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[Chapter Five: Access Granted. Displaying Contents.]
. . . . .
Knock Out groaned and muttered to himself as he finally came back online, rubbing the side of his head. "Uuhhhng, I feel like I stood too close to Brawl during target practice," he complained, rolling over onto his side. Not yet opening his optics, he became aware that he was lying on a table somewhere; it had the stretched-diamond shape and familiar feel of a medical berth, which jolted his systems into gear in a note of worry. What had happened to him that he was in a medical facility, where was he, and what had been done to him?
He shot up to a sit, grabbing hold of the edge of the table, and found himself face to face with what could only be some kind of Autobot medic - the white and red paintjob with medical cross embazoned on her upper arms was a bit of a dead giveaway.
"Welcome to the land of the functioning once more, Mr. Knock Out," she stated, her accent placing her as having once hailed from the high-castes of Iacon.
"Where am I?" Knock Out asked quietly, sensors still recalibrating as he squinted, the lights just a little to bright for him yet. He suppressed a wave of revulsion at the sound of a tower accent; when you'd been all but marinated in hate for the high-castes for as long as you could remember, old habits died hard.
"Medical facilities within the Decagon. It's the only secure area at this time during the night," the medic replied, scribbling across a datapad with a stylus.
"There's a place I never I thought I'd be," Knock Out muttered, rubbing his face and trying to blink away the ghosting and static across his sight, looking idly at the medic as she presumably filed a report on his treatment.
She was moderate in height and some type of rotorcraft, though one built for medical transport rather than combat. The way the transformation plates of her alternate mode lay against her root mode in white, flowing sheets made her look as if she were a human scientist wearing a lab coat. Her helm came to a kind of raised peak in the front, tapering down to the back, and resting across her nasal ridge were two rounded lense devices – micromagnification glasses – that allowed her to work with components too small for even a Cybertronian to see well. She had a look of maturity to her; Knock Out thought better of calling her "old", but she was probably of the same generation as the Autobot's crotchety medic, Ratchet.
"Yes, it isn't every day we have a Decepticon, former or otherwise, here among our midst," the medic calmly noted.
It was then that Knock Out heard the giggling and whispering of what could only be a small crowd of femmes.
He immediately drew his legs together and checked to make sure all of his plates were in place.
The medic cleared her intakes and chuckled softly, "Now now, no need to worry about that, everything's in its proper place. You were overcharged, not having surgery," she reassured the jumpy red mech, before looking over her shoulder at the gathered fembots who'd come to see a real live not-Dinobot mech while he was unconscious. "Give him plenty of room, girls, you'll have all the time in the world to gawk at him from here on out."
It hit Knock Out like the fist of Metroplex: He was one of only a handful of mechs in a polity composed largely of femmes. Femmes who had not be around anything other than Grimlock and his crew of barely sapient monsters. Femmes who were, apparently, very interested to see what he looked like – and he had no competition (Prime's team certainly didn't count, how could any of those scuffed-up clunky mechs compare to someone like him, after all) among what surely must be fembots who were simply starved for attention after all this time...
"It looks like I really am on the winning team," he said as the grin on his face threatened to split his head in half.
"Oh, so you've decided to become an Autobot then?" the medic querried with a raised optic ridge and a what Knock Out swore was a devious little smile. "Fantastic, because we already have a mission assignment for you. Think of it as an opportunity to prove to all of us that you really are a changed mech."
Knock Out's grin slid off his face and hit the floor with a clatter of disappointment. Work already? "But the war's over, can't we take a vacation or something?" he asked a bit desperately. He was immediately shoved off the berth from behind and tackled to the ground.
"Aaagh! What in the pit?!" he shouted, wrestling to try to get out from under his opponent.
"Time off is what you do in medbay after gettin' patched up between fights!" his attacker shouted as she maneuvered him onto his back, sitting on his chest, pinning his arms to the floor. She was a speeder frame, but lacked the willowy limbs and narrow build you'd expect from a speeder; her armor was thicker, her orange and black paintjob chipped, abraded and scratched. It wasn't hard for Knock Out to tell that she was living her own advice as she beamed at him, blue optics lively and intense.
"Shiftlock," the medic warned lowly. "You know there is no roughhousing in the medbay, especially with a patient."
"Awww, Socket, c'mon! He's already whining like a cyberpuppy!" Shiftlock complained, looking over her shoulder at the medic.
"No buts. Off," Socket ordered with the strictness of a schoolteacher.
Shiftlock grumbled and rolled her optics, giving Knock Out a devious, playful grin, before getting up off the former Decepticon.
"Are all you ladies so... aggressive?" Knock Out asked, disgruntled, as he rubbed his wrists and checked his paint job.
"Please excuse Shiftlock," Socket apologized quietly to Knock Out, offering him a hand to help him up. "Her upbringing was rather... unconventional." The other femmes in the bay laughed softly among themselves.
"Unconventional?" Knock Out questioned, quirking a brow and glancing over at the orange and black femme.
Shiftlock scratched her armor, snorted loudly, turned her head and spat a wad of congealed energon into a wastebin.
"She was reared by Grimlock and his men," Socket sighed.
"Fascinating," Knock Out deadpanned, grimmacing at Shiftlock's display.
"Is he cleared for duty, Doc?" Chromia asked, stepping forward, crossing the floor towards Socket and Knock Out.
"Oh I think he's up and mobile, wouldn't you agree, Chromia?" Socket smiled, glancing in the mech's direction; Knock Out was busy checking himself for damage to his finish.
"Seems lively enough," Chromia ascertained. "All right, Knock Out, was it? Since we're all going to be working together, I think some introductions are in order." She turned her head to the group of chatterers. "All right ladies, line up and sound off!"
With some quick scurring around, the fembots, barring Socket, Chromia and Shiftlock, had arranged themselves in ranking order in the wide open area opposite the rows of medical berths.
"I'm Firestar," a red fembot grounder with a silver and orange helm greeted. "Rescue and recovery operations."
"Greenlight," a fembot with a name matching her colorscheme announced. "Researcher." She returned to busying herself with a datapad in her hands, already tuning out her surroundings to get back to her work.
"Lancer," an unsmiling orange and blue fembot in military-class armoring stated crisply with a glimmer of wary disdain in her eyes for the former Decepticon. "Elite Guard."
A red, orange and silver fembot of extraordinarily similar design to Firestar piped up cheerfully next. "I'm Flareup! I make things go boom!"
"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Knock Out. My name is Road Rage, and I serve as both a bodyguard and diplomatic advisor," a pleasant and mannerly red and black female speedster-frame stated.
"And your name is Road Rage?" Knock Out asked curiously.
"That's 'cause when she transforms, she goes a little haywire. She's worse'n a stunticon!" Shiftlock explained with a laugh.
Road Rage cleared her intakes and chuckled nervously, embarassed. "It's a medical condition," she quickly added in her defense.
"Oh!" a small blue and silver minibot femme interjected, realizing it was her turn to introduce herself. "My name is Glyph, and I'm an archeometrist – say, you were on that alien world we just heard about – Earth, right?" she asked, walking up to Knock Out. "Can you tell me anything about the dominant species there? Do they have a culture like ours? Oh! I bet you downloaded some of their language modules! Would you be willing to share them?" Her optics widened and Knock Out took a step backwards as the smaller female kept encroaching on his personal space, staring at him as if he were going to become the focus of her every waking, obsessive thought. "Or maybe you could just speak some grammar structure and I could see if I could figure it out-"
"Oookay, that's enough, Glyph," Chromia mercifully interrupted, picking up Glyph by her doorwings and pulling her away from the nervous looking mech. "You can shake him down for data later. Right now we have bigger matters to attend to."
Glyph folded her arms and sulked, hanging from Chromia's grip. "Oh bother," she fussed.
"Indeed," Socket agreed, adjusting her glasses. "If you recall we are in need of your assistance in a small matter."
"Oh, right, the mission," Knock Out sighed, still not enthusiastic about work when he finally had a golden opportunity to schmooze with the fembots and be lazy. "So what is it?"
"One of our teammates failed to report back in. Word across the drone network is that she was captured by the Swarm and taken beneath Kaon," Chromia explained. "That's where you're going to come in handy. Some of the systems there are still operating on Decepticon code-"
"-And I happen to be a Decepticon," he concluded, getting the hint. "Er, happened to be a Decepticon," Knock Out added, quickly correcting himself.
"You got it," Chromia agreed.
The red mech hummed throughtfully and rubbed the bottom of his faceplate. "So who are we looking for?" he asked.
"Moonracer," Socket explained, bringing up a technical specification sheet complete with image on her datapad, handing it over to Knock Out. "Sharpshooter and scout."
Knock Out internally grinned. Oh she was a cute one: a speedster like himself with an excellent taste in color selection, mint green and white. A damsel in distress that would no doubt be very, very grateful for being rescued by a handsome mech like himself-
- He must have been grinning on the outside, as Socket grabbed hold of him by the exterior of his audioceptors and drug him a short distance away from the others.
"Before you get any further ideas running through that no doubt perverted Decepticon-leaning mind of yours, I would like to advise against attempting any sort of chicanery with Moonracer or any of the other young fembots. We have several last generation femmes as well as new constructs who have never laid eyes on a regular mech such as yourself, and they are no doubt going to find you highly intriguing due to your "expatriot" status. I am an extremely skilled surgeon, Mr. Knock Out, and if I find out that you have taken advantage of their naivete, I will make certain that any component of yours used in that advantage-taking will be rendered permanently incapable of further function in ways that even you cannot repair," Socket briskly and quietly threatened, letting go of Knock Out's audioceptor, wearing an upbeat visage as she turned toward the rest of the group, taking the data pad back from the red mech's hands.
Knock Out rubbed the side of his head, cowed. "I-I'm guessing I won't be going alone to rescue her then?" he asked, voice cracking midway through.
Shiftlock slapped a hand down on the Aston Martin's shoulder. "You got five minutes before we roll out, partner."
Knock Out slumped forward, head hanging low. "Frag. My. Spark."
. . . . .
[Chapter Five: Complete.]
[End of Transmission.]