The fighting continues; as does Knock Out and Smokescreen's brave stupidity


Another insecticon tried to beat him in brute force. Breakdown crushed through its head to prove that attempt was rather futile.

Or it should have been.

But these were the strongest vermin on Cybertron. Sure, scraplets were the worst, but insecticons could match Megatron in a battle of physical strength.

And Breakdown didn't have to feel bad admitting that he couldn't match his former boss.

Lifting his hammer, the mech looked around the chaotic battlefield. All these stupid human buildings everywhere were tripping hazards and only made this whole thing harder. Not that he was adverse to a tough fight! Still, he'd come mainly hoping to smash more M.E.C.H. guys into paste and found out Dreadwing had beat him to it. Instead of frying humans, he was dealing with Airachnid and all her insecticons.

There were so many of them. Why did the vermin even make it to Earth in the first place?

The boss was busy fighting off three, and Airachnid herself, right now. Somewhere on level with the trashed up warehouses, that gutsy human was still shooting at insecticons (and thankfully hadn't hit any of his allies with those Tox-En shards). A few lucky shots landed on helms or cut through visors and the toxins took the big guys down.

If anything, the fact that the fleshy could hold his own in a fight like this only made Breakdown more and more certain that he knew the guy; he reminded him of one of his troops.

Despite being much smaller than any of the insecticons he was up against, Wheeljack was hopping from bug to bug cutting through their vital systems. Ratchet was using his short blades to fend of insecticons, but they were hardly injuring any of them. Arcee was shooting down those bugs that went airborne. Bumblebee was flickering around the battlefield too fast to bother trying to keep up with.

All that to say, there was a whole lot going on and it didn't show signs of slowing down. Another insecticon tried to fly at him and Breakdown shot it down. The gun on his shoulder was far from his ideal weapon, but he wasn't adverse to using it if he had to. And besides, against these guys it really was the better type of weapon.

Another insecticon tried to leap on him. Since this one jumped him from the back, it worked. Breakdown crashed down face first and felt his paint scratch off against the concrete. Something pounded down on one spoiler and he felt internal mechanisms snapping before he'd even gotten his head back in the game to toss the bot off. Before he had time to, the insecticon rolled off. The blue mech lifted his head up first and saw the bug leaning against the foot of a warehouse curling in over a blaster wound. A few meters away, Bulkhead looked from the insecticon to him and offered a shrug.

"I've got your back."

The curled insecticon struggled back to its pedes despite the injury and tried to charge again. Another shot from the green wrecker kept it down.

Slagging insecticons were such a pain. And the warrior types were nothing compared to their queen. How it was that Airachnid hadn't managed to be killed was lost on him. He'd cornered her the woods and almost died even though she was the one injured. Her durability just wasn't fair.

Speaking of-

He looked over to where Optimus and Ratchet were trying to fight the femme. If it wasn't for all the insecticon shields she kept throwing up between them and her, she'd probably be dead by now. Please, could she just die? It would be so nice.

Stuck in Airachnid's webbing while she crawled closer, pulling her servos along almost intimately while they left behind a trail of agonizing green acid-

I thought you wanted to get me alone. Why so scared, big guy-

No more bad fluxes, no more disgustingly weak fear.

...but that wasn't true, was it? Or else Silas would have stopped bothering him after Breakdown had killed him. Granted, at the least he had someone to talk to about the bad fluxes these days. Someone who wasn't just a vehicon that ended up dying before they ever got a chance to respond to his story.

It was kinda funny actually. He still didn't want their dumb looking badge and hadn't bothered to touch the rules and regulations files Knock Out kept in the little shelf in their room. But he was still looking over the battlefield in worry that something bad would happen to one of these bots.

He'd gotten attached. Breakdown wasn't meant to be alone. He still felt the phantom gestalt pretending to be the real one he'd worked hard to sever from his spark; the ghostly need to belong in a unit.

Currently, he was good with not 'belonging' with this unit- but he still wanted them to stay alive. Weird, that.

Another bug dove down from the sky. Before Breakdown could shoot it down, it rent itself into seared metal shapes and crashed to the ground in flames.

What?

Around the compound, other insecticons burned similarly.

If anything, the widespread combustion only made him more confused.


The last time he'd held the immobilizer had been during that Unicron/Terrorcon fiasco. It had been the perfect instrument for his change. Breaking it over Starscream's head and hoping that would prove to the bots that he was done with having a con as his boss had been a metaphor, really. And it had worked to- he'd been able to seamlessly integrate himself with the team...well, during the duration of that emergency at least. Soon as Optimus was gone and there wasn't a battle going on, Knock Out had noticed himself sticking out from the team a whole lot more.

But they'd let him stay.

They'd let him in. And even after Cybertron decided it wanted nothing to do with Team Prime, he'd stayed. Really, it would have been easy to break the metaphorical immobilizer again. Just scrape off the brand and voila! Just an average neutral living an average happy life on the planet, nothing to see here. No need to be fired from any more jobs or treated like a security risk.

Why'd you do it, Knock Out?

Or rather, why hadn't he done it?

There was no escaping the stares. The former autobots and many neutrals felt by his look he had been a decepticon and gave him a suspicious berth. Former cons recognized him and hated him for what he'd done at the end of the war.

To all of them, he was a coward.

But to himself, he was just a mech who'd realized he needed to throw his cards in for one team instead of flipflopping.

He'd tossed in his cards when he'd broken the immobilizer. Even if Cybertron was giving him multiple opportunities to change his mind, Knock Out wasn't going to.

All that philosophy aside, the weapon was pretty comfortable in his servo. Sure, it was no phase shifter. That was his favorite of all the relics (that force field generator had been fun, but Bulkhead had seen to breaking it fast). But it wasn't bad; while the phase shifter kept him from getting scratched by making him impossible to touch, the immobilizer wouldn't let anyone get close enough to hurt him anyways.

Or at least he hoped so. Otherwise heading back into the depths of the Nemesis was going to end with his parts strewn around everywhere. Knock Out was no Starscream; if Megatron found him, he wasn't about to be given any sort of second chance.

Oh well. Smokescreen had managed that one time, hadn't he? Nabbed the omega keys, including the one in the Big M's servo, and hopped straight off the warship. Hopefully the Smokescreen of this timeline would be able to tap into some of that incredulous luck.

The two of them crept forward down purple hallways that Knock Out did not miss. At least after the war had ended, they'd made this place look lively. Who knew graffiti could make such a difference in the suffocating feel of these halls?

"So-"

Smokescreen's whisper still sounded a bit too loud. Although the medic supposed a little whisper was fine; honestly, Soundwave would probably notice them just because their very noticeable figures were prowling in his ship without ever needing to hear them speak.

"Where do we go?"

Well, unless the decepticons had radically changed the layout of their ship, he would say only a few halls down from here. That human child was a genius, getting them so close all based on some tracking schematics from various squishy militaries. Kudos to them, or rather to Raf. No wonder Bumblebee could never shut up about the kid for so long after leaving Earth behind. At least, before he'd stopped using his voice to speak nearly as much as he had at the start. The yellow mech had grown positively withdrawn by the last time Knock Out saw him; sometime before he'd disappeared to Earth once more and everything had fallen apart for the medic on Cybertron.

Meh. He really needed to stop reminiscing while they were doing this.

"Most likely the main storage area," he whispered back. "That's where Breakdown and I left the forge last tim-um...that's where it was last I checked. The others should be there too."

Smokescren grew one of those big, ridiculously rookie smiles that only those still positive they would always be untouchable wore.

"Let's get in there then," he said, bouncing on his pedes a bit.

"Wait!" Knock Out grabbed his arm when the rookie tried to take off. At the confusion Smokescreen tossed back at him, the medic elaborated. "If we see one glimpse of Soundwave, let alone the Big M, I'm ditching this plan. With or without you; got it?"

The younger autobot snerked. "'K, coward."

Obviously the kid had no experience with the decepticon 3IC. Apprehension wasn't cowardiceness, it was realism.

They started off down the purple halls in a manner both could only describe as 'stealthy'.

The storage units were held at the far end of the warship, past the officer quarters, door to the bridge, and his old medbay. Knock Out couldn't help but pause outside that room to gaze at it wistfully.

Rather than his vision being met with a closed door as expected, someone had left the medbay open. And occupied. Knock Out spied his former boss laying lifeless on one berth and the mech he'd once considered a friend twitching on the other.

They both took one long look and then glanced at each other. Smokescreen gave a shiver

"No, thank you."

They crept away from the scene in the medbay quickly. No need to touch that madness.

It felt like his nervousness was at its peak by the time they finally got to storage without anyone interrupting them. Sure, the warlord and Starscream, who was apparently back, were both preoccupied, but what about Dreadwing? The vehicons? Soundwave?

The lack of danger was just uncanny.

When they did make it to their destination, Knock Out shifted the immobilizer to one servo and tried to key the doors open.

They refused to open. Oh, for the love of-

"Here." He glanced to his side and saw Smokescreen's open servo. "I'll get us both in," the kid finished saying.

Well, seeing as he did have that same phase shifter that had once let them both slip through a wall (or almost slip through, in his case), their odds did seem better with his method. Knock Out apted to grab the rookie's arm and waited for the smaller mech to slip them both through the door.

At the least, he didn't have to worry about being stuck in the wall this time.

On the other side lay the few Iacon relics the decepticons had managed to drag up. The forge was joined by the small resonance blaster and the hulking resting state of the Apex Armor.

He couldn't help but let out an impressed whistle.

"Jackpot."

Oh, the war would be finished a month sooner with these goodies!

"Right?" Smokescreen grinned again, "It was a pretty good plan to grab these."

Primus, did he look this stupid when he fished for compliments?

The kid went straight for the forge and then tried to shake it off casually when his first attempt to heft it up failed; that thing's size wasn't just for show. Rather than lose his own mobility, Knock Out left Smokescreen with the forge and picked up the resonance blaster. The Apex Armor was shoved up under one arm afterwards. Oh, Soundwave and Starscream were going to pitch little fits to find out their toys were gone. That imagery, however unlikely for at least one of the mechs, made him far more amused than he should have been.

By the time he was done, the rookie had a good grip on the forge.

Knock Out grabbed Smokescreen again, though this time it was far harder with all the relics they were trying to carry, and the two phased back through the door.

It wouldn't have come as a shock to him to hear his spark well and truly stalled at the sight of Soundwave waiting motionless in the hall.


With the activation of Dreadwing's grenades, the insecticons lost their edge in the fight. Their numbers dropped instantly from 'swarming' to 'manageable'. And once manageable, the group of temporary allies quickly gained the upper hand.

Unfortunately, that was obvious not just to them.

A shot of webbing flung into Optimus's gun barrel and stuck in trails to the ground behind him. His other servo changed from a canon to a blade and sliced through the web without hindrance.

But it wasn't meant to be debilitating. It was meant to distract.

While he had looked away, Airachnid had sprung back and landed behind the ruined human fence. She looked around her enemies- both those moving towards her and those that were still fighting off insecticons- and seemed to make an instant decision.

Optimus could read a retreat easily. He jolted forward to reach the rogue too slowly.

"I won't forget you broke my trade," Airacnid gave a cocky, if enraged, smirk. "I'll just have to pay darling June another visit and this time I won't rely on good faith from you. Ta ta, autobots-" she blew a mocking kiss and then drilled into the ground beneath her. Before any of the smaller bots that would fit could think of following, an insecticon crashed down over the tunnel entrance and screeched.

By the time it was dead and moved, the femme was long gone.

It left no satisfaction. There was no victory in arriving to defeat M.E.C.H. and finding Dreadwing in a state that only seemed to herald further instability. Keeping June safe was a victory that should have outweighed the defeat Airachnid's escape was but...

But the rogue's survival worried Optimus. Loathe as he was to kill an enemy, he could foresee nothing good coming from her continued life.

The night was far from satisfying. And the Prime resisted losing his cool. The others needed to see his strength, his determination and hope.

He looked out over his autobots, the humans that were reuniting with agent Fowler and huddling together, and the bloodstained Dreadwing.

They all needed it.