Tarantulas's History
Tarantulas was a Predacon scientist that worked for Megatron during the Beast Wars before eventually revealing himself as a secret police agent and then going out on his own. His body was mutated by the quantum surge that resulted from the destruction of the Vox Planet Buster.
Despite his best attempts to flee the planet during the Planet Buster crisis, Tarantulas's unconscious form was trapped on the planet along with the rest of the Cybertronians. When the quantum surge caused by the "second moon's" destruction knocked out all of the Transformers on the planet, Tarantulas's body was upgraded to a Transmetal form, and he forced Blackarachnia to drag it from the Maximal base, even getting her to ignore Megatron's command to stay and fight the Maximals. With Blackarachnia's hard work and some serious-looking electrical arc generators, Tarantulas was restored to life. Megatron soon called him to the battlefield, so he left Blackarachnia to root around in their leader's computer files: by this point, the loss of the "moon" and the damages to the planet had revealed it to be prehistoric Earth all along.
Using his new cycle mode, Tarantulas quickly reached the Maximals' position. During the fight, he kept in contact with her, until a shot by Dinobot put him temporarily out of commission. After he came around, Blackarachnia reported that she'd failed to get the data he needed. The Predacons were soon routed by the resurrection of Optimus Primal, and forced to return to base. There, Megatron and Tarantulas questioned Blackarachnia, only to be told the vital data had been lost. Neither of them believed her, but didn't call her out.
With his old lair destroyed by the Planet Buster, Tarantulas was fortuitous in that Megatron assigned him with Blackarachnia and Quickstrike to check out a cave filled with energon. He quickly surmised that it would make an excellent new lair, and attempted to get his two comrades interested in going it alone. Blackarachnia was more interested in getting rid of the neural link the two of them shared, and cracked an energon crystal, sending feedback through the link, to force him to sever it. By a fortunate coincidence, the three Predacons were soon attacked by Silverbolt and Rattrap, and during the battle Tarantulas was able to convincingly fake the destruction of the cave, allowing him to utilize it as his own lair. When Dinobot defected to the Predacon side, Tarantulas offered to verify his programming, but Megatron decided it wouldn't be a very good idea to let Tarantulas into Dinobot's processor.
Back in his lair, Tarantulas's instruments detected the aliens again, and he rushed off to the site. He arrived shortly after Tigatron and Airazor had been abducted, and zapped Cheetor, but was forced to retreat when more Maximals arrived. He visited Megatron, claiming to no longer be under the tyrant's command, but willing to help. The Predacons returned to the alien site to set up equipment, during which Blackarachnia revealed that she had learned through the broken neural link that Tarantulas hated the aliens. Megatron, Quickstrike, and Tarantulas recovered quickly from the energy wave put out by the new alien construct, and after Tarantulas's refractive web was activated, the trio ventured inside. Once Megatron had control of the construct, he terminated his alliance with Tarantulas, dropping the Predacon from a great height. Infuriated, Tarantulas helped the Maximals attack the construct, infiltrating it along with Rattrap, and sabotaging the transwarp cells which Megatron installed, causing the ship to explode.
Through a bug planted on Megatron's chair, Tarantulas learned that Blackarachnia had been sent to recover a new protoform, and took the opportunity to threaten her to try and extract the information he suspected she'd gained from Megatron's computers. Unfortunately for him, Silverbolt stepped in and defended Blackarachnia, shortly before an energon explosion separated everyone. Though Tarantulas found the stasis pod, its contents found him, and his body parts were spread liberally over a wide area. Dinobot later tracked down Tarantulas in an attempt to find out what Megatron's latest scheme was. Though Tarantulas didn't know, Dinobot forced him to act as transport, and they soon found Megatron preparing to torch a valley full of anthropoids. Tarantulas took advantage of Dinobot's distraction to shoot the Maximal, only for Dinobot to drop a boulder on him.
Alerted by the transwarp wavefront, the Tripredacus Council sent covert agent Ravage to capture Megatron. The former Decepticon led the Maximals to apprehend Megatron, and Tarantulas assisted by taking down the Darksyde's defense system. Megatron, much to his indignation, was later informed by Ravage that the spider was a lieutenant in the Predacon Secret Police; Tarantulas joined in the diss by laughing over a comm-screen at his former boss. Tarantulas was able to inform the Maximals of the location of a stash of energon crystals that Megatron had hidden. When Ravage was persuaded to change sides by the Predacon leader, Tarantulas appeared to come too, manning the transwarp cruiser's weapons systems for an attack on the Axalon. Alas, Rattrap chewed his way into the ship and tossed a couple of bombs at Tarantulas, which stuck to his hands before exploding.
Tarantulas survived, though, and was quickly put back together by his arachnoids. He was repaired in time to witness the destruction of the Axalon. He was soon seen back at the Predacon base, working under Megatron's command once again with no mention of his former secession. However, around this time he was also working on another scheme: restoring the Nemesis, the original flagship of the Decepticon fleet. At some point, he'd found it lying at the bottom of the ocean, and was ensuring it would not only fly again but had a Predacon control console and a transwarp cell that could take it back to Cybertron.
He battled the Maximals alongside Megatron's cyber raptors, taking the opportunity to try out his new Transmetal cyber venom to great success, though he was stomped on by a cyber raptor once the Maximals worked out how to destroy their controls. He assisted in the construction of Megatron's disruptor cannon, suggesting that they abduct an early human to complete the device when the other Predacons were unable to get too close to it due to the unstable power source. While the cannon was completed by Una, she managed to use her knowledge of levers to tip a piece of heavy equipment on him. Though he survived, Una had taken the cannon's stablizer crystal, and it exploded in the Predacons' faces when they tried to use it.
When the Maximals attempted to remove Blackarachnia's shell program, he revealed to Megatron that he had included "certain safeguards" that guaranteed she would not survive, and joined the other Predacons in an attack on the Maximals that was meant to disrupt the attempted shell removal. He fired the missile which knocked the Maximals' power off-line at a crucial instant, seemingly bringing an end to his "treacherous creation". Enraged by the death of his beloved, Silverbolt attempted to kill the scientist, but was thwarted by Rampage, who was later defeated by a revived—and Transmetalized—Blackarachnia.
Tarantulas participated in the Predacons' next attempt to retake the Ark, utilising his latest invention to allow Quickstrike to take control of Optimus Primal... and that was when he made his move, at last. He manipulated Quickstrike into throwing Megatron into the nearby lava while he himself set the Ark's engines to overload. Megatron survived his lava-dunking, gaining a new body in the process. However, he had lost his patience. While he'd tolerated Tarantulas' treachery, he could not tolerate incompetence. Tarantulas survived his punishment and fled back to his lair.
Tarantulas was left ranting in his lair about how the Tripredacus Council's plans were wrecked, while his systems monitored the Nemesis (which was finished by this point). However, his rant and Nemesis plans were interrupted when the aliens—now revealed to be called the Vok—sent their emissary Tigerhawk to Earth. Tarantulas let him take out the Predacons, then used his arachnoids to disable and capture him. Tarantulas intended to force the all-powerful being into his servitude by drawing the Vok influences out of his body and reprogramming him, and then have him obliterate the Ark. He cheerfully told the emissary that as he nor the Council had Autobot or Decepticon origins, they'd survive the resulting timestorm, turn Cybertron into a universe-conquering force, and one day even conquer the Vok themselves.
The scheme backfired, however, as his energy beam device expelled two actual Vok out of Tigerhawk. The formless spectres attempted to take over Tarantulas' body. Panicking, he made a religious sign to ward them off and then opened fire on them—a futile gesture that merely served to spin the energy device around 'til its rays were blasting him and his lab equipment. Overloaded by the beams, Tarantulas exploded, leaving nothing behind but his boots. The remainder of his equipment detonated seconds later, blowing the lair to rubble.
