So... it has been quite a while since I last updated (three months, to be exact). All I really have for excuses is school, and a whole lot of other requests and oneshots I wanted to get done. I haven't abandoned this, and I never will, but I try to take my time with each chapter so I don't end up having to go back and change details I end up being unhappy with later on (which still happens anyway despite my best efforts *~*). Nevertheless, I can't say when the next chapter will be as I have a very busy schedule ahead of me for at least the next few weeks, but I'll do my best to write a bit whenever I can.
Xx
As Optimus emerged from the ethereal swirls of the Ground Bridge, he realised two things simultaneously. Airachnid had not attempted to contact him ever since Ratchet examined Scorpia- usually nothing he would worry about, considering the spider's solitary nature- and the clearing was deserted.
Now considering the first fact, he knew something was wrong.
All he found in the open patch of grass and rocks were empty energon cubes and the trampled remains of trees and bushes, but none of the destruction led into the surrounding forest. Even if Grimlock was nearby, something in his ancient biology made his EM field and spark signature almost non-existent. It would be impossible to find him without seeing him from miles away first.
Then Optimus saw the specks of energon on the dirt.
Something was horribly wrong.
Had Grimlock went on a rampage and injured the femmes? Had Airachnid herself lashed out against the Dinobot? A thousand more possibilities ran in terrible detail through Optimus' processor, and his spark felt like it was dangling over a pit set deep in his chest. His hands were clenched so hard that he almost punched the ground in rage before he noticed deep tracks on the edge of forestry, almost hidden beneath cover of shredded fern leaves. Kneeling down on shaking peds, Optimus saw that the soil was moist and churned in long rows very reminiscent of claws scraping into it. There were stains here as well, but maroon rather than Cybertronian cyan. If not energon, then what?
Optimus knew he didn't have the luxury of indulging his curiosity any further than that thought, and immediately set to finding more tracks. He was deep in the forest's heaving body before long, beaded with coolant from the stifling humidity and shielding his optics from the flares of sunlight that found their way through the tree canopy.
One sudden burst of light blinded him enough that he almost missed the giant lump of metal that made up Grimlock's resting hulk.
Two bots were nowhere to be found, almost certainly injured, and he was sleeping. The fury that consumed Optimus in that moment was enough to block out any signals from his logic centres, and he kicked the Dinobot in the ribs hard enough to dent and fracture any normal metal frame. It only made Grimlock snort and flick his tail dismissively.
"Grimlock!" Yelling into the dinobot's audios prompted even less of a reaction, and Optimus swore his energon was boiling in his fuel lines. The old Grimlock was well known for sleeping in during the war, but this was something else for the old mech. He stepped back and shovelled vents of air that felt like pushing rocks through his cooling fans.
"Grimlock, I order you to awaken." With all his anger compressed his voice sounded close to an Insecticon growl. He didn't like how it grated against his audios, but he couldn't do much to soften it at this point. "Something... something terrible has occurred. Airachnid and Scorpia are missing."
Deja vu then hit him conveniently like Grimlock's tail did as the giant mech shot upward with gnashing denta. Optimus lay sprawled and rubbing the fresh dent in his helm while Grimlock stampeded around his resting place.
"But... me... me Grimlock scare bad things away! Me Grimlock save them!"
"What... bad things?" Optimus struggled to his peds with a hand on his bent backstrut, leaning on a large tree log.
"Two legged... dark... me Grimlock no remember!" He roared in frustration and scraped his servo claws along his muzzle. 'Two legs' was a sufficient enough clue for Optimus, though.
'Humans...' Even with his processor in a jolted jumble he started to piece together what had transpired in his fateful absence. Red stains on the ground, no lingering EM signatures... but Agent Fowler said the island had been deserted for decades. There was no reason for humans to be on it now.
Unless...
"Grimlock, what did they look like? Did you see them taking Airachnid and Scorpia?" Even in his rampage of panic Grimlock still had enough lingering competence to think, closing his optics and furrowing his eyeridges deeply as if he was trying to contact Primus himself.
"Bad things... capture femmes." Every word seemed to scrape against his vocaliser. "Spider lady fight back, but... dragged... away... ME GRIMLOCK FAIL!" The Dinobot screeched and rammed into a tree trunk, sending it toppling over as his horns chewed furiously into the wood. Optimus knew he couldn't just leave Grimlock to decimate the entire island like this, as much as he would have preferred finding the femmes himself; so he approached him slowly with spread palms and small steps. It was how most nature scouts approached wild animals on Cybertron.
"Listen to me, Grimlock. We can get them back." The rampage paused as great billows of steam rose out of Grimlock's olfactories, and he turned smelting pool optics down at Optimus. "We can help them... but only if we work together."
The Dinobot blew stale meaty air in his faceplate. "Me work with Prime?" The thought seemed to curdle in his mind like sour energon, and he scratched his muzzle again before giving his verdict. "Only to find family. Me Grimlock still king!"
"Of course you are," Optimus agreed with a weary sigh. As Grimlock turned to presumably lead the way deeper into the forest, he noticed the long crossbow-like arrow sticking out of his rear armour. It wasn't of Cybertronian make, and seemed to be coated in something sticky. But Optimus knew better than to try yanking it out for a closer look- even across species he knew deadly poisons when he saw them, and he wasn't about to have his death dealt by rabid Dinobot teeth tearing into him.
xx
"You know, Airachnid, the last time we met you never struck me as the 'maternal' type." She turned herself away from Silas, not bothering to waste a glare on him. He didn't seem too offended by her indifference. "Still, there are so many unknowns about your species. But you're not a true Cybertronian, are you?" Her shoulders suddenly went rigid, and Silas very much noticed it. "No... you're just some freak. A grotesque thing that no-one wants anything to do with." Airachnid heard him turn away from the shuffle of his boots on the metal floor.
"Is that why the father of this little one left you here alone?"
She risked a glance over her shoulder, and her spark almost tore itself in two.
They had locked Scorpia in some kind of cage, not so different from her own apart from scale. Her cocoon had been ripped away and she was left to shiver in her thin protoform, too terrified to even whimper under the goggled gaze of her captors. If her optics weren't buried in her hands, Airachnid knew they'd be dull to match her spark. Her daughter's fear vibrated over their bond with enough force to bring even the most battle-hardened mech to his knees.
Airachnid was no mech, though. She knew better than to show any weakness in front of creatures like these. She wrenched herself away from Scorpia's anguish even as her spark wallowed in it, missing Silas' surprise at her persistent apathy.
"Well, you're in luck today, Airachnid," he went on regardless, folding his arms behind his back and walking a bit away from her. "We do want something to do with you. The way I see it, you are proof that man and machine are not so distant from each other as originally thought. You are a living fusion of organic and mechanical... organic like humans." Something in Silas' tone made Airachnid flinch at the link between herself and her captors. "And if we can find a way to make ourselves more powerful, augment ourselves with what components you take for granted, well..." He shrugged off the weight of the possibilities. "Even Megatron might quake in his metal boots at what we would be capable of."
"Do me a favour and keep him alive when you separate his spark from its chamber," she muttered into her bloodstained claws, clenching them as if she could see the warlord's chest split open in front of her. Silas heard the venomous comment and laughed- whether it was in amusement or mockery Airachnid didn't care enough to tell.
"Always efficiently cold, Airachnid. That's what I liked about you, during our partnership. Much more tolerable than that fool Starscream, at least." She glanced over at him again in surprise- the Seeker making a deal with MECH was news to her. The fact that he had survived long enough to make one was even more surprising.
She saw Silas smirking silently to himself before a series of beeps from a computer module drew his attention away from his prisoner.
"System scan is complete, sir, and fluid samples have been taken and documented."
"Excellent." Silas leaned down to Scorpia's optic level with a look that made Airachnid want to tear him apart with all six limbs. "I see no more reason to keep mother and daughter apart." He nodded, and the two anonymous henchmen lifted the cage door and picked her sparkling up as if she was a wriggling insect. The door to Airachnid's own cell was only kept open just enough to fit an arm through and throw Scorpia in. Seeing her crying, shivering on the floor made Airachnid's maternal instincts overload, and against all better judgement she instantly swept her daughter into her servos,
"Shhh, shh, Scorpia." Her whisper was quiet enough that Silas and his goons couldn't hear, and its softness combined with the soft strokes along Scorpia's helm and fraying filaments reduced her howling to choked sobbing against her mother's neck. Airachnid's spark hammered with relief and fury; both at the humans and herself for letting them get into this situation. But the relief was far more palatable, so she let it block out the anger for now. All the world was her child, and she held Scorpia like a precious final ammo round in the middle of a battlefield wasteland.
At some point, she started humming. It was an old song with Vosian roots, she recalled, about something called 'The Pixelite' that supposedly soothed and watched over sparklings. At least, that was what Dreadwing had relayed to her when they heard an Autobot prisoner singing it to her dying sparkmate in their cell.
She tried not to envision any potential parallels between then and now as she sang it softly to Scorpia. The sparkling was the only one to find sleep that evening.