"I have to say, Dreadwing, you're looking even more pipe-logged than usual. Someone eat your rations when you weren't looking?"
Knockout's diagnosis didn't help shift the scowl scratched permanent on Dreadwing's faceplate. "You would do well to exercise some acknowledgement over Lord Megatron's current concerns, Knockout," the Seeker growled, with his wings practically bristling. "Our leader's foul mood affects his soldiers as well- his loyal ones, at least."
"Trust me, Dreadwing, on the inside I'm just as mopey as him," Knockout deadpanned, turning his attention to more important matters than Dreadwing's secure position as president of the Megatron Fan Club- namely the frequency detector in his hands, and its annoyingly blank screen. Supposedly it would pick up the unique calls found in an Insecticon hive, even one leagues underground, and supposedly this was exactly where his constipated companion tracked a creature suspiciously similar to an Insecticon from a distance just that morning. "Hm... you're certain you saw it fly here?" he asked, sweeping the detector over the horizon just to be sure there wasn't an Insecticon hiding himself under a log somewhere.
"I know what I saw better than any toy you can conjure from your subspace," Dreadwing insisted, and Knockout could practically hear his denta grinding themselves to dust.
"Cool your thrusters, I just don't want us wasting any of Lord Megatron's valuable time chasing after-" A clutch of claws suddenly appeared on his chest, pressing down on the immaculate paint and stopping Knockout from wandering helm-first down a cliff face dropping away right beneath their peds (and also preventing him from any rants about how claws didn't react well with polish). Knockout reeled himself back with a heavy vent sucking air in, and he tried not to look down for too long. The main reason he'd never liked the thought of reformatting as a Seeker despite the spark attacks it would have caused Starscream- deathly fear of heights.
But just as he was about to retrace his steps into the cover of the trees, Dreadwing went and made his life difficult again. "What's that down there?" he asked, and the cruel hook of curiosity forced Knockout back to study the empty patch of dirt at the foot of the cliff despite vertigo making his gears clench. The first thing he noticed was the squat starship parked at the fringe of the trees below, mostly camouflaged by the leaves, but that wasn't what caught Dreadwing's attention. It was the speck of fractured black armour glinting in the low sun, jagged peaks jutting from its silhouette and its mirror image slowly approaching opposite.
"It looks like..." Knockout already knew what it was, and Dreadwing realised a nanoklick later.
"Airachnid!" The Seeker's wings flared wide and smacked into Knockout's back, almost sending him barelling down the cliff, but he was too focused on anger to pay any attention to the medic's panic. "We should tell Lord Megatron at once-!"
Now Knockout had the opportunity to interrupt, and he took it with relish. "Now hold on, Dreadwing, let's not be hasty..." The medic was tempted to put his own claws on the Seeker's chest, but his survival instinct outweighed his snarky one. Instead he settled for holding a digit up, and it somehow stopped Dreadwing from soaring down to sweep the spider right back to the Nemesis. "That other shape looks like an Insecticon to me. And if there's a hive down there like we suspected, it could be rather... beneficial to observe their behaviour up close. For science. And I'm sure Megatron would be very grateful for the data." A habitual grin found its way onto his faceplate before he could squash it back down, but something about the flash of denta made Dreadwing's struts lower themselves inch by inch, and by the time his wings lay flat he was only frowning fiercely. At least he couldn't scowl a bot to death just yet.
"If we lose her again, the fault will lie solely on your shoulders, Knockout," Dreadwing warned, and he was dragging himself further back into cover to watch her. With his engine snarling, he was like a predator waiting for an ambush.
"I'm willing to take that risk," Knockout said, still smiling away as he slipped beside him while trying to avoid the barbs of stray undergrowth. Just as he magnified his optics, the device holstered by his side started crackling with the faint trills of a greeting far below. But there were two audio bands, from both Airachnid and her Insecticon friend. He 'd heard the rumours way back on Cybertron that Airachnid spent more time in Shockwave's lab than anyone had any right to, that she'd managed to tame a whole feral hive just with her optics, but he'd never imagined having a chance to see it for himself.
At least that was what he told himself he was interested in, trying to ignore any genuine concern for the spider for his own sake. Even from far away, it was so difficult imagining her as being a mother to anything, that there was even a faint bud of light left in her spark. He'd seen it for himself after all, a dim purple bulb sputtering behind cracked chamber glass, and some kind of engraving he didn't think to ask about over the core. To most she was walking proof that Primus had abandoned his children, to him she was a mine of biological miracles. But most of all, she was smart; enough to survive this long in an alien wild without exterminating the local population, too smart to be blinded by loyalty to something she had no choice in to begin with, and certainly too smart to be knocked up by any random mech that caught her optic. Little wonder that Breakdown was so infatuated by her, and that he still felt the shock of Megatron's revelation that she'd been pregnant for Primus knows how long.
The detector was thrumming now, like the hive had come alive in Knockout's palm, and he could see the Insecticon only an inch or so away from Airachnid. The sounds were curious but fading into a strange familiarity, like she was an old friend even though she was centuries senior to the buzzing creature. Clicking punctuated with chirps, mandibles scraping together and something else even the best of Cybertron's medics couldn't decipher reached out towards Airachnid... only to recoil back with a shriek to rival one of Starscream's tantrums, and before Knockout could even blink the Insecticon was tearing at Airachnid's frame like a rabid chainsaw. Even Dreadwing was shocked, every molecule in his body tensing, and he seemed torn between leaving her to the savagery or trying to save her for Megatron's wrath instead.
While the spider frantically tried to shove the huge mass of screeching plating off of her with only two back legs and Knockout ached to turn away, a white mech he only vaguely recognised emerged from the starship. Even from a distance Knockout could hear him yell, "Airachnid! Get back onboard!" Then he seemed to click something in his hand, and there was a dull orchestra of booms before the cliff all but disintegrated from underneath the two Decepticons. Rolling rocks and crumbling stone fell in a nightmare avalanche around Knockout as he collapsed helm over peds, and by the time he came to a shuddering stop amongst the trees the starship was already hovering in the sky, zooming off along the slipstreams a nanoklick later. At least he had his question answered, saw how Insecticons actually did react to Airachnid; with the same fury and malice as every other sentient creature.
"Wheeljack..." Sadly Dreadwing survived the sudden shifting of the Earth's plates, and he was shoving debris off his armour while glaring after the ship, wings fluttering so intently they might end up carrying him into the sky by force of sheer rage. "I should have terminated him as soon as I landed on this cursed Pit of a planet..."
Knockout tried to ignore the fact he could hardly stand on his numb legs and the dents now gracing over half his armour surface for now, looking every other way for any other rabid Insecticons on the loose. "Well... look on the bright side. We now know Airachnid is alive, and working with Autobots. I know you just get so excited around traitors, after all."
Dreadwing's vents huffed with a cloud of dirt billowing around him as he kept staring upwards, even though the ship was gone from sight. "I could flag that pile of rust down in five nanoklicks-"
"Don't bother, it's better in the long run if they think they got away for now. Besides, Airachnid may well perish from her wounds," Knockout suggested out of sheer desperation to return to the relief of his buffing pad; though medical records told him long ago it would take more than a single Insecticon to finish her off. Whether or not Dreadwing knew it as well, he pinned his wings down and marched out of the ruins of the cliff, towards the clearing where Airachnid held her ill-fated audience just a klick ago. The dirt was stained with jet exhaust and energon, and what once was an angry Insecticon was now a crushed sparking mess of plating and circuitry beneath a slab of rock. Morbidly it reminded Knockout of flyswatters humans used on their own household pests.
"I look forward to seeing how you plan to explain this to Lord Megatron," Dreadwing said, and if he wasn't Dreadwing Knockout might have said the winged aft was laughing about it.
"Quite easily, actually," Knockout said back, and his smile was almost genuine as he gestured towards what remained of the Insecticon and the barred off cave behind it. "The hive has been dealt with. That was the whole point of this mission, wasn't it?"
Dreadwing's mouth fell just enough for Knockout to notice him getting somehow angrier, and his talon firmly jabbed at a large dent in the center of Knockout's chest. "I will still be informing him of Airachnid's survival, as well as your failure to capture her."
Forcing his smile wider, Knockout swiped Dreadwing's claw aside with a simple wave and fought the urge to shove past him. "Whatever helps you recharge at night, Dreadwing."
xx
The next chapter is going to be, for lack of a better word, a dramagasm the likes of which have rarely been seen. That being said, I might take more than a week to get it hammered out cause I'm sure to be exhausted by it.