Transformers: Prime Shattered Glass Protective, a transformers/beast wars fanfic

A/N. I really didn't and still don't don't like the idea of the Shattered Glass universe, at least not until this idea jumped up and nibbled my brain.

Jack's personality is significantly changed, the details of his life less so, and the other human in this story even less so. The two Cybertronians who feature in this story only swap optic colour, otherwise they look the same as usual.

Summary: In the Shattered Glass universe, how Jack meets his extraterrestrial partner and protector is completely different than the standard Prime universe. Oneshot.

Transformers:Prime - Shattered Glass.

Protective.

"This Earth indigenous organic is warm blooded, and is of a lineage that incubates it's young within its body and feeds the young from glandular secretions until they become old enough to ingest more solid food. This individual appears to be male. He walks through this forest with the confidence of someone who knows their environment. His alert stance makes it evident that he knows there are other predators in this forest who could pose a threat to him. With no natural defences bar his speed and intelligence, this sub-adult of the species who call themselves 'humans' must use those two skills to it's advantage. This species is intelligent and it's members are self-aware, so I must be careful not to alert him to my presence," Airachnid sub-vocalised to herself as she observed the human boy.

She waited until he was further on, then moved almost silently through the trees in her six-legged second form, the ability to take three forms something relatively rare amongst her own kind.

She had received Megatron's call from this planet, and was planning to rendezvous with him, but her sixth sense was tingling. This had never let her down before, and usually meant one thing: she was herself being tailed. She did not wish to lead her pursuer directly to their base of operations, so she was indulging herself in one of her passions: xenobiology, hoping any pursuer would either grow bored and go elsewhere, or try and draw her into a fight. If the latter were to happen while she was studying any of the humans, or other forms of life on this planet, she hoped they'd have the sense to run while she fought.

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Jack Darby, totally unaware that he was being watched, followed the little known trail happily. Between his school studies and his job, (which was a dead end job, but a way to put some money aside for when he went to college) he didn't often get a chance to go out hiking, but he'd switched shifts to help out a co worker and had finished his homework. As it was a Friday, he'd grabbed his junker car and put a backpack and a tent in the trunk, and was now hiking with them out to a clearing he was familiar with to set up camp. He could wake early the next morning, hike back to his car, and head home. He'd left a note for his mother in case she came home that evening, but as a doctor doing shifts in the ER both that evening and over the weekend, he'd be surprised if she did.

It was the glint of metal at about the level of his shoulder that made Jack stop in his tracks. He could see a thin wire stretched between two tree trunks, but then he could see it loop round the trunk and then continue upwards, extending up into the trees. As he looked he heard a slight movement in the trees above him, but when he looked all he could see was swaying branches, some of them looking oddly stiff and crooked to his eyes. He dismissed it as a bird moving around in a possibly diseased tree, and looked at the wire again. As he looked further in, he could see other lengths of wire, some also set straight across and above the ground, and some unmistakeable snares, though some had large loops and thick wires. They were partially obscured, but not from his sight, although from above, they'd be easily missed.

"Blasted idiots and poachers!" Jack swore. He'd heard of people who maliciously strung wire between trees to unseat, or worse, decapitate bike riders, and the snares suggested poachers were also at work, although the gauge of some of the wires made him wonder if they were trying to catch bears, or maybe Bigfoot. He reached to his belt to unclip his trusty multi function pocket knife and found the pliers on it. He snipped through the first shoulder height wire, which as he cut it released the tension on the rest which whizzed up into the trees, before he moved on to cut through the snares to disable them. As he struggled to cut through the thick wire of the third, he heard a feminine voice shout "What do you think you're doing?"

He looked on in shock as a tall, thin, humanoid form stood up from beneath a pile of branches and leaves that had been used to hide it. The blue and black mechanical being approached, burning red eyes frowning at him from beneath sliver brow plates. "You leave my stuff alone!"

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She was a few feet behind and above him when Airachnid saw the human stop to look at something. Zooming in her vision, she spotted the wire just after him, and she spotted the rest of the wire zigzagging through the trees just as he did. She realised he was about to look at where she was, and hid behind the thickest part of the trunk, clinging on with her arms and setting her legs to blend in with the tree branches, and she shut down the lights of her optics to mute the blue glow that would otherwise give her away, shuttering her optics completely to make sure. She listened, and when she heard him mutter something about poachers, she risked taking a look. She could, now she was looking for them, see some of the other trip wires and snares scattered at different levels through the trees, and realised they had to have been set to capture her. The trip wires were very thin and almost unnoticeable, had she blundered into them she would have likely ended up putting one or more legs in the snares as she tripped. As the human moved aside concealing foliage, she saw more. Without the human's sharp optics, they might have succeeded; he had saved her from blundering into a carefully set trap. She pulled closer to the tree trunk for concealment, and scanned the forest with a sudden intensity to her gaze, because whoever the traps had been set by was likely to be close. She switched her optics to infra red vision.

She spotted the heat source under the pile of branches and leaves, flicking back to standard vision as the form beneath the pile stood up, demanding in a cold, familiar voice to know what the human was up to and to leave the traps alone. As Airachnid had suspected, it was her nemesis, Arcee. Although slightly smaller in frame then herself, Airachnid knew from experience that this did not make the Autobot femme any less deadly. She readied herself to attack Arcee if the Autobot assassin made a move against the human, for leaving him to Arcee's not-so-tender mercies would be a poor repayment for saving her from blundering into the traps.

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Jack gaped at the unmistakably feminine looking robot. "I - uh - are you Military technology?" he asked.

"Of course I'm not, your Military are too primitive to make something like me," she said. "What are you doing? Who do you think you are to disable my traps?"

"I'm Jack Darby, who are you? Why are you setting man traps in this forest?" Jack countered. The female robot scanned the trees, and then suddenly dropped to a crouch, touching him lightly on the shoulder, and bringing her face closer to Jack's."

"My name is Arcee, and I'm from another world. Those are not man traps, but snares to catch an enemy fugitive I'm pursuing from my world. She moves through the trees as well as on the ground, and resembles a fusion of robot and spider, although she can assume a bipedal form at will. She is dangerous, and was tracked to this very forest. I am here to capture her. It would be a very bad idea to let her catch sight of you, for she is deadly. My suggestion is to turn back around and return from where you came." She twirled one sharp metal finger in a circle, pointing downwards, in a clear visual of her instructions. Jack nodded, not sure what else he could do under the circumstances. She frowned down at him.

"Stop staring! Why are you still here? Leave, now, before my quarry turns up." She stood, and Jack turned. He had taken no more than two steps before she spoke again.

"Oh, and Jack Darby?" He turned to look at her again, as she scowled and took a step forward.

"Don't mention any of this to anybody, because if you do, I'll hunt you down, and you don't want that."

"It's just Jack, but right, got it, I never saw anyone or anything. I just decided to camp next time I get the time off," Jack acknowledged, before turning and resuming his walk away.

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Airachnid stayed hidden throughout the exchange, peering from between some leaves, once again shutting down her optic lights. She was relieved to hear Arcee and Jack come to some agreement which ended up in him being permitted to leave alive. It was unusual for Arcee to be so reasonable, when she turned on the charm it usually meant she was distracting you to plan for some sneak attack. As Airachnid watched, she saw Arcee suddenly convert one of her arms to a blaster, raising it to point at the retreating human's back.

Airachnid couldn't stand by and watch the native get executed, or toyed with and used as target practice by the Autobot femme. She'd probably toy with him, disabling him before killing him when she'd sated her anger.

"Arcee!" She shouted, drawing her attention from the human, and leaped down between them, avoiding the traps Jack hadn't disabled as she went.

"Jack! She's here! Run!" Arcee shouted, before unloading her gun in Airachnid's direction. Airachnid leaped, narrowly missing one of the traps. 'Scrap this! I have to do something about these booby-traps!' she thought, while shouting to Arcee "You'll have to do better than that!" She retracted the guards from the blades on the ends of the front pair of legs and brought them down and then back up to cleanly slice the remaining wires. Arcee yelled and charged at Airachnid, her arm mounted blades shooting out as she slashed at Airachnid's middle supporting legs. Airachnid retreated up a tree, repeating the cutting motions with her hind legs this time, her forelegs and middle legs supporting her as she retreated. Certain she had now disarmed the nearest traps, she dodged and then leaped for Arcee, who herself dodged and then slashed at Airachnid.

"I'll finally get rid of you, Airachnid, and then I can hunt down that human pet of yours, using the tracking device I tagged him with earlier," Arcee taunted Airachnid, who went for Arcee with her front leg's claws. Arcee dodged back, but Airachnid caught her cheek just under the left optic. From the corner of one of her own optics, Airachnid saw the human in question standing and watching them fight. Why wasn't he running? Humans were supposed to be intelligent!

"He's nothing to do with us or our fight, leave him out of it!" Airachnid told Arcee, leg tips poised to strike.

"Oh, he involved himself the moment he started to disable my traps," Arcee said, wiping away the Energon that welled from the cut under her optic, before taking a half hearted swipe at Airachnid, who reared back. Arcee pushed forward, slashing at Airachnid while she was off balance, and Airachnid caught one arm in one foreleg, while using the other foreleg to block. She held her in that position as Arcee pushed her head forward to glare at Airachnid

"He will pay for that, without his interference I might have already terminated you!" Arcee growled.

"He thought the traps were human work, and when you told him otherwise and told him not to involve himself, he agreed! Leave him alone!"

"If I harm him, I harm you, you just made absolutely certain that I will go after him now," Arcee told her. "His death - if you survive, of course - will be on your conscience!"

"No" Airachnid cried, swapping her blocking leg with one arm, so the former could sweep Arcee's feet from under her. Airachnid dropped the Autobot femme as she fell, raised her arms, and webbed Arcee to the ground from her palm mounted web blasters, before turning to look at Jack. The human took one look at her, and chose that moment to run.

"Scrap that!" she swore, and took off after him, knowing the webbing wouldn't keep Arcee for long, and knowing too that she had to find and remove that tracking device, before Arcee added Jack to her grudge kill count. The human looked back, saw her in full six-legged pursuit, and let out a wordless moan, letting his backpack slide off his back as he lightened his load. Airachnid vaulted it with relative ease, but for a moment, couldn't see the human.

"Jack, where are you? Your life is in danger, Arcee planted a tracker on you, we have to remove it!" Stopping and listening intently, she could hear heavy breathing. Switching to infra-red vision she detected a "glow" from a heat source under an overhang, between some tree roots, and bent down to look. She saw the frightened human boy, who scuttled off the other side of the root ball and fled headlong.

"Scrap it!" she swore again, as she saw him run back the way they'd come, he was in serious danger of running straight back to Arcee.

"I didn't want to do this, but you leave me no choice, human," she muttered, holding out her hands as she pursued him, coming alongside him, and shooting web at his legs. The human fell with a cry of terror.

She stooped to pick him up, but he pulled out his multi-function pocket knife and waved the short blade at her. "Keep back!" he cried, and she sighed and webbed his upper body, making sure his hands were webbed too before picking him up and climbing up a tree with him. When she found a secure and well-hidden branch junction, she webbed his almost-cocoon securely to it, before using one of her hands to find and remove the tracker. She held it in front of him to show it before crushing it between two fingers. He stared. "What was that?" he asked.

"That deals with the tracker that Arcee planted on you," she said. "Now, stay up here and keep your mouth shut, and you might survive this. If I don't return within 4 hours, you should come down carefully and go home, because it means I have been defeated, but she may still target you." She used one leg to carefully cut around one of his hands so he could, over time, free himself from the webbing. She put a finger to her lips. "Don't draw attention to yourself," she said in a whisper. He nodded vigorously. Airachnid gave him a single sharp nod of her own head before descending the tree at speed and running back away from where she could now hear Arcee revving her engine. After she'd gone half a kilometre, she tossed the remains of the tracker down, if it was somehow still working, it should throw Arcee off the track.

It wasn't long before she heard Arcee's engine sound getting closer, and she backed herself into and up a tree with thick foliage at the edge of a clearing, switching to infra red vision. She could see Arcee's heat signature as she, now in a two-wheeled motor vehicle form, headed towards Airachnid's position.

She knew Arcee might very well be able to observe her in the same way, rendering her hiding in the foliage useless, but by being up in the trees, she had the advantage. Importantly she was out of the booby trapped area, and even more importantly, they were both away from where she had hidden the human. As she came closer, Arcee switched into robot form and armed herself before entering the clearing, confirming Airachnid's suspicion that Arcee was viewing her whereabouts using infra red. Airachnid shifted so that she was face-on, meaning Arcee could not see what she was doing with her hands if she continued using infra red, and quickly shot webs at Arcee's optics.

"Aargh!" Arcee cried, stumbling back, grabbing onto the webbing, and tearing it from her head, but by the time she'd cleared her vision, Airachnid had leaped from the tree and was attacking from her right. Arcee saw the blur of her movement and whirled around to kick Airachnid in the chest, sending her flying back. Airachnid deployed all of her leg claws, and used them as she flailed at Arcee with her legs, before withdrawing her back legs, re-sheathing the claws, and using them to right herself again, sheathing all her claws before shooting web at Arcee again and following up with her taloned hands. Arcee attacked back with her own fists, something that pleased Airachnid. Arcee only fought at close quarters if she had no option, or when she lost her cool, and had Arcee been calmer, she'd have seen she had room to back up. She lunged for Airachnid again, shouting "I'll tear your Spark out!"

Airachnid did not dignify the threat with a response, and neither did she let up, webbing and clawing at Arcee with her hands and the claws on the end of her first pair of legs, and blocking many of her attacks using the lengths of this same legs, causing no mortal wounds, but inflicting a myriad of minor injuries. Arcee got a few lucky hits on Airachnid, but it became apparent that Arcee was at a disadvantage. The next time Arcee kicked Airachnid in the chest, tipping her onto her back, instead of pressing her attack, she flipped into her vehicle mode, turned, and roared off out of the clearing, her engine sound quickly dropping in volume.

Airachnid got to her feet, crouching to dip her finger in a spot of Energon that had dropped from Arcee's wounds, and tasted it. She knew she could probably track Arcee back to wherever the Autobots were based, or even get to her before that, and eliminate the threat she posed for good, and indeed, if she didn't have other responsibilities, she might have done, but she knew she had to deal with the human. Arcee had already declared that Jack would pay for his interference, and Arcee never made threats she wasn't willing to follow up on. Airachnid had to get back to him, make sure he was all right, and take him to Megatron to discuss what to do next. She climbed back into the trees and made her way back to him, using infra red vision to navigate as it began to get dark. By doing so, she was not only able to avoid the nocturnal forest inhabitants as they began waking up, but was able to check none were attempting to attack the human boy while he was helpless.

He had almost freed himself when she came back across him, and he panicked when she climbed up, but she said "Calm down, I'm getting you down now!"

"Can I go home now? I know the drill, I didn't see you and I didn't see her, neither of you exist!"

She wrapped her arms around him, holding his own arms against his sides, held him closely to her as she came down the trees and set his feet on the ground. Then she began to help him remove the rest of the webbing, stopping him with a gentle but firm hand as he went to bolt.

"Hold on, Jack, you don't know what creatures you might run into in that forest, even if Arcee is gone, which is by no means certain," she said.

"Says the creepy spider woman who kidnapped me!" he said, then seemed to realise that he might not want to anger her. "No disrespect?" he said, with a little laugh.

She stepped back and changed back into her humanoid form and crouched in front of him. "Is this a little better, and less 'creepy'? My Hunter form just makes it easier to move through the trees, covers ground faster, and can give me certain advantages in the branches when it comes to remaining unseen," she said.

"Yeah, that is less creepy, I'm not an arachnophobe, but I prefer things with less than six legs," Jack confessed. "Please, can I go home now though, and forget you exist?"

"I wish I could let you, but Arcee has seen you and you've earned her ire," Airachnid said. "As such, she might come after you again, meaning we need a plan to try and keep you safe. I need to take you to Megatron, our Leader, to work out the best way to do that," she said. She put the fingers of one hand to her head and tilted it as a message from Megatron came through.

'Okay, get him to come lower, I'll wave so he can see me,' she responded, as a helicopter came into view in the sky. She stood as the helicopter dropped lower, and a voice from speakers on it was heard.

"This is Special Agent William Fowler to the Con on the ground, please indicate you can hear me in some manner?"

Airachnid waved, and there was a pause, during which Airachnid received instructions to follow Agent Fowler to their Base. She acknowledged.

"Okay, I have received instruction that you will follow me, and I'm standing by, although I'm curious as to how you'll follow me back?" Fowler said."

"So am I!" Jack said to her. "I mean you're distinctive enough like that, and unless where we're going is a forest, you're four times more distinctive in your, what did you call it, your 'Hunter mode?' I can't imagine you in a city!"

"If I were heading for a city I would have to scan a more effective disguise, but as we're not going to a city, that's not a concern. Transportation, however, is, so I'll scan something more appropriate." She took two steps back from Jack, looked up at Fowler's copter, and green beams shone from her eyes and travelled over the whole helicopter, from front to back.

"Oh no, not this again!" Fowler yelled. Jack barely registered the shout as the beams shut off, and Airachnid began transforming from a humanoid to an almost exact replica of the helicopter that hovered above. The door slid open.

"Come on Jack, ready for another adventure?" Airachnid's voice said from inside the helicopter."

"Well, I guess so, except I can't fly," Jack said, eyeing the controls.

"No need, Jack, I can, so I'll be flying," Airachnid said. Jack gave a shrug and climbed in. The door shut behind him, and the helicopter's engine started off, the rotors moving faster and faster until they were a blur. The helicopter rose into the air until it was behind Fowler's.

Then both helicopters moved off.

A/N: This is intended to be a one shot that I'm unlikely to continue, I just had this idea come into my brain. Unless I do think of a way to bring in Miko and Raf, and write their stories, this is a stand alone.