Chapter Three
Unfortunately for Wheeljack, he ran into the five returning SPARTANs before 196 could catch up with him. The inventor gaped at them behind his battlemask again as he finally noticed a few key differences between these unusual bots and normal Cybertronians, now that he had finally stopped watching everywhere else and got a good look at their unique protoframes. Intellectually trying to match their protoforms and projected base systems with the power draw and gross weight approximations he knew from his intermittent work with Ratchet, the inventor finally got around to speculating about just what these bots were built for.
127 waved at him when she trailed after 113 into his view. "Sup, mech? The cargo ramp is now down, so you don't have to take that rip in the ship to get out." She came to a halt next to him as he just raised a hand to his optics, vocalizer fins that had just faded to a pale pink flashed again. "Seriously, are you okay? We don't have a medic, but you've been acting kinda odd for a... well, just odd."
Wheeljack tried counting backwards from ten to keep himself from embarrassingly panicking again. "You do... uh, realize you're all naked, right? I mean... all of your parts and wires are showing."
127 tried to compute an appropriate response for that as she waved to an armed 196 and a still-unarmed Yuri, who were trotting up behind the other mech. "We get that, really. It's just that, well... we don't have any replacements for our armor, so it's not a big issue at the moment. Can't fix it, so," she shrugged as he stared in complete disbelief, "no worries."
"Oh, right." The inventor dropped his hand and kept his optics firmly on the amused orange ones looking back at him. "I volunteered to... um, help you all out with that."
Lip plates twitching, the saboteur nodded at him while 196 started striking modeling poses behind the green and white mech until Yuri slapped him upside the helm. "How are you going to do that?" Before he could answer, the Covert Ops infiltrator made the hand sign for designation and then pointed to the mech. "And, um, what's your name?"
"Oh, right, I'm Wheeljack. It's... err, nice to meet you." Dearly wishing the awkwardness for the orn was over with, he got the rest out in a rush. "I'm gonna collect armor plate panels from this place that I know of in Kalis. Then... uh, do you all even have a workshop? I will need some tools, and... and, oh frag. I'm going to need your frames' blueprints."
127 rocked back on her heel stabilizers as she made some quick inquiries over the comm lines before answering the mech. "In reverse order; sure, if we can find them, okay, yes, and neat. I'm known as one-two-seven and your temporary bodyguards standing behind you is gamma-one-nine-six, which is the mech, and the femme is Yuri. You can refer to gamma-one-nine-six as one-nine-six."
Wheeljack blinked incredulously at her as she smiled back, then twisted around and got an optic full of bare chassis of the mech standing behind him, who straight up laughed at his squeak of surprise, which was followed by the femme partner's bell-like laughter. "Are we leaving yet?"
"Yes!" Wheeljack all but shouted at them as he ran past the vastly amused saboteur. "Bye, one-two-seven!"
With a snort of hilarity, 127 slapped 196 and Yuri on the back as they passed her to follow the runaway mech.
Wheeljack had made it to the edge of the UNSC ATHENS' shields by the time 196 caught up, not that he was trying hard. Yuri had gotten impatient and used her incredibly strong legs to catch up to Wheeljack, who nearly fritzed at how fast she had moved. The infiltrator had presumed he needed some time to calm down. "You done fritzing every time you turn around yet?"
"Yes," he whistled out in good humor as his systems slowly cycled his intakes. The inventor slanted his helm back to look into the strange orange optics that this mech also had. "Can I ask you a question?" He had a number of them, and if they were assigning a pair of bodyguards to him just for offering to help, the mechs and femmes couldn't be bad Decepticons, if they even were in the first place, though Yuri had a strange air of alienation around her that worried him.
Hefting his M90A shotgun a bit higher as he commed 341 to deactivate a part of the shields for them, the infiltrater shrugged at him. "Sure, but I reserve the right not to answer."
"Fair enough, I suppose." Whatever else Wheeljack was going to say was lost as a part of the shield started to peel back, far enough that the two mechs and one femme could walk out without stooping. "How does that work?"
196 let out a bark of surprised laughter. "Not a clue. As long as it works right, I don't really care." At Wheeljack's wide-opticed look, he shrugged at him again. "You would be better off asking zero-three-nine or one-nine-three later."
"That was another thing I wanted to ask about." The inventor picked his way across an expanse of a rock littered valley to the battered service road he had taken to get into the canyon.
"What thing?" asked Yuri, who had stayed silent until then.
Keeping his optics on the ground to prevent another accidental view of 196's parts, Wheeljack tried to listen to the mech's systems to get a sense of where he was. "Err, three things now."
"Still waiting mech."
The mech sounded like he was just behind him, and the inventor risked a quick peek to locate 196's pedes before spewing out his questions before he lost the nerve to ask them. "You move totally silently, why don't you all have armor, and is your designation really one-nine-six?"
The infiltrator snorted at him as they both made the last few feet to the pitted road. "Jumping in the deep end, aren't we?" Before Wheeljack could inquire about the strange turn of phrase, 196 continued, "Yes, my roster number is one-nine-six, not too sure about the missing armor thing ourselves, and I'm a stealth unit."
As they started up the incline to get to the main highway, the slighter mech was silent as he thought about that, and the SPARTAN and foundling silently counted to five.
"Roster number?"
"He made some request that I took the liberty to pass on to a few others, sir, ma'am." 127 flicked a salute to 046 and 341 as the saboteur jointed the two still on the command deck of the ATHENS.
The tactician snorted as she reviewed a few files Refit had recorded before whatever happened to shove her into 076's frame transpired. "really now. Was it all in one sentence, or did our mystery mech happen to calm down enough to speak coherently?"
"Said his name was Wheeljack, and he was pretty calm until the end." The saboteur grinned at the not-amused glare that earned her from the other femme, before turning to the CO. "He requested some workspace and tools, but what I don't know how to get is our 'frames' blueprints."
046 grimaced as he thought about where any copy of MJOLNIR armor system blueprints were likely to be, and sourly speculated on the validity of such specs for them now. "That may be more than just a bit difficult." Figuring it wouldn't kill anything to ask, the massive mech looked around for 039.
The close-quarters combat specialist had been arguing something with 193, but caught the CO's look and trotted over immediately. "Sir?"
"Wheeljack, the name of our lone snoop, has volunteered to assist us with our armor issue." When 046 raised an optic ridge, 039 nodded to show his comprehension. "He has asked for a few things to assist him, but he has also asked for our blueprints."
039 blinked yellow optics at them blankly before realizing the real issue at hand. With a groan, the mech looked at the officers and saboteur with a bitter expression. "That might take a bit of doing. But, I'm not even sure the blueprints would help, sir." The larger mech nodded in understanding and gestured for the closest thing the SPARTANs had to an engineer to elaborate. "As I'm sure you noticed, we're not really MJOLNIR armor systems. Oh, I'm sure it would help in identifying the reworked systems, but there appears to be nothing organic about us and the armor was designed to protect and fit around human forms, so just by that, the original layouts won't be of any help."
"Hook up with zero-seven-zero and see what you two can figure out," The CO sighed as he rubbed the side of his helm at the ache building there, casting a quick glare at 341's smug smirk in his direction. "Worse comes to worse, we'll just have to sit long enough for Wheeljack to get our measure."
That's not all, sir," said 039.
"What now?" sighed the CO.
"Yuri." That was all it took, as 039 continued. "We don't know a whole helluva lot about her, we don't know what armor she was wearing, what her weaponry is, other than those energy daggers that she created, what her background is, hell, we don't even know if she's aerial, grounder, or other."
"'Other'?" asked 046.
"Triple-changers," said 039. "There's another that I can't remember off the top of my head.
"She's an aerial," said 341, calmly.
"Which type of aerial, though?" asked 046.
"Not sure, but she looks like she would follow after a Pelican with scary ease," the tactician admitted. "What worries me is that because of how she's formatted, she doesn't have or need an alternate mode. She can fly as is."
The cabin exploded into a full-blown argument over what to do with the femme.
Jazz and Prowl were a few breems from Kaon proper when one of the medics back in Iacon pinged the saboteur's internal comm and growled out the closest approximation to a greeting as he ever got. {Jazz, where in the Pit are you?}
The silver mech slowed a bit to let his mission partner take the lead as he responded. {Ratchet? Ah'm just outside 'o Kaon's city limits. Per m' orders dat was posted ah bit ago. What's wrong, doc bot?}
{You've met Wheeljack, right?} Without waiting for a reply, as Jazz made it a point to know every bot that entered the Autobot base in Iacon, the medic continued in his usual caustic tones. {The fragger takes a supply run from Crystal City to the surrounding cities every few stellar cycles. He set out a few orns ago, and passed through Yuss like he was scheduled to. But, the fragging glitch is a few joors late, almost half an orn for Primus' sake, for his arrival to Simfur, and the Pit-spawned governing council just got to me that 'jack's late.}
Jazz suppressed the desire to laugh. He had indeed met the inventor before, and truly liked the slightly odd-ball mech. As far as the saboteur could tell, Ratchet actually liked the company of Wheeljack, even if the mech's inventions had a habit of blowing up in his faceplate and taking out the nearby walls and parts of his own frame. The ratio of explosions to successes caused Crystal City to send the mech out when they needed to repair the structures around the inventor's labs, and the inventor himself usually took the long hauls with a frank sense of humor that Jazz genuinely liked. Along with getting out of the city for a while, Wheeljack usually ended up in Iacon's med bay with Ratchet for a few repairs that the inventor had forgotten to get. If the inventor had missed Simfur, it could mean anything from stray Decepticon activity to simply being broken down and too stubborn to call in for help. {Ah'll keep 'n optic out for him, Ratch'. We'll take his route back, and ah'll comm if'n we find anythin'.}
"So," Wheeljack had lead 196 and Yuri to the very edge of Kalis' ruined merchant quarter, and was chatting with Yuri in order to keep his processor on anything other than the few deactivated frames that were still visible in the streets or the armorless mech and femme, the mech behind, femme beside him. "Your designation really is Yuri?" he asked.
"Yep," said Yuri calmly. She'd been answering with monosyllables since he started asking her questions, so Wheeljack gave her up as a lost cause, but asked one more question.
"Why haven't you transformed yet?" he asked, curiously.
She looked at 196 in confusion, and he shrugged.
"I didn't think I needed to," she answered, calmly, before jumping into the sky and rocketing upwards at speeds rivaling the trine on board the ATHENS. She rolled, and pulled an 180, swooping down at the mechs who were staring at her in shock. She deactivated the jets in her pedes, and free fell, flipping so her pedes were down, and landed with a boom that shook the street itself. She stood up, an optic ridge raised at the dumbfounded looks on their faces. "What?"
Wheeljack shook his helm, and looked at 196, and asked, "Your designation really is gamma-one-nine-six, which means the one hundred and ninety-sixth, uh... SPARTAN of the Gamma Company?"
"Yep." 196 snickered as he caught the other mech's aborted attempt to look at him. "That would be me, but since there is no other one-nine-six to confuse me with, the Gamma Company SPARTANs agreed a bit ago to drop the Gamma Company identifier before our three digit roster numbers when there is no others with the same numbers, so it's just one-nine-six." The inventor was taking the three of them through the back roads of the city to avoid any large scenes of mass slaughter that the city still held, and the infiltrator hadn't argued even if he had already seen worse. Yuri was as expressionless as ever, and had been willing to subside into silence. 196 glanced at her, wondering what was going on behind that mask that she was wearing. He remembered one of the reports he'd managed to read, and his optics widened in shock. "Hey, Yuri?" he asked.
"Hai?" she answered.
"Were you the cause of the one Covenant legion who just died?" he asked.
The answering smirk made a shiver crawl it's way up his spinal struts. "Hai. They didn't particularly like the fact that an unarmored femme took them down."
"Um... what?" asked Wheeljack, confused at the sudden question.
"Legion," said Yuri. "One thousand soldiers. When the original chain of command of the SPARTANs found me, through their SPARTANs, they found a legion of the Covenant dead, and me standing in the middle. Armorless, covered in alien blood and guts, and with four plasma blades active."
"Gamma Company still considers her the holy grail of foundlings," said 196, grinning at her.
She just preened.
As a veteran of another war and countless urban battles, 196 could still see the signs of mass panic and fighting that occurred down nearly every road. "So, how far are we going?"
The merchant quarter skirted the entertainment district, and the far end led into the part of the city that held the storage warehouses and metal workshops. Wheeljack reviewed his old map of Kalis and plotted a few ways to pass any possible obstructions in their way. "Not too much farther. It should be just a bit down this next road." Like he had thought, a few buildings had collapsed on the street they wanted, and the inventor led his companions through a shattered store front to avoid the rubble piled high in the middle of the street. "you would think some bot would get around to cleaning up the streets, 'cause I'm sure that there were at least a few survivors, but-" Wheeljack yelped and ducked as he caught sight of something being swung at his helm.
"But what, mech?" The inventor scrambled backwards only to freeze as his attacker hefted the large chunk of re-bar he had attempted to remove his helm with. "Roadrage, go 'n find who our chatty guest was talkin' to. The femme... is mine."
The bloodthirsty smirk on Yuri's faceplate made Wheeljack very glad that she was on his side as four blades appeared, two on the back of her hands, the other two in her hands. "You sure you want a piece of me, fraggin' slagger?" she hissed. "Well, maggot?"
Wheeljack's attacker froze, and slowly turned to her, taking in the plasma blades and how they lit up her smirk. The glitch then attacked her, only to have one blade take out his hands, as the second removed his helm. The other two bots attacked, and she made quick work of them as well, her plasma blades flashing as they cut through the Cybertronians who dared to attack and claim her as theirs.
196 appeared, his shotgun on his shoulder. "Primus... I heard the rumors, but damn that was hot, Yuri," he said, chuckling.
Yuri just deactivated her plasma swords and daggers, then picked her way over to the still-rattled inventor, covered in energon and oil. "I think we should take another way back."
"R-right." Wheeljack blinked at the three down mechs for a moment before scrambling for the far exit. It took most of the remaining distance to clear enough of his processor to realize a couple of things. He looked at 196. "You were invisible." He turned to Yuri. "And you were unarmed."
Yuri glanced at 196, before asking, "Do you want to answer first?"
196 shrugged, before looking at the inventor. "Err, no... not really." 196 figured the mech would have noticed sooner, if he hadn't been so set on not looking at him. He had been 'invisible' for most of the journey through Kalis. "It's a very... complex type of optical camouflage. You could have seen through it if you had the time and knew what to look for. I did say I was a stealth unit." The infiltrator was going to attempt to change the subject when Yuri piped up.
"I am never fully unarmed, 'jack," she said. "If I don't have my swords, I have my daggers. I am also considered a close-quarters combat bot. Is this it?"
"Yeah, it belonged to a friend of mine when I used to live here." Wheeljack punched in a string of Cybertronian numbers into the security panel on a post positioned on the outside of a glowing fence. The building behind the fence didn't look so beat up as the other buildings 196 and Yuri had seen, the latter giving off a long low whistle. The security measures accepted the code, and the system that had defended the warehouse for the vorns that Kalis had been abandoned finally shorted out with a few sparks. "Even if he was still alive, he wouldn't mind me appropriating some of his stock for you and the rest of your... friends."
196 made a noncommittal hum as they followed the inventor across the loading yard of the large warehouse, wondering just how heavy of a load the mech wanted for his work and if he should call back to the ATHENS for some help. Folding his frame to follow the enthusiastic inventor, 196 ducked through the main doors and straightened up with an impressed whistle as he caught sight of the warehouse's contents. "Wow. Please tell me we won't need all of this."
Wheeljack finally had an opportunity to laugh at him for once, and took it gleefully as Yuri giggled slightly. "No," the inventor managed between his snickers, "but we are going to need a bit of everything. Different weight plates go on different areas, some mechs need heavier weights than most femmes, and that means we need a few of every type of plating." The inventor grunted as he tried to maneuver one of the very heavy sheets of plating to an anti-gravity lift he had snagged on his way in. 196 raised an optic ridge, and before Wheeljack could comment, he easily lifted the unwieldy plate and set it down where the inventor wanted it. "Stronger than your frame would suggest, aren't you?"
The slighter mech frowned at the infiltrator, and the SPARTAN just shrugged again in reply. "How many do you want?"
Yuri was working her way to the lightest of the plates, and started hefting them, moving several piles up or down, if the plate was too light or heavy. Suddenly, a number of plates started getting tossed over, and 196 caught them, setting them onto a second anti-gravity lift next to the inventor's. "Those are mine," she called.
039 was waiting for the three outside of the ATHENS and raised an optic ridge at the high-stacked anti-gravity lift that they brought with them, Yuri pulling a decidedly less-stacked anti-grav lift behind her, then turned to address a flustered Wheeljack. "Zero-four-six told me I was to assist you in getting a room set up and to help with whatever work you needed, one-nine-six," the infiltrator tilted his helm to the side in response. "Three-four-one said to keep the scatter gun and go claim a room."
The inventor jumped as 196 slapped him roughly on the back. "Alrighty then, 'jack. I leave you in zero-three-nine's capable hands."
He could only wave, as the lighter mech was still trying not to offend anybot by gawking offensively, and nearly yelped as 039 unexpectedly took control of the lift from him. "One of the cargo rooms has been cleared for your use, and has been stocked with all the tools that four-five-eight could locate." Still maneuvering the lift, the close-quarters combat specialist stopped short of a door in what the inventor still thought of as the blue hall. "There is one slight problem."
As it seemed that most of the mechs and a few of the femmes that inhabited the ship were taller than he was, Wheeljack was keeping his optics on the floor as he followed 039's pedes. "Well, I'm an inventor. If you tell me what's wrong, I'm sure I can help.
Said inventor crashed into the SPARTAN mech's back as he failed to notice that the larger mech had stopped. 039 looked down at the startled mech calmly. "We don't have blueprints. Our frames are... were, prototypes." He opened the door to the cargo bay not occupied with the Cryo-Stasis Tanks and steered the anti-gravity lift inside. "The only one who has anything remotely close to blueprints is Yuri."
"Oh... slaggit all." Still sitting on the floor, Wheeljack lifted a hand to rub his helm as he tried to find a way around not having to inspect every bot on the ship to make up new blueprints for them. "Uh... I could work up the armor plates individually and attach them as they become ready... or work the plates up first and attach them once the set is done... oh, Primus," by this time 039 had returned for the hapless inventor still in the middle of the hallway, Yuri standing nearby, her optics amused as she listened to him think out loud, "we'll have to do this on a bot-by-bot basis."
"True enough, I suppose." Wheeljack jerked and looked up into yellow optics as the mech leaned forward to grasp the inventor's arm plating and yanked him upright. "Since I am to be assisting you, we can start with me. Particularly because it seems that you can't look armorless bots in the optics." The slighter mech's vocalizer fins flashed a dull pink as the SPARTAN mech steered him into the cargo bay. "Do you need anything else?"
Wheeljack spent a breem looking around the cargo bay. Whoever 458 was had found him a good number of useful tools and a few he couldn't recognize, but what he could see in the bins the tools were stored in was enough for working up decent armor plates. "This should be good. I am going to need some energon and a berth."
"Refit has informed us you would call our energon mid-grade," when Wheeljack just waved a hand as he started to sort the tool bins to show he didn't care what grade it was, 039 carried on, "and three-four-one said you were to have your own room in the crew quarters while you are with us. I will be right back with your energon."
Leaving the inventor to happily muttering over the tools, 039 left the cargo bay doors and smirked at the smear of ripples that betrayed 127's stealth system stationed across from the doorway, next to Yuri, who had the datapad that had her schematics in hand, both of whom were stationed across from the doorway. 046 had judged Wheeljack to be a noncombatant, but that didn't mean the SPARTANs were just going to let him or Yuri, who was a combatant, and a damn good one, to wander around unchecked. 127 would be relieved by either 341 or 196 in what Refit had called four joors of time.
As the close-quarters combat specialist walked to the engineering room for a 'cube' of energon, Refit had explained that when she was going over Cybertronians in general and he had rigged up a dispenser on the ex-AI's limited knowledge, and wondered if 046 and 341 had decided how much they were going to tell Wheeljack about what and who they really were, let alone whether or not they were going to do something about Yuri.
196 had kept his comm line open while the inventor had been talking to him, and every SPARTAN had heard the confusion in the mech's vocalizer as he questioned about the roster numbers. 341 had fretted that the mech might refuse to help if he knew they had originally been organic creatures or now something comparable to what Cybertronians referred to as war bots. Apparently, many Cybertronians found the idea of mechs and femmes built solely for war as distasteful as many of the civilian Humans had found the SPARTAN-Programs; well before the benefits of having SPARTANs in the war efforts were made public knowledge.
039 found 341 and 196 in the engineering room, the tactician was frowning at the collection of dusty cubes that the infiltrator had brought back as the both inspected the stack. The femme raised an optic ridge as she lifted one of the empty containers and inspected the carved outside. "Why is it a cube? Why are there no proper cups?"
196 merely shrugged at her as he waved a greeting to the other SPARTAN mech. "They do have cups, but Refit said that the Cybertronians use them for the little ones, the sparklings that have no coordination." The infiltrator handed the close-quarters combat specialist a clean cube as he picked himself up one and continued to mock his old squad leader. "Suck it up. You know the saying, 'When in Rome..."
"Bite me," the tactician snarled back as she waved 039 to precede her to the rigged dispenser as she picked up a cube for herself. "It better taste like coffee."
The close-quarters combat specialist smirked as he listened to the two SPARTAN-IIIs argue back and forth good naturedly about the desired taste of the energon. As he left, the tactician gave him a curt farewell that would have normally made him annoyed, but since most of the mechs and femmes were still getting used to each other's quirks, himself included, he just considered it a personality failure of the XO's and replied in kind.
It took him only a breem to leave and return with the inventor's energon, and 039 nodded to the still concealed 127 as he let himself back in as Yuri passed Wheeljack her schematics datapad, and left, nodding at 039 as she passed him in the doorway.
Wheeljack had been busy while the SPARTAN mech had been gone, most of the metal that 196 and Yuri had helped him bring back was stacked next to the wall according to thickness and alloy grades, the tools neatly laid out instead of packed in the bins and boxes 458 had tossed them in. The mech himself was seated on the one of two chairs that was in the room working on a thin sheet of metal and had quickly looked up with a flash of yellow-orange color when 039 let himself in. "Great! You're back, we can start with your hands while I refuel."
Smirking, the SPARTAN mech set the cube down next to the inventor and snagged the remaining seat. Wheeljack still couldn't look him in the optics.
Jazz and Prowl had made it to Simfur an orn ahead of schedule by skipping some of the prearranged stops on their trips. The last time the medic Ratchet had called in to the saboteur he sounded even more irritable and grouchy, and that had made enough of an impression on Jazz that he had felt that a little more haste was called for.
Prowl, once the silver special ops mech had remembered to fill the black and white Praxian in on the search and rescue side-trip, had agreed in his mono-toned way that looking for Wheeljack was important but cautioned that the inventor may have been set upon by Decepticons and deactivated if he had not limped his way to Simfur's gates yet.
Even so, Jazz had used the 'looking for a popular mech' angle to pump information out of the Neutral city's officials about the flow of traffic in and out of Simfur's territory that he was now sharing with the tactician. "Dere was ah sightin' 'o 'Cons, but ah few travelers claimed deir offline frames are now decorating da side of ah road ta Yuss."
Prowl compared the sightings to Wheeljack's known route and to the hazy reports of a meteor that Jazz had also found out about from talking with some of the more pleasantly mannered civilian bots. "There does seem to be a correlation between the three events, even with allowances made for inaccurate reports." The Praxian stood from the bench he had been waiting for the saboteur on and started out for the main highway to Yuss. "The report about Decepticons worries me. Whatever found them could have found Wheeljack as well."
"Maybe, but we should find somethin'."
Wheeljack had been with the SPARTANs now one orn short of a full megacycle, the end of this cycle saw him cleaning up as 039 helped the last mech for the orn into the last of his armor. 113, as this particular mech was called, was one of the three seekers on the ATHENS, and he delighted in pricking 039's slight temper when he saw the other mech. The inventor listened with half an audio as the two bickered.
"No, not... stand still, you glitch!" 039 had the seeker's last wing plate in hand and was trying to attach it.
"Frag you. That – stop! That tickles!" 113 shuddered as the last and final plate clicked home. He swung but missed Wheeljack's helper as he stomped out. Yuri slipped in and picked up the plates that she'd had Wheeljack make up for her, and as 039 attached the wing plates, she attached the rest, each plate clicking into place where she had wanted them. "Thank you, 'jack," she said, softly.
"No problem, Yuri," said Wheeljack, smirking safely behind his ever present battlemask as his helper made some arcane sign at the seeker's back with one hand, while attaching a wing plate with the other, before grabbing the larger pieces of scrap metal and tossing them into a bin to be melted down later.
He had mostly gotten used to the violent but not harmful way the mechs and femmes usually dug into each other in some type of a show of comradely association, but Yuri was either with Refit helping the slight femme with something, or helping Wheeljack get the armor plates onto the other bots, yet... she seemed slightly distant from the rest of the mechs and femmes.
The first time someone had swung at 039 had startled him badly. 341, who the inventor had later learned was what they called an XO, something he took to mean their Third in Command, or as they termed it, 'executive officer', had verbally ripped into the hapless mech that they had been fitting for his armor for startling the 'noncom' after he had jerked back at the show of violence. She had been escorting a femme by the name of Refit, who was next to be fitted for armor, and after that incident no bot except Yuri, on the ship moved faster than Wheeljack could track with his optics.
The inventor's smile faltered as that thought led him to another that had been bothering him for a while. He knew most of the mechs and femmes on board the ATHENS by now; he new that only 039 had any working knowledge about their frames, though he was often helped by Yuri, 193 had most of the scientific knowledge that they possessed, and Refit and Yuri were the only ones who had actual names. He knew that the three seekers and the 'Valkyrie' – as Yuri had named her frame-type, having there be no other ideas for it's name, let alone what it was, short of it having a strange alt-form that they hadn't either found or made yet – had been surprised by their wings, even if they had tried to hide it, and that 341 and 027 had been very confused over the purpose of their door-wings, and that 046 and 459 had been vastly amused by their tank-like alt-forms. The reasons why had never been uttered, even on the rare occasions that the inventor had ventured out among them for his own energon.
One cycle, he had even taken the cycle off and watched the bots run their every cycle drills and perform some kind of full system test, which included some sparring between the bots, and Yuri doing drills with her plasma-forged swords and daggers, and joining in with the sparring without activating either swords or daggers. There were a few bots that left early every cycle and returned very late, most of whom he hadn't seen since he made up their armor sets for them.
After a moment, he flicked a glance to 039 who was now tidying up a few scraps of metal on the work table. "I have a question."
"When don't you?"
"Never!" He had heard 127 respond the same way once, and knew the other mech would snort.
Wheeljack wasn't disappointed. 039 snorted at him, then abandoned the scraps of metal and stole the seat 113 had abandoned, and Yuri stepped over to where 039 had been tidying up, and continued 039's work. From somewhere, one of the femmes had dug up some type of paint and the mech now had pale green armor plates over a light gray under-frame coat, a duller version of his own colors. Wheeljack had made the comment that the bluish sheen to their protoframes would confuse most bots and the mechs and femmes had opted to cover it with a coat of paint. Yuri had ignored the advice, saying, "If someone asks, I painted it. Where's the dark gray paint?"
Yellow optics regarded the inventor with barely-concealed amusement. "Alright, 'jack. What's your question?"
The slighter mech summoned up his courage and blurted out, "Why?" Before the other mech could answer or question what he was asking about, the inventor barreled on in a rush. "Why is that only Refit and Yuri have proper designations? Why is the trine surprised by their own wings? Why do some of you move with no sound? Why do you answer to numbers instead of proper names? Why does Yuri have legs like that?"
039 shut his open mouthplates with a snap, blinked at the now cringing inventor, then sighed and rolled his helm to loosen his neck cables. "Right, come on. Let's go get some energon." When Wheeljack only stared at him, the SPARTAN chuckled wryly. "We'll tell you, but it's a long story, and I think we both need some fuel. Yuri, you're coming too, since you're the only one who knows your full story."
Yuri simply hummed acknowledgement.