Chapter 4: Dishonest Mistakes

Knock Out was not surprised when Smokescreen kept his gun trained on him, but he hadn't expected the young Autobot to laugh.

"Seriously?" Smokescreen said, looking thoroughly amused by the situation. "You're surrendering? Awww, and you didn't even put up a fight."

"Maybe I've seen the error of my ways," the Decepticon replied, tilting his head to the side and forcing a smile. What he'd really seen was error messages and dire warnings flashing through his internal diagnostics. Taken individually, they informed him (as if he didn't know) that he was in a world of hurt. Taken en masse, their message was very clear: "Find a med bay, ASAP."

"Nah, you're just crazy." Smokescreen laughed again. "All right, whatever. Throw down your weapons. Got any blasters?"

"No."

"Where's that staff thingie of yours?"

"Broken in half," he shrugged. "It's buried in a Vehicon's spark chamber now." He waited for the inevitable question, ready to explain how the simple-minded Vehicons had turned on their own medic due to a mutated virus overloading their circuits.

But the question never came. Smokescreen looked even more entertained. "You lost to a Vehicon? Oh man! Looooser!"

"It was more than just one." Knock Out snapped, hands on his hips as he glared. But his eyes fixed speculatively on Smokescreen's wrist. The Phase Shifter. His favorite of the much sought after relics, the one that let bullets fly harmlessly through the user, or let the wearer walk through walls . . . He didn't let his gaze linger on it, just filed its presence away in his mind. "Can we just get going?"

"You're pretty pushy for a prisoner," Smokescreen said. He didn't seem bothered by it, though; he had the air of someone who would be twirling his gun, if said gun wasn't built directly into his arm. "And where am I supposed to be taking you?"

"To a med bay, for a preference. Before I bleed out." This was an exaggeration, but not as much of one as Knock Out would have wished.

"Yeah, you're pretty thrashed. Okay, champ. I can dump you on Ratchet, I guess. Hands in the air, start walking."

Why his hands should be in the air was not clear to the medic, but he raised them anyway and took a few steps in the direction Smokescreen had gestured. A thin ribbon of spilled energon threaded across the landscape in front of him . . . his own. He frowned, partly calculating how much he had lost, partly because of the backtracking.

"Why this way?"

There was a clang as Smokescreen whacked the back of his head with his gun arm, probably scraping the one spot that had avoided battle damage.

"Don't be so mouthy. I know what I'm doing, okay?" There was a hint of defensiveness in those words, but just a hint. "Anyway," he said after a moment, "you can't open a ground bridge just anywhere in these hills."

Knock Out grunted. How well he knew.

So. Smokescreen actually intended to take him back to his base. Knock Out hadn't expected that; he had speculated that Team Prime would mutter uncomfortable protests and then patch him up in the field after he promised them some tantalizing intel. Starscream, to his certain knowledge, had made such a deal no fewer than three times. Well, the third time he had actually faked the Autobots out and robbed them blind, but still.

If he was transported to the Autobots' actual base, though . . . that would have great potential for gathering information, which in turn would be a good way to buy Lord Megatron's forgiveness when all this came to light (because with apologies to his liege, survival came first). Hmm, it would be harder to escape, though. But then again—the Phase Shifter. Yes, that was the plan: get patched up, steal the Phase Shifter, and stroll away to find the Nemesis.

If it's up there, a tiny, irritating voice in his head whispered. If. Don't forget those Vehicons.

Knock Out frowned, first at nothing in particular, then behind him. He never forgot a paint job, and he'd never seen Smokescreen's before—primarily gold, with white rolling up the hood and over the roof, and then deep purple for the trim and the number "83" screaming from either door. But was that so strange? Smokescreen had changed his paint before—maybe he was just a modder at spark.

"Do you know who I am?" Knock Out asked abruptly, still walking. Not with an arrogant sneer, as he'd had occasion to ask it in times past, but as an actual, honest question.

Gold-and-white-Smokescreen's footsteps stopped and Knock Out turned to look at him, his arms still raised and his hands half-curled. The Autobot was staring at him. "Uh . . . yeah? You're Doc Knock. The Decepticon's medical guy."

Knock Out closed his optics a moment as he experienced an actual, unnerving surge of gratitude towards Smokescreen.

"'Course, you look different. Like you just rolled out of a junkyard, for one thing," Smokescreen added.

Knock Out opened his optics, observed the Autobot's perfect, gleaming finish, and went right back to hating him. He swiveled on his heel, and if it hurt when he stomped, so what?

"You Deceptigoons are so slagging weird," Smokescreen laughed.

Someday, someday Knock Out was going to dissect this Autobot's processor and see if he had a glitch that prevented him from saying "Decepticon." De-cep-ti-con, it wasn't hard.

"Hey." The gun prodded him in the back. "Hey. Do you believe in destiny?"

"No." Why couldn't Smokescreen let him ache in peace? "Do you? Let me guess; you do. You check your horoscope every day."

"Ha ha, no! I mean, no, I don't believe in fortune-telling, that's just junk. But that's not destiny," the Autobot said with a surge of youthful confidence in his voice. "Me, I'm meant for great things. I've always known it. Prime and the others . . ." His voice trailed away for a minute. "They don't get it. They think I'm just a kid or whatever. Just some dumb rookie." (Knock Out tactfully refrained from sharing his own opinion.) "But I'm going to show them. And it's not like I'm sitting around waiting for it to happen, right? I've been training hard, with blasters, grenades, everything—"

"Mm-hmm," Knock Out said, letting the Autobot's words wash over him. They were nearing the rock formation where he and Bumblebee had briefly taken shelter; he could see the black blaster scars all over it. His audio receptors strained for the sound of gunfire, but there was nothing. Either Bumblebee had escaped or the Vehicons had killed the scout and returned to the mine.

And what to do with that knowledge? The Autobots would want to know what became of their scout; that made the information valuable, a possible bargaining chip for his freedom. Except . . . they would be angry if he held back too long, particularly if Bumblebee leaked to death in the rocks in the meantime. If he told them now, would they be grateful enough to let him go later? Maybe, maybe not. Autobots had strange and inexplicable notions of obligation . . . And—another consideration—if he told Smokescreen, would the cocksure Autobot run off to fight the remaining Vehicons? If he died it would put Knock Out in a tight spot. He really needed that med bay.

Hmm, how did Starscream make such decisions? This was really more his area of expertise . . .

"HEY, are you listening to me?" Smokescreen jabbed his back with the gun. "Arms in the air, 'Con."

Knock Out sighed as he lifted his arms again. Energon trickled sluggishly from one wrist joint and a few fingers. "Of course I was listening," he said, trying to repress the boredom in his voice. "You were talking about your destiny."

"That's right." Smokescreen relaxed, though his gun didn't lower. "Hey, stop. This is the spot."

Knock Out obliged, once again eyeing the Phase Shifter on Smokescreen's wrist as the Autobot spoke into the comm link built into his right arm. "Hey Ratchet, need a ground bridge, mmkay? I'm transmitting the coordinates now."

"Finally," Knock Out muttered. He waited expectantly for a blue-green portal to appear.

"Hands in the air," Smokescreen reminded him again. "Cool. There it is."

"What? Where?" Knock Out wondered if the Autobot was talking about something else.

"There." Smokescreen absently balanced the muzzle of his gun on Knock Out's scuffed, black neck guard, angled between the yellow shoulder struts and one of the tires hanging off his back. With his other hand, he pointed.

Knock Out followed his finger and glimpsed a speck of glowing green in the distance. The far distance.

"That is your ground bridge." It wasn't quite a question and it wasn't quite a statement and there was a tremor of anger in it. "That. A mile away. Where we started from."

"Yeah." Smokescreen sounded totally unperturbed. "Not a mile, though. More like a mile and a half."

Knock Out couldn't even find words. After a minute of silence, the Autobot continued.

"Anyway. Yeah. Everyone at base is always talking about Optimus this and Optimus that. Optimus is the strongest leader, Optimus is the best shot, Optimus has offed the most Decepticons . . ."

The blaster slid up against Knock Out's neck, angling to dig under the edge of his helm.

"But the thing is, I just need a chance, you know? To prove myself." The blaster jabbed and scraped against his neck for emphasis. "I'm really glad I found you. You'll be a big help."

The medic stood silently with upraised hands (three claws snapped off, his hands glowing with dribbles of energon) and a cool circle of metal pressed against the underside of his jaw. He eased towards the protocols needed to activate his saw and drill, knowing he couldn't be fast enough.

"I surrendered," the medic ground out.

"Well, that made it easier for me, huh? Not that I couldn't have taken you anyway. Like I said, I've been practicing. So, check it out. The ground bridge is a mile and a half away. That's not so far for you, right? Looks like you decided to try out a car mode."

Smokescreen stretched out a finger and spun one of the yellow-rimmed wheels. He didn't react when Knock Out jerked his shoulder away.

"If you reach the 'bridge, you can consider yourself an Autobot prisoner. If you don't . . . well, I'd try real hard to reach it if I were you. Oh, and you get a ten second head start. Usually I make it five, but you're already all scrapped up, so."

Knock Out stared at the pinpoint of green fire gleaming in the twilight like a fallen star. His eyes shifted sideways to glare at the Autobot; voice rising, his body jerked with all the furious, sweeping gestures he didn't dare make. "I'm unarmed. Unarmed. You said you'd help me!"

Smokescreen smiled, shadows falling over his face in the dusk.

"Sorry, champ." Red optics met red optics. "I lied."