"Knock Out, are you busy?" Arcee's voice came through the visitor's speaker. He glanced up from his waxing to look at the camera he had rigged to view the outside hall. She had just leaned off of the buzzer and had crossed her arms.
"No, not remotely," he said, a tinge of bitterness to his voice, though Arcee's body language didn't indicate that she had noticed. He set his supplies back under the berth and went to unlock the door. "Yes?"
She didn't waste any time getting straight to the point. "We're having a ceremony for the ones who perished on Earth. We wanted to ask you to say something for Breakdown."
Internally, Knock Out winced. Up until now, he had avoided conversations involving Breakdown. It was awkward enough attempting to get used to casual- maybe even friendly- interaction with people he had enjoyed hurting.
His sentence was redoing the entirety of his medical training under Ratchet, which, in his opinion, may have been worse than being offlined, though the Autobots swore it was lightened sentence due to his change in allegiance. Other than that, everyone was rather light on him- especially after they recovered Breakdown's corpse. He failed to mention that he himself had contributed to the terrible mutilation of the body.
Breakdown dealt his fair share of blows, but around the end of his run he took quite a few more. Silas, Airachnid, and eventually, Knock Out himself, in a revenge-fueled fury, had tortured and ruined Breakdown's body even further.
"Knock Out, are you going to come to the ceremony or not?" Arcee gave him a quick tap on the arm. He looked up and rapidly shuttered his optics a couple of times, realizing he had spaced out to think.
"The body?"
"Excuse me?"
"The body. Breakdown's. Did they do anything to it?"
Arcee looked at him for a moment. "It's still in the casket. We were going to leave it closed."
"Can I..." Knock Out's vocal processor started spitting static and he immediately offlined it. Breakdown's remains were torn apart. He gave it a few moments to clear out, Arcee respectfully waiting, before he spoke again. "May I prepare the body?"
"I don't have the authority to approve that, I'll ask Ultra Magnus. You would like to say something, though?"
"Yes. I would." Arcee nodded and turned to leave. "Wait."
She paused. "Yes?"
"Why did they send you to ask me?"
She looked at him for a moment. "I asked if I could."
He gave her a half-suspicious look before repeating himself. "Why?"
"Airachnid killed Breakdown." Her optics constricted a bit.
"Yes..."
"Airachnid killed Tailgate." Knock Out's blank look prompted her to elaborate. "I sympathize with you. She took out each of our partners. The spider's a glitchspawn."
"Hm."
"Hm."
Both stood in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes.
Knock Out cleared his vocal processor before asking "Did you ever see him come back? Tailgate?"
"Come back?"
"Breakdown did. Well, not Breakdown, but his body." Knock Out noticed Arcee's figure go stiff.
"I didn't see Tailgate come back, no."
He waited to see if she was going to speak any further, and when she offered up nothing more, he continued. "Silas took it. Breakdown's body. He used it. Fused himself with it."
"I... heard about that. Saw some of it. " Arcee's optics were clouded over. Knock Out could tell her mind had gone somewhere else.
"I tortured him."
"Hm?"
"Silas. I tortured him." She looked at him blankly, and he shuffled a bit until he was leaning on the wall. "I don't regret it. I'm supposed to apologize for my war crimes, but I don't regret that one."
She seemed to consider this for a moment, and Knock Out, simply from watching her optics, could tell that her hatred for this being was replacing whatever horror she was reliving. "You don't need to regret it."
"Oh?" Knock Out seemed almost amused.
"He was a monster. Human, maybe, but still a monster." The medic nodded in agreement before Arcee continued. "I thought humans were pure until I came across that piece of slag."
Silence again. Knock Out changed the subject.
"Did you lot end up killing Airachnid?"
"What? No. She was stasis-locked. I thought she got taken out of the first base when it was destroyed."
"Well, yes, but..."
Arcee's optics narrowed. "But what."
"There were some experiments. With dark and synthetic energon."
"On Airachnid?"
"No. On Silas. But-" Knock Out hesitated as he considered how to explain the terrifying phenomenon. "...Did you ever watch human films?"
"Some."
"Are you familiar with the concepts of zombies or vampires?"
"Yes."
"The infected were both of them." Knock Out let it sink in, watching Arcee put two and two together.
"Oh. Primus."
"Yes. Well." He paused. "There was a scuffle in the vault..." Arcee stared in horror. "And Airachnid was being stored in there..."
"For the love of... Scrap, she's not on Earth, is she?!"
"No! No."
"Well, where is she?!"
Knock Out edged towards a window and pointed to the second moon.
"Knock Out!" She turned on him, and the subtle sound of her servos attempting to transform into blades or blasters did not escape his notice. "Why haven't you told anyone?!"
He shrugged. "She's probably starved to death by now. No energon."
"We need to check!"
"Mm, yes, perhaps we should. It would be nice to see her corpse."
"Come on, we have to tell Magnus." She grabbed him by the wrist and started dragging him down the hallway.
Knock Out swore violently. There was no way Magnus would let him repair Breakdown after this.