The Alchemor hadn't always been a prison ship. There were ships for comedy shows, ships for gambling, ships for prisoners, ships for just about everything, but the Alchemor wasn't always a prison ship.
It was a mental asylum.
It had some of the worst: a femme with a habit of clinging to the bars and screaming shiny whenever someone walked by with well-waxed armor, a mech who caused destruction everywhere he went...those were the "better" cases.
But the only things those bots really did was offend people (like exclaiming 'Ey yo when something impressed, bothered, or angered the speaker), bother people (SHINY!), and disturb people (walking sideways, making "deals" to avoid conflict). But they had hundreds and dozens of complaints, and so they were put on the Alchemor.
Among them was Steeljaw, Thunderhoof, Filch, and former heroes Nightshade, Knock Out, and Megatron.
Steeljaw was kept in a dark, cold room from being abrasive and rough. He had been in and out of asylums and work, because whenever the boss did something unfair, he would create a group of coworkers to fight back, sometimes with words and other times with his dangerous claws and teeth.
Thunderhoof was collared, tagged, and chained from the ceiling so he couldn't lash out. The officers on the Alchemor had wanted to cut his antlers off, but he had bitten everyone that tried, resulting in the shock collar now buzzing around his neck. His greatest crime was running "operations". No one really ever knew what, exactly, the operations were about. Every time there was an investigation, they came up empty. So they reasoned that Thunderhoof was mentally unstable.
Filch stole things. Not just anything. Shiny things. She loved those more than anything, probably because she only saw things that were shiny. But the officials didn't know that. They just saw her as a danger to anyone shiny, since she robbed things from people to build her nest. When they found her, she was laying on everything from gems to pieces of Iacon's buildings. She had to be drawn away with a waxed piece of armor. The only word she knew was shiny, and because that often wore down on an official's nerves, she was gagged, even when she reverted to her bird form.
Nightshade was a Decepticon. That landed her in her first mental asylum. Then they heard she killed her carrier. That got her sent to a different asylum. When she gave vague answers that led them to believe she was her carrier's murderer, they sent her to Rung, who got her to confess not only being a murderer, but her undying love for a mech that spent only enough time to get her carrying. That landed her on the Alchemor as a murderer and an obsessed femme of three, who were all grown up and informed their carrier had passed quietly in her sleep at a very unfortunately young age from a made-up disease.
Knock Out was too shiny, which led everyone to believe he was hiding something that only The Doctor could pry from the peeved medic. Only, The Doctor came around every other eon, so until the mech either found something wrong with the former 'con or found him completely healthy, he was to stay on the Alchemor.
Their days go as follows:
Wake Up
Refuel
Bath
Exercise
Refuel
Therapy
Medication
Refuel
Go To Sleep
Somewhere in between the written-in-stone schedule, officials would come to "treat" the patients. Sometimes this involved tying an Earth coin (a nickel) to a string and making it slide across the floor of Filch's cell. It made her run around, often slamming into the bars. Other times, it involved putting black stickers on Knockout and making his optics blurry with a simple plung of a syringe into his neck so that he thought there was something on his armor. He would scratch and rub and whine, ruining his finish in the process of making it better, but unable to quit. The rare times, it involved rape.
Thunderhoof got the most of it. He was collared, after all, and that collar kept him from fighting back. Several slaps to the face and shocks to his vocalizer did nothing to improve his speech. His antlers were perfect things to tug, jerk on, and ruin. Even though Thunderhoof was a favorite, the others got tastes of rape.
Knock Out would often be too preoccupied with getting his finish perfect, so his aft would be easy to slam into. Steeljaw could be muzzled and collared. Filch could be gagged and bound up.
Nightshade was harder. She refused to be near the officials. Because they did not separate the genders, she got to watch her neighbors Filch and Thunderhoof get raped every day. Sometimes the officials would torture her, but most days she was excluded from everything simply because they didn't know how to handle her.
Right now, they were playing recordings of Starscream, dangling a soft toy of him within reach they had found when they retrieved her from her home. She didn't whine for them, didn't beg to be left alone. She just sat and stared. And that made them angry enough to "teach her a lesson".
Her cries reached Megatron, who was isolated.
He was struggling to overcome his addiction to Dark Energon. They excluded him as well, but not because they hated him or didn't want to touch him. They didn't know he was on the ship at all. He was dying, bound up and collared and shackled. He hadn't refueled since the first day he came in with Nightshade and Knock Out pressing against him for support.
Where was his friends? Starscream was dead. Soundwave, too, had eventually been brought back and killed. Optimus was dead. The Autobots thought he was dead. No one was alive or aware that he was dying on the very ship that promised to heal him.
Only a little minicon was aware of the things going on, and he had just learned about Megatron from his wanderings in the halls. While the other officials left Nightshade to bleed and cry, he slipped into her cell to soothe her hurts and stroke her helm. He cleaned her up and left her a big cube of Energon.
He gave Filch more nickels than she knew what to do with. She nuzzled up to him, chittering and giggling while she chased them across the floor.
He uncollared Thunderhoof and bathed him, fixing his antlers and giving him treats for not attacking him like he did to the others.
He unchained Steeljaw and let the mech follow him around the halls while he did chores around the other patients.
He polished and buffered Knock Out, never tiring of the mech.
He earned the nickname Fixit from the patients, and he adopted that as his name instead of G-98. So when the Alchemor became a prison ship to appease the Cybertronian society, he was the only official with the ability to soothe and care for the prisoners.