So why'd you really do it?

by Dreamingsinger

The last thing the Autobots expected was that Knockout would ever switch sides to join them. But why'd he do it? It's out of character. There are bound to be a few trust issues. But when he is badly injured, saving his team without even thinking about it, the 'bots begin to discover that their suspicious defector is far less confidant than they thought, and far more broken.

45. Chapter 45

Notes/ As far as I can tell now, based on how things are going there will be three possible four chapters left to write and post. And most of it now will be short scenes and 'odds and ends.' Basically I'm focused now on both tying up some loose ends and creating futures for these characters so that I can continue on with a second part. (In part two, along with so many other things we will see Cybershock grow up. Obviously I have plans to give her a personality of her own. Right now she's clearly a bit flat, because well, she's just a little baby.)

I got a question in a review – where is Ultra Magnus? And checking back I'm sure I've gotten that one before. Terribly sorry for missing it months back. Okay, let's address this one. :) When I started this one, writing him in was somehow a bad oversight. I simply forgot all about the fact that yes indeed he did survive Predicons Rising. Now, I did certainly remembered this several chapters in, but honestly I was just unsure how to work him in from there, so I decided to simply leave him out. I realize now this was probably a terrible idea, and I thought about going back and editing parts of this to work him in from the start. Trouble is, as you can imagine, this would logically change entirely aspects of the entire plot, because as the obvious leader on base, he would have done so many things differently. Now, I DO seriously feel like I should work Ultra Magnus back into the second part... with a few obvious 'cheats' to explain his so far absence.

"Speedbreaker, please don't feel like you need to stay late into the evening to help me," Ratchet said, glancing toward the clock, on a wall, across the room. And when he did, he blinked his optics once in obvious disbelief over the hours that seemed to have escaped entirely.

"I love working with you though," Speedy answered. She glanced back at the clock herself, certainly surprised herself with the fact that the day had passed by and it was early evening already. But instead of stopping her work, she only picked up a particle scanner and waved it over vials of energon, mixed at varied concentrations, just like Ratchet had directed her to do every so often. "I'm learning so much more than I've ever had a chance to learn before."

"Well," Ratchet said with a chuckle, and a rare hint of a smile on his face-plate. He tapped his hand gently on one of the young bot's shoulder panels, "I certainly won't ever say I'm ungrateful for your help." His smile faded then, and he looked back at the mess of vials and tools, scanners and datapads, scattered about on his favoured large worktable, in the corner of the medbay devoted to his research. "It's wonderful to work with someone clearly interested."

"Are you kidding?" Speedbreaker exclaimed grinning. "The Cybermatter project! Reverse engineering the building blocks of our planet and everything on it. Who wouldn't want to work on this? Surely it's every engineers dream."

"You'd be surprised," Ratchet mused, reaching for a datapad left closest to him on the right, and double checking a set of equations on the screen. "I'm sure you know as well as I do, 'Bee doesn't have the passion for hard science. And Knockout's biggest interest in here, aside from anything directly medically related of course, is usually drawing..." He shook his head slightly, and his musing turned to muttering. "That, and downright goofing off. I swear to Primus. I marvel sometimes that he, of any bot, was the first of us with a bondmate and a child..."

Speedbreaker only shook her head, laughing a little at the old bot's mock crankiness. She leaned over, standing tall as she could on the fronts of her feet, and stared a moment at the long complex equation on the pad he held in his hands. Her knee joints protested a little as she did this for more than just a second, and she ignored the slight pulsing ache, too interested in the series of numbers that could well change the world, to be bothered with the mild annoyance of slightly aching knees.

When he moved to place the pad back onto the work table, she reached to grab it from him instead, wanting a much closer look, and as she did, her back began to ache. It was just a little, though slightly more than the discomfort of her knees. And she quickly hid the involuntary frown that tried to spread across her face-plate at the feeling, all to sure that Ratchet would put a stop to her work with him if only he'd noticed it.

"Speedbreaker," Ratchet said not a few seconds later, she looked intently at the pad she was studying, but still in the very top of her field of vision, she could see his alert and cautious 'medic look.' "You aren't too tired, are you?"

"I'm fine," Speedbreaker insisted, so quickly she was sure that alone had given her away.

"It's just annoying aches and pains," she admitted, with a smile. She really did feel tired, and she noticed that herself only after he'd mentioned it. She frowned again and shook her head a little. "I feel... weak and half useless..."

"You are most certainly not useless, Speedy," Ratchet said. He placed his hand back onto her shoulder panel again and smiled his assurance. "You're carrying. That's a perfectly good excuse to be tired you know."

"I'm a very young bot," Speedbreaker shook her head again. "And Arcee could do five times as much as this while she was carrying Cybershock. And much further along than I am" Indeed, Arcee had trained with her blaster, well into her final term. Jumping and flipping in the air, running, transforming... not to mention, running a base of operations, processing a near endless stream of returning refugees, and caring for a badly disabled bondmate.

"A couple of things for you to bare in mind, Speedy," Ratchet answered. He held up a couple fingers of his right hand, and his face-plate looked serious "Firstly, the earliest stages can well be just as tiring as the final one. Your frame is still adapting to carrying that tiny newspark. And yes it may be tiny at this point, but still it requires a great deal of your own energy supply just to grow bigger. Secondly, Arcee should most certainly not have been doing half the things she did, as often as she did them, and she knows it. Do not follow her example. She's obviously a bad influence. And Age has little to do with it," He smiled then, just a little, at his comment that made light of things. But still his point was clear. The old bot turned then, with another look of understanding, and reached out to grab a nearby chair, which he promptly set down closer to the worktable.

"Take a seat," he said, smiling with understanding, as he gestured to the folding chair. "This is light work anyway. You should be fine a while longer as long as you aren't continuously standing."

"Thanks," Speedbreaker answered, with gratitude at being allowed to keep on working, at least for a while.

"If I may ask, what will you do once you've had your youngling?" Ratchet questioned suddenly, after a long silence consumed only by intent work. And Speedbreaker considered a moment.

"I suppose I'll be home for a while with the youngling, of course," she answered. "But I do want to work again just as soon as it makes sense to. I just can't imagine not. So I guess one day I'll be back at my carrier's sweet shop. He's told me already I'll always have a job. He needs me..."

"Or..." Ratchet exclaimed, grinning by then. "Perhaps you would prefer to come and work for me. A kind of internship, in science and engineering. You wouldn't be just an intern forever of course. I'll soon have a hospital to run on top of teaching you, and so much else. A bot a trained in science would most ideally be the one who would eventually run the science department."

"Ratchet, I..." Speedbreaker only sputtered something of an answer while her spark pounded behind her chest panel. She wanted to blurt that a thing like this had been her dream since she was a youngling on a refugee ship. But of course he must have known that already, or at least he'd assumed. Slowly though her spark began to sink, and in defiance of her own feelings, she smiled again.

"I don't think I can," she said, still smiling and only hoping her voice remained even, while she shook her head. "I mean, don't get me wrong. A chance to finally do something like this for real, to be more than just an armature and self taught tinkerer... it would be amazing. But like I said... my carrier... he needs me. The family business..."

"Never let that stop you in life," Ratchet answered firmly. He still smiled. "I've been talking to your carrier a bit already. Remember, I buy sweets from him as much as anybot." he chuckled just a little before his expression turned serious. Today I proposed to him a brilliant idea, that if you can believe was first proposed to me by Soundwave last night."

"Th... thank you." Speedbreaker mumbled smiling far brighter herself. Trying hard not to let that smile turn into something that would look like she was grinning like an idiot. She wondered all the while what this 'brilliant idea' was. But he was not saying. "I'll certainly think about it."

"We are very close to getting this right," Ratchet muttered, his attention right back to his work again. "One more adjustment to the measurements... and I wonder... Hey, Speedy, hand me that container in front of you there."

"This one?" Speedbreaker asked, seeking confirmation as she grabbed with too much excitement for a container filled with bright bluish glowing liquid.

"Oh, and be careful with that one." Ratchet's quick and urgent warning made her pause. And she carefully grabbed the container with both hands now, holding it with far greater care.

"Is it dangerous?" she asked, holding it out to him, from her place still seated in her folding chair. "What is that stuff?"

"Synthetic energon," Ratchet answered. He thought for a moment, as he took the container from her. "Not exactly dangerous, no... though I would never want anyone to consume the stuff. And with you, a carrying bot, I'm playing it safer."

"What's in this one?" Speedbreaker reached for a second container, this one filled with something glowing purple, and behind the place the first one had been. She did not touch it, but even her hand, reaching out, and coming closer to it, made the old medic-bot freeze in alarm, before he quickly turned to face her with a serious look.

"That's dark energon," he explained, once she had quickly taken the hint and pulled her hand back. "It's reactive and volatile. It's turned bots to literally monsters and it seems, at least from what I've briefly seen of it, that it may just be capable of corrupting machinery. I would not want you to even touch the container it's stored in."

Speedbreaker nodded once in understanding, but her frame was unable to resist a slight shudder at the the old bot's words. Slowly she reached for a data pad, left laying on a worktable. And with curiousity she carefully scanned shorthand typed notes.

"This one's not yours." she said gesturing with her optics toward the pad she was holding. The formatting was different somehow from his. The wording was... off.

"The Cybermattter project is not entirely mine," Ratchet explained. Checking his own pad again, he carefully poured just a little of the glowing bluish liquid into a smaller container in front of him. "Those notes you've got there, they were given to me by the now former Decepticon, Shockwave."

"That bot 'Bee went with you to negotiate with once?" Speedbreaker questioned, remedying. "That same night Cybershock was born?"

"The very same."

"Then... this is what you negotiated for. His safety, for his part of the research?"

"Indeed." Ratchet nodded slightly and only mumbled an answer while he worked intently.

"Is all this really that important?" Speedbreaker asked, amazed. Sure, it may well have been naive of her. And she knew it of course. But still she wondered. "It is so incredibly valuable?"

"Speedy," Ratchet said, with a confidant smile on his face-plate. Setting down his work, he turned to face her. And with both hands firm on her shoulder panels, he continued on. "This may be the most important scietific and medical advance Cybertron has seen in twenty centuries."

Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break

"It's still both so strange and amazing to see the sun set on another planet," Jack mused Sitting on the smooth metal ground, he looked out over a river of shining oil, reflecting the fading light in rainbow colors not far below him, and shook his head just a little with the near disbelief over it all. "A sun so different from our own, shinning its light on a world so different from home. But still, it shines. It sets, and rises. You get day and night..."

"What do think I used to think about so often all those years on Earth?" Arcee said, laughing just a little in reply. "I'd watch your sun. I'd think about my home. I'd marvel at how it was so very different, yet somehow so close to the same..."

"I'm glad you got this planet back," Jack grinned. He looked from his bot partner, to slow and winding river below, and back again. "It really is a pretty and amazing place now that it's alive again."

"I thank Primus every day that we could save both of our worlds."

Cybershock, held gently in her carrier's arms, started to wiggle and fuss, and squirm and fuss some more. And Arcee shifted her child a little, before she carefully shifted her far more so that the little one could see the river too. Cybershock held a small toy – a few links of light brass chain, between her hands. And suddenly she dropped it with a giggle, to land on the ground in front of Jack's folded knees. Instantly her giggles turned to pouting, as she reached for the toy, now far below her outstretched hands.

"You want this?" Jack asked the baby Cybertronian, standing up at once with the toy dangling from his hand. The baby giggled again and grabbed for it.

"Well, don't drop it again," the human warned, laughing. It was only a second before she indeed dropped it again, and so obviously on purpose.

"Now you've done it, Jack," Arcee said with a laugh of her own, bending forward a bit so that her youngling in her arms was closer to eye and optic level with her human partner. And Jack looked at her, with entirely no idea what she meant by that, until the baby dropped the toy yet again, and she squealed with laughter as she did so. "She thinks she's found herself a perfectly amusing and hilarious game."

"You're just being silly," Jack said to the baby. And his eyes looked her in the bright blue optics as he handed over the toy he'd just picked up again. Cybershock giggled loudly, and the force of her laughter caused her to soon emit a loud and not unlikable whirring kind of buzzing noise.

"What if I took this?" Jack asked her playfully. Slowly he moved to hide the toy behind his back. "What if I told you it's mine now?"

Cybershock looked at him a moment, clearly puzzled. And her laughter stopped abruptly. Her grin turned to a sad little pout, and she made a distressed little whir, while she reached for a toy she could no longer see any sign of. When Jack quickly presented the toy again, she laughed loudly, and made a rough and still clumsy motion of trying to clap her little metal hands together.

Jack watched as Arcee bent carefully down, to place the baby, laying face down on the smooth metal ground, before she sat down close to her. He watched, chuckling a little, as the little one explored the texture of the blue tinted metal of the ground, with curious and reaching fingers. He watched her, impressed, as she rolled herself over, to lay on her back, giggling again. And finally, with another roll partway back over again, and little help from her own arms to stabilize herself, the baby sat herself up, and just stayed there looking around her.

"Hey, that's pretty good," Jack exclaimed his surprise at learning the baby could indeed sit up like that on her own.

"That's the first time she's done that," Arcee explained, laughing under her intakes just a little, and impressed herself. "Soon enough she'll probably crawl. Then I'm really in trouble..." Her gaze wandered briefly from her child and her partner, to somewhere out over the river, before she looked back again, and went on speaking, her tone now clearly a bit sad. "Knockout wanted so much to be able to sit up unaided before our child learned to do it. Still, he'll be happy as anything to see her beat him to it. She's always been his biggest motivation to keep on trying... well anything really. I don't think he'd do half the crazy things he's insisted on doing if we didn't have her." She paused a moment smiling from her youngling to her human partner and back again. Eventually she shook her head a little and mused, "a couple days ago now, in the morning, he got the idea in his processor that maybe, just maybe he could get himself from our recharge station, onto his mobility cart with no help at all. Never mind that he'd only practised that in rehabilitation twice and never without help."

"W..what happened?" for a moment Jack was almost horrified, imagining that it could only have gone badly.

"He got it right. That night he did it again in reverse. He's never fallen yet... of course Ratchet learned of this quickly, and at first I thought he'd get his wrench to crack him over the head with it." Arcee sat a moment, just shaking her head, with a bemused look on her face-plate. "Of course we all know he'd never do it. Knockout's successes make that old bot proud as anything."

"Knockout is so far from being helpless, as far as I've seen while I've been here. And it's obvious even to me he's so much happier even as a damaged Autobot than he was as a fully functional 'con..."

Arcee just nodded her head in agreement. She looked out across the river, and she gestured with her optics toward the place she was looking.

"See that flat plane over there?" she asked. And when Jack nodded slowly, looking toward the place indicated, she continued with another tiny laugh. "That's the place Knockout and I met for the first time. Of course it was little more than an energon soaked battle field then."

"You didn't meet on Earth?"

"Most members of both factions all knew each other on Cybertron first, remember. We all travelled separately to Earth, only to cross paths once again. Of course we all just picked right up where we'd left off..." Arcee looked sad for a moment. And she shook her head slightly, before she spoke again. "Knockout was honestly decent with his skills in battle, when he wasn't ready to run for it. He had a good hold on that staff of his, and I was carefully dodging his bolts of electrical current, for what seemed like too long, while I tried to convince him that the medics were never supposed to fight. He said my dead frame would be perfect for dissection. I quickly gave up on reasoning and decked him... He pulled a rotary blade on me. I pulled a pair of blasters..." She looked then at Cybershock, still sitting on the ground grinning as she shoved her little toy made of mental chain links into her mouth to chew on it. And again she shook her head. "We'll have our own apartment together before we know it. Bulkhead is over at the last finished building now. Sounds like he's assessing a place on the tenth floor, for accessibility adaptations..."

"Everything is turning out so different than I ever would have guessed in a million years," Jack mused, quiet and retrospective. "Knockout defecting... that was one thing. But then so did Soundwave, of any bot. It's a bit funny really in some crazy sort of way... Miko is Knockout's human friend. Now Raf is fast becoming Soundwave's. Those two, both befriending the bot that once traded them as hostages." He stopped talking seconds after Cybershock, sitting close to where he stood, half dropped and half throw her toy to the ground, so clearly trying to re-instigate the little game of theirs. And quickly he bent to pick it up and hand it too her. The baby bot's head, while she sat and the ground and he stood, reached over halfway to the top of his chest. And Jack laughed a little, for the first time, from their current perspective, truly realizing just how big Arcee's child really was. He sat on the ground close to her, well aware of making himself appear to be even smaller. And slowly, with a nearly disbelieving shake of his head, he spoke again, finishing the thought he'd started. "I could never have achieved what they did."

"Knockout and Soundwave were on some level both looking for friendship," Arcee answered, in a tone that could not have been mistaken for anything less than understanding. "Or at least they were not completely opposed to it." She laughed a little then and slightly shook her head back at him. "No one ever could have expected you to even try to befriend Starscream, Jack. That thought honestly horrifies me just a bit..."

"Are you guys still technically Auotbots?" Jack knew his question must have sounded just as odd and out of nowhere to her, as he feared it did. But it had suddenly occurred to him to ask, and so he had. "The 'cons are fully no more now. The last of them are either defectors are dead now. So where's that leave you? After centuries of war, with fighting and battle and endless combat shaping your entire world and its culture, can there be Autobots without Decepticons?"

"It always used to be Raf that asked the complicated questions," Arcee answered with a sigh. "Going away to school, being on your own so far from home, it's made you think differently. It's made you question more, made you wonder more."

"You don't think that's a bad thing, do you?" For a moment, Jack was worried – ever the same young human that cared so much what a huge, sentient robotic being thought of him and his behaviour.

"Of course not," Arcee laughed a little. "It's worked well for Raf so far."

"So, how would you answer then? Are you still Autobots?"

"We'll always be Autobots, Jack. It's not just our faction - a side to fight on in the war. It's become an identity. Autobot as much who I am now, as what I am."

"Cool," Jack mumbled with a smile at his bot friend. It may have been a Miko-like answer perhaps. And he almost laughed at simply realizing that. But that simple reply was the only one he felt the need to make.

"You packed up and ready to go tonight?" Arcee questioned, after several long moments of sitting in happy silence just watching the youngling and the river.

"All packed," Jack confirmed with a nod. It was almost hard to believe it, but he and the others of the humans were finally going home that evening.

The distinct and familiar sound of a ground bridge whirring lightly as it opened somewhere behind them made both Jack and his bot partner turn to look in its direction. Knockout drove quickly away from the portal on that strange, efficient machine of his. He may have been limited, but still he was just as good as any bot at serving as safe effective transport for a human – any of which were so greatly disadvantaged, slow and vulnerable on the world of huge bots. And at the moment, Miko sat, perched carefully on his right shoulder panel while he drove.

The ground bridge remained open even after he had more than cleared it. And a good few moments later, Jack saw why. Another bot, another of the slowly growing number of Cybertronian females appearing on their world, and this one white and yellow, left the bridge behind the others. She was slow, and uncoordinated, with steadily trembling hands, and using the handlebars of some strange upright sort of wheeled frame to hold her self up. But still he moved clearly just as fast as she could, even if that was still indeed slower than one should have moved, pushing the frame in front of her, her stumbling feet struggling to keep on going. Jack remembered that he had met her- or at least seen her in passing – very briefly just a couple of days before, in the midst of the chaos of some medical disaster he'd finally learned involved exploded energon inside a mine somewhere. He hadn't noticed the mobility equipment then. And suddenly he found himself taken just slightly aback by the discovery of a second badly dysfunctional bot.

"Wait uuup..." she said, with strangely mumbled speech. She hurried on, trying in vain to keep up, as Knockout steadily put more distance between them. "I... nofast like yoo ah."

"Ha. I'm pretty sure you're the only one to ever call me fast," Knockout answered, laughing a little in reply. But still, And much to Jack's dismay, he did not stop for even a second to let her catch up. "Last one to the river bank is...," he paused in his speaking a moment, and still drove on forward. "Miko, remind me again what you humans call someone who's last?"

"A rotten egg!" Miko cried, laughing loudly. And with no warning at all, she slid somewhat recklessly right down from Knockout's shoulder, and over his bent knees, before she leapt without so much as a pause, right down to the ground close to his font wheel. Instantly she was running, while she yelled over the noise of moving bots, "I'm gonna beat both of you there!"

"Miko, be careful," Arcee said, optics watching the young human run half carelessly, and still close to the wheel. She sounded so much like anybody's mother now, and Jack reminded himself quickly that it was simply because she actually was one.

"He'd stop and wait for her if he really needed to," Arcee explained. And Jack knew she must have read the bothered expression on his face. She gestured slightly toward the white and yellow bot. "Firestorm is pretty well unstoppable. I suppose that's because her processor was damaged while she was still a youngling. She just does what she does, because she's always just done it that way."

"Meee-ko going ta bea-us..." the young bot said, seconds later. And Jack to, to his great surprise, saw that she was laughing now as she spoke, and all the while still trying to catch up.

"So, let's not let her," Knockout answered fast, as the human began to put more and more distance between them.

And the younger bot, with agreement practically written across her pale yellow face-plate, made exactly four much longer than her usual steps, before the slight unevenness of the ground caused her right foot to stumble first, followed closely by her left. With the handlebars of her frame she caught herself well before she fully fell down onto her knees. She stood upright again from there, and grinning, she walked on.

Knockout had stopped then, turning that machine of his partway back around. But he turned again fast and drove on, when her look so clearly said she thought she might just catch up. Knockout reached the river bank, not too far behind Miko. And as the young bot, Firestorm, kept on moving to complete the task of reaching it herself. And sure enough she did so and only stumbled once more and without falling. Knockout began quickly fumbling then with well fitted and fastened shoulder harness straps, that Jack had not noticed until then that he had even been strapped into his machine with. Or – more likely it seemed – he had strapped himself in, since he could obviously do the reserve just fine.

"You can transform, Firestorm," Arcee said to the young bot, who was now walking slowly toward the little group gathered sitting on the ground, still pushing the frame in front of her. "You could have had them both easily in your alt mode."

"That'be cheatin'" Firestorm answered, laughing as she stood near the group, smiling at the baby.

Knockout, Jack realized, amazed and almost disbelieving, had been deliberately inspiring the younger bot to move faster, to walk steadier on purpose. He must have drawn on his own medical training, and used his clear passion for the field, to understand just how to help her by teaching her body to become stronger and he helped her more so, by letting her simply have fun in doing it. He watched as Arcee stood to promptly plop Cybershock down onto Knockout's lap. He laughed a little at seeing the baby grin brightly as soon as he grinned at her, and bounced her just as well as he could on his right knee. The baby, Jack saw in just that simple moment, probably loved him more than anybot on Cybertron. Arcee had been right about that.

Firestorm, the young bot whose name Jack had only just learned, sat herself down on the metal ground, near the place where Jack still sat. He smiled a greeting at her, as he introduced himself, with a hand extended to shake a fingertip as the humans had taken to doing in place of handshakes with bots. And clearly the bot must have done the same before, probably with Miko, because she held out a right hand fingertip right away, obviously familiar already with the practice. But the smile on her face-plate, so bright while she was engaged in competition, racing Knockout and Miko to the river, faded all too quickly now that she was simply seated quiet on the ground. Jack frowned a little at that, remembering the recent disaster, the base had received the horrific results of. At once he understood without needing anyone to tell him, that she had lost someone important to her in that disaster.

"The bags and blankets are ready by the ground bridge control," Miko said. She flopped down onto the ground close by, and for a moment she just lay with her head in her hands propped on her elbows and kicked her legs back and forth up behind her. "Tonight we're really all going home."

Jack had had no idea at all, what it was he was supposed to say to a young Cybertronian in the face of an obvious loss of some other bot he himself had never known. And Miko's comment served as perfect distraction from a need to figure that out in that moment.

"Yeah," he answered quickly. And he added with confidence, "I'm gonna miss this place and the bots of course. But Earth is home. And I'm excited to get back to school."

His step father thankfully had a few strings he could pull with the military college of Rhode Island, and he'd pulled them all, to get Jack a perfectly excusable leave from his classes for out of state experimental treatment for a not at all real medical condition.

"Yeah, I guess I'm kinda ready to get home too," Miko said, considering. "Getting ready for finals soon."

"Think you'll catch up in time?" Jack asked, partly because he really did wonder, and mostly because he had that same worry for himself.

"Sure," Miko's answer was surprisingly confidant. And she just stayed where she was, kicking her legs behind her a moment before she explained. "Knockout's been helping me with all that homework my teachers emailed to me. Now granted, he's no help at all with history, his thing is clearly math and science, but I think I'll manage. And my language elective is English, and my English is good enough to pass for an American, so..."

Jack knew that at still not quite seventeen, Miko was practically on her own already, while her father worked in foreign countries for seasons on end, and her mother had an affair while she worked day and night. Of course she had been given a wonderful cover story too. Hers simply involving a second, shorter term trip back to the US to study. But this satisfied mostly her school. Either one of her parents, sad as it may have been, may barely have noticed she was even away at all.

"Miko, aren't you going to share your good news?" Knockout questioned, from his place off to the side of the little gathered group, on his mobility machine with his baby on his lap.

"What news?" For a moment Miko appeared genuinely confused. Then she sat up on the ground, shrugged, and muttered, "oh, the grade thing? Knockout, no one but you cares about that."

"I don't know about that," Knockout answered, with a laugh under his intake. The baby, sitting on his lap, had been chewing away happily on the end of her metal chain toy. And suddenly she gave up on that, and with a laugh she tossed the toy to the ground once again.

"Cybershock, please don't drop your toys," Knockout said, with a smile and shake of his head. He spoke to her in a way that sounded strangely adult, just as though she could understand what he was saying. He reached, pointedly toward the ground with his stronger hand, clearly trying all the while to keep her balanced at the same time, and barely reaching halfway before a clear risk of overbalancing. He laughed just slightly then and shook his head again. "I cannot possibly pick that up."

"My grades in every subject are on a steady increase," Miko explained. She got up from the ground quickly, and run over to retrieve the toy herself. Holding it carefully with one hand, she used the other hand and both feet, to climb awkwardly onto the mobility machine's front wheel , then to the armrest, where she offered the chain back to the baby. "My school administrator says if I keep it up next year, I'll actually make it to post secondary after all." The baby, sitting on her creator's lap. Took her toy back gently. And she looked up at Knockout, with big blue optics, that strangely showed her understanding, of what he had just explained.

"I think that's great news," Jack said and behind him Arcee nodded.

"Firestorm, How are you today?" Arcee asked, turning around, and of course inviting the young bot, Jack had just met, back into the conversation.

"I... I'am mostly betta'ta'day," Firestorm said. Her voice was certainly not fully normal for a bot. It was slow and mumbled. But still it was not so difficult to understand her after a moment to get used to the speech pattern. "Still no'sure where I'go wit'my brother gone. But I'll de'cide soon I'guess." The young bot looked at the ground, clearly sad again for a moment, until ruffianly she looked up again and said in her usual mumbled voice, "I'll be'workin' vari'soon!"

Hearing this, Jack turned fact to look fully at her. And his eyes darted from the young bot to the others, as he tried to shift though a strange mix of feelings that ran through his head. So, it had been her brother who had died. And the comment about a place to go told him, it had been the brother who had cared for her. Norw with him gone, she was straight out into the workforce. He asked himself if that news was good news. Yes everyone on Cybertron, it seemed did their part and earned their keep. Even Knockout clearly had a job, though Jack had admitted at first been surprised to learned that he could and did. And really that was little different than Earth. There was certainly nothing wrong with that as a rule. Still, the very idea of this young bot, disabled, damaged and newly alone on her world, working for her place and struggling just to keep up...

The young bot, Firestorm was smiling though. Nearly grinning her happiness, that showed throuhg grief, as soon as she had said she'd have a job. This was what she wanted, Jack understood, smiling right back. To work for her own keep, to have credits that she had earned by herself, to do something bigger and have her own place in the world... this was what she wanted more than anything. And course the Autobots would let her try.

Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break

"Thanks for the game," Raf said, grinning.

He may have only introduced Soundwave and Laserbeak to a PC version of Risk the day before, after they had too quickly almost mastered chess. But already he had managed to lose every game he had played with this one too after the first game they'd ever played. Raf only shrugged, sincerely laughing it off. Both of his fellow human members of team Prime may have been competitive – Miko especially so – but to him games were far more about sharpening mental skill, and simply passing a little time with friends. And of course Jack and Miko, would have always far preferred loud racing or street fighting games to anything that required any real foresight and strategy: not that he considered such things bad or even entirely uninteresting.

But Soundwave was interested in the things that he was truly interested in too – he could do things with computers and coding that most would not even think to dream of. He loved to think, to reason, to plan, and stratigize. And he was always busy learning – something. Laserbeak, it had so quickly turned out, was the very same way. She may have been a bird of course. But even she could beat Raf at games of great strategy. And he could respect that. Neither one of them ever talked, or even seemed to make a sound. But they listened with obvious interest. And each had their own ways, however unexpected, of making that interest apparent.

Raf had been sitting on a huge bot worktable, looking up comfortably at the monitor of a huge computer in a little used room on the base's lower level, while they played. And now he stood up slowly, and moved to the edge of that huge table. When Soundwave extended a hand, however hesitant the bot may have clearly been about it, Raf confidently climbed right onto it.

"I'm leaving Cybertron tonight," Raf said. He wondered as he did so, if the bot and his bird knew that already or not. He knew not to doubt it. Nothing, it seemed, was ever unknown to Soundwave. The bot, sure enough, nodded his head once, in a clear show if his knowning. And Raf, sighing, plopped himself legs dangling over the side of the bot's hand.

"No reason to stay much longer," he went on, thinking out loud, wondering all the while to himself if thought that finally going back home was good news or bad. "There's certainly no danger in being back on Earth now. No more insane bots ready to grab any of us without notice. We prob'ly could have left before now, but I guess none of us really wanted to... Agent Fowler told my parents Ive been working for him in Washington. Some crazy cover story about a top secret project involving hacking North Korea's defence files. All they had to say apparently is fine by them, and fair enough. Just don't get into any trouble. I called home myself last week... rigged up the base's comm so my cellphone number would display on the other end. I could hear my brother, fighting with his girlfriend somewhere in the background, yet again. Some kid was banging on pots and pans near by too. Their daughter or my younger brother. Who knows? All my dad had to say is my mom lost her job and she's drinking again. No 'take care' no ' miss you, hurry home.'"

"For my own part in your past capture – my true apology."

Soundwave had never spoken to him before. And Raf looked around him a second, momentarily confused over who it was that had in fact spoken now. He knew of course the bot could talk. But he also knew that he simply didn't, or least he never had to him. The human thought then for a moment, wondering what exactly the bot was talking about. And finally he understood; the glass container, a still unimpaired Cybertron – held in trade for keys. Knockout, he knew, had once apologized to Miko for his own part in all that too.

"Thanks" Raf said simply, grinning at the bot he was still looking up at. He'd assumed already that Soundwave regretted that move. But he'd understood his motivations and knew that things had been different then, in a time not so long before. In the young human's mind,'sorry' just seemed to without saying, when they'd first forged their strange kind of friendship. Still, to hear it made him smile. To hear the bot speak any words at all, made him smile even more. He wondered sillantly to himself, had Soundwave spoken then, And had he chose to say he was sorry, because that would be the last chance he'd have to say so.

"I'll... I'll comm you sometime," Raf said. Laserbeak sat perched on Soundwave's shoulder, and the human looked at her then too. "Well, I'll comm both of you. You can type on a keyboard if you don't wanna say much. Hit me up someday if you ever feel like a chess game online."