Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers. This was posted for my birthday! Happy Birthday to me! This story is partly dedicated to the real Ultraviolet. You know who you are.
"Knock Knock! Wake up!"
Knock Out rolled over and tried to ignore his brother's annoying pounding on his bedroom door.
"Wake u-u-up!" yelled Starfire.
"Shut up!" the red sparkling yelled back.
"What are you doing?"
"Recharging."
"Then how come you're talking?"
"Because a certain little idiot came pounding on my door at one o'clock in the morning."
"WAKE UP!"
"I already woke up."
"Then get up!"
"I'm recharging," replied Knock Out, letting a small smile spread over his facial plates. The smile slipped away the second Starfire started kicking the door in an effort to get it to open.
"Shut up!" he whined. "I'm trying to recharge!"
"Mum says you have to wake UP," announced Starfire, as if it was the most important thing in the world.
"I'm recharging! I can't hear you!"
Starfire growled before running away. Knock Out listened to what was happening in the back room, and wasn't surprised at all with what he heard.
"Mu-u-u-u-um?"
"Yeah?" replied Windwalker, looking up from her phone.
Starfire frowned, tears in his optics.
"Knock Out won't wake up!"
"Tell him I said for him to wake up."
Knock Out buried his helm under his pillow as the telltale sound of pattering footsteps heralded Starfire's second round of 'get Knock Out out of bed' that day.
"Mum says you have to wake up!"
"No."
"Why?"
"I'm recharging."
Starfire was quiet for a minute. Then he ran away again, with the same annoying pit-pat of footsteps.
Five seconds later, a lullaby rang through the house.
Knock Out snuggled up tighter in his blanket, determined not to let 'Lavender's Blue' wrestle him out of bed.
"What sort of idiot uses a lullaby to wake somebody up?!" he yelled.
Starfire giggled.
Knock Out chuckled a little to himself, before flipping his pillow over so that the cool side was under his neck.
It felt good.
"Get up!" came an angry voice.
Uh-oh.
Clearly Mum wasn't impressed.
Knock Out was out of bed and at the breakfast table in less than a minute.
"Hi," he greeted his family.
Starfire poked his bowl of energon pops.
"Hi," he replied.
Knock Out grabbed his shoulders.
"Aren't you going to say something?" he asked, a devious grin spreading over his facial plates.
"Happy Birthday," called Windwalker from her room.
"Happy Birthday," mumbled Starfire.
"Optical contact."
The dark blue and orange sparkling looked up, awkwardly meeting Knock Out's optics.
"Happy Birthday."
"Big smile.
"Happy Birthday."
"More enthusiasm."
"Happy Birthday."
"No, bigger smile!"
Starfire face-palmed.
"Come on," whined Knock Out.
"Happy Birthday," droned Starfire.
"More enthusiasm."
Starfire face-palmed again.
"She's here!" yelled Windwalker as the doorbell rang.
Knock Out looked up from his game, shut down the computer and ran out the door to greet Ultraviolet.
"Hi," he greeted, smiling.
"Hi!" chorused the purple sparkling and her carrier.
Ultraviolet handed Knock out a strange array of popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and sequins somewhat identifiable as a multicoloured K, with a pink pipe cleaner O sticking out the top branch.
"Thanks!" grinned Knock Out, wondering what it was supposed to do and, more importantly, what he was supposed to do with it.
Ultraviolet's carrier left soom after, saying that she'd come back in a few hours. She walked out the gate and hopped into her car, leaving the sparklings to play.
Knock Out placed the initial-statue on his display shelf.
"It's nice," he smiled.
The cherry red sparkling then proceeded to give Ultraviolet a tour of the house, while Starfire tagged along and asked stupid questions.
"Aww, why is it always me?" complained Knock Out as he, Starfire and Ultraviolet clambered into Windwalker's interior. "Why do I always have to sit in the middle?"
The others chose to ignore him.
Knock Out picked up a teddy bear off the floor.
"This is Teddy," he announced proudly.
Ultraviolet stared at the bear.
"You just randomly pulled it off the floor?" she asked, an incredulous grin on her facial plates.
"Yup," replied Knock Out. "You can do this..."
Knock Out proceeded to take Teddy's shirt off, before putting it on his legs as a pair of pants.
Ultraviolet giggled.
"That just looks WRONG!"
Knock Out carefully examined the toy, nodding dramatically before practically ripping the shirt off and putting it back in the right way again.
"We're here," announced Knock Out, hopping out of his carrier as the sign saying 'Kaon Park' came into view. "Now if you could hold this very light picnic blanket for me..."
The five wandered through the park until they came across a shady place to set up a tent.
Starfire looked up at a tree.
"Those are poonuts," he told Ultraviolet.
"What?!" she exclaimed in response, surprised at the introduction of such a ridiculous term to her vocabulary.
"We call those poonuts," explained Knock Out. "Because they look like...er...you know."
Ultraviolet rolled her optics.
"Sand?" asked Ultraviolet.
Knock Out shrugged, pocketing a few energon jellybeans. "Okay. Starfire, hurry up."
The three arrived on the sand two minutes later.
"Yess..." hissed Knock Out. "It's low tide!"
Running onto the sand and trying to ignore the sand getting into his joints, Knock Out leant over and picked up a cyberclam.
"This is a cyberclam," he announced.
"Is it alive?" asked Ultraviolet, staring at it.
Knock Out nodded, grinning.
"It's very dirty," observed the purple sparkling.
"You don't say," agreed Knock Out.
"What's inside?"
"Inside this little, dirty, disgusting, slimy, smelly, sandy, slippery, sloppy, salty cyberclam, you'll find a little, dirty, disgusting, slimy, smelly, sandy, slippery, sloppy, salty cyberoyster."
"Right."
The three sparklings spent the next half hour getting wet. Knock Out was trying to catch a robocrab, he was trying so hard, but it just wasn't working. He'd reach out, and change his mind, scaring the crab away in the process.
Knock Out picked up a tiny robocrab, knowing that its pincers were too small to hurt him.
"Can you put it on my servo?" asked Ultraviolet.
Knock Out held his claw above her palm, trying to get the microscopic robocrab off. In the end, he dropped a clump of sand into her palm, to tempt the little robocrab.
It worked. The minuscule sea creature was off his claw and onto Ultraviolet's in half a second.
"It's very small," observed the purple sparkling.
"You don't say," agreed Knock Out.
"Time to go," announced Windwalker, wandering over with Ultraviolet's carrier.
Ultraviolet picked up a nearby cyberclam.
"You can keep that," Knock Out told her.
"Wait, where's your cyberclam?"
"It's the exact same one you're holding in your servo right now."
Ultraviolet giggled, torn between staring at the cyberclam and staring at Knock Out.
"Time to go," repeated Windwalker.
A few minutes later, everyone was out of the sand.
"You can take that home," smiled Ultraviolet's carrier.
"It's alive," piped up Starfire.
"What, it's alive?! No, throw it away."
Ultraviolet handed it to Knock Out, who very inaccurately threw it as far as he could with his left arm. The cyberclam nearly hit a wall, before bouncing onto the sand, ten metres away from where Knock Out awkwardly stood.
"That was my left arm," he protested in his defense.
"Go and save the cyberclam from the sun," instructed Windwalker lazily. Ultraviolet and her carrier had left, after taking a lolly bag as a party favour. Now Windwalker and her sparklings were sitting around, doing nothing.
Knock Out ran over and picked up the cyberclam. He very carefully walked right next to the water line, before lobbing the creature as far as he could. He was far more successful this time.
As he triumphantly marched back up the beach, he called to Starfire, "So, you came all this way just to watch me chuck a cyberclam into the sea?"
Starfire nodded.
"Happy birthday to you..."
"Aren't you going to sing?" Knock Out asked Starfire, who was face-palming again.
"Happy birthday to you..."
"I sang at your birthday! Meanie!"
"Happy birthday dear Knock Out...
Happy birthday to you!"
Knock Out blew out the candles, not bothering to make a wish. He already had everything he could possibly want. A family, a nice friend, an annoying little brother...who would ask for more?
"Knock Out. Wake up."
Knock Out groaned and onlined his optics.
"Breakdown?" he murmured, half in recharge.
"You were fidgeting," the larger mech told him. "Were you dreaming?"
Knock Out felt his optics fill with tears.
"Nothing," he sighed. "Only memories."
Breakdown patted his shoulder sympathetically and fished a parcel out of nowhere.
"And, by the way..."
He held the parcel out.
"Happy Birthday."