Notes/ Though it's likely obvious enough, this chapter begin, plot timing wise, immediately after the end of the last one. Its also just another collection of little, only partly related scenes. It's all still leading places. More real action and excitement coming soon.

On the lower level of the base, down in the training gym, Bulkhead and Soundwave had begun to make almost a game of idly shoving the hanging punching bag back and forth toward one another, with their punching fists. Though Bulkhead knew he hardly should have been anymore, he remained surprised by the force and strength of soundwave's hits to the heavy bag. The bot was far from one that could be mistaken for weak my any means. But he was tall, and long limbed, with a frame that did not exactly look like one close to ideal for brute force attacks. And even when he pushed himself physically far beyond a level of skill that should have been nearly above him entirely, he barely seemed to tire.

"Confirmation inquiry..." Soundwave spoke up suddenly in the midst of a punch to the bag, back in Bulkhead's direction.

The big bot hit it hard at once, sending it back again. As he did he mumbled casually, "Yeah?"

"Megatron – Missing and assumed to be in willing exile?"

As he asked his awkwardly worded question, Soundwave stopped punching the bag, so that he could back up a short ways. He then processed to kick it instead.

Bulkhead had never been much for kicking, either while training or in any true hand to hand combat in battle. He was far more a fan of his integrated hand weapons, and his fists. But inspired by his unexpected training partner, he made the quick decision to jump slightly from the floor, while kicking with his right leg, aiming for the punching bag. He hit the punching bag at a terrible angle, nearly missing it entirely, and that awkward impact threw his whole body of balance. Bulkhead stumbled to catch himself, arms flying out beside him widely for a second, before he fell to the floor mat and right on his backside. This in turn made a terrible thump, and slightly shook the floor around both bots.

Though he, and most other bots really, would once have assumed such a thing was impossible or at least unlikely, Bulk' found himself wondering for a second if behind his darkened face-shield, Soundwave was silently laughing at him in the ridiculousness of his move.

"Nice way to sum it up, yeah," the big green bot said, hauling himself back to his feet again. "Megatron up and flew off one day. It was… err… quite a weird situation. Arcee will prob'ly have a report you could read or somethin.' I couldn't tell the story very well."

"Prime – offline?"

"We dunno for sure..." Bulkhead stood in the middle of the room, looking toward his estimation of where Soundwave's hidden optics must have been. The new defector had stopped his attacks against the punching bag and simply stood still and presumably listening. "It seems best to assume so. We all do. But an Autobot never really does quit hopin'"

"Events and circumstances – not understood due to time spent in shadow zone."

"Yeah, ya missed a lot."

"Emotion – confusion. Reaction – do not like it."

"You've got a lotta catching up to do." Bulkhead gave a little shrug of his massive shoulders and idly gave the bag another couple of half sparked punches, while he continued to look in Soundwave's direction. "It's a different world now. A brand new Cybertron."

"How to live in new world – unknown."

Though Bulkhead would never admit it to anyone, Soundwave's words made him feel almost bad for the bot. A once dangerous and feared enemy, was now lost in circumstances he could not yet even understand.

"I don't think anybot knows how to live in it yet," Bulk' said with another shrug, and trying to give what simple wisdom he could, to a bot he would once never have imagined he'd interact with as anything but a feared enemy, he knew in hindsight, he'd hated on little more than principle. He punched the bag again, and Soundwave moved again, to return it to him with a fast firm kick. "All of us... we were soldiers for so long, we don't know how to be anything else anymore. We're still remembering what it was we were good at once. What it was we used to want. I'm doing construction again. I guess I was pretty good at building stuff once before the war. I'm liking it now..."

Bulkhead had no idea what else to say on the subject, or any other for that matter. He knew he was simply no good at idle conversation, and small talk for the sake of small talking. And it hardly took a genius to know that Soundwave had absolutely no interest whatsoever in such pointless interaction either. But after a few more minutes of the two just punching and kicking the punching bag around for no reason at all, he decided to chance a question.

"You really meant what you said? 'Bout thinking you shoulda killed Megatron back in your fighting pit days?"

"Yes." Soundwave answered simply. And for any and all the hope that he may elaborate on that somewhat, he instead offered nothing more than a single nod of his head to accompany his one word answer.

"Hmm," Bulk' mumbled over continued, through slowing punches. The idea of even trying to imagine a world in which that reality had been, was far too much for his processor to work out, and really he saw little point in thinking much about it anyway. So instead of a real reply he only shrugged his huge shoulders yet again, and gave the bag one more good hit.

"Inquiry – rematch?" Soundwave asked. He stood again with his body in a fighting stance, and bulkhead only shook his head with a chuckle under his intakes.

"I'll take you up on that tomorrow," he answered, satisfyingly tired out well before then. "Let's grab some evening fuel, and we'll see if Acree's got some unclassified files for you to read, so you can catch up on the war you missed the end of."

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"Jack..." Arcee mumbled quietly, looking in the direction of the monitor mounted in her living space. "It's been a good while now since you've called me..."

"I guess almost a year now," the human answered back. The boy – no, young man already, Arcee realized with somewhat of a shock and almost disbelief at that – clearly sat at a desk somewhere in a simple white room, and with a couple of narrow cots and a small window behind him. He shrugged at his webcam. "Ten, eleven months now."

"I wasn't sure you'd ever call again… Miko and Raf still call us all the time, but you..."

Jack gave another shrug and looked at her over the monitor, with his face full of anxious uncertainty.

"I almost didn't plan on it," he admitted slowly. "I guess the whole giant transforming robot thing always was just a little weirder to me, than it was to the other two for some reason. Then just as I thought I finally understood how things worked with regard to said giant transforming robots, the game just changed and I couldn't keep up anymore."

For a moment Arcee silently studied her human former partner, over the monitor. Wearing a blue set of clothes she recognized as that of something to do with the US air force, hair cut shorter and bangs that once hung into his face now long gone, he somehow looked different to her. Yet still so much the same too.

"You look..." she said slowly, and with a slight laugh as she nearly shook her head in her disbelief, "like a grown up young human being now."

"Ha, Kind of I guess." Jack shrugged again and laughed a tiny bit himself. He took a drink from a red soda can, he'd lifted up from close to him on the desk. "I'm eighteen now. One of the big years for us humans." He gestured around the small room a little with the hand that was not holding the can. "I'm away at school now. Military collage. Rhode Island. Across the country from Nevada and my mom still calls three times a week to remind me to sort my laundry so I don't ruin my whites, or to make sure I've had a real breakfast and not just a banana and an energy bar on the run. It's a bit ridiculous really. She's been married to Bill.. or I guess still Agent Fowler to you, for months. Still though she's trying to take car of me, her grown up son away at school, instead of just loving her new married life."

"You're okay fine with your mother being remarried?" Arcee asked, both simply curious about a human situation she still knew so little about, and concerned for 'her' human.

On the monitor, Jack shrugged and then smiled slightly. "Sure. Why not? I mean, don't get me wrong, Arcee. If she had run off with some trucker named Bob, with a girlfriend Vegas, a criminal record, and a bad reputation for violence, I'd hardly be impressed. But my mom knows what shes doing. She knows what she wants. And Bill's a decent guy. He's good to her. He said he likes me like a son..."

"You still keep in touch with the other two human kids of team Prime?"

"Sometimes yeah. Raf and Miko talk to each far more I think. They practice Raf's Japanese and stuff. We do all still call each other though… Hey Arcee?"

"Yes?"

"Miko's been.. well… saying stuff. Crazy stuff… about you..."

"What?" Arcee's optics opened slightly wider in baffled confusion. She looked intently in the direction of the monitor and waited patiently for an explanation. She pulled her legs up in front of her on the recharge station she was sitting on to comfortably converse, and continued to calmly wait. Miko, she knew would never speak badly of the team. Whatever Jack was referring to, she was certain it was all a silly misunderstanding.

"She said… well she's told me that you…" Jack sounded suddenly so much less like the young man he'd become and far more childlike. Confused, baffled. Even bordering on terrified now, as his eyes opened wider and he stared unblinking at his webcam. "You and Knockout are bondmates!"

Arcee only nodded her head slowly, as she understood quickly and with a sinking spark, just what the matter of Miko and the 'crazy stuff' was about. She smiled then, only to show him the best way she could that she was truly happy. That his look of terror was unfounded. She opened her mouth then to speak again, but Jack interrupted before she could say anything.

"I was still holding out hope that… that maybe this was some Miko prank… her idea of a joke..." he mumbled almost inaudibility as his eyes grew wider.

"You miss out on a lot of news when you don't keep in touch with up with an old friend, Jack," Arcee said. She was trying for a lighthearted reply, and she was still smiling too. But Jack only looked first more panicked, and then simply shocked again. A moment passed. And then anther one, before Jack finally spoke up again.

"Were the two of you given to each other by your factions or something?" he asked, questioning in a tone that sounded both disgusted and still baffled, as well as strangely hopeful in some odd way. "Some kind of mutual peace offering or something…?"

"Of course not. In a mutual peace agreement I would never have been given to their defector. Wouldn't make any sense." Arcee was joking with him, of course, and she carried on the game for slightly longer. "In a deal like that I would likely have been given to Starscream. Maybe Shockwave..." She made a point of giving an over the top cringing motion, and grinning for a second before she said as an after thought, "Hmm… there's Soundwave too. He would have been a possibly I suppose…. But what would we possibly have found to talk about over morning energon…"

But despite her greatest effort, Jack was not laughing.

"Arcee…?" he said after many long seconds of simply staring at his webcam speechless. "Why would you… How did..."

"It's been quite the year, Jack. After you left after our last visit to Earth we discovered that sadly, Knockout was not fully functional. He's not even close now. But he needed a friend above anything else I suppose. Stuck in a recharge station in the corner of the medbay, unable to walk, or do much else at all really, he was just lonely and bored. At first I just wanted to keep him company. To make him laugh and smile. I quickly realized that I saw him as strong, and smart, and determined… eventually we just needed each other. And it wasn't about a damaged bot needing help to hold his own fuel container, or just making sure he wasn't sad or on the verge of giving up, anymore. I've lost so much in life. So many bots that meant so much to me. Hopes and dreams, all of it so far gone that I didn't know by the end of the war if I was coming or going anymore, or I'd ever really be okay when I finished picking up the pieces of what was left of my own existence. I wouldn't have thought in a million years that the bot that could teach me to laugh again, to make me realize it was okay to be a bit broken sometimes, would be Knockout of any bot."

"Arcee," Jack said when the bot had stopped speaking again. His eyes, focused perhaps too intently on the monitor, appeared close to burning with anger. "He can't possibly be one of your personal heroes, or someone you see even one admirable thing about. It sounds like you've forgotten entirely that Knockout is a Decepticon!"

"He was once, yes. But that was..."

"After so many years – centuries- fighting 'cons. After your own planet was totaled by the war. After you finally got your home back, against all odds, and no thanks to those sparkless brutes…. Arcee how could you possibly..." Over the monitor, Jack looked like he was clearly trying so hard just to simply remain angry, furious with her. But behind his rage, Acree saw the innocent child she once knew, as he stared down to the desk he sat at, so clearly only for the sake of hiding the tears in the corners of his eyes at his own confusion and despair. She had seen Knockout do something so very similar so many times, and Arcee reflected for a second on just how much the humans really were not unlike her race. Jack looked up again at the monitor. The expression on his face now was one of no nonsense seriousness that she had never seen on him ever before.

"If he ever hurts you or any of the team in any way," the young human said. He held up a hand now clenched into a vicious fist and with the other he sent his soda can flying from the desk. "I swear to God, I'll destroy him!"

Arcee, despite her best efforts to understand exactly where it was that her human friend was coming from, was slowly growing frustrated with his behavior. She wanted to see it from his perspective if even for just a moment so that she could really relate to him and his own panic and anger. But his call had been entirely unexpected, she was strangely tired to begin with, and just lacked the spark for any long down out argument filled with explanations the human was not even bothering to try understanding.

"No one is going to hurt anybody, Jack," she sighed, with a slight shake of her head, which she slowly lowered to rest on one hand propped on a bent elbow. "You've always trusted me before. So trust me when I say Knockout and I love each other by our own choice. You may never believe it and that's okay. I understand. But I'd trust that bot with my life."

"Miko says you're carrying a... well, what she calls a transformer baby."

"Yes."

For a moment Jack looked just plan mad all over again. Every bit of the slowly fading rage of his so clearly threaten to return quickly. But she saw him slowly smile a little instead, even if it was so obviously halfhearted and doubtful.

"I gotta go," he said. "I'll call again sometime, see how things are going."

"Bye Jack," Arcee said quickly. She smiled and raised a hand to wave a polite goodbye. But her human friend had killed the connection quickly, and before she could even open her mouth again.

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Knockout sat parked at the edge of the cliff top that had quickly become a favored place of both he and Arcee to sit and talk to each other while they watched the setting sun. But tonight Arcee was far from sitting in one place, and neither one of them had been talking a lot either.

Arcee had been standing near the cliff's edge a short ways away from him for a while, appear to simply stare down over the steadily growing residential and commercial area, that returning bots had taken to calling the first 'new' city's 'downtown.' Slowly, still so clearly distracted, she stepped back from the edge and paced a little, walking very slowly from one end of the cliff top to the other.

"Arcee?" he said in growing worry, as he rolled the cart forward until it was only inches from the cliff's edge. He took in the view himself while he watched his so clearly nervous and visibly upset bond mate.

"Oh my..." Arcee exclaimed, as she turned again to look at him, and she saw that he had moved. "Knockout, if you want to be parked there, please lock your brake!"

"Okay," Knockout answered simply. He raised his right hand from where it had been resting in his lap, for a second in a gesture of assent to her wishes, and then reached down to quickly lock the safety break at the right side of the cart. He had taken his foot off the power pedal just as soon as he had stopped moving the machine, and he didn't the thing would actually go anywhere without him powering it. But her optics continued to stare at him with strange worry, until he locked the brake anyway. So he did so she could feel better about it.

"What's the matter?" he asked after a moment. She had stopped her pacing and moved to sit on the ground beside the cart, only to get back up in under a second and stand up looking over 'downtown' again.

"I… I'm fine," Arcee answered. Her tone was hesitant, but turned and looked at him at once, with a smile on her face-plate. Sitting down again, this time close beside him and the parked cart, she turned to rest her head against his knees and reached to hold the finger tips of his left hand.

"Arcee," Knockout said. He reached with his right arm, so that he could rest his hand over the back of one of her shoulder panels. "Please talk to me..."

"I've been thinking maybe I should space bridge back to Earth tonight," she mumbled into his body armor.

"Something to do with that comm call today from Jack?" Knockout asked after a moment. He sat exactly where he was, with a hand against her shoulder panel.

She nodded her head slowly, and with it still pressed against his armor. "I just… Jack seemed so angry, but I don't think he really was at all. He's worried and sad and thinks I'm in some real danger, and he's just a tiny human, back on Earth and powerless to help me if I really was in trouble. If… if I could just talk to him face to face, see him in person, I think he might just see that I'm not..."

"Arcee," Knockout spoke with real compassion and understanding. But he let his concern show just as well. "it's late. It's dark out..."

"It might be daylight in Rhode Island. I'm… not actually sure to be honest. But in any case I drove on Earth at night all the time. That's what my headlight is for..."

The blue bot lifted her head again slowly, and as soon as Knockout let go of her and gestured with a smile and an inviting motion of his good hand, she carefully climbed into his lap. Immediately she turned her body so that she could wrap both of her arms around him and once again rest against his body armor. When the added weight slightly but still clearly shifting the balance of the cart, made him slightly nervous, he carefully moved to release the safety brake. And without him even needing to ask her to out loud, she moved slightly again, so that she could reach behind her and bump the hand control just a little, to send the cart backward, a ways back from the cliff's edge.

"You could come with me," Arcee said thoughtfully after a moment. She shifted again so that she could look up into his optics and she gave an uncertain and confused smile. "Maybe it would be even better, more effective if you did come along. Let Jack see you again, see that you are hardly some terrible Cybertronian monster that's going to kill me any second."

"Arcee, that young human has obviously formed an opinion a good while ago and it's likely nothing will change it now."

"He was my human partner for over an Earth year. We taught each other so much. We worked to save both of our words together. I cared for that young human like I would my own child. I just… I hate that he hates you…."

"It is a sad situation. But everyone always will have an opinion..."

"He implied he might just want to destroy you.." Tiny streams of coolant suddenly appeared in the corners of Arcee's optics, and she dropped her head to her mate's shoulder panel at once.

"Teen aged human, verses armored Cybertronian?" Knockout chuckled a little, trying hard to make her do so as well. "Even disabled, I'm not exactly worried about.."

"That's not the point!" Arcee cried. Her small frame began to tremble a little with her anxiety and so clearly mixed up feelings about the whole matter. "I know he can't hurt you. I know he wouldn't even if he somehow could, because of how much that would upset me. But that's not that point. I want him to see that he's wrong. That I'm fine and happy and then he can just do good in school and sleep at night, and..."

"I see," Knockout said, sure he understood now. "I never thought once I'd ever really understand a bot's relationship with a human. They were just weir looking little organic things that made noise, made messes and seemed so simple and almost ridiculous. Then little Miko decided she needed to be my friend even when she was told specifically not to. To get to talk with a lillte human child myself, and finally see what it is that made you care so much about them, made you want to protect them…" Knockout chuckled again as he pulled his mate closer to him with his stronger arm and hand.

"Do you think I'm over reacting?" Arcee questioned. She looked up at him again.

"Listen," Knockout answered. Her drive to action made him almost proud and pleased in a way. But more so it concerned him, more than just a little bit. "You're very far into carrying. And we both know that I can't just up go anywhere without some planning and preparation. Just up and space bridging away from Cybertron on an hour's notice, without a real plan in mind… And anyway, Ratchet would undoubtedly hit the ceiling if he knew either one of us was even thinking about doing this. It's late. You're tired. You're stressed out. It'll all make far more sense in the morning. We can rethink the situation then."

"You're right," Arcee sighed. But she finally smiled as well. Slowly she shook her head and let it fall gently back against her mate's body armor. "I'm being… crazy..."

"Ha. Late into carrying. I think you're well entitled to a little bit of crazy by now." It was a somewhat tricky thing to do, and did take some thinking and a couple of slow and careful tries to get it right. But Knockout managed eventually to shift her weight still resting on top of him, by carefully shifting his body as well as he could. With her still half siting and half laying on him and with her feet dangling over the side of the cart, she eventually managed to move his right hand enough that he could bump it again the left wrist, getting his left hand onto the control switch all without accidentally shoving her off.

He knew she would have moved in an instant, to get off of him, had he asked her too. That certainly would have made it simply to move himself so that he could drive. But he didn't entirely want her too and they both knew it. He wanted the feeling he had so come to love, of her weight resting on top of his lap and front panels. And she wanted see if he could do it all on his own, all without dropping her. Or maybe, he thought, considering again as he looked at her, with her face-plate almost entirely hidden against his shoulder panel, and both of her small hands barely holding on to him anymore, she was simply exhausted and had barely understood his need to move at all.

"We'll bridge to Earth at some point," Knockout said quietly to his mate. He began to roll the cart slowly forward over the tiny loose chunks of the unfinished road back toward the base. Moving slowly, he managed to round a sharp corner without dropping her. "We'll bring our little one with us. Make our way to Tokyo too. I still owe Miko that visit, and she'll be bouncing off the walls over getting to meet a Cybertronian youngling, face to face-plate."

"A very small child, far bigger than she is..." Arcee mumbled tiredly, with a tiny laugh. "Poor Miko, trying to work out how to play with her..."

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"Morning Knockout," Bulkhead greeted somewhat hurriedly. He looked up from the table he sat at with Wheeljack, while both bots drank from containers of energon, and looked intently over a data pad laying on the table between them.

"Morning," Knockout mumbled back quickly. He nodded those two of his teammates. He gave a usual over the top grin as well, as he rolled the cart past their table and toward the other side of the common room.

Turning though in the center of the room, his attention caught at once by a great deal of noise in another passage way, one that lead to the lift and a couple of storage rooms, he lifted his right foot as fast as he could from the power pedal, and moved fast to tap the foot brake before almost smashing into Speedbreaker, who stood in front of him with a rusty iron crate in her hands. Speedy, laughing slightly, held one foot up in front of her, using it to stop the slowing cart before it hit her. She didn't even drop the large heavy box she carried, and shared a quick chuckle with Bumblebee who stood right behind her, with a box of his own.

A refugee ship was on its way home to Cybertron, due to arrive sometime early the next morning, according to communication received by the base in the night. The ship was one on the small side, carrying only forty-three bots and it's cargo. But the notice it had been able to give regarding its arrival had been the shortest received yet, seemingly due to trouble with its long range communication systems. And the Autobot team had been left scrambling to ready the base for forty-three guests in a very short time. Knockout, had been thrown headlong into the midst of that chaos just as soon as Ratchet had, in his own rush to complete four tasks or more at once, helped him to transfer to his cart that morning.

"Where's this going?" Speedbreaker asked of anybot that was within earshot. She nodded toward the heavy box in her hands, and shifted it slightly, trying for a better grip, as she looked around the common room.

"Downstairs. Lower level rec room," Knockout said, repeating information he had heard from Ratchet a moment or two before when the old bot had hurried down the hallway beside him for a short while, before he had disappeared somewhere. He reached out with his good hand, gesturing to to box. "Actually, let me take that."

Speedbreaker, without protest, put the box down carefully enough but still quickly onto his lap, before she turned fast, and grabbed a much lighter box somebot had left in the middle of the common room. Knockout rolled the cart down the corridor, heading for the lift, with Speedy and 'Bee both behind him, and each packing their boxes.

More noise came from up the corridor, as the three bots approached. And as they rounded a slight bend, they discovered Smokescreen, half inside and half out the open door of storage room four, trying to drag out a large sized folded worktable. A large box he'd left balancing on the side of the folded table, due to a lapse in judgment and nowhere else to really put it, wobbled as he pulled the table forwards. The bot grabbed it at once, but stood then holding the box in his hands, stuck in the storage room behind the folded work table and with nowhere to put the box. He shook his head and gave a little chuckle at his own poor planning, as Bumblebee and Knockout both took a second to laugh about it.

"I've got it," Knockout said, reaching for the dangerously unstable box with his functional hand, as he pulled the cart closer to in order to reach. Smokescreen stood for too long of a moment, hands fumbling with the badly placed box, and his knee the only thing now preventing the worktable from falling hard against the door. With a look of hesitation so clear it would have been almost offensive were he not a teammate, Smokescreen let the box go and let the red bot on the cart place it onto his lap using only his stronger arm.

"What is all this stuff anyway?" Speedbreaker questioned. She gestured with her optics toward the boxes they carried, as the trio continued on toward the lift. She shook her head as the noise of Smokescreen's continued fight with the folded table behind them.

"A whole pile of information data pads to give to the returning bots. Just like the one you and your family got when you landed." Bumblebee shrugged slightly he walked at the front of the little group. "Some tools a couple of them asked for in order to fix an energon refiner..."

It took slightly more effort and caution, because of both the mobility cart and the boxes that the bots carried with them, but they managed still quite simply enough to get all of them into the lift.

"Hey thanks for grabbing those..." Speedbreaker said. She turned herself slightly in the tight space of the lift to look from Knockout's optics to the heavy boxes that sat now well balanced on his lap. He held the top one steady with his right hand, while the left stayed resting against his cart's hand control.

"Ha. What can I say?" the red bot laughed once, and then he flashed a grin at the young neutral. "Everyone does love a team player!"

Knockout felt on some level, like perhaps he almost ought to resent the job of carrying heavy boxes. On board the warship, he'd once been an officer. And he'd so rarely hesitated to let anyone below him in rank know it through his prideful bragging rants. Carrying cargo around the place himself, especially if it was heavy, just would not have happened easily. The menial job was humiliating to be caught doing, and besides it tended to scuff paint, which simply would not do. That's what the vehicons were for. And Knockout had never had any ill feeling at all about simply grabbing the closest available trooper, and instructing him to do his heavy work for him.

He found now though that he actually didn't mind the task at all. There were so many things he couldn't do at all, or at least not quickly or efficiently enough to truly be of any use to anyone, as far as he could see it. But to pile boxes onto his lap while he drove himself on the cart, just to move things around the base, made perfect sense. Beside the weight and the balancing was a challenge. And strangely he found himself enjoying the task of moving boxes.

"No sign of Arcee yet this morning," Speedbreaker commented, with slight concern evident in her voice. The lift came to a stop with a slight bump against the bottom of the elevator shaft it rode on, and the trio of bots quickly got back out again. "She okay?"

"Recharging late. I made her," Knockout answered as he rolled the cart along the narrow hallway of the lower level. He laughed slightly and felt some sense of pride in himself at having managed to convince her to do exactly that. "Arcee is on medical leave now anyway. Ratchet's orders, which I was more than happy to back up."

"Good." Speedy grinned back. She may have been young, but the young bot certainly looked like she understood the other's exhaustion. "She's looked like she's needed that for a while."

"Yes, and I'm perfectly fine now," Arcee said, unexpectedly getting to her feet from a position she had been in on the rec room floor, apparently checking some connections for a computer monitor that had been set up near the back wall.

She crossed the room quickly, with er optics glaring in mock annoyance at Knockout, and the red bot felt his spark drop a bit with dismay as he realized he had not succeeded in making her rest at all.

"Knockout," she said, her tone a mix of mild disappointment and almost amusement. "When I told you I'd rest a bit, I didn't mean half the morning. I hardly meant for you to roll away and start working without me."

"You needed the rest," he protested with a smile and a tiny laugh, even as she glared at him.

"I suppose I was tired..." she admitted slowly. She stood a second, her expression turning from her mild annoyance to one of bewilderment instead. She slowly shook her head just a little muttering, "I remember we were outside, on our cliff looking over the city and talking. I don't even remember coming back here."

Knockout only chuckled then as he made a point of pulling her closer to him with his functional hand. He grinned when she leaned her weight against him, so obviously trying not to upset the boxes that still sat on his knees. "You were practically asleep on my lap and the cart. I carried you back to base. Ha. Ratchet certainly had a little chuckle when I asked him to help me put you back down so I could then be transferred to the recharge station."

"I'm still so guilty of forgetting that physically you're still pretty strong."

"Yes."

For all of another second, Arcee stood resting against him, and chuckled lightly. Then straightened herself up, stepped back, and looked around purposefully around the room.

"I'm carrying, not dying," she mumbled seriously. "I can hardly rest indefinitely while a ship is on it's way in. Now where is Smokescreen with that work table anyway. I need it along that far wall, so we've got somewhere to stack those data pads."

Knockout exchanged looks of disbelieving concern with Bumblebee as Arcee matched quickly away, crossing the room toward the wall she had intended said worktable to go, and then went off the other direction, instead to fuss with the monitor again. The two bot's looks turned instantly to dread, when Ratchet walked fast into the recroom, and they saw him nearly bump right into Arcee, who he had specifically was to be doing next to nothing at all.

"Ratchet… I… I tried to make her..." Knockout stammered his words despite his best efforts not to.

But the old bot only shook his head and gave a somewhat obviously sarcastic laugh under his intakes.

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The Autobot base was in a state that was slowly beginning to resemble complete chaos. It had been that way all morning, as the Autobots prepared for the impending arrival of a shipload of returning refugees. And Soundwave, seemingly forgotten in the rush of bots hurrying to ready for returning bots requiring briefing and directions on housing and resources, wandered the halls somewhat aimlessly and glad to have been forgotten all about.

Not long before, he had wandered right past the file room, whose always locked door, had been left unlocked and slightly ajar. He laughed inwardly for a second, before he shook his head in silent confusion at the conflict that door had quickly brought him. A well learned and long enforced sense of duty had made him think immediately of creeping inside the unlocked room (not like a lock could have really stopped him in the first place had he been truly determined to get inside,) in order to quickly and efficiently scan through ever saved file on the Autobot mainframe, and send to his own faction. Then, just as quickly, he remembered again that his faction was gone. Most had disbanded, probably with no interest at all in Autobot intel anyway in any case. His own leader was gone, and another, left behind to take over and struggle with the fast failing task of establishing new order, had tried to kill him.

Soundwave fallowed the hallway, as it rounded a corner, past the closed doors of living quarters. These he knew were not locked and passworded as some were. These ones were empty, sitting unused. He thought for a moment he ought to laugh at the Autobot's and their belief that they could truly win a war with their numbers so small, their bases generally housing a third the bots they should have. But still, they had for all intents and purposes, already won the war with those small numbers and sparks filled with she sheer determination to never lay down and die.

He had not been outside of the base at all since he had been found and brought in, and he had never exactly pressed the matter of going outside. Centuries of serving on a worship, leaving for the ground or the open skies only when a mission called for it, had made him used to being indoors. In fact he had long preferred the safely of the warships corridors, and the dimly lit silence of the comm room and his out of the way, locked, and rarely disturbed office, to the brightness of the world outside. But still fresh air and sunlight, particularly that of Cyberton's bright white and distant sun, were needs that even he had on occasion. And mostly out of boredom and with little else to do, he made his way to the side doors he knew led into the fenced off and courtyard. In his storage compartment, he carried the one data pad file he had been given, handed willingly to him by Autobot Arcee that morning in the midst of her rushing about. She had told him hurriedly that the pad contained the reports of events had he missed, and that she hoped it might make sense enough that he could feel better about it all.

To read from a data pad outdoors, with bright sunlight reflecting off the pad, was far more difficult for him to do than it was most any other bot, because of the way he had rigged his own optical systems to function through his face-shield's hidden view screen. But he thought that perhaps there might just been a place out there shaded enough he could make it work. So, with Laserbeak following his path, flying up near the ceiling and clearly enjoying the freedom of it, he continued on toward the back doors.

The sound of feet moving slowly toward him, still unseen around another curve in the hallway, made him slow his own steps to listen. The approaching steps he heard were slow. Small metal feet dragging more than a bot's feet should, accompanied by the noise of the tiny wheels of a walking frame rolling along the rough flooring. Soundwave, to his own dismay, felt his spark, faced with a run in with the one young bot he knew expected he would socialize when he barely could. The one small bot that he should have been able to scare away from him simply and could not.

"Hi, Soun-wave," Firestorm grinned her strangely calm and cheery grin, as he rounded the corner and met her near the base's rear doors to the courtyard.

"Imm goin' hometonigh'," she said slowly in her usual muddled and slightly slurring speech, when he had not said a word to her after a few seconds. She gestured with her optics down tot he walking frame she leaned against to stand up straight. She had a new one now, obviously newly constructed, and correctly sized for her small frame. It was even painted in a light pale yellow to match her own body point, and she looked clearly so happy to have it.

"I can learnta balance betternow," she said, still grinning far more than Soundwave felt she would if she only knew half of the things he had done as a 'con. "Ratchet saysIcan walk normalif I keepatryin' it. Knockout saysIcan run..."

Soundwave, baffled and annoyed, but not willing to say a word, moved to step around her without a thought. His hand grabbed for the door handle and he pushed it open as soon as he had gotten easily by the little bot and the walking frame. She said something more. A simply and still cheerful and polite good bye and he heard a slow retreating footstep. But there was nothing more after that. The sound of her walking away had stopped as soon as it started. And she didn't say another word either. Soundwave wasn't sure exactly what it was that made him turn back around again to look at her, other than that something was suddenly off and he knew it. And somehow a sense of concern he never bothered to show before to anyone, made his spark skip once in its chamber.

Firestorm was standing still and silent in the hallway, optics staring toward the wall, and appearing to see nothing at all. After a second of this, she opened her mouth a little, and appeared to be trying to speak again. But her voice was nothing more than inaudible static. Without any warning the little bot's legs gave out beneath her. The walking frame tipped over to land on its side nearby, and before he could even question why he bothered, Soundwave had darted froward with impressive speed learned over years of combat training, and gently grabbed Firestorm before she fell face-plate down on the rough floor.

He lowered himself to the floor with her, and managed to shift her body around so that she lay face up when he put her carefully down into the floor. But beyond that most obvious action, Soundwave knew instantly that he had no idea at all, what to do.

The little bot's optics were still open, still glowing in their pale blue. And for a second he was sure she might have looked at him again, optics focusing on something specific, before she stared back off into nothing. Her small white and yellow frame began to tremble lightly from head to foot, and still baffled by the whole situation, Soundwave could only think to kneel close by, with no idea what it was he was seeing, but just as sure that leaving her by herself was the last thing anyone should do.

Every Decepticon had been trained in the basics of field first aid – though centuries spent on endless battlefields had convinced him that the Autobots, in their own training, were generally much better at it. He could use his own training with it, just as well as any 'con could do. But this was not a battlefield, and this bot was not exactly suffering from some sudden damage inflicted by weapons-fire. The little bot's trembling stopped and for a fraction of a second, he was relieved by that. Until both of her legs began to kick violently against the floor, feet scrapping hard and dangerously against the rough flooring of the hallway. Her optics blinked now from open to closed and back open again, and she still didn't appear to see much at all. But though the static of her barely working vocalizer, there was a sound that could only have been one of increasing panic.

Soundwave looked up then toward the ceiling, where his bird continued to fly, now only circling around above in her own clear confusion at a situation she was not trained for.

Laserbeak, he instructed over the telepathic link he shared with the little flying bot. Fly quickly back toward the medical bay. Find help.

Laserbeak may not have been trained specifically in assistance tasks of that kind. Her primary job had always been infiltration and information recon. She was far better at breaking into any given place, than simply flying in invited. But she was smart. She could learn fast. She'd figure it out. And sure enough she was off at once, turning in the air, setting a path back in the direction she had been sent.

"Please, don't be afraid," Soundwave said, speaking out loud, when Firestorm screamed again in panic through though the static of her vocalizer. Her optics appeared to be struggling to focus and see him now. "Assistance – alerted."

Metal footsteps and the strange but familiar sound of Knockout's motorized mobility cart, got Soundwave's attention at once. And a strange amount of relief flooded his spark. Even though the bots were approaching from the wrong direction, some hallway leading away from the medbay, still he knew that Knockout, and with luck, whoever it was that was walking with him, would be of some use.

"...well that's very true, and quite obviously it's important to consider that," Knockout's voice said, as the approaching bots come closer and clearly in the middle of their own conversation. "Still though, even if an energon line were cut near the dislocated joint, we want to get the joint back in place first. An out of place elbow or knee will only even complicate things. Besides it was increase the injured bot's pain level horribly."

"What about a situation where the out of place joint was actually pinching the damaged line, and serving to control what would otherwise be horrible bleeding?" The other bot questioned. Soundwave thought he recognized the voice as that of the yellow and black one. Ratchet's medical student.

"Fair point," Knockout answered as the voices and the footsteps came closer. "Still though the best answer… That's not actually as helpful as you would think. Energon lose happens and it will then, probably massively if you mess this up. Think fast. Move even faster."

"Pop quiz, 'Bee," Knockout said quickly. He chuckled with slight laugh, though his tone remained serious as ever. "Large framed, adult bot has been down for ten minutes in full on spark failure before you get to him. You find him with no visible injured, broken parts, no obvious amount of energon on or near the frame..."

He stopped talking as the pair of bots came around the bend in the corridor, and for a fraction of a second both of them stood exchaging looks with each other and with Soundwave, who still sat helpless on the floor next to the fallen little bot. Knockout was on his comm unit in under a second, more than likely looking for more help. And Soundwave considered for the first time that perhaps it was time he appealed to the bots regarding his own comm code in the base network.

"Soundwave..." Bumblebee said slowly. The Autobot was stepping toward him fast, before he could even think of getting himself to his feet. And Soundwave, remembering suddenly a recent encounter with this same Autobot in the gym, after he had advanced toward the bot that turned out to be his promised bondmate, fully realized for the first time how bad the current situation may just have looked.

"Fault – not my own," Soundwave said. He kept his voice even as ever, and nearly emotionless, even through his sudden desire to be clearly understood in his intentions. "Firestorm – fell to the floor. Logical guess – sudden outset of illness."

Soundwave tried then to get to his feet quickly as he could. But to his surprise, the black and yellow Autobot held a hand toward him. Not quite touching his shoulder panel, but his hand still coming close to doing so.

"Clearly not your fault," he said, with understanding in tone of his voice. "Good call on stopping to try and help. Just… keep talking to her for a minute please."

"I knew there was some reason the bird here was behaving strangely when tried to dive bomb right at by head through the medbay door," Ratchet said, over the sound of his own hurried and heavy aproaching footsteps. Soundwave looked up to the see the old Autobot medic quickly kneel on the hallway floor, with Laserbeak riding quite contently perched on his left shoulder panel.

"Firestorm – alright?" Soundwave questioned, somewhat hesitant now as she finally got to his feet and let Laserbeak hop onto his arm.

"Yes yes, it seems so," Ratchet mumbled an answer while activating a handheld scanner he'd carried with him. "Processor reboot is all. But different from the ones we usually see with Knockout, but still…. If she snaps out of this in under a minute or two I might not even bother holding her in medical again. Oh, and Soundwave… thanks."