A human year passed and it was time for a break. Preferably a change of pace altogether.

Cybertron was still alive. The government wasn't hostile towards any specific groups of people. It was a pretty awkward government to witness, but it hadn't imploded or exploded or any of the like. Even Vos, the weird little independent country surrounded by official cybertronian cities that it was, had done alright. There'd been about four big assassination attempts, but honestly Knock Out stopped paying attention to them after confirming that Orion had survived. It would have really been slag to have his hero (or a version of him) die on him (again).

The planet wasn't covered in cities yet. It had only been a year, after all. The area around the Well had been constructed pretty well and served as the biggest capital built so far. Vos had hired (presumably, with very little pay) workers to rebuild in there while the Well city was still being worked on, so it had become semi-presentable as an urban paradise about the time the capital had. The rest were still in early construction phases. Bulkhead's line of work had done very well. It had probably been busier and hired more than any others. A shame, really. Cybertron could use more cosmetic stylists.

There were enough shiploads of cybertronians to return that he'd lost count of them too. They were hardly news anymore. With each new ship came new adults who, unlike the newsparks, already had life experience and jobs and opinions and whatnot. Among them came- inevitably- more medics.

Breakdown had tutored the vehicon medic replacement in medical assisting and ended up with a few other recruits for those lessons. Ships returned with their own doctors and their crews only wanted to be touched by those they knew well. The 'one hospital on Cybertron' status changed to 'multiple hospitals at different vital locations'- and more would be coming as these cities expanded further. There was no one official CMO anymore. Not when there were so many medbays. There was no rule or need saying they had to stick around to keep all these individual hospitals in order.

All in all, things felt rather wrapped up. Breakdown felt that his little crew of discount nurses were ready to be thrown into the world and then had done just that. He was currently retired from that teaching position. Knock Out had slipped out of the medical spotlight the minute a second hospital had been built and now was very firmly out of it. The rest of Team Prime had survived the war and were faring nicely. Orion was a very popular leader and had even gotten the pleasant surprise of being reunited with some old friends of his who had survived the war. Even as busy as he was, he still found time to meet with all the others on a regular basis. A few orns after this started, Breakdown mentioned that he rather liked Orion. Knock Out painfully agreed to disagree on the matter (even if he did like Pax, there was no topping Optimus Prime). Subjective tastes were supposed to be subjective for a reason, he supposed. And he had made a choice to let others choose their own lives and likes and tastes- even if they were wrong (in his opinion, he tried to remind himself).

The rest of the team still met on a regular enough basis. Judging by the fact that a good amount of those reunions happened on Earth, it didn't end up affecting them all too much that Ratchet and Wheeljack were on the other planet.

Which made Knock Out think.

So think he did.

And, after a good few cycles devoted solely to thinking, he decided it was time for a trip.


Ah, Earth. Knock Out shifted his pede over the organic dirt and relished in its gritty feeling. Being on Earth always meant getting as many oil baths (or at least car washes) as possible. There was nothing clean about this planet's natural state. It was a horrible place in that regard. Oh, but it had so many open roads. The star had more heat than Cybertron's latest distant orbiter. And humans had some very, very creative inputs to the world: automobile models, films, polishes, etc.

The last time the war had ended, he'd been thrilled to be on Cybertron. There had been visits (supervised) with the autobots over to Earth, but those had dwindled away within the first year. Then banned altogether.

He was exercising a spiteful right against that stupid law of his home timeline by coming here. This time, Earth and Cybertron were official allies. This time, there was already small commerce growing between them and travel was technically unrestricted ('technically', because so far as he could tell it was very difficult to undergo on the human side of things). This time, he could come here and go back anytime he wanted.

And that freedom let him think about what it was he wanted most. Knock Out ground the dirt under his pedes, smiled at the feeling (and what freedom it represented), and looked at his partner.

"How do you feel about this place?"

Breakdown shrugged without putting much thought into it. That was fine. They both like to think through action instead of spending too much pesky time on details.

"Not bad," he answered. "Gotta lot of good memories here."

Was that so? Sounded just like him then.

"How would you feel..." Knock Out drew the second question out with faux uncaring. "...about leaving Cybertron?"

One brow shot up while Breakdown's expression constricted. Always so expressive in thought, wasn't he.

"To come here?" he asked. "For good?"

Maybe. Maybe not. What was so bad about that thought anyway?

"For a while," the medic said. "Just to get away from the craziness over there. It's not like we'd be locked here. The autobots are always visiting this place and Ratchet and Wheeljack haven't left for more than a few days in space at a time before the kids have called them back."

Nothing permanent, no commitments. Even if they'd need to build some sort of base with comforts for their stay, which did imply commitments. No reason to think too hard on that.

"Sure," Breakdown shrugged again. "There were too many newsparks over there anyway."

Knock Out smiled widely.

"Wonderful!" The dirt underpede was ground again for good measure before he looked at his partner's imperfectly colored optics. "I always was more of a colony mech myself. The homeworld isn't quite the place for me."

Breakdown looked out past him to stare at the Earth desert.

"I can't say I had that many fond memories of living there myself," he replied before smiling back at the smaller mech. "So I think you meant 'for us'."


Without the rest of the team, Autobot Outpost Omega One had gotten rather empty. The Jackhammer was parked outside of it on a regular basis. Sometimes it was an empty spot; sometimes, its pilot had dragged the base medic out to explore some nearby system or something in Earth's own. The rest of the time, it was a permanent parking lot for a single ship.

The spacebridge within the base was lit up on a regular basis. It had been for the last stellar cycle and it seemed pretty likely it'd stay that way.

Out of the whole team, Orion was the one who seemed least likely to visit. He was the busiest out of all of them. That didn't stop the leader from coming to spend time with the permanent cybertronian consultant to Unit:E. Knock Out wasn't sure what had gone down between the two the night of that party, but it hadn't stopped either from staying in contact with each other.

Far more importantly to him, that fact meant that he was able to see the former Prime too. He'd been worried that moving to Earth would mean leaving behind chances to socialize. It hadn't. Everyone came by. They didn't even have to go visit Cybertron regularly (even if they did) to stay in touch: the team was always dropping in on this formerly backwater planet.

Even Magnus came on occasion as well. He was almost always there to work on some fine details of interplanetary relations with Unit:E, but he could still be seen being trailing by that human they'd run into in Arizona. Judging by some of Fowler's complaints vented when they were nearby, the fleshy wasn't even supposed to be in any of these government outposts.

Fowler was a pretty busy man. That left him less free time to show up and rant, and more subjects to rant about. As entertaining as it was, it was a good reminder that they needed out of this place and to one that wouldn't allow the human to exit the lift and begin a tirade without warning. Let Magnus and Ratchet deal with all that mess.

Smokescreen was another that visited on his own. He'd pop in by himself to spend time with Knock Out or Jack Darby. Races or troublemaking were typically involved. Knock Out couldn't say those visits weren't good fun.

The original human's partners came by as much as they could (occasionally for a visit long enough that they stole one of the base rooms or else parked in front of the organic's houses), which was pretty often. He still remembered how upset they were to have that access cut off from them. He remembered their spikes in irritability or glum moods after the council had cut them off. Their trips over now were a perfect example of how much better this time was than that.

Arcee was on Earth on a semi permanent basis. She split time between planets at least evenly. Most of that time was spent with the Darby family, but she was still spending a good amount with him. Knock Out quite enjoyed that fact. They'd go the most exquisite car washes (he had made a rather perfected list based on his experiences when he and Breakdown had been wandering the planet), bask on sunny beaches to enjoy the glint of the star off of their newly shiny plating (and soak in the stares, because how good it was to finally be free to show off to all the unattractive humans here), and then go to another car wash to get the sand out from the rather uncomfortable places in cracks and under plating. Apparently, human gossip columnist and internet websites sometimes wrote theories about them both based on their outings and they always gave the medic and two-wheeler a good laugh.

The other two also came by, although they were on Cybertron far more than Arcee. Bulkhead tended to spend more time with Breakdown than he did with the duo together. Knock Out tried not to be offended by that; he reminded himself that he didn't particularly want to spend one on one time with the wrecker and that made him feel far better about the snub. Bumblebee split his time between them and with them together. It was nice, actually. On their own, they did different activities than they would have with Breakdown involved. When the other two were on their own, the same could probably be said of them. And all three together? Bumblebee was a rather sociable person. He really did know how to adapt to those he was hanging out with at the time.

The humans were around far more than any bots from Cybertron were. They were, apparently, 'consultants' here now. That mainly meant they were free to watch television and goof around in the main room with Ratchet. Sometimes June Darby came with them and she would join the two medics and the cybertronian nurse in the medbay. Did they actually talk about medicine? Not particularly often. But let the outsiders think they were while they actually gossiped about delightful, gossip-worthy happenings.

Even if they'd never quite returned to the state of ease they'd had before the incident in the tropics, Knock Out didn't particularly mind living with Wheeljack. The wrecker tended to stay busy outside during the day and preferred staying with Ratchet over attempting to steal any of the other quarters. They didn't run into each other that often around the base, but they both seemed to have silently agreed to attempt looking past that incident. When Wheeljack was busy with Magnus one cycle, Knock Out had dug through all of his things in Ratchet's (horrifyingly crowded and drab) quarters and the crates on the Jackhammer parked outside: to his satisfaction, he didn't find any opened crates of nuke or syk or the like. The sealed crate that he did recognize (although it had been unsealed at that time he'd seen it last) was buried discreetly behind the plateau and Knock Out congratulated himself for a job well done.

As unassuming as his roommates were here, the living arrangements still weren't ideal. It had almost felt less crowded on the Nemesis when there were newsparks and other busybodies running around wild. The outpost here was the conduit location for travel between worlds. As much as a separate Unit:E base had been set up for more official visits and training and other locations around the world had been created, this was still the bridge typically used to bring Team Prime over. Ratchet would hold random seminars for humans (Knock Out had walked out of the hall right into one of these seminars once and it had been embarrassing how long it had taken for him to adjust to what was in front of him) to 'do his part' as a consultant alongside the kids. The kids were loud and had little appreciation for real music or art (it did occur to him that a part of that could've been purposeful; perhaps they were trying to get him riled up by offending him).

Fowler managed to help them find a location in his jurisdiction that was relatively empty of humans. The duo was given free reign to set up something there. Once word got out, they were swarmed by help. Bulkhead organized the others and supervised construction effectively. Even Miko (in her stolen cybertronian armor, of course) managed to build more things than she broke.

Eventually, they had a nice little lodging. There was a party to 'break it in'. A few streamers were still found in random areas even a few cycles after that had ended.

The property was in the north somewhere, in pretty high (by human standards) elevation. It was dry and flat in enough places nearby to race around with enough green, wooded area around the base itself to keep the riff raff from thinking it was important. Best of all, a service road a few miles out connected them to eventual city access and that meant drive in movies and car washes and even a small racing ring. Any comforts the towns nearby didn't have, Bulkhead had made sure to include in the base floor plan.

Actually, that wasn't really the best bit. It was pretty easy to consider the best part was that it wasn't cut off. A bridge could get them back to Jasper and a second could send them over to Cybertron to catch up on what was happening over there.

It wasn't that he disliked the planet, after all. It was a delightful place. The omega lock had done wonders there. Even some of the dead colony worlds had been proposed as places to shoot the second lock at as well. Maybe someday Velocitron would be back. Until then, Earth was nice enough and the homeworld made for a good vacation location. The door was always open to change living spaces and that option was so much less constricting than those his old world had boxed people in with.

Actually, if Knock Out thought about it hard, he wasn't sure if there was anything to complain about right then. Cybertron's government was doing well enough. Its society was building nicely, if chaotically. Earth was gross in its organic-ness, but it really held more charms than flaws. Everyone that mattered seemed happy with their current work and the lives they held on either planet.

Not to brag, but he thought he'd done a pretty bang up job with making this world possible.