Chapter Text
“Oh scrap.”, Bumblebee muttered and Knockout couldn’t help but whole-sparkedly agree.
“What was that?!”, he exclaimed as he closed in on the bot’s altmode.
“Predaking.”, the scout responded, voice tense.
Knockout’s spark flickered dangerously within his chassis. That would explain why the rumbling had sounded so awfully familiar.
“ Predaking?!”, he repeated nonetheless, sensors already on high alert.
If patching up Airachnid after a romp with Arcee had been a pain, repairing Starscream after an unsuccessful attempt at ‘training’ the predacon was enough to give Knockout nightmares while he was awake.
“He’s here?!”, he yelled, before tacking on, “He’s alive?!”
“ Yes!”, Bumblebee answered, “Now slow down! Our best bet is talking him down – unless you want his hunting instincts to kick in!”
Just as his last glyphs found the air, the yellow scout hit his brakes, throwing up a cloud of rust flakes.
A few kliks later, Knockout followed his lead. The bot was the expert here.
Together they stood, at the edge of an invisible line that Knockout only now realized had been followed quite closely by Bumblebee. Less so by the red medic.
Frag.
The ground shook with the weight of the landing predacon. He threw his head back, letting out another mighty roar before angling his head down to look at the two mechs.
Bumblebee inclined his helm respectfully. Knockout hurried to do the same. “Predaking. What brings you out here?”
The gigantic dragon took a moment to transform into botmode before answering. His expression read as nothing but displeased. “You are trespassing. The question should be directed at you .”
The yellow scout raised his helm again, meeting the optics of the giant mech fearlessly. “I did not step a single wheel into your territory, Predaking.”, he remarked, voice resolute.
The predacon’s gaze slid from the yellow bot to Knockout, who couldn’t quite hide the stutter in his vents.
“No, perhaps not. But this one did.”
Immediately, Bumblebee stretched out his left servo, almost as though he was trying to protect Knockout.
The red medic reset his optics, quite taken aback by the gesture. Yet a glance at the scout’s helm revealed that he was resolutely staring at Predaking.
“Knockout is not an autobot and therefore not part of our agreement.”, the yellow scout remarked, voice even, despite the latent fear pulsing through his field.
A field Knockout could only pick up on because the autobot had stepped closer to him, right servo emitting a low whine like combat protocols just at the edge of kicking in.
Despite the situation Knockout couldn’t help but feel appreciative of the other bot. Sure, a tiny scout would hardly be much of an obstacle to a mech like Predaking – but perhaps Bumblebee’s sacrifice could buy the red medic the few precious breems he needed to escape.
…Not that he had anywhere to escape to.
(The autobots could use another medic.)
“Yet still he intrudes upon my territory.”, the predacon rumbled.
Once again, before Knockout had even the chance to open his intake and explain himself, talk himself out of trouble – as he’d done many times on the Nemesis – Blumblebee spoke up.
“Which is my fault. I neglected to tell him that we were driving along your borders. I apologize. It will not happen again.”
Predaking’s gaze landed on Knockout’s optics again.
The red medic recalled unfreezing the other’s lines after he had returned to the Nemesis. He recalled buffing out dents and scratches of Predaking’s plating after fixing up Starscream. Because while Shockwave had primarily cared for the predacon, Knockout had taken over whenever the scientist was too busy or otherwise preoccupied.
He pulled on those memory files now, a calming smile stretching his faceplate. “Just this once, Predaking.”, he said, voice in that same cadence he’d used to soothe the distressed predacon during a routine inspection. They hadn’t realized quite how sentient he was, back then, but the voice still appeared to have an effect on the mech.
His ruffled plating flattened almost imperceptibly, frown faintly smoothing out. “…Fine.”, the king rumbled, “Just this once. But after today you are bound by the same rules as the autobots.”
Knockout inclined his helm.
Predaking remained, the heavy gaze from his optics burning into Knockout’s plating as he and Bumblebee sped away.
The red medic made sure to follow the scout’s movements exactly, this time. As they were driving, he checked his mirrors several times, but the tell-tale speck of a predacon in the sky did not follow them.
They were fine.
For now. Probably.
“Where exactly are we even going?”, Knockout questioned, his servo slipping from the rough edge of the jagged piece of metal he was currently climbing. A heavy vent of warm air poured out of his frame in an effort to quell his overheating. “I thought you didn’t know where those vehicons snuck off to!”
“I don’t.”, Bumblebee confessed, turning to offer the medic his own servo. “But when I followed them, I always lost them around the same area. So that’s where we’re going.”
A strained groan left Knockout’s main intake as he accepted (mildly bewildered) the scout’s offered help and pulled himself the rest of the way up. Luckily they’d reached the top by now, leaving them stood atop of a hill of rubble and distorted metal.
The medic allowed himself a few kliks of respite, cycling his vents. “Fantastic.”, he muttered.
The yellow bot shrugged, a mischievous grin decorating his faceplate. “Race you to the bottom?”
“What do you mean?”, Knockout asked, optics narrowing. He didn’t like the particular twinkle in the bot’s expression.
The yellow scout turned, jumped and transformed mid-air. “Last one there is a rotten scraplet!”, he yelled.
His tires turned for a moment, before finally gaining traction. He shot forward, rapidly descending the pile of scrap.
“You spark of a—“, Knockout exclaimed, a faint bit of amusement curling through him as he transformed as well.
His altmode was set a bit too low for a race across the uneven, rough surface. He could feel the scratches in his undercarriage.
But Bumblebee had challenged him to a race and Knockout was nothing if not the fastest race car on Cybertron – or earth, for that matter.
He floored his gas petal, using a mild transformation to pull his undercarriage a little farther up. It wasn’t like he needed room for passengers right now.
After a few kliks he shot past the yellow scout, giving him an amused “See you at the finish line!”, as he passed.
“Hey!”, the bot answered, engine revving as he kicked into a higher gear, “Get back here!”
Knockout laughed, enjoying the breeze of the wind against his plating. And this time, he didn’t even feel stifled by the latent fear that a predacon would swoop down and grab him!
Honestly, he’d missed this – perhaps even more than his clean plating. No, no, definitely not more than his mint condition paint, actually.
But it was nice nonetheless, being able to push himself past his limits like this again. Stretching his wheels.
Really, it was almost worth----
Woah!
Bumblebee cursed the fact that he wasn’t as fast as Knockout – but only a little bit. He felt too giddy to be properly angry. Usually he and Smokescreen would go on races together across Cybertron’s wasteland – when they found the time, anyway – but something about chasing Knockout down this hill felt… exhilarating in a way that racing Smokescreen hadn’t.
“I’ll catch you!”, the yellow bot yelled, evading a particularly obstructive protrusion of sharpened metal.
As they raced on, Knockout gained speed, weaving between debris and jutting rocks alike, red paint disappearing between all the obstacles at semi-regular intervals.
Bumblebee didn’t mind much, the anxiety of loosing the ‘con minimal, considering the volume of his engine and the delighted laughter filling the air.
…Until the noise of Knockout’s engine abruptly cut off, as did his cackle.
Bumblebee came to a halt behind the last obstacle he’d avoided, transforming back into bot mode in the process.
Silence .
The utter, absolute silence of an undead planet that was still rebuilding itself.
“Knockout?”, he called cautiously, optics moving frantically to catch a glimpse of that red plating. There was nothing besides the occasional stain of rust. “Knockout!”
It was Arcee that found him in the end, digging in a pile of rubble, moving pieces of debris, seemingly at random.
His voicebox had since fallen silent, only his anxious vents filling the dead space.
Arcee transformed, watching with concern as the former scout collapsed servos clutching his helm.
As she closed in, footsteps silent, her audials picked up on quiet mutterings falling from Bumblebee’s intake.
“No, no, no, I lost him, how could I lose him?! No, no, no! Optimus is gonna be--- no, no!”
“…Bee?”
The yellow scout shot to his peds instantly, whipping around to meet Arcee’s optics. His stance failed to be anything remotely relaxed, despite his obvious attempt to make it seem that way.
“Arcee! What, uh, a pleasant surprise! Hey! What, uhm, brings you to this, errr, beautiful spot…?”
He nearly fell to his faceplate as he leaned against a particularly unstable pile of debris, that, predictably, fell over with a loud crash.
Arcee raised one optic ridge questioningly. She crossed her arms. “Bee, what’s wrong?”
“Wrong? Uh, nothing! Nothing’s wrong.”, a fake smile decorated the former scout’s faceplate.
The motorcycle remained unmoved, simply kept staring at Bumblebee with narrowed optics.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the yellow bot slumped with a heavy ex-vent. “Fine… I… may havefreedKnockoutandthenimmediatelylosthim.”
A heavy vent left Arcee’s intake. “I knew this would happen.”
The yellow bot’s optic’s shot wide in surprise. He even drifted back into beeping in his puzzlement. “You knew?!”
“I wasn’t sure why you were sneaking all over the Nemesis but then Knockout’s complaining suddenly and mysteriously stopped. After an entire two weeks with only breaks for refueling.”, Arcee explained, field curling with amusement at the sheepish embarrassment flooding Bumblebee’s. “Besides, you’ve been pestering us about the vehicons almost since we’ve arrived here.”
“So, uhm… are you going to help me find him…?”
“I am. And then we’re bringing him back to the Nemesis and nobody has to know about this little excursion, alright?”
The yellow bot’s shoulders slumped. “…right.”
Arcee then reached a servo up to the side of her helm. A frown pulled at her faceplate. “You haven’t tried to comm him yet?”
Bumblebee shrugged. “I can’t. Didn’t ask for his comm line.”, a rookie mistake, really, in the long line of mistakes he’d made today. Starting with getting up in the first place.
He missed his berth.
His HUD pinged with a message from Arcee.
“Here, try this, it’s an old ‘con line we picked up ages ago.”
Knockout landed mid-transformation, impact pushing all the air out of his systems with a forced vent. After a brief moment of recollecting himself and closing a few pop-ups informing him of bruised parts, he transformed fully.
His nightvision – while never measuring up to the various miner builds – was still much better than most autobots’. As such he was quite capable of seeing the absolute horror that surrounded him.
He couldn’t help a sharp invent.
A wide, rather gigantic room – perhaps a warehouse of some kind, when Cybertron was still populated? – stretched out around him. Throughout the entire thing, in a grid-like formation, lay injured vehicons. Some of them were placed on raised platforms, but most simply rested on the metal floor.
Yeah, sure, rested .
There must have been at least, what, fifty? A hundred?
Sending a careful glance around the room – he was the only visible mech on their peds – he raised his gaze upward. He’d fallen through a hole in the ceiling, after all... Maybe there were a few of those and the drones had simply fallen into a perfect grid…?
But above Knockout there wasn’t a single pinprick of light coming from the hardly visible roof.
Lowering his gaze again and finding himself deprived of options, Knockout carefully crept forward.
Another glance was sent around the room, but he remained the only mech upright, before he knelt down beside the first downed vehicon he reached. From what he could see the poor thing had several snapped struts in his ped, leaving it sticking out at an odd angle.
There was something haphazardly wrapped around the limb, as though somebody had – very, very badly – tried to fix the mech. But, well. The job was so shoddily done, Knockout felt second-servo embarrassment for the poor sod who’d attempted it.
Still he reached out to where the drones had their medical ports. Usually hooking oneself up to a mech that was unconscious for unknown reasons was a sure-fire way to get a virus, but Knockout had been retrofitted with special medic firewalls once he’d joined the decepticons.
A fond memory, really, with Breakdown threatening that upper Iacon medic into giving up the specialty upgrades. He missed his assistant.
With a shake of his helm Knockout cleared his cache and plugged himself into the vehicon’s medical port.
To his surprise he found that the mech was still alive. Indeed, he’d only been forcefully put into stasis – a process that must have been about as rudimentary and terribly executed as the botched ‘repair job’.
The mech’s code was a mess, jumbled and tangled. Whenever he woke up, he’d have to do some intense deep cleaning through his personality matrix before he could properly… be a person again.
Knockout pulled back, plug receding back into his arm plating. With a considering look he turned to the vehicon at his other side. This one appeared to have received a rather crushing reminder of Cybertron’s gravity – against his torso.
Not that it looked particularly lethal either, however. The damage appeared quite superficial, really, mostly dented plating. Maybe some bruising on the protoform beneath.
Still, somebody had gone to the trouble of wrapping an energon compression mesh loosely around the vehicon’s middle. A quite useless affair, even if it wasn’t such an amateur wrap – there wasn’t a single drop of lost energon on the floor beneath the hurt vehicon.
Plugging into this drone confirmed that he, too, had been forced into stasis and had some scrambled code to sort through, but was otherwise fine.
Casting another look across the bodies strewn over the floor, the others looked much the same. Superficial damage, broken struts, everyone sporting such a terrible, awful ‘repair job’ that Knockout was certain not even Starscream would have done this bad.
Not a single drop of spilled energon in sight.
Maybe another drone had done it? They weren’t programmed in the slightest with medical procedures.
Looked like Bumblebee’s theory was starting to hold more water.
…
Knockout grimaced. When had he even picked up so many human phrases? He felt a little disgusted at himself.
At least the rock in his ped had not survived the fall from the ceiling, leaving him unimpeded as he stood up again.
Quite certain that there was nothing to fear, here, except for medical ineptness, Knockout began making his way toward the rectangular hole in the opposite wall. It looked quite like a doorway.
The hallway beyond it was dim, but a little more illuminated than the room before. A thin string of lights ran along the floor, giving off just a bare minimum of a glow.
Not that it revealed much besides barebones metal walls and floors. Though in the distance Knockout could see the light turning a corner.
Throwing a last, paranoid glance over his shoulder strut – and suppressing a shiver at the still quite off-putting sight of offline mechs – the red medic made his way into the unknown. His pedsteps were as quiet as he could make them, yet still not as quiet as he would like them to be.
While the drones hadn’t been dead, as he knew now, seeing them lined up like that was still… off-putting , to say the least.
The faint ping of a comm signal drew his attention for a moment, away from the eerily empty hallway.
>Knockout?
The enquiry was simple, a quick, careful message sent into an old decepticon channel that nobody had used in several joors. Since the autobots had discovered it.
Bumblebee! How’s it going up there?<
Not even a klik after Knockout sent his answer, the reply hit him.
>What happened? Where are you?
I have no idea. But I found your vehicons.<
Knockout truthfully replied, even adding a shrug though nobody was there to see it.
A faint clanking noise reached his audials suddenly, drawing his attention. For a few kliks he deliberated, before creeping the rest of the way forward and peeking around the corner.
Hold on.<
What he saw drew a vent of relief from him. Placing both servos on his hip struts, he strolled past the corner and met the vehicon – Steve, if he recalled correctly – helm-on.
The vehicon in question dropped the rolls of energon compression mesh he was carrying as he caught sight of the red mech. “Knockout! Sir!”, he yelped, quickly leaning down to reclaim his lost cargo.
Knockout stopped a few paces in front of the vehicon, crossed his arms and watched the drone with a raised optic ridge. “What are those for?”
The vehicone stuttered in his movements for a moment, before standing up again, uncertainly clutching the soft material to his chassis. “Uhm, changing their bandages. Sir.”
A heaved sigh left the medic’s intake. “Really, Steve, you should know better.”
A frown marred Knockout’s faceplate as he faintly noted the sound of a comm'd conversation. “…I’m sorry, sir.”, the vehicon remarked, clutching his mesh rolls closer. “If you would, just, come with me?”
The non-sequitur had Knockout lean back, a suspicious slant to his optics. “Sure, Stevie.”, he remarked but followed, just a few paces behind the vehicon.
>Knockout? What’s going on?
Still no idea. Found one that’s awake. Will keep you posted.<
The hallway twisted a few more times before they came to a door. The vehicon had to awkwardly maneuver the cargo in his arms to manage the mechanism and get it to open, but eventually Knockout and Steve stepped into the room.
A room that was far more brightly lit than the hallway leading there, causing Knockout to squint his optics as he manually re-arranged their settings.
Before he’d even finished adjusting, a gratingly familiar voice cut through the air and soured his mood.
“Knockout! What a… pleasant surprise.”
“Starscream.”, the medic replied, finally finding the mech in question. “A sentiment I can only return.”
Being stuck imprisoned hadn’t exactly given Knockout the knowledge of what had happened to the seeker, though seeing him now made a twinge of agitation rear it’s helm. The flight-model’s paint wasn’t necessarily impeccable, but he was in far better shape than Knockout. Honestly, even Bumblebee hadn’t quite looked that good, and he was supposedly on the side that had won.
(And so is Megatron)
“I’m sure.”, Starscream muttered, optics taking in the absolute disaster of Knockout’s paint. Honestly, the medic didn’t even want to think about what he currently must look like, so he averted his optics, taking in the room around them instead.
“Yes, well, I’ve seen your collection of vehicons and I must say, Starscream, even for you that seems a strange hobby.”, he remarked, optics trailing the transparasteel tubes lining the walls of the room.
Some kind of yellow-ish liquid lazily bubbled away in them, though they disappeared through the metal ceiling and floor, leaving their purpose entirely unknown to Knockout. Some of them sported a tap for controlling the pressure within, presumably.
The other side of the room was taken up by a desks, an array of datapads scattered across their surfaces. A currently off console sat in the very middle of the desks.
“Hm, I suppose.”, Starscream replied, drawing Knockout’s attention back to the seeker fully. “Though still better than hanging out with those… autobot pests that murdered Lord Megatron.”
Knockout’s lines ran cold, but his field was already pulled in close and his faceplate betrayed none of his emotions. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The seeker huffed out a laugh. “Really, Knockout, you should know better than to use an old decepticon channel.”
“Starscream, wait—”
It was too late. He felt a tiny pinprick of pain in the cables along his neck, his medical systems instantly kicking into high gear to find what had just been injected straight into his energon.
A vehicon that had fumbled even the most basic of medical care could not have hit one of Knockout’s main lines like that, not past his excessive neck plating, especially since his frame had been remodeled quite a few times and his main lines where nowhere near where his standard blueprints would claim them to be.
A tranquilizer strong enough to knock a predacon off his peds, that was what had just been injected into him, his processor informed him as the world began to blur before his optics.
His leg struts gave in, and the pain from his knee joints felt muted as they impacted with the ground.
“You shouldn’t have chosen the losing side, Knockout.”, Starscream taunted from somewhere that sounded far, far away.
“It was quite illogical.”, another voice joined in, one that Knockout only just identified as Shockwave’s.
The front of his chassis hit the ground, cool metal against his faceplate acting almost like an anchor, pulling a fleck of consciousness back into him.
He wanted to curse, beg, talk his way out of this situation – I didn’t side with them, of course I didn’t, I’m just pretending, deceiving – but he hadn’t mentioned his connections out loud, let alone the comms he was sharing with Bumblebee; his defense would be a weak one. An illogical one, most certainly.
Besides, Knockout’s vocaliser was, by now, far out of the reach of his processor and his intake wouldn’t open far enough to let any noise escape, anyway. Through faint, swirling thoughts that slowly crumbled away to nothing, Knockout sent one last message over comms.
Frag you, Starscream.<