"Well, it's less rustic than I pictured," Knock Out admitted as he hoisted himself over a boulder blocking a dust-coated hall. "And bigger. But still, living under a rock?"

"That's the point. Megatron never would've expected to find us in Jasper!" Bumblebee said.

"Yep," Bulkhead grinned. "Kept the 'Cons off our tail."

"For a while, anyway," said Arcee. Funny . . . She'd spent such a short time here compared to her millions of years on Cybertron, and yet the Earthen base was sharper, clearer, in her memory than her old home on her home planet.

"Eurgh." Knock Out paused in mid-scramble over a boulder, his optics squeezing closed.

"What's wrong?" Bumblebee asked.

"Nothing, nothing. Just picturing what a fright I must look, covered in cobwebs." Knock Out braced his arms and pulled himself over the rock.

"Hmm." Arcee glanced ahead. This hall should have led to a t-junction, but the metal walls had buckled under the heat from Decepticon missiles; they had melted a new passageway. She tried to map out the base in her head; was she catching a glimpse of the training room through that crevice, or the armory?

Bumblebee's comm lit up. "Hey Bee," Raf's voice came through. "How's it going?"

"Really good," Bumblebee said. "It's not nearly as bad as I was expecting."

"That's great! Um, are you almost done? Miko's getting that look in her eye . . . "

The four bots exchanged glances and wordlessly agreed that this was a warning to be heeded. "Yeah," Bumblebee said, "we'll be back soon."

Arcee turned to Bulkhead, gesturing to the rubble-filled halls around them. "What do you think?"

The former construction bot eyed the walls and beams. "It ain't pretty, but it's not gonna collapse. Should be safe to get a cleanup crew through here."

Arcee nodded. Apparently being this deep underground had shielded the lower levels of the base; Cybertronians had a habit of underestimating not only Earthlings but the Earth itself. "That's what I needed to hear. Let's head back."

"Oh, thank goodness," Knock Out said. "Yes, let's go topside before my vents clog."

They retraced their steps, blinking and shading their optics as they stepped into the sunlight. The towering butte which had once protected the Autobot base was long gone; only one wall of it rose above them, a reminder of what had been lost the fateful night that Megatron located the base.

The kids were poking through the rubble of the briefing room while Fowler inspected a tangle of wire spread around the remains of the old Ground Bridge. He looked up as the bots returned, smiling as the kids ran over to greet their Cybertronian partners. Bulkhead scooped up Miko and set her on his shoulder, to her delight, while Bumblebee crouched to talk to Raf. Jack said something to Arcee, then turned to speak to Knock Out, who was vigorously scrubbing his chest with a chamois cloth.

Pulling his glance from the others, Agent Fowler drew a pocket knife out of his pocket, flipping out a tiny wire cutter attachment. A simple snip and a taut, tension-filled wire turned into a loose coil. He wound it up and pocketed it as he approached the others.

"So the Halloween party is a go?" Miko was saying as she pumped her fist in the air. "Yesss!"

"Wasn't Halloween last week?" Knock Out asked.

"As good as you bots are at staying in disguise, it would've been pretty obvious if you'd come trick-or-treating with us," Jack said. "Uh, not that I was trick-or-treating. I just went with Raf and Miko to keep them stay safe—"

"Don't be lame, Jack," Miko said. "Anyway, this party is gonna rock. We can eat candy—"

"Play games," Raf added.

"Tell ghost stories," Jack said.

"And this place is gonna be super spooky at night!" Miko grinned.

"Hmmm." Knock Out tapped his chin, casting his eyes to the looming rock wall. "You know, you could probably project movies onto that . . . Might I suggest Bloodscythe 3: Bane of the Bloody Blade ?"

"COOL!"

"You've seen that?" Jack said. "The theater in Jasper pulled it, they got too many complaints."

"Um," quavered Raf.

"Let's make a list of potential movies," Bumblebee said diplomatically. "And we'll see what we end up watching."

Bloodscythe 3 wasn't likely to make the cut, Fowler thought, amused. "Sun's getting pretty low," he said. "Might be time to be getting back."

"You're right," Arcee said. "It's a ways back." She transformed, the other bots followed suit.

Agent Fowler started towards Bumblebee, who had been his ride on the way over. But a blockade comprised of gloss and chrome glided lazily in front of him.

"Let the human newsparks make the most of the evening," Knock Out said. "They don't want you encroaching on their time with their mentors." He opened his driver's side door.

"Well," Agent Fowler said after a moment, climbing in. "Beats the trunk."

"Very drole," Knock Out said. He followed Arcee, Bulkhead, and Bumblebee as they pulled out onto the dusty old highway, golden beneath the sinking sun.

The ride back to the Autobots' current base was, as Arcee had said, "a ways." On and on they rolled, leaving behind the ghost town of Jasper, Nevada. And despite his infamous love of racing, Knock Out seemed content to follow Bumblebee's taillights this particular evening.

Agent Fowler's impression of Knock Out had always been that he was a chatterbox. Every interrogator's dream, a guy who couldn't shut up. Just put him in a silent, empty room and sooner or later he would start singing just to fill the silence. But tonight he said nothing. A faint hum emitted from around his steering column now and then; Fowler wasn't sure if it was a mechanical noise or musical. Maybe both.

"Arcee was looking for something," Knock Out said abruptly. "She didn't say anything about it, but I saw her poking through the rubble whenever she thought no one was looking."

Fowler remembered the memorial that had been on the top of the mesa. "They lived there a long time. She probably had a lot of personal stuff in her room. You know how it is, stuff piles up."

"True," Knock Out said thoughtfully. "It piles up. Did you live there too?"

"In the base? Me?" Fowler was startled into a short laugh. "Nope. I didn't even live in Nevada till Unit E assigned me to be the official robot liaison."

Knock Out hummed some kind of acknowledgement and fell silent. Fowler gazed out the window, his foot twitching from the instinct to put his foot on the gas pedal or the brake. But that wasn't how it went when you were riding in Cybertronians. You rolled on their terms.

The bevy of cars (and one motorcycle) ducked around a "NO ENTRY - DANGER: RADIATION" sign, sliding onto the highway leading to the town of Harrisville. One step closer to the Unit E base.

"Ultra Magnus told me what you did," Knock Out said suddenly as they rounded a gentle curve.

"What I did?"

"How you helped. You know, during . . ." There was a pause, as though Knock Out was choosing his words with care. "During the chase." He cleared his throat, or the robotic equivalent. "I just wanted to say it was, ah, appreciated."

"Oh." Now Fowler was the one awkwardly clearing his throat. For some reason he felt embarrassed. "Well, thanks."

Knock Out decelerated as he followed Bumblebee off the highway, pausing at a stop sign marking a lonely small town intersection. "I wouldn't really have taken you and your lady-friend to Megatron that one time," he said.

Fowler raised an eyebrow. "No?"

"Well . . . yes, I probably would have," Knock Out admitted. "But I would have regretted it later, most likely. Megatron didn't have any use for humans anyway."

Agent Fowler gave a snort. "Apology—I think—accepted. And she wasn't my lady-friend."

"No? How about now?" Knock Out asked slyly.

"Mind your own business, 'Bot."

Knock Out's engine thrummed in time to his chuckles.

Ratchet grumbled as he tried to fit his igniscope into a wooden crate. He would never be so sentimental as to describe the instrument as "beloved", but it had served him well over the years.

His old colleague Pharma had scoffed at the device, even pre-war; he claimed the supposedly more "advanced" luxinometers measured spark-strength with more precision. Maybe that was true on paper, but the igniscope caught nuances that the luxinometer never could. And it was sturdy. Ratchet wasn't going anywhere without it. If only it would fit in the damn box . . .

Scowling, he set the igniscope aside, instead picking up his oleumizer, a bulky cylinder with a hose extending from the base of the drum. This device, too, Pharma had besmirched, telling Ratchet he should use the latest-on-the-market oil applicator, which "didn't take an eternity to warm up." Pharma had always been prone to hyperbole.

To Ratchet's annoyance, the oleumizer didn't fit in the crate either. But the next tool did: a hacksaw. Pharma had absolutely hated the hacksaw, he said it was "barbaric" and the sight of it "made him faint", which was a ridiculous statement from a bot who would chatter about his dinner plans while wrist-deep in a patient.

Ratchet had to admit that the occasions where he needed a hacksaw were few and far between. Still, he liked having it around. What if all the power went out and his built-in tools failed and he needed to open a patient's chassis? Just because it hadn't happened recently (meaning the past two million years) didn't mean it couldn't happen.

"What I need is bigger boxes," he said out loud.

The words echoed strangely. The med bay—no, the entire Unit E base—felt cavernous now that the walls defining the medbay, the briefing room, and the Autobots' private quarters had been removed. If one could even call them "walls". Lined up as they were at the far end of the hangar, it was impossible to see them as anything more than they were: sheets strung on aluminum frames..

We really lived like this, Ratchet thought in renewed surprise. Not that it was the worst place he'd stayed, not by a long shot Certainly a step up from trenches full of mud and spilled energon or tents that leaked underneath a dreary, continuous onslaught of rain.

But the strange thing about the Unit E base was that it had seemed so normal, like an actual home. And now, like a magician's trick, the illusion was shattered. An empty hangar spread around Ratchet, populated by odd little islands of electronics: the computer banks on the far wall, the Ground-Bridge-turned-Space-Bridge standing all alone, Ratchet's little bevy of medical berths and equipment, the latter diminishing as he packed.

Bah. It was time Ratchet returned to Cybertron anyway. That's what he'd fought for all those years, wasn't it? Getting all this fighting nonsense over with so he could return to what was important: healing bots. Doing his job. It was sheer foolishness that he'd stayed here at all; what possible reason did he have for staying on this endlessly frustrating planet?

A rumble of engines came from the end of the hangar as the automated doors slid open, letting the setting sun pour in; a chorus of young voices called out.

"Ratchet, we're back!"

"Hey, you're never going to guess what we found—our old PlayGamer 2. I think it's broken but—"

"Yo, Ratch! Get ready to swing 'cause there's a par-tay incoming!"

It took Ratchet a moment to realize he was smiling.

The emptiness receded before a babble of voices and the whirr of multiple transformation cogs, with Knock Out bringing up the rear. Within moments the children were upon Ratchet, clamoring about their adventure.

"Well, what's all the fuss?" Ratchet said. "One at a time, please."

"The base was great," Miko said. "You should've come with us, Ratch!"

"Bee said a lot of the tunnels under the base are intact—"

"We're going to have a Halloween party there," said Jack. "Well, a post-Halloween party, actually—"

"A party over there? In a ruin?" Ratchet cast an incredulous look at the bots, particularly Arcee whom he considered the most responsible bot present and therefore the most to blame. But it was Bulkhead who answered him.

"Aw, c'mon Doc. It's safe, I promise."

"We-e-ell." Ratchet's tone made his skepticism clear. "That's what you say."

"You'll come though, right Ratchet?" Raf said. "To the party?"

"Harumph." The scaffolding that the kids loved to clamber up had already been removed, so they were gazing at him from the floor: three tiny, hopeful, upturned faces. "I suppose someone with sense should be there to keep things under control."

"Ouch, what a dig at Magnus," Knock Out said, strolling over. He was walking a little slower than usual. "Or does he only attend soirees when there are nuts and bolts to count?"

"He'll be there," Bulkhead chuckled. "Probably thinkin' up Halloween recipes as we speak."

"Not if he's on the job," Bumblebee said. "He's got too much work ethic."

"Far too much," Knock Out agreed. "I'm constantly wishing he had less."

Jack's phone buzzed. He flipped it open, then glanced at Miko and Raf. "Hey, I just got a text from my mom. She's heading over to pick us up."

"Awww." Miko's upper body flopped forward as though her waist were on a hinge, her arms swinging limply. "But we're still hanging with the bots! It's only been—"

"The whole day?" Arcee smiled. "Don't worry, we'll be back soon."

"Yeah, chin up, kiddo." Bulkhead gave Miko a pat on the back that was somehow hearty and gentle at the same time. "We'll be back soon and, hey, we're only a space bridge away!"

"Yeah." Miko straightened, crossing her arms. "Only a space bridge away. Until . . ."

She let the sentence drop. No one picked it up. The silence grew awkward.

Knock Out clapped his hands together, making everyone start. "Well!" he said. "As Arcee said, we should be on our way. Thank you for your hospitality, Ratchet."

"Ah, ah, ah!" Ratchet jerked a thumb towards the med berth. "Get over there. I don't like the sound of your transformation."

"No need for personal remarks," Knock Out said lightly. "I assure you I'm fine—"

"Get. over. there." Ratchet locked eyes with him.

With a huff, Knock Out stalked towards the medical equipment.

"We'll wait for you," Bumblebee said.

"No, no." Knock Out waved him towards the Space Bridge. "You go on ahead. A few scans won't take long. Five minutes tops."

Forty minutes later, the oleumizer had almost warmed up and Ratchet was waiting for a clean read from the igniscope. The latter had to be gripped by its handles and held at spark level while the patient sat perfectly still for ten minutes. It was the 'sitting still' part that Knock Out was struggling with; he kept twitching and staring longingly towards the Space Bridge.

While he waited on readouts from those devices, Ratchet busied himself with the information displayed on his handheld medical scanner . . . and with questioning Knock Out.

"So let me get this straight." Ratchet pinched the bridge of his nose-guard as he paced in front of the examination on which Knock Out sat, not looking nearly penitent enough. "When I said 'no heavy lifting,' you heard 'throw out your back again.' I told you to leave the rough stuff to Ultra Magnus."

"I did. He was dragging all the heavy equipment into position—the construction vehicles and tanks and so on—and I was handling the lightweight cargo like bicycles and DVDs."

"You're telling me these stress points," Ratchet spun around the med scanner so Knock Out could see the portions of his backstruts outlined in red, "are from carrying DVDs?"

"Well, I did pick up a car," Knock Out admitted. "But it was a small one." He moved his hands apart to illustrate its size and the igniscope beeped.

"You moved," Ratchet scolded, reaching over to reset it. "Now you have to start over."

"Oh hell."

Ratchet clucked his tongue, going over his notes and ignoring the sullen look Knock Out was giving him. 'Medics make the worst patients.' How many times had Ratchet heard that? Orderlies had murmured it knowingly to each other when he passed in the halls. Even Optimus had expressed it to him back in Jasper, Nevada—oh, not that exact phrase, but in his considerate, beating-around-the-bush way he'd said he was "concerned" about Ratchet's intake of energon. As though it made any sense for Ratchet, who stayed in the base all day, to receive the same amount of energon rations as the Autobots who were fighting 'Cons in the field!

No, Ratchet refused to validate that silly generalization. But as to whether Knock Out was a bad patient? Well.

The igniscope finally took a readout; Knock Out gave a sigh of relief as Ratchet lifted it away from him. "Well, your spark has a healthy rotation—"

"Is that what that antique was reading? I could have told you that."

"A good medic takes nothing for granted," Ratchet said sternly. "Hmm, no spark issues, good energon circulation and circuit integrity . . . but your back's another story. I'm putting you back on bedrest."

Knock Out recoiled, either wincing from pain or from Ratchet's words. "Ex cuse me? You can't be serious."

"Try me."

"You're really going to penalize me for being the victim of an unfortunate accident?" Knock Out's eyes were wide, his hand pressed dramatically against his chest. "It could have happened to anyone!"

"I'm not 'penalizing' you by providing necessary care, Knock Out. As for 'it could happen to anyone', we-e-ell, anyone who disregards medical advice and carries trucks over his head maybe—"

"I would never carry one like that, don't be silly." Knock Out's optics narrowed. "Speaking of untended injuries . . . how's that twinge in your elbow, hmm?"

"Do not deflect. We aren't talking about me, we're talking about you—the patient who keeps returning to the med bay like a boomerang."

Knock Out had the gall to wink. "Well, I am a medic. It's my natural habitat."

"You know what I mean. If you'd listened to me you'd be fully recovered by now."

"I am ," Knock Out said, forcing his back straight as his gears audibly ground. "I'm (ungh) perfectly fine."

"Bedrest. Three weeks."

"Three weeks?" Knock Out pressed his hand to his chest again and this time his shock seemed genuine. " Ratchet."

"You heard me."

"But that's absurd. Come on, I'll die of boredom." Knock Out took on a wheedling tone. "Now Ratchet, we both know that the recommended time for recovery isn't set in stone. It's just a general guideline , a little extra buffer for those silly bots who forget to take their medication and skip appointments. But we're different, we're medics—"

Ratchet pinched his nose again. From deep in his memory banks Pharma smirked at him, shoving unneeded and undesired painkillers into his hand. 'Oh Ratchet, Ratchet . . . Medics really do make the worst patients, don't they?'

"There's room for one more," June said with a smile, her elbow resting on the open window of her beat up station wagon.

William Fowler smiled back but shook his head. "Looks like someone's already riding shotgun."

"Oh. Uh, I can move . . ." Jack fumbled with his seatbelt—perhaps a little unenthusiastically, as it didn't actually unbuckle.

Fowler chuckled. "No need. I got some stuff to do around here still. Ratchet will 'bridge me out when I'm done."

"I guess this is goodnight then." June leaned out of the window and Fowler, self-conscious, met her for a peck of a kiss.

"Oh ho HO!" Miko hooted from the backseat, elbowing Raf as Jack slumped with his face in his hands.

Fowler waved as they drove off, then returned to the hangar, where Ratchet was packing up his tools. Or going through the motions, at least. The doc-bot had cleared out the majority of his workspace in just a few days, but he'd hit a stalemate since then; the tools surrounding the medical berths got shuffled around without being reduced in number.

"You're still here?" Ratchet said, finally noticing his presence.

"Yeah. We need to talk." Agent Fowler opened his hand to reveal a segment of wire from the ruined Ground Bridge in Jasper, one end cleanly sheared.

And the other end as well.