Headhunter

Dreadwing did not, in fact, understand the assignment.

Megatron is ringmaster of a clown circus and only Soundwave went to a professional clown college.

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The women would have VERY large butts, long legs, and dramatically snatched waists, but no necks to speak of. They would either have great big huge anime eyes or a pair of small beady eyes, uncomfortably close together and high on the head. The hands would look strange and either be weirdly understated or have long, thin fingers with too many joints. Body hair would be straight and stiff. Spiders would NOT understand human mouths and would probably draw them in poses where they’re not fully visible, or else give us enlarged and misshapen lips on our chins with jaws that close sideways. They would minimize breasts but make washboard abs on short torsos. Some of them would carry quintuplets in cradleboards.

Can’t risk you losing your lunch after convincing you to eat it.

“You wound me,” they teased. “And besides, after living with Tarantulas for so long, I’d like to think I developed a strong constitution.”

The weight of her arm, of her helm on their shoulder, was soothing. It reminded them of nesting together when they were still young and untouched by the trouble’s of the world.

Make no mistake, she knew how strong Blackarachnia was, she respected their work ethic in spite of how hard she tries to get them out of work. But she could tell this war was pushing their limits. Though she had seen and made many others break, she would hate to see them undergo the same process.

“Sport?” She looked up at her with bright optics. That definitely caught her attention.

“A space bridge accident? Do you figure it was done intentionally or not?” She didn’t exactly believe his story, but if she asked more questions, she might find enough inconsistencies or additional information to pinpoint where any other teammates might be.

Her gaze swept out in front of them, trying to find tell-tale signs of a scope glare or moving shadows. Incapacitating them from a distance would be hard, but she figured Autobots would be more hesitant to attack with a potential hostage in tow.

“It’s getting late. Do you have any shelter already made or did you just get here?” She unsubspaced another cube, taking a drawn out sip of it from one end before extending it out to him. A little under half of it remained, though surely he’d take anything if he was desperate enough to scoop it off the floor.

“Hundred percent intentional. One minute I am dropping flares and smoke canisters, trying to gather as much attention as I can, and the next I am tumbling across dirt on a completely different planet. I am so far away that my communication’s cant even connect to one of my comrades nearby to recalibrate” He muttered, peering up to the sky to check the cloud patterns overhead. Sparse, tailwind, no storm.

She noted him look out to the skies, gave them a brief glance, before looking back at him.

“Is it close by? I can make something temporary if it’ll take too long to walk back to.” The offer was offered casually, though she was hoping she could convince him to trust her enough to take her to this seemingly nicer local. She had given him fuel, maybe that was enough to show him how nice she could be.

She still had three more cubes in subspace, which, if paced out by one individual, could last nearly a vorn. She had neither the direct means to find energon, nor a method to convert it to its liquid form. She had hoped that, with enough searching, she could find the necessary tech to deal with that second issue and would only need to conduct a solo strike on a Decepticon site. But it was harder to locate Cybertronian tech on this miserable mudball of a planet than she thought and she wasn’t about to risk a suicidal mission on a mine without the slightest guarantee of gain.

“You know I can’t sleep,” they murmured. “At least… not well. This is just me trying to cope.”

They’d always been a workaholic. But, perhaps millions of years spent at war with no end in sight, and the palpable loss of Tarantulas, who had been MIA for centuries, was taking a larger toll on them than they let others see.

Blackarachnia glanced into their tribe-sister’s eyes and knew better than to argue. Her brow was set stubbornly, and they knew it would be like trying to move a mountain. With a twitch of a smile, they consented with a nod. “I guess it is my lucky day, then. Thank you.”

She took their arm and leaned into a shoulder. It felt nice to have them to talk to outside of work, even if it wasn’t very often.

"I have a backlog of them, but I'll spare the details until we can properly get some food in you, can’t risk you losing your lunch after convincing you to eat it."

The pair caught more stray stares on the way to their spot, all of which she ignored.

They peeked their head around the corner, and upon seeing their tribe-sister, rolled their eyes good-naturedly. “Oh, come on. It can’t be time to collect me already. It’s only—“ They glanced at a nearby wall clock out of curiosity and their mouth twisted into a grimace. Oh. They were twenty minutes late, again.

But they set an alarm this time and everything!

“Ugh, hold on. Let me finish this set and put them in the machine, and I’ll be out.”

She scoffed at the sight of the energy drinks. “I take it you’re running on fumes? It’s going to cost you your efficiency if you keep taking those.”

Her lunch cooler started to chitter and Airachnid lightly bumped it against the wall surface to settle her lunch down.

It took great restraint to keep from jolting towards him when he stepped away from her.

“Don’t mention it.”

She kept hands and auxilliary limbs to herself to make sure he could clearly see she wouldn’t try and grab him again. One of her servos was turned slightly to the side, aimed at his legs. If he so much as made a run for it, she would web up at knee joints to incapacitate.

She waited a it before starting towards the cavern entrance, glancing to make sure he kept up. She was in need of some fresh air before she even considered refueling.

Well, a deal was a deal. She’d place him back down, and he’d tell her why he was out here. At least in the darkness, she couldn’t see him fidget, focusing on her lavender biolights to guide him out of here.

“I was ‘bridged out here. One moment, I was in a fight, I was giving air support, and the next moment I am tumbling across dirt and no one else in sight. The colours of sky and terrain tell me its a new planet” He sighed, trudging along behind her and squinting against the brightness of the cave mouth outside.

Her gaze swept out in front of them, trying to find tell-tale signs of a scope glare or moving shadows. Incapacitating them from a distance would be hard, but she figured Autobots would be more hesitant to attack with a potential hostage in tow.

Seeing his smile and hearing his offer made her stop dead in her tracks, though she made sure to pay mind and nodded. “That is very generous of your resources, thank you.”

On one part, what he described seemed to be what she found exciting about her time

“You prefer stability, moments of reprieve.” Something she herself needed quite a lot of getting used to. It felt like it was less than a day under this strange form of “medical watch” and she was already antsying for a moment outside the ship. “That… makes sense. I’m certain you’ve experienced more of this war than I have, and your team’s seen much more energon shed in comparison to what I may have.”

She held onto those datapads as tightly as she hung on each word he spoke. She was only listening to get more information, she reasoned to herself.

“Also, because it is a good show of dexterity after a dip in saline. And I assume testing your limits on something you are passionate about, a thesis, is far more of interest to you than the usual hours of repeated motions” Shellshock hummed, far more content to tailor his exercises after medical visits to ones strength rather than the dull textbook recommendations.

Sure, he could just make Aira roll her wrists or touch her digit tips to her thumb for hours, or, she could let loose on the keyboard of a datapad and give feedback on whether any of her joints didn’t move as smoothly as others.

Recovery. Even that was a foreign concept to her.

“I-” She was definitely confused about that statement. Even with the pleasant interactions with the doctor, a small, nagging thought in the back of her processor was reminding her that she was still very much at large. It has been a good while since she first came onboard, yet no one was bringing up the elephant in the room.

“I wouldn’t want to take too much advantage of his hospitality.” She wasn’t sure how long she could play dumb about Megatron’s order to ‘kill on sight’. But maybe there was some way to work around the potential ignorance. “I’ll make sure not to extend my stay too much, as to avoid using up too much of your resources.”