Work Text:
After the situation with Decima was resolved, things slowly started to go back to normal. Or at least what passed for normal for Team Machine. Sadly they had had to relocate to new homes, and established new safe houses and base of operations. But as the numbers started to come in they settled back into their patterns of research and observation to try and head off whatever violence the Machine had foreseen.
Until the day they received a number that was 5 digits instead of the usual 9.
It was accompanied by considerable consternation as they tried to decipher what the number could mean. Finally, they hit upon license plate number, and from there it could be traced to a rather banged up car in one of the cities impound lots. It was no problem forging the necessary paper work to obtain the vehicle and having it towed to a secure location. Then they all began to try and puzzle out what the significance of a car one step away from the junk heap could be. They could find no history on the vehicle, no suspicious packages hidden inside, nothing to indicate why the Machine should have taken an interest.
Eventually they abandoned their attempts to unravel the mystery as new numbers came in and required their attention. Since their interest in the battered wreck had waned Fusco called dibs on the car. He thought it might make a nice project for himself and his son to work on restoring together. Lionel hadn’t gotten to spend as much time as he would have liked with Lee recently and he was eager for some way to bond with the boy.
It was perhaps a comment on the way his life had been going recently when Lionel's first thought was “it just figures” when during one of their restoration sessions the battered yellow car transformed into a battered yellow robot.
Fortunately the robot seemed friendly. And the mystery of the Machine's interest was finally solved.
The one good thing about the whole misadventure was that it firmly secured Lionel's position as The Coolest Dad Ever.