Disclaimer (Cause I didn't put it in chapter one.)
I own neither Transformers nor its Beast Wars branch and make no claim to the contrary, however the character of Chamelecon is my property, reproduction of this character is fine as long as I am consulted first.


As if that's going to happen...

Beast Wars

Pathways

Gone Fishing

The door to the R-Chamber hissed shut and Rattrap quickly checked to make sure Silverbolt was still offline, satisfied that he wouldn't awake and muck up the repair sequence he turned back toward Cheetor and the new guy. "Eh, so how'd you get here then, green skin?" He asked, leveling his wary eye at the stranger, "You weren't on the Axalon and couldn't a been on the Darkside, without bein' in itty bitty pieces."

Chamelecon returned the accusatory stare, "Cybertron sent me, the High Council to be more specific." He paused for a few seconds, letting the expressions of confusion spread out over Rattrap and Cheetor's faces, "A Maximal unit strayed into a forbidden zone while in pursuit of a dangerous protoform, I was told to bring them both back, in a functional state if I could."

Rattrap cocked his head, not believing a blind word which came out of the lizard bot's mouth. "Yeah, an' I guess you just hot wired a pod and went on ya merry little way, eh? You couldn't of fired a pod through all the space 'tween Cybertron and Earth." Unconsciously his hand brushed against the butt of his weapon, not being one to trust a guy that skulked around in the dark, as hypocritical as the idea was.

"You're right, I didn't." The Maximal answered, an expression of satisfaction spread across Rattrap's mug, which was shattered as the stranger continued, "The council couldn't give me a ship and tell me to fly a forbidden path, so under the guise of a prisoner I was put on a transport ship in a stasis pod with some.. special programming, the ship jettisoned me as it reached the edge of the system and I used the gravity of the planets between there and Earth to slingshot myself here." He sighed, "But then this spacial temporal anomaly pulled me in and trashed the pod along with its recovery beacon, which would have sent me a drone ship to bring my two happy campers back. Thought my mission was slag until the pod registered both X and the other fugitive. Effectively I'm stuck on this rock until they send someone to haul my carcass in and then the Council will probably chew my brass out but good... if they don't shred me to shrapnel that is."

"Well, least you found Rampage, uh, X." Cheetor commented, placing an arm on the newcomer's shoulder, "Now can you tell me where I can get one of those Energon whips... huh, buddy?" Chamelecon smirked and drew the weapon in question, at the touch of a switch it buzzed with the hazy blue energy.

"High Council issued me with it." Chamelecon explained, "Must have bonded with my beast mode profile while I was coming out of stasis lock. Lucky me, eh?" Rattrap cocked his head again, that thing was unlike anything he'd seen previous and he wondered how it must function, leaning in to get a closer look he was halted by Chamelecon, "Wouldn't do that if I were you, the results could be, uh, unpleasant. As in, highly combustible unpleasant, experimental design and all."

"So you're here to pull the fish outta water huh? Pfft, good luck" Rattrap remarked, "Ol' salmon puss and his crab cake buddy haven't been seen in a fair few solar cycles. The boss is out lookin' for true blue but he should be back later on." As if by intent, none other should burst through the doors at that moment but Optimus Primal, transformed by his encounter with the Spark of the Maximal's ancient ancestor Optimus Prime, the famed Autobot, he even had started to look like the bot in question. To say the least Chamelecon was dumbstruck.

"No sign of Depth Charge or any Predacons, but I'll recharge and get under way again in--" It was at this point we he noticed the new face and promptly bent forward to take a closer look. "A couple of cycles." He finished, "Care to fill me in Rattrap?" He asked turning toward the sub-commander.

"Your guess is as good as mine boss monkey." Rattrap summarised, "Guy says the Council sent him, lookin' for our blue buddy, but he's as stranded as we are now that some spacial anomaly whatsit trashed his stasis pod." He gestured toward Cheetor casually, "The kitty cat was out there and I sent Silverbolt to back 'em up, these two came back in one piece. As for Bolt, well, he's in the Chamber pullin' himself back together."

Optimus turned back and looked down toward Chamelecon, "Thanks for the assist, sorry I couldn't have brought Depth Charge back for you." Chamelecon simply shrugged, "But there's some hope left that we can reach him before he reaches Rampage." Again Chamelecon shrugged.

"With my luck they'll slag each other." He sighed, "Don't you have a tech head around here who can calibrate a scanner to his Spark?"

"That would be Rattrap." Optimus began.

"If he'd get off his tail for a change." Cheetor finished for him.

The door to the Recovery Chamber hissed and lifted upward, revealing the polished and fully repaired form of Silverbolt. "See, Fido? Good as new." To emphasise his fine work in debugging the bases systems after the recent move from the Axalon Rattrap patted on the console next to him. "Just a little spit an' polish is all."

A wave of sighs ran through the assembled Maximals. Rattrap could be an insufferable blow hard sometimes, well, most of the time really. "Shall we leave you two alone?" Cheetor asked, his voice thick with sarcasm.

Two Solar Cycles later...

"Amazing." Rhinox murmured starring at the instruments before him, Chamelecon lay in front of him on a surgical slab, an x-ray probe hovering above him taking shots of his internal workings. "Your superstructures only been forty percent tranmetalised. The rest of your systems function as normal."

"Well that means what to me, doc." Chamelecon commented, "You said Depth Charge was fully transformed when he came through, so, why not me?"

Rhinox glared at the screens before him as his subject got up and stood beside him, making little sense of the readings which Rhinox had gathered, "I'm not exactly sure, I have a theory but I'd have to examine all the variables before I make a concrete hypothesis, I'd have to have a look at the stasis pod and I'd need the coordinates of the spacial anomaly as well. Which should be stored on the pods internal memory."

"You'll have to send someone else." The new Maximal cut in, "I still have to find Depth Charge and then we can get to work on a way to get off of this rock, seriously how do you put up with this place, it's so different from Cybertron."

"Why do you think I don't go on missions any more? This place is too different from when we landed, I feel almost lost, most of all, all the flowers are all different."

"I though you were playing watchdog for the Ark, but good point." Both bots comm links came on line at once, crackled with static for a moment, which to a Transformer is very much like nails on a chalk board, then the signal began to stabilise.

"Depth Charge to Maximal base." Both Maximals exchanged a look of relief, on Rhinox's part because he had genuinely worried about his friend and on Chamelecon's because this meant he might still be able to acquire his target in one piece. "Repeat, Depth Charge here, to anyone, I'm in coastal grid Z-Epsilon, Rampage is here and you have to.. argh!"

"Sounds like my friend's bitten off more than he could chew." Chamelecon observed. Rhinox nodded.

"We better send help, you go get Optimus and--" Rhinox was cut off as the new team member made a b-line for the front gate.

"Sorry Rhinox. I'm out fishin'." As the door slammed behind him he could almost hear Rhinox sigh heavily. He felt like a Grade-A slag heap for bailing on his new friends, but Depth Charge was too important.

A few cycles later, Grid Z-Epsilon

Depth Charge rounded the last corner, bolts of energy and superheated plasma along with a missile or two pounded into the wall, just missing him, but that was about as far as he could go, there was a dead end round this corner and if he flew out they'd simply shoot him down. From around the corner he heard Megatron's pompous voice spouting orders as usual. "Blow him out of there, bring that cliff face down around him!"

The barrage resumed quickly, dust and small rocks began to pelt down as thick as rain on the Maximal. Finding a small crevice, just big enough to shield him from the impending collapse, he pressed his back against its rear wall and crouched low, his weapon at the ready should they decide to come flush him out. Rocks creaked and shifted far above, producing ear shattering crashes, he at least counted himself lucky that he didn't have organic ear drums.

"Bring me that alien unit, or bring me his head!" Megatron bellowed, Depth Charge heard a bestial growl, no doubt the sound of Dinobot moving closer, then all at once, the noise stopped.

"What the pit?" Depth Charge mumbled, stepping out of the crevice, "Are they gone? Must be a trap." Trap or not, if he was going out, he might as well bite the bait, uttering a colossal cry, he rounded the corner, not even bothering to take aim before firing off his first shot, which connected solidly, with nothing but rock. Dinobot lay not far from him, apparently in stasis lock, as did Rampage and Megatron. "What the pit?" Depth Charge repeated.

"That's the element of surprise in action." A voice said from nearby, Depth Charge cast his eyes upward to see a transformer whom he half recognised, apparently stuck to the wall by his feet. In one move the bot had leaped down to come face to face with him, well almost seeing as how Depth Charge was taller, "Or had you forgotten how valuable that is?"

"What're you doing here?" Depth Charge asked menacingly, his face contorting in to what passed for a sneer, "Sure as slag not sightseeing, I can tell that much. You hunting bear or what?"

"Nah." Chamelecon said as he crossed in his arms, "Rock's and dust aren't easy on the optics, just gimmie an urban paradise over this dust ball any day." He looked up at Depth Charge and gave a somewhat nervous grin, "So, no hard feelings about--?" He was cut off as Depth Charge slammed his fist in Chamelecon's face, sending him straight to the floor.

"No hard feelings." Depth Charge joked, he then pulled the other bot to his feet only to knock him back down again. "And that's for bailing on me, scrapheap."

A few cycles and about seven right hooks later...

"So I bumped Megs and the two stooges in stasis lock and got our friend out of there, despite him wanting to finish his job on X and earning myself a couple of cheap shots." Chamelecon summarised to Optimus, Depth Charge simply nodded whenever the bigger bot looked toward him. "So I guess grape face will be pretty riled up about now, probably taking it out on some of those poor old subordinates, anyway, whatever he was blabbering about it's not important now."

Depth Charge knew exactly what Megatron was referring to, but stayed perfectly silent, he assumed that he had destroyed the transmetal driver in one of the base's lava pits, of course he was mistaken, but he had absolutely no idea that Blackarachnia had snagged the device before it hit the pit. Optimus looked them both over and sighed, "Well at least you both got back in one piece. Depth Charge, I'll debrief you later, I'm sure you've learned something of value, you've been gone long enough." At this Depth Charge shrugged and walked off, prompting another sigh from Optimus. "And Chamelecon, if you're satisfied that Depth Charge is safe and you're ready I'd like you to start active duty with us."

Chamelecon gave an almost comical salute, before bellowing, "Yes sir!" Relaxing he looked around, "Where do you want me?"