===
After the Ark-32 incident, Tony Stark simply vanished. Prowl sent agents to monitor his Malibu residence and his other known properties, as well as the homes of other Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s offices, but after several cycles there was still no sign of him. Knowing that death by vacuum could not be ruled out, Prowl asked the orbital to do a sweep for quasi- and superatmospheric debris and biomatter, but found no relevant traces of either.This meant, most likely, that Stark was with the Decepticons, but the latter denied this. And they were in contact with Prowl's detachment quite frequently now, as Autobot brass tried desperately to steer the situation away from catastrophe and the Ark-19 crew found themselves at the centre of a mounting political slagstorm. The cybercat and glitchmouse game that the two factions had played since the start of Megatron's imperial ambitions was now escalating in such a way that open confrontation seemed inevitable. And every Autobot cadet knew that the reason they didn't fight a hot war with the Decepticons was that they wouldn't win it.
After five cycles of answering constant communications and filing reports, Prowl, finding he had a bit of a gap in his schedule, called Wheeljack in for a meeting. The moment Wheeljack passed through the doorway, Prowl gestured for him to sit down.
"Let's review," the Major said as he complied. He put aside his datapad.
Wheeljack, fully aware that the door had locked behind him, let his optics drift momentarily to the 'bot standing silently in the corner of the room. Ratchet kept his arms folded under his chestplate and didn't acknowledge him.
"Stark is now a known enemy agent," Prowl said to start them off, drawing Wheeljack's attention back across his desk. "From what we've gathered through reports and your and Ratchet's intel, he was involved if not instrumental in the early planning stages of the Machination, including funding of some of their troop activities and acquisitions in exchange for advanced access to their research. He was probably not directly involved in Sunstreaker's kidnapping, but from your visual logs we've confirmed he at least reaped some of the early benefits of his capture. His cover-up attempt through show of force only further implicates him, as far as command is concerned."
Wheeljack nodded silently. Nothing to add there.
"We also now know, as a result of your activities, that Tony Stark has been in communication with the Decepticons for at least a period of five decacycles. We have been unable to determine the content or value of the information he sold, but Nightbeat suggests it most likely pertained to Autobot development secrets. His accessible financial and inventory records have yielded nothing indicative of how he was compensated."
"I know what he got."
Prowl met his gaze, surprised, or at least not expecting to be interrupted. "Do enlighten me," he said.
"Well, call it more of a hunch," Wheeljack mumbled. He shifted in his chair. "I think he got what he stole. Information. He took something of theirs."
"The Decepticons would never sell their technology to a human. Especially not Stark. They knew sooner than we did what sort of danger he posed."
"So maybe they didn't sell it. The point is he went back to that base multiple times. If he found out our secrets that way, why not theirs?"
Prowl examined him closely. Finally, he said, "It's a well-reasoned speculation, but we have no proof of that. Anyway, it's now Nightbeat's case, not yours."
Wheeljack fought the urge to contest this. When all else was said and done, he still thought he knew Stark better than the rest of the Earth detachment. If they weren't even going to listen to his input, how the hell was anything going to improve?
But Prowl was moving on.
"And now we turn to you," he segued calmly. "I've received word back from your superiors in the science division. They are not aware of any research commission involving Tony Stark, or the use of holomatter to engage in recreational behaviours with Earth creatures. They said their administrative board would not approve such a thing even if it was proposed. A look at your lab notes," he went on, peering again at the datapad to check his place, "indicates that these activities of yours, which enlisted Medical Officer Ratchet without his full knowledge of the ramifications of his actions, were targeted specifically toward Stark and a female I understand is associated with him. I might not know very much about the scientific method, Wheeljack, but that doesn't sound like a control experiment to me."
Wheeljack fixed his gaze on a spot on Prowl's desk. He better keep his reactions in check now, because Prowl hadn't even begun to lay into him.
Prowl put it to him straight: "You knew well in advance of our communication that Stark was likely involved in the Machination, and lied about the project's status in order to mislead me in my duty and encourage a fellow officer toward continued unauthorised behaviour. You installed a ghost programme on Ratchet's default avatar without his knowledge or consent, in order to fabricate a holomatter facsimile of Stark for the specific purpose of unmonitored infiltration and illegal behaviour, resulting in the unnecessary death of a human civilian."
Wheeljack snapped his head up furiously. "She got better!"
"Ratchet managed to revive her, yes," Prowl said, without a change in his tone. "That was your one save in that entire incident, when you extracted Ratchet from the mission you set him on in order to cover for your own mistake."
If Wheeljack engaged him now, it'd be playing right into Prowl's hands. The Major was just looking for an excuse to amplify the punishment. Wheeljack resisted. He sat back in his chair, clenching and unclenching his hands, and exhaled slowly, trying to draw off the heat his overworked processors were generating.
He felt Ratchet's optics on him as Prowl continued.
"Worst of all," Prowl said, "this incident has become the humiliation of the Earth front and our entire division. You exposed us as fools not only to the human elite but to Megatron himself. This, combined with your gross failures in judgement, your refusal to follow standard operating procedure, your exploitation of your position, the manipulation of your crewmates, and your lack of remorse, leave me with no choice but to place you under military arrest and recommend you for immediate discharge."
For a moment, Wheeljack remained quiet, almost motionless. Then, he said, "We got a hot front on our hands, and you wanna get fewer mechs on the ground than what we already have?"
"Troop movements are out of my hands," said Prowl impassively. "But frankly, Wheeljack, we could find ourselves needing every available trooper in the galaxy and I still wouldn't want you on my crew."
"Even," Wheeljack persisted, "if it turns out Stark is our biggest problem?"
"I should think especially in that case." Prowl reached the end of the file on his datapad and stamped it with his electronic signature. "As of now you are relieved of your station. You will relinquish your arsenal and projection systems and be placed in the brig until we can arrange for your transport. Ratchet?"
===
After doing his duty without comment, Ratchet returned to the brig in the lattercycle to bring Wheeljack some fuel. Prowl hadn't specified that the inventor be placed in stasis-lock, so Ratchet took that to mean Wheeljack could continue normal operational status for the time being. Though there wasn't much to look at besides the walls.In preference to that, Wheeljack was staring at his lap when Ratchet entered. The medic set his canister down by his feet and remained silent.
Wheeljack pressed a hand to the side of his head. "He beat me," he said, so quietly Ratchet only barely caught it. "Beat me inside my own head."
"It couldn't be helped," Ratchet insisted.
"Yes it could."
Ratchet sighed. "'Jack," he said. "I helped Stark gain access to your systems. I gave him your third-tier permissions."
Wheeljack fell silent. He lowered his hand.
"None of us knew the harm we were doing," Ratchet continued. "Like you, I guess I underestimated him."
Still nothing. Ratchet glanced up at the camera in the corner of the cell and decided Jazz would be fine turning a blind eye for a few millicycles. The medic shut the cell door and knelt down next to his companion.
Ratchet placed his hand delicately on Wheeljack's shoulder. Then, carefully, he stroked his palm down along the ridge of his arm.
Wheeljack twitched and threw his hand off, standing.
"Don't! Just-- for Primus's sake!" Wheeljack shouted at him. "You're contaminated!"
He paced to the other end of the cell. Ratchet got to his feet again, but stood in place.
Ratchet had never seen his mate act like this. This went a lot deeper than wounded professional pride, even deeper than the verbal lashing that Prowl had dealt him. And it was going to tear him to pieces if he kept letting it affect him this way.
Ratchet had to get him to understand, even if it meant words he wasn't used to using.
"The time I spent in contact with Stark," he said slowly, so that he could be sure to keep his voice steady, "reaffirmed for me where I belonged. It's with you."
Wheeljack stopped in the midst of pacing. He shifted on his treads, facing the wall, unwilling to look around.
"Suppose..." he said. He stopped. He paced another step or two. "Suppose I don't feel the same way."
Ratchet understood. There was a strange burning sensation in the cabling around his power components. "That human female."
"Keep Pepper out of this," Wheeljack warned, finally turning to face him. "This isn't about her."
"Is that so? Do you think I'm stupid?" Ratchet demanded. The burning feeling was rising up through his main adrenal ducts. "You cajoled me into taking up Stark's proposal. You told me to do it for Sunstreaker. She had nothing to offer you, and yet you did it anyway!"
"She hasn't thrown me under a monorail yet. I'd say that puts her one over you."
The medic straightened. "I only--"
"You told Prowl I coerced you into that second visit," Wheeljack said, cutting him off. "You told him you had no idea what I was getting you into. You're just as guilty in this slag of a situation as I am, but you rolled on me, so Prowl let you off!"
Ratchet glanced quickly toward the surveillance camera. He immediately regretted it.
"What," said Wheeljack, amused. "You wondering if they're gettin' sound off of this?"
Wheeljack suddenly darted toward him. Ratchet instinctively backed away, to the adjacent wall. Wheeljack approached him again, laughing. This time, when Ratchet moved toward the door, Wheeljack swiped forward with a hand, tore open a key piece of panelling along the medic's backstruts, and plucked a fat cable straight out of its socket.
Ratchet's right leg folded beneath him, navigation lost. He went down. Wheeljack hooked him by the shoulders and hauled him against a wall. He pried open another panel and tore out two more wires. Ratchet's arms stopped moving.
He could barely stand. His hydraulics in his one functional leg trembled with the strain. If not for Wheeljack pinning him facing the wall, he would drop straight down again. The exposed wires sparked and burned.
"--Wheeljack--" Ratchet gasped desperately. Someone had to come in. Someone had to be seeing this. Why wasn't anyone stepping in? He looked up and found Wheeljack had backed him into the corner right in the camera's blind spot.
Ratchet heard Wheeljack pushing open part of his chest plating one-handed. "D'you know what it's like to be helpless inside your own body?" Wheeljack growled near his audio receptor. There was a soft snap, as he tore open a livewire of his own. "It's not fun."
The medic shuddered, topical sensors reading the heat off it as Wheeljack leaned more of his weight against him.
"You don't really want to do this," Ratchet said, trying, vainly, to reason with him. For all the crazy and stupid things they had done together, they had never once hotwired. It wasn't what coupling was about. It was pure pain.
Wheeljack's fingers located one of Ratchet's exposed wires and peeled back the casing. His thumb brushed the frayed conductors and registered brief, uncomfortable little jolts, almost ticklish, but too sharp. Wheeljack drew his own wire up and touched Ratchet's with his own current.
Ratchet barely managed not to cry out. The burning sensation radiated around the area of the panel and down his right side; lingering even after Wheeljack broke the circuit. He slumped further against the wall, his one working leg failing to support him. Wheeljack grabbed a sheet of his back kibble and pulled him back upright, then shocked him again.
Clenching the gears in his jaw, Ratchet told himself he could endure this. More importantly, he had to. In a way, he had wanted this. Why should he complain about getting what he'd wanted?
It was his fault that everything had turned out this way. His own damn fault.
Wheeljack's livewire connected with his for only a refresh at first, but then for progressively longer, burning every node and sensor the wire was networked with. The pain doubled with each contact; secondary boards started to smoulder and emit garbage data; warning systems released compensatory endorphinergic fluid into near capillaries, but it was quickly burned away. It steamed and condensed in the higher regions of the cabling, trickling out the edges of Ratchet's optics.
He tried to move, to grasp the wall with a hand, anything-- nothing worked. There was nothing except the spreading, numbing pain, and Wheeljack's chest digging into his back.
Out of the blue, Ratchet received a ping from Bumblebee. The minibot spoke through Ratchet's main comm link, into the open air: "Hey, Doc, Jazz needs you on the bridge."
Wheeljack's fingers paused, then withdrew.
"Sounds like you've got business," Wheeljack told him softly. "Don't let me keep you."
He pushed off him; Ratchet's body immediately fell to the floor, slumped against the edge of the wall. Wheeljack reached down and started shoving the medic's broken wires back into his casing, twisting the exposed conductors back together without much regard to safety. An unsteady jolt coursed through Ratchet's damaged leg linkages as the connection re-established. His hands, shaking, grappled for purchase along the wall as he pulled himself to his feet.
Ratchet exited without a word and left the canister. Wheeljack, having moved to the far corner, didn't look up to watch him go.
===
Ratchet tried to reach back and smooth down the panelling with his fingers as he made his way to the bridge. He wiped the fluid leakage off his cheek plating. The limp he was just going to have to do his best to hide, until he could find the time to repair himself.The damaged wires jittered and shorted as he walked, bringing little bursts of pain. He tried his best not to wince as he passed through the doors onto the bridge. Jazz greeted him and called him over to the observation monitors.
"Yo, you all right?" Jazz asked, noticing Ratchet's walk.
"Fine," Ratchet struggled out, keeping his head down.
Jazz seemed hesitant to let it go. He had been here on observation duty the whole time-- had he seen anything, even enough to guess at the rest? Was he going to say anything? Ratchet had every intention to tell him to keep the hell out of it, but even doing that much opened it for discussion more than he wanted.
After a long beat, Jazz appeared to drop it. He turned their attention to the lake shore monitors.
"This just showed up," he said, pointing. "Dropped off by human transport. Practically dumped on our doorstep, don't'cha think?"
Ratchet looked at it.
The corner of his mouth twitched. "I'll go get--" he began.
"I'll get Prowl," Jazz said, cutting him off. He turned from the monitors toward the far corridor. "You just hang tight."
Ratchet fell silent, unsure whether to be grateful or not.
Jazz left and returned with the Major, apparently having pulled him out of a teleconference with Prime and some other officers in order to attend to this. He showed Prowl the monitors and waited for his reaction.
"...Surveillance?" Prowl asked finally, scrutinising the image.
"Negative for all scanners that ain't ours," Jazz answered. "Actually, seems they went an' packed up their old cameras 'bout two decacycles ago. Guess we ain't a high priority of theirs no more."
Prowl studied the lake shore feeds for a few refreshes more and then said, "Let's go collect him."
"Right," Jazz said immediately, "I'll go assemble--"
"No, Captain, you stay here," Prowl instructed. "Ratchet and I will go topside."
"But the CO should--"
"I'm going," Prowl said, in such a way that both Jazz and Ratchet knew there could be no argument.
===
An uncomfortable silence crept in as Ratchet and Prowl waited in the airlock.They had not addressed Ratchet's visit to the brig, so presumably Jazz had not mentioned it to the Major on their walk over. Ratchet tried to calm himself down with this line of reasoning, but didn't make much progress. He felt another sting from the twisted wires and shifted; the errant arcs were gnawing at adjacent cabling, sending a sick feeling down his entire side. Ratchet quietly smoothed his panelling down again and stared at the floor plating.
A few moments later, he heard Prowl move and looked up to see his superior holding out a datadisk to him, still facing the far doors.
"The forms for a contract dissolution," Prowl explained rigidly. "Given the decision I handed down this morning..."
Ratchet accepted the drive awkwardly. He turned it over in his hand like it was some unknown device, an artefact from a dead civilisation.
"I never thought I'd be telling you this, but you did the right thing," Prowl continued. He spoke without particular inflection. "I'd like it if you would do this for yourself. It'll cause you fewer problems later on."
The medic stared at the little datadisk. It presented a neat, surgical end to gigacycles of growth, but was that really the solution?
Ratchet murmured quietly, "I'd like for Wheeljack and I to handle this on our o--"
"I need to sign off on it," Prowl said firmly. "And I need an answer soon, before his inquiry starts. You let it lie and the problem's only going to rust--"
The doors behind them finished sealing and Jazz's voice clicked on the overhead intercom: "Hull is secure, Major."
Ratchet put the disk away in a side compartment for safe keeping. Prowl tapped his comm button. "Open outer doors."
===
There was still a little sunlight outside when they surfaced, so Prowl had Ratchet scan for human biosigns in the surrounding area. When the scan came back clean, they slowly trudged their way up to the shore.If Ratchet hadn't seen it with his own optics, he'd never have believed the monitors. Somehow, in the course of Sunstreaker's absence, Ratchet had begun misremembering him as taller and bulkier. And online.
Prowl helped turn Sunstreaker's body onto his side so Ratchet's scanners could get a better look. A massive wave of relief passed over when his reader confirmed the young Autobot's central power components were still ticking regularly, including his spark. He was functioning, if barely. In addition to severe energy depletion, some of his parts had been soldered together in the wrong places; other components were simply too damaged to be recognisable. But he was alive.
Ratchet saw Prowl grip Sunstreaker's casing as though he needed tactile confirmation that he was real. The kid was the only member of their Earth detachment who had matched Ratchet in his ability to incite the Major's ire; the two had fought so frequently that you could easily believe that they had thrived on each other's antagonism. Certainly, the fire in Prowl's eyes had seemed to dim once it became more and more likely that they were never going to see the real Sunstreaker again.
Prowl moved a hand over Sunstreaker's vacant, broken face. "Let's move him," he said quietly. "Or... is it safe to?"
"I doubt whatever humans dropped him off paid too much attention to his comfort," said Ratchet. He got up from his crouch. "He's free of contagions. Here; we'll walk him back..."
Prowl got up and hooked his arms under Sunstreaker's shoulders as Ratchet grabbed the body at the knees. They lifted gently, mindful of the loose welding that had been done on so many of his parts.
Before they even got Sunstreaker clear of the ground, Ratchet's peripheral vision picked up movement behind some near brush. Ratchet released one of Sunstreaker's legs and unfolded his forearm pistol in the direction of the movement.
Prowl, even quicker to the draw, kept his aim steady and clicked his visual feed over to infrared.
"I see him," he muttered. "Don't know how he slipped past your scanners. Lower than average temperature output... You! Come out or we'll fire!" he shouted in the direction of the treeline.
A shape stumbled into view under the fading sunlight. For a moment, Ratchet thought it was a Transformer-- a very small one. But its face was covered in skin and a shock of orange hair. It shambled more than walked, and seemed only distantly aware of anyone else's presence.
Ratchet's ID registries suddenly came back with a positive. He couldn't believe he hadn't recognised the human sooner.
It was Hunter. Or what was left of him.
===
The place was barely a cabin, and even that was stretching it. It was an ancient shack perched on a hill in the Tehachapi Mountains, and probably had a bomb shelter beneath it running down for miles, but She-Hulk couldn't puzzle out the trick to get inside.This was the last of Stark's properties that she felt she had the energy to check, so she decided she was sick of playing games. She left Stark a message where she knew he'd find it and went to go wait.
After a few hours, she got bored and looked in the fridge. To She-Hulk's chagrin, it was empty and shut off. Electricity didn't seem to be running to this place at all. Nor water-- eventually, she went down the side of the hill to visit the well.
The well had one of those pump-pulley systems for which raw strength meant nothing and it all boiled down to diligence and a lot of patience. She-Hulk pumped for a good two or three minutes before the pail appeared, full to the brim with fresh groundwater. She took the pail off its latch and carried it up to the house to brew some coffee. She was sure she saw an old wood stove in the corner, so at the very least she could heat something.
When she got back to the cabin, Tony Stark was standing in the kitchen, as surprised as she had been that the taps didn't work.
"You," She-Hulk said, setting down the pail and wiping her hand, "are a hard man to schedule a meeting with."
"Well, you left me that nice letter on the wall of my Swiss vault. I thought I could at least pay a little visit," said Stark. He shook the dust off of a dish cloth and used it to more-or-less clean out the coffee pot he found in the back of the cupboard. The coffee grounds he located in the next cupboard looked even less trustworthy, but it wasn't like it was going to kill her. Him, she was more worried about. He looked languid and there was something unnatural about his skin.
She-Hulk left him to the work of setting up the stove. She wasn't opposed to helping him, but that wasn't the kind of help she had driven all the way out here to offer. She returned to his dinette table and snapped open her briefcase.
"I won't keep you," she told him, sitting down with the files she had brought. "I just want you to be aware of your legal options, in light of our current situation."
Stark set a fire going with some scraps of firewood and the last of a box of matches. He closed the stove's gate and rose to see that the flue was open. "'Legal options'?" he repeated. "They can't charge me. I'm not even a member of their species. Kill me or put a price on my head, okay. But I hate to think you're just inventing ways to feel useful, Jennifer."
She-Hulk smiled brittlely. "Actually, they can, Tony. The Cybertronians are part of this thing called the Code of Interplanetary Conflict, sort of a galactic Interpol except, I would guess, more proactive. One of their mandates is that members of undeveloped species who are aberrantly advanced can be considered subject to the Code in the event they do injury to the galactic community. Basically, they're saying you should have known better, so you'll get tried as an adult."
"So I'm officially a big kid now?"
"The Autobots' resolution is still tied up in committee. The Decepticons have recommended you remain classified as a lower life form." She wondered if Stark considered that being vouched for or insulted. She hoped he could swallow his pride enough to follow on the first interpretation. But it was a dim hope. She-Hulk went on: "Unfortunately, the Autobots have another tactic they might employ in order to manoeuvre around the issue: if they argue the Avengers constitute a collective intelligence, they could implicate us as a group, or implicate you specifically as a tumour maligning the rest of the organism."
"...So I'm not a big kid."
She tapped the papers irritatedly with the base of her pen. "Tony, this is important. The Autobots have already dissolved their alliance with the Avengers; now Cap wants us to publicly disavow any connection with you, in order to protect the rest of our members. We'll still support you in private, of course," she added; "and if you do come under fire, I'm happy to defend you..."
Stark set the coffee going on top of the stove and joined her by the table, though he didn't sit down. He leaned against the table's edge and rubbed at the soot on his fingertips.
Odd: in all the time She-Hulk had known him, she had been under the impression that Tony Stark couldn't even get his hair combed into place without Pepper there to care for him. Now, not only was Pepper still in a S.H.I.E.L.D.-monitored hospital, but Stark had apparently spent the last five days on the run from everywhere. Yet somehow he looked as groomed and pampered as he always did. His suit wasn't even grubby.
"...Better start preparing your casefile, then," he said at length, without looking at her. The tone was so neutral it practically screamed neediness. Was he in worse trouble than she even realised?
"I've been on it since Cap called me with the details on the treaty dissolution. It's been rough putting together a good picture just based on the Autobots' assertions-- I'd've liked to have you around to clarify some things."
"Whatever they say is probably more flattering than what I actually did."
"I don't want to hear that," she lectured, pointing a green finger at him. "I didn't hear that. We'll get to the bottom of this, but I don't want to play any dirtier than I have to. At this point, it's not even a question of whether you did harm. The only things that matter to me are 'to whom' and 'for what purpose'. Were you serving humanity's best interest, Tony?"
"Yes," he said quietly. "At least, I wanna believe I am."
She made a small mark in her notes. That was all she had to ask out of him right then. The rest would come out eventually. By hook or by crook.
"There's a silver lining to all this," she told him. "I've looked into the Code's legal resources, now that they've been made available to us. The Autobots were actually in violation of the Code to show you Cybertronian technology in the first place, even before the gag order. That's going to make it a lot harder to convict you on a straight charge of theft."
"Oh, they've got others to throw at me," Stark said proudly. "Some I kinda wish they would find me guilty of, just so I can prove I did it."
"Tony," she warned him again.
He glanced down and looked her directly in the eye for the first time. His eyes had an unfamiliar, sort of haunting quality to them now.
"Whatever happened to us, Jennifer?" he asked suddenly. "We used to be a lot closer than this."
"Yes," She-Hulk answered stringently. "You were on your back and I was telling you I'd snap your spine like a toothpick if you came too quickly."
Not even a hint of a blush. God, this man was something else.
A sharp, wet hiss over by the stove told Stark that his coffee project was getting neglected. He stood upright and grinned inappropriately, saying, "That was what made it so fun, don't you think?" He went to go take the pot off.
She scowled at his retreating back. "You've got a nasty habit of getting in bed with things that can crush you," she told him. "Someday something's going to succeed."
Stark chuckled. No getting through to him there.
"Pepper is going to be released soon," She-Hulk said, moving along. "I'm sure she has a support network of her own, but I'd rather she was kept under our supervision. Our reports indicate that she... That her objectivity is compromised."
This garnered a glance over his shoulder. "You just got done impugning my manhood, and now you're skirting around Pepper getting horizontal with a giant alien robot?"
"Fairer sex, Tony," She-Hulk reminded.
"I really believe that, out of you."
She-Hulk sat back, arms folded, as Stark brought the coffee pot over and fetched some dirty ceramic mugs from the cupboard. "And here I was, thinking you might just like to know how she was doing," she said. "Or possibly even that you'd want to go see her."
Stark paused in the midst of washing the cups out in the left-over well water. "I can't..." he began, and then sighed. He shook the mugs dry and placed them on the table.
"I can't deal with it right now," he told She-Hulk firmly. "Just keep her insulated so she doesn't know what's going on."
Oh, Tony, She-Hulk thought, smiling sadly. And you wonder why you and I never worked out.
He poured her coffee and slid the mug to her. The thick smoke-like steam coming from the surface kept her from drinking it just yet. Tony didn't touch his either. "Is there anything else?" he added.
She-Hulk paged through her folder. "Deconstruction of the Machination project is nearing completion," she noted. "S.H.I.E.L.D. is offering reintegration services for the pilots who are finding their current condition is irreversible. Do you swear you had nothing to do with the Headmaster initiative?"
"What about the pilots?" Stark asked, puzzled.
She watched him closely, and then made another small scribble in her notes. "In this case, ignorance is bliss, Tony. If you don't know, I--"
"No," he said, suddenly insistent. "Tell me."
===
The repairs the humans had performed on Sunstreaker were more hatchet work and superglue than anything else. Ratchet needed to cut him apart again before the CR Chamber could do anything for him. They laid him out in the medical bay and sealed the door.Ratchet knew he had to fix his own wiring problems first, or he wouldn't be able to concentrate properly. He navigated one of his helper arms to get the panels open and solder the conductors back in their proper order. While he was doing this, Bumblebee pinged him.
"Hey, Ratch," he said awkwardly, "what're we supposed to do with Hunter?"
"Is he ambulatory?"
"Not really. He keeps trying to find a corner and go to sleep."
It was clear to Ratchet that Hunter needed medical attention from someone who actually knew human physiology. And, ideally, someone who knew human machinery as well. But the one name which leapt to mind was not really an option at the moment.
"Let him sleep for now. I'll look at him soon."
"Gotcha."
The helper arms finished their work on Ratchet's backstruts, so he rolled his chair over to the examination table to get started on Sunstreaker. He selected a low cutter beam from among his tool tray and had the lamp readjust itself over the area of the first incision.
Ratchet's blade hesitated above Sunstreaker's left leg. He glanced up at the mech's blank, neutral face-- what was left of it. Fortunately, he was already stasis-locked, so there was no worry about him feeling any pain.
If the medic thought back on it, Sunstreaker had been the goal from the first place. So why did this all feel so empty?
"You better get right back to causing Prowl trouble when you wake up," he told the slumbering young mech. "Or I'm going to wonder what we did this all for."
Except our own selfish curiosity, he amended mentally.
He switched on the cutter beam and lowered it to the line of the humans' poor soldering job. The blade went in cleanly, a little curl of smoke rising from around the edge as he tracked along the length of the seam.
Abruptly, Ratchet received another, more frantic ping.
"Ratchet, you gotta get out here!" Bumblebee shouted. In the background, he could hear something like an animal wailing.
Ratchet withdrew the blade before reaching the end of the panel. "Why?" he answered. "What happened?"
"Hunter just suddenly started screaming! He was quiet and then he was all howling and rolling around on the ground! I think he's in pain!"
The medic tilted his head. He looked from the blade to the incision in Sunstreaker's leg.
This suddenly seemed a lot darker than anyone on the base had yet considered.
===
"They signed away on it," She-Hulk insisted. "They gave informed consent, every single one of them... except for this one."She pulled out what notes she had been able to club together on the anomalous case of the boy who had originally been brought in with the research subject. She handed some of these documents to Stark. "He apparently was critically injured in the crash that acquired Sunstreaker-- lost three of his limbs, most of his vital organs. It turned out to be an inspiration for their prosthetics department."
Stark studied the medical reports and diagrams she had given him. He said nothing.
"Makes you feel fortunate, doesn't it?" she added, to break the silence.
"I've always known I was lucky," Stark answered quietly, still staring.
The documents included photos-- before and after. Beautifully macabre, but mostly just terrifying. It made you wonder how the boy survived, until you heard that he actually hadn't. Not really.
"He runs on an artificial engine. After-market Stark tech, actually. And his brain has been partially cyberised. He's more machine than human now."
"They're all like this?"
"The other Headmasters consented," She-Hulk said. "We don't have to worry about them. They knew going in what the trade-off would be. This one, we could say that it was a life-saving procedure, but there's no arguing it was sadistic."
"Isn't it always," Stark mused abstractly.
She-Hulk peered at him. She would never presume to know Stark well, even having shared a bed with him; she knew very little of his past, particularly what had gone on in Afghanistan. The S.H.I.E.L.D. notes on the incident were less illuminating than one might imagine. But she knew something had traumatised him, and the haunted look he had had in those media images then was the same expression he wore now.
"You had nothing to do with this," she reminded him. "You withdrew as a financier a full two weeks before the research logs say they began work on the Headmaster template."
"My machines, Jennifer. Again."
"Your machines saved his life. It's just not the same life he had before. Sound familiar?"
"Where is he now?" Stark asked quickly.
She-Hulk shook her head. "I wouldn't advise meeting him."
"I need to."
"Tony, the less contact you have with this boy, the better. Plus, we have good reason to believe he was in the shipment the Tampa facility sent to Michigan. He's most likely in Autobot custody right now."
Stark pressed the documents between his fingers, like he was prepared to run off with them. Then his hand relaxed and he passed the papers back to She-Hulk. She returned them to her folder, satisfied she'd appealed to his sense of self-preservation, if nothing else.
She tried her coffee. It was still hot enough to mask most of its other horrible qualities and that, at least, did wonders for breaking the tension.
Stark leaned off the table and paced about the kitchen. "Anything else?"
"That's all," she said casually. "For now. Want to tell me the secret of getting in touch with you without vandalising a bank vault?"
"It's just gonna be a few more days," he said obliquely. "I think I figured it out last night."
"Figured what?"
"How to make a grand entrance into galactic politics."
She probably wasn't going to get many more details than that. "You'll get in touch with me if you need help, right? Before you go off and do something stupid?"
"That's Pepper's line," he muttered, and then looked surprised at himself.
How sweet it was when a crack of light shown through. Maybe he was going to be okay after all. She-Hulk grinned and took another sip of her godawful coffee.
In the same instant she did this, Stark popped clear out of existence. She-Hulk, startled, choked on and spit out a full mouth of coffee, neatly ruining her best Thursday tie.
She coughed and wiped her mouth. "God, Tony!" she shouted at the air. "You could at least warn people!"
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