Brainstorm offers theories to an upset Knock Out.
The two wreckers fight Dreadwing over one of four omega keys.
And vorns before, a young Bulkhead finds reassurance from some of his new coworkers.

AN- First scene is a flash'back' (ie a flash forward to the RID future), last scene is a traditional flashback to the early war.
Spoilers for MTMTE issue #33 contained in the first flashback scene. Warning for drug use.

They ran into each other just the once. Knock Out had been on his way out of Cybertron-controlled space in a ship he hated for many reasons. It was cramped, it was cluttered, it was badly painted, and it was empty. He didn't like how empty it was. He didn't like being alone.

The Jackhammer was a mess inside. It made Knock Out rant and rave and threaten to space most of the wrecker's junk. But at least the Jackhammer had a name. A personality. A history with its occupant.

His shuttle had nothing except the honor of personally allowing him off that planet and away from the two bounty hunters on his tail. When it came to giving the thing a good name, that wasn't saying much.

It was obvious Wheeljack liked his ship, though. Just like it was obvious the mech was able to adjust just fine to this whole mess.

"I like to wander," the wrecker waved him off that one cycle where his shuttle had clamped to the ship and Knock Out had boarded it.

All things considered, it was a good cycle compared to some of the others. They'd run across each other not that far from the ruins of Velocitron; in other words, he was not nearly far enough from Cybertron to feel comfortable. Little wonder too; not with that warrant on his track record and the hunters behind his trail.

At least this had felt friendly. A flash of the past. Wheeljack was so obviously comfortable with his cramped living space. He had no evident issue with what warrant he himself had. He was just as free and easy as he'd always been. It was almost enviable. Even when Knock Out had tripped over that crate and then gotten glimpse of the nuke packets hid inside, Wheeljack's casual airs still seemed enviable.

What a fragging lie.

They'd both doped up on the pink stuff that night (despite the medic knowing how detrimental it was) and Wheeljack had almost throttled him over something or other (nuke did tend to make aggression worse, Knock Out realized belatedly).

"You ever used before?" he'd asked once he'd calmed down and the high was fading from them both.

Knock Out shook his head and regretted the spinning movement. "Never. You?"

He could hear Wheeljack scoff.

"I had it with me, didn' I?"

A moment later and he added more: "Didn' really use it in the war though. Picked this up on my way out."

The question of why pounded at the medic's head. Why why why- such an incessant scream- no, stream- ur

Of course he'd asked it. The single word had only made the wrecker pull himself up from the ground they were laying on.

"No point lettin' go of hope so long as a war still existed to be won or lost," Wheeljack said.

And now?

That war didn't exist.

That war had been won.

And here they were: hiding from bounty hunters, warrants for stupid arrests on both their profiles, energon lines running with nuke and conversation shared with two who barely knew each other.

"Now I got nothin' to fight for. So why not?"

Health reasons. Anger control. Addiction management.

Knock Out had just slumped.

"Why not," he dully repeated.

They'd made light plans to connect his shuttle with the Jackhammer and travel around together for a while. Maybe with two of them there, they'd keep each other responsible. They'd have company and that would stop the chance to be fools.

Both shared what their current warrants were for. Wheeljack mocked Knock Out's and the medic mocked the wrecker's. The 'crimes' were all so petty. Such excuses just to drag them back and toss them in a prison ship while they waited for a trial that was far from anyone's priority. Lotta good being a war hero was these days.

There was incessant curiosity over the why. Why were they, both former members of the team that had brought back Cybertron, such priorities for such petty reasons? Why were they, both mechs wearing the autobot badge so clearly on their bodies, worth enough to send bounty hunters after?

Neither had an answer.

But the next events led him to one.

Those events involved a failing of their fledgling plan. Knock Out had returned to his shuttle to pack up what he needed for a transition to the Jackhammer- and then the two ships had torn out of space.

The shuttle wasn't docked yet. They weren't connected yet. They couldn't-

The Jackhammer had spun and moved to avoid shots from the hunters while the medic fought his own ship's controls. A comm line opened and Wheeljack's voice sounded...

He didn't know exactly. But it was depressing to hear whatever that tone was.

"I'll lead 'em away. Don' follow me. Frag, go to these co-ord's even. Not like I'm ever gonna."

The coordinates pinged on his dash. Some wayward shot rattled Knock Out's shuttle and made the medic squeak, suddenly far more involved in getting the controls working to move the dumb dumpheap.

"What are those for?" he shot back. Thankfully, his voice sounded far more recovered than it had when he'd uttered that noise nano's before.

"It's registered as a safe spot for bots like us," Wheeljack said, the transmission fading further.

"Why don't you go there then?" the medic couldn't help but ask, even as he grabbed at the dash for support while the shuttle lurched.

He heard one last laugh, cynical as always, before their distance worked harder to cut comm lines. "Cause I don' settle down. I've got a whole universe to explore and more wreckers to find. But you-"

They barely knew each other and still Wheeljack had him pegged.

"-you're no loner. You need a safe haven and a bot to bunk with. Good luck."

The shuttle slid away from the fight. Knock Out slumped down to its floor, shaking with the last residues of nuke and stress from the arrival of his pursuers. There went that plan. There went that friend.

Fragging Cybertron. What had the two of them ever done to get on the planet's bad side?

Why were they such priorities?

Why were they listed as criminals?

Wheeljack hadn't offered an answer. The medic hadn't had one just then. But the mech at the coordinate's 'safe spot' offered something for the query.

No matter what suspicions he or the others had over the cycles had had, it had taken Brainstorm to really answer that question for Knock Out. The seeker may not be the genius he called himself, but he had an undeniable intellect and too much time to think.

"Isn't it obvious?" the colorful mech had asked during that first cycle on the isolated moonbase. It was cluttered, chaotic, and wild here; but the medic had to get used to it, because his slagging shuttle had fallen to pieces crash landing here, leaving him unfortunately stranded.

And no, Brainstorm, that unexplainable situation was obviously not obvious, or Knock Out wouldn't have bothered questioning it so many times.

The seeker moved to a seperate room to point at lists of mechs, cross referenced, notes drawn over- a mess, in other words.

"I've looked at each one that the government targets. I've put together what qualities most share with each other. In the shortest conclusion, since I imagine it's just an abridged version you want-" Brainstorm narrowed his glare and the medic gave him an unapologetic shrug, "...fine. In short, there were two qualities shared that were most common. One: former decepticons who defected, and a few autobots vice versa though they were more rare and possibly confounding variables in the mix. And two: autobots, or neutrals though they also were far more randomly distributed, whose history and current standpoint is fixed in loyalty to our now dead leader. And I've got your track record on file, just like everyone else's: they'd want you locked away for both reasons."

That had really been when the reality of it all had sunken in.

Sure, it would take him more cycles to truly, truly, understand it all, but seeing Brainstorm's hypothesis was sobering enough.

Like an idiot hanging on to foolish hope, he'd denied that. They'd fought. It was the first instance in which Knock Out had learned to not bother arguing with the seeker.

After an especially biting insult, Brainstorm had gone still.

It was fuel for his fire; all the rage and frustration and horrid confusion and betrayal and-and-and-

All bubbling over and-

"-you were never one of us, never one of those last fighters, never there in the early cycles after revival. By your logic, Cybertron would never have scared you offworld to this scrapheap! Why do you need to be out here in the middle of Primus knows where, hiding from a new cybertronian government when you never did anything for or against them?"

Brainstorm hadn't moved. Finally, just when Knock Out was on the cusp of walking off, the seeker lifted a servo to his battlemask. Instead of it sliding back into his helm like Optimus Prime's or Bumblebee's or even Wheeljack's, the mask detached into Brainstorm's grasp. It was offered to the medic, golden metal upside down on the seeker's palm so that the purple was plainly visible to him.

"Because," Brainstorm had answered lowly, "-when I went there to find a place, I found that the new government didn't want me back there either way."

Frag.

There wasn't much talking for a good couple clicks after that. Brainstorm had returned his battlemask to his face and had moved back to some unrecognizable project while Knock Out trailed behind him.

"What do I get to do then?" he finally started up again, only partially aware of how whiny his tone sounded.

"Why should I care?" the other snapped without bothering to look his way.

Because...because...this was his dumb moon! What if Knock Out decided to just disorganize everything here? What then, huh?

The medic was smart enough not to indulge in those thoughts.

"I'm stuck here," Knock Out crossed his arms. "You've got the only ship off this rock and I've got nowhere safe to go anyway."

The gesture the seeker made, never once turning around to make it, was amusingly rude.

"Not my fault you're an atrocious pilot."

Well, that couldn't exactly be argued with.

Another long moment passed in awkward pause before Brainstorm had returned to discussing the current madness i.e. his project. Once again, Knock Out found himself interrupting.

They'd gotten into another spat soon after. It bothered him (everything about this did) that he was just going to sit on some rock while his friends (if he could call them that; if he could have friends; if he could feel confident in every saying someone else was feeling just what he was after all the doubts Arcee and Bee and the rest had unintentionally put in him) in the old Team Prime got blacklisted and harassed by the new council.

"What can you do about it?" the seeker snapped. "You've got no ride, no contacts nearby, nothing."

And all of that was true.

"So then what are you going to do?" Knock Out snapped right back at him.

"What can I do? Go complain to the council and lose my head for it? Go back in time to stop the war at its start? Go start a resistance?" Brainstorm scoffed and turned his back even more pointedly towards the medic.

"I'm going to stay here and build useful things for the friends I don't have," the seeker finished snippidly.

Well, that was depressing. Knock Out couldn't help but laugh.

It really felt a bit odd to fight like this.

What had happened to him in the last few human months? Battles felt weird now, seeing faces he should want to beat into pulp felt weird now- in short, everything was weird now.

Somehow even more so than they had been during those first few cycles after the kids had found them.

Really, it was almost like the war just...wasn't happening anymore. Like all that scrap the universe of aliens believed about the cybertronian war coming to its end when Cybertron had was true.

The last time he'd really been in close, personal quarters danger was when that vehicon had slagged half his face. But even the events leading up to that injury didn't feel like the war. He hadn't been fighting the con. They'd gotten out of a human deathtrap together.

The last event that felt like the war had been watching Optimus cut that mountain apart because that had been an epic reminder of the Prime's power. But there wasn't even a fight after that.

All that to say it had lost a certain sense of familiarity. The war was played out like a game; treating it otherwise meant being assaulted by far too many harsh realities for sanity to remain intact.

And one of the rules of the game was to see exaggeration rather than existence.

Having a rival was almost a stretch of that rule. It meant he was getting too close with one of the Other Side. But the amount of hate involved with a rival managed to balance out the familiarity.

Then Knock Out had up and decided to pop over to Bulkhead's team, bring his rival with him, and M.E.C.H. had decided to play third party and-

And now he was looking over the face of the con and thinking about everything he knew about him (granted, not much) rather than just seeing a con.

A name, an affiliation, weird quirks they'd picked up, last fight he'd been seen at- Dreadwing had a face to him now, a personality. Just like the drone who'd burnt his face had. Just like Breakdown and Knock Out apparently had.

It just didn't feel like the war so long as the enemies all of a sudden started looking like people he'd just worked alongside of, what, three cycles before?

At his side, Wheeljack growled and flexed his servos. Bulkhead knew that sound. He knew that look on his buddy's face. He knew this was about to be a fight that'd feel almost right but not quite.

Part of him felt ready to mediate. It was a part of him that had gotten lazy and used to how easily Optimus seemed to convince every enemy they ran across lately to just team up and separate non-lethally.

"Shouldna come here," the smaller wrecker started. "You were temptin' fate."

Bulkhead watched him and the con and saw the coming battle. It should've felt familiar. It should have felt normal.

But they'd been working together so recently...

"I'm goin' to beat you into the ground for Seaspray," Wheeljack snarled. Dreadwing matched the expression.

"I have slain more autobots than just that one," he boasted and the smaller wrecker charged forward thoughtlessly.

Aw Jackie, come on- with a sigh, Bulkhead followed. For once, he'd have to be the one who kept his head in the game during a fight against a bot-killer. His preferred style of battle was simply fight without too much overthinking.

In the war, in what was normal for him, he'd never have thought this weirdly.

Dreadwing charged forward, swinging one arm at Wheeljack. The smaller wrecker crashed over the ground into a tree and Bulkhead caught sight of the seeker's curled smile just a nano before the remote control came into vision.

Of course. Bombs. They must be hidden around the trees where neither wrecker had noticed.

Was that how Wheeljack had said Seaspray had died? It was.

The seeker never got the chance to activate these explosives; Bulkhead crashed into him, knocking them both to the ground and the remote to who knew where.

For a flyer, the con was surprisingly strong. The wrecker discovered this after being tossed over.

Punches were thrown. Maces impacted armor and swords nicked at plating. Wheeljack was in the mix, fighting with a fury Bulkhead was lacking.

Not to say the green wrecker wasn't fighting well. That wasn't the case at all.

In fact, when it was Wheeljack who'd been shoved away, it had been Bulkhead that landed the next strong hit against the con. Dreadwing was turning, moving too slow to avoid the hit, optics widening in slight shock.

Shock was an emotional expression.

Bulkhead wasn't supposed to read emotions expressed from his enemies. They were all supposed to be the same slaggers.

There was only the slightest hitch in the velocity of the wrecking ball.

Didn't matter. In the end, it couldn't matter.

For Seaspray.

He slammed his mace against the side of Dreadwing's face and left the bulky seeker reeling straight into Wheeljack's grasp. Now, where was that relic?

There was a cylinder nearby; its silver stuck out starkly among the golds and reds of the forest. A cybertronian cylinder, without a doubt. Bulkhead jolted for it and pulled the key out.

"Got it!" he shouted, turning back to the fight.

Didn't look like he was really needed. Wheeljack was the only mech standing, even if he was leaking from multiple bludgeons and lacerations. With his battlemask shut, only his narrow optics were visible. They widened and then the smaller wrecker was giving a nod.

«Got a bridge you can give us, Sunshine?» the swordsmech asked over their squad-to-base commline.

Despite sputtering from the other end, a groundbridge did tear through the air a few meters away. Wheeljack leaned over to pick up one of his blades from where it had fallen and then paused upon straightening up.

"Oh." He glanced at Bulkhead. "One more thin'."

The whole team thought he was a softie. The big mech, but the friendliest. The least likely to hurt a Earth fly.

He tried his best to keep up that sort of comforting image. Told Miko to look away when he'd tear sparks out or punch deep or any of the violence she didn't need to see at her age (a part of him felt responsible for what she'd done with the insecticons in the last fight; had he been the one to normalize killing for her? had he been at fault for that? ...was that why she hadn't gone to him about it still, even if her upset was obvious?).

And through all that, his team forgot a simple fact: Bulkhead was a wrecker.

They weren't the type to shudder at strong violence.

Bulkhead didn't flinch when the sword stabbed somewhere below the downed seeker's wings.

He thought of that first time Wheeljack, or the shape changer Makeshift at that moment, had arrived on Earth. The pride of seeing him fight again; the flash of swords, the flying heads, the aerial gymnastics.

I taught him that-

No, Bulkhead didn't flinch at his old partner's brutality. It was admirable. It was good looking, at times.

But he didn't have to like it all the time either.

Neither bothered to check the con before they left. He might have been alive, he might not of. Bulkhead shouldn't stress over it. Even if Dreadwing had worked alongside them so recently, he'd also killed one of their own recently.

And wreckers always were protective of each other.

There was something undeniably embarrassing about this.

Granted, most things were for him. It had taken time to get used to construction work in the good areas of Tesarus and, more recently, the bad areas of Iacon. There was always an adjustment with change. There was always that awkward period when new coworkers watched him move his way clumsily through supplies and make a fool of himself just by being the klutz he was.

This was the biggest change to adjust to so far in his life though.

Bulkhead was nervous about it. He'd been drafted out of the construction barracks straight into a military one. He didn't have any military training or know any protocol or even carry any weapon mods!

And all these guys were crazy prepared looking. There was a huge gray mech over to his right, keeping some smaller mech in a headlock. There was a bulky femme inspecting a canon bigger than his leg. There were two mechs, a awful yellow colored shuttle and a red hulk, right by the door of this rec room arguing over something or other.

All Bulkhead caught when he walked by was a confusing: "-you keep your carriers on the comm line every time to make sure they can guide you through it?"

"Save that sass for later, Barnicle-b-"

"Oh, do you want it?" the yellow mech teased, "Is that it?"

Alright, so, that was all something. So glad he'd overhead that. Bulkhead kept walking past the verbal fighting or flirting or whatever that was and tried to approach the energon dispensers casually.

Unfortunately, he managed to get the dispenser tank knocked to the ground when he turned around.

"Sorry!" Bulkhead waved his servos placatingly, accidentally spilling the fuel from the cube he was still holding all over both himself and the floor. "Sorry-"

Ah scrud, scrud-

He dropped down to pick up the tank and put it back as gently as he could, and then tried to escape the room.

That plan was interrupted by the yellow mech he'd seen by the door. The shuttle, awfully small for his frametype, had servos planted on his hips and was looking straight up at him.

"Hey mech!" he piped up and Bulkhead felt his own jaw slacking.

Oh- right! Talk back. No big deal. He'd done plenty of talking during his shifts in building zones and all.

"...hello?"

Green optics sparkled with some sort of mirth. If the mech had a mouth, it'd have probably been smiling.

"You seem a bit nervous," the stranger continued. "You new here?"

"Oh. Yeah!" Bulkhead answered. A bit too energetically, he realized right after.

The yellow mech gave him a little punch in the shoulder, offering the same servo a moment after it dropped from his arm.

"You want me to show you around then?" he offered.

Yes please.

"U-um, okay?" the green mech 'answered'.

Those brightened optics rolled, but the mech started moving around the lounge.

"So, that's it for this room," he finished a few clicks later, turning to face Bulkhead once more. "The outpost is a whole lot bigger and so far there's probably way too many of us here. The draft for this unit typically targeted the heavy lifters like you, so don't worry about fitting in."

That was somewhat reassuring. The kindness behind it was at least, even if he doubted a klutz like him would ever fit in.

"But this-this is military, with commanders, and rules, and expectations. I don't real-"

A new mech shoved his way into the conversation without warning. He was big, coated in fresh looking turquoise polish, and had spun the shuttle around.

Did everyone here just shove their way around? Seemed nothing like the orderly stiffness he expected from military.

"Hey-oo, Barni," the big teal mech interrupted them vocally. Bulkhead's words died in the air as he watched the scene unfold.

The bot he'd been speaking with a moment before glanced over at the one behind him.

"Your memory fritzed again, Altus? You can't seem to hang on to names." Green optics shot to their widest state as though he just now realized something incredible. "You need me to knock your processor back in order?"

"Ooh! Wait!" a different voice came in and then some new mech bounced into the conversation, rotors swinging wildly behind him. Two sets of claws tapped each other in excitement.

There seemed to be a collective groan from the other bots in the room. The single optic'd mech took no notice.

"Can I do it for you?"

The one apparently named Altus shoved his way out of the room, the cyclops cackling in fast pursuit.

It was a short moment before the yellow mech turned slowly

"Anywayyy." The shuttle started up again, voice betraying his inability to take the conversation seriously. "You were saying...oh, something about how you are a real young guy, in the head at least, never got a weapons mod, never even hurt a turbofox, who'll break down at the slightest reprimand from an officer. All that sound right?"

Well, that was...harsh.

"Not trying to offend you, but it just seemed like that's the kind of scrap you were about to spout. Look, we're all in that together here. None of us know the least thing about fighting outside of the occasional street brawl," the yellow mech shrugged. "You don't fit in with military life? None of us do either."

"No-o, I just meant- I-"

The mouth-free face couldn't smile or frown, but the mech seemed like he was waiting patiently regardless of lacking telling expression. The patience, so different from the verbal spatting with those other mechs, prompted Bulkhead to keep going. "I was in construction, not a big job. Just another worker. I don't know how to have a- a commander or fight somebot or-"

"Hey, mech." The stranger, soon to be his teammate, put a servo on his shoulder. "You know what my last job was?"

Of course not. They'd only just met now.

"What was it?" Bulkhead asked curiously.

The other laughed and then leaned forward as if he was about to impart a great secret.

"I was a film producer in Helex," he whispered and then laughed again.

Bulkhead blinked slowly.

"Um. Well that is pretty different than the army."

He felt that same slap on his shoulder; it reminded him of the mechs at the building projects, always hitting each other and overworking, and crashing in one laughing heap. He was gonna miss those guys. He was even gonna miss the overworking part of it all.

"That's my point!" the other mech said gleefully.

They both laughed then and Bulkhead was reassured to realize it wasn't being forced or sounding stilted. It was a free laugh. Like the earlier banter and 'spat' had been.

He had thought officers skinned recruits for having fun like that. Maybe not...

"So? Feel a little better?"

Still smiling from laughter, Bulkhead nodded.

"More than a bit. You-"

Aaaand interrupted again. What was wrong with these people?

The new guilty mech had come up and tackled the shuttle from behind, wrapping sharply edged arms around the round bot. His head came up next to the ex-film producers and the green mech could see the teasing grin on that smooth face.

"Jackie!" the yellow mech tried to duck out of the hold. The one called Jackie laughed but did not relent his hold until Bulkhead's new friend dropped flat down to the ground and crushed the passenger. The green mech couldn't hide a wince; that had to have hurt. But the newcomer was rolling back up to his pedes, chuckling never ceasing even as he slid an arm around the yellow soldier's shoulder and looked Bulkhead up and down.

"New guy?" Jackie asked, speaking the question out slowly. Did he think that said 'new guy' was slow or-

"Bulkhead," he answered with a sheepish grin and wave. The shortest of the mechs moved his gaze to the flapping servo, which dropped down to his side in embarrassment.

But Jackie just met his optics with another slow grin.

Maybe everything the guy did was slow; dragged out, lazy. Not judging, just-

"Nice to have you with us, Bulk. Now-" he finally disentangled from the yellow mech and offered a cocky salute to them both. "-Sad as it is to go, I've got to meet with the slag-er, commander. Just thought I'd come by an' tell you that Altus is on a warpath to get you since you sic'd Whirl on him."

The two left behind watched him saunter out. Saunter slowly, Bulkhead noted with his own amusement. The mech beside him shook his head with a chuckle.

"That's Wheeljack for you," came the explanation for mirth. "Always quick to leave. Good mech, though. Not everyone here is."

Well that was a...anxiety provoking statement. Bulkhead wasn't entirely sure how to take that.

"Uh-" he started up.

The other gave his arm an absent hit.

"It's alright, big guy. I'll tell you who to tackle and who to avoid."

"R-really?" Bulkhead brightened up. "Thank you!"

"Anytime, mech," the shorter mech's green optics fritzed with light. "How about we start now?"

How about that?

The way his smile crawled into place was reminiscent of Wheeljack's a moment before.

"Alright with me, so long as we start with the first of you bunch to be tackled," he prodded.

The beat that followed could have been choreographed with its perfection.

Actually, since this guy had been a film producer before the draft, it could very well have been choreographed.

"Oh!" the yellow mech broke the pause with alert realization. "Right. I'm Seaspray. And like Jackie said: Welcome to the team."

Bulkhead smiled at his new friend.

"Glad to be here."