Authors Note: Here be chapter two! Thanks for the reviews!
Chapter Two
"-and this is my lab." Wheeljack said, he was giving Ari a tour of the Ark. He'd offered to let Lee come along as well, but the young driver refused, stating excuses like practice runs and such. Ari, however, was delighted. She tried to see up onto the massive tables piled high with various gadgets, but they were all well over twice her height. Wheeljack noticed her plight and bent down, holding his hand flat before her. "Hop on." She hesitated, then stepped up into his palm, sitting down hard when he began to lift her up. He waited for her to adjust to the new height, then carefully placed her on the table. She looked around curiously, and promptly headed for his latest project. Wheeljack started to stop her, but decided she probably couldn't do any damage by looking at it.
Ari studied the internal workings of the cannon, occasionally muttering to herself. She glanced up at her large companion. "You do realize it's going to blow up right?"
Wheeljack blinked, and shook his head. "No, I rerouted the power source to be re-generational. There's no way it can explode."
The human smiled and wagged a finger at him. She knelt before the device and waved for him to take a closer look.
"You still need to hook it up to a power source. See this?" Ari pointed to a bunch of wires and tubing. "Your input is greater than your output, now, if you fired it alot that wouldn't be a problem, but your refractor that reroutes the left-over laser energy to the main power cell negates that possibility. The energy just keeps building and building-"
"And it blows up." Wheeljack stared dumbly at the mistake he'd made, stunned and somewhat humbled by the fact that a human had discovered it, and not only did she discover it, but then proceeded to fix it right there.
"There ya go." She said, sitting back on her heels. "I set the refractor to reroute the excess energy back into the laser, along with the extra energy from the power cell. That oughta keep it from exploding." She looked up at him, and laughed at his awed expression.
At this he jerked back into the real world and carefully studied what she had done. When he finished he was more impressed than ever. "You not only kept it from exploding, you tripled the laser's strength! It could cut a hole in the Ark's hull with one hit!" Okay, so maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but it was pretty close to the truth! Ari smiled up at him,
"I'm a mechanic remember? I love this kind of stuff."
"Good." Wheeljack announced. "Because I'm going to name this laser after you."
She stared. "What?!"
"I said...I'm going to name this laser after you. How's the 'Ari Cannon' sound?" He picked it up and studied it, his optics smiling.
She made a face. ".....Ari Cannon?"
"Okay, maybe not. What's your last name?" She hesitated, then gave in.
"Manhattan."
"Perfect!" The engineer cried. "The Manhattan Laser! And don't try to talk me out of it either." He warned when she opened her mouth to protest. She closed it again and just stared at him, unsure whether to be amused or flattered. She seemed to decide on a mix between the two.
"You're not going to name everything I help you fix after me are you? I've only got two names you know.."
Weeks later...
"I'm telling you! You need to hook the main circuits to the coolant tank or they'll overheat!" Ari insisted. She had become an almost permanent fixture around the Ark, mostly helping Wheeljack with his creations. There were fewer explosions that way, not to mention the sudden lack of 'accidents'. The two made the perfect team, when one had an idea, both pooled their technical knowledge to figure out how to make it work. Wheeljack had never realized just how much fun it was to bounce ideas off of someone who actually knew what he was talking about! Not only that, but her feedback was useful and imaginative, which in turn fueled his own creative enthusiasm.
"What if we hooked a fan to the main power cell and used that too cool the circuits? Then we could hook the coolant tank up to the barrel and double our firing rate!" he fingered the part he was holding thoughtfully. "We could also rig it with a remote control and cameras so the user could operate it from a distance. It'd be just like playing a video game!"
Ari laughed. "Some game! This thing could shred granite!"
"Yeah! Let's go test it!"