After a brief debate over the pros and cons of facing an ex naked, Airachnid eventually decided to shrug her armour on after all.
"We're about to have a visitor, Grimlock," she said, securing her last piece of thigh plating. "Don't scare him off. And don't kill him just yet."
The Dinobot rumbled against the dirt with his helm kept low to the undergrowth. "Yes, spider lady..."
Wherever the Jackhammer managed to land, it took Wheeljack ten klicks to navigate through the maze of foliage, and the undergrowth practically spat him into the clearing when he finally stumbled across it. After regaining his footing and brushing his armour clean, he seemed to home in on Airachnid on the other side of the grass, staring and stepping towards them like he was in a dream.
He had such a handsome smile, before she walked up and slapped it off his faceplate.
"And where the Pit have you been?!" she demanded. Whether or not it was harder than she intended, it at least jolted him out of his trance.
"I probably deserved that..." Wheeljack rubbed tenderly at the raw spot on his cheek, tilting his helm over until he saw Scorpia clinging to Airachnid's chest and curiously swiping a servo towards him. "Woah, you've gotten big, lil' lady!"
The sparkling gurgled as if recognising him as well, and Airachnid let him hold her if only so she could cross her servos over in a picture of disapproval. "You still haven't answered my question."
Wheeljack let Scorpia nibble on one of his digits as he spoke. "Long story short, your boyfriend's an aft."
She raised an eyeridge, only realising he was talking about Optimus after a few nanoklicks. And rather than insist he was just the only mech on Earth willing to feed her, she affixed a pitying pout. "What's the matter, Jackie, getting jealous?"
Part of her was glad to see Wheeljack blush and pull his optics down, so obviously embarrassed that even Scorpia gave him a knowing look. "...Maybe," he admitted.
Still pouting, Airachnid gave him a sympathetic pat on his shoulder as she walked past him. "Don't worry, Jackie, I'm sure a big manly Prime will look after you one day."
The Wrecker's vents spluttered in an effort to protest, before he realised she was joking. "Looks like the lightyears have changed everything except your slag sense of humour," he huffed, kneeling down to let the squirming sparkling fall out of his arms and onto the soft ground.
"And they haven't made your faceplate any prettier to look at," Airachnid quipped back, reaching out one of her back legs towards Scorpia as she stumbled back to her mother's side. And it was just in time for Grimlock to make his dramatic entrance, snarling through a legion of trees and locking optics with the Wrecker.
"WHEELJACK!" The roar almost made a shockwave that brought the rest of the forest down, but Wheeljack barely budged as the main force of it dissipated around him. Even having to wipe flying spit from his armour didn't make his grin fade.
"Grimlock, ya' big hunk of slag!" His outstretched servos made a pitiful attempt to capture the Dinobot as he charged towards him, and Wheeljack was send rolling in the dirt as Grimlock violently helmbutted him, just barely avoiding gutting him with his horns. Though the collision sent a loud clang echoing through the humid air, the Wrecker was back on his peds as if he'd just been brushed by a Minicon, locking Grimlock's muzzle in one servo while the other rubbed his fist into it.
All the noise and confusion just made Airachnid groan and Scorpia whimper. "Don't worry, dear, it's just a harmless idiot ritual," the spider sighed, taking her daughter back into the relative safety of her servos.
Wheeljack somehow heard her over his own giddy chuckles, throwing her a look as he paused in his noogie efforts. "Now who's gettin' jealous?" he asked, releasing Grimlock's maw with one last pat. "You're a lot... bigger since last time I saw ya', Grimmy."
"Ate a lot!" the Dinobot proclaimed proudly, practically wagging his tail and slamming it into some surviving trees behind him. "Lots of energon and metal! Me strong, take good care of ladies!"
"So, what finally brings you all the way out here?" Airachnid interjected while wheeling the Wrecker back to face her, unwilling to risk another round of destruction between the two overgrown sparklings (a normal sized one was enough to deal with).
"Two things," Wheeljack said, holding up three digits before he realised it was one too many and sheepishly lowered one. "A friendly visit to my favourite rogue Decepticon, and a chance for you to get off'a this tropical prison of yours."
Airachnid's expression stayed stone, aside from one eyeridge quirking. "I'm listening."
"What did Prime tell you 'bout why he hasn't been showin' up lately?"
She shrugged, letting her legs click together. "A whole lot of bullslag about 'Autobot responsibilities'." She knew his team would always be a priority over one already damned spark, but that didn't mean she couldn't feel slighted by it.
Wheeljack nodded with a smirk. "Sounds like him... well, a buddy of mine, Bulkhead, got..." He looked away for a nanoklick, filling his vocaliser with a cough of static before going on. "Attacked by Starscream, and an Insecticon. The big ugly bird's already been taken out, so I'm off to do some pest control. Not that I need the help, but if you wanna tag along..."
Starscream's demise, as well as Insecticons being on Earth, was certainly news to her. Pleasant news, considering he was the reason she was put here in the first place, yet hearing of it was like trying to recall a distant memory. Remembering it might bring her some joy, but ultimately the true happiness of it was lost to the past. And that itself was quite jarring, considering how often she'd imagined his death when even Primus would be fed up with his slag and snatch him right off the face of the universe. Though with survival and motherhood taking up so much of her focus, she hadn't had much time to be lamenting old mortal enemies.
"...It has been a very long while since I've felt fresh energon on my claws," she mused, and Wheeljack's infectious grin ended up getting to her.
"You trust the walkin' woodchipper over there to look after the kid?" he asked with another glance at Grimlock, who still thumped his tail into the ground while hopping on each haunch.
Airachnid shrugged. "I don't trust him with much else." If anything, Grimlock was the best alternative to a sparkling sitter she had avaliable to her, and Scorpia was only too happy to nestle herself next to the Dinobot's neck.
Even so, Airachnid hesitated on the edge of the clearing. She hadn't been separated from Scorpia ever since their encounter with M.E.C.H, and her spark wrenched against her chamber walls at the thought of leaving her behind. If anything did go wrong in Airachnid's absence, there was no telling what else would happen to her spark, or the state their bond would be in before she managed to return.
But she knew the island was the safest place for Scorpia. If an Insecticon ended up chewing her spark out, at least she had something to leave behind that wasn't just her own energon-soaked legacy. With that conviction secure in her processor, she turned to follow Wheeljack to his ship.
"So, why did the oh so wise Optimus not think to tell me of what kept him away for so long?" she asked, letting Wheeljack clear the way of flopping ferns and saplings in their way.
"Beats me," he shrugged, slicing through a particularly stubborn barrier of vines with ineffectively stubby digits.
"Maybe he's just sick of the sight of me," Airachnid suggested, intending to be humourous. But rather than give one of his low laughs, Wheeljack paused his efforts and turned to face her with scarred lips pressed together.
"Listen, Airachnid..." He shook his hands free of leaf shreds, blinking before looking at her with a sincerity she'd only seen before on Optimus himself. "Prime does care about you. More than you believe. You should've see the look he got when I said I was comin' over. Pit, even the way he is when he talks 'bout you... And I saw the way you looked at him, back when Ratchet came crashin' in-"
"I don't know what the Pit you're talking about," she cut off with venom coating her voice, though the flow struggled against the growing tightness of her throat and the pounding pulse of her spark. Wheeljack must have known her better than she thought, or her denial was obvious to everyone except herself.
"Just like I said, still got a slag sense of humour," he said, with a sad smile tugging at his lips. "I'm actually am a lil' jealous, to be honest with ya'... wish I could get a femme to look at me that way."
Now she had something else entirely spearing her spark through- a normal bot might have called it guilt. After all, he was the only mech she hadn't felt the urge to kill since the Exodus. "Wheeljack..." She reached her talons out to him, breezing the tips against one of his hunched shoulders. His helm snapped back up when he felt her, and he tried to resurrect his easy lopsided expression.
"I just think you'd make a good couple, is all," he said, wringing his digits around the length of vine trapped within his hands. "You're already pretty good parents." When her phantom touch didn't budge, he finally looked at her optics again. "We had some damn good times together, though, didn't we?"
Airachnid felt a solemn nostalgia twitching on the edges of her lips. "Yeah. We did."
Wheeljack nodded and blinked slowly, and it was as if her voice managed to reset something inside him. Turning back to the tangled obstruction, he managed to tear through it with a single swift pull of his servos. "Not much further to go. I should'a landed just around this clump of-"
As he pulled the trailing curtain of leaves aside, he saw something that made him want to snap them closed again.
"Wheeljack!" It was a muffled peal of a voice that Airachnid didn't recognise, but she could tell it was from a female. She tensed, expecting Arcee to come bristling out of the branches, but when Wheeljack moved aside all she saw was a very tiny shape leaping over stones and roots towards them. The second human she'd seen in the past week, yet this island was supposed to be completely cut off from them? Airachnid would have cursed Primus if she thought he was even listening to her anymore.
"MIKO?!" Wheeljack was just as surprised as Airachnid, and he only remembered to hide the spider behind him when the young human skidded to a panting stop by his peds, the strange pink-tipped antennae on her head bobbing with every deep breath.
"Don't just stand there, get in the ship!" she wheezed out. "There's something after me, I swear there is, there was this massive roar and all the trees were shaking-"
Noticing Wheeljack's frozen stance, Miko took another colossal breath that swelled her chest up. "Okay, yes I know I shouldn't have stowed on board and I know Bulkhead will be mad at me and I know I was stupid but-" As valiant as Wheeljack's effort to conceal Airachnid was, it seemed there was nothing that could be hidden from a hyperactive teenager.
"FREAKY DECEPTICON ALERT!" Miko squealed, diving behind Wheeljack's ped and still pointing at where Airachnid's heels pierced the ground. Her head only popped up again when seconds ticked by with a suspicious lack of blaster fire, and threw an incredulous glare up at Wheeljack. "What are you waiting for, blow her up or something!"
"Do you want to tell her or shall I?" Airachnid asked, deadpan weighing her voice down.
Wheeljack shrugged, starting to get that guilty sparkling look about him again. "I'm worried about which of us is gonna tell Prime."