They had been observing the camp for a few days now and Leech was bored.
Are you done yet? The fleshlings have been doing the same thing for solar cycles now. Just going out to gather supplies to be used as fuel and consuming it. I'm so bored!
Alright, alright. We'll follow the hunter when they go out this time. Scythe shifted positions and got ready to move.
The fleshling she had referred to as the 'hunter' was the first one they had come across. That one had left that camp every day and often came back with a dead creature. And they were leaving again today. Scythe followed at a distance. The hunter met up with some gatherers. They spoke for a bit.
I wonder what they're saying. Scythe mused as she circled the fleshlings.
Who knows? Hey, why don't we show ourselves today? Leech asked.
No way. That will scare them.
Ah, come on. What's the worst that could happen?
Scythe mulled over it for a bit. She kind of wanted to as well. Fine.
She followed the hunter as they left the gatherers. When they were a good distance away, she just sort of appeared next to them. The fleshling screamed, loudly, to the point it startled Scythe into not reacting when the fleshling stumbled back and fell into the ravine they had been walking along.
"Oh… whoops," Leech said aloud as Scythe stepped to the edge and looked down.
It was only a two meter drop but the fleshling had landed on their back on the rocky bottom.
"I think it's dying," Scythe said, running some scans.
"Fleshlings are such frail creatures," Leech grumbled.
"Quick, let's download the contents of its processor before it dies." Scythe leapt down into the ravine.
"You want to probe a squishy organic neural net?" Leech shivered at the thought. "No thanks."
"How else are we supposed to learn about these creatures?" Scythe asked. "We can't exactly talk to them. And they most certainly don't have a computer database somewhere that we can just download the information from. This is the only option."
"Ugh! Alright. But you can use your probe. Not mine."
"Yeah, yeah."
Scythe knelt next to the fleshling who was watching her with fear filled eyes while they gasped painfully for air thanks to their broken internal parts. A small tentacle snaked out from a panel next to her wrist and stiffened into a thin blade. She shoved it up the fleshling's nasal cavity and into the soft tissue of its neural processor. The fleshling started to spasm as she scanned for information.
By the time she was done, the neural processor had become mush, the body going limp shortly before and the eyes rolled back in their sockets. Retracting the probe back into her wrist, Scythe sifted through the new information, quickly assembling a language packet as she heard shouts in the distance. The gatherers must have heard the hunter scream. They were calling their name and asking for them to answer.
We should go before they find us. Leech sent.
Yeah… She agreed distractedly but did not move.
Scythe? Leech nudged the main processor.
Are you seeing what I'm seeing? She sent a request log to Leech.
What…? It was her t-cog telling her that an appropriate alternate mode had been scanned and was sending a request to engage the transformation sequence. You gotta be kidding me…
The shouts were closer now.
We need to scram. Leech reached for the override protocols to access the frame's motor functions.
Oh, no, you don't! Scythe reacted by engaging the t-cog.
Leech yelped as its frame moved involuntarily. It shifted to the top of Scythe's shoulder, twisting slightly so one tail became flush with her side, while the other took the shape of an arm and a hand, the mouth hidden in the palm. The optic stems went flush to her neck, one optic embedding itself in her cheek, while the other covered her left optic cluster like a monocle.
The rest of Scythe's frame was also shifting, her components moving and her armor turning over on itself until she was the same size and shape of the fleshling. Then the entirety of the frame was covered in platelets that used hard light holographic imaging to complete the look, including skin, hair, and even the coverings over the nether regions.
Now can we go? Leech sounded smushed, even in thought.
Yeah. Scythe reversed the transformation and took off running just before the other fleshlings showed up. Let's head back and see what Char and Bolthex are up to.
Both of the Cons were in the cave when she arrived.
"I'm back," she announced as she walked into the main cavern. "Guess what I found out?"
"Did you find the fleshlings?" asked Char. "You were gone for a while…"
"Well, yes. They were as primitive as you said. And while some of their bodily functions are quite disturbing and disgusting, the rest of their culture is quite interesting. But that's not what I wanted you to guess."
"Then what is it?"
"Apparently, I have the capabilities of a pretender." She transformed into the fleshling hunter.
"Gross!" Bolthex made a gagging noise.
Char reached over and smacked him. "And you weren't aware of this?" she asked, turning back to Scythe.
"No." Scythe transformed back. "As far as I know, none of my clan had ever left Cybertron. We were mostly miners with no alternate mode. And, thanks to Megatron, there is no one left for me to go back and ask."
Bolthex looked up. "You're the last of your kind?"
"Well, somebody got mad when we refused to share our technology. Not that we could. It is integrated into our frames. We're created with it. We couldn't even reproduce it." She brought her blade out to form a crescent around her servo. "This is probably the last blade of its kind in Cybertronian existence. If something happened to my arm, well… I would be useless, wouldn't I?"