"So here's what I'm thinkin'," Thunderhoof said after they finally managed to navigate the maze of roads that lead to Degapex, forced to forsake alt-modes since Strongarm's T Cog still refused to even work with a Minicon strapped all around her. The city crept up on them in the horizon, almost buried beneath the highways that its buildings rose up between, only as high as the tallest slice of tarmac. "I be bad cop and you be good cop. Medics are always wimps, one hit from me and he'll be spillin' his tanks before I spill his-"
"Here's what I'm thinking," Strongarm countered, keeping her voice low now that she'd seen the entrance to the medical center that swelled out of the city's side. "You keep your mouth shut before you get us both arrested!" Fixit hummed in agreement, clinging tighter in his more modest mode to Strongarm's tense frame.
"...I like my plan better," Thunderhoof muttered, but something about the blindingly clean whiteness of the reception area before them must have suppressed any other schemes rattling in his helm. It wasn't much different from hospitals on Cybertron, except most of the patients waiting only had snapped axles, shattered headlights or blown-out exhaust pipes. Even on a planet dedicated to speed, there was a limit to how fast a bot could safely go. These ones just didn't care about that, which was fortunate since they were too busy cradling their injuries to notice that the new arrivals weren't built like Velocitronians, or that the femme approaching the front desk had some very strange armour that kept blinking nervously. If anything, most Velocitronians found Thunderhoof more curious to look at, with his permanently curdled expression and horns weighing down each step he took.
"Excuse me, ma'am," Strongarm said, catching the attention of a red and white femme behind the desk. "We're looking for a physician called Knockout."
The femme gave both bots long looks, especially Thunderhoof, before deciding she wasn't paid enough to ask about anything but the essential. "Do you have an appointment with him?" she asked, with the weary tone of someone who hadn't gone a day without hearing some half-revved excuse from a teenspark wanting to be seen urgently. Which was exactly what Strongarm was, and she only had her excuse ready after she threw a panicked glance aside at Thunderhoof.
"Not officially, but my, uh... companion has horribly grotesque growths coming out of his helm." Strongarm reached up to pull down one of the antler struts hovering over her, making Thunderhoof yelp in pain as he almost toppled over. "Poor mech can barely walk. We need to get them checked out ASAP, specifically by Knockout." It was a blind bluff, considering she didn't even know what kind of medicine Knockout specialised in, but either she got lucky or the receptionist had never seen a beastformer before from how wide her optics snapped open. Now that Strongarm thought about it, it was unlikely anyone on Velocitron had seen anything feral, with all wilderness either scorched sand or paved over with asphalt and laybys.
"Well, his schedule's usually all full, but since this is such a serious case he has a free breem just now," the receptionist said, focusing fully on the screen in front of her with stray, flinching glances at Thunderhoof. "Take the hoverpad to the second floor and then a right down the first corridor. His office is the one bigger than all the other ones." She waved down past the desk to the end of a corridor flanked by doors, where the hoverpads would be waiting for passengers.
"Thank you," Strongarm said, tugging Thunderhoof along by the antler she was still grasping to make sure he kept the act up. "Come along, you poor thing, it'll be over soon." And poor Thunderhoof could only grunt and snort as he was dragged further into any beastformer's nightmare; somewhere sterile and full of sharp needles. Luckily the receptionist did not watch them leave, still shuddering from the sight of those pronged 'growths'.
"That was a lil' uncalled for," Thunderhoof mumbled on the hoverpad, gingerly massaging where his left horn still had digit imprints on it.
"It got us in, didn't it?" Strongarm asked, forcing him to know how she felt about threatening dock officials just to avoid paperwork. "Though... maybe I did grip a little too hard," she admitted, just as doors opened on the second floor.
The same impossibly white walls greeted them, with glowing red markings set into the tiled ground that pointed to different departments. According to the instructions, Knockout's office lay at the end of the line marked as 'overhauls', with thick windows running down either side of it that looked out onto the corridors outside. Strongarm was only allowed a nanoklick to glance through one of the windows before she saw that their medic wasn't alone, forced to duck down where the wall would shield her. Thunderhoof followed suit, though he had to crawl along the floor to stop his horns giving them away.
Though the walls must have been thick, she could hear a femme speaking, the same one she'd seen only as an orange and red blur opposite who must have been Knockout. Part of her spark suspected Fixit of cranking up his audios so they could both eavesdrop.
"...And you know I don't like you locking yourself up in this office all day, Knockout. You need to talk to bots who aren't just wanting a new faceplate from you. It's bad enough we hardly get to see Sunny and Sides nowadays, now my own son is practically avoiding me!"
"Mother, as I've told you several times before, I. Am. Busy. I can't just shove off appointments to drop in on one of your little tea parties-"
"It is a fashion show, darling-"
"-just so you can show me off to all your friends!"
"Well, if you're going to be like that I'll just give your place on the guest list to someone else."
"Fine by me."
"...Will you at least come to the going away party, before I and Rodimus return to Cybertron?"
"...Of course, mother."
After that, speech was replaced with a shuffle of plating and the steady tap of peds coming closer and closer. The once-blurry femme emerged from a door just in front of Strongarm, luckily heading the other way with her back to the would-be intruders. A plume of flame reaching out from her helm danced after her, with a hint of its heat wafting back against Strongarm's faceplate. The thought of a bot just walking around with fire coming out of their processor surprised her so much that she didn't hear Thunderhoof heaving himself up and stamping forwards to enter the door while it was still open.
"Alright, I'm tired of sneakin' round..."
"Thunderhoof, get back!" By the time Strongarm managed to get onto her peds, even with Fixit doing his fair share to pull her up, Thunderhoof had already marched inside and was no doubt almost crushing Knockout's helm under his ped.
"Right, listen here, pretty boy, we got questions and you got answers to 'em, so start talkin'!"
Luckily Knockout was still unharmed when Strongarm made it to the doorway, red armour somehow managing to shine brighter than the squeaky clean walls surrounding him. And if she didn't already know he was once a Decepticon, the wide red optics staring up at Thunderhoof would have made it obvious enough.
"...Excuse me?" It was a very calm reaction considering how most might face a bristling set of rakes all too ready to spear through their frame. Knockout just looked confused rather than scared, but that didn't deter Thunderhoof.
"And if you think you can distract us with sexiness, then you got another damn thing coming-!"
As the only one not being threatened by impaling, Strongarm took it upon herself to defuse the situation the only way she knew how; bashing a fist across Thunderhoof's face to get him out of Knockout's way and sagged useless on the floor. "Thunderhoof, shut up."
Now Knockout had a chance to recover, and he took hold of it by backing up towards his desk. "Look, I've never seen either of you before in my life, so unless you want to be dragged out by-!" He was pointing a claw between them, but his strength failed and servo went limp as soon as it landed on Strongarm. He blinked, red seizure flashes across his optics, and his mouth hung open as he drifted towards her like Thunderhoof had just sunk into the ground, even though he was definitely still lying there scowling up at him.
"Hey, I'm still talkin' to you!"
But Knockout expertly ignored him, his focus riveted on Strongarm and, more importantly, Fixit. It was a near mirror of how Steve stared at her, like he was standing in front of the last member of an extinct species.
"Ma'am... may I ask where you got that armour?" He didn't even try making the question sound innocent as his claws twitched in front of him, as if they were aching to grab her. Strongarm fought the urge to flinch, but at least there was no need to keep Fixit quiet anymore when it was clear they'd followed the right trail.
"Funny you should ask, but I'm not the one who can answer that," she said.
"That would be me," Fixit quipped, and before his voice even faded Knockout had leapt back almost halfway across the room in shock.
"A... a l-living Kamuicon...?" His vents were ragged, his spark no doubt trying to keep itself within his heaving chestplates. "Made out of Life Fibers?"
"100%, sir," Fixit answered, sounding quite proud of it.
Knockout's shock was slow to fade but something else was already replacing it; awe. He approached again and circled Strongarm like she was a sculpture while muttering past wide, anxious smiles. "This is... this is incredible, I never...I never thought-!"
Only when he stopped to draw curtains across his office windows, drenching the room in shadow, did Strongarm manage to get a word past his amazed stuttering. "Uh, I don't mean to rain on the parade but we're here about something else-"
"Yes, yes, all in due time, just let me…" Despite the darkness Knockout's armour still managed to gleam, giving him away before his claws did when he tried prodding around her chestplates.
"Hey, what the Pit-!"
"Calm down, dear, I'm just checking-" Whatever his excuse was ended up being squashed aside as Strongarm seized his servo and pinned it against his back, slamming his face against one of the windows right through where the curtains parted.
"You're not laying a fragging hand on me until you tell me what I wanna know!" she growled, tightening her grip on Knockout's neck as he grunted against the smothering glass. Strongarm would have gladly kept it up if not for Fixit tugging at her servos, urging her to release Knockout as well as the medic's own muffled wheezing.
"If you'd… just… let go of my helm…" Strongarm pulled him back before finally relinquishing her hold, leaving Knockout to gasp in relief and rub gingerly at his faceplate. "Fine, fine, make it quick…"
Ignoring Thunderhoof's impressed expression beside her and his mutter of, "So much for you being the good cop," Strongarm crossed her servos over her chest more out of self-consciousness than seriousness, though the anxious light from Fixit's optics still managed to leak through. "What do you know about Airachnid?"
Just hearing her name made Knockout's irritation dissolve like acid had just been splashed in his face to drip into his frozen wide optics. At least that confirmed he knew who Airachnid was. "Who sent you here?"
"We asked first, ya sleazy-!" Again Thunderhoof was silenced by Strongarm shoving him aside by his chestplate and taking his place in Knockout's line of sight.
"A Vehicon," she answered, as simply as she could despite all that had happened in just the past decacycle. "We found him on Earth's moon, abandoned by Airachnid. He said she'd managed to escape and was planning to meet you here on Velocitron."
Knockout buried all his previous panic under a quirked eyeridge, red and glittering and doubtful like the rest of him. "Is that so? The same Airachnid who hasn't been sighted in over fifteen stellar cycles?" he asked, though his skepticism was a shallow effort over something still trembling in his vocaliser, something very much like fear. And yet he still glanced down at Fixit's wide optics as if expecting him to speak again.
Strongarm narrowed her glare to the point of a dagger. "Yeah, so if you want to know anything more about Fixit you'd better tell us what she's up to!"
Fixit squirmed at being dragged into the conversation, while Knockout regarded the digit Strongarm brandished at him with little more than mild amusement. "Are you trying to threaten me, dear?"
She lowered the digit to make it stab against his chest. "Usually I don't need to try."
Knockout stared down his olfactories at her, somehow looking down even though she was taller than him.
"...You'd both better sit down, then," he said slowly. Guided by only Primus-knows-what he somehow found his desk in the dark and instantly blinded both Strongarm and Thunderhoof with the light of a plasma lamp. Once the burn faded from their optics they both perched on the padded couch opposite the desk and its cold glow, with ample space left between them. Thunderhoof helped himself to a bowl of crystalgon in front of him while Knockout pressed a hand to his forehelm, shielding the top half of his face. When he pulled it away so he could lean over his desk, he seemed to age another two centuries.
"Right... first things first. Just who the Pit are you two?" he asked, and for some reason Strongarm had to take a moment to think about the answer.
"I'm Strongarm," she said. "Cadet of the Autobot Police Force in Iacon. My Kamuicon is Fixit. And this is... Thunderhoof. A Decepticon."
Knockout now finally gave Thunderhoof some attention while he was busy stuffing his face to rival Steve's greed, with a half-formed huff lodged in his throat. "And here I thought all the Cons were stamped out by now..."
Fangs jutted over Thunderhoof's sugar-stained lips as he growled, clawing at the plush of the sofa as his digits made sharp fists. "Just because you decided to switch to the winning side doesn't mean we all gotta lie down and let the Autobots walk all over us!" It was a challenge that Knockout wasn't interested in rising to. Instead he just pressed something on his desk when a series of blips sounded from it, and went on to the next question as he turned back to Strongarm.
"And why does a young femme like you want to go chasing after a dead bot?"
"Because she's not dead," Strongarm answered with a firm grip on every word. "She sent someone to Earth to try and steal Fixit, so who knows what else she's doing out there? You were with the Cons before the war, you know how dangerous she is, so wipe that damn smirk off your face and tell me what you know about her already!"
Strongarm had slammed her servos on the desk by now, almost butting her helm against Knockout's from how she thrust her glare towards him. Not that he even seemed to notice.
"My, my, you are persistent…" From this angle Fixit's optics were level with the medic's, and he seemed far more invested in him (or he was just taking the chance to ogle her chestplates). But before Strongarm could threaten to slap his helm upwards he pushed himself up so he was now taller than her hunched-over frame as he started pacing, dragging his crimson-edged shine behind him.
"Unfortunately for you, everything I have on Airachnid is outdated. Old medical records, mission reports, as well as my near-certainty that she's dead. Because the last time I saw her, she was trapped in an Insecticon pod. The last I heard of her was a report that confirmed she was in quarantine on Earth's moon and would eventually starve to death."
"Bullslag," Strongarm spat, having read the exact same report herself.
"It's true, I'm afraid. I have no better idea than you of where she is now, if she really is still alive."
Thunderhoof was grumbling low to himself behind a cluster of crystalgon still dissolving on his glossa, impatience building up all over again. "Then why the Pit did we get told she was gonna meet you here!?"
Knockout let his mouth hang open with a sad, small smile twitching over it. He seemed embarrassed to answer. "When we were stationed on Earth, I often talked about settling here after the war... if I survived and if our home was restored. It seems she knew me better than I knew myself."
Noticing his wistful tone with sharply rising suspicion, Strongarm asked, "If you're not helping her, then why would she have wanted to meet you?"
Knockout let his peds carry his frame back to his desk before he answered, each word slow and heavy with something he didn't quite want to admit, especially not to a pair of strangers. But he did so anyway.
"If I had to guess... it would be because when she got stranded on Earth's moon, she was carrying my sparkling."
Strongarm and Thunderhoof both expressed their shock in different ways.
"You... she was pregnant?"
"You banged one of the most dangerous Cons ever sparked? I mean I get crazy can be hot sometimes, but-" Strongarm's elbow hit square against Thunderhoof's side, just missing the bowl balanced in his lap, before he could finish that thought.
Knockout didn't seem phased; if anything he just looked sad, caught in his own memories with his optics glassed over with something much older than he was. Even when another round of blips came from his desk his digit was slow to cease them with a button press. "We agreed to keep it a secret, though I half expected her to have it terminated. Airachnid... with that frame, it was so easy to forget she was a monster. But I worked under Megatron himself, and even he didn't hold a candle to how evil that spark of hers could be."
As expected, Thunderhoof didn't exactly emphathise. "How do we know you're not just bluffin'?"
"I can only swear on that child's spark that I'm telling the truth," Knockout said, claws spread over his chest, with a pained glint in his optics that was so similar to those that flashed too often in Wheeljack's that Strongarm knew he wasn't lying. And that their only lead was now a dead end.
While she cursed herself for wasting so much time, Knockout bowed his helm and braced himself on his desk as he sighed, before addressing his guests with tired words. "Alive or not, if you're really planning on going after her then let me tell you from experience that you're not the first to go out trying find her. And you won't be the last to fail."
"The worst we can do is fail," Strongarm said. "And that's reason enough to try anyway."
Knockout was about to roll his optics, but he only got as far as sharply creasing an eyeridge. "Just you and your Kamuicon against the forces of nature… Fixit, hmm?"
The third time Knockout stared right into Fixit's optics made him stab his haywire nodes right into Strongarm's protoform, jolting her into covering her chestplates with her servos again. It wasn't nearly as aggressive a stance as she would have liked, but it would have to do. "Since you're so interested in him, why don't you tell me how you know what he is?"
From the look on Knockout's face, it was like he'd been waiting all this time for her to ask that. "It seems we both have something the other bot wants," he said, practically oozing superiority.
"All I wanted to know is where Airachnid is. You've already said you don't know, so we have nothing more to discuss-" Strongarm was rising to her peds, gritting her denta while Fixit still clung tightly to her, but Knockout snapped out of his slimy stare to shoot up and reach out for her.
"Now, now, let's not be hasty," he said, waiting until she sank back down to take his own seat behind his desk. "I have more to offer than just Airachnid… if your friend would like to step outside for a klick."
Thunderhoof looked up from his casual snacking, a hand halfway between candy and mouth while both started to sour. "I ain't goin' nowhere, ya' smug aft-!"
"You heard him, Thunderhoof," Strongarm cut in, though this was a rare occasion where she was sorely tempted to not hold him back. "Go stand watch or something."
Thunderhoof gave her a slack-jawed glare with half-chewed energon covering his fangs, finally closing his mouth in a scowl and holding the half-empty bowl close to his chest in a minor rebellion as he stomped towards the door trailing bitter mutters. "Was gettin' sick'a lookin' at that fragger anyway…"
Knockout watched him until he left, a tiny slit of light from the open door hardly spilling halfway across the floor before it was locked away again. "And here I thought he'd never leave," the medic sighed, burning through the dark with his hooded optics. Strongarm faced them head-on.
"He scare you too much?" she asked.
"Hardly. I just didn't want him knowing what should be kept between as few bots as possible." He slipped behind his desk to poke at unseen buttons and pads as he kept talking to himself. "Bad enough that he's already aware of your Kamuicon…"
"What's so bad about that?" Strongarm asked, servos still bolted over her chest.
"There's far more bots than just Airachnid who would do anything to get their claws on one of those," Knockout answered, flashing her a far-too-knowing smile as he went to sit on the edge of his desk so he was directly in front of her, whether she liked it or not. "Do you really know what kind of technology you're in possession of, Strongarm?"
He spoke like she was a sparkling trying to read a textbook on quantum physics. That would have been enough to offend her if not for Fixit being reduced to nothing more than a gadget. "He's not 'technology', he's my friend! And he didn't want to get dragged into this slag any more than I did!" The only reason she didn't shoot up from her seat to confront Knockout properly was so she could avoid going any closer to him.
"You've already bonded with him?" he asked. "That's adorable."
Now she had no more reason to stay seated. Strongarm launched from her chair to Knockout's face, jabbing a digit at the spear of metal glinting at her on his chin, mocking her like the rest of his frame. "Cut the slag out of your vocaliser before I cut it out myself, and start saying something useful! If you're not working with Airachnid and whatever she wants with Kamuicons, just how the Pit do you know what they are when no one else has even heard of them?"
Despite their faceplates being just inches away, Knockout didn't flinch. Still holding a level stare with her, he pushed her digit aside and brushed at his chin as if he'd just been assaulted by dust. "For now let's just say I inherited the knowledge, and that you're not the first femme I've seen with her own Kamuicon," he answered, sliding out of Strongarm's glare with the ease of a well-oiled gear and leaving her to track him as he paced in the shadows again. "Few bots know they exist, true. But even fewer know how they work, and what they're capable of. How they get their power. Why, I might be the only other bot in the galaxy who knows more about what Fixit is than he himself does. How much has he told you about how he fits you?"
He faced her to receive her reply, but he might as well have done it just to see how annoyed she was. "None of your damn business," she snapped, but Knockout's optics only glittered ever brighter as Fixit's bloomed ever wider below her neck.
"He's neglected certain details in the past, hasn't he?" he went on, looking right at Fixit to freeze him onto Strongarm's protoform, with every nerve node thrumming frantically against her as he tensed, like a cluster of fireworks along her bare skin.
"Strongarm, I-I swear I just forgot to tell you! I'd never let you get hurt on purpose!"
Whether or not Knockout was listening to Fixit's pleas, they didn't stop him prying deeper as he carried himself closer with carefully calculated steps. "He didn't warn you about fusing with your very core and stripping you down-"
"I can't change how I look!"
"Gorging on your own energon-"
"I have to o-or else the Fibers will die!"
"Until you've almost collapsed from the strain of holding all that power in your poor little spark-"
"Both of you, shut up!" The breaking point for Strongarm was not Fixit's near-suffocating hold on her frame, nor the agitated pulse of his energon or even his incessant begging. It was the very tip of Knockout's claw pressed slightly against her chest, right between the Kamuicon's wide optics, almost piercing through to the bare protoform beneath. She felt the sting for less than a nanoklick before she tore out of Fixit's grip and slammed the wandering servo away, letting it tear at the surface of her armour as she forced it down onto the desk where it wouldn't reach for her again. Knockout didn't struggle, didn't dare to use his other servo instead. He just watched her, a picture of rage reflected in his optics as she heaved frustration out of her vents like a digger throwing out the foundations of a world behind it as it trundled blindly onwards. Even when she finally calmed herself, no longer having to fight against Fixit as he relaxed over her, there was a cold silence before Knockout spoke again.
"I can help ease that strain for you," he said softly.
Strongarm faced him and his patronising gentleness with a scowl, but she released his servo anyway. "How?"
Knockout flashed a smile as he rubbed at his wrist, examining the paint closely. "Despite how you defend him, it's clear you don't trust your Kamuicon. You guard your tanks and spark from him because you don't believe that he'll do much good for you in exchange." He nodded to himself when he found the paint free of scuffs, and returned to his seat behind his desk. "Synchronising with your Kamuicon is all about trust," he continued. "You have to trust him not to leave you an empty husk, not to abandon you to the mercy of a lecherous audience…"
Again Fixit tensed, not quite as much as last time but enough to squeeze a retort out of Strongarm. "I already know about synchronising. You've got nothing new to scare me with."
Knockout raised an eyeridge, unveiling surprise over his faceplate. "Do you know how to synchronise?"
"I'll figure it out eventually," she said.
Now Knockout's surprise was clouded by disbelief, but he just shook his helm. "Well, if you're really so intent on staying ignorant… I can also help you find Airachnid. I might not know where she is, but I do know what she leaves behind wherever she goes. I'm the only one who's been that close to her and lived to speak about it. So why not listen to what I have to say?" He tented his claws with the ease of a professional negotiator, not quite shielding an expression bordering dangerously on devious, but not enough so that Strongarm could instantly reject his offer. Not when it was her best bet at getting any further along on her mission.
"Start talking, then," she ordered, but Knockout just gave her a flat smile as he shook his helm again.
"My dear, silence may be golden but my words are worth much more," he said, leaning back swiftly and holding up a claw before Strongarm could utter outrage. "So I'd like to make a deal with you. Something I'm sure you won't mind. You let me take a closer look at your Kamuicon... and I'll tell you everything you want to know. Simple as that."
Strongarm blinked, her faceplate creasing, knowing already that nothing was 'simple as that'. "You... want to study Fixit?"
"I've never gotten hold of a real Kamuicon before, you understand. And I might never see one again." His gaze on Fixit brightened, and it was hard to not interpret his reasoning as a threat, or a prediction. "Besides, the more I know about him and how he works, the more I can help you in turn. I'm sure by now you have no issue with undressing yourself for others…"
Knockout's optics slipped down her like oil, and only her shivers from it stopped Strongarm slamming a hard-worn fist through his grin. Fixit especially pricked at her protoform, and with a hand rubbing under his optic she wondered if she was just imagining the nerves rising under her digits. "You're not gonna… dissect him or anything?"
Knockout scoffed. "Even I wouldn't risk losing such a rare specimen by cutting it open."
As much as Strongarm hated to think about giving anything to a former Con, especially one who obviously still thought like one, she had no alternative. She hoped Fixit would understand that as well.
"...Fine. But that's all you're getting out of me."
"More than enough, my dear. More than enough," Knockout declared past a huge grin, clapping his hands together and kicking off his seat to gracefully stand back up. "My free breem's almost over, but return tomorrow around noon and we can-" Once again, something blipped on his desk, but rather than just giving it the usual look of annoyance he treated it like a nuclear warning siren.
"Now it's definitely time for you to leave," he muttered as he rushed to open his office curtains, flooding the room with stinging light that left Strongarm stumbling as Knockout pushed her towards the door.
"What, why? Who's trying to comm you?" she asked, rubbing her optics as they struggled to adjust.
"Someone I never like to hang up on," was all Knockout answered with, leaving Strongarm hovering in the doorway as he rushed back to his desk. The blips ceased, but this time a blank screen on the wall beside his desk fizzled into life with annoyance etched on a face that Strongarm instantly recognised, even with spots still flying in her vision.
"Knockout, why is it I need to comm you three times in a row before you decide to answer?"
"Because you always sound cute when you're desperate for something, Arcee," Knockout lilted, and that was all the confirmation Strongarm needed when there was only one Arcee on Cybertron. Though she couldn't see much of her face from her current angle, it seemed she hadn't changed at all from the femme who had taught her everything before Academy graduation- except right now she was shooting daggers through the glass screen at Knockout's comfortably smug face.
"Really? Cause Springer's just a room away, we can see what he thinks about me being cute-"
And Knockout's face fell in what must have been a world record time. "N-no, no, that won't be necessary... what do you want?"
"I wanna speak to your sparkling of a stepsire, cause he doesn't even have his comm unit turned on."
"Well I don't know where he is, but he certainly isn't here. Firestar left over ten klicks ago-"
The door shut before Strongarm could hear any more, and she thought better of barging in out of spite. "Thanks for nothing, then," she spat, as Fixit seemed to sag in relief around her. It was like he'd been trying not to collapse while Knockout was watching.
"Hey, Fixit… he didn't freak you out, did he?" she asked.
If he had his servos, she was sure he would have been shaking them together even as he confidently said, "I've seen ramroaches more bet-pet-threatening than him." He breathed out, and seemed to regain his strength from somewhere. "Anyway, he can't hide everything from us. Check your subspace."
Strongarm did, finding another datapad where there certainly wasn't one before. "Fixit! Where'd you get this?!"
"Seems Knockout was in such a hurry to get us out that he didn't notice me swiping it," he said, pride literally swelling him around her chestplates.
"Usually I don't condone stealing, but this is worth an exception," she said, letting a smile of small triumph tug at her lips as she patted Fixit. "Come on, let's go find Thunderhoof before he gets himself arrested again."