HiddenPast ch2 by SupremeAlien

As DinoMiner and Inferno were out putting up the surveypost, Rampage retreated into the wilderness. He thought about the newcomer. Why did she feel so… safe… to him? He felt like he had to protect her, though he had absolutely no clue why. He had never even seen her. And yet… Something told him he knew her, and knew her well.
Rampage walked into the ocean. For once, his mind wasn’t thinking about who he could terrorize next, or how he could evoke DepthCharge to come out and play. He walked on the bottom of the ocean, not knowing where to go, but not having a point to go to either. He sighed. Little bubbles of air lifted up in the water, joining the air above it.
His emotions for this little transformer went deep. Really deep. But it wasn’t like he was in love with her. He knew he wasn’t. Her spark was attractive though. It felt a lot like that of DinobotII. His eyes widened in realisation.
“No wonder our mad scientist knows her…” he said to himself, “I will have to talk to my brother about this…”

Depth Charge flew through the air, RatTrap on his back. The irritating rodent just wouldn’t be quiet, even if Depth Charge had literally shouted at him to shut him up. It didn’t work… RatTrap just kept complaining about flying.
“If you don’t shut up rodent, I swear I will just drop you on the spot, then you don’t have to worry about flying anymore,” he snapped. At last, the rodent was silent. For a few seconds in a way.
“Why you fried fishfilet, I oughta…” RatTrap started, then interrupted himself, “Look there!”
Depth Charge looked at the point RatTrap was pointing to. His eyes widened. Inferno was down there, along with a transformer he found oddly familiar.
“Contact Optimus,” he ordered the rat, “Tell him we found something, or rather, someone interesting.”
As RatTrap was blabbing to Optimus, Depth Charge landed in the bushes and transformed, letting the rat fall on his butt. He edged closer to the clearing where Inferno and the newcomer were working at something. He watched and tried to remember who she was, she looked so familiar to him. The two Predacons were working in silence, and with such refinement it seemed like they had been working together for stellar cycles. They finished the build, just as RatTrap joined him.
“The bossmonkey wants us to take that surveypost down,” he told Depth Charge, “If we let it stay here, Megs can keep an eye on the humans and on us way too easily.”
“Well then, lets cut some Predacons,” Depth Charge said, grabbing his gun and jumping out of the bushes.
Inferno and DinoMiner turned around at the exact same moment. Before even being able to react, Depth Charge’s shot impacted with her breastplate, damaging her quite bad and sending her flying.
“Maximal fool! Burn in the fires of Inferno! HIYAAAA!!!!” Inferno screamed, making a torch out of Depth Charge, until he was blasted backwards.
“Pestering fishface is my job, crawler,” RatTrap said, blowing the smoke from his gun.
“And exterminating vermin is mine,” a melodious voice said. Less then a second later two bright beams ripped through RatTrap’s chest, letting him yell in protest and pain.
“I thought I had taken you out,” Depth Charge said, turning towards her.
“You thought wrong, DC,” she said, stunning the mantaray and therefore giving her the chance to shoot him as well. She got up with difficulty and walked over to Inferno.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” Inferno said, “But you look quite damaged. Allow me to escort you back to base. The Maximals already know about the post, so they’ll take it down soon again.”
DinoMiner nodded. “I agree,” was all she could say before Inferno lifted her and placed her on top of his flight engines. Pretty soon, they arrived back at the Predaconbase. As soon as they entered the com-room, Megatron started talking.
“Report, subcommander,” he said.
As Inferno started his report, DinoMiner got over to the R-chamber and jumped in, the system starting to repair her immediately.

At the Maximal base, Depth Charge was even more quiet than usual. Optimus Primal noticed this immediately.
“Is something wrong, Depth Charge?” he asked carefully.
Depth Charge turned around.
“No,” he said, then walked passed Optimus and out the Maximal base. Something was but Depth Charge just didn’t want to talk about it. Optimus decided to let it be. When Depth Charge was ready to tell him he would, Optimus hoped. He sighed and turned around, facing RatTrap.
“What happened out there?” he asked.
“Well, we saw the ant and the new Pred working on a surveypost and we risked our furry butts to make the post sink into the ground, but the new girl got the best of us,” RatTrap admitted.
“Tell me more about that new Predacon,” Optimus said.
“Her body is like... wow… She’s a chopperface in beastmode,” RatTrap told him, “And she’s a Pred with heart and soul.”
“Perhaps she just doesn’t know she was originally a Maximal,” SilverBolt opted.
“No... There was something about her that just couldn’t be Maximal,” RatTrap said.
“Everybody who comes out of a stasispod was originally a Maximal,” Optimus said, “You know that, RatTrap.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got my doubts about this girl,” RatTrap repeated.
“So she was hot, ey?” Cheetor interrupted, not at all caring about the earlier subject, “What exactly did she look like?”
“Warning, Predacon signatures detected in grid Alpha,” the computer said.
“I think you’ll be able to see that soon enough,” Optimus said.
“Alright!” Cheetor exclaimed.
Optimus just ignored that. Cheetor could so childish sometimes. Optimus often felt he had to look after him, like it was his son. He kind of felt that way about Cheetor, but he couldn’t let that cloud his judgement.
“In the mean time, I want RatTrap to tell the others about the new Predacon,” he said, “We didn’t get any readings about a stasispod, so they need to know.”
“Roger that, bossmonkey,” RatTrap said, then turned his stool around to start using the comlink.
“Cheetor, SilverBolt, you come with me,” Optimus said, before transforming and flying out of the base.
As they flew, they remained quiet, each mind on the new Predacon. SilverBolt wondering what her personality was like, and if she’d come around, Optimus wondering who she really was and Cheetor wondering how he could ask her out, if she was, as RatTrap had put it, hot.
They landed a bit off the location the computer had found the Preds. They wanted to observe before taking any action. They didn’t know what the Preds were doing there and which Preds it actually were.