8: Mechanic

It was strange. The movements and inflection were Cyborg, but the voice and body were not.

"How're you holding up, big guy?"

He looked down, feet planted an even distance apart to prevent him from falling over. That had already happened half a dozen times. He was still learning his centre of balance. "Okay, I guess. A few phantom pains. My brain keeps insisting I should have more nerve endings than I do. It feels weird to see you like this, though. You always been such a pipsqueak?"

Terra grinned despite herself and tried to ignore the mention of phantom pains. "Watch who you're calling a pipsqueak. I can still kick your butt."

"Oh really?" Again, it was Cyborg's smirk, but the mouth that made it wasn't his. There was a feeling of duality to everything he did now, and she got the impression that it might last a while.

But he was alive and coherent, which were the main things.

"Yeah, really." She raised her fists and threw a few shadow punches. "C'mon. I can take you."

Wobbling only slightly, he bent at the hips and wrapped a too-big hand around her waist, picking her up effortlessly and so fast her stomach took a moment to catch up. She could feel the faint shift in his fingers as they compensated for this new load, though it was surprisingly gentle against her. She should have felt more worried they could accidentally crush her. She should. He hadn't got full control yet. He was still trying on this new skin. But… but.

But.

"Uh, best two out of three?"

"Now there's something I'd pay ticket-money for." Beast Boy wandered in munching an NRG bar.

Terra swivelled as best she could, but ended up peering uncomfortably over her shoulder at him. Mechanic's 'shop' was only the front of his operation. Below it was a sprawling complex of rooms and corridors with the taste of military in the air. Old style military, though. One of those bomb shelters built in the sixties that were replaced by high-tech alternatives when the Star Wars programme kicked in. Government reports – those that acknowledged their existence – promised they'd all been filled in with concrete and whatnot. For once, Terra was glad of America's cost-cutting culture.

She tried not to think how many people could have been saved had they known about this place before.

They'd been put in a large-ish room, long disused and covered in cobwebs. She'd all but coughed up a lung breathing them in, but Cyborg's new body didn't even wheeze. Truth be told, he seemed a little disappointed by that, but she couldn't be sure. Raven, Speedy and Starfire were still conferring on the upper level.

"Yo, BB. Where'd you get that?"

"Mechanic gave it to me. He's got, like, a whole barn full of food here. All freeze-dried and just-add-water stuff. I think before… y'know. I think he was some sort of Nostradamus freak. Storing stuff away to survive the Big One."

"Um, hello? Big One kinda already came and went."

"Maybe he was the smart one all the ti-i-i-i-iiiiiiiii…"

"Cy?" Terra looked to where his jaw hung a little loose at the hinges.

He reached up with his free arm and clanked it shut. Then he rocked his head from side to side as if getting a kink out of his neck. Which was ridiculous, because he was all nuts and bolts now, and nuts and bolts didn't get kinks. "Sorry. Vocal loop. Still getting used to the systems in here. But I think I got it now." His eyes ticked from side to side with such rapidity they might have been part of a computer game. When they stopped, they hit the jackpot. "I think."

"Dude." Beast Boy looked at the half-eaten NRG bar, then offered it up. "Hey, y'wanna try some?"

Cyborg bent at the hips again and plucked the bar from his hand. It looked small and pathetic in his massive fingers. Both Beast Boy and Terra watched as he took a bite, chewed, and then spat it out again.

"Uh, ew?" BB wiped pulp from the top of his head.

"Sorry," Cyborg apologised, giving the unfinished bar back to him. "No taste buds. And I just got a heedful of data telling me I was ingesting foreign matter that should be purged immediately. So it was either spit it out or try to swallow and - "

"We get the picture," Terra cut in. "But still, ew. That's a totally disgusting habit."

"Hey, I didn't exactly have a tissue."

She blinked, suddenly struck by a memory so lucid and fierce it almost took her breath away. She could feel it in her molars, could actually smell her mother's perfume, and hear her accented voice and that tone she adopted when she was playing Disciplinarian Mummy. "If you don't like it, don't let peoples see it. Use a hankie and put it in the gah-bage."

The backs of Terra's eyeballs stung. She opened her eyes wider, forcing them to dry out.

"Terra?" Beast Boy's voice floated up to her.

"Yeah," she said hastily. "Man, it's dusty in here." She scrubbed at her eyes so that if they were red she could blame that.

She'd tried so long, so hard not to remember anything like that. Memory was a snare, a silver wire around your neck. You could look back, but if you remembered something that actually meant something, you were sunk. Green tress, warm bread, the throb of a scraped knee – pretties, but ultimately meaningless. You could think of them without too much bother.

But other things… think of them and you got trapped in the past, because the past was so much better than the present. Each day was worse than the one that came before it. Once you got trapped in the past, you saw yourself as you really were, all the brattiness and tantrums and obstinacy. You knew you were in trouble when even that was shiner than the here and now.

"Terra?" Cyborg brought her close to his angular, red and yellow face. His range of facial expressions was severely limited by that face, but there was still concern in his voice. Her head jerked forward because his movements weren't anything like smooth yet. "Girl, you in there?"

"Yeah. Um, Cy? Could you put me down, please? I'm kinda hungry."

"So that's it." Speedy leaned back in his chair with an audible sigh. It was hard plastic and grey – the kind of thing they might have used in a classroom somewhere in another world. "He wants in."

Terra noted how he, Starfire and Raven had set themselves up opposite herself, Beast Boy and Cyborg. What, did they expect them to cross their room to show their allegiance? Cy refused to move in case he missed a step and squashed them all, so that option was out. And quite frankly, she was too tired to move anywhere unless the words 'second' and 'apocalypse' featured heavily.

"He'd give us full range of the complex, including the supply stores."

"Would he let us bring people down here?" That from Cyborg, though to look at his impassivity you wouldn't know he'd spoken. His expressive transistors had gone offline again, and behind his eyes a million tiny electrical impulses worked to get them back under his control.

There were similarities to his old systems, but there was no getting away from the fact that now he was now a personality programme in an all-robot body. Terra wondered whether all his personality had been stored in the computerized part of his brain, or whether they'd just got the selected bits – a hollow echo of the Cyborg they'd known. The very idea made her shiver, and she pushed it away.

"What?" said Speedy.

"People. Survivors. Would he let us bring them down here with us?"

"I don't know. Maybe. You'd have to ask him." He made a face that said he'd thought of that before but was glad someone else had brought it up. "So what do we think?"

Beast Boy mused on it. "Mechanic becomes a Titan, and in exchange we move out of the caves and into this place."

"And he'd keep an eye on how Cyborg's adjusting to his new body. You know, to make sure there aren't any problems with it."

"Or to shut him down and call it a malfunction when we're not looking," Raven added.

Terra glanced at her. She was doing the cape thing again, hiding all but a few shades of her face. Her eyes were closed, her head bowed, but it was obvious she was listening intently to the conversation. Tension rode shotgun in her shoulders.

"Is he that untrustworthy?" Beast Boy asked. He hadn't been there when they first encountered Mechanic, and so knew only part of the story.

"Trustworthiness is as constancy – inconstant."

He scratched his head. "I hate when you do that."

"Raven's just being Raven," said Terra, curling her arms around her knees and rocking thoughtfully. "I think it sounds like a sweet deal. The caves don't have any automatic defences. This place does. In the caves we've all but run out of food, and when we don't catch anything, we starve. Here there's a ready-made store until we can figure out a better solution in the long run. Cyborg can keep his new bod in shape, we might be able to get a good night's sleep for once, and if we can get some survivors down here to safety... well, so much the better."

Beast Boy whistled. "Look at you being all forward-thinking."

"Had to happen sometime."

Raven opened her eyes. "You're forgetting the crucial element of all this. We know precious little about Mechanic, save he may have worked for the government at some point and his sanity is tenuous – at best."

"Maybe he's the best off of everyone," Terra snorted.

"I'll choose to believe I didn't hear that."

"You do that."

"What does Mechanic get out of all this?" Cyborg interrupted. It was a good question.

"Mechanic articulated his wish to maintain the body of his, uh, 'boss' and retain close proximity to it," Starfire said in clipped tones. She stood with her hands behind her back, and her gaze would periodically slip out of focus, as if she were thinking of another topic entirely. It was disconcerting, but better than those moments she looked caught between crying tears that never came and punching something.

"You've got to wonder about a guy with that much attachment to a big metal statue." Beast Boy ran a hand through his hair.

"Different floats for different boats," Terra supplied. "Maybe he just wants some company. Or maybe giving us a pad to crash in is his form of protection money."

"So we'd be, like, his bodyguards?"

"Less the black suits and earpieces, BB. But yeah, maybe that's what he's after. He's - " she refrained from adding 'just' " - a regular human. Easy pickings for Misshapens whenever he goes out. And we've already seen that he does go out. For salvaging junk and stuff."

"It could be any number of things," said Cyborg. "It could be everything we just said, or it could be something completely different."

"He could be affiliated with the… you-know-whats." Beast Boy shrugged. "What? I'm trying to be a… what's that saying? Satan's lawyer? That crappy movie with Keanu Reeves in it."

"Devil's advocate," Speedy corrected. "And yes, that movie sucked big time."

"That's the one. Raven said he worked for the government."

"I said he might have worked for the government. It's likely, given his extensive knowledge of A.I. and his access to this place."

"Or he could have come from an independent faction, like the Lone Gunmen, and just happened to find this place by accident," said Terra. "Or he could be an undercover mutant cow come to make us all drink milk until we explode."

Raven slitted one eye at her. "While I appreciate that humour is an effective defensive mechanism, Terra, it hardly seems appropriate right now."

"No, I think it really is appropriate right now." Terra placed both palms flat against the floor and stared hard at everyone in turn. "We're debating his motives like he's some sort of criminal, and yet we've been here over twenty-four hours and I've yet to see him make anything like a hostile move against us. Yes, he could be out to get us. Yes, he could be totally innocent and just want a good conversation. The point is, so far the positive arguments outweigh the negative, so why don't we take up his offer for a trial period and see how it goes from there? Alternatively, Raven could do one of those freaky-deaky mind-scans to see if he's on the level."

Raven's cloak tightened. "Scanning an unbalanced mind isn't always accurate."

"There you go, then. We don't have any way of knowing until we try it. So I put my hand up and vote we make him a Titan – at least for a while."

"Sort of like a probationary member?" Beast Boy nodded and raised his hand. "I can go for that."

"You're sure you're not just agreeing with her because she's your squeeze?" Raven muttered, and it was impossible but it seemed like there was a bitter thread in her voice. Both Terra and Beast Boy blushed, and Terra peered at her, but she was still busy being Raven – cold and hard and finicky.

Everyone chose to ignore that remark. Cyborg agreed with the idea of a pilot membership, and Starfire had zoned out enough that she also mumbled her agreement. Which left Raven and Speedy. Or, since Raven had already made her position abundantly clear, Speedy was left to cast his vote.

He grunted and sank back in his chair. "Considering the total lack of privileges being leader has afforded me so far, can't I claim this as one of them and just abstain?"

"Considering you are leader, you have to vote," Raven informed him flatly.

"Right. Just checking. In which case, I say we go for the probationary idea." He looked back at her.

"I'm not going to make this neat and tidy and unanimous just because it'd be easier for you. I stand by what I said."

"That you don't trust him," Speedy sighed, but she shook her head.

"I neither trust nor distrust him. I just wish it to be known that I'm opposed to this willy-nilly handing out of membership cards on principle."

Terra frowned. "So… you're saying it wouldn't matter who'd asked to join, you'd oppose them being made a Titan just because?" Then she rolled her eyes and resisted the urge to scream. "You could be quite possibly the most infuriating person I've ever met."

"Bearing in mind I've just been overruled, you'll have to forgive me if I don't weep tears of sorrow over that." A small puddle of darkness appeared beneath Raven's feet, and she sank into it while still speaking. "I'll go and inform Mechanic of his upgraded status."

Terra suspected she was going to threaten him with spectacular mental tortures if he betrayed their trust, too, but didn't comment on it. Still, the notion dispelled her desire to scream. A little. It maybe even made her feel a little more kindly disposed towards Raven. She may not be the most agreeable person on their sad and scarred little planet, but she stood by her teammates. If they fell flat on their faces, she'd be a bit quiet, but she wouldn't even think of saying 'I told you so'. It had taken Terra a while to figure that out, and to understand even a tiny portion of why Raven stayed to fight their battles with them.

If, as seemed probable given her sporadic father and deceased mother, part of Terra's fixation with superheroing in a battered wasteland was that it gave her a quick way to fill a previously empty cart at the Family Supermarket, then it was perhaps understandable why she was more willing than Raven to give Mechanic a chance, and why she was less discerning when it came to making bonds and forming relationships with those around her. Any kind of relationship was satisfactory – from what she had with Beast Boy, to the respect she had for Speedy, to the irritation byway between her and Raven. Terra just threw in everything she saw, everything available to her. And these fractured remnants of a more golden age were definitely in her field of vision, so she grabbed and held on tight to stop herself from skidding on every spill in the aisles.

And at times like this, when Mechanic burst through the door with nothing short of rapture on his face, and hugged the stuffing out of anyone who would let him… well, it seemed almost worthwhile.

They moved their stuff in all at once. Maybe it would have been a better idea to do things piecemeal, just in case it was a set-up, but with Misshapens sniffing around and precious few mementoes stashed away, they wanted to protect what they had. Mechanic set them up with separate bedrooms, and while the tiny grey boxes with bunks moulded into the walls were hardly the Ritz, they had actual doors and thin sheets and were inside a building protected by lasers.

Terra unpacked within fifteen minutes, spent another fifteen staring and pacing, rearranged everything, and then went to look for the others.

The rooms were all along the same corridor, but it was Mechanic she met first. He was carrying a small box of weird looking tools under his arm and beamed at her when she appeared.

"Hey, hey, hey," he said, and she could almost overlook the vestiges of grief in his eyes. He still mourned for his 'boss', and so channelled that grief into caring for the new owner of his body. Cyborg had been through three separate checks within an hour before Mechanic was satisfied enough to let him see his new room – a much bigger space they were going to drag stuff into to make it more comfortable and less like a hangar. "What's shakin', toots?"

Terra giggled. This whole place, if I wanted it to, she thought, but didn't say it. Mechanic looked puzzled, but kept smiling.

"How's Cyborg?"

He patted his tools, underscoring she was correct in her thinking. "New Boss is right as rain. Shiny as a new button. Yup-yup. Had to give his operating systems a tweak, but at least now he can use his thumbs. Sure enough."

"And you?"

The smile was not enough to cover the moment of shock that someone would ask him that. "No complaints, no complaints. Nice to have folks around the place. Would say 'again', but there ain't never been nobody here but me. Nu-uh. Me an' the boss. The boss an' me. Peas in a pod, y'know? Pretty crowded pod now, but that's good, right? Peas is meant to be crammed full. Makes 'em taste better. Makes 'em greener. You like your greens? Make you grow big an' strong."

"I thought that was milk."

"Nu-uh, milk's for bones. Calcium. Beats osteoporosis. Protein builds up muscles. Vitamins come in little pots with numbers on 'em. Alpha, beta, come-an'-get'a. Greens is good for your health. Hale an' hearty, geddit? Good greens. Greens is good."

There was solid information in the babbling. Whatever his mental state now, Mechanic had clearly been an intelligent man before. Shards of it peeped under the edges. "Yes," Terra said, nodding and feeling a little like a 'Jane and John' book. "Greens are good."

"Smart girl."

The door next to them swung open. "Hey," said Beast Boy. "The Green Guy is in da house. What's up, dude and dudette?"

His expression when they burst into peels of laughter was priceless.

To Be Continued …