Dreadwing had roused himself from his cave by the time the Autobots returned with their humans, taking in every suspicious glance in his stride. He could have saved the Matrix itself and the team still wouldn't have trusted him yet. Even so, with Smokescreen still busy slacking off his chores they seemed content to leave Dreadwing in the same awkward position as Airachnid; having to keep the organics entertained, whether they wanted to or not.
Luckily for her, without Scorpia on her lap the humans seemed much more interested in harassing Dreadwing, and Airachnid had little else to do but watch the massive Seeker be brought to the edge of sanity by nothing more than a pair of nosy children.
"Come on, Dread, you can't always be this boring. What did you do back with the Decepticons?"
"You mean other than kissing up to Megatron?"
Understandably Dreadwing scowled at both Jack and Miko's probing attempts (despite being the youngest, Rafael was wise enough to not participate), though perhaps more at the latter's cutting mockery. "If you must know, when not undertaking missions I spent my time wisely, training and perfecting my aerial maneuvers." He paused in glaring at the children only to shift his narrow optics over to where Bulkhead watched vigilantly from the sidelines, no doubt being the only thing stopping Dreadwing from just swatting Miko aside. The ex-Con settled with scoffing at the ex-Wrecker. "Not that Autobots would know anything about that..."
As if Starscream wasn't proof enough that his kind's rumours were all true; Seekers really didn't like being around grounders if they couldn't make themselves feel better than them somehow. Airachnid almost copied Miko in rolling her optics.
"Jeesh, you must have been popular on Cybertron," the human scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest as she occupied Dreadwing's ped as a leaning post. Oh, how tempted he must have been to step on her.
"I will ignore your sarcasm, human, since I know such a primitive lifeform cannot muster any better form of wit." Airachnid saw Dreadwing flash a smirk to himself, so proud of the tiny blow he'd managed against Miko, only to have the human not even acknowledge it enough to be offended.
"Whatever. Come on, Jack, you owe me a rematch on Guts 'n Glory." The Seeker was left more bewildered than annoyed as the humans literally abandoned him, focusing instead on their pathetically tiny screen and the mystery device hooked up to it. Airachnid had assumed it was some kind of shield generator (it would explain how such fragile creatures had survived this long, at least), yet when Miko knelt to activate it there was no crackle of an EM field or shimmer in the air; all that changed was that the screen wasn't blank anymore.
Curiosity brought Airachnid closer, though even when she squinted she couldn't decipher the human's cryptic squiggles flashing on the screen in a spray of red. "What does that say?"
Both humans shot her a look of confusion. "You can't read it?" Jack asked, still fighting the urge to flinch as he met Airachnid's optics. Miko was busy with untangling a pair of controllers from a nest of cables, too busy to notice Dreadwing approaching to shove himself back into the center of attention, almost as if he craved it.
"Just because we speak your barbaric language does not mean we can understand its glyphs," he explained curtly. "An Iaconian can mock a mech from Kaon's vocaliser, but they'd be lost in a matter of klicks if they tried walking down a miner's street." And how ironic that such a comparison was made in the Dreadwing's own Tarnian-drenched tone, the only trace of Vos about him being his wings. Not that the humans registered it, they only blinked blankly before turning back to the screen.
"Sounds a little like Japanese," Miko mused, and she must have given an example of it when Airachnid suddenly couldn't understand anything she said. Dreadwing looked like he'd just heard a bomb going off somewhere, sending the human into a fit of laughter. "Don't try and learn it, I think that super-powered alien brain of yours can only take so much."
Dreadwing didn't appreciate the advice. "On Cybertron, such disrespectful glossas would have been torn out by now." Airachnid had done enough worse herself to know he was being completely serious, but fortunately Miko wasn't even paying heed to the threat.
"Ooh, that reminds me; Jack, you know how to do the special spinal rip move?" Airachnid still couldn't decide if the human was too brave or just too stupid to be scared, but whatever the case it seemed to be infectious from what little concern Jack showed to Dreadwing's scowl.
"No, cause that's what you killed me with last time," he reminded her, holding his controller limply in contrast to Miko's excitement as she flashed through different screens in a blur.
"Only cause you didn't press the right buttons- here, copy me." The humans' screen settled onto one venue, an arena of some kind with hideously organic combatants on either side, and Miko seemed to move one of them with twitches of her controller and its curiously arranged buttons. With just a few taps from her fingers, the screen filled with a flurry of punches and thuds that almost surprised Airachnid; how long had it been since she'd fought like that against someone?
"Miko, slow down! You know I can't remember all the button combos!"
"Sorry, Jack, not my fault you don't know how to block!"
It took longer than she'd like to admit for Airachnid to realise that these humans treated fighting like a game, as long as it wasn't their lives on the line. The competitive grunts and hisses of defeat, so similar to those she'd heard during the war's… no, during her darkest hours; but without the edge of true pain, without the weight of likely death behind each sound. Autobots, Decepticons, unlucky neutrals, they all sounded the same when they were desperate to survive.
Somehow, Dreadwing didn't get such grim reminders as he watched the simulation play out. "This program encourages pointless slaughter?" he asked, just as Miko finished literally smearing the ground with her opponent.
"Yep!" She punched the air as Jack groaned and threw his head back in defeat. He let the controller fall now that his avatar was left in pieces, and only now did he notice how closely Dreadwing and Airachnid were leaning in to see.
"Don't tell Mom we're playing it, she kinda freaks out whenever there's blood," he pleaded. "I mean, she sees real blood enough at the hospital, you'd think she'd be used to it by now."
Airachnid knew how wrong he was, but said nothing. Dreadwing pulled back from the screen with a scoff. "Our battle simulators are far more advanced than this primitive projection."
"Oh really?" Miko slung her arm over her seat and gestured up at Dreadwing with her controller. "Then try it for yourself, big guy."
Dreadwing almost flinched away from the human's offer, as if expecting the controller to fire a laser through his armour. But when Miko's continued shaking of it left him unmarked, he stretched out two claws to pinch it away from her. With such large digits he had to carefully tap the buttons as he hunched over the controller, a sight that would have made Unicron himself at least snicker. Every other nanoklick he would glance up at the screen, tracking the movement of his character and testing kicks against Jack's. The more he tapped his claws the more he creased his faceplate in concentration.
"Seems like a juvenile waste of time to me," Dreadwing announced after a few cautious klicks.
"Then give back the controller," Miko said, only to have the Seeker snatch it closer towards him.
"No, wait your turn," he muttered, guarding his moves and watching the game more closely now. Either the device was more lenient to fellow machines or Jack was profoundly terrible from how quickly he lost against even Dreadwing's slow inputs, groaning to himself once again as he endured Miko's endless taunts.
"That's it, I give up. This game hates me." He pushed himself up amidst Miko's protests and, just a second before throwing his controller down, pulled his arm back and offered it behind him instead. "...You wanna try, Airachnid?"
Though she knew it wasn't dangerous, Airachnid still hesitated at accepting it. She'd tried to ignore the virtual massacre, not so much out of disgust as out of fear. The sight of violence, real or otherwise, made her… unpredictable. And she doubted that even Elita's influence could curb the more hidden instincts she'd tried to forget about since Scorpia's birth.
But Optimus advised connecting with the humans somehow… and though Jack's hand shook he still held it out towards her, almost like a peace offering. Airachnid resisted the urge to check if Arcee was watching as she stretched her claws.
"I… suppose so." The controller fit her small hands much better than Dreadwing's bulky servos, but her claws scratched harshly against the plastic as she tried to grip the buttons. So she employed the more precise edges of her legs, one on each trigger she'd seen Dreadwing using. Twitching her razors only slightly at first, experimenting with what the screen showed, she quickly realised how to win just like in a real battle. Dreadwing was more powerful here, but with his own hands being obstacles he couldn't stop her from flitting around him in a flurry of knives and fists.
If only real bots were so easy to kill… Dreadwing-no, his character, was in bloody shreds like Airachnid's own claws had raked right through the screen. She had to hold them tight in her lap to control them, holding back a grin at the carnage she'd wrought, energon thudding like thunder through her fuel lines when all she wanted was to soak the floor in it… so long since her last kill… so long that all she could imagine was Megatron under her talons.
"Cheater." Dreadwing's pout was obvious in his sullen voice, but he took on a whole new expression when he turned towards Airachnid, mirroring the human's strange displays of shock. She didn't know why they stared at her so, not until she noticed how hard her fangs cut into her stretched lips, how her legs gouged the controller so deep in her frenzy. Not until the sweet flood of energon faded from her vision, and she finally pried her claws apart from each other. Blinking made her optics burn, but it was all she could do to clear her head.
How long had it really been since she'd been pushed so far…? She let the controller fall as her legs snapped safely behind her back, out of any harm's way.
"You always were a sore loser, Dreadwing." Lapping at the wounds on her lips only slightly stopped a snarl rising on her vocaliser as she turned away, leaving behind the suspicious stares and slaughter. If any of them wanted to follow after her, they were smart enough not to try.
"Don't look so pissed, Dread, I'll play against ya'!" Miko piped up, growing fainter the further Airachnid walked. "Come on, best of three rounds! If I win, you gotta fly around and let me ride in you."
"I would rather join Unicron in the Pit than even imagine that, human."
At that moment, Airachnid would have happily went with him if it meant being somewhere else. She needed space… somewhere quiet. The med bay. Scorpia would calm her down, somehow. She rubbed at her face with tense claws, wiping away any trace of energon from her mouth, but still couldn't make herself go further than the bay's entrance. Her spark was still swelling uncomfortably, how much had Scorpia felt of it? The sparkling already knew more about her than Elita knew herself. How much else could really shock her?
Airachnid hoped to never know the answer, but finally pushing herself onwards she saw the real reason for her spark simmering so violently in its chamber. It was Scorpia's own fear, from the cold medic's hands and sharp needles piercing her aching protoform-
"What are you doing to her...?"
Ratchet tensed at once, snapping upright and letting go of Scorpia as if by reflex. She pulled herself further away from him, to the very edge of the table and its array of glinting instruments, and crawled gladly into Airachnid's servos as soon as she was close enough. Other than her wide optics and tight grip, she seemed unharmed, but that didn't make Airachnid's glare any less deadly.
"I... thought that while she was here, I could scan her for any health issues," Ratchet explained, folding his empty hands over themselves as if to distract from the lack of actual scanner held in them. Airachnid narrowed her optics to daggers, distrust flooding through her like a rich poison.
"And you didn't think to ask for my permission first?" She fixed him in a glare that left him speechless, fumbling for more excuses when she budged it only to focus on where the scanner actually lay far out of his reach, placed on top of a datapad. Holding Scorpia closer, she kept one hand on her wire braid while the other reached out towards the pad. As Ratchet had said, the scanner's results were shown alongside a thorough log of Scorpia's progress dating back months, despite this only being her second examination. One furious swipe took her to the first entry, and the truth of Ratchet's first diagnosis.
"'Brittle armour'...? Dark Energon infection?!" The shock of a cold despair through Airachnid's whole body was all that stopped her crushing the pad in her claws. She knew that wouldn't erase the reality it described, and didn't know yet if it was the worst it had to offer. But what could be worse than Dark Energon… a sick joke of inheritance from Scorpia's sire?
"Airachnid… please stay calm-" Ratchet unbolted himself from the floor, approached her like a rabid animal only to be pinned back in place by her legs unfolding from her back, a subconscious defense that rose to protect all she had left.
"'Symptoms worsened over time…' How long has she had this?!" Airachnid held the datapad's screen towards him, forced him to see Scorpia's fate in his own words. The guilt was carved deep into his expression, only fueling her fury further.
"As you can see...I only noticed it during her first exam," Ratchet confessed, dropping his optics as soon as he thought it was safe to. "I didn't think… I'd hoped it would improve naturally."
Airachnid could only find his plea pathetic, a mumbled almost-apology at being too cowardly to tell her the truth. The eldest Autobot was also the weakest, how predictable… she put Scorpia down with her itching claws, raising her legs as her servos lowered, watching Ratchet foolishly think he had a chance to escape when something in his comm line tilted his helm sideways.
"Optimus is requesting a Ground Bridge, so-" His one exit was quickly barred by a maze of her legs, blades so close to slicing across his armour like plasma through steel, with her bristling self filling the doorway gap. The concrete wall itself crumbled around the anchored razor tips, and Airachnid trembled to stop tearing through the entire outpost.
"Don't try and get out of this, Ratchet! You kept this from me all this time, secrets about my own daughter!" Her hiss set her vocaliser on fire, acid burning against the wounds already on her lips. Some of it must have splattered Ratchet, from his his armour smoked silently over his wincing face.
"We… I didn't think you'd be-"
"Be so upset?" she finished in a vicious snap, fanning her claws to rip through the air so close to Ratchet's pitiful face. "So angry, that my daughter could survive all this only to end up like her sire?! I risked my life, both our lives to get her away from that monster!" Her voice cracked like glass against stone, but she hardly cared. It was a miracle she was even still standing in place, with her spark boiling her own energon and the undeniable, incurable need to… to hunt, to kill, to just do something with all her brutal urges, the thing she was made to do for longer than Elita had even existed for.
She might have killed Ratchet right there, whether or not Scorpia was watching, if not for the voice and sharp edge cutting into her neck, sharper than her own acid streaming down her chin.
"Stand down, Airachnid." Behind her Optimus spoke like she was a criminal rather than his sparkmate, icy authority taking a hard grip on his vocaliser. That revelation was what brought Airachnid back from the Pit. That, and the realisation that the muffled but piercing screech in her audios wasn't her own hissing or nightmares echoing back at her; it was Scorpia crying.
xx
You might notice Airachnid is acting a little more like the one we know from canon here… is it Dark Energon, bloodlust or extreme motherly instincts getting to her? Will she forgive Optimus and Ratchet? When will she finally get the chance for revenge against Megatron, and to avenge all the years Elita lost with her sparkmate?
Well, I can't tell you, that'd spoil everything :P