Knock Out was gloriously lustrously red; the red of sex and victory and poor life choices unregretted. He sauntered into the foyer with a small medical pod floating behind him. He arched a brow ridge at Mirage, unpolished and dented, and might have commented on either condition except for a noise from Thundercracker.

The deep rumble of an outlier with a tank low on patience.

"He's out. We had to sedate him, with a properly checked standard dose correctly calibrated for a sparkling of his developmental age." The medic sing-song explained to avoid the usual queries. Thundercracker had taken it upon himself to fill solo a trine-load of parental fretting. Knock Out guided the pod to the Seeker then stepped back to avoid being shoved aside. There was a lot of avoidance going on. Such as not asking where Starscream and Skywarp were.

"Are there any sparkling developmental specialists on Cybertron?" The noble asked in a careful tone to evade any suggestion he was implying Hook was a construction engineer not a doctor. He also did not hint he knew Knock Out had learned his trade, and others, in a Polyhexian chop-shop. The Decepticon Medical Corps was notorious for on the job training.

"I doubt there are any left in toto." Knock Out shrugged. "None have come forward. The field was niche. No one wanted to distend their frame when Primus could pop out a spark for them."

"There were Vosian midwives." Thundercracker delicately lifted Tempest out of the pod and tucked him into his cockpit. He'd be safe there until the discomfort of the asynchronous pull of their sparks woke him. The Seeker couldn't make it better but his bitlet was at least soothed by the presence of his Carrier. He recognised the spark that had nurtured him.

"We're dealing with a lot of past tense here." The medic retrieved the pod. They only had a few. "If we knew where Ratchet was, I'd ping him with a sob story. Though I'm fairly sure you 'Bots packed off your sparked mecha to some Neutral hidey-hole." He grinned at the faded Autobot. "Unless you want to pretend you were all as chaste as platinum."

"We weren't." Mirage decided to treat Knock Out was charmingly informal rather than rude. "We had ready access to contraceptives however." Short rations and stress covered what the prophylactic coding had not. "I don't know where Ratchet is either."

"Of course you don't." The racer tweaked a glossy crimson wing mirror. The spy failed to not envy his state of polish.

"Will his spark help Tempest?" Thundercracker could hear the undercurrent of sniping and didn't care. Nothing mattered except his sparkling.

Knock Out's shrug was eloquent.

Mirage considered he could leash the blue Seeker with a minimum of willingness. The 'Con could betray him, use him and toss him aside. He wouldn't be surprised. The gamble might be worth it if it got him an ally. Seekers were loyal. Starscream's perpetual mutinies were all the more egregious considering his frame-type.

"You'll have a record of Tempest's spark frequency. Scan me now." Mirage suggested as though it was the simplest thing for him to crack his chest in the presence of two 'Cons. That he wasn't having to override security code sure he was being hacked. "The resolution won't be precise but if we're nowhere near harmony it will be obvious."

"Prepare yourself for disappointment." Knock Out said airily to Thundercracker while pulling a hand-held scanner from his subspace. Normally the medic didn't carry one. Grey was grey and hard to miss. Post-war though, the Command Trine weren't the only ones trying to make horrible miniature versions of themselves.

Spec Ops tricks quietened perfectly sensible protocols enough for Mirage to unlock the armour over his spark chamber. There was nothing he could do to moderate his spark rate or the insistent alerts from his deactivated invisibility suite. Or basic common sense. With the chamber crystal still in place, Knock Out couldn't kill him with a punch but a direct shot from a blaster would be instantly terminal.

The scanner clicked cold against his soul. Ages of poetry had been written of the hue and humming perfection of what had been seen as an individual's direct connection to Primus. Until someone had devised a way to cold construct mecha from stored sparks thus rendering life a commodity. One more social division to carve up Cybertronians.

"Don't get excited." Knock Out frowned when the scanner beeped. He had the results direct to his HUD and pulled Tempest's out of primary memory to analyse. "They're not incompatible." He checked again so if this all blew up in someone's face it wouldn't be his. "I'll need the 'Bot on a slab for a full scan to be sure."

"But they're near enough?" Thundercracker asked urgently.

"For you to do this ridiculous stunt? Yes." The medic stowed the scanner. "There are other options."

"No."

"You need to be realistic..." Knock Out didn't like seeing mecha torture themselves. He wasn't an interrogator. He'd never got off on pain-play. Too much like work. Seeing Thundercracker wrack himself was not fun.

"No!" The Seeker snarled.

"We'll sign the contract and make an attempt." Mirage intruded smoothly before he had to dive behind any of the inadequate furniture. He didn't want to see a Carrier's pain. Or coo over a bitlet tiny enough to fit in a cockpit. He was tired. He was going to be ruthless, secure his freedom, and fret about ethics later.

"Thank you." The jet had enough self-control his glyphs were correct. No fuzzing at the edges, no doubling. Thundercracker moderated his engine. He wasn't going to shoot a medic. Even if stupid wrong poisonous things came out of Knock Out's vocaliser.

"Touching, I'm sure." The sleek racer didn't reset his optics in derision because he was going to keep target lock on the Seeker until he was out of the apartment. "Hook will need to give the 'Bot a physical." It was the Constructicon's turn to deal with Thundercracker's idiocy. "Do you want me to give him a copy of Tempest's medical info?"

At the jet's nod, Knock Out transmitted the file and excused himself. Soundwave might be prepared to indulge the allegedly least-unstable of the Command Trine but the medic had run his course. When Starscream was on approach looking for someone to blame, Knock Out was not going to be at ground zero.

"Why don't you have a lie-down with Tempest while I read through the jargon?" Mirage needed privacy to reconcile his programming. His chest ached. A little tactical nap-time would give him the chance to pull himself together. "Lock me in a spare room if you need the peace of mind I won't run."

However much the Decepticon wanted to feign chivalry, Thundercracker didn't hesitate to shut him in. None of the rooms in the apartment were poky. Seekers were notoriously claustrophobic. This space was at least four times larger than his cell even with every wall lined with bookshelves. Horizontal slit windows let in plenty of light and pillows smothered the improvised chaise. Not awful. Mirage was fairly confident he could pick the lock too.

Being incarcerated wasn't the issue. Not being seen as he subsided onto the floor to rock back and forth as his tank heaved was. He had his pride. The noble curled up on the bare plascrete fighting the urge to purge as his frame trembled. His joints throbbed like every servo was misaligned. Knowing this was just a panic attack didn't help.

Mirage let the reaction run its course. He'd been not too bad since returning to Cybertron. Hospitality had been lacking but being home had helped. Being where he should be, not adrift in exile helped. He hadn't been made for war. The interminable conflict had carved runnels into him, eroding his self. If he had known what enlisting would cost him, he would've decamped with his peers.

But he had wanted to do something. The Towers had fallen. Mirage had felt at the time that abandoning Cybertron would be throwing away everything his ancestors had built. They were made of their planet. They had a responsibility to steward their homeworld. So he had joined the Autobots to save what he could.

Then had been ordered to flee, only to spend four millions years in stasis on an organic world while Cybertron faded to a husk.