NOTE: Fodder the Eradicon is my OC.
Enjoy!
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Steeljaw found himself on a berth in the Daytrader's med-bay with Dead End, the ex-Stunticon giving him a check-up, per Bumblebee's insistence. After all he suffered at the servos of Thundertron and his crew, he needed some stress free R&R…
"Sit still!"
He just needed to survive being poked and prodded and having optics and servos on multiple parts of his frame, again.
"Frag, you're almost as bad as the old gang!"
Dead End tried to pin Steeljaw to a large, flat surface – berth, wall, floor – in order to inject a sedative into his system. He would rather have the Lupicon be unconscious for the internal mess he soon learned that he'll have to fix after a thorough scan.
"You do know I'm just trying to help, right?"
"I don't want you anywhere near me with that needle!" Steeljaw snarled, looking like a cornered animal. His claws gauged the metal underneath, leaving deep, long scratches in the otherwise pristine floor.
"And I just cleaned that," Dead End muttered. He shook his helm and moved on. "Listen, you have Tox-En and a variety of other substances polluting your Energon lines, not to mention other internal functions appear damaged on some level or another. Now, either you let me sedate you so I can go in, or I can have someone else do it instead."
"Or how about a third option? I stay online."
"The stress of you being online will do more harm than good, trust me."
"I don't trust anyone."
"Figured that. So, what's your choice?"
Later…
"Okay… just one more wire… frag this scrap…"
"Your focus should be on the task, not on cursing."
"I'm very much well aware of that fact, Shockwave!"
The scientist didn't retort. He remained where he was, silently surveying Fodder's work on recovering the travel and navigation logs of the damaged Autobot vessel.
"Did I just hear someone talk back to Shockwave, without threat of deactivation?" Knockout whispered to Starscream.
"I believe you did, yes," Starscream whispered back.
"Considering Fodder is my assistant, and is quite adept in a laboratory setting, it would be illogical of me to terminate him," Shockwave explained without budging from his spot.
Knockout and Starscream exchanged looks.
"Well, at least it's not me this time around," Knockout said.
"Or me," Starscream agreed.
"Wait, you were his assistant, too? Since when?"
Starscream opened his mouth to answer…
"After Bumblebee stabbed Megatron and Starscream and I fled the Nemesis before the Autobots took the ship," Shockwave explained, not realizing he cut Starscream off because he still hadn't moved.
Knockout thought back to those events, then made an 'oh' face as he remembered that day.
"You offlined Megatron?" Slipstream asked, leaning forward to get a better look at Bumblebee past Wreck-Gar's larger frame. The yellow and black mech rubbed the back of his helm and nodded. "Impressive."
"I wouldn't get too excited, sis, he's still online," Starscream grumbled. "Unicron resurrected him, converting his frame into a new vessel for the both of them. Optimus Prime sacrificed himself to seal Unicron away… and save Megatron. He disbanded the Decepticons and left. Nobody's seen nor heard from him since."
Aside from the sound of Fodder still rummaging around through wiring, the room was silent, Slipstream and her comrades taking in the information.
"So… he was just… allowed to go free?" Slipstream hissed.
"As was Knockout," Starscream added before he could stop himself.
"What? You're seriously going back to that again? I thought we were past this, Starscream!" Knockout exclaimed.
"I didn't mean to this time, I swear! You know I'm not good at keeping my mouth shut!"
"Don't give me that scrap! You managed a week with the pirates!"
"That was completely different!"
"GOT IT!" Fodder yelled, interrupting the fight before it could escalate. The Eradicon carefully maneuvered himself out from the tangle of circuitry he was just dealing with and into the circle of many mechs and one femme.
The group crowded around Fodder and Shockwave as they brought specific systems online and started searching through data. Having other things to attend to, Wreck-Gar and Slipstream departed their company. Sunstorm had stuff to do, too, but didn't want to leave Starscream. It took both Seekers and Wreck-Gar to push/pull the mech out of the room.
"Oh thank Primus he's gone," Starscream muttered, leaning against the recently closed doors.
"Do you not like being back with your family, Screamer?" Knockout teased, crossing his arms and smirking.
Starscream vented and stalked back over to the other mechs. He didn't answer Knockout as he turned his attention onto Fodder and Shockwave. This bothered the red medic, as he enjoyed pestering the silver Seeker, but he couldn't go overboard right now. Not with Shockwave there, and especially not when there seems to be something going on between him and Starscream.
Something that would no doubt lead him to being offlined by both parties.
Within the next few minutes, Fodder and Shockwave find exactly what they're looking for.
"According to the data here, these are the coordinates for where one emergency escape pod was ejected just nanokliks before everything shut down," Fodder spoke, pointing to all the little bits of information that popped up.
Knockout, Bumblebee, and Starscream all sighed in relief and smiled.
"Bless the Allspark," Bumblebee vented. "Now we can get Moonracer back."
"It'll be nice having her around, if only to have someone else bother the good doctor here whenever I cannot," Starscream admitted, gesturing to the red medic beside him.
"Oh, ha ha, very funny," Knockout replied sarcastically, rolling his optics. "That's assuming I survive."
Bumblebee and Starscream burst out laughing. Fodder and Shockwave exchanged a look, but shrugged their shoulder plates and decided to watch on in silence instead of asking questions.
"That's right! I completely forgot that you shoved her in the pod when it was supposed to be you going instead!" Bumblebee recalled, gathering himself quicker than Starscream.
"Haha… ah… I can't wait for that," the silver Seeker chuckled. Once he was calm, he perked to attention. "Oh, shouldn't we tell Steeljaw about this? He's close with Moonracer, isn't he?"
"Yeah, we should."
Knockout nodded in sync with Bumblebee's answer.
"That'll have to wait," someone interrupted.
The mechs turned and spotted Dead End standing in the open doorway, data pad in servo.
"Is something wrong?" Knockout inquired.
"Considering how much of a pain in my aft he was being about being sedated, I'd say whatever happened to him recently made him afraid of needles," Dead End explained.
Knockout and Bumblebee shared worrying looks. Starscream averted his gaze. Fodder and Shockwave remained silent and unmoving.
"Mhm. Anyway, the good news is he's perfectly fine, except for some processor trauma. Not physically. Like I said, I don't do that kind of work. I did, however, repair his internal systems, flushed out most of the toxins and such. His systems are going to have to do the rest of the work themselves. Patched him up the best I could, but figured he would rather do the external touch-ups himself, or have one of you do it for him. Don't think he'll let anyone get any closer to him except for maybe you three."
Dead End paused before continuing.
"I noticed his lower arms looked like they were drilled into, puncturing his Energon lines. I'm guessing that's where they injected the toxins into him?"
The mechs nodded, solemn looks on their faceplates.
"Hm. Mustn't have been a pleasant experience."
"It wasn't," the three replied simultaneously.
Sensing that he was pushing his luck, Dead End cleared his vocalizer and turned around.
"You can see him after he wakes up."
And with that, Dead End was gone.
The remaining mechs exited the room after a few minutes of silence, following Fodder and Shockwave to meet up with Wreck-Gar and Slipstream once again. They gave them the information, inputted it into their own systems, and activating their quantum warp drive, were off.
One jump through space later…
The ship jerked and came to a sudden stop. Not used to teleporting from one section of the galaxy to the next in only nanokliks on such a large scale, Knockout, Bumblebee, and Starscream all lost equilibrium and either fell to the floor, or grabbed a hold of something before they could.
"You all good?" Slipstream mused, trying to keep herself from laughing. "Insides still inside?"
"Urgh… I hate you," Starscream groaned.
"Love you, too, Scream."
The silver Seeker raised his helm and glared at his sister.
"Whoa, I forgot how weird that feels," Bumblebee commented, cradling his helm in one servo and gripping onto the edge of a console with the other. He turns to look at a shiny red heap lying on the floor closeby. "Knockout, are you alright? Still online and functional?"
"Online, yes," the red mech replied, his voice muffled due to being face-first against the ground. "Functional… I'll let you know once we're on the planet's surface and I can drive around."
"Fair enough. I think I'll join you."
"Make it a threesome," Starscream mumbles. Bumblebee gives a thumbs-up and soon joins his shipmates on the floor.
Wreck-Gar, Slipstream, and Fodder worked on landing the ship while Sunstorm and Shockwave looked over the others, searching for anything that'd set off the proverbial alarm bells; there were none, and by the time the mechs regained their senses, Wreck-Gar had successfully landed his ship on the planet's surface.
Suffering from what the humans call cabin fever, Knockout, Bumblebee, and Starscream couldn't wait to go outside and get some fresh air. Wreck-Gar couldn't even get the doors to open fast enough for the trio's liking. When the doors did open, they didn't hold back.
Starscream took off in his jet mode, and Knockout and Bumblebee raced away in their automobile modes.
"Oh, how I've missed you, steel-belted radials!" Knockout preened.
"I agree," Bumblebee said, driving alongside the red medic. "I can't remember the last time I was this happy to be driving!"
After driving for a while and burning off pent-up energy, the mechs eventually turned around and soon arrived back at the ship. Much to their surprise, Starscream was already there. He didn't look pleased, but he didn't exactly look pissed, either. No more than usual, anyway.
"Hey, Screamer, what's up?" Knockout asked as he transformed, Bumblebee following suit.
"My sister," Starscream growled. "She called me back early. I'm sure she's just doing it to bug me. So annoying."
"Must run in the family."
Bumblebee had to choke back a laugh at the red medic's comment. Starscream scoffed and was just about to roll his optics when he caught sight of something approaching them. Noticing the silver Seeker's focus was on something behind them, Knockout and Bumblebee turned around to see what the other saw. Not that they had any time to process the object in movement as it crashed into all three mechs.
"YOU'RE ALL ALIVE! BLESS THE STARS! I WAS SO WORRIED!"
"Moonracer?!" The downed mechs exclaimed. The turquoise femme gave each of them a great big hug before stepping away to wipe away her tears.
"I almost can't believe it! You're here! It's been a whole chord, maybe longer! How did you even find me? Did the ship somehow survive? What happened?"
"Whoa whoa whoa! Calm down, Moonracer! We'll explain everything… OW!"
Knockout tried to get Moonracer to stop bombarding them with questions, only to be punched in the arm. Hard.
"That was for the stunt you pulled!" The femme snapped.
"Won't happen again," Knockout grimaced, rubbing the point of impact. Moonracer looked unconvinced, but her expression quickly softened.
"I hope not."
The turquoise femme looked around, her expression slowly but surely turning grim.
"Where's Steeljaw?"
The mechs exchanged uncertain glances, not knowing how to…
"Right here, Moon," a familiar voice rasped.
It was Steeljaw, making his way down the ramp with support from a rather grumpy Dead End.
"By the Allspark, what happened to you?" Moonracer gasped. "You look like scrap!"
"Thanks, I greatly appreciate that," Steeljaw responded, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"I told you to wait," Dead End muttered.
"You said I was free to leave anytime I wanted."
"I thought you would clean up a bit, first."
"Isn't that part of your job?"
"I'm not a cosmetologist."
"What is going on here?" Moonracer interrupted.
"Ah, yes," Knockout piped, rushing to be between the femme and the quarreling mechs. "Moonracer, this is Dead End. He's the resident medic and engineer of the Daytrader, and he's an old friend of Breakdown's."
Moonracer's optics widened.
"You knew Breakdown?" She asked.
"I did," Dead End said. "Moonracer… hm… I believe Breakdown used to talk about you quite a bit, too. Always had good things to say. Never anything bad, from what I heard."
"Glad to hear."
The femme vented to calm herself down.
"So, anything else I should be aware of?"
"Starscream's sister is second-in-command," Knockout answered immediately.
"And he has a twin brother that he's the complete opposite of living on board as well," Bumblebee followed-up just as quickly.
"Not to mention the It's complicated drama between Screamer and Shockwave."
"Shockwave?" Steeljaw repeated, tilting his helm.
"Oh, right, you missed him," Knockout waved-off.
"You were with Dead End at the time," Bumblebee elaborated. Steeljaw didn't ask anymore questions. "Anything else?"
"I think we got most of it covered."
"You got all of it covered," Starscream snarled.
The red medic chuckled, reveling in his success at annoying the silver Seeker for the… he's lost count of how many times it's been now.
"Great, more family drama," Moonracer laughed, an unusual air of awkwardness falling upon her. The mechs turned concerned gazes to the femme, about to ask what's wrong…
"Oh, but I'm not all bad!"
Everyone jumped, scared out of their plating. No one noticed anyone else approaching, or that they were even in the area at all. They all turned and came upon a Lupicon mech, purple and blue detailing sticking out against black and white armor, with piercing yellow optics being the central focus of a dark faceplate. Attached to his left servo is a red, triple claw weapon.
"Primus, Phantomjaw, I told you not to do that!" Moonracer cried, placing a servo on her chassis.
"My apologies, I couldn't resist," Phantomjaw replied, smirking.
The others remained silent. Steeljaw's optics were wide and jaw slightly agape, as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing or hearing. Sensing the uncertainty, the black and white Lupicon turned his attention to that of the blue/gray Lupicon.
"What? Got nothing to say to your long lost brother, Steel-y?"