Chapter 6: Physician, Heal Thyself

Made a wrong turn once or twice,
Dug my way out, blood and fire.
Bad decisions? That's all right;
Welcome to my silly life.
-Pink, "F*cking Perfect"


It didn't take long for the Autobot to start proposing plans. True to his function, they all involved a great deal of sneaking, scouting, and crawling through the dirt. Knock Out coldly vetoed all of them.

"If you wouldn't mind dropping the 'action hero' routine for an astrosecond, you might notice that we're still injured, still low on energon, and still in hostile territory." He stopped dabbing sealant into his broken fingertips long enough to give the Autobot a look. "Tell me, Bumblebee, which of those factors makes stumbling around in the dark seem like a good idea?"

"But we have to do something!"

"Like recharging, hmmm? Or would you rather collapse from exhaustion?"

"Oh, great idea. What difference will that make when we starve to death?"

"We won't starve to death," Knock Out said irritably. "The worst we'll have to cope with is disorientation, slower auto-repair, and stupid Autobots. Oh wait, no, only I have to deal with that last one. Lucky me."

"But you said it yourself, we're low on energon!" The Autobot froze in the middle of an impatient motion, his optics whirring in sudden determination. "Energon. The energon mine. I'll sneak in there and—"

"Bumblebee." Knock Out rolled his optics. "That is, without question, the most idiotic scheme you've advanced to date. You're injured, you're tired, and you're in no condition to take on a battalion of Vehicons."

"If you backed me up—"

"Ha! Did you catch that? Let me repeat it. HA!"

"But we have to—"

"No. NO, we don't." Knock Out's patience, thin at the best of times, gave out completely as he stabbed a claw at the Autobot. "We don't have to crawl through organic muck, play special ops, or tiptoe past Vehicon drones, so stop your blathering! I don't want to hear it! Shut up, shut down, and rest up!"

Bumblebee's eyebrows dropped into a glare as he stepped forward. "I'm not taking orders from a Decepticon!"

"Then take them from a doctor!" They stared daggers at each other.

Bumblebee broke the deadlock first, leaning back with a little electronic slurr of laughter. "You sound just like Ratchet."

Knock Out recoiled, truly offended. "Take that back."

Bumblebee's eyeridges tilted upwards in amusement as he sat down. "Sorry, but you do."

"Hrmph. That rusty old hack." Knock Out settled against the rocks opposite the Autobot, who had fallen into sudden, thoughtful silent.

"Where do you think we are?"

Knock Out snorted and replied curtly, " Watch more Earth movies." He was not going to forgive that "like Ratchet" remark in a hurry. Bumblebee just kept looking at him, his static face unreadable but his body language uncertain, uncomfortable. The medic glared at him. "What now?"

"Nothing."

"Well then." The medic pointedly closed his eyes.

"I was thinking," Bumblebee said after a space, "about that Vehicon . . ."

"What Vehicon?"

"The last one."

Knock Out opened one eye. "Call me slow, but that doesn't exactly narrow down which of the hundred or so identical bots you're referring to."

"The last one before the two ground bridges . . . did that weird thing they did." There was a hint of desperation in his voice as he regarded Knock Out's perplexed expression. "The one that you . . ." He let the sentence hang.

"Oh, the mercy case." Knock Out leaned back. "What about it?"

"The . . . what?"

"The mercy . . ." He reminded himself who he was talking to. "The drone who fired the missile."

"Yeah." Bumblebee lifted his head. "You killed him."

"That's one way of looking at it." Knock Out ignored the accusatory tone, choosing instead to examine the jagged edge where the tip of his middle finger had broken off. "And factually correct, certainly."

Bumblebee said nothing. He said it loudly.

Knock Out tossed the subject away with a flick of his fingers. "So? What do you care?"

"What do I care?" Somehow Bumblebee made it sound like the craziest question in the world, like he couldn't understand how Knock Out could even ask. "Because . . . because I had to hide there . . . not moving . . . while I listened to a cold-blooded murder!"

The Decepticon's optics snapped wide, then narrowed to slits. "It wasn't murder."

"Then what was it?"

Knock Out gave a disdainful snort. He knew better than to try to explain the duties of a Decepticon medic to an Autobot. "Go to sleep. I promise I won't snuff your spark while you recharge. That's what you're really worried about, aren't you?"

"I'm not afraid of you."

"Good. Me neither."

"But that doesn't mean I trust you." The black and yellow scout blended in with the darkness, but Knock Out could tell when he turned his gaze to the sky by the shift of his optics. "Why did you pull me out of that boulder?"

Knock Out's processor kicked into overdrive as he searched for an answer that would satisfy an idealistic Autobot.

"Well, you helped me," he hedged. That might or might not have been true; at any rate, it was a logical hypothesis—oh scrap, now he was sounding like Shockwave—a LIKELY OCCURENCE, seeing as he had fallen unconscious with Smokescreen trying to stomp through his spine and had awakened to find the two Autobots facing off. "So I returned the favor out of, er . . . appreciation."

The two blue spotlights dropped to gaze at him. Knock Out made an irritable gesture, as though to ward them off. Naturally this had no effect whatsoever.

"Besides which . . ." Knock Out polished a little spot on his leg, then stopped when the edges of his broken fingers scraped at the little remaining paint. He frowned at the damage. "A-hem. Besides which, you have ranged weapons and I don't. Which makes you an asset."

Strangely, this answer seemed to satisfy the Autobot. He heard Bumblebee's joints relax with an audible creak as he leaned back. "So. What's the plan?"

Knock Out paused a moment while the scout's words sank in. "I'll tell you tomorrow."

"You don't have one, do you?"

"Go to sleep, Autobot." He watched the blue optics dim down before closing his own eyes.


Just because a Decepticon's eyes are closed does not mean he's offline.

Knock Out waited a good half hour before slowly standing, trying not to let his joints creak as he reached for the two halves of his energon prod. His optics searched until they identified Bumblebee, barely more than an outline in the darkness. Tomorrow he would let himself be convinced of the feasibility of raiding the energon mine; it was not a bad plan. But that was tomorrow.

A channel of starry sky glimmered above the cliffs as Knock Out spidered his fingers along the rock face, letting the embankment guide his path. Rounding out into the open, the desert valley spread in front of him. The spangle of stars was brighter out here, gilding the towering rocks with silver. Invisible organics hid in the shadows somewhere, everywhere, chirping a continuous chorus that was almost metallic. From the far distance came the faint, familiar rumble of cars and trucks trundling along the Human highways.

Knock Out drank it all in before turning his attention to his more immediate surroundings. He poked at boulders with his staff, scuffed at the ground with his pede, and finally settled himself on a low, flat stone. His optics dimmed slightly as he began running his internal diagnostics. First things first. What hurt?

Knock Out did not enjoy pain, at least not in the first-person. Still, it was undeniably useful, the body's way of saying, "Hey, patch me up!" or "Get out of here!" He had dulled and ignored the signals as much as he could (not nearly as effectively as he could have wished!), and now he winced as a flood of feedback surged in from his back struts and spinal column. He would have cracked plating and crushed circuitry to deal with once he finally found a med bay.

On the bright side, his auto-repair had started patching what it could and the numbness that had so worried him had receded to an ache. He cycled rapidly through the rest of his systems. Phantom pain where Smokescreen (presumably) had wrenched the door-plate from his arm. Tolerable. Aches in his upper leg, minor. But his right side gave him the occasional flash of agony that made him instinctively clamp his arm down over it, although he couldn't find any wounds.

Well, not bad, he thought, considering. No transforming for a while, however. Now let's see how we can help that auto-repair along, shall we?

The Decepticon stood up, carefully testing each of his joints and noting the aches, pains, and any limitations to his normal range of motion. Settling back on the boulder, he took the head-end of his staff and convinced it (after whacking it against the rock a few times) to generate a gentle blue glow. He worked the broken end into a crevice. It wobbled, but did not fall over.

Then he tended to supplies, popping one compartment open after another—the ones in his arms, his legs, all of them—and plucking out nearly every carefully catalogued tool, bandage, and narcotic. Pulling his right foot onto his knee, he loosened a few screws and bolts, mentally rerouted the energon flow elsewhere, and calmly detached the triangular pede that made up the front of his foot.

Some mechs found this kind of repair distasteful or even repugnant, involving, as it did, a sort of self-disassembly; it was one thing to have a limb blasted off in battle, but to willingly unscrew the screws, unbolt the bolts, and pull apart the casing yourself . . . Well, it made a Cybertronian seem a little too similar to a mindless machine, a collection of random parts like a datapad or a computer.

Knock Out vaguely remembered a time when he too would have felt a swell of nausea at having to separate his hand or leg for repair. But he had been a medic for a long time, and gradually he had come to see Cybertronians as collections of parts. To identify and replace the malfunctioning components, that was a medic's main function. He was sure even Ratchet, the Autobots' medic, would agree.

Autobot medics . . . Knock Out closed his eyes for an instant before coaxing the grey, triangular cover off his pede to reveal the interior workings. There had been a time when medics had banded together in common field hospitals on the great Cybertronian battlefields—Decepticons medics, Autobot medics, even some Neutrals in the early days. It made sense. They all used the same equipment. They all had the same requirements. They all knew people working for "the other side", and probably still went out drinking with them after work. They belonged to the profession first; they were medics.

But even then, there had been differences. Autobot medics were cowardly; if a patient was mortally injured, the Autobot medics would administer some basic aid before hurrying on to a more viable case. They busied themselves with the living, turned away from the dying, and just . . . let them die. Whereas Decepticon medics stepped up and helped them die.

(Knock Out finished digging out the rocks and loose dirt that had been clogging the gears and began reassembling his pede. The first bolts slid in smoothly, aided by a new sheen of grease. He pulled up his left foot and started the same process all over again.)

And, yes, it meant making choices and, yes, maybe some mechs wondered afterwards if they had made the right ones, if that was the kind of mech they were. But that was what being a medic was about. And anyway, it got easier as time went by. You found the rhythm—of the battlefield, of the medical base, of the cargo-bots rushing in with new supplies—and you looked down at the energon-splattered mech at your feet and you decided. And moved on.

Oh, that didn't mean new questions didn't crop up. For example: an unconscious 'Con comes in, missing his leg and a good chunk of his torso—in danger, but not necessarily a mortality. What should a medic to do? Shove him off to the side until there's time to tend him, focusing on the patients most likely to survive? But if you—that mech—were juggling three other severely injured patients, and if you knew the unconscious mech had the parts they needed, and if you knew he might die anyway . . .

(He reattached his left pede and wiggled it. A perfect fit.)

The first time he was faced with that choice, Knock Out had hesitated and finally left the unconscious Decepticon's fate in Primus' capable and ethereal hands, concentrating on the other three bots.

All four mechs had died.

Red Alert had dragged him out that night—in this context "out" meant "on the far side of a rusty hill, just out of sight of the battle field and the field hospital", there was really nowhere else to go—and they had gotten spectacularly drunk on high-grade energon filched from the officers' quarters. Knock Out scraped up his paint when he tripped face-first down the hill but was too juiced up to notice, and he couldn't understand why Red kept laughing at him. Tensions were already mounting between Autobot medics and Decepticons medics then—mostly in the form of dirty looks between factions and harassment of the few remaining Neutrals to "pick a damn side already"—but he and Red Alert had always gotten along. Yes, she was a craven Autobot who wasted precious supplies on the dying, but by Primus, she was a craven Autobot who could really hold her booze and always had your back.

(He flexed his transformation circuits, but his right-hand buzzsaw still wouldn't come out, (ka-chuck ka-chuck). Ahhh, there now . . . the handle of the saw was bent where it attached to his wrist. He pried his arm casing outward, flipped the saw out, and began straightening the supports.)

He couldn't remember telling the Autobot medic about his little . . . dilemma. He couldn't remember much about that night, to be honest. But he did remember her response.

"K.O.," she said, "We're soldiers too. And just like the ones out there—" She pointed towards the battlefield. "—we do what we have to. Find what you can live with and never look back. Keep your chin up, Shiny Hiney."

That was the last time he'd spoken with Red Alert. Not long afterwards—and it was funny, when you thought about Red's "soldier" remark—Lord Megatron decreed that all his medics would undergo weapons training so that they could double as infantry as the need arose. The Decepticon medics had been upset, complaining bitterly that the Decepticon High Command undervalued anyone who didn't tote a gun and predicting (correctly, it turned out) that the "need would arise" for their participation in almost every battle.

But the Autobot medics . . . the Autobot medics hadn't been upset, they'd been furious. It was a betrayal of medical ethics, they said. You can't you shoot them up one day and patch them up the next, they said. What they expected the Decepticon medical staff to do was unclear—defy direct orders from Lord Megatron? desert en masse?—but whatever the case, the little interfactional favors and deals that had gone on for so long—"Two rolls of sterile foil for a gallon of medical-grade energon, and if you put an IV in that 'Bot then I'll cauterize the wound on that 'Con"—came to an abrupt end.

Knock Out's scalpels were replaced with industrial grade buzzsaws, and he survived his first infantry battle thanks to dumb luck and familiarity with his electro-staff. He'd long practiced with it—ostensibly in case he had to break apart an out-of-control gestalt for repair, and in truth because he knew he looked fabulous with blue bolts of lightning reflecting in his highly polished paint. He hotly denied the rumored third reason, that he was a lousy shot. Actually, he was a perfectly average shot for the amount of practice he put in at the shooting range, which was precisely none.

(He flipped his buzzsaw for his hand a few times with perfect ease. The only thing left was to fix his left arm; he couldn't bend it all the way at the elbow. The casing had partially shattered and a shard of it was buried in the inner workings.)

The other medics—Splint, Trauma, and the rest—were not so lucky. They had no familiarity with melee weapons, and so were issued laser-rifles, almost at the last minute. The Autobot infantry seemed to take 'Cons with laser-rifles rather more seriously than a 'Con with a stick. Each time Knock Out came back from battle, there were fewer Decepticon medics to go around. And each time the Autobot and Decepticon field hospitals—plural now—were further apart.

(Removing the circular joint guards (custom built, black with a yellow rim to match his tires), the medic worked the cracked casing off his upper arm. A tangles of cables and energon conduits ran under the skeletal scaffolding. He bent his arm. He couldn't see the obstruction, but he could feel it. Gripping his knee to keep his arm steady, he probed gently at the bundled wires, his fingertips slid into their midst.)

By the battle of Tyger Pax, the two camps were on the opposite sides of the field, so that the Autobot medics looked no larger than turbo-ants as they scurried through the ash and smoke to examine their incoming patients and casualties.

He didn't have to see them, though, to know that the Autobots were still wasting increasing scarce medical supplies on the doomed and dying. It made Knock Out crazy. But all he could do, as Red Alert said, was find what he could live with.

He practically fell on the next borderline case that came in, his buzzsaws whining before the orderlies even set down the stretcher. The patient ended up in four pieces, Knock Out's beautiful finish was splattered with energon, and four severely injured Decepticons survived his ruthlessly efficient transplant operations. (One was Breakdown, although he wouldn't learn his name until much later; he was just "the big blue head wound" at the time.) One Decepticon dead and four alive by his hand. And Knock Out found he could live with that.

(The two broken fingertips on his right hand, only an inconvenience before, now proved a genuine problem. The ragged metal caught and snagged on the the cables and tubes. He dug deeper. If he could just catch the shrapnel between his first two fingers . . . )

The battles became easier, too . . . easier than patching up wave after wave of injured troopers, now assisted only by Hook and a few orderlies whose names he no longer bothered to learn. To dig his buzzsaw into an enemy's chest, to drop an Autobot with an energon burst to the knee . . . it was so simple, so straightforward, so satisfying.

(Okay, there. He had the damn thing. Awkward as slag, pinned between the sides of his fingers instead of the tips, but whatever. Now to draw it back, sloooowly, caaaaarefully, working it through the cables—)

He wondered why the Autobot medics had objected. They were already in a war, weren't they? They were already effecting its outcome, weren't they? And it wasn't sooo different from surgery. All you had to do was think of your opponent as a collection of parts . . .


The past dissolved in a terrifying instant as the deep blare of a truck's horn blasted from the highway. Knock Out's hand jerked.

Pain seared through his arm, but that it was nothing compared to his rising panic as a wash of blue liquid burbled merrily out of the mass of cables.

"Oh scrap oh scrap oh scrap—" Instinctively he unclenched his fingers from the shard of metal, the Pit-bound shard of metal, and jerked his fingers out of the cables. He'd severed a line, he'd severed an actual energon line, a major conduit! And the flood of blue continued, and would continue, until it ran out—

"Calm down, calm dooown," he hissed to himself. "You're a medic."

He concentrated on his internal systems, rerouting what he could. It wouldn't stop the flow, but it would buy him some time, a few minutes maybe. And then—no help for it—his claws gleamed in the flickering light for an instant before he began tearing through the cabling. It hurt, Primus but it hurt, and feeling his left hand numb up, watching it go limp as he clawed out the cables, that was a special kind of terror. But it was an intellectual terror, the kind he could shove into the back of his mind and think about later. His face was calm and his eyes steady as his fingers found one end of the severed conduit. He jerked it—oh yes, that hurt—and pulled enough tubing out of the mess of wires to attach a clamp. It still took him a minute, since he had to wrestle the clamp onto the surging energon vein with a single hand. Energon continued to ooze determinedly from the doubled-over tube, but at a much slower rate.

Now he had to contain the other end of the conduit . . . but he couldn't seem to get hold of the Pit-bound thing! Every time his claws dug through the cables, he shredded a bit more of the delicate rubber conduit, and if Breakdown were here he'd be able to DO this thing, and what was the big lug thinking when he let himself DIE?!

Calm. Caaalm. He was calm. He drew his hand back and let it hover until it had stopped shaking. Then with one swift movement, he let his thumb and forefinger drop down, catch the tubing, and draw it out. His conscious mind watched with critical interest as his fingers danced, performing a flawless one-handed knot without seeming to need any kind of mental direction. But he had to tell himself to run his diagnostics. He added a clamp to the rubber knot for security while he waited for the results.

And there they were, popping up on his internal display. And he—well now. He was going to die.

He kept staring at the display, vaguely aware of the outside world layered behind it. Really? A half hour till I run out of energon? It's going to end like THIS? Something rebelled in his spark, now consumed not with fear but anger. His feet dug into the soil as he sat up straighter. The energon pooled around him rippled gently. No. That's stupid. SENSELESS. Worse than the Terrorcons! I refuse.

I refuse.

I refuse.

I refuse to die.

He closed his fingers tightly over the line that was still oozing precious energon, and he knew that no one cared how much he refused, it was still going to happen.

I don't slagging BELIEVE this. Over one idiotic mistake! Damn, damn, damn it, why didn't I agree to go on the Autobot's stupid energon raid instead?!

The Autobot . . .

The Autobot.

Knock Out encouraged his reputation as a ghoul; it kept the Vehicons from cluttering up his med bay. However, even an avowed scavenger had limits and taboos. But anything, anything was better than dying. What was the Autobot but a collection of parts? And wasn't one of those parts a tank of energon?

He grabbed the end of his staff from the crevice and the soft, calm light was replaced by crackles of lightning. All right. First, shock and drop. Then drop the staff, bring out the buzzsaw. Start carving. Energon for all. By which I mean me.

He staggered to his feet, praying to whatever gods might be listening that Bumblebee was still in recharge; with one functional arm and waves of dizziness already crashing over him, the element of surprise was all Knock Out had. He gathered his strength and—he wanted to leap around the corner to relieve the tension in his spark, but that would be foolhardy—he crept around the curving rock wall.

The licks of blue lightning illuminated his face in fits and starts as he stared. At a canyon full of nothing.

Knock Out leaned against the rocky wall, his laughter echoing crazily as he slid down to his knees.

Bumblebee was gone.


A/N: I hope the formatting wasn't too distracting in the flashback part. It was hard to find something that worked.

Red Alert is based off a background character in Transformers Animated; I just really like her design. Yes, we will meet the Decepticons. Soon. )