By: Lynx Traveller

Disclaimer: I don’t own Beast wars. Maybe someday, but not yet.

Anyway, this is another of my angsty fics, I hope you like it.

DC isn’t as innocent as people think…

I slammed the door to my quarters hard enough to knock something to the ground in the next room; it made a somewhat satisfying smash sound.

Slagging Primal, Slagging Maximals. Can’t they see that I hunt X to keep them safe?

Yet that fool still thinks that he can command me like some drone; if it weren’t for me, X would probably be decorating the Ark with Autobot carcasses now.

I shot a quick glance around my quarters.

I’d always liked my quarters Spartan; even now there was nothing here except my two service medals and a small scrap of armour that I’d found.

A constant reminder of what I must stop from happening again.

Slag X, he always manages to infuriate me; every time that we fight, he leaves me questioning my mind.

But he was right this time.

The truth of the matter was something I’d known all along; it haunted me when I was recharging at night and there was nothing around to take my mind off it.

The truth was that X didn’t need me, but I needed him.

To think that I needed anything from that sick perverted abomination makes me physically ill, but it’s true.

But it goes deeper than that.

As much as I try and convince myself that X is something less than a mech, that I hunt him for the good of the universe, I know that it’s not true.

X is simply a victim of circumstance; any bot could have done what he did, given the right provocation.

I’m not justifying what he did, and I’m certainly not sympathising, but it’s the truth; any bot that was brought up from protoformation to know pain and suffering would naturally see it as a way of interacting with others.

As much as I hate to admit it, that could have easily been me.

I doubt that I’d ever have done what he did; thirty-six colonies fell to his hands before I finally trapped him. But what if I X hadn’t been around?

I don’t think that I’d have ever killed anyone, but I was at the stage in my career when things started becoming monotonous; I was silently abusing my superiors whenever they gave me an order, contemplating just throwing my badge in the district liaison officers face and walking out.

But what if I hadn’t? It wouldn’t have been the first time a bot in a tiring job cracked from the strain and killed someone.

What if. What if I’d snapped and shot my superior, or an insubordinate kid who was trying to be a rebel by breaking curfew??

Luckily for me, X came along.

I know that I shouldn’t say that, and it hurts me to, but it’s the truth.

When I first heard X had levelled the colony, my first fleeting thought was good riddance; those pompous fools would have to deal with a real threat for once.

Does that make me a bad person?
But it gets worse; deep down in my spark, in a place that I never even contemplate trying to touch, I silently thank X.

With X, I have a purpose; rather than me killing innocent kids trying to sell dirty radium on the streets, I now have a focal point for my hatred; I can now release it in the open without hurting anyone.

I knew Primal and Rhinox before I came here; they were first and second mates on a mineral freighter. I’d spent many a week escorting them through extremist territory.

They both tell me how different I’ve become; they want me to forget Rampage and go back to the way that I was before.

If only they knew. I’ve never changed, I’ve just found a way to express how I feel. I was that close to just strafing that transport when it was out in extremist territory, just so that I wouldn’t have to ever see it again.

But I didn’t. For what it counts, I managed to have the self-control not to.

Not that it matters now. Even now I find that I’m slipping.

It isn’t nice to question your own mind, but this morning I shoved Rattrap hard enough to put him in CR. How long will it be before I plunge my hand into Primal’s chest and rip out his spark for stopping my patrols. How long before I decorate my quarters with Rhinox’ head. I’m sure his rhino teeth would make a very nice necklace.

It’s thoughts like these that make me glad I have Rampage. Even if I hate him, I need him in a way.

Which brings me back to what happened today; we were fighting as usual, and X asked me what it would take for me to leave.

Naturally I told him to shove it and tried to blast him so that I wouldn’t have to hear any more, but as usual he said what he wanted to.

He wanted to know if I’d leave if everyone on this planet were dead. If I had no one to protect here would I leave.

After that he started telling me what he had planned for the others. Although I ripped his vocaliser so badly that he could only rattle what he wanted to say, I still found myself picturing what he said.

And I liked it.

He even asked me if I’d help him get his spark back so that he could do what he said; he argued that he was doing me a favour by relieving my burden of protecting the innocent.

It was then that he told me that he didn’t really need me, but that I needed him.

And as much as I slam doors behind me and glare daggers at the other Maximals, I know that he’s right.

He doesn’t need me. He could live quite happily doing what he wanted without me around.

But the opposite isn’t true. I have no idea what I’d do if X were gone.

Hunting him gives my life purpose. Without him I wouldn’t have any direction.

That was why I didn’t just kill him last time.

It would have been so easy; he’d stopped off at one of the orbital stations when I found him.

I strafed his ship when I came in, but I hadn’t banked on what I’d found inside.

X had been there for days. I found later that he was at least three colonies ahead of me at that stage, but his ship had blown a preheat manifold and he couldn’t get it restarted without an atmosphere.

He was inside, almost terminated from lack of energon.

I could have just left him there, satisfied to know the slow pain that he’d be in for a few more months before the support equipment for his spark gave out.

Alternatively I could have just ended it there. There was already enough mech on the walls that his wouldn’t have made much of a stain.

But just as the cat plays with its food before eating it, I wasn’t finished with this game.

I brought X to justice, partially hoping that he’d do something at the trial to carry on the game, but instead he just stared at me the whole time, smirking like he’d found something funny.

Outwardly I was outraged when he was sentenced to live, but inwardly I was happy; it meant that we could continue the game just a little longer.

That was why I’d begun to track the Axalon.

I have no idea what I’d do if things hadn’t panned out the way that they had. I force myself not to think of what I’d done if I’d come across the Axalon while it was still flying.

To think that part of me would have probably wanted to help X escape kills me inside, but the truth is that I really couldn’t give a scrap.

The truth, the cold hard unavoidable truth is that I am Rampage. He is my alter ego. Without someone like him around to hunt, I could easily become that which I hate.

Which I why I loathe the inevitable. X is cunning, but also self-preserving. He knows that when it comes down to the final battle, that if he were to concede defeat; simply lye there and take what I gave him that I probably wouldn’t be able to.

Which is why I must.

But more important than that, I must make sure that I die myself. When the time comes for X’s destruction, it has to me mutual.

X asked me what would happen if everyone were dead. The real question is what would I do if they weren’t.