Alright, so I’ve got this guy. His name’s Twitch. It’s not particularly clever, he has a tiny glitch somewhere in his coding (probably up next to the stuff about how to blink) that makes one of his optic lids twitch. Not important enough to put the effort into fixing it.

He used to work in medical waste disposal, cleaning up messes and removing biohazards and such. 

Accidentally overheard a budding Decepticon going on a very long and entirely logical anti-Functionalist speech to some medics, thought about it for awhile, went “yeah okay makes sense”, and offered to help distribute their information. People don’t tend to notice trash bots, he was good at getting around quietly, but was eventually captured by Functionalists who had a sense of irony.

They put him through a modified variant of empurata, something experimental at the time. Took his optics out and replaced them with blank, expressionless camera lenses (though with optic lids, still with that glitch), replaced his mouth with what was basically a garbage disposal on steroids, took out his T-cog, even managed to snip out the parts of his coding and processor that dealt with transformation sequences.

Then modded the rest of his frame. Pumped up his nanite production facilities to a ridiculous degree, made him able to digest almost anything.They basically turned him into a living trash disposal slash nanite production factory.

He used to have a fairly heavy frame. Still has the struts for it, but not so much the plating and armor, looks almost emaciated.

Under his chassis armor, on both flanks, he has transparent energon-filled tanks where the excess nanites live. One for repair nanites, one for immune system nanites. His plating is covered in an unusually high number of surface nanites, and he has a couple of vacuum-pumps with attached hoses built into his frame to vacuum the nanites off his armor when a lot of them build up. 

Also, his reproductive system has been retrofitted. His transfluid/reproductive nanite factories now produce transfluid full of repair nanites, and his valve has been altered to essentially milk a spike, drawing in nanites to be modified. He was /intended/ to also be useful as stress relief, but his appearance creeped most people out a bit too much.Fortunately for his mental health, he’s… weirdly calm. In his words “yeah, should’ve expected this. Oh well, works for me. It’s a life. I’m useful, nobody messes with me, and I /like/ the valve mod.”

He’s very firm about people, especially people like him, being treated well by others, but is entirely satisfied with his lot in life. Wasn’t the Functionalists screwing with his ability to care, , he’s just an incredibly calm little mech. With, uh-

Is it still called pica if the things you’re eating are edible?

He eats trash.Broken data-pads, mostly empty energon cubes, and, uhhe’ll quite happily drink medical waste.

“oh, yeah, that’s a piece of plating we had to replace, too badly singed to-" 

*crunch*
”…uh"

None of the medics are sure how much they should encourage him. He’s very useful, they agree on that.

And it doesn’t hurt him to eat things like that, it’s just, well, it’s damned creepy, tends to unnerve people a bit. He forgets to care about it. The medics also tend to very strongly suggest that he use an antiseptic mouthwash. 

At this point, there’s a lot of other people who have Twitch’s nanites in them somewhere after repairs, he’s a productive little thing.

And, for someone not unnerved by the fact that he /does/ kinda look both slightly emaciated and seem to have semi-exposed fuel tanks on both sides, he’s excellent in berth.Tight valve designed to milk a spike of transfluid and all. Plus the lightweight frame meaning he can be easily moved, a fairly strong frame, and he’s usually quite happy with just about everything respectful. His valve has probably been modded to take fairly large spikes, as well. 

The rest of the mods, he’s either neutral about or likes them only for their usefulness.The valve mods, he very much enjoys.

Doesn’t really miss transforming. His alt was slow in the first place, he never had a strong urge to move, and the Functionalists did their job so thoroughly he doesn’t have anything left to miss transforming with. There are the memories, but he could have outrun his own alt, it was basically just a mobile trash can.

Most people would have been fragged all to Pit by what happened, but, no, Twitch is just far too chill to mind very much. His pain tolerance is extraordinarily high, as well, always has been. It takes a massive amount of damage to put him over about a pain level of 3, with 3 being “ow, yeah, I suppose that hurts, but it’s not that hard to ignore, I’m OK”. 

He was a Functionalist tool/pet for awhile, being told over and over how lucky he was that they let him continue to hear, to move, then was rescued/captured/stolen by Decepticons. 

So we have this little guy who’s MTMTE Tailgate’s size or smaller, with lenses for optics, a mouth hidden under a mask due to it being /fangs/, sort of an emaciated look around the joints in his limbs and his stomach, two half-visible tanks of energon under the armor at his sides, who absentmindedly picks up and eats trash. And, if upset enough and out of options, will trigger the emergency “ate something toxic” function of his fuel tank and purge whatever medical waste he’s eaten lately on whoever’s attacking him. It’s gross, but effective, considering how strong his stomach acid is. 

He also has a sort of celebrity-crush on Soundwave. Like, "not sure I’d actually want a relationship but you are /hot/ and /awesome/ and I somewhat look up to you". Light fanboying with a side of “same values!!”, basically. 

Weird little guy, but nice enough.