By Fang Wolfsbane
The thing that she found most irritating about her ability to shapeshift into any alternate mode was that she couldn't use that same ability to change her appearance into that of another bot to make infiltration easier.
She never had a problem with her fame or build, in fact, she found that she rather liked it, but it did come with its disadvantages. That was to be expected, Shockwave had told her once. She hated that he had been right.
During one of the tests he constantly put her through back on Cybertron, he had her try to imitate the builds of various bots. She hadn't succeeded at even one. Their alternate modes had been no problem, but their bi-pedal frames had been a different story entirely.
When she originally asked Megatron what the purpose behind the idea was, he hadn't really told her much, save for hinting that he intended on using her for nearly the same purpose as she was trying to do now: infiltrating the Autobot base to gather energon.
The thought alone was irritating enough to make her hesitant about carrying out the mission, even if it was just for her own wellbeing. She couldn't help but wonder, if she had succeeded during those tests, would she have had enough experience to know exactly what she needed to do?
She doubted it. If she had passed the tests, she would have been ordered to stay behind on Cybertron, working under Shockwave's command, trying to gather the remaining energon from the few bases the Autobots still had left.
Thinking back on it now, maybe that wouldn't have been so bad. At least then she would have known where most bots were.
Brightening the intensity on her visor, Starlit used the red light to guide her path along the vents she was currently scuttling through. Luckily for her, Earth's defences hadn't evolved to Cybertron's level, leaving the vents pretty much exposed. It was almost ridiculous, though that didn't mean that she wasn't grateful for it. This way she didn't have to worry so much over her own safety.
With all the mini bots they had around, she would have thought that the Autobots would have ensured that the vents were smaller, at least human sized, but from the look of it, they hadn't expected to be snuck up on by the Decepticons, much less a femme Decepticon.
As she crawled along, she didn't have a clue where she was going, save for a slight cool breeze. When it came to energon storage, it didn't need to be stored under any specific temperatures, as long as that temperature didn't reach a boiling point, so that left the most logical choice the coldest room on base, thus the reason why she followed the breeze.
Voices echoed through the vents, causing her to constantly pause her exploration to try and determine how many potential enemies she would have to face if she were somehow found out, as well as to listen for anything that might be of use to her. So far? She hadn't heard anything of value.
The latest gossip on base seemed to be about their human guests, something she already knew about thanks to Zett. If she succeeded, she planned on thanking him for the heads up. If she survived.
"I still say it's a stupid idea," one of the mech's made clear his distain about letting humans into their base. She didn't blame him on that front. Even if they were humans, they were a security risk, especially if one of them planned on getting inside the way she had done.
She was extremely glad that the plating holding the vents together was strong enough not to creak beneath her weight. Given that most of the mechs on the base were physically bigger than her, she supposed that they needed to make the vents strong enough to hold the bigger weight in case of maintenance situations. She silently prayed that today wasn't one of those days.
"Oh come on Red Alert, it can't be that bad," another mech said, the sound of their peds alerting her that they were walking in her direction. She went still, waiting on them to pass.
"How can you say that Inferno?" the first mech, Red Alert, asked in a bit of a huff. Listening to their names and voices, she didn't recognise either, which meant that they couldn't have been high on the ranking list, at least not to the point she had heard of. Who knew, maybe they had recently gotten promotions, or maybe they were new recruits.
"Not every bot – or human – is out to get you, you know," Inferno hummed.
"You can never be too careful."
'You can say that again,' Starlit thought to herself, waiting on their voices to disappear into the distance before she continued her descent. At some point she had lost track of how long she had been in the vents, until she heard an all too familiar voice telling her exactly where she was.
"Uh, yeah. You say energon is like your lifeblood right? Your food and everything, but how long can you really go without it?"
B ingo.
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