A sea slug rippled through the water. "I'm still not sure Dinobot's the best guard for my fawn."
A crab scuttled along underneath her. "Well, did you want to take it with you?"
"Very funny, Rampage." Overdose flowed down towards the crab, and fluttered through his antenna.
"Cut that out!" Rampage twitched his antenna away from her fins, but she kept winding her way around them. The soft touches on them were making him want to laugh at the tickling sensation. "Stop!" He started laughing involuntarily.
"Well, well, well! Are you just a bit ticklish?" The sea slug had no mercy, and continued exploring the crab's weak spot despite his efforts to stop her. "Hmm?" She dodged his pincers and brushed her skin flaps along his antenna again.
He wondered how she managed to put a smirk in her voice, but his fits of laughter were making it hard to concentrate. "Okay, okay! I guess I'm ticklish!" he gasped out. "Will you stop?!"
Overdose gave a graceful shrug that lifted her back up above the crab. "Aw, Rampage is ticklish," she teased. "How cute."
He sighed. "I'm never going to live this down, am I?" he grumbled.
"Nope. That’s the bad news." She waved her own antenna at him cheerfully. "The good news is, that's my ship up ahead."
"Huh?" Rampage took his attention off her, and looked ahead. "Oh."
The half-buried star hopper was quite obvious, even from this far away. Neon paint practically made it a beacon...

Depth Charge cruised along, sweeping the area for any sign of his target....

"Dude?"
"Yes, computer?"
"Like, where are we, like, going, dude?"
Overdose made a rude gesture with her antenna. "For the last time, farther up towards shore!"
"Like, where?"
Her patience died. "I don't have exact coordinates!" she snapped.
"Dude."
Rampage continued hauling the star hopper along as Overdose came alongside him, her skin flashing in angry colors. "Why don't you reprogram it?" he cautiously suggested.
"I will," she snarled. "Someday. Whenever I finally get around to it." Her attention was caught by the bottom of an isolated island up ahead, and she forgot her irritation. The base of the island was riddled with holes. "Ooh, I wanna go look in the caves!"
"Overdose..."
Her colors rippled into bright patterns. "I wanna!" she squealed, sounding like a child. A spoiled brat, more accurately.
Rampage sighed. "We’re supposed to bring your ship to shore," he reminded her.
"Whatever." The sea slug was already heading towards the island. "Anyway, technically that could be considered a shore," she mentioned absently.
He considered that, and shrugged. "Good enough."

*Beep!* "Protoform X detected," said Depth Charge’s onboard computer.
The Maximal immediately headed towards his foe....

Rampage hauled the ship to the base of the island before letting go. "Overdose?" he called. The femme had disappeared into one of the holes as the crab had been approaching, and he didn’t know where she was.
"Hey, look at this stuff!" a voice came from below him, and he moved his foot to see Overdose in robot mode in a hole beneath him, holding some sort of rock in her hands. "This island is like a giant network of tunnels," she said excitedly. "It’s so cool!"
He eyed the size of the holes around him, and concluded he wouldn’t be able to fit. "Can we go now?"
Overdose laughed. "No way! I’m gonna see where these caves and tunnels all lead!" She gave him an impish grin, and disappeared back into the darkness of the maze.
"Overdose? Overdose!" Rampage grumbled for a moment, and settled down to wait.

Overdose transformed back into her sea slug form so she could ooze through the tunnels easier. Small fish fled her approach, and she absentmindedly munched the ones her poison killed. She didn’t care that normal sea slugs ate plant-life. Normal didn’t apply to her.
She swam for what seemed like forever.

Depth Charge cautiously approached the island, looking around for Rampage. He didn’t see the crab at first, but he definitely noticed the multicolored ship parked in the midst of a bunch of cave entrances.
Even more cautiously, the ray-bot inspected the area. He didn’t see anything, but...
"Overdose!"
Rampage glared down at the numerous holes. "Overdose?!" he shouted again. They had to bring the ship back to shore.
Depth Charge silently crept towards the source of the impatient calls, ready to attack.

Overdose could vaguely hear Rampage shouting for her to come back, but what she was seeing was more interesting.
The tunnels joined into one main branch ahead, and the floor was sloping up. She followed the main tunnel, and found a dead end.
Frustrated, she turned back to try again. The dead end was a wedge-like slope pointing upwards towards the strangely shimmering ceiling. Disappointed at the dead end, Overdose didn’t notice the ceiling until her antenna should have brushed it.
They didn’t brush against the ceiling. They went through it.
"What the..?" Overdose poked her antenna up through the shimmering ceiling again, and felt around. Nothing. Only air...under water?
She swam up to the top, and transformed. Her head was above the water level, and she could see a dim area of dry land next to her. A small blob of light was on the ground farther away, and above it was a hole that the light was coming from. The light gave a slight bit of illumination to the area.
Overdose climbed up onto the ground and looked around at the cavern. A couple black holes hinted at more caves connected to this one. When she peered up through the hole in the ceiling, she could see blue sky high above.
"Ventilation, a maze of tunnels, privacy..." Overdose mused. "I like it," she decided spontaneously as her mind produced an idea. She slid back into the water to go find Rampage and tell him about it.
The water vibrated as she swam along. The vibrations were strangely familiar, like she had felt them before...explosions. And since she was in here, she wasn’t the one fighting with...
"Rampage!"
She popped out of a hole directly between the two fighters. "Stop it!" she screamed as she transformed.
Rampage immediately stopped firing, not wanting to hit her. "Overdose, move!" he yelled at her.
"Get out of the way!" yelled Depth Charge. He fired his weapon again, risking that he might hit the crazy femme.
She dodged at the last second. "Hey!" Overdose made sure she stayed in the line of fire despite the weapon pointing straight at her. "What do you want?" she wanted to know.
Depth Charge didn’t relax his trigger finger. "To kill Rampage," he snarled.
Overdose thought for a second. "No can do," she said finally. "I can’t let you kill my friend." She gave him a calm smile.
If she was for Rampage, she was against him. "Get out of my way," he warned her. "Or I’ll have to go through you." He motioned with his gun for her to get off to the side.
"What’d I ever do to you?" Overdose’s smile died.
He just sneered at her. "If Rampage is your friend, then you’re my enemy."
She tilted her head to the side, and her background fin patterns formed multicolored question marks. "Why?" she asked innocently.
"Why?!" Depth Charge sputtered incoherently for a moment. "He killed an entire colony!" he bellowed.
Her head tilted to the other side. "So? My family was on that colony, and I’m not out to kill Rampage." She shifted topics suddenly, "You’re going to kill me ‘cause of my friend?"
"I-" He stared at her incredulously. How was he supposed to answer that?! She seemed so innocent, but for her to befriend Rampage...his mind was in an upset as a moral dilemma slapped him in the face. Would he kill an innocent to get to Rampage?
A large part of his mind coldly said yes. Why not? He already had. Several times, in fact. What was one more?
Another, smaller part of his mind, the part not dominated by hate, yelled not to do it. Something in her eyes strengthened that part of his mind, forcing him to remember each murder and crime he had committed to keep tracking Rampage across the galaxy.
He stared at Overdose, his mind off-balance. "I don’t know..."
She blinked at the confused ray-bot, then looked over her shoulder at Rampage. "Put down your weapon," she ordered calmly.
He gaped at her, taken off-guard. "What?!"
Overdose glanced back at Depth Charge, who was giving her an equally puzzled look as the crab. "If you both put down your weapons, we can talk rationally," she told them, her voice patronizing. "Rampage?"
"No!" Rampage shook his head.
She turned around fully. "Do it," she said softly, her voice flat.
He had heard that tone before. Rampage carefully set down his weapon, keeping his eyes on the dangerously insane femme in front of him. She watched him impassively, and turned back to Depth Charge.
"Your turn!" she giggled in a mood shift.
Depth Charge considered. Rampage had disarmed, and now he was expected to. The brilliantly colored transformer looked at him, her eyes trusting and innocent.
The hating part of his mind took over as the thought of Rampage weaponless registered, and Overdose’s innocent trust became a way to exploit the situation. Overdose probably didn’t know about the disk-launcher in his chest, so if he...
Overdose smiled as the ray-bot put down his gun. "Okay, now we can talk without having the threat of blowing each other up." Amazing how someone insane had to think up something so obviously logical...
She turned sideways so she could see them both, and made a beckoning gesture. "C’mon!"
Rampage and Depth Charge stepped towards her, cautiously watching the other for any sign of attack. They made their way slowly towards her until they stopped, facing each other in front of her.
"See? That wasn’t so hard!" She giggled. Rampage muttered something, and she slid in-between the two worst enemies to come face to face with the crab-bot. She was so quick she seemed to simply appear between them.
Depth Charge fired point-blank at Rampage just as something colorful took his place in the Maximal’s targeting sites. It was too late to stop.
The disks hit Overdose in the back.
"Overdose? NO!" Rampage caught her as she shrieked and stumbled into him. The remains of her backdrop fins flashed black and red as she writhed in pain in his arms. She stiffened once, and went into stasis lock.
He glared at Depth Charge over her head, but the Maximal seemed stunned. The ray-bot was an easy target, but he had to get Overdose to a CR Tank right now. Her tricky circuitry might do something weird.
"This isn’t over, Maximal," he growled, and retreated. On the way, he scooped up his weaponry, but Depth Charge just continued to dazedly stare after him.
Her scream echoed in his audios.
He hadn’t meant to hit her. He hadn’t wanted to hit her. She had put herself in the line of fire. It was her fault. She was defending RAMPAGE of all people. She was a Predacon...
No, he didn’t know that. Depth Charge’s excuses started to cave in as they were revealed as exactly that: excuses. He had known the risk of hitting her, and she had already shown that she would put herself in harm’s way. He had known that, and still used her to get to Rampage. And she wasn’t defending Rampage, she was defending a friend.
He forced those thoughts back, along with the thoughts of the other innocents he had killed over the years to get to Rampage. The hatred-filled, mostly dominant part of his mind was slowly recovering from breaking the trust in Overdose’s eyes, but it was recovering. It would justify the incident soon enough if he gave it enough time. It always had.
"*Optimus to Depth Charge.*"
The voice startled him out of his thoughts. "Depth Charge here."
"*I need you to fly my coordinates by the Predacon base. We Maximals are going to let Overdose have a fair choice between Maximal or Predacon alliance.*"
Depth Charge reluctantly acknowledged the order, and set out.
Rampage made it to the beach before Overdose regained consciousness. Her tattered fins became shot through with jagged strips of black and red, and she moved in his arms.
"Rampage?" She tried to wiggle out of his tight grip, but the pain stopped her.
"I’m taking you back to base," he told her gently. "I’ve already told Dinobot to meet us there."
She gasped as another flash of pain tore through her. When she could, she looked up at him again. "What about my fawn?"

Dinobot shook the last bit of blood from his claws, and headed back to base. Rampage surely didn’t expect him to take the baby animal all the way back to base...

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