It is a marked improvement. On another note, if you ever consider mnemosurgery again, come to me first.
I mean- I’m still thinking about it. Overlord’s probably not the best bot to ask for help, though! Why do I gotta come to you about this? You some kinda needle medic expert now, Megs?
I am not an expert. But I have seen the after effects of such surgery both successful and unsuccessful, and I won’t have the same happen to those under my protection.
There are some nights that I want to put you in a box without the phase shifter, so that you’ll be safe for ten minutes from yourself and from anonymous humans. You’re too trusting. I’ve lost track of how many times you’ve been mutilated by some murderer you believed could be a friend… but that is because you believe the best of others.
It is a mistake, but a mistake that I wish sometimes that I could still make.
(With a nervous joy in his spark, Bee bounces in a safe space between Megatron’s legs and Bigger Bee’s kicking and protesting. His spellbook stays clamped tight in his arms, ready to help uncover the monster and get rid of this menace once and for all! They were gonna be heroes!)
(But where Megatron’s optics fall on the living, Bee’s attention hones in on the dead. Thick and tumulous clouds diffuse the light of the fire, casting an evil red glow along the corpses strewn over the colony. They lie in agony, mangled and twisted into forms he can’t make sense of. Parts of them seem to disappear from the physical plane and simply appear in ways it should not be. It might have been bearable, even ignorable to a degree, if the other bots hadn’t dropped to their knees to weep or try to gather up their loved ones while their offlined optics wrenched and mouths gaped to the hazy sky above.)
(There’s a shifting in the ground, a literal one. Out ahead of them, deep in the ichor pool, the ruins of buildings not only start to shatter, but roll. They casually dip to the sides as if they were floating on water, but remain there, wrought out of place. That must be it!)
(Bee wails the spell and chucks it at the space between.)
Margi!
(Its colors swirl in an unholy violet.)
Megatron was accustomed to chaos. The panic of civilians, anguished cries for the dead, twisted husks littering the ground were nothing new. That he was so unbothered by the setting disturbed him more than the vile horror that appeared before them. It did however rank fairly high.
A hellish monster that needed defeating. Megatron fell into his instincts, analyzing the beast as his blaster warmed again. Every part of them that touched the oozing ichor rusted. This creature was full of the bile, so melee combat was unwise. The spell was meant to banish it back to some other realm, but as he watched, the amalgam seemed to take offence to the fact that it was no longer invisible.
All of its mouths opened in concert, along with every loose bit of plating and space between the viscera that spilled from its center, to let loose a deafening cry. One of its limb-like structures detached itself from the ground in a series of sticky snaps. The piece waved over them before slamming into the ground mere feet from where the group stood. Megatron leapt into the air and transformed, flying around the horror in a wide arch. Eyes followed him wherever he went, more limbs beginning to sprout from every surface. ::It’s preparing to attack! Take cover and-::
A point of color got his attention. A grounder, still alive, trapped in his alt-mode beneath a section of the building just beside the monster. Megatron swore internally, firing his cannon into the beast with as much power as he was able with every pass. The holes it made soon filled with more organic gunk as it healed, but the screech it made at least sounded angry.
Megatron's back up 