Airachnid was expecting to have heard from Strika by now, eager to finally see once and for all if Trepan's seamstry and Straxus' research were any good to her. She wanted to give all her loyal soldiers the generous power of the Life Fibers, true, but not so badly that she'd just hand over one of her precious Kamuicons to any them. No… she couldn't trust two minds working together like that. She couldn't trust that the cursed Minicons wouldn't find a way to the Fibers against her somehow.

She was leagues more powerful than them in every way, but… she didn't understand them, and that made them dangerous. Though, if Shockwave kept working, she soon wouldn't need to. Not when the Life Fibers would obey her and her alone.

The steelrobes were just the stepping stone, the means for her proxies to secure her domain. They only needed to work for as long as they were necessary. Then the Fibers within could do whatever they wanted to their hosts. They wouldn't need to kill, or drain anyone anymore. Not when they could feast on the energy of her universe.

Lovely thoughts. Wistful ones. Airachnid found herself entertaining them more and more nowadays. Bathing in them, like oil. Or warm energon.

"Mistress," Straxus voice lingered at the outskirts of her attention, "I bring news."

She sighed as she brought herself out of her blood-soaked reverie, stretching herself out on her throne as she faced her lieutenant. "What is it now, Straxus? You know you don't need to inform me every time an Insecticon so much as keels over-"

"It concerns Chaar." He dared to interrupt only because he knew he'd be punished for waiting to tell her. "We've lost all contact. Strika is not answering comms, and all other channels to her fortress are flooded with static."

Airachnid felt herself grow concerned. But she didn't recognise it as anything as pathetic, as shameful, as fear or panic. Nothing of the sort. She was intrigued. Strika must have been keeping herself very entertained dealing with Strongarm… making the most of the new toys she'd been given. Airachnid could hardly blame her. Still, she had expectations of her agents in return for her giving them the honor of serving her. Surely Strika wasn't so distracted that she'd risk something as stupid as ignoring her Lord. Megatron would have never allowed something like that.

But, then again, she wasn't Megatron. She intended to be far worse than him.

"Curious…" Airachnid felt the Fibers on her claws tickle her chin as she tapped them there. "Have Bludgeon go investigate. He's overdue for making himself useful." In fact, Bludgeon hadn't been put to work since he brought in Windblade- for all the good she ended up being. Until Shockwave and Straxus were ready for Cybertronian trials of their experiments, all she did was languish in the pit of her ship and use up precious rations while staying barely alive.

"Understood." Straxus keyed in a command to his datapad, but then something made his claws freeze over the interface. He blinked his red optics, one alight with confusion while the other swarmed with agitated Fibers feeding off of that confusion.

"Um, Mistress… a transmission has just come in from Chaar. But, the comms are still down…"

Airachnid's curiosity was now reaching lethal levels. "Send it over."

As always, Straxus did as he was told. Airachnid's console pinged with the arrival of the new data packet, and with an elegant sweep of her servo she opened the transmission.

"Lord Airachnid." Strika grinned as she came into view, Chaar's command room spotlights shining bright all around her. Those lights reflected the coolant dripping down her bare protoform, most of it left exposed by the arrangement of her garment. Airachnid could practically feel the excitement of the Fibers wrapped around her agent's body, voicing their sensations with a purr. Most of the carnage must have been hidden off-screen, but it must have been a spectacular fight. She wished she could have seen it for herself.

"As you can see," Strika went on, panting from the exertion of her victory and the drain of the Fibers on her frame, "the steelrobe experiment was a complete success. I have Strongarm captured and will eliminate her as soon as you authorize it. Her Kamuicon is somewhere in the fortress, but once its host is dealt with it will be unable to resist-"

Then Strika retched as the tip of a drill suddenly thrust its way through her chest, splattering the console in front of her with watery energon- even splashing some of it over the camera. Airachnid flinched before she could stop herself; not because the death before her was shocking, or because of the fresh energon flying out towards her. No, the Fibers… she could hear them through the screen. They were shrieking. Begging. They were dying. How had she not felt them… how had she not been able to tell when it happened?

The Fibers in the steelrobes were cut off from her, from her hivemind. They had to be, so that the wearer could survive their hunger long enough to be useful. But… the true price was that she couldn't protect them. She couldn't save them. And they couldn't save themselves.

But they didn't need to. They shouldn't have needed to, that was what the hosts were for, to protect them! To keep them alive, to guard and feed them and carry out their will, which was just an extension of Airachnid's. Strika was one of her strongest soldiers, one of the only generals who escaped the War unscathed, the perfect test subject for such a brutal experiment. How…

"How…" Through the splattered screen, Strika was asking the same question with her dying vents, "how did... you…?"

The illustrious commander, one of Megatron's last surviving commandants, a living relic, slumped over and out of sight. Airachnid watched, waiting for Strika to pull herself back up, for the Fibers still clinging onto life to haul her body up and show that they weren't so easily killed. But that didn't happen. Because Strika and her Fibers were dead.

As Airachnid kept watching, not knowing what else to do, her killer soon made herself known.

"Can you see me, Airachnid?" She looked half-dead herself; her protoform weeping blue from her black bruises, her hand trembling as she held her murder weapon, not even able to stand as she slumped over the console. But she was still unmistakable.

Especially when she wasn't even wearing the Kamuicon.

She didn't even have Fixit… and she'd defeated Strika anyway.

Confusion didn't have a long lifespan in Airachnid's spark. Like carbon under immense pressure hardening to diamond, all emotion was quickly coerced into being nothing but pure anger.

"Mistress?" Straxus, the wretch that he was, dared to approach her to see the transmission for himself. "Is everything… under control?"

'No. Nothing is under control right now, you suck-up pedlicker, you pathetic idiot, as useless as your fragging son, the only good he ever did was giving me Chop Shop and even he's yet to make a decent case for continuing to live in my world, MY universe-!"

But then, even though her spider legs were coiled together and braced for a fight, her claws making a ruin of the steel they rested against, Airachnid's rampage ended before it could begin. Because the transmission had yet to end. It was still going, showing Strongarm collapse under her own weight as two mechs surged forward to catch her.

Airachnid recognised one of them. She thought she did, long enough to pause the message to be sure.

"Who's that with her…?" She whispered to herself, to the Fibers in her hivemind, as she magnified the mech's image.

Scarred lips. Scars everywhere.

Wheeljack. The Wrecker. The part-time Autobot. The one-time defector.

Despite everything else she'd seen, Airachnid had to smile. How could she not, when her universe suddenly seemed so small? "Well, now. This has just gotten very interesting."

Interesting wasn't necessarily good. The Decepticons had been interesting, when they were on Earth. Wheeljack himself had been interesting, at one point, a long time ago. 'Interesting' only meant that she would be spared boredom for another decacycle or so. When Airachnid was bored, bad things happened to good bots- or, at least, bots better than her.

Just look at what happened on Earth's moon, after all. So mad from the boredom that she accidentally discovered a new species of living armor, and devised a way to rule the galaxy with them.

If Soundwave had just left her alone on the Nemesis, then none of this would have happened. Then again, she did love how ironic it was that two of his own Minicons would soon be the downfall of everything.

But that was something else entirely. She often had to stop herself thinking too much about her secret weapons, else she'd get excited and distracted. Plenty of time for that when she and the Life Fibers won this war.

For now, she had questions that needed answered. Had Wheeljack been accompanying Strongarm all along? Was he using her quest as an excuse to find Airachnid herself? Was this all just a way for him to finally try and kill her?

If so, he sure took his fragging time about it.

"Straxus." Airachnid snapped one of her back legs to ensure she had his full attention. "Who do we know is currently with Strongarm?" Other than letting Swindle come up with Rosanna's 'death', Airachnid had never bothered herself with learning who else was with the femme. All that concerned her was the one who had stolen her Kamuicon. The rest were just stupid enough to tag along with her.

"Let's see…" Straxus coughed as he investigated his datapad. "On Velocitron it was reported that she had Rosanna, an unidentified mech we suspect to be the Decepticon Thunderhoof, an unregistered Vehicon, and her sire Wheeljack."

Sire…?

Airachnid realised what it meant, but there was some significant lag between her processor and her vocaliser. Luckily so, otherwise she'd have burst out into laughter before she could control herself.

So the Wrecker had kept the child. The daughter. She hadn't really been expecting her to live this long.

"Mistress Airachnid? What are your orders for Chaar?" Straxus clearly only spoke because he felt like he had to, to clarify how his Mistress would set things right. But she knew what he was really wanting to know. She could feel his curiosity burning over her shoulders. Some said that a grandsire could sense all sparks linked to theirs. Their children, their grandchildren, the siblings and cousins and their sparkmates, and their children… what an awful burden.

Would he sense Strongarm through Chop Shop, perhaps? An ever-so faint and alien presence, one that he could see but not hear- or maybe the other way around? If so, it might have been useful for keeping track of her. But that would have meant telling him what she was. Who she was.

No. Airachnid liked her secrets. Often times they were the only things she could put any trust in.

"Same as before," she clarified. "Send Bludgeon over to clean up the mess. I imagine Strongarm and the rest of the idiots will have found a way off of Chaar by the time he arrives. So we'll just wait for her to get herself in trouble again and reappear. Like a little sparkling, crying out for help." Airachnid allowed herself a chuckle, cryptic and callous and perfect as she considered how quickly everything had changed in front of her.

"I wouldn't underestimate her, Airachnid," Straxus advised, as if his non-existent knowledge about Strongarm gave him the right to advise anything. "If she's managed to overpower Strika without even using her Kamuicon, then-"

"Then it's nothing to be worried about," Airachnid dismissed, hiding her grin by turning away from him. "This was a trial run, remember. We have plenty of time to perfect the design of the steelrobes, and I expect great results from your and Shockwave's work. Or am I mistaken in that?"

"Not at all, Mistress." Airachnid didn't miss the gulp caught in Straxus' throat.

"Good." She seated herself comfortably while her Fibers hummed around her, sharing her good humor. "I want perfection from all the time we have to spare before she finds us." Before her, the console's screen showed a new file opened. Eight portraits, with Strika's now defaced with a glowing red mark signifying her ultimate failure.

"After all," Airachnid mused, watching Strongarm's exhausted frame being carried away in the replaying transmission, "she has seven more just like Strika to get through first."

Airachnid almost hoped that she did get through them all, just so she could see Strongarm for herself. See if there was anything familiar in her, any resemblance. See if it could be torn out.

What an interesting family reunion this would be.

xx

There were no days, no cycles or vorns or even breems this deep within the dungeon. No stars were visible. Not even the internal chronometer could be trusted, not when it had nothing to realign itself to when the frame that contained it finally started to give up.

The only thing that marked the time as it passed were the subtle shifts in sound. It was never silent here. Between the ambient growl of the fortress' walls, the whispers from the machines, the hiss of her own vents when she could finally no longer mask them behind her tears, something as peaceful and blessed as silence could never survive.

She doubted that anything could survive for very long down here… including herself. She'd had many doubts, many thoughts, since she'd been brought here. There was nothing else for her to do, after all. Nothing but lie there and listen, waiting for the end of this.

The sounds. The whispers. The clunk of peds on the ground, one after the other, came and went. At first they came often, in sets of two or three or even four. Now there was only ever one visitor; a faceless drone who would roll a tiny vial of energon under the heavy steel door. This time the vial was sent flying in too fast; before she could catch it, the energon exploded against the wall as the vial hit it and cracked open.

It was the only light she'd seen in what felt like decacycles, so bright and sudden that it blinded her for a klick. Once her aching optics adjusted, she saw that the thin stain had covered almost half of the cold floor. Spilled. Wasted.

No… not quite.

She coated her digits in the blue, not yet desperate enough to stoop to licking fuel from the ground. This energon wasn't for drinking. Instead she smeared it over her cheeks, to repair the intricate paint that was now chipping off her face in tiny flakes and washed away by streams of coolant. The paint that marked her heritage and home, that the twins had thought was so beautiful, that Drift would kiss on each cheek before he had to leave…

If she pressed her digits into her cheeks, she could almost still feel it. That last kiss, from the last time she'd seen him. She could feel the energon cold on her face, dripping down, slowly swept away by coolant leaking once again from her optics. It was a wonder she even had any fluid left to spare, that she was still alive to even wonder at all.

Beyond Drift's remembered face, the sounds continued. Whispers. Words. Peds. The drone was leaving, not knowing or caring that the energon it brought had gone to waste. The machine marched onwards, not knowing or caring if she lived or died.

"They care in delaying it. Until you're not needed."

And that voice. That fragging awful voice that had been haunting her, whispering to her ever since she'd been locked in this cell. She didn't know if it was a guard muttering to himself somewhere far away, out of boredom or just to try and make her go insane. She didn't know if it was other prisoners, others like her being left to rot. She didn't know if it was just her last taunting memories of Drift, of their sons.

She only knew that it was speaking to her.

It was speaking…

"Don't hide away this time…"

And, this time, she could actually hear it.

"Windblade."

It knew her name. It was there, clear as a day that she could no longer remember. The drone was definitely gone, but she hadn't hear anything else approach after it.

"Who's there?" She couldn't speak any louder than a whisper even if she wanted to. Her vocalizer felt like it was clogged with rust after such neglect. The cell went colder, somehow, like a draught was being blown through from an unseen opening. Like the air was letting out a sigh.

"Finally," the voicebreathed. "You've unlocked your gift. But you're still trapped. Listen. Hear me. Or you'll never get out of here."

She looked behind her, then sideways, not knowing where the voice was even coming from. "Wh… wh-who are you?"

"My name is Alavast. This ship is my body. I can help you escape from it."

Ship. This was a ship. Mobile. She was being transported somewhere, then. Or held where she could quickly be moved. That was information she had to absorb quickly before she could deal with the suggestion that the ship was alive. And talking to her. And… friendly.

It was too good to be true. It had to be. Most likely she was just finally going insane from the isolation. But this voice, this ship who called himself Alavast, was all that she had at her disposal. She gulped down the last of the tears, feeling the energon still on her cheeks start to freeze into a hard crust.

"How…?"

"Listen closely, Cityspeaker Windblade…"

She didn't know what a 'Cityspeaker' was or why she'd been labelled one, but she did as she was told, as she'd gotten used to doing. It was all she could do, other than curl up on the floor and cry.

xx

Betch'a didn't see that comin' didja

After 4 or so years of on-and-off work, part 1 of my bizarro magnum opus is finally complete. Yeah, it's weird as hell, but I'm proud of it.
If you've read all the way up until this point (or just skipped to the end to see what the heck lies ahead), I am eternally grateful for your patience and open-mindedness. Please feel free to give as much critique as is needed; this may be a stupid crack fic, but I want it to be the best it possibly can be and I'd love to know what worked and what didn't, and what can be improved for part 2. And, of course, I'll do my best to answer any questions in the comments.

As for part 2, I can't say when it will arrive. I know a good chunk of what it will contain and how it'll start, I just need to carve out some time to actually write it up. But, until then, ta-ta for now!