Though his spark was pulling him towards Scorpia, Optimus made himself stay just long enough to oversee the mission preparations. Even if he wasn't happy about it, such a small team going after an entire Insecticon hive (and never mind a human tagging along), there wasn't much he could do to stop it. Not even the wisdom of the Thirteen constantly nagging in his chest could stand against three of the most stubborn souls in the galaxy.

"Take patience with the human, Airachnid, she can be rather… hyperactive. Like a sparkling entering its childhood phase."

Airachnid just smirked at his warning, casting a glance over to where Miko was tapping her boots impatiently on the Jackhammer's boarding ramp. "I'll know what to expect with Scorpia, then. But are you sure I can be trusted around one? A human?"

Optimus sensed a mockery lurking in her tone, but he chose to answer it sincerely. "You had chances to harm Rafael when he and Bumblebee appeared, but you didn't take them. Whether or not that was due to my presence, it is proof enough that you can at least control yourself around humans. And regardless of that, I'm sure Wheeljack will prevent you from any acts of aggression."

Whether Airachnid agreed with him on that, her shrug didn't say. "Well, we'll see about that. At this rate, I'll happily pair up with anything that doesn't have a Decepticon badge on it."

Optimus had more to say, a build up of questions spilling out of his processor all at once in a messy stream, but Wheeljack was quick to dam the flow. "Prime, if you're done flirtin', I'd like to get somethin' done with the day before nightfall."

And at his peds, Miko was busy turning the ramp into an impromptu concert stage. "Gonna go kick some buuug butt! With Jackie and a freaky buuug mama!"

"I hate her already," Airachnid decided.

Wheeljack just snorted while Miko was too busy drowning everything that wasn't her own voice out. "Somethin' tells me she'll grow on you," the Wrecker said.

"Oh, great, so she's infectious now." Airachnid's groan only made him laugh, and in turn her fangs deepened her scowl.

"Not like you're thinkin', but now you mention it... yeah, she is kinda." Wheeljack leaned down and tapped Miko on her shoulder, stopping her from attempting a powerslide, and gestured towards the interior of the Jackhammer. While the human scrambled inside, Airachnid turned back to Optimus on the fringe of the landing site.

"You might have some trouble wrestling Scorpia away from Grimlock, but I'm sure you've faced worse than several tonnes of paternal-charged anger," she warned, though like Optimus some sincerity ended up leaking in where she might have otherwise kept it fimrly out.

Prime nodded, almost deploying his battlemask when he felt a smile threatening his faceplate. "And I know you've survived worse than..." He trailed off, not quite sure if he knew where he was going, or if it was safe to go there.

Whether it was one or the other, Airachnid's optics still flickered with that sad look that didn't suit her. "Sometimes I think you overestimate me, Prime," she said after a sigh.

"Or it may be that you just underestimate yourself," Optimus suggested.

Airachnid seemed to find the thought amusing. "Either way, at least one of us is definitely wrong."

Optimus knew when he was faced with a debate that he wouldn't win, thanks to the stellar cycles spent having to match wits with Elita One. "That is one way to look at it," he conceded, and Airachnid looked quite proud of the small victory over Prime's processor. Or maybe she was just glad to be right about something.

"Come on, lovebirds, I ain't gettin' any younger here!" Wheeljack called out, banging on the side of the Jackhammer's hull like sounding some kind of gladiator bell.

"What does he mean by love-" Optimus was muttering under his vents, shaking his helm when he decided it didn't matter. "Good luck, Airachnid. Take care of yourself."

The spider hesitated for something, another flicker across her optics too fast for Optimus to recognise, as they flicked from him to Wheeljack and then back again. "You too, Optimus." The two rods hovering over her shoulders seemed to inch lower towards the ground, and spindly as they looked they both managed to support Airachnid's weight as she lifted herself up, just enough to press her mouth against Optimus' cheek.

Whatever it was that stopped Prime from flinching away still had him paralysed while Airachnid loaded herself into the Jackhammer. He could only move one servo, lifting the shaking digits up to where the imprint of her lips still tingled just inches aside from his mouth. Whatever he was expecting to find there, an acid stain or some kind of ethereal bruise, evaporated against the smooth damp sheen of his own face.

Still cradling his cheek, it was only some klicks after the Jackhammer and Airachnid faded from sight, into the dappled white-and-blue beyond, that Optimus realised he was in love with her.

xx

Though the Jackhammer was built for two passengers, Miko was content to seat herself in the space between Wheeljack and Airachnid. It was the best place to focus her eyes, still wide even while squinting above a pout so intense it must have hurt, up at the spider so casually trying to not take a slice out of her.

"Wheeljack, why does the vermin keep staring at me?" Airachnid eventually had to ask.

"I think she likes ya'," Wheeljack said, and his smirk would have been pelted with something if Miko had anything to throw at him other than a glare.

"Do not!" she protested, springing to her feet and clenching her hands into laughably small fists by her sides. When Wheeljack didn't offer to retract his heinous suggestion, Miko chose to ignore him and turn her attention back on Airachnid. "I'm just... trying to think what your baby must look like."

Airachnid scoffed, kicking herself back in her chair with servos folded just under her chestplates. "Tiny. Eats a lot. Optics far too big for her helm. Does that help?"

But the human was too busy squealing again to notice sarcasm, making Airachnid think there was something wrong with her vocaliser. "It's a girl! Awww! Does she have a name?"

Airachnid twitched an eyeridge, trying to sense if the human was using some kind of Earth form of contempt on her. Why would a creature be so invested in the offspring of an entirely different species, after all? "...Scorpia," she answered after a suspicious pause, and almost worryingly Miko seemed to faint when she heard it. But she was still making noises even a turbofox would have had trouble hearing with her legs kicking the air, so Airachnid just rolled her optics and turned them to look elsewhere around the ship.

That strategy worked for all of five nanoklicks, before Miko regained herself and said in a very bad whisper to her left; "Pssst, Jackie... who's the dad?"

"I'm done talking about this." Airachnid was already rising out of her seat, half with legs and half with rods, and scuttling over to the other side of the Jackhammer where she knew she'd find a bench to stubbornly sit on.

Though her back was turned to them both, she could still hear them over the dull roar of the ship's engine. "...Guess I said something wrong?"

"Trust me, Miko; if you did, even I wouldn't be able to stop her if she really wanted to web ya' up like a fly." Airachnid was glad she decided to face away, since she didn't have to hide her smile. Still, it would have been nice to see how the human would have reacted to the thought.

"What's the story, then? How did Optimus... find her, or whatever?" Miko tried to lower her voice, but someone usually so loud had a very different concept of what 'quiet' was to most people. Even so, Airachnid wasn't in the mood to scare her silent.

At least Wheeljack had the decency to tune his vocaliser lower, though still not low enough to escape range of her audios. "From what Air herself told me, she left the 'Cons after... havin' her sparklin'. Then Optimus found her in a forest, probably durin' a patrol. Since then he's been bringin' her energon, eventually relocatin' her to that big island you saw. 'Course, he didn't know the place was already home to a cranky Dinobot..."

"A what?" Whether or not it was intentional, Miko was instantly pulled away from all unanswered questions about Airachnid as a thousand more about Grimlock took their place. Airachnid heard Wheeljack huff one of his small laughs that he always had when he smirked.

"Oh, you'd like him, kid," the Wrecker said. "He's a lot like you but in a much bigger, much scarier body."

"Hey, I can be scary!"

"Haha, I'm sure ya' can, like Bulkhead when you're between him and an energon banquet."

Whatever was said beyond that, Airachnid mostly drowned it out. Her lips had been tingling ever since they touched Optimus' faceplate, and she was still trying to convince herself why she let them. Not to just annoy Wheeljack in all his jealousy, not to throw Prime off his eternal guard. She just... wanted to. Not even her spark, sitting idle in its tight chamber after a brief flare, could explain why.

She still hadn't reached an answer when the Jackhammer landed, amidst another forest with oak trees instead of palm and with dirt less sandy than she was now used to. It was like where she first hid herself, among the bracken and leaves where Optimus still managed to find her; she even recognised the cave yawning open before them through the viewport, but from much longer ago.

"Isn't this an energon mine?" She didn't need to ask, having helped scout the cave for Megatron herself, but Wheeljack's nod at least reassured her.

"Used to be. 'Cons must have picked it clean and abandoned it, cause it's where I've been seein' all the Insecticon drones going into. Whichever one's controllin' them is hidden deep in there, and he ain't comin' out without bringin' the whole swarm with him."

Though she had to scramble onto the passenger seat and stand on the very tips of her boots to see, Miko still managed to budge between them. "So what's the plan, Wheeljack?"

"Well, kid, there's several tried and tested strategies to clearin' out a hive of ugly-aft bug beasts. I can't remember most of them, so I'm just gonna blow the Pit outta it and hope for the best."

It was exactly what she expected from Wheeljack, yet Airachnid's optics were still rolling. "If it's underground, couldn't you cause a cave-in?" she mentioned, recalling one of the main problems Shockwave had with domesticating Insecticons was stopping their hives from collapsing.

Wheeljack looked away to think it over. "With enough mines placed 'round the weak points... yeah, that could work. Save me a lot of random explosives as well. Speakin' of which, you still got that grenade I gave ya'?"

Airachnid blinked and her hand went deep into her subspace, talons brushing past the meteorite she kept nestled near the surface and eventually hitting the hard casing of the grenade she'd completely forgotten about until now. "Surprisingly..." she muttered. All the times she could have used it before were gone now, but mostly she was just relieved it hadn't gone off while still hidden away.

Wheeljack smirked, as if telling himself she just kept it to remember him. "Least you got it for an emergency. Right, Miko; you scout round the perimeter and take a record of it, that way I can see where to place the mines."

The human dug around in her own subspace- though much smaller than a Cybertronian's and on her rear for some reason- and retrieved a pink device from it. "On it!"
As she sprinted down the Jackhammer's ramp faster than it could descend, Airachnid couldn't help pouting after her. "How does she get to go scouting?"
"Cause a human's a lot harder to spot than a wanderin' techno-organic with a slammin' hot body," Wheeljack said, all fact and only a little bit of flirt- but just enough to make one of Airachnid's razors snap up to his neck.

"More like 'slamming in your codpiece' if you don't shut up," she said, but didn't resist against Wheeljack pushing her leg away from slicing at his neck cables.

"Hey, I'm sure Optimus would agree," he chanced, but Airachnid just switched to pointing a talon just inches from his optics.

"If this is about me kissing him-!"

"I never said anythin' 'bout that," Wheeljack interrupted, optics wide enough without the claw threatening to carve them out. "Pit, I assumed you done it lots of times with him."

Airachnid lowered her hand, sinking back into her chair and suddenly unable to lift her optics off the ground. "Actually... that was the first," she confessed, and even hearing it out loud didn't give her any insight into why she'd waited so long.

"Ohhhh..." As the realisation took its time soaking into Wheeljack's processor, Miko returned panting and baring her device high over her head.

"All done!" she gasped, doubling over against the foot of the passenger seat and handing the pink thing over to Wheeljack.

"Nice one, kid," the Wrecker praised, and whatever he was watching took much shorter to absorb than it did to record. By the time he closed the screen over, his optics were cold with calculations and hoard of incendiary equations only Wreckers and scientists would ever bother with. "Now you stay here, I'm gonna go place the mines." He paused at the top of the boarding ramp, turning towards Airachnid. "You wanna come this time, your majesty?"

Airachnid chose to sneer at his tone. "If you're going to act like that, I'll eat the human by the time you get back."

Wheeljack shook his helm even as he laughed. "Honey, you and I know that ain't good for your figure."

Both her and Miko watched him go, heard his peds scuffing in the heavy dirt outside, and only when they faded from hearing did Miko ask, "Is Wheeljack the dad?"

Airachnid almost burst out laughing. "He wishes he was." Part of her almost wished it as well, but it was a part she would have sooner had assassinated than let out for anyone to see.

Still, she'd probably have preferred company with it than with Miko's rambling. "So did you leave the 'Cons so your daughter would have a better life? Or maybe you fell in love with an Autobot and wanted to be with him, or maybe-!"

"Maybe you read far too many romance stories," Airachnid scoffed. "No wonder your species has such small processors, you fill them up with slag at such a young age."

"Hey, I'm fifteen years old!" Miko protested, with a pout that would have been perfectly placed on any sparkling.

Airachnid thought she was joking before she realised humans live such shorter lives, and still laughed through a smirk. "Try fifteen thousand years. Give or take a few vorns." The war had lasted for a hundred thousand of them, probably more, so even that wasn't impressive to a Cybertronian. But it shut Miko up for a few seconds, before she found something else to interrogate her about.

"You're not related to the Insecticons, are you?"
Airachnid's optics spilled a new brighter glow as one of her eyeridges arced dangerously. "What on Cybertron makes you say something like that?"
"Well, Optimus said... you were a techno-organic. And they're not like normal bots, obviously. Insecticons don't look normal either, and you're both bugs, soooo-" The human was too busy making circles on the floor with the tip of her boot, and she didn't notice the clutch of talons reaching down to pluck her off the floor until she was already in the air, squealing much less annoyingly now. Airachnid's talons didn't breach skin, but they did grasp tightly to the back of Miko's shirt as she dangled off her hand in front of her frown, and the hisses that came from it.

"If you must know, I assisted Shockwave in controlling them for the Decepticons, during the war," Airachnid informed Miko through a film of venom over her denta. Miko at least didn't try to struggle, instead matching Airachnid's frown and at least trying to compete with her burning glare. "But if you dare imply that I'm part of some primitive, barbaric slave species-"

For once, Airachnid interrupted herself as an idea hit her processor like a meteor impact, ripples across her circuits making her talons fall limp and drop Miko. Luckily (or not) the human landed on her lap, and managed to clamber back to the ground by the time Wheeljack was stretching in the ship's door.

"Right, let's blow up and blow out before I need to invest in some bug spray-"

"Wheeljack, wait." Airachnid rose from her seat, holding up a servo. "Before you arm the mines, I want to try something."

Both Wheeljack and Miko gave her curious stares, though Miko was mostly preoccupied poking at the new holes in the back of her shirt. "'Something' being...?" The Wrecker waited for an answer that Airachnid only gave when she was halfway off the ship.

"Something you just need to trust me on," she said, with a glance down at Miko. "In fact, your... human was the one who made me think of it."

As she descended onto solid ground and approached the open mouth of the mine, she heard Wheeljack's muffled voice asking, "Miko, what did you do now?!"

xx

So this chapter was actually going to be longer, but I figured there was enough going on to leave the rest of it for next time (with the way things are going, there might be a lot more shuffling about in the future; currently I have the premises of the next six chapters thought out, but depending on how long they end up being I might end up having to split them into more than six).

But some good news; I have a bit of a better idea how to get to a satisfying ending now, and I'd say that realistically we're almost there :D