Once again, Knight was distracted while running through the forest. He found a river, and rinsed himself off, then drew back and looked at his reflection. He liked it. Strong, noble, sleek, and silver. The only things wrong were the scars on his shoulders his wrongly-colored, cut-short front toes, and the fact that he had no tail.
Knight had found the source of the energon smell: a rocky place between some boulders close to where he had left the big spider. So, he thought, the spider must have consumed some energon. That means she is alive. With some hesitation, Knight made up his mind to track her down; he was curious and needed to be sure that she was okay. Besides, Brent had promoted him to official tracker and scout.
The thing that puzzled Knight the most about his encounter with the spider was that he had spoken to her. He had said something in her language—she understood him, or else she would not have looked so surprised. Could Knight say anything else? Could he talk to her? He had to know.
While he was absent-mindedly thinking about this, Knight stumbled upon the creature he was tracking. Caught by surprise, the silver wolf jumped back several steps, landing with a loud noise in a pile of dried leaves.
Blackarachnia turned and saw the wolf, and stared at it for some time. Knight looked at the spider—she seemed totally different than she had last night. Now she was upright on two legs, just like she had been when she shot the brown wolf. This made Knight nervous for a second, but only a second. For the ever-present, unexplained soreness in his chest lifted when he looked at her. He thought again that she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. So they both stared at each other.
Then the spider-girl started acting weird. She looked upset and some liquid was coming from her eyes. Then Knight remembered—he had seen this emotion before. It was called crying. You do it when you're sad. Knight was ashamed: just looking at him made the spider-girl sad?
Knight started to walk away with his head down. It made him depressed to leave the spider, and as soon as he thought about it the mysterious pain came back to him, so sharply it made him yelp and fall down.
Blackarachnia ran over to the fallen wolf; she was still crying. It was because this silver wolf—it reminded her so much of Silverbolt. The golden eyes were just the same as his. The spider woman pulled herself together and recognized this wolf as the one she had seen last night. She wondered if it could talk, or if that was her imagination.
"Are you alright?" Blackarachnia asked the wolf.
Knight found that he could understand her. He struggled to find words—real words, not expressions, grunts, and growls. "Y-yes," he said with some difficulty. "At least, I think I can survive."
Blackarachnia stared at the wolf, open-mouthed. She looked like she might cry again.
"What? What have I said?" Knight asked quickly.
"Nothing—it's just…your voice. It sounds like my best friend used to," said Blackarachnia, still hardly believing that she was talking to a wolf.
"Your best friend? He sounds like me?" Knight asked, interested.
"He used to," Blackarachnia answered, her voice going off-key. "But he's not alive now. Now I don't have any friends."
"You don't have a pack?" Knight exclaimed incredulously. Without friends and a pack to stay with, how could anyone survive? "I'll be your friend," Knight stated, not knowing where the thought came from. "But Darkstar and Brent won't like it. You are, after all, a different creature."
Blackarachnia looked at the wolf in perplexity. Was her mind playing tricks on her? The way the wolf had just talked reminded her of a similar line. You are, after all, a predacon. "What's your name?" Blackarachnia asked, daring to hope a little.
"I am Knight," replied the silver wolf. "It would please me to know your name."
"I'm Blackarachnia," the Transmetal 2 spider said in disappointment. So, this wolf was not Silverbolt, but he was a friend. "Will you—will you meet me here again, Knight?" she asked.
"Of course; it would be an honor," Knight replied. They parted and both felt considerably better. The pain was still there for Knight, but it had lessened. He felt pleased—no, overjoyed—that he would see the spider woman again.
***
Cheetor returned to the Transformer's arc (currently the maximal base), too angry and upset to talk to anyone. The base seemed so empty without Silverbolt and Blackarachnia. When Silverbolt was not out tracking and scouting, he would sit at the computers with Rhinox and actually get the big old grump to talk. Their conversations were always fun to spy on, because Rhinox was normally so quiet. To hear him talking openly to the bird-dog was a rare experience. Rhinox talked about random things—his favorite kind of oil to drink, places on Cybertron he liked, computers on Cybertron he liked, sometimes even girls on Cybertron he liked. But now, Rhinox was quiet.
Blackarachnia was not fighting with Rattrap or engaging in long conversations with Silverbolt, which she had grown to like doing. Hey, it was even lonely without Depth Charge, who had recently been hanging around the base doing nothing but watching the monitors for any sign of Rampage. Cheetor felt alone.
"Did you find Depth Charge?" Optimus asked. When Cheetor did not answer, the maximal leader looked at him and noticed he was slightly damaged. "I didn't mean for things to get violent," he said with disappointment. "But I suppose you had to beat the answers out of Depth Charge."
"He still didn't tell me where Blackarachnia is," Cheetor answered angrily. "I had to fall back cuz he pulled an energon knife on me." He caught Optimus' shocked expression and added, "I didn't get hurt or anything. Besides, I'm Transmetal 2 now; I have the most advanced self-repair circuitry."
"That doesn't make me worry any less," Optimus said. "I'll find him myself tomorrow. Last time we had a little…serious talk and I managed to get things out of him. Funny how Depth Charge always seems to overhear the things we have to know about."
Optimus turned towards his quarters, and jumped in surprise when he saw Depth Charge, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. "Funny how I always overhear," he said.
"Where's Blackarachnia!?" Cheetor demanded with aggressiveness in his voice.
"You're right; I do know where Blackarachnia is, or at least where she was earlier today," Depth Charge admitted. "I'll think about telling you if you tell me this: why are you asking about her? With your computers you can pick up maximal signatures, right?"
"We're having some, uh…technical difficulties," Optimus explained. "Teletraan1 doesn't work for us, and, as you know all too well, we lost Sentinel. What other small computer programs we've salvaged from the Axalon are unreliable. A couple nights ago—actually, the night after we lost Silverbolt—something attacked and on purpose messed up our tracking devices."
"Now what is that supposed to mean?" Cheetor asked, more to himself than to Optimus. "Was it some predacon?"
"I don't know," Optimus sighed. "But it seems unlikely that the predacons would only attack the tracking program—more specifically, that they would attack that area of the tracking program which allows us to scan maximal signatures. I've asked Rhinox to tamper around with the computer and try to figure something out. I have a sneaking suspicion that whoever did this was no predacon."
"Still, it could be. Could be Megatron," Cheetor suggested. "Depth Charge fought him last night."
"He was alone on a strange plateau, where gravity seems to be disoriented," Depth Charge explained. "I don't know what he was doing, but…I have to say Optimus has a point."
"About what?" the maximal leader asked.
"About the attacker not being a predacon. Lately I've sensed someone out there." Depth Charge did not say the other part out loud: the strange feeling that whoever he sensed was from Omicron. But that was impossible! Every Omicron citizen was dead excepting himself.
"It's just a fluke, maybe," Depth Charge said. He changed the subject. "Blackarachnia has changed since Silverbolt died. She says she doesn't want to live anymore. Made me promise not to tell you guys where she was. She is gonna die if she doesn't start taking care of herself. Got pretty ripped up the other night."
"What?!" Cheetor exclaimed, suddenly full of worry. "Is she okay?"
"Thanks to me," said Depth Charge. "But what's puzzling me is what could have done that to her. No wild animal can bite through metal like that."
Cheetor shuddered involuntarily. "How can she be okay if she was that bad?"
"She has Transmetal 2 self-repair technology of the most advanced kind," Depth Charge said.
"That doesn't make me worry any less," Cheetor remarked. He realized what he had said and there was an awkward silence. "Please tell us where she is," he muttered.
"I'll think about it," Depth Charge replied.