Ep 1.5. Along Came a Spider

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(Set day 1, week 2)

Most of the night patrols were out when something had come up on the sensors. The signal was muted, distorted but there was a decent chance that it was energon.

Soooo, someone needed to go check it out. It wasn't a pressing priority, there was every chance the reading was a sensor glitch or a false reading. Instead of rousing up a whole platoon to go investigate, why not send one mech, one with a nifty teleportation trick to whisk him to the other side of the plant if he needed to escape (not that he ever) and carrying enough firepower to level a small city. Besides, the co-ordinates were far from any large human settlement and Skywarp had been haunting the command desk for ages and dear Primus, just get him out of here, please.

Humming pleasantly and feeling rather pleased with himself, Skywarp stepped out of the ground bridge and was deposited on the rocky terrain of the side of a mountain range, somewhere Wyoming. The Seeker could have teleported himself here but by using the Nemesis's ground bridge, he conserved his own fuel reserves. Skywarp took a few moment to get himself orientated, he blinked, flicked his wings and craned his neck back to eye all the pine trees that dominated the landscape. He shuttered his optics once more and finished calibrating them to the darkness. The moon wasn't out tonight, the dark sky was covered by clouds. A cursory scan told Skywarp that he could expect rain showers if he took too long.

With an unbothered shrug, Skywarp kicked his other sensors into gear as he set off at a leisurely pace though the pine forest. Time to see whether he could find the source of that signal.

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If there was something about this planet she hated, it would be the lack of options. At first she'd been upset with being marooned on the planet without her ship. Her artifacts, her trophies, everything that made her her was gone in one explosion. Her Jack had effectively ruined whatever advantage she could ever hold over the rest of her species. And so thoroughly. She'd hate him if she wasn't just a touch proud of him. She always did pick the very best of the species and wasn't wrong about the young boy...

For now, she'd have to be happy with scavenging like a common grunt. She'd gotten lucky and had ran across a depo of the Cons. Shadowing their movements was far easier than just outright attacking. It helped that they were apparently having trouble with a group of humans preying on them. Pathetic, really. But, the confusion was easy to use to her own advantage. So a few more vehicons disappeared while on patrol? Must be the ever illusive MECH at work.

But the last run in with a information hub ran by the Cons had been too risky. She was going to have to reanalyze how she got her hands on fuel and information. Unless something very fortunate had happened, Soundwave was still communications officer on the Nemesis and he'd eventually figure out she was eavesdropping on their network. Too much and he'd pin her down eventually. So, she decided to spring the trap before it had been set.

She knew where a vein of energon was but it was too deep for her resources and she didn't have the capabilities to refine the fuel for her own purposes. She was getting tired of siphoning off of the human's vehicles. And the fuel she'd pilfered from the depo hadn't last long at all. Carefully she had crept over the side of the mountain, long, spindly legs taking care to inspect the uneven terrain carefully. After assuring that the land would give with minimal prompting, she settled back from the edge and gave the ridge a few heavy shots with her blasters. It took some coaxing from gravity, but the side of the hill came crashing down into the small creek below, revealing a good chunk of the energon. Now to wait until someone showed, friend or foe.

...oh who was she kidding? They were all foe.

Settling in one of the larger trees in her spider mode, she rested her chin on her hand and sighed. This was the life she led. Lurking in trees like a ruffian. How...banal. Luckily she didn't have too much time to reflect on her life choices. (She made no mistakes, that she was sure.) Company came knocking in the form of...hm, not what she'd wanted. She had been expecting easily over powered vehicons. Not a brute. This forced her carefully planned ambush to a standstill. She'd just wait until he made the first move before acting.

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One would think a mech by himself, out on a scouting mission, would attempt some semblance of stealth. Would attempt to leave no traces behind them. After all, Cybertronians did that whole robot in disguise gig.

Skywarp strode unhurriedly and loudly through the forest. His heavy pedes left deep tracks in the ground behind him. If the big Seeker really wanted, he could be moving a lot quieter or leaving a far less obvious trail. From the many, many pranks he'd pulled in his long life, Skywarp had gradually picked up a few tricks and a bit of stealth. Unfortunately, the big mech had no motivation to put it to good use on missions, rather he utilized it solely for mischief. So onwards he trundled, following that faint energon signal on his sensors.

Progress however was slowly going. Skywarp's attention span was notoriously short and he wandered off course several times to investigate whatever bit of scenery caught his attention. An oddly shaped boulder. A sad stump of a tree. Another oddly shaped boulder. Then a regular boulder. A daffodil.

Another boulder.

Eventually though, he lifted his head as the sound of gently trickling water reached his audials. Skywarp emerged from the trees to a small creek and half the mountainside that had decided to come crashing down on it. A large heap of soil and rock covered the mouth of the stream and above it gleamed the glow of energon crystals, peaking out from the hillside.

Skywarp's lip plates pursed together as he peered at the mess through narrow optics. Technically, he was supposed to be reporting in, now that he had indeed confirmed that the signal indeed was energon. However, if he did that, then this little venture would already be over and he'd be ordered back to base and to boredom while a crew of Vehicons was sent to excavate the fuel.

Ha, no.

The big Seeker moved closer. His optics gleamed with sudden mischief. The hillside had to be unstable for the recent avalanche to have exposed the buried energon. Perhaps a few well placed shots could bring the rest of the ridge down. Skywarp wasn't unduly worried about getting crushed by a landslide, he could teleport himself out of danger should too much of the land come crumbling down. And it would probably create more work for whoever was sent out to dig up the energon.

Skywarp was never one to deny his destructive impulses.

A shot began to build inside his right cannon. He raised his arm and fired.

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This was the exact reason she didn't like working with Decepticons! They were messy and sloppy! Such a wasted shot! And for no reason that Airachnid could see. For a startling moment, she thought perhaps the mech was going to ignite the vein of raw energon but no, his primed shot slammed into the already weakened land, making the whole hillside shudder. With a hiss of discomfort, the noise easily drowned out by the groaning of the ground breaking way, Airachnid clung to her perch with her spindly legs and digged in the clawed tips for stability.

In front of her, the view of the valley opened up as the hillside gave way..again. The weaker, younger trees with less of a root structure were plucked from the earth as the ground sagged into the creek. Boulders were overturned and exposed, making the bones of the mountain easily visible. Luckily the tree she had picked was old, and had roots deep into the mountainside. The ground gave way around it and partway under it, but the stubborn tree that could hold a helicopters weight, could withstand another landslide. However, this left her cover exposed to the very mech she had wanted to stay hidden from.

Optics narrowing in irritation, she straightened up from her perch, bent legs tensing and readying to flee if she need be. This wasn't nearly what she'd wanted when she'd uncovered the energon.

"Rude..."

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There was something about raw destruction that Skywarp couldn't help but enjoy on a visceral level. One shot was enough to set off another landslide and he was immensely satisfied to watch the ground give way, bringing down a whole bunch of young trees.

And…

Huh.

He wasn't expecting that.

There was a helibot hidden in the trees. Or had been, the second landslide had blown the bot's cover. Skywarp rocked back on his heels for a moment, eying up the newcomer in open curiosity. He thought he was dealing with another Decepticon, which is why he didn't attempt to shot the helibot first thing. He didn't recognise the Con but then again, it wasn't like Skywarp had bothered to get to know each and every Decepticon aboard the Nemesis.

"Hello," he chirruped happily and unconcerned completely about the landslide he'd just caused that the helibot had been caught in. "Whatcha doing out here? Did they send you to come check out the signal too?"

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The chipper tone metaphorically threw Airachnid. It wasn't a fake tone, either. She was Queen of the saccharine. This mech, whoever he was, was actually happy and seemed to have not a care in the world. There wasn't a hint of irony in his words. And he was a Decepticon. What in the world was going on?

It took her a moment to get her mental barrings, no more than two seconds but surely longer than normal. She settled herself on the branch, spindly limbs spread out to hold her weight evenly in the tree lest she snap any weak points. If the random cascade of pine needles on her frame bothered her, she didn't seem to show it. She was giving the mech all of her attention.

"Yes, in a way. I'm more of a scout. I spend more time on my own. You startled me with that shot." All of which was...more or less the truth. She did spend a great deal of her time alone. And the shot had startled the heck out of her. One musn't tell a lie without some basis of the truth. That was how one got sloppy.

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Ooh, a scout. No one told Skywarp that they had a scout out here. Then again, they rarely bothered telling Skywarp anything at all.

But wow, what a strange looking helibot. Skywarp blinked at her a couple of times. Nope, she didn't get any less weirder the more he stared. Gosh, that was an excess of legs. Kinda reminded of…of…now what was that mech's name? The scaredy one that he could flatten? Flatline! Hey, even his name suggested that he was squashable.

"You have a lot of legs," Skywarp informed her frankly, just in case she hadn't noticed. "Kinda like this mech I ran into. Do you know him? He's called Flatline. He has an extra arm for some reason. I think there's supposed to be another one but he lost it. I think you should be friends in the Extra Limbs Club."

None of this was said with a trace of irony or humour.




OOC: Why yes, Skywarp ships Flatline with Airachnid and I live in disappointment that this will not be a thing since Airachnid's being dropped. Personally, I can understand her leaving this thread abruptly. This is not a convo anyone should ever have with Skywarp XD

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((I know I said I was going to write her out of this thread but for the life of me, I can't think of a way to do it gracefully. So, I'm just going to put on the stop here and release this character into the wild blue yonder. XD ))