Of Sentience and Predator

D6: Into Hell

Suddenly, the crab stepped over to him and kicked him. Animo squawked as he collapsed to the ground. The crab repeated, "Weak humans. Who are you?"

Animo glared at the crab, stood back up, dusted off his cloak, then answered, "I am Doctor Animo."

The four strange creatures looked at each other. The crystalline stated something, then turned around and left. The werewolf followed, then did the frankenstein-eske. The crab looked again at Animo and stated, "Do not get in our way and you will be fine." The crab grabbed the dead rat and dragged it after the other three.

He followed the crab, taking out his notepad and a pencil. Animo wasn't about to let this slip away, there was just an unmissable opportunity here. Maybe he could also snag some DNA samples as well...

-(...)-

The day was nice, the sun shining upon them. The four walked along the path, the lake reflecting the sunlight along their surface. The noise of wildlife sung around them.

"I forgot how beautiful coral-type planets can be," Dealla- EightEight, same same- commented, hands in her pockets. "Sotoragg's surface is mostly rocks and sands."

"Do other coral-type planets have a similar surface to Earth?" Ben asked.

"Doctor Psychobos is the better one to ask about that," Dealla replied. "I'm just a bounty hunter. I don't pay attention to planet types unless it heavily affects the mission."

"Really?" Gwen blinked.

"To be fair, it's mostly acid-type planets," Dealla shrugged. "Even then, acid-type planets are weird because they're oddly specific."

The Nemetrix suddenly beeped, causing the group to stop and all look at said watch. The red part of it began to flash a pale purple color, and continued as if waiting for something. "What is it?" Damana- Kevin, same same- asked.

Ben lifted up his arm, his other hand coming to the edge of the watch. "I don't know," Ben replied, a finger tapping the edge of the watch. After a moment, he pressed the watch itself and a hologram appeared.

"Good to see this function works," Psychobos commented through the hologram, a claw clicking.

"Wait, since when was the Predatrix a communicator?" Dealla asked.

"Nemetrix, and it was one of the first things I added once I finished the transformation function," Psychobos replied. "It was a fun challenge considering Cerebrocrustaceans like myself speak telepathically."

"Why did you do... well, I guess contact us?" Ben asked, looking towards the ground for a moment.

"Call me curious, but I decided to use the tech scanner to see what level tech was in the area," Psychobos began. "Ignoring obvious alien tech such as the Dark Eagle and Nemetrix, the tech level was of what was expected, but I noticed a level spike here to level six."

"That's not normal," Dealla commented.

The hologram showed Psychobos nodding and he added, "I did a more specific search and found there's a group of Encephalona Cyber Squids here. Do you know if there's a reason for that?"

"There's another horde of Cyber Squids on Earth?" Dealla hissed.

"Pardon?" Psychobos inquired.

"Remind me to tell you about Sparksville at some point, but we have bigger problems because there's Cyber Squids here," Dealla replied. She reached up to her ID mask and touched something on it, the strange hardlight disguise shifting to Afri. "Where are they gathered?"

Psychobos looked at something offscreen (off-hologram?) before looking back and answering, "Based on the scan, they seemed to be gathered near the bottom of a lake of sorts. I believe that's the human word I'm thinking of."