Disclaimer: do not own Transformers.

Summary: Drabblish, Masterpiece 'verse. By certain twisted Decepticon standards, the humans could be considered quite beautiful.

Rating: T

Warning: Possible OOC, and warnings for the narrator's infatuation with the concept of evolution.

Author note: Opinions do not necessarily reflect opinions of the author. Yes, I am that creeped out by this narrator. Also: summary of this story is silvane's original bunny.

Eye of the Beholder

He became interested in humanity in general and Lennox in particular, the first time he ever saw the soldier. The human had torn through the shattered streets in a stolen silver motorbike, laughing in voice high and howling, taking down Blackout with nothing but a few rifle rounds and sheer recklessness and tenacity.

The fact that Lennox removed the annoying sorry excuse for the seeker wannabe also worked in the human's favour.

His interest was piqued.

He was a scientist before the war, and still had a scientist's spark during the war. He was what humans would have termed as a biologist. As such, he was obligated to both love life and to enjoy every moment taking life apart, be it for science or for conquest.

He hadn't really thought much of the humans. They weren't even obstacles went it came to their participation in this war. To him, they were mainly small and mostly squishy.

But after he saw Lennox…that was when he did some reconsidering.

He thought about how humans feared small things as well, with good reason. The feared poisonous spiders, scorpions, vipers… They even feared that which they could not see…tiny insects and bacteria and viruses; a whole reign of the animal world that was microscopic and, for all intents and purposes, squishy.

The Autobots and the Decepticons alike feared small things, too. They feared the parasitic scraplets, creatures that would eat through their armour and wires. They feared the kreemzeeks, creatures that were a result of a scientific experiment gone awry and that inflicted often irreversible processor damage.

They also feared Frenzy.

So why the Pit would humans be any different?

So he found himself vaguely enamoured with these creatures, as some humans would admire insects and others would despise them.

Unlike some of his more uncouth comrades, he didn't find their suffering beautiful. Indeed, he found it quite pathetic. He did, however, have an admiration for the outcome of their suffering.

After he had given the humans the honour of his interest, he became particularly fascinated by evolution, natural selection, this survival of the fittest, this nature red in tooth and claw, this will to survive, no matter the cost. It was the driving force of all of Earth's children. Even the most primitive of Earth's organisms had this ingrained in every particle of their being.

Imagine that. What took the Cybertronians eons to figure out, the inhabitants of this backward planet knew solely by their nature.

He was left with the lingering thought that Lennox was a fine specimen of evolution. Not perfect—evolution always did leave scars—but pretty close. He and a handful of select others were well-adapted to the new environment that the Cybertronians brought with them.

If he could fill the world with humans who were more like Lennox…then he'd have done them all a favour.

So really, it came down to this: if the humans showed him fear, he would kill them. If not, they would live.

He was a driving force of nature; it was all a culling.

Once, he had cornered Witwicky and Banes…And, because they were not afraid to die, he let them live.

The fact that their continued existence annoyed Megatron also swayed his decision. With Megatron up and about, gaining control of the Decepticon army came first in his priority list; finding the Allspark took second. So he set them aside…for now. He knew that their capture and subsequent interrogation would be an exhilarating hunt.

He had never managed to separate Lennox from the group. The creature was always an alpha, a dominant power, and never a straggler, even when his sickly daughter—by all means a dead end in evolution, and he wondered how a fine specimen such as Lennox could ever breed out such a thing—finally succumbed to nature, even when his mate left him, even when his pack was desecrated to all but himself.

Such things would make Autobots pause and cry, but Lennox went right on fighting.

Taking his contribution away from the vastly pathetic gene pool of humanity would be a great waste indeed.

In true Autobot fashion, his rival in this admiration for the humans thought that all humans were worthy of life.

Just went to show that even the most vicious of Autobots were still pansies.

He was sure that his rival would be proven wrong, though whether or not his rival would live long enough to see his mistake was questionable.

When competition between two organisms occurred for the exploitation of one resource, one organism would live, and the other would die. That was the natural way of things, and not even the two organisms in question—and the resource of the human race—were not exempt from this.

And he wouldn't have it any other way.

But doesn't think about that at the moment. Watching the humans, with Lennox in the lead, tear and slash and shred an army of drones into indiscernible bits of trash, hands slick with blood and energon and their eyes bright and teeth bared in impending victory, all he could think about was that humans were, indeed, very beautiful.