Well, I decided to add another little snapshot of life to the Shattered Glass collection!
At this point I'm thinking I'll set up the characters on the Nemesis, and then after that move on to re-telling the pilot miniseries of Season 1, Shattered Glass-style.
The Nemesis: four years later
Airachnid smiled craftily as she crept through the chamber. "Where are you?" she cooed in a sing-song voice, "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
The muffled giggles coming from somewhere near her pedes told her that her hunch was correct. The little rascal had run straight into the vault. The huntress caught sight of a pair of tiny sneakers poking out from the corner of a display case. She smirked.
"Oh no!" she exclaimed in a tone of mock concern, "Where is Pax? I just have no idea!" Silently, she began to scale the wall to place herself right over the miscreant's hiding place. "Fee, fi, fo, fum!" she chanted, then dropped from the ceiling to find...shoes. Just shoes.
There was a high-pitched squeal of laughter as a barefoot Pax Minor darted out the door and down the hall, leaving a startled and somewhat embarrassed Airachnid holding the sneakers.
"How in the 'verse did he pull that off?!" she complained before transforming into her spider mode to shorten the chase.
The little boy ducked under a startled Starscream and dodged Breakdown's clumsy attempt to grab him. He made it all the way to the junction between two halls before a set of massive silver talons swooped him up. The four year old lay flat on his back, winded, and still giggling.
"Good morning, Pax Minor," Megatron greeted him with a raised eyebrow, "What are you doing?"
"I'm playin' hide and seek with Rani and Pop!" the child chirped.
"Oh, were you?" the teacher-turned-gladiator indulgently let the little one prattle on as "Rani" made her appearance, still holding the sneaky sneakers. The Decepticon leader hid a smile at the clear evidence that Airachnid had been outwitted by a preschooler. "Pop" followed close behind his sparkmate, chuckling.
"He's getting better at this," he said ruefully.
Airachnid groaned. "One of these days, we're probably going to need a heat-scanner to find him!"
She slipped the shoes back onto Pax's feet, playfully scolding him. "You are too sneaky for your own good!"
"I am sneakier than Autobots!" the boy crowed.
"I should hope so!" Breakdown snorted, taking his grandson from Megatron's palm.
"I am sneakier than Goldbug?" Pax guessed, earning a worried glance from his elders.
"You don't need to be worrying about that right now, Small Fry," Breakdown said, quickly recovering his smile, "Now, let's find out what happened to your jacket, so you can go to the park when your Mama gets home."
Pax cheered wildly at the thought. "Let's go, Pop! I need my jacket!"
As the bulky Decepticon and the preschooler shambeld off down the hall, Airachnid remained with Megatron, who guessed that she had something on her processor.
"You worry about him," he observed.
"How can I not?" the femme sounded frustrated. "He can literally disappear if you turn your back for even an instant, and he has no fear of strangers when he's out and about with the holoforms. And now, June wants to send him to school. School!"
Megatron looked confused. "Is he not already being educated here?"
Airachnid huffed in exasperation. "That's what I said! But June wants him to learn to interact with human children his age."
The warlord pondered this for a moment, then smiled broadly. "You said much the same thing when you and Breakdown decided to send your daughter to high school."
"This country was different then, safer then!" The femme almost sounded pleading. "Now, the Autobots are in league with most of the human governments. It isn't safe down there anymore!" Her optics widened as another thought occurred to her. "And what if John Darby finds out he has a son? What then?"
Megatron placed a hand on the distraught grandmother's shoulder. "Airachnid," he said gently, "We cannot shelter Pax forever."
He opened a viewscreen and pulled up footage from a human news broadcast. "We are his family," he said firmly, "But they are his people. One day, Pax will fight alongside us to free them. He needs to know why."
Though she disliked it, Airachnid could not argue with her leader's logic. When June arrived from her new job at a local hospital, Airachnid and Breakdown reluctantly gave their blessing to enroll Pax in Jasper Memorial Elementary.
