The first written part of an 'Inheritance' series I have on AO3, which I aim to be a collection of stories about the parents of canon characters, most of them other characters adapted for the TFP universe. In this case I'll be taking Beast Wars Tarantulas and giving him a bit of a pre-war sirehood make-over.
Shockwave being an empurata victim, the Institute and Helex all come from the IDW comics (cough one of the only good things to come out of them cough), but otherwise this is set in the same continuity of TFP.
xx
"Tarantulas, you've done a lot of fragging crazy things around here, but this probably sets a new record."
The spider mech glanced down at the sparkling in his servos before raising an eyeridge at the laboratory guard. "Do you honestly think I'd just leave her alone at home, Helex?"
The much larger mech seemed to shrink slightly at Tarantulas' incriminating glare, but he shook his helm in both disbelief and to reset himself. "Assuming you didn't just make her in a test tube one day when you were bored, shouldn't her carrier be taking care of that?"
Tarantulas flashed a smirk at Helex's humour, but otherwise didn't miss a beat in replying. "She has important business to take care of."
"So do you."
"My business doesn't involve going into the pits of the most dangerous city on the planet." The spider's tone hadn't shifted, but the honeycombs in his optics seemed to flare a little brighter. Helex had to look away as if he might get burned by them (ironic, considering the new oven upgrade that made his chassis look like a bloated cybercow).
"...Boss isn't gonna be happy about this," he grumbled, scratching at a patch of rust on his elbow joint as Tarantulas went to move past him. He paused when he heard the guard's mutter, smiling to himself before turning on his heel and speaking.
"Simple solution then- don't tell him." Helex couldn't tell if he winked or blinked before going on his way- mostly because he'd just noticed the sparkling at Tarantulas' chest grinning up at him with a mouth full of fangs.
It was still early in the evening, so the halls leading through the lab were thankfully barren. Even he doubted he could charm his way past the more hard-aft workers. Flatline was waiting for him in the operating chamber, and almost dropped his datapad when he saw an extra pair of optics blinking curiously up at him.
"Tarantulas, you've got a sparkling infestation," the medic pointed out.
"I'm aware."
Flatline seemed about to ask more, but eventually shrugged and went back to focusing on his pad. "You'll be excited for this assignment. We got a Senator who pissed off the wrong friends and now he's up for an Empurata."
Tarantulas let a grin slip through- the medic knew him well. "What's his name?"
Flatline scrolled through his pad and hummed to himself. "Let's see... uh, Shockwave. Senator Shockwave."
Tarantulas had heard the name mentioned in the news of more than a few short-lived anti-Senate protests. "I'm surprised they didn't catch him earlier."
"Well, this time he happened to drink one too many high-grades spiked with freezing agent." Both mech's laughs echoed cruelly through the dimness of the chamber, ringing against the vaulted ceiling hanging leagues above them. Tarantulas thought he heard some high-pitched giggling and, glancing down, he caught his daughter in the midst of her own brand of joy.
"That's not all we've got today, either," Flatline went on as his colleague calmed the sparkling down. "There's another with severe injuries all over the place- over 80% of his protoform's lost, mangled energon pump, T cog almost torn in half-"
"The illustrious Straxus wasn't able to fix him?" Tarantulas interrupted. The Senate's new Surgeon General was usually the go-to mech for working miracles on anyone who mattered.
Flatline looked away for a nanoklick, seeming hesitant to speak now. "He might have, if the Senator wasn't a techno-organic."
Clarity hit Tarantulas like a grenade to his processor, and even the sparkling seemed to feel her sire's tension. It wasn't so much that even the best medics made a multitude of mistakes where organic biology was concerned, more that no-one would miss a TO no matter who they were.
The spider coughed lightly. "...I see why they want me to take him, then. It's Ratbat, isn't it?"
Flatline nodded and tried to pave over the awkwardness of the situation with details. "They gave some pretty specific instructions for him- basically amounting to 'leave his body for scrap but preserve his spark.'"
Tarantulas raised an eyeridge and smirked despite himself. "And here I thought our bodies were what made us so special."
Flatline rolled his optics and threw his datapad aside on a table, going to a table and pulling long gloves over his servos. "I swear, the only thing worse than a TO is one who's proud about it." Tarantulas heard the mutter, but he elected to ignore it. He'd killed mechs before over lesser remarks, but he would have started missing the medic by now if he slaughtered him for every insult he made.
It would have been a different story altogether if it was aimed against his daughter, but lucky for Flatline that wasn't the case just yet.
"Each procedure'll be just as long as each other, so we've got a choice on which one to do first," Flatline said, oblivious to the murderous thoughts dancing his his co-worker's processor. Tarantulas set his sparkling down on a nearby desk and joined him by his side as he prepared equipment, not bothering with gloves. He liked feeling energon slick on his digits.
"Call me old-fashioned, but I do like the start the day with some agonised screaming."
Flatline chuckled. "Empurata it is." He checked a particularly large handsaw while glancing across at the young femme gnawing on her own servo.
"I never knew you had a kid," he said. "Didn't think sirehood would be your thing."
Tarantulas shrugged as he washed dried fluids off a screwdriver. "Well, it's what usually happens when you meet a gorgeous femme."
"Correction; it's what happens when you meet a gorgeous femme with your firewalls down." Flatline laughed at his own wit while Tarantulas couldn't help chuckling at the truth of it. The medic then checked his wrist chronometer and glanced at the doors leading to where their patients were kept- the so-called "graveyard room".
"Shockwave should be all ready for the procedure, but I'll go check someone isn't playing basketball with his helm." Usually both helm and servos were kept on until they were to be replaced with the Empurata markers, but in one rather infamous case not long ago the helm was already partially hanging off the neck cables (one unfortunate and over-eager scientist accidentally jostled the gurney too hard and was found later trying to get the whole helm into a compactor bin).
Tarantulas watched him go before going to his daughter, gently pulling her servo out of her mouth with a tut.
"Are you hungry, sweetspark?" The young femme nodded rapidly up at her sire, clicking her tiny fangs together in anticipation while her legs swung back and forth over the edge of the desk. Tarantulas smiled and couldn't help holding her close, nuzzling her against his own clicking mandibles. In a way he was glad her mother was too busy to babysit her- she never said what she was busy with, other than it had something to do with going to Kaon, but Tarantulas had no reason to question her about it.
"We'll get some energon after Daddy's finished here, alright?," he promised, gently kissing the crown of his daughter's helm. She giggled and tried to kiss him back without accidentally nibbling on his plating.
"You're going to hear a lot of loud noises, but don't be scared. It's only a bad bot being punished, okay? I know you're a brave girl, so keep nice and quiet while Daddy is busy. Can you do that, sweetie?" She nodded again, slower this time, before wrapping as much of her servos around his neck as she could.
"Wuv you, Dadda." Her vocaliser was still forming, but her voice was already as sweet as a tame lilleth. If Tarantulas couldn't feel his spark pulsing he would have sworn that it melted.
"I love you too, Airachnid."