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Hook didn’t understand combiners.
Sure, being part of one and having as extensive a knowledge about their bodies as one could in this war might give the impression he had expert insight, but when it came to actually understanding combiners, he barely had any idea where to start.
It was a little known fact that Devastator could actually stay together and function minimally even without the head component on, thus allowing Hook to do maintenance. Being the head component, however, came with the disadvantage of not being able to detach and try to talk to Devastator in person. In addition, even though Scrapper had also tried this, it seemed that being suddenly approached by their own limb trying to do small talk was as awkward to a combiner as it would be to any mech. In the end, that hadn't gone much anywhere, and Hook still didn’t really know what went on in Devastator’s personal processor.
Yes, the wants and needs of the team and the combiners were intimately intertwined; but as great of a gestalt team they were, despite of how smoothly they operated (largely thanks to Hook's excellent teamwork skills, thank you very much), knowledge of what the other side wanted tended to pass better in one direction than the other. That was to say, Devastator probably understood more of the Constructicons forming him than they of Devastator.
So when he was tasked to evaluate Menasor, both mentally and mechanically, Hook knew it'd be an exercise in frustration, despite his unique experience. Exactly how frustrating was what he hadn’t anticipated.
The biggest hurdle to pass had been getting Menasor to stay still and docile enough to be examined, and Hook was baffled as to why .
Despite to the destruction they could cause, combiners left on their own were usually rather docile and ponderous mechs. Their processors were slower than those of normal bots, and so staying put was practically their default state of existing. Even the most dysfunctional gestalt usually had trouble when it came to doing things, not with being calm and quiet. In addition, there was little to nothing that could harm a combiner, and thus they tended to be utterly self-assured.
None of which you could have guessed, looking at Menasor.
After two failed attempts to start medical scans, Hook had had to evacuate the hall they had arranged for the examination, as Menasor was downright jittery and kept trying to attack Hook’s helpers. It kept glancing around with remarkably speedy movements of its head, in order to keep an eye on the small mechs it seemed to somehow register as a threat. The only two reasons that they had avoided casualties (other than the floor, which was now marked by several grooves from the combiners claws) were, firstly, because Skywarp had had the common sense to warp out as soon as he saw the combiner reaching for him, and secondly, because the hall was less than optimal for the combiner.
It wasn’t high enough for Menasor to stand, and staying crouched severely limited its range of movement. This did create its own issues though, as being stationed on a platform on Menasor's eye level meant that Hook had spent quite some time dodging and cursing at Menasor's horns. Every time the idiotic combiner turned its head to assess a nonexistent threat that had spooked it, its horns cut through the space like particularly vicious log-utilizing traps from human movies.
Throwing everyone else out had helped in that Menasor focused its attention solely on Hook. Unfortunately, if there was something to distract you from doing your work, it was being stalked by two optics the size of a small car.
Hook made sure to pour every ounce of cold indifference towards the combiner into his EM field, and kept his visor to the scanner readings he had managed to take, jotting down notes on his datapad.
"LET MENASOR READ."
Hook kept his visor to his datapad, feigning ignorance.
"LET MENASOR READ."
Oh Primus.
It wasn’t until hot air gusted down his back that Hook turned to find Menasor craning its neck, trying to read his datapad from over his shoulder.
Hook suppressed a shiver and lifted the datapad enough for the combiner to squint at the item, barely larger than its mechanical pupil.
After a moment of concentrated squinting, it pulled back looking dissatisfied.
"MENASOR NOT UNDERSTAND."
"What a surprise there," Hook said, "you're not supposed to, they're scientific terms relating to your mechanical functions for medical use."
After a moment of deliberation, he added: "Also, indoor voice , please!"
Menasor cocked its head at him. It seemed to be captivated by Hook, red optics unblinkingly following him around as he used this chance to start further long range scans, preparing the medical computer to be plugged into Menasor.
With the combiner finally settled and sitting down, seemingly content to follow Hook walking back and forth collecting readings, he sent in a few medical drones and ordered Menasor to be still for them, as they would check the combining seams on its lower limbs.
The little drones rolled towards Menasor with their lowest speed setting, having been ordered to approach as non-threateningly as a drone could, in hopes of avoiding riling up the combiner again. Menasor turned to consider the drones, brow furrowing, and made a few mock swipes at them that didn’t connect. Gaining no reaction, the combiner proceeded to gently inspect one of the faceless drones by poking at it.
Hook had barely turned back to reading the data provided by the drones when a high-pitch squeal erupted from one of the machines, quickly followed by another. While ever so gently cradling a drone in its palm, Menasor had started to rip its arms off.
It wasn’t the unmitigated violence that really bothered Hook, but rather the quite disgustingly endearing look of pure curiosity and joy on the combiner’s faceplates, as it watched the drone squirm.
"What do you think you're doing?!" Hook shouted over the screams of the drone. Maybe programming self-preservation protocols into them had been a mistake.
A firm inspecting poke of a claw ruptured the drone's chest cavity, putting it out of its misery. After a moment’s stupefied silence, seeing that Menasor had begun to eye another drone, Hook resorted to throwing his stylus at Menasor's helm.
"MENASOR MAKE IT DO NOISE," the combiner said, beaming at Hook and lifting the offlined drone for him to see.
"MENASOR MAKE IT MOVE."
A screech of metal followed by a pained, staticky squeal that abruptly ended, distracted Hook from his notes. He sighed deep and sent in another drone.
"Lord Megatron, there is something wrong with Menasor."
"You don't say, Hook," Megatron sneered. The Stunticons as a whole had been a bigger disappointment than he cared to admit, and their combined form, though extremely powerful, had been unwieldy: its failure to defeat the Autobots was evident for all to see.
"Menasor has deficient verbal skills, and the interference of base urges and petulant aggression in executing orders goes beyond what I'd expect even from the most undisciplined gestalt. Frankly, it acts more like a…a human child in its early development stages, than a mech.”
Megatron threw a disbelieving glance at the medic. "Surely you're exaggerating."
"I don’t believe I am," Hook said, holding firm.
"Pray tell," Megatron growled, "since you seem so knowledgeable on this, exactly how much does researching fleshling breeding benefit our goals?"
"It’s only logical to have a rudimentary knowledge on the basic workings of the native species we need to work with and against, to better know their weak points. Sometimes this does include gathering…less currently vital information, since thus far I have not yet witnessed a species to write publicly available documentation of their exploitable faults for the benefit of invaders." Hook knew his tone was starting to get out of line, but Primus damn it, as a medic he had the right to research such topics if he so pleased! Even if he really did it just to feel smug about their own superior anatomy in comparison to organics.
Megatron waved his servo with a roll of his optics, urging the medic to get on with the more pressing topic.
"Specifically in the case of Menasor," Hook continued, "it seems to get an inordinate amount of enjoyment from hurting things."
"Well, at least there's something good in it," Megatron said, clearly unimpressed with the issue.
"My Lord, the problem is that I don’t think Menasor understands it’s causing pain," Hook urged, "and I fear it might have to do with the, uh…rather miraculous origins of the Stunticons."
As if creating the Stunticons from Earth vehicles, practically non-sentient dolls if you were to think of it that way, wasn’t hard enough to believe, Megatron having basically shouted their mythical creator-supercomputer into giving minds to the constructs was even more outrageous. Furthermore, since the mechs who witnessed this were few, rumors and theories had run rampant.
Privately, Hook believed that Megatron had made a badly thought out decision when he’d more or less told Vector Sigma to make the Stunticons the opposite of Autobots, thinking it'd be a shorthand for making them the perfect Decepticons.
But the opposite of an Autobot wasn't a Decepticon, not really, Hook thought; it was easy to forget in the millions-of-years-spanning war, but for the most part, both sides had been forged much the same. When it came to ethics, upon onlining they had all been programmed with an understanding of cause and effect, of consequences. True, the Decepticons these days sported many more sick fraggers and cruelty was more common than among Autobots, but such things weren't exclusive to either side. Besides, these were largely learned responses from millennia of being rewarded for certain behavior. Even the worst sadist was a sadist precisely because they understood they were causing pain.
What Hook had found when going through Menasor’s programming, however, was a gaping emptiness where many of the preprogrammed protocols of an adult mech should be.
Menasor wasn't an efficient fighter because it liked hurting others, it was efficient because it lacked the ability to comprehend anything except what it felt. If you bothered Menasor, it hurt you to make you go away. If you being in pain amused it, it hurt you more to amuse itself. The pain others felt was a side-note that didn’t even register in its processor.
Some Decepticons thought this should be blamed on the Earth materials somehow responding to the fleshlings that were in constant contact with them, which Hook felt was too preposterously spiritual to even consider. He favored the perhaps the more likely option: it being a subtle ‘frag you’ from Vector Sigma. ‘Oh so you want mechs that hate everything positive in our race? Well here, have a bunch of impossible to work with fragholes with personality glitches that shouldn't even be possible outside organic species.’
"In summary, it's likely that Menasor will have to be…taught…to understand the things that everyone else has been preprogrammed with, since the combiner is clearly not meshing with the knowledge of its components. And supplanting its missing coding by copying Devastator’s would require specialized knowledge that's frankly impossible to find anymore,” Hook said, ending his analysis.
Megatron thought for a while. "How would one even begin to do that?” he asked, "and more importantly, if you succeed, can you guarantee that Menasor will stay as ruthless to our enemies as it is now?"
"I don't know," Hook had to admit. "But if we don't do something, the issues Menasor is exhibiting now risk becoming exponentially worse as time goes on."
"If the problems of the combiner and its components exacerbate each other," he continued, "by the end of the war, we might have something uncontrollable in our servos."
"By the end of the war," Megatron contemplated, "they will not be needed anymore."
"…..I understand, Lord Megatron," Hook mumbled, and with a stiff nod, left to return to his medbay.