Poison Bite (Beast Wars Transformers)

A strong spark ought to bear our calamities, not flee them.

Name: Poison Bite
Allegiance: Mutants
Function: Special operations
Timeline: Generation 1 (Beast Era)

Toyline: Beast Wars

Profile:

Among any group of Cybertronians, Poison Bite was always the one most likely to be away from everyone else, brooding in some dark corner. Being turned into a Mutant and deprived of his robot mode has only made this worse. He feels abandoned by whatever higher powers oversee the mortal realm, bitterly declaring “there is no Primus”, and consequently he has a strong dislike of Optimus Primal’s spirituality. The only ones he trusts are his fellow Mutants, due to the fact they share a lot of his pain. In turn, the other Mutants try to help Poison Bite through his depressive episodes. Although he usually acts aloof and hostile, Poison Bite secretly appreciates the support of his fellow Mutants. Fiercely loyal to Icebird, the leader of the Mutants.

Abilities:

Poison Bite's scorpion and barracuda forms make him a versatile warrior capable of combat on land and in the water. Poison Bite possesses incredible strength - in scorpion form a strike from his tail can shatter steel and with his claws he can tear through all but the toughest alloys like tin foil. In barracuda mode Poison Bite can move at speeds in excess of 100 knots. Like all the Mutants, Poison Bite became an outlier as a result of the experiments that stripped him of his robot mode. He possesses the ability to teleport distances of up to 30 metres at a time, based on his line of sight.

Weaknesses:

For all his power and strength, Poison Bite is severely limited by his depression and spends much time feeling bleak and listless. He'll frequently be found moping or brooding on the eve of a battle, rather than making the necessary preparations. The effective use of his teleportation ability requires Poison Bite to keep a clear and focused mind - something which is incredibly difficult for him to achieve during his frequent depressive episodes.

Scorpion mode:

More information on Poison Bite at TFW2005

Author notes:

If you find yourself identifying with Poison Bite, please, go out and seek help. Depression is not a fun place to be and you were not put on this Earth to suffer through it. I've been there and some of this writeup draws from that experience. It's an experience that I truly wish I had never gone through, and I also deeply wish I'd not spent as long as I did before getting help.

I do find the Mutants as characters interesting. They're a quartet of non-aligned characters who more or less work with the Maximals - or at least, they're neutral to them and hostile to the Vehicons. The fiction for these guys is fluid, sometimes putting them in the Beast Wars, and other times putting them in the events of Beast Machines. I went with Beast Machines, since the whole idea of Megatron experimenting on them fits that series' story beat around trying to rid himself of his beast mode, as well as the fact there's Savage Noble in that series, a character who is for all intents and purposes a Mutant.