Warning: Non-con
"Are you sure this is where the Eradicon said he lost Jack?" Knock Out grumbled over the comm. link. He'd transformed into his bi-pedal form as the rocky terrain was going to be enough of a nightmare for his paintjob anyway with adding to it.
Dreadwing, who was flying overhead, sounded rather tense with his reply. "Yes, he said that Jack went falling through a crevice behind the rocks."
Knock Out paused as he thought of what this meant and looked forlornly down at himself. "Great, this means I have to go searching down there." he muttered. "Couldn't you just go instead?"
"The Eradicon reported that the crevice was small, which would be unlikely to allow me entry. If I blasted my way through, the cave could collapse and Lord Megatron would be displeased if we lost this mech." Dreadwing explained.
Knock Out gritted his denta as he was given the co-ordinates for the cave and began to search for the crevice behind the rock wall. There were only the two of them out here, and Knock Out cursed himself for not thinking in hindsight. He shouldn't have let Jack leave his room in the first place; they should have brought more troops with them, at least then he wouldn't damage his paintjob. Without Breakdown or Jack around he'd have to fix it himself again.
"I'm here, just keep an optic out for any sign that Jack's up here." Knock Out replied and made his way into the cavern, the traction of a hill letting him transform and drive down it into a rather spacious cavern. True, the gap where the entrance was would be too small for Dreadwing to fit through, but Knock Out assumed even the seeker would be able to stand without problem in here.
Transforming once more, Knock Out began to look for any sign Jack had been around. He felt along the wall and discovered a smaller tunnel, and grimaced as he realized he'd have to crawl through it. "You're really gonna get it, Jack." He muttered and could feel the dirt cover his knee plating and the tunnel ceiling scrape against his shoulder armour. "You're really gonna get it."
When he made it through to the other side, Knock Out's sight was immediately filled with a wall of glowing crystals, but the missing sockets told him that Jack must have been here. 'Or that he's still here somewhere.' Knock Out thought and got onto his feet. "Dreadwing, I have found an energon mine, and from the look of things, Jack was likely here. Keep a sharp optic on the surface."
"Affirmative." Dreadwing replied.
Knock Out peered around the ground, making out the indentations of a crater in the one part of the cavern. There were several smaller craters that moved up to the wall. "Seems Jack wasn't too picky about where his meals came from." He muttered. His attention was drawn to the second set of craters emerging from the larger one toward the back wall. His optics narrowed, feeling a flare of possessive jealously course through him. Had there been someone else in here with Jack?
He tried to think of who else could have been here with him, and the answers were slim. Even he knew that Jack hated Airachnid as much as he did, so there was no chance he would stick around if she'd been here. It could have been Starscream, or even someone who'd only arrived, but the latter option seemed unlikely. 'It's just as unlikely that Jack's with Starscream either.' He thought dismissively. Jack could have gotten here later or before someone else and he was just reading too much into things.
Knock Out narrowed his optics as he dug into his memory banks of their time together. He shuttered his optics half-way as he remembered the feel of the other mech underneath him, those pleasing expressions on Jack's faceplate, how eventually the red mech had gotten the begging to stop, those had really starting killing the mood even if it got him excited. 'I can't let anyone else touch him, he's mine.' Knock Out thought darkly.
Even as dozens of scenarios were playing in his processor of what he was going to do to Jack when he got him back, Knock Out grudgingly admitted that he needed to find him first. And he couldn't find him if he was too busy being distracted by the images he conjured up. 'Later,' he told himself and smirked, 'when I have my toy back.'
Jack stared incredulously at Starscream, who was clutching at his chassis with a scowl. He couldn't see any visible wounds on the mech, so what was he screeching about? "What's the matter with you?" he asked sharply.
Starscream gave him a wide-optic glare, his expression contorted in a mixture of rage and pain. "Your concern," he sneered, "is noted." He said narrowing his optics.
Jack held up his servos and backed up slightly. "Don't get angry at me, you're the one who just began screaming for pretty much no reason." He retorted, but upon reluctantly realizing that this would only make him seem more like a back-talking freeloader, he bit out an "I just can't see any wounds on you, is it an internal pain?" in a slightly more concerned tone.
Starscream sneered at him once more. "Did you just notice that?" he questioned caustically as he gripped at his chest plating and glowered at the wall. "Why is it that my clones get to possess a T-cog I no longer have while all I get is their agony?!"
The "is that a rhetorical question" was about to slip out, but the odd phrase had Jack knitting his optic ridges together. "What's a T-cog?"
Starscream abruptly looked back at him, his expression incredulous, and there was a tinge of disgust hidden underneath. "You don't know what a T-cog is? How old are you?"
Jack's optics widened at the vehement tone, but he still wasn't about to risk tipping off the seeker anymore. "Old enough." He said bitterly. "It's not like it matters to you anyway."
Starscream scrunched his faceplate briefly in pain, but he huffed and shakily walked over to the crystal pile. "Fine, since you lack so much basic knowledge, I suppose I could tell you." He said arrogantly and Jack rolled his optics. "A T-cog is what allows us to transform," he paused as he nibbled on the crystal, "now go be useful and see if there's anything usable; I will not have you be a burden to me."
Jack raised an optic ridge. Still, as conceited as the seeker was being, Jack now had implicit permission to search through the computer to see if it could be linked up to the human internet. He felt his sorrow rise as he thought of his mother once more, and the urge to find an alt-mode became more than just something to cover himself up in. 'Gotta find something soon; Mom deserves to know what happened to me, from me.' He thought.
Even if he was wrong about the Autobots keeping his condition a secret, he couldn't trust that they'd likely sugar coat what was going on with him; while he also didn't want to distress her further, Jack knew his mother deserved the whole truth. He felt the strange sensation of energon rising in his throat as he wanted to purge as he thought of his mother being lied to while Optimus got away with what he'd done.
'One of them had to be with him when he got me.' Jack thought darkly. 'One of them has to have found it strange he threw me back.'
Shuddering, Jack quickly walked off before Starscream could notice his unease. As he didn't know much about anything related to Cybertronian tech, he wasn't quite sure just how he was supposed to know if things were useful. He didn't want to accidently set something off because he couldn't handle it properly. 'Just gonna have to be real careful then.' He thought and walked past the room where the protoforms had been stored, but after a moment of consideration he turned back and went inside the room.
When he was standing in front of the computer though, he felt foolish as he stared down at the screen. He couldn't for the life of him figure out what to do; it felt like he'd been a mech for so long and yet he hadn't the slightest idea of how even he worked. Jack scowled down at his reflection in the screen. 'Just another thing I can blame Knock Out for.'
Knitting his ridges together, Jack noticed a slot in the computer, and he thought back to how Starscream had been able to make his clones. Feeling around his wrist, Jack prodded at the metal for some sort of release switch; now, where had Starscream gotten the cable from…
Jack nearly jumped when he pressed down on a part of his wrist and peered into the plating that had sunken in and moved to the side, revealing both the beginning of a cord and a connecting port. Jack stared for a few moments longer, still a bit disbelieving that it hadn't hurt, before he pulled the end of the cable out gently and hooked it into the port on the console.
As the moments ticked by, Jack began to feel foolish; what exactly was supposed to-
Quick as a flash, Jack fell to his knees, a painful feeling gnawing away in his processor. He clutched at his head, unable to keep the whimpers back as he shut his optics tightly, seeing system warnings appear in his processor. He crashed to the floor, gasping as he froze up and found his memory bank opening and-
-he felt digits twisting the seams in his hips, a moan escaping him despite how much he wanted to get away. He reached up to Knock Out's faceplate, hands gently gripping his cheek plating as he desperately wanted to do nothing more than slam his head against the wall. The red mech might've trusted him to be off his leash now, but he still wasn't allowed to leave the room.
Jack felt disgust curl inside him as he met the other mechs lip components, opening his mouth to allow Knock Out access. He wanted to bite down on the glossa that entered his mouth, but was only able to bring his denta down in a wall that had Knock Out shuddering against him and abandoning his seams to spread Jack's legs. Jack couldn't do more than twitch as he tried and failed to close his legs, and Knock Out pulled back to give him a long once over, that infuriatingly smug smirk on his faceplate.
"Each time I see you like this," he said and removed Jack's codpiece, making the other mech internally recoil at what he knew was coming, "each time I get inside you," a sharp digit roamed around the edge of Jack's valve teasingly, and Jack's revulsion grew as he keened when the digit slipped in, "reminds me of our first time." Knock Out purred and nuzzled lovingly against Jack's neck cables.
Jack wanted to spit at the mech, wanted to claw his face up and rip his glossa out. He couldn't do that, he couldn't even tell Knock Out to stop anymore; it was like the very word would get caught in a chokehold each time he tried to say it. Just what had the red mech's little 'spark adjustment' entailed?
Knock Out added another digit and smirked. "Tell me how you feel," he pulled his digits out before thrusting them back into the valve, causing Jack to arch off the berth, "tell me how I make you feel."
Jack gritted his denta as he couldn't keep the words back. "Good!" He snarled. "You make me feel good!" he wrapped his arms around Knock Out's frame as he lifted himself up, the other mech using his free hand to keep Jack pressed against him. Jack could feel an overload building as he felt those digits twist in deeper, the urge to throw up making itself known. He bit down on Knock Out's neck cables as he felt his climax hit, his whole frame convulsing as the red mech didn't stop moving his fingers in and out.
Jack wished more than anything at that moment he could bit down harder, sever an important energon line and watch Knock Out bleed out for all he's done to him, but his body wouldn't respond to the violent urge. What infuriated him even more was when he glanced up to find Knock Out peering down at him from the corner of his optic, and saw a complacent smile on his lip components as if to say 'try, just try it.'
Jack's fingers dug slightly into the metal, but no more than that. He closed his optics as he felt the fingers leave him, whimpering at the loss of contact while the disgust reached its peaking point, and felt something thicker than digits break the entrance of his valve. Tightening his hold, Jack braced himself for what was about to hap-
-gasping, Jack's optics snapped open and he found himself still on the ground. His helm was pounding and he knitted his optic ridges together as he looked down at the opening in his wrist. He followed the cable attached in confusion, but his optics widened when he saw Starscream holding the end of it, an enraged look upon his faceplate.
"You stupid Neutral, what did you think you were doing?!" he demanded and threw the cable at Jack, who scrambled onto his aft as he scurried back from the seeker while the cable snaked back into its casing. "I can't have you offline, I need your T-" he scowled and his optic ridge twitched "-you in one piece!" he snarled and stormed around the room, knocking things over in his anger.
Jack tried to remind himself that he wasn't with Knock Out anymore; though with how Starscream was acting, being with him might not be that much better. Jack clutched his helm as the aching continued and he wondered why he'd had a memory of that come to him in the first place. He winced when a set of pedes entered his line of sight and he flinched as he saw Starscream holding a device that looked very much like something Ratchet had.
When Starscream pointed it at him, Jack tensed up, waiting for the moment when he'd get scrapped. The moment never came though, as Starscream only looked down at the screen attached to the device and narrowed his optics. "Good, the hacking process wasn't able to breech your firewall."
Jack blinked as he tried to make sense of what the seeker was saying. "Huh?" was all that came out.
Starscream rolled his optics. "When you stupidly hooked yourself up to the console, it tried to hack your systems," he explained, his tone dripping with condescension, "to which your own systems defended itself against the intrusion, with me so far?" he sneered.
Jack glared back at him, feeling both indignant, and strangely grateful for Starscream pulling the cable out. "Yes." He grumbled. "I just wanted to find a base to get an alt-mode from."
Starscream glanced from the console and then back to Jack, his optics narrowed. "That's not the one you'd use then." He said flatly. Without a word, he turned on his pede and marched out of the room; gathering his wits, Jack reluctantly got to his pedes and followed after the prideful mech back into the main room, where Starscream pointed to the large screen on the wall, his wings twitching oddly while there was a smug smirk on his faceplate. "This is."
Jack stared at the screen, taking in the flat keyboard beneath it and the flashing lights on the screen. He couldn't keep the groan from coming out of his vocalizer. "Okay then," he said slowly, "would I be able to get a translation? I think in the crash my default language went on the fritz."
Starscream stared at him for long moment, his optics narrowed and his mouth set in a displeased frown. He muttered incomprehensibly under his breath, but the acidic tone held no argument with who it was directed at or, as Jack was willing to guess, why; Jack only hoped he didn't push it too far and Starscream decided he didn't need a follower after all. Slowly, Starscream began typing in something on the strange glyphs that ran along the keyboard.
Jack watched as the screen suddenly began blinking with another light and Starscream grumbled nondescriptly once more before continuing on with his typing. The screen changed to a website of military grade vehicles, and Jack almost cringed at the glare on Starscream's faceplate.
"Now pick."
Starscream sneered as he saw the dumbfounded look cross Shift's features. "Remember the energon." He muttered to himself again. He longed to ruin the mech's pretty faceplate by scratching it and simply taking the T-cog, but the extra work was something he didn't need when Shift could do the hard part for him. "I suggest a flying alt-mode," he said with a raised voice, and with a smirk he added, "you can't go wrong with that."
Shift stared at him, a speculative look in his red optics. "It…it would be nice." He said hesitantly.
Smothering the grin that threatened to grow from his smirk, Starscream kept his tone even. "It's better than that; it's…" he paused as he watched the interested look appear on Shift's faceplate, and flourished with a breathy, "an experience. You can go wherever you want; you'll never know true freedom until you've flown through the air by the power of your own engine."
His little sales pitch seemed to have the intended effect; Shift looked indecisive, but the words obviously had him glancing over the military jets displayed on the screen. His optics hardened as resolved showed on his faceplate as he looked at Starscream. "Tell me what I need to do to get a flight frame then."
Now Starscream let his grin spread across his lip components; the T-cog was so close, the promise of energon as his new payment for Shift getting just as close. "Well, first we'd need to get there, but believe me….the result will be worth it."
