Summary: Knock Out during his time as a neutral during the beginnings of the war. Also, him being immoral.
Word count: 2606
Warnings: Slight robo-gore
A friend in need is a friend indeed
Knock Out stared at his map. The battle had cooled down about a cycle ago, and he had been able to stock up. Pedes, tanks, processors, servos- he had one in nearly every size. Besides protoform parts, he had it all.
"Now where are you going now..." It wasn't too hard to follow in the wake of the Decepticon army- they left a trail of bodies wherever they went. Wasteful. That wasn't to say the Autobots were any better- they took their dead from the field as much as they could and then simply scrapped perfectly good parts!
Knock Out squinted and zoomed in on the map. The war had moved through a choke-point in between two completely collapsed city parts- The Decepticons were winning, or the Autobots were retreating to a better spot to rage war from. Either was just as likely. Knock Out wanted to be there during the next battle, some parts could get stale or clogged with dried energon if left too long in a dead frame. Hmm. They were probably going to clash right there, at the side of the-
A knocking at his shuttle door had him jumping out of his dermal plating, and he had his servos on his energy prod in mere kliks. The knocking sounded again, and there was no sound of Decepticons pulling his door apart. Hesitantly he stepped over to the door, and opened it.
"Please! Don't shoot- we have wounded, wounded civilians, we need a Medic... W-we can pay!" The most pathetic group of bots stood swaying on the step of his door, two civilian bots and a single heavily singed Autobot. A pathetic looking femme was holding onto the prototype of what was probably her son, and the Autobot soldier held a servo to a wound in his side. They had a thin trail of energon following in their wake, and their optics were dull with lack of power. Knock Out hesitated.
"Yees-... yes. I am a medic. Come in." He stepped aside to let them stumble in, and mentally slapped himself. He should have hidden his shuttle better- if the Decepticons had found him he would have been one with the allspark by now. The femme carefully laid her sparkling on the medical berth and Knock Out leant over him.
The small thing had a case of fluid-malnutrition and processor shock. Easy enough to fix. He had plenty of spare fluids, he siphoned them from every fresh corpse he could find -or from living mech's that were destined to become corpses anyway. Those resulted in the best materials.
"Alright, just some fluid malnutrition. He'll be fixed in no time, as will you." He gestured to the Autobot. "Do not go into my supply storage. I'll go grab you something to top off your systems." They looked so thankful that it made his dermal plating crawl, and he quickly shot into his supply room to grab his cheapest selection of lubricants, transfluids and energon. The bots were sitting against the wall of his medical room when he got back, their frames relaxed and slack. Thinking themselves oh so safe. Knock Out smiled and handed them the fluids.
"Sorry they're not top notch. It's difficult to find the right quality. You three had me startled, I thought the Decepticons had found me! What are you doing so far into the war zone?"
The femme civilian flinched, and pulled her son closer to her frame. "We... My husband promised he would come back to our apartment, so when the Autobot started evacuating we opted to stay at home and wait just a bit longer... I didn't think the war could catch up so fast-! We hid in the basement of the apartment building and Boltwrench found us there when he was hiding from the Decepticons."
Knock Out smiled wryly, and hoped that it came across as a sympathetic grimace. What a sentimental moron. "Must've been stressful."
"It was horrible... My little Mash wasn't responding to anything I was saying- and I could hear the fighting." She trailed off, and the Autobot, Boltwrench, rested a heavy servo on her shoulder. Knock Out sighed.
"You should all be fine. I topped off your oils and fluids and all that, but you'll have to find some more on your own. Supplies are scarce, and their price is rising."
His current patients had paid him a lot for the meagre supplies, and that was just the way Knock Out liked it. He had to be a millionaire by now with all the credits he got for his services! It was a good thing too that people were too busy with the war to ask about the origin of the parts.
Some bots just wouldn't accept a tank if they knew it was from an unregistered donor. Knock Out would never understand those kind of morals. Impracticalities would be a better name if you asked him. A new tank is a new tank- no matter how it was donated. And the battlefield that the Decepticons left behind was a gold mine of parts.
The Autobot had remained mostly silent, and when he opened his mouth it was to ask obnoxious and prodding questions.
"Doctor, why are you in the warzone? I thought all medics were at the medical settlement?..."
Knock Out smiled amiably. "I'm staying behind the Decepticon lines to find anyone that might have survived. I honestly can't stand the idea of sparks withering away in the remnants of a battlefield. I try to do my part."
The femme gave him a warm smile that dripped with gratitude and wonder, and Knock Out flashed her a smile in return.
"Doctor Knock Out, you are amazing. I... I wouldn't be able to do it- the battlefield is such a horrid place. Even to save others- I think I would lose my processor."
The Autobot kept quiet, but he sent a hesitant smile Knock Out's way. Knock Out was slowly reaching his quota of never-ending gratitude, and quite honestly it was bothering him that nobody had complemented his paintjob yet. It was really quite hard to keep it so polished during a war, some of the fallen soldiers had this annoying habit of trying to fight him off as he was working to siphon their energon.
Knock Out nodded at the femme. He wanted them all out of his shuttle. "I try to keep as many sparks alive as I can. It's the least I can do." Well, he kind of lived by that philosophy, mostly when it paid. Paid in thick thick wads of credits.
The Autobot was the one that saved Knock Out his ' I gotta kick you out now' speech.
"Knock Out, thank you, but we cannot impede on your hospitality for much longer. I need to rejoin the Autobot troops and bring these two to safety."
"Yes, my line of work keeps me close to danger, it would be best if I dropped you off at a safe point." There was a decent spot nearby, and Knock Out was one hundred percent ready to dump his patients. As nice as it was to be admired for orns on end, his operation would suffer if they kept with him too long. He hated to think of all the good parts rusting away on the battlefield. "I will drop you off near this ridge tomorrow- that should provide some good cover for returning to the Autobots." They all agreed, and he got out a folded-berth for the femme and her son, the Autobot taking place on the medical berth. Knock Out was looking forward to dumping them. It was obnoxious to keep up his goody-goody-I-have-morals-act for longer than a day.
Knock Out was shaken from his recharge in the middle of the night, and he sat up on his berth. The ship was silent, and there was no sign of a sound that could have woken him, but Knock Out knew better than to depend on faith. He quickly jumped off his berth and carefully walked into the main room of the ship. The femme stood next to the berth of her son, and both bots were wide awake. They were deadly quiet and Knock Out strained to hear any sign of a Decepticon attack. He looked at the femme. "Did you hear anything?"
The femme shook her head, but her servos were clenched to fists and her optics shone with panic. Her son was motionless and silent and Knock Out felt his plating crawl. Something was … off. He stalked past the medical berth, and his optics fell on the door to his storage. It was open, and the berth that had held the Autobot was empty.
"Where is-"
There was a sharp tingle at his side as a hot blaster was pressed against his helm, and Knock Out had his hands in the air in a klik. "Don't move Knock Out." The voice was gruff and nearly unrecognisable with static. Knock Out glanced at his attacker, and found the Autobot soldier aiming the barrel of his blaster at his temple.
"W-what is this about? Not happy with your treatment? Please put that thing away-..." His voice was wavering, and he inched away from the blaster. His energy prod seemed lightyears away, leaning against the doorpost of his personal room. Stupid stupid stupid, always keep a hold on your weapon, always keep it close!
The femme was standing in front of her son, her entire frame quivering and a startlingly recognizable box standing at her pedes."You're not a doctor!" The femme's tone held a spite that he had never expected from her voicebox, her charmed flirty tone replaced with disgusted and fright. "You're a filthy corpse-cutter." She tipped the box over with her foot and a coiled mess of glistening tubes slipped onto the floor. Spare lubricant-lines, spare fuel-lines, extra wiring, all still covered in the dried energon of their previous owners. Knock Out's mouth ran dry, and his optics flickered to his energy prod before he could stop himself.
"Oh- No you have it all wrong!" His processor was running at topmost efficiency to create a convincing lie, something that would get that blaster away from his face. "Oh- wh-! I bought those! From this vendor at a neutral settlement-" The blaster was knocked roughly against his helm and a servo grabbed him by the helm, forcing him to his knees.
The Autobot was long done with being friendly, and he jabbed the blaster firmly against Knock Out's head. "You knew. Nobody fabricates this quality wiring any more. You stripped them from the corpses of cybertronians!" Knock Out's vents cycled air quickly and shallowly. He needed more time.
"No- you're wrong. I- the tubes- garbage. I was going to throw them out-" The femme stepped over the spilled wiring, and held out a shaking arm. In her servo lied a neatly severed and cleaned limb. Ready for reattachment.
"They were bots. Mechs and femmes like you and me! You're... you're a doctor... How could you-?" She dropped the limb, and it slid in between the messy wiring with a squelch. Knock Out scowled.
"It's only logical- practical! Medics are useful as long as they keep bots tip top in shape. That is impossible to do if you don't have the supplies to do it! This is war and I'm surviving!" The mech holding his head tightened his grip and Knock Out felt his plating dent.
"You fragger... You spineless son of a glitch!" The young mech on the berth was crying, and the femme turned to her son.
"Oh, no sweety... It's okay sweetspark, we're safe...Don't cry, we're safe." The femme pulled her son into an embrace and the unstable little youngling curled into her touch like it wanted to merge with her.
Knock Out felt the grip of his captor slackening at the sad little display, and he took his chance. He jerked his head free. The blaster went off and he felt the shot searing past his cheek. He twisted, his servo turning into its deadly form and dug his drill into the Autobot's abdomen. The mech screamed and his balled servo slammed into Knock Out's head, knocking him backwards. He fell against the medical berth and tumbled to the floor, the messy wiring and slick tubes cushioning his fall with a sickly squelch. The femme screamed and the young mech's crying had turned hysterical.
The energy prod, he had to get to his energy prod! Knock Out scrambled to his feet and dove for his weapon, the whining charge of a blaster sounding behind him.
"Foul Decepticon murderer!" Knock Out got behind the medical berth just in time, a searing shot pinging off the metal. The autobot was breathing heavily, and Knock Out could hear energon splattering to the ground. That meant he had hit a main fuel line, maybe even the tank. The Autobot was a dead mech walking. A few more shots grazed the medical berth, and Knock Out curled up behind the safe metal. He could hear the Autobot fall to his knees, and the femme rushing forward.
"No! Boltwrench!" The autobot's voicebox was shorting out, and the rush of spilling energon was starting to slow. Knock Out carefully looked out from over the medical berth, and held his energy prod at the ready.
The Autobot was nearing the last kliks of his life. In a moment of desperation and insane luck Knock Out had managed to hit both the mech's tank and his fuel lines with his drill. A lucky hit of one in a million. He got up from behind his shield and chuckled.
"Looks like you ran out of luck and energon at the same time- what a pity!" The Autobot's optics were darkening, and his systems were offlining one by one even as he tried to steep his wound. The femme started shaking when Knock Out approached, and she dove for the table with medical tools, grabbing a thin drill from the plate. Her son sat terrified and crying against the side of the ship, his servos clenched around the wound Knock Out had welded shut just one cycle earlier.
"S-stay away from us!"
"None can do, Autobot. I don't take well to being threatened." He jabbed the energy prod into her and she convulsed, her chosen weapon clattering to the ground with her following right after. The young mech was at the ship's locked doors, pounding a servo on the unrelenting metal. Knock Out sighed and checked his chronometer. The sun would come up soon, and with it would come new patients. He took a good look around his med-room. The Autobot had left a thick pool of energon all over the floor, the femme was leaking foaming lubricant from her mouth and there were scorchmarks on his medical berth. Not to mention the pathetically crying prototype losing his transfluids right by the door. Knock Out wished he had had the insight to buy some high grade, and brought out his saw.
There weren't a lot of prototypes to scavenge anymore, let alone protoframes at all. He'd have to remove the spark manually, and maybe he'd find a buyer for a good-as-new protoframe. He dragged the crying youngling over to the medical berth and strapped him in. Barely three in the morning and he was already cleaning energon off the walls. But he was alive. He had survived another day in the war, and he would continue to survive.
EINDE
That was the first of many oneshots to come. Requests or idea's are welcome!