Decisions and Destinies

Shiftlock is still sitting in her recovery suite. There's a low recharge berth with emergency medical equipment nearby in case someone should need it; across from that is a couch big enough for several visitors to use. A single rectangular window lets in light and a view from the outside, while a holoscreen for entertainment hangs on the wall near the door. It's your typical hospital room.
She's still hooked into the "IV" and the little roller drone; she's been repaired (again) and this time has been painted and polished to look presentable. There's a medical schedule on the end of her circuit slab. It's marked with notes for upcoming surgeries.
Tromping into the medical bay, Scattershot is sporting fresh injuries. His left shoulder and wing have heavy damage, armor ripped across his back as he moves towards check in, making a few notes for the medics before he goes to sit down. He takes a moment to clear his rifle and glances towards where the femme is sitting by herself. He considers for a moment, as if trying to figure out some things. 
Then he gives a shrug of his shoulders, glancing at the monitor and snorts faintly, though in amusement. "The Newtypes and the Sparkless." more a comment than a question. How he recognizes the soap opera is beyond anyone's question as he drops into a chair to settle down and looks at a pad to study. 
"Yeah, I'm not paying attention to it," Shiftlock agrees. "I don't care what's on. It doesn't matter. It's just ... sound. People talking. That's good enough right now." She gets up, going to the window and looking out. The medical drone beeps, rolling along after her with the noise of gears and wheels, and the subtle hiss of a pump kicking off and on.
"I've been that slagged a couple of times. Ain't fun, I know that." Scattershot says thoughtfully as he continues to study the pad in his hands, not really looking up. "Ya need anything?" he asks finally as he presses a button on the pad, pushing back the data and frowns at something. 
"I need out of here," Shiftlock says earnestly.
Scattershot looks around. Shrugs. "There's the door." the Technobot offers. He certainetly isn't going to stop her. 
"I can't leave like that. I'm stuck here. I have to stay here in the Decagon until Ratbat's trial is over. Orion Pax did his best to get me out of here, keep me safe from the scum that filters around at the top of the command chain, but he could only do it for so long."
Shiftlock turns and gazes over at Scattershot. "You ever work with any Senators before, or are you strictly military?" it's an honest question asked in an honest manner.
"Strictly military. Someone tried to assign me to a detail once, punched the slaghead in the face, never got assigned it again." Scattershot shrugs his shoulders. "And I don't see why ya can't just walk out. Noone's holdin ya here against yer will. Ya ain't in chains. Can ya walk?" he asks as he looks over towards her. "I know they got ya hooked up to all this." 
Standing up, he comes over to where the girl is hooked up and grabs the little medical droid by the top od his head and shakes it. "Hey. She's good to go fer a walk, right?" 
The drone, which looks like the back end of a canister vacuum, beeps and spins its wheels. It can be carried.
"I can walk, just slow. My stamina's still kind of low," Shiftlock says, watching Scattershot pick up the IV drone, wondering where this is going. "... Actually--" She abruptly stops speaking.
Shiftlock waves her hand. "No, no, nevermind. Let's go for a walk."
"Awesome. Let's go." Setting the drone on his shoulder, Scattershot waits for Shiftlock to rise to her feet and then asks, hell, actually kind of polietly. "Mind if I carry ya?" he asks with a shrug. "Make it easier on ya, that's fer sure." 
Shiftlock is a little nervous about that, but he's right. "... All right. Just... don't shoot me, okay?" That's a really strange question, but everything about her is saying she's uneasy.
"Shoot you?" Scattershot looks surprised and then he chuckles. "Just because I'm bristling with weapons ain't gonna mean I'm gonna shoot you." he says with a snort. "Is that what that one-opticed freakshow's been tellin ya? I should shoot him fer it." a smirk. He may just be serious, but who knows. 
Lowering down, he offers the femme his arms so that she can easily find purchase to climb her way up and he can lift her. 
Shiftlock struggles to get up, her body weaker than she's used to. She trembles like she's palsied, until she can finally find a place to rest and hold on to Scattershot. "Ugh. How long is spark recovery supposed to take?" She mildly complains.
Tired, she fails to catch herself verbally. "I was conscripted at gunpoint. S'why I asked."
"Dunno. I have to admit stickin something in someone's spark is a new one fer me. Up fer a little flight? I think my wing's sealed up enough that I can handle the weight of a passenger." Scattershot says and then frowns. "When did we start doing that Taurusbot Scrap?" the Techno asks with a sudden look at the femme in his arms, and then he glares at the drone on his shoulder. "Ya know about this?" 
The drone just beeps again and injects another round of supplement. "We started doing it from the start. I began my life being one of Senator Ratbat's "special assistants". My job was to black bag anyone that knew too much. I never had a chance to get away. From anyone." She shutters her optics. "If you want to fly, I'm game. I miss... I miss having my grapple line. It was the closest thing I had to flying."
Shiftlock can feel the armor of the Technobot tightening, the whir of the engines in a commotion. "...ya know. I have half the mind to go down and rip the wings off that flying turborat and see how he likes it." Apparently Scattershot has no love of Senators or anything along those lines. "And then maybe feed them to 'im." With Shiftlock settled, the mech carries her out and towards the top of Decagon. "So how high have you ever been?"
That thought makes her smile. "Top of Darkmount. I'm not a flier - I'm more about going down deep than going up high." She coughs. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything to you. I'm a risk to everyone around me, but ... but thanks anyways. Thanks for talking to me."
"Shiftlock, please." Scattershot snorts. "I ain't nothing but trouble." the mech offers. "Don't worry, I'll file it away for further use." He winks towards her. And as soon as they are clear, he coalesces around the femme, transforming into his techo-bomber form, and launches skywards. And continues to climb. He's already broken the rule once today - why not one more time just to see a femme smile, right? 
"... I get why Seekers are so proud of themselves now," Shiftlock says as she looks out the windows and at the view screens. "You can see everything up here. You can go anywhere you want to go, there's no resistance, nothing to stop you. Perfect freedom of movement." She laughs softly - hey, it seems to be working. "And here I thought that sort of freedom only worked for those of us with tires."
"Ain't nothin' wrong with tires." Scattershot says as his panels flash within the cockpit of the bomber as he travels through the skies of Cybertron. "I have one of my team, his name's Lightspeed. Really fast speedster. But he wants more. Wants to be able to travel interstellarly." the technobot comments. "But because he's made as part of a team, any attempt to upgrade him or get him a new frame would probably end in his deactivation." 
The mech seems to sigh for a moment internally, and then suddenly adjusts his vector and engages his main engines and thrusters. There's a slight rattling inside the vehicle. He won't be able to reach full speed due to the earlier damages, but mech breaks through the atmosphere and into orbit. 
The little drone beeps as he floats by Shiftlock because he wasn't secured into place. Continuing to travel a little ways up, Scattershot rotates himself and rolls over, allowing Shiftlock to look down at Cybertron from the view of a spacer. "Don't tell him you've been up here, he'll ask ya a million questions." he comments as they float lazily and then brings up an image on his screen. "That's where we're from. Tyger Pax. I know, where the best and brightest live. I ain't either." he says with a chuckle. "I was just made to be their security." 
"It's beautiful up here," Shiftlock notes, sounding awed by the sight. "You have a beautiful home too - and you're just fine the way you are. I appreciate mechs that say what they mean." She reaches out to grab the drone before it falls into something, holding it in her arms like a pet. "I was ignited in a hot spot in some wasteland outside of Nyon. One of the last big ones, from what I understand. Not that it matters, they culled me out of nurturing as defective."
"Well, that's just insane. But I know what they mean." Scattershot says as he continues to float around the shiny silver, black and gold orb. "I read the report on ya. Third mode. Torso, right?" he says to her as they continue to drift along. "I have one of those too." he comments. "Actually, four, I suppose. It didn't make me friends, that's fer sure." he says with a chuckle. 
He activates one of his viewscreens. It brings up his schematics. Root form, technobomber, artillery platform, and one that looks a lot like the torso that she is. "Who knows, you may just have something else ya don't know exists yet, right?" 
"I hope not. I'm tired of surprises like that." Shiftlock continues her previous thought, because she wants to see how Scattershot reacts. She needs to have some kind of yardstick measurement for 'normal' - nothing in her life has been. "Well, I figured out why they decided to call me 'defective'. Let's say you're a corrupt government official and you need someone who will do whatever you say, whenever you say. Someone who cannot avoid crawling back to you no matter what you do, right? Well, go to a nurturing facility. Pick your spark. Pay someone off to call it deformed and unlikely to live, then when it's fully formed and activated, take it to Polyhex and push it towards the smelting pools. Make sure it can crawl out, and then tell the frightened newspark that you're here to help."
She pauses to let that sink in. "What do you have? A spark that is legally dead. Has no assigned function. Has no paperwork. Has no identification. Has no way of blending back into society without you knowing about it, because someone without a function ID gets picked up immediately. You have the perfect lackey, who will do whatever you want, because they no longer have a choice."
"Well, in my opinion, ya'd go find them and slag their aft until they couldn't hurt ya anymore. Me and my team? We're just one big experiment. Experimental weapons. Alt-modes, engines, always back in Tyger Pax for some form of experiment or upgrade. Joke's on them, though." Scattershot rumbles as he seems to be sharing a dirty secret with the femme. He gives a little snort and switches the screen from the schematics to a datascroll. "Every time they do something to us, we keep a log of it." the Technobot comments. "Everything they've done. We know it. And how to reverse engineer it if we don't like it. I ain't braggin, but what I am sayin is.. that's how ya get back at the slaggers that like to frack with ya. Ya learn. Ya adapt. And ya grow from it." he pauses to let that sink in as he continues his orbit. 
"Guess we're a lot alike then. Combiner experiment. Mutacon merge. Frag, even the Decepticons had a go at experimenting on me. I've had my brain wiped more than once; that's how they managed to keep me quiet. I had someone else in my body for almost two centuries ... she was in control of everything. My body, my name, my life - I was just... trapped. Trapped in my own frame." She leans over the drone and hugs it for lack of anything else to do. "You sound like you've been doing this longer - maybe doing it right, too."
"Maybe I have. Don't mean I can handle it better, Shiftlock. I'm one mess of anger and guns. Ain't the kind of life one wants to live, but it's what suits me just fine. But like I said, it ain't gonna score points with friends or any of that." Scattershot chuckles as he twists finally to start the process of re-entry. "Here's the thing. And I know it ain't much. But if ya find yerself needing an assignment, an outlet, Pit ya just want to come out and check out our very scrapped up and junked up headquarters, ya got an open invitation to be a Technobot. I can pull some strings in Tyger Pax, maybe get the gearheads that work on us to take a look on ya about getting that slag that the Cons did to ya undone." 
"They're talking about putting me through -- ugh -- more surgery. Experimental surgery. Gonna try to get my arms to fit into my body and see if they can't pull out those cables, but because it's hooked right into my spark chamber they can't do anything until my spark recovers." Shiftlock rubs her hand idly on the armrest of the chair she's sitting in, a way of expressing her apprecation to Scattershot. "Thank you. I don't know where I'm going or what's gonna happen to me. I don't feel like there's much hope left, but... thank you for giving a damn."
"That's what Autobots are supposed to do, or somethin." Scattershot chuckles and opens a small panel. Out comes a Kremzeek juice box and an ener goodie. He was probably saving it for later or something. "And don't tell anyone I gave a damn, it ruins my reputation." he chuckles. 
Shiftlock accepts the offered items. YAY NOT-HOSPITAL FOOD. "As long as you don't go to Pharma for repairs, you have my word."
"That quack. Slag no." Scattershot actually laughs at that as they break back into the atmosphere with a shudder that shakes the whole bomber. "Even the Tyger Pax techs are scared of her." he comments as they reapproach Decagon and he starts the transformation back to his root mode, holding the femme and drone in his arms. 
"Good. He's the one that erased my mind after Blurr forced me into the Decagon," Shiftlock explains, sounding bitter. She's embarasssed she has to be carried like this, but she accepts that this is what has to be done.
"Blurr." Scattershot files that away. He will have a chat with Blurr later. One with his fists. Setting the femme down. "So, you have a choice to make." the mech comments. "Ya can head down to medical and wait for the repairs to finish. Or ya can walk out. Head back to Nyon if you want. I won't stop you, and I won't blame ya." the mech comments. "But that is your choice to make." 
She can almost read what's going through Scattershot's mind (not that it's hard to tell, he wears that kind of intent on his face like a neon sign). "Don't blame Blurr. He's completely reprogrammed. He has no control over his actions - he's a fast puppet on a long string."
She vents softly, still holding that drone, looking down the hall. She thinks for a moment. "I hate the Decepticons for what they did to me. I tried to tell them the truth - I believed in them, once. They didn't care, Scattershot, they didn't care at all, they just saw a red badge and that was it. Maybe they had a good idea once, but now... ? Now they're just monsters. All they care about is burning the world down around them."
"I may not have come here by choice, but I think I'm going to stay. There's corruption in high places, and I want to do what Pax did. I want to try to fight it the right way. From inside."
"Well, it sounds good, kid. And we'll be happy to help, my mechs and I." Scattershot comments. "And well, sometimes ya gotta hit the marionette to find the puppetter." the Technobot comments. "Anyway, lets head on back to medical since ya and I are going to the same place for similar reasons." Then he pauses, and glances towards her. "Ya know..." he says thoughtfully. 
"If ya were one of those types that was to be a combiner.. ya have four sisters out there somewhere." he points out to her as he steps into the medical bay level. 
"How do you know they're sisters?" Shiftlock asks, following after Scattershot. "Maybe they're brothers!"
"Could be. Could just be." Scattershot says with a chuckle. "But then you'd have to share a lot of info with them all." he points out to her as he takes a seat back on the medbed. 
Shiftlock stops, needing to catch her breath. "... hold on. Just need to ... need to rest."
"Whoops. Okay, back to bed with you. That's enough exercise for one cycle." Scattershot says as he picks up the femme to carry her back to her bed to rest. 
Shiftlock nods. "Ugh... why is the room spinning... sorry..." She leans against Scattershot, and her perceptions get fuzzier and fuzzier. She shutters her optics and clenches her dental plates.
"Too much action for one day, Shift." Scattershot sounds amused, but as he sets her down in her bed, he's quick to gesture for the medics to come tend to her. 
The medics come in and take over, getting Shiftlock onto the berth and hooking up monitoring equipment to run diagnostics. Shiftlock is muttering to herself incoherently, limbs trembling erraticly. The lead nurse looks at the results, and then checks the datapad of the patient records. "Hmm. She should have stabilized by now," he murmurs, tapping his chin.
"Do we need to up the ratio of nucleon?" one of the assistant nurses asks.
"No - leave it as it is for now, I'm going to get one of the head technicians. This is going beyond standard repair." He hurries out the door.
"Slaggit." Scattershot rumbles, but he remains close by as he paces now as he tries to pay attention to the medics speaking about the femme and gain some idea of what the problem may be. As he passes by one of the monitors, he sneaks in a network link and starts downloading information, directly passing it to Lightspeed to get his opinion on it all. 
That's all he'll be able to do for now. "I'm sorry sir but we need to induce stasis lock until a spark technician can see her," the assistant nurse says to Scattershot, trying to shoo him out of the room. "We can keep you updated on her progress if you like."
With his damages, do you really think Scattershot is going to be easily shooed away. "Do what ya gotta and do it quick." the Technobot grumbles as he finishes the download and sends the information off to Lightspeed as he goes to take a seat and watch. 
"Oh, excuse me, are you kin? Endurae perhaps?" one nurse, a helicopter, asks gently, trying to be understanding and compassionate of the potential situation going on.
The other two nurses, a pair of ambulances, induce stasis lock. Shiftlock stops trembling, and relaxes into the equivalent of a deep sleep. The little drone hooked up to her still parks in the corner, beeping. Another injection of nucleon goes in, on schedule.
"Yeah." Scattershot lifts his chestplate. He has the same kind of innerlock for combiner technology. "We're siblin's. And ya ask me to leave one more time.." the mech pulls out his acid pellet rifle and pets it. "I'll just say no more firmly." 
The nurse laughs nervously. "Sir, that's -- that's not really appropriate here. Besides, you look like you're i need of repairs yourself."
"Good. Now that we've established I'm supposed to be here.." Scattershot says, unclipping the magazine from his rifle, checking it, and shoving it back in with a satisfying click. "Ya can go work on her and stop frettin on where I'm supposed to be, yeh?" 
** Radio: A-Chat ** Nurse Lynchpin speaks up. "E-excuse me, we need a spark technician, and... possibly some restraints."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Scattershot says, "One of you tin-plated dunderheads with the platinum plated degree get down here and tend to this gal before I go find someone to drag in here and handle it."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Feint says, "Oh... oh dear, well... the only resident spark expert on the premises is Mr. Pharma, and he's not available right now."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Feint says, "Is the patient stabilized? In stasis lock? I can do that much."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Scattershot says, "Oh for the love of Primus' right lugnut. She's in stasis lock. I'm goin to Tyger Pax, see if I can get my techs to come take a look at her."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Feint says, "Just let me have a look at the patient data."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Whirl says, "What the hell did you do to her?!"
** Radio: A-Chat ** Feint says, "Whirl, this is neither the time nor the place for accusation."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Feint says, "Sir, can I have the patient's name please? I'll check the records as I come down."
** Radio: Global ** Scattershot says, "Shiftlock."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Scattershot says, "Shiftlock."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Whirl says, "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO HER?"
** Radio: A-Chat ** Feint says, "-Whirl-. That is -enough-."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Whirl says, "I can't believe this crap."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Feint says, "I'm going to get to the bottom of this. Arguing isn't going to make her get well any faster."
Sitting in a chair near where Shiftlock is being tended to, Scattershot is sitting there with his rifle settled in his lap, optics dimmed as he seems to be having a conversation. "I don't like that idea.." the mech rumbles under his vocalizer, possibly into his comm system. 
** Radio: A-Chat ** Whirl says, "Tch! And I'm supposed to trust your word?"
The door opens a few moments later and a slender, well-curved aerial frame steps in. Toned in hues of blue, white and black, she has a datapad in her hand as she moves past the nurses. A gold chain with a Senate emblem hangs from her neck, identifying her position immediately. The nurses give her the kind of deference you'd expect. "All right," she states calmly, "she's locked down and stabilized. I'm checking her records now -- Scattershot, is it? I'll do my best."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Feint says, "Are we not all on the same team?"
** Radio: A-Chat ** Whirl says, "That doesn't change anything."
Senate emblem. Scattershot's optics brigten for a moment and then narrow. "Yeah. Ya do that." he rumbles as he studies curvy and blue as she moves towards Shiftlock. "Ya do what ya gotta do." he comments. "And I'll do the same." 
** Radio: A-Chat ** Feint says, "Are you angry at /me/ or are you angry at /Blurr/? Usually it's the latter."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Whirl says, "I'm angry at you both. I know what you did."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Feint says, "You're going to have to refresh my memory, because I'm fairly certain I've never met you in person."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Whirl says, "That doesn't matter!"
"My name is Feint, and before you get any ideas, no, I am not like the rest of -them-. I am a part of Senator Halogen's house, that's why I'm wearing this," Feint says with a pleasant smile, trying to put Scattershot at ease. She then swipes her finger across the medical records. The enormous set of multiple camera lenses on her torso and the front of her helm adjust. "... This doesn't make sense. She's getting a standard nucleon feed, she should have been able to return to duty by now."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Whirl says, "I know the kind of messed up stuff you do, that's all that matters and being on the same team wont change that."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Feint says, "Funny, I can say the same for you."
Scattershot frowns. He was sure that the cabin was mostly pressurized. And the drone would have given a warning if something was screwed up. "We were out for a flight earlier. I took her sub-orbital." he says with a screwing of his face. "But the cabin was pressurized." 
"That shouldn't affect her at all. The nucleon's there just to give her inner energon a boost to recharge the spark; because it's an internal system it should function regardless of a change of pressure or gravity," Feint explains. "This is more like - more like -failure to thrive- than anything else. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something wrong here."
"Ya mean she's acting like she don't want to live?" Scattershot asks, sounding incredious about the idea. "She has plenty of suitors. She has friends. She has a life outside of the Autobots. Ain't a damned thing that she shouldn't be fightin fer. Ya hear me, Shiftlock!" he yells towards her, "Ya got too much to fight fer, including fraggin that slaghead that did this to ya!" 
Feint holds up her hand. "That's enough Captain. Yelling isn't going to help her, she's in stasis lock. She can't even hear you." The aerodrone frame snaps her attention to the two remaining nurses. "Out. Both of you. You're dismissed."
One of them protests meekly. "But Madame Elect, we have orders to--" Feint points her finger to the door. "Out. NOW."
The two of them scurry off quickly, out of fear of that emblem around Feint's neck.
Scattershot stops his grumbling, not in deference to some damn emblem, but because well.. Feint's right. Instead, he stands there, arms over his chest, watching the femme at work. 
"What I am about to do goes no further than this room. Do you understand me?" Feint asks Scattershot, looking him directly in the optics.
"Yeah. I ain't seen nothin'." Scattershot says with a snort. "Just do what ya need ta." 
From the sides of Feint's body, two long silvery prehensile tendrils snake out. The tips of each open and retract, exposing a long needle in each. "I need to connect into her neurological systems while I perform a scan. She might be rejecting those upgrades."
Walking closer to Shiftlock she stands at the other fembot's side, and with great gentleness, slips the needles of one tentacle into the back of the speeder's neck, while the other sinks into the upper torso.
"...what the frag are ya doin?!" Scattershot hisses, though he wants to yell it at her as he steps forth, his rifle coming up to settle against Feint's temple. "...if yer fraggin her brainbox, I'll scramble yours." he says harshly. 
"I take it you've never seen this in action, Captain? Relax. I am doing nothing of the sort, and I'll thank you to put your gun down and listen to me first. If you shoot me now, there's a chance she goes with me. I don't want that to happen, and neither do you," Feint states, remaining perfectly still, her body language betraying nothing. "I looked through the list of her medics since she was enlisted, and one name in particular stood out to me. Do you happen to know a frame engineer by the name of Cipher?"
"...yeah." Scattershot rumbles. "Seen his name on the roster, but not much else." the technobot rumbles as he lowers the rifle from her temple, shelving it back over her shoulder as he frowns, studying the two femmes. 
Feint looks back to Shiftlock, concentrating on sifting lightly, professionally, through the architecture and file structure of the connected speeder's mind. "He specializes in "enforced loyalty". A lot of the newer recruits are passing through his hands these days, it seems. He wasn't content to just reduce Blurr to a helpless, obedient slave - no, I think he's finally been noticed by those in a higher position."
"And ya think that's what he's done to her?" Scattershot asks, looking down at Shiftlock and back to Feint. "Can ya reverse what he's done?" he asks her as he continues to observe the work between one femme and the other. 
"I can almost guarantee it. She was violently opposed to Security Forces until she was brought in here; the next day she was a sweet, tractable, child-like recruit." Feint stops and her exterior lighting brightens. "Ah, yes, there are his finger prints -- but they're all broken files, code commented out. Junk data waiting for the next purge cycle, it's as if she overwhelmed it with a brute force mental assault. Hah! I'd heard she was stubborn but this really does take the fuelcake." The camera lenses on her body change position and aperture. "I'd thought maybe he placed some kind of suicide-programming into her to cause her body to shut down on its own, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Everything checks clean." Feint detatches her cables from Shiftlock, coiling back into her frame.
"I see. And what can be done about it?" Scattershot finally decides to ask as he gives a darkening frown. "Besides going down, grabbin Cipher by his throat and draggin him up here to fix her and then rippin his head off when he's done?" he asks as he looks over at Feint. "Anything I can do?" 
Feint shakes her head and looks over her shoulder at Scattershot. "Don't bother with Cipher. If you kill him the IAA will just send another in his place. I found out the hard way when his predecessor tried to disintegrate me with a rail gun." Her hand on the circuit slab, she returns to gazing at Shiftlock and just seems to stare, very, very intently at the other femme, as if she could somehow burn a hole in her from the weight of her gaze alone.
"Yeah. Well. Kill enough of 'em and they'll stop sendin' em." Scattershot rumbles. And realizing that he may not be of any use here at the moment, he goes over, and touches Shiftlock on her shoulder. "Ya can't hear me, but ya keep fightin, ya hear me?" he says with a frown before he starts to pull away. 
"Do you have access to a private lab where you can do a chemical analysis?" Feint asks Scattershot before starts to walk way. Which... she can some how tell depite the fact that he's behind her and she is staring 180 degrees away from him.
"Yeah. Back in Tyger Pax." Scattershot comments as he turns his attention to the femme tending to Shiftlock. "What ya need analyzed?" he asks as he looks her over again. 
Unceremoniously Feint reaches over to the nucleon IV drone and *yanks* the line out of it! She holds the line closed in one hand and picks up the drone with the other. "Do me a favor and shoot the wall. I'll tell the medics you got angry and discharged your weapons in a fit of temper before I reasoned with you. Take the medication that's left inside the drone and have it analyzed, and for Primus' sake get rid of every sample once you know what it's composed of. There's a chance she's being /poisoned/."
"The frag..." Scattershot stares at the femme for a moment. To trust her or not to trust her. She's Senate, after all. Maybe she's lying about Cipher, just to get her hands on Shiftlock's mind and erase it yet again. He stands there for a moment, considering and then.. takes out his radio. 
** Radio: A-Chat ** Scattershot says, "Whirl."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Scattershot says, "Come keep an optic on Shiftlock. I need to investigate somethin'. Ya care as much as ya claim ya do, yer aft will be up here like it's bein' melted."
And with the transmission sent, Scattershot does indeed shoot the wall and makes a ton of noise, shoving the drone into his cockpit space. "I'll let ya know what I find." he grunts, switching out with his tag team partner once he arrives. 
** Radio: A-Chat ** Scattershot says, "And if Whirl ain't available, Arcee, if ya don't mind. Somethin ain't matching up. I'll tell ya about it later."
** Radio: A-Chat ** Arcee says, "Alright, I'm inbound."
Standing near the door of the medical lab, Scattershot is standing alone. A drone in his hand. Over where Feint is, she's tending to Shiftlock. And there's a nice hole in the wall of melting acid. Draw your own conclusions. 
A) Shiftlock's brain went boom and melted the wall. 
B) Scattershot shot the wall. 
C) Feint was marking her territory again. 
D) History Channel Guy: 'Aliens'. 
"Hello Arcee," Feint says without looking up as she removes the nucleon IV line. "It looks like Blurr isn't the only one getting his brain module routinely 'tidied'. On top of that I suspect a poisoning, but I am reluctant to take it to Mister 'We need an Autopsy' himself, as I believe that if it were poison, he'd happily inject it into Shiftlock himself."
Arcee finally arrives after some transit time has passed. She was very likely not in Iacon when she got the call to return. She hesitates to get very close to the surgery in progress, because she doesn't want to make one wrong move and kill the patient. Then again, there IS that hole in the wall...where did THAT come from? Wasn't this a delicate procedure?
"Well, no surprise that she's been through tampering, eh?" Arcee says to Feint. "But poisoned, too? Experimentation, maybe?"
"Good. Thanks fer comin', Arcee. Best for one Senate aide to watch another Senate aide or some slag like that." Scattershot rumbles, holding the remains of the drone, filled with whatever was getting injected into Shiftlock. "I'm taking this to my contacts in Tyger Pax to figure out what it is and how to neutralize it." the mech rumbles. "And then I'm gonna shove it in Cipher's head and pump him full of it." 
Fortunately there's no surgery for Arcee to interfere with; Shiftlock's in her hospital room, lying on a berth, in artificial stasis lock. Feint is removing an IV.
"Oh that sounds wonderful, I want to watch~" Feint sing-songs in response to Scattershot's comment on Cipher. "No, Arcee, if she -is- being poisoned, and it's not just straight out spark failure -- this is an inside job."
"...That mech," Arcee comments softly, looking from Scattershot, then to Feint, and finally over to Shiftlock's unconscious form. "I should do some more digging on him." It's a somewhat strange comment coming from her, perhaps alluding to the fact that she's already done some digging on Cipher, perhaps?
"Well, if he was poision' the femme over there.." Scattershot points over towards Shiftlock. "...you can dig out what's left of his neural net with an ice energon scoop when I'm done melting his brain box." the large Technobot comments before he turns to start on his way out of the medical bay to make the trip to Tyger Pax. 
"Thanks, Arcee." Scattershot offers, a nod of his head towards Feint and then he shoves the drone into a storage area and steps out to make the run to Tyger Pax.