So this is... probably the silliest chapter in the whole story. Because I just love writing Wheeljack waaaay too much. And all of you seem to think that Jackie and Air meeting wouldn't end well but, uh... just prepare to be surprised is all I'll say.
Also I suspect that this chapter will drive a few people off the story because /reasons/, but all I ask is that you keep an open mind and if you don't like where we're going with this in the end, then I won't hold anything against you.
xx
"Jackie, your signal's paused. Everything alright?" A voice echoed in the Wrecker's comm unit as his transformation gears- rusty from the years of disuse- whirred to a stop.
"I'm fine, Bulk. Just takin' a break," Wheeljack called back into his unit, optics taking in the Earth landscape that he set out to scout. Dust, dust and more dust. The trees on the rocky ridges now rising up at his sides were the first signs of green he'd seen since he left Bulkhead behind, ramping off-road and kicking up more of the grainy stuff in his wake as he tore across the Nevada desert. It reminded him of the Rust Sea, albeit without that annoying 'rust' feature taking up so much of his systems nowadays. "You head back to the base, I'm gonna look 'round here for a while."
"Alright. I gotta go take Miko to school anyway." The link cut out just as Wheeljack's scanners finished sweeping the area. Apart from Bulk's signal at the far edge of his range, already retreating, he was alone.
With a roll of his shoulder gears Wheeljack took slow, lazy steps forward, letting the morning sun to the low east wash over his dust grained frame and humming an old Wrecker drinking song under his exvents. Earth was a pretty nice planet, if you forgot the Decepticons scraping their afts all over it. The humans as well would be some getting used to, the bigger ones especially. Still, he could definitely get used to having Miko nearby. As for the Autobots... eh, maybe Optimus wasn't such the prig that Grimlock always made him out to be. Besides, anyone who wasn't Ultra Magnus warranted at least a little respect on his part.
A sudden rustle of branches nearby made Wheeljack's peds freeze, and before Airachnid could mutter another curse his cannons were out and aimed high overhead. He sidestepped cautiously as his battle mask shot over his faceplate, optics narrowed at the suspicious ridge of forest on the upper ledge and audios tuned in to the fading noise. Bulkhead had told him about the other lifeforms on Earth- birds, dogs and whathaveyou- but Wheeljack didn't survive as a Wrecker by leaving disturbances to themselves. He paused, waiting for the sound to repeat itself, and when it didn't he advanced to the foot of the cliff.
In the fleeting safety of the trees, Airachnid's spark was hammering so hard in its chamber that Scorpia was sent wriggling in her webbing, trying to reach behind her and calm her mother down. Airachnid beat down the urge to reach behind her and hold her daughter close- not yet, at least. Any other moves and Wheeljack would be on them both before she could blink an optic.
Unfortunately, Scorpia was not so content with being ignored.
'What the...' Wheeljack's eye ridges raised at the unmistakable sound of a... sparkling? Crying? Nevermind that Wheeljack had never heard of any infants surviving the war, but of one being alive on Earth? His ridges lowered again at the possibility of some sick Decepticon trap.
"Show yourself 'fore I shoot this whole forest down!" he called out in a growl, powering his cannon up. Usually he would have shot the whole forest down at this point, but he suspected that Optimus wouldn't appreciate such damage to the planet's wildlife (Okay, a bit of a prig).
No rustle, no show. The sparkling sound was only slightly muffled by its mother frantically trying to quiet it, obviously to no avail.
"Last warnin'..." Wheeljack's plasma shot was whirring hot enough to melt through its own barrel, and all Airachnid could see when she chanced a glance downwards was a blue blurr designed solely to kill her.
'One of these days, you're going to be just another one of them, aren't you?' she thought with her gaze turning back to Scorpia now cradled in her servos, cries dimmed to a low whine. With a sigh on her lips as they pressed to her child's forehead, Airachnid rose to her peds and inched herself around the tree trunk to bare herself before the Wrecker down below.
As soon as he saw the familiar palette of pink, black and gold, Wheeljack's cannon died down and fell to his side as his mask retracted, revealing a very pleased smirk.
"Long time no see , darlin'."
Even after all these years, she still had that same tired look whenever she heard his voice.
xx
It was afternoon when Ratchet heard the arrival of the children in the screech of tires on the base tarmac as he was shrugging himself awake, managing a grunt of greeting to them and the other Autobots as he took up his post again.
"Hey Ratchet, where's Arcee?" Jack asked as Bumblebee and Bulkhead transformed (the latter heading promptly to his own quarters), Miko launching herself on the couch and Raf setting up his laptop.
"Still recharging. She... didn't get much sleep last night," the medic replied, to a dismissive shrug from the human as he went to shove Miko's legs out of the way as they took up the whole couch.
"What about Optimus? Did he come back?" Raf asked this time, staring up at Ratchet.
"Early this morning, yes," he replied with a quiet groan, wishing he had followed his teammates examples and just stayed in berth himself. "He won't be up for another few hours, I'd imagine."
"Oh..." Something in the young boys dejected tone made Ratchet's more endurant side show itself.
"Why do you ask, Rafael?"
"I just... wanted to talk to him about something." His curiosity satisfied, Ratchet was about to return to the screen before him, until he heard Raf's voice again (prompted by a few boot-clad nudges from Miko and frantic whispers of 'Go on, tell him!').
"You know that... picture I found a few days ago? The one in the forest, with the energon?" Ratchet huffed an affirmative to that. "Well... I was looking it over again last night, and I thought I... noticed something about it. More than just the energon, I mean."
"And what would that be?"
"Something in the background, like... a shape." Raf loaded the image up again and turned his screen towards Ratchet. "See?"
The medic leaned down for a closer look, doubtful that the human would have spotted anything that he might have missed last night (but maybe those lenses he put over his eyes did something to them...).
"Y'know what I think it looks like?" Miko said as she leant over to Raf's laptop and effectively blocked off Ratchet's view. "Airachnid."
"W-what?!" Both boys- Jack and Raf- and bot all exclaimed at Miko's musing.
"Yeah, see? All the spikey things, all the black, and you try telling me you don't see some purple in there," she said, dodging away from the screen as they all crowded around it. They all scanned it with new eyes- taking in the irregular points and shadows, the purple-pink tint to the black all around. Whether or not this meant Airachnid was free from the Decepticons again, or if she just got caught hunting, neither of the boys could stop the shivers that welled in the goosebumps along their skin.
"What's the deal with Airachnid anyway?" Miko continued, tapping a foot idly as she lounged on the couch. "She's all... different from you guys." Ratchet, who had pulled himself away from the tiny computer screen, made a sound of grim agreement, and his optics wandered as he thought of how to explain her to these humans. To even begin on what she was could fill an entire Covenant.
"She is... what we call a 'techno-organic'," he explained. "Fundamentally a fusion of Cybertronian and organic; genes, chemistry, biology-"
"Hang on a slaggin' second, I thought techno-whatevers were sparkling myths!" Bumblebee whirred erratically, just returning from retrieving his energon ration from the base stores.
"That is just one of the many misconceptions about TO's," Ratchet sighed to the young scout, wondering just how much of a sparkling he could be about these things. "They are very much real, Airachnid is living proof of that much."
"Soooo, what is a techno-thingy?" Miko pressed on, leaning her head on an armrest. "And make it juicy, I need something to distract me from homework." Make that two sparklings.
"No-one knows exactly where they originated from," Ratchet began. "Despite their many origin stories. It's nearly impossible to tell fact from fiction."
"What, you couldn't just go up and ask one where it came from?" Miko asked, to a wide-eyed look of shock from the medic.
"Noooo, no no, nothing of the sort. Techno-organics were... not looked upon kindly in Cybertronian society."
"How come?"
"It was the general consensus that they were... tainted," Ratchet explained with a shudder, just as Raf and Jack's were ebbing away. "Unnatural abominations, not meant to walk Primus' body, or among his children. Some even believe that the Well of All Sparks ceased production because of the sudden surge in the TO population, just before the war. Because Primus was angry with their presence."
"Yeah, but not everyone hated them, right Ratch'?" Bumblebee beeped with a mischievous tilt of his eyeridges. "If I remember, there were quite a few that actually admired techno-organics-"
"You mean fetishised them," Ratchet interrupted with a sickened scoff as Raf translated Bee's blips for Miko and Jack. "Disgusting, the slag they would come up with, all sorts of debauchery-"
"You seem kinda hardcore about the whole 'equality' thing, Ratch'," Miko pointed out.
"Well, I must admit, I too once shared a contempt for them, but... Elita had always supported them." The mention of her name silenced Bumblebee's light beeping chuckles. "Always saying they deserved more, that they couldn't change what they were born as and such, and... eventually I believed it too." The dreamy mist that seemed to dull Ratchet's optics dissipated with a blink, and he remembered what Miko had asked in the first place.
"But Airachnid appears to be a mutated Cybertronian, rather than born as techno-organic. And the Decepticons no doubt would have seen her organic traits as an advantage in their ranks .If there was anything to know about her, then only they would know it."
"Wait, so she wasn't always like... that?" Jack said, finding it hard to imagine the spider as anything other than a crawling nightmare.
"I am only speculating, but... yes, I'd imagine that at some point she was pure Cybertronian, infected with organic biology at some point. The best guess I could make would be that Shockwave experimented on her, or perhaps The Institute had something to do with-"
Frantic clicks and whirrs courtesy of Bumblebee cut Ratchet off, and he was about to threaten to weld the scout's vocaliser shut when he caught sight of blue armour and bluer optics glaring at him.
"Arcee! How-how long where you, uh, standing there?" Ratchet stuttered, letting his entire train of thought crash into his CPU walls.
"Long enough to give myself another headache, thanks," she groaned in reply, creasing her optics in pain of her throbbing processor. Jack leapt off the couch and went to her, and she showed a smile as she knelt down to him.
"Sorry for not picking you up, partner."
"Don't worry about it, really. Are... you okay?" Her weary nod wasn't a convincing one.
"I think a long ride on the open road will help clear that headache up," he said over the thud of footsteps in the corridor behind Arcee, and Optimus entered to see Miko trying to interrogate Ratchet.
"Come on, tell me more about-"
"No."
"Well what was 'The Institute-"
"I said no, Miko."
Optimus left them to their curious exchange as Arcee looked up at him, still kneeling next to Jack.
"Permission to leave to base, Optimus?"
"Granted. In fact, it's time I left for a patrol myself." Airachnid and Scorpia would be hungry, and as Jack and Arcee tore off through the road entrance he made for the Ground Bridge controls. Raf kept his eyes plastered to his laptop, and Miko looked on the verge of hammering Ratchet's plates to dented oblivion as the medic caught Optimus, just when the Bridge vortex yawned open.
"Actually, Optimus, I need to... retrieve some things from outside. For an experiment. It would be most efficient if I accompanied you on your patrol." After all these centuries, his old friend still knew how to be a sneaky bastard. And there was no way to refuse him without looking suspicious... but perhaps it was time he knew the truth.
"Of course, Ratchet. After you."
xx
Ratchet wasted no time in getting to the point as soon as he felt dirt under his peds.
"They're nearby?" Optimus could only nod and keep his pace as slow as possible as he spotted the rocks where Airachnid had made her home. He contemplated leading Ratchet astray, and then feigning ignorance to the former Decepticons location, but... no. He needed at least one bot he could trust. And Ratchet wouldn't appreciate any further deception.
"All I ask is that you let me bring them out of their own will and... do not attack. Please." Ratchet's optics veered downwards as he recognised the pleading in Optimus' tone, and he gave a nod of his own. The cave entrance was just a footstep away when Optimus held up a servo before Ratchet, leaning down to see if she was awake. Or alive. With the sun at its highest point and beaming straight into the cave, there weren't many places for the shadows to reign. Or anything for the shadows to hide.
"They're... not here," Optimus said in disbelief, standing back up as all the worst possibilites raced through his mind.
"What do you mean-?" Ratchet's voice was precursor to an accusation, one that died down as a shriek sounded from far deeper than the cave, carried over the high cliff above them from the other side. Unlike the shrieks of pain and grief that both Autobots were so used to though, this one told of delight. And that pitch of sound could only come from one thing.
"A Decepticon sparkling!?" Optimus flinched at the outrage in his friend's hissed whisper, and before he could begin to explain Ratchet was pushing himself through the cave opening, heedless of his plates scraping against the compact rocks. Optimus was careful to keep any mention of sparklings out of his cover ups; as a medic, Ratchet knew more than anyone else what Cybertronian children and mothers had suffered at the hands of war. And now Optimus wouldn't be able to stop him homing in on Airachnid even if he had the Polarity Gauntlet with him.
Luck seemed to be with him today though, as when he made to chase after Ratchet, he had great trouble stifling laughter at the sight of the medic caught between a rock and... well, a rock. His backpack had jammed itself in a particularly tight crevice, and was leaving orange scuffs all over the granite.
"If I get you out of this, Ratchet, will you let me go ahead?" Optimus asked over the sound o the medic struggling without success, and with heavy vents he answered with a furious mutter of "Very well." A hard push to the accursed backpack and Ratchet was sent reeling as he popped out, and Optimus kept walking ahead as he left him to gather himself. Daylight was strong and streaming through the other ravine opening up ahead, and the sound of Scorpia chirping was clear as the sky hidden overhead. Though Optimus pleased smile at the sound fell when he saw what was causing it.
"WHEELJACK?!"
The Wrecker sat on a log just outside the cave opening perked his helm at the shocked shout of his name, still cradling the clicking sparkling in his servos. Airachnid was perched in a tree branch opposite Wheeljack, seemingly unharmed from the look of her grin at the sight of Optimus, and Wheeljack flashed a smirk of his own at the gaping Prime as Ratchet approached behind him, still gasping.
"Nice family ya' got here, chief."
xx
And this is probably the point where most of you clicked off. To those who managed to hold on up to this point, let me explain; At first I was very hesitant to include some things in here that now I'm just doing anyway, and Wheeljack being involved with Airachnid was definitely one of them. But a while back, when this story was still in the early stages of planning, Emmy made a lot of humour-intended suggestions about Optimus blowing a gasket when he hears about Air and Jackie's past XD And eventually... I just decided to include a bit of that in here. Why? Cause Airachnid needs all the love she can get, guys. She deserves that much. And I'm greedy.
Be assured though that the story as a whole will still centre on Optimus and Airachnid's relationship, and that her and Wheeljack are meant purely as an aside thing and maaaybe a source of humour.