AN: So I changed my mind. This is still going to be the last chapter, but it will have Knock Out in it.
Autobot Base:
Damn that mech. Damn him. Why couldn't he see it? I was just trying to help. Ratchet was frustrated beyond belief with his former apprentice.
After everything that had happened, Knock Out still chose the Decepticons. But why? No one tried to rescue him. But then again, no one ever tried to rescue Breakdown from MECH. No one actually harmed him. But Knock Out would have been used to that after spending so long in Megatron's ranks.
The old mech silently went over the glyphs again in his mind, comparing them to the ancient tongue he knew.
Vain and unstable. Conceited and Arrogant. Worthless. A pathetic warrior. Too like one of them. A loose end. Brash and uncertain. Aggressive and spiteful. Hardheaded and stubborn.
Loose ends must be cut – how many times has that been said?
Ratchet remembered all of those terms being used to describe the young medic at one time or another, vain and arrogant being used most frequently. No one really liked Knock Out, but they put up with him because he did good work.
From the beginning Ratchet had seen Knock Out would never be fully content with being a medic. He was too easily distracted and too fascinated with the gladiatorial combat to focus solely on his work. He liked to rummage through the arena after fights and pick out bits and pieces he thought could come in handy – this made him nervous when someone challenged him.
Having a dry wit and impeccable sense of ingenuity made the red mech a formidable adversary – when he felt like risking his finish, that is.
And that was the problem everyone had with Knock Out – he concentrated on looking good rather than on the job he was supposed to do. Doubtless even Megatron only put up with him solely because he had no other medic.
Ratchet thought all this over as he concentrated on repairing the base's damaged power lines.
The lights above him flickered, coming to life but cutting out again as soon as a sigh of relief escaped him.
The Chief Medical Officer growled in frustration, unintentionally tearing out the wire in his hand. "Slaggit!"
He rummaged through his kit, looking for the right replacement wire.
Arcee walked in. "You dropped this." She knelt down, handing him a thin wire that he had need of now. "Do you want help?"
Ratchet gave his consent, asking the blue femme for tools now and again.
"Ratchet?" She asked after a while of silence.
"Yes, Arcee?"
"Why do you think he did it?"
The medic sighed. "I don't know."
Wherever:
Knock Out shifted into his primary form and ducked under the shelter of a nearby overhang. He relaxed only slightly as he felt his holster for his prized energon prod. It was still there. Good.
Then he froze when his audio receptors picked up a shrill whine from nearby.
The red medic knew the sound from many missions with air-bound Vehicons. Jets.
"The signal's coming from this direction."
"I can see that, thank you very much Dreadwing."
There was a heavy thud as the two seekers transformed and landed. Their bickering grew steadily louder as they came closer and closer to Knock Out's hiding place. The red mech drew farther back into the shadows, wincing as the rough sandstone tore at his paint. His finish would be ruined.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"And you do, CommanderStarscream?"
Instinctively, Knock Out drew his prod in one swift, fluid motion.
But silence had never been his strong suit.
The click of the weapon extending was just loud enough to make Dreadwing freeze in his tracks.
"Did you hear that?"
Knock Out's spark stopped cold. If it came down to it, he was no match for even a Vehicon in this state. He had lost too much energon when his systems failed earlier that day.
Ratchet had said it would kill him if he exceeded sixty mph; Knock Out had gone two-twenty in his rush to escape.
Hardly daring to move, Knock Out retracted his prod, focusing on being absolutely silent while the two seekers remained within earshot. But then a shard of stone fell from the overhang above him and landed squarely on his arm. It was just his luck that it landed on a portion where the armor had been torn off earlier that day.
The medic hissed in pain, and quickly quieted himself.
But it was too late.
The sound of a cannon firing above head made Knock Out flinch. All of a sudden, the overhang collapsed on top of him.
"Thought you could hide?" The familiar sneer of Starscream drifted to his audio receptors as the First Lieutenant grabbed him by the throat and dragged him out of the rubble.
Knock Out couldn't resist an opportunity to take another dig at his former commander. "About as much as you think you can fly," he rasped.
The seeker growled, throwing the smaller mech to the ground. "Watch who you go around insulting, Knock Out."
Dreadwing narrowed his optics at the banter. "Have we a mission or not?"
Knock Out didn't react. "Megatron doesn't tolerate traitors anymore, eh?" he said loudly. "Maybe he should look closer to home on that one first."
Even Starscream couldn't miss a direct jibe like that. He shot at the medic with a missile. Knock Out flinched but didn't strike back.
"What's wrong? Too weak to fight back?"
The red mech only laughed. His crimson optics were half-crazed. "Whatever you do to me would only have happened if you left me alone." He pressed a hand against his grill, holding it there for a moment before releasing it and turning the palm upward. The silver plating was covered in liquid energon. "See?" He laughed again. "Do your worst," he challenged.
Dreadwing's optics narrowed a fraction more. He drew his swords, holding them steadily with expert hands.
Starscream aimed again, this time shifting his hand into a blaster which he leveled with the red mech's spark chamber. He fired.
Knock Out dropped like a stone, his frame twitching once, then twice, then stilling. As the tremors ceased, a single word escaped his vocorder. "B-Breakdown…?" His optics went out like lights and his armor faded from bright red to dull gray.
"What do we do with the body?" Starscream wondered aloud.
Dreadwing had already pulled an incinerator bomb from subspace. "Destroy it." He tossed the device down and it immediately attached to the lifeless husk of the red medic.
The two seekers transformed and sped off. As soon as they were safely out of range, Dreadwing activated the remote detonator.
The sound of the explosion was drowned out by the screaming engines of the two jets as they headed back to the Nemesis.
Autobot Base:
Ratchet had fixed the wiring, with Arcee's help of course.
Now he sat in the medical bay, toying with one of the many of his experiments Knock Out had modified, still not quite finished thinking.
None of it made sense. Knock Out had stayed consistent in his reports, and nothing ever suggested that he had any desire to betray the Autobots. He had always given as much information as he could to Ratchet without making any Decepticon suspicious.
What had gone wrong?
Something Knock Out had said while he was recovering came back to Ratchet:
Even though he was a Decepticon, and I an Autobot, I still felt some kind of friendship toward him. Nothing much, though. I grew to like his unrelenting personality, and single-mindedness about destroying Bulkhead. It was amusing, to say the least. Just like what drives Bulkhead to get even with Breakdown every chance he gets. Reminded me of the way things were on Cybertron, before the war.
Knock Out had come to form a sort of bond to his enemy while in their ranks. The way he described them in his early reports made it seem as though Knock Out were enjoying being there.
His friendship with the enemy had lessened his loyalty to the Autobots, or at least it had clouded it.
Ratchet had a feeling that if he were to send another spy into the Decepticon ranks, he would find the same problem.
If this were to happen every time, then it wasn't worth the lives it cost, or the betrayal to each side. It wasn't worth the mental torture it inflicted on the agent. It wasn't worth the hastily-made decisions to somehow prove your loyalty to a leader to whom you owed none.
Ratchet made up his mind. He would tell Optimus what he thought in the morning.
No more double-agents.
AN: The end. I could hardly bring myself to write the part where Knock Out dies, but I had to. And as for my favorite Autobot, I hope Prime agrees with him. Let this be a lesson to us all.