuzor gestured at Waspinator’s pieces casually. "But Ah’m already carryin’ Bug-Boy."

The raptor took note of the web-bag holding the wasp’s pieces together. "Where is Tarantulas?" he asked suspiciously. "He can carry Inferno…"

"I would, hehehaheh, but I’m not exactly in my best condition at the moment, either." The tarantula crept over the top of a nearby rock and waved his front legs in irritation at three of his other legs, which were crippled. "My transformation circuitry locked up as soon as I beast-moded. The widow’s aim is improving, tehehehahe."

A rumble of tank treads announced Rampage’s arrival right then, and the crab transformed. "So. We retreat again." Disgusted, he kicked Inferno out of his way and stomped in the general direction of the base. "If Megatron had left us alone, I could have torn the spark out of that miserable rat!"

Dinobot snorted and reached out to snag a front claw in the webbing still wrapped around Inferno’s propellers. He used it to drag the ant after him awkwardly. "That, I doubt."

Quickstrike and Tarantulas exchanged a glance, recognizing a familiar, building anger in the other two Predacons. They lagged behind them tactfully, not wanting to get in between loyalty programming and a psychopath.

The larger Predacon glanced over his shoulder and smirked. "If that idiotic saurian had just stayed out of the fight, I probably could have even managed to end your pathetic life, clone," he said deliberately. "But since we all know Megatron couldn’t find his skidplate with a map and Inferno along as a guide, I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me…"

The raptor following him snarled low in his throat. "I will tell Megatron that you said that," he said threateningly, but Rampage merely laughed.

A feminine laugh echoed him, and the Predacons jumped, startled. Waspinator and Inferno were abandoned as they spun around to put their backs to each other as combat instincts overrode normal Predacon protocol (also known as just plain paranoia: never, ever trust someone enough to turn your back to them, especially if they call themselves Predacons!). While they were scanning the landscape around them, though, the source of the laugh drifted down silently on hang-glider wings and transformed in the middle of the circle they had formed.

Tarantulas heard the muted thump as she landed, and he turned back to the center curiously only to shriek and run for cover when he saw her. The other three Predacons whirled around in time to see him cram himself under a rock somehow. Overdose watched him disappear from sight and giggled madly. "He’s funny!" she told Rampage.

"If you say so," he said warily. Dinobot and Quickstrike were backing away from her slowly, still searching the area for Maximals. There weren’t any, though, and Overdose seemed confused when they kept glancing around. Not that she wasn’t confused normally, but… "Why are you here, Overdose?" Rampage asked cautiously. "Where are the other Maximals?"

"The golems commanded me to leave the Maximals," she replied solemnly. "They said, ‘Overdose! Thou shalt follow the Predacons to the ends of the world,’ and so I obeyed." The femme smiled. "Of course, they also said to douse you in cheese sauce and offer you in sacrifice to the sacred gulu-gulu’s, but I’m not sure I want to do that. I don’t have enough cheese, for one thing!" She tilted her head to one side and studied her fins, apparently forgetting about the three Predacons. She fingered a couple torn edges and appeared lost in thought. "I don’t have enough cheese, but…when in doubt, use nitroglycerin." Her smile turned wolfish as her fins turned orange and Quickstrike hid behind a bush.

Rampage blinked and glanced at Dinobot. The raptor seemed to still be trying to figure out the part about cheese sauce to nitroglycerin, and it didn’t look like Quickstrike or Tarantulas would be any help with dealing with the crazy sea slug...which left him to do it. "So…the golems," whatever a ‘golem’ was, "told you to leave the Maximals and sacrifice us?" he hazarded, then took a precautionary step back when Overdose nodded enthusiastically. "Ooooookay. And that’s why you came after us." He tensed to run for it, hoping she’d go after the other Predacons first.

Overdose’s eyes lit up with colors, and she giggled. "No, silly!" she chided him. "The sun set. I’m a Predacon now, remember?"

There was complete silence for a long moment. Overdose beamed at one and all. One and all stared back at her.

"Joy," Dinobot grumbled finally.

"Ain’t it?" she chirped cheerfully, completely oblivious to the sarcasm.

Quickstrike peeked around his bush. "What’s a gulu-gulu?"

Inferno’s body dragged behind the tank, who ignored the fact that it wasn’t exactly improving the ant’s condition. Dinobot ignored it, too, stalking along beside Rampage and muttering to himself instead. Quickstrike scurried on the other side of the tank in his beast mode, hauling Waspinator’s pieces while Tarantulas limped at his side.

Overdose, despite Rampage’s attempts to dissuade her, was riding on top of his tank mode, happily munching pills from a dozen different bottles as she questioned Dinobot about Megatron’s plans so far in the Beast Wars. She had already threatened to dismember Tarantulas if he didn’t give her a brief history of the Beast Wars, but now she had questions about what had happened. "…so then he tried to destroy the proto-humans, right?"

"Yes," the raptor snarled.

She didn’t seem to notice that he was more than a little annoyed with her. "Why?"

"Ta let the Dicept…Decapt…Decepti-somebodies win some big battle in the future," Quickstrike answered when Dinobot only ground his fangs angrily.

"Decepticons," Tarantulas corrected him wearily. "If there were no humans, the Decepticons would win over the Autobots."

"Why’s that a GOOD thing?" Overdose asked immediately, failing to acknowledge a faint voice inside her that agreed with Megatron’s logic. "I mean, if the Decepticons won, then there’d be a Decepticon Empire. If there was a Decepticon Empire, then it’s not very likely that a bunch of Predacons would have gone back in time at the right point in the future to kill the humans off, and the entire time-loop would have collapsed, thereby destroying history and the universe." She picked out a pretty blue pill and popped it in her mouth before noticing that Rampage had rolled to a stop and everyone was staring at her. "What?" she asked innocently.

"That’s not a scientifically provable theory," Tarantulas said slowly, "but I could almost agree with it if it wasn’t so, tehahe, insane."

"It’s coming from Overdose," Rampage said wryly. "Did you expect anything different?"

The spider shrugged all eight of his shoulders. "Hehehahe, true." He flinched when a multicolored glare focused on him. "No offense intended," he added meekly, and Overdose glared at him a moment more before returning her attention to her drugs.

"Uh…not ta interrupt or anythin’," Quickstrike pointed a leg at Dinobot, "but he’s twitchin’ again."

"Huh?" Overdose blinked at the raptor, who was staring at her and twitching spasmodically. "Oh. Snap out of it!" She threw an empty pill bottle at him when that didn’t work. "Yeesh. It’s like he’s never heard anyone criticize…um…"

"Megatron," Rampage, Quickstrike, and Tarantulas supplied automatically.

"…before." The femme shook her head sadly and hopped off of Rampage. "Poor, poor, Dinobot," she sighed as she strolled towards the raptor. His optics followed her, and his twitching increased.

"What’s she doin’?" Quickstrike asked Tarantulas in a whisper.

"I have no idea," the spider whispered back. Rampage remained silent, waiting to see what the crazed femme was doing THIS time.

"You know what you need?" she asked Dinobot, and raptor transformed quickly, one of his hands shooting out to wrap talon’s around Overdose’s neck.

"WHAT do I need?" he hissed at her as he tightened his hold. "I need—"

Overdose didn’t seem to notice the claws on her throat. "Drugs!" she said gleefully as her hand shot up to stuff a pill bottle in Dinobot’s open mouth. He froze, his optics wide, and her other hand slammed up into his chin.

*GULP!*

"Uh-oh…" Rampage murmured. "That can’t be good."

Quickstrike looked at the stunned raptor-bot and the colorful femme who had freed herself from his grip to do a triumphant victory dance of some kind around him. "Ah don’t think the Boss-bot’s gonna like this."

Tarantulas chuckled.

Megatron scowled as the computer informed him of his troop’s arrival, and he called up the closest surveillance camera on a nearby screen. Finally! He hadn’t thought any of them were THAT damaged, so what in the Pit had taken them so long to—

His thoughts slid to an incoherent halt as Overdose came reeling through the entrance, laughing and changing colors wildly. It wouldn’t have been so surprising if Dinobot hadn’t been arm-in-arm with her, laughing just as hard as she was and staggering like his legs wouldn’t support him. They stumbled off down the corridor when Rampage gave them both a push from behind to get them started.

The crab looked up at the surveillance camera, then at the two ‘bots who came inside behind him. Tarantulas rolled all eight of his spider eyes and limped after the laughing duo. Quickstrike shrugged helplessly and followed, still dragging Waspinator’s pieces. Rampage looked back up at the camera and shook his head.

"You don’t want to know," he said quietly, then turned to find a CR Tank to throw Inferno into.

Megatron sat back in his throne and calculated how much longer before the sun would rise. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know because that’s when Overdose would become an enemy again…or because that’s when she would stop being an ally.

And he really wasn’t sure if she knew the difference between the two.

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