The Ugly Truth
Part II
Plink, plink. Rain fell onto the sleeping white panther's metal hide and dripped off in rivulets.
Angel awoke with a start. The dream again.
It was raining. And cold. She stood up and shook herself off, sending water flying everywhere.
Voices. In the distance.
"Have you found her?"
"I cannot track anything in this rain. I hate to say it, but we seem to be getting nowhere."
Well, at least one thing was going right.
The voices faded into nothingness. They were gone.
She decided to wait for the rain to stop before continuing her mission. It would be hard to fly in the rain.
Angel once again woke from her nightmare, but this time felt the sun shining through the trees. The sun didn't look like it would stay out for long. Dark clouds passed by.
A flash of bright yellow against the forest caught her eye.
BUTTERFLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Angel halted in mid-pounce. Now was not the time for chasing butterflies. She had a mission. She needed to find out the truth to her existence.
Where to start? Where would the Predacons keep an empty stasis pod? Duh. In their ship. To the Predacon base!
Angel screwed up her resolve and entered the Darkside through the same hole on her ill-fated solo mission. Piece of cake. Where to start, though?
Angel peeked out of the duct. She could see Megatron in a bathtub. With a rubber ducky. No fair! How come stinky old Megatron got a toy and Angel had to make her own?
Oops! The mission!
She continued through the duct for a while, but stopped abruptly. She tested seemingly thin air with a claw, and confirmed her suspicions. The blue cyberweb materialized in front of her. A few swipes cleared away the web, but she felt very uneasy.
Still, she went forward, looking out into rooms every once in a while. Big mistake.
She poked her head into some secluded room and instantly drew it back in. Blackarachnia and Tarantulas were talking- arguing- about something. Wait, no, they were calling each other names! Optimus always yelled at Angel when she did that!
"Psychopath."
"Witch."
Blackarachnia was about to return the insult when she saw a flash of white in the duct. Suspicious and curious, she decided to get rid of her current annoyance.
"I heard Waspinator say something about going to your lab to play Tetris on your computer. You might want to catch him before he does something stupid."
Tarantulas made an angry noise, but hurried out. No telling what Waspinator could do in the lab.
Well, that gets rid of one, Angel thought.
Blackarachnia looked right at her. Uh-oh.
"I know you're in there. Come out and I might not slag you."
Angel briefly considered her options, and decided the best thing to do was listen to the femme. She hopped out.
"If I was going to send someone on an infiltration mission, you'd be that last one I'd pick," Blackarachnia sneered.
"I wasn't sent," Angel replied with false bravery.
The spider lady's face changed from disgust to disgust and curiosity.
"Oh, really? And why might you be here, pussycat?"
Angel kept quiet. Telling anyone could be bad.
"Look, kid, if you don't tell my, I can just raise my pretty little voice and get the entire Predacon force into this room in half a cycle."
"You're not going to tell anyone what I'm going to tell you, are you?"
Blacharachnia laughed, "That's for me to decide."
Well, here goes. She'd get captured even if she didn't tell, so there wasn't much she could do.
"I'm looking for my stasis pod."
"Why would you need that?"
"Never mind."
"Oh, Megatron..." Blacharachnia began in a singsong voice.
Angel squeaked for about the quadrillionth time.
"You can't tell anyone. Please?" she begged.
"Sure, kid. Whatever." Well, THAT didn't sound very convincing, Angel thought. But what choice do I have?
Angel told Blackarachnia everything. The spider lady's eyes got wide as the panther's story unfolded.
"Kid, you've got problems," she said when Angel finished.
"Well, duh! So, what are you going to do with me?"
"I'm thinking."
If the Maximals were right, it could spell doom for Maximals and Predacons alike. But Megatron didn't hold onto empty stasis pods. However...
"Tarantulas probably has what you're looking for."
"You're helping me?"
"Don't read too much into it, kid. I'm just looking out to save my skin."
"Hee hee, but I'm not." Tarantulas. Bad thing!!!!!!!!!!
"How long have you been standing there, lunatic?" Blackarachnia snapped.
"Long enough to know an opportunity when I see it. I know of the exact stasis pod you seek, little kitty." Angel doubted he too would help her.
“What are you going to do?” She was dreaming, right? This HAD to be a dream.
“Why, I’m going to take you to my lab, of course.”
“And what exactly do you plan to do there?” Blackarachnia hissed.
“Listen, witch, I’m as interested in self-preservation as you are.”
“Um, are you two going to argue all day, or are we going to go?” Angel asked innocently.
“The kid’s right. Let’s move before lizard-lips or his goons finds us.”
This couldn’t be real. It was impossible. Teamed up with two Predacons- not just any Preds, but the spiders, going to Tarantulas’ lab.
At least, she was pretty sure that’s where they were going. Apparently the lab was secret, because Angel, now transformed, was blindfolded. She hoped dearly they were taking her to the lab and not Megatron.
“All right, you can take it off. We’re here.” Angel quickly obliged, and heaved a sigh of relief. The place stank, it was a mess, but it wasn’t Megatron.
Tarantulas went to a computer and started typing away at the keys. Blackarachnia went to a wall panel and stood by it, waiting expectantly.
“Where’s Waspinator?” Angel wondered aloud.
“Hm?” The scary purple spider didn’t look up from his computer.
“I thought he was here, playing Tetris.” This made Blacharachnia laugh.
“Tarantulas doesn’t have Tetris.”
“It’s a waste of memory,” the other spider agreed. “Success! I’ve found it!”
“Well, hurry up and get it out!”
Tarantulas glared at the black widow and pushed a button. The wall panel Blackarachnia was waiting by slid open, revealing a number of empty stasis pods.
“Which one is it?”
“Third from the left.”
Yep, it was hers alright. All melted and singed and stuff. It brought back memories.
“Does it still run?”
“Hold on.” Tarantulas pushed a few more buttons. An arm pushed the pod out from its niche in the wall and deposited it on the floor. He then walked over to it, attached a few wires, and pushed a big, red button. The pod sparked a lot, but seemed to run.
“Look in the backup files. It’d probably be there, if anywhere.”
“I know what I’m doing!”
Angel stood and remained silent throughout all of this. Tarantulas tapped at the pod for a few cycles, and then stood back.
“There it is,” he said smugly. Angel and Blackarachnia crowded around the pod, eager to see exactly what “it” was. All “it” was to Angel was a bunch of ones and zeros, but Blackarachnia seemed to understand what it said.
“That confirms it. She is what she says she is.”
“Wait, what?”
“You, pussycat, were sent here by the aliens to destroy the transformers.”
“That can’t be right! You’re reading it wrong!”
The spiders ignored her.
“So, what do we do with her?”
“Simple. We slag her, and then she can’t slag us.”
“Oh, but that would be a waste of such a lovely opportunity, yesssss.”
Angel squeaked AGAIN.
“M-Megatron? Oh, we weren’t going to slag her without your permission, of course.”
“Of course.” The tyrant walked up to Angel, who was too scared to do much but squeak.
“We could harness this power of yours, yesssss.”
Angel recovered from her fright.
“Harness this, jerkface!” She slashed him across the chest, thonked him on the head hard enough to make him see stars, and ran.
“Get her!” he bellowed. Inferno popped out from a corridor, but Angel blasted him before he could do anything. These finger lasers are handy! she thought, completely unaware of the pun she created.
Quickstrike was running up to confront her. She was about to take care of him in the same manner as she had taken Inferno, but a sharp pain in her head, followed by blackness prevented her. Angel fell to the ground as Megatron watched happily.
Oh, today was a good day, yessssss.
When Angel came to, the first thing she noticed was she was tied up, hands behind her back, which eliminated any possibility of blasting the Preds as they busily made preparations around her.
Well, looking pitiful wasn't going to help. These guys didn't know pity. So, if that won't work, do something else. Annoy the snot out of them.
"Hey! Lemme go! I wanna a drink of water! The binders are too tight on my wrists! It smells in here! Megatron looks like Barney!"
"Someone shut her up!"
"I'll shut up if you tell me what you're doing." Besides, she was running out of things to complain about.
"I hope this is simple enough for you to understand," Megatron started. "We are going to take the backup alien programming from the stasis pod and put it into your head. Of course, we're making a few... modifications. You, or rather the original you, will only respond to my commands." He looked over at Blackarachnia, who was tapping at Angel's stasis pod. "Are the modifications complete?"
"Hold on. This stuff takes time. It's complicated."
"So, what will happen to me?" Angel asked meekly.
Megatron shrugged, and said, "You'll probably be deleted."
"You still look like Barney, you big, fat, evil lizard thing," Angel muttered.
Blackarachnia looked up from the stasis pod.
"Modifications are complete." She pulled out a visor-type thing. Angel recognized it as something used to download and upload data from a computer to a 'bot. Or, at least, that's what Rhinox said it did.
Tarantulas' claws gripped the sides of Angel's head, making it impossible for her to move it. The gravity of the situation finally sunk in. She, Angel, was going to die.
No one else seemed to care much. Blackarachnia slapped the visor on over Angel's optics. All Angel could see was green, but she heard footsteps going towards where the pod would be.
"Commencing interface... Interface acquired... Loading modified alien programming into target..."
That was the last thing Angel knew.
"Optimus," Rhinox said as he stared at the viewscreen, "I'm detecting two energy signatures heading straight here. One’s Megatron, but the other...”
"What about it?”
"...It almost looks like that of the aliens, but it's not exact."
“ETA?”
“I’d say about two cycles.”
“Well that’s just prime. Dinobot, Silverbolt, Rattrap, Cheetor, get in here. We’ve got trouble.”
“What is it, Big Bot?”
“Prepare to defend the base. We’ve got company.”
“I’ve got a visual,” Rhinox said.
“Let’s see it.”
Rhinox pushed a button, and the visual came up on the viewscreen.
“Oh, slag.”
“We’re all gonna die.”
“Hey, did Megatron get a new Pred?” Cheetor wondered. “She looks kinda like Angel.”
“She is Angel. Or, what’s left of her.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s no time to explain. Rhinox, get the shields up and the autoguns ready.”
“We can’t attack Angel!” Cheetor protested.
“It’s Angel’s body, but a different person’s inside her.”
“So what’s happened to Angel?”
“Hard to say,” Rhinox said. “She’s possibly deleted.”
“What’s the new Angel going to do?”
“Isn’t it obvious, kid?” Rattrap said. “She’s gonna turn us alllllllll into hot, smoldering slag.”