Diabla (BB)

Diabla is a Decepticon (or Autobot?) from the Bumblebee portion of the live-action film continuity family.

She's a killer queen, gunpowder, gelatin, dynamite with a laser beam.

Amongst the Transformers, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better femme fatale than Diabla: once a Decepticon, then an Autobot double-agent, and even an amoral partner of a human supervillain, Diabla always looks for out for herself, and her skill with her grappling hook allows her to keep ahead of the competition. Over the years, her strange life has led to repeated encounters with her most vexing foe, the Autobot Bumblebee: though she insists that she's a Decepticon through and through, the optimistic yellow Autobot has a way of bringing out a different side of her, even if she's not always aware of it.

Or does he? Maybe Bumblebee's just too caught up in his foolish Autobot notions of good and evil to realize that Diabla's a natural opportunist, willing to do anything, and team up with anyone, if it means a little more power for her and her alone. And yet... could this amoral behavior conceal the Spark of a hero, buried somewhere deep beneath her cynical exterior?

Fiction

Bumblebee Movie Prequel

On Cybertron, Diabla was assigned by Megatron to infiltrate the Autobots, an undercover mole that would work to destabilize the Autobots from within. Diabla became an excellent double agent, and even developed a friendship with Bumblebee, The Man with the Golden Car even fighting alongside him in the smelting pools of Altihex, From Cybertron with Love but this friendship would come to a messy end when the Decepticon eventually revealed her true loyalties. The Man with the Golden Car In spite of this betrayal, Bumblebee remained adamant that Diabla had been an Autobot who had simply been turned by her new commander, the Triple Changer Blitzwing, and not the spy she had always been. Energon Is Forever

Following the loss of the Transformer homeworld, Diabla was one of the many Cybertronians who made their way to Earth, arriving alongside her fellow Decepticons Runabout and Wildrider. The trio fell in with Konrad Gotell's E.I.D.O.L.O.N. crime syndicate, and in 1964, they became aware that a different group of Decepticons had been manipulating both E.I.D.O.L.O.N. and the British intelligence agency known as P.R.O.G.R.A.M.M.E., led by the diminutive Malignus and her commander Blitzwing. Energon Is Forever From Cybertron with Love When Bumblebee took out Wildrider shortly afterwards during a confrontation at E.I.D.O.L.O.N. headquarters, Diabla and Runabout trailed Bumblebee to London and attacked P.R.O.G.R.A.M.M.E.'s base. Diabla shrugged off Bumblebee's accusations that she had ever been an Autobot as she unsuccessfully blasted David Reeve and Diana Lux, but was unable to give chase when the yellow Autobot deployed an oil slick and tripped up the two Decepticons. The Man with the Golden Car

The two Decepticons caught up with Reeve and his allies shortly afterwards, bursting out of a nearby river to ambush the spies during a phone conversation between themselves and B.A.S.E.S.T.A.T.I.O.N.. Bumblebee tossed his human allies to safety before taking on Diabla atop Tower Bridge, but despite his best efforts Diabla was able to maintain the upper hand until Bumblebee escaped by diving into the Thames.

Diabla next intercepted the three spies when the pair were staking out Vladimir Vladek's base of operations in London; once again clashing with Bumblebee, the Autobot was this time able to convince his foe to stand down, and the pair retreated to a nearby rooftop to trade information about their human alliances. Despite Bumblebee enthusiastically vouching for the human race, Diabla opined that she only considered them to be parasites, tools to restore Cybertron to its former greatness... and then revealed that the truce had been a way to buy time so that the cannibalistic Dead End could tie up another loose end by killing Malignus's Soviet contacts. The Living Headlights Blitzwing arrived in the skies over London, and though he corroborated Diabla's story that she had always been a Decepticon, her insistence on giving Bumblebee a quick and painless death led her commander to wonder if she had gone soft, and this hesitation let Bumblebee cause a distraction by blowing up a gas main and escaping into the London Underground. Diabla transformed to pursue him, but the Autobot was able to use his rear-mounted gun to slow her down — and the Decepticon got blindsided by an oncoming train as Bumblebee transformed and leapt aside.

Having lost Bumblebee's trail, Diabla retreated to the current Decepticon headquarters in the region, an abandoned castle on a nearby peninsula... unaware that during their most recent chase Bumblebee had used his gun to tag her with a homing device, allowing the agents to locate their base of operations. When the three heroes finally reached their castle, Diabla stood by Malignus as the little Decepticon revealed himself to the intruders. Energon Is Forever In the subsequent battle, Lux revealed that she had taken a prior opportunity to modify Bumblebee's tracer round into a bomb, which detonated. When one of Malignus's pet Sharkticons nearly took out the Autobot, however, Diabla intervened, nailing the beast with a shot. Bumblebee briefly wondered if Diabla had finally returned to good... but the orange Decepticon simply revealed that she had always been loyal to E.I.D.O.L.O.N. first and foremost, and that she had saved Bumblebee only so that she could avenge the death of Wildrider. When Malignus unveiled the nuclear missile he planned to launch at the Soviet Union, Diabla's own sympathy for her human allies overwhelmed her, and she battled Blitzwing to stop the rocket before it could take off. The Decepticon flew up to intercept the missile, but a stray shot from Blitzwing hit the missile's propulsion system, sending the weapon spiraling back down into the Decepticon base.

Shielded from the blast by the ocean, Reeve and Lux had survived by clinging on to a floating tire—a tire that Bumblebee recognized as one of Diabla's, and took it to mean that she had survived the explosion. Indeed, Bumblebee resolved to find Diabla... and, if he couldn't, then to get even with her killer. Though he scoured the globe for the next twenty years, Bumblebee was unable to locate any trace of his former friend, and eventually his desire to find Diabla gave way to a mission of vengeance against Blitzwing. From Cybertron with Love

Notes

Foreign names

• Japanese: Diabla (ディアブラ Diabura)