The first several cycles of Knock Out's training as a new vehicon were conducted by the big gray brute who'd first collected him, who went by the name of Piston. Piston was cold and harsh, but it was quickly apparent that he had become that way in the same Pit from which the recruits came.
It was hard to believe, as Piston ran with them through their first drills of rapid and in-motion transformation, basic cover tactics and the rudiments of how to take blows and falls defensively to minimize damage, that he had ever been as weak, clueless and inept as the recruits. It was even harder to believe that Piston was low-ranking and considered unremarkable by his peers.
But Knock Out soon began to realize that, while Piston knew the basics, he was not clever or innovative. When Knock Out observed one of Commander Starscream's advanced training courses in which Piston was taking part, Knock Out realized that Piston did not modify maneuvers from their text book description, or react quickly to changing scenarios. He didn't know anything that wasn't taught to him, nor think for himself. And that was why Piston was fit only to collect new recruits and show them the ropes, he could hardly do anything else, but he did this one thing particularly well.
Knock Out was a quick study, in part because he had a goal in mind. It was enough for his fellow recruits to merely survive and live slightly better than they had as slaves, but Knock Out's ambitions required that he excel. It was not long before he had learned all Piston had to teach.
While Piston proved to have little intellect beneath the loutish exterior, Breakdown was the exact opposite. Breakdown was not a teacher, and hadn't been a Decepticon long enough to be officially using his name or wearing his own colors, but Knock Out found that he nonetheless carried a wisdom and insight that was second to none, and that he had a strange sense of refinement and real class underneath the barbarian looks.
It seemed as if Breakdown knew everything about the technological aspect of Cybertronians. And, what he didn't know, he knew how to find out. Breakdown also had something of an in with Shockwave, who had come to regard him as a fine assistant on the occasion when Shockwave needed one. Breakdown's association with Shockwave provided Knock Out access to the mad scientist much sooner than he otherwise would have had, especially once his own aptitude for Cybertronian biology became evident to the older Decepticon.
Shockwave was an extensive fount of knowledge about Megatron, the Decepticons, the original gladiator pits of Kaon by which most of them swore, the once suffocating and stagnant caste system of Cybertron that had given birth to the Decepticons and Autobots alike, the various battles and key moments of the war, its significant players and pawns, as well as things Knock Out had never guessed about the biology and technology of Cybertronians and indeed Cybertron itself. What Shockwave didn't know about all this wasn't worth knowing in the first place.
For a Cybertronian who had always been curious about the biological and technological aspects of his world, this was more than a dream come true, it was enough to overload the mental circuits. Knock Out had gone from having no access to knowledge, to having access to knowledge of every kind that he could possibly ever want.
But the learning took time, a lot of time. And, the more Knock Out learned, the more he discovered he didn't know. And that, Shockwave informed him, was the most important lesson of all in science. To find what you didn't know, and then study and experiment until you broke past that barrier, only to find that what lay beyond was an ever larger sea of not knowing, where you must then try to swim in. There was no end to what was out there to know, and that was both the horror and the joy of the endeavor.
And then there was the combat training, which had originally been under the purview of another Decepticon, but by the time Knock Out was ready for more advanced lessons, the duty of vehicon battle education had passed on to Commander Starscream.
"Due to a rather unfortunate incident which we will not be discussing," as Starscream put it, "It now falls to me to try and turn you lot from useless ground units worth less than the scrap you were built with into the ideal Decepticon war machines the likes of which will make our glorious leader, Megatron justly proud." He paused to bask in his own grandeur before continuing disdainfully, "All true, genuinely valuable combat takes place in the air, but even ground troops have their value."
Knock Out, quite rightly as it happened, would eventually infer that the 'unfortunate incident' had been orchestrated by Starscream himself as means of career advancement, rather than a skirmish with the Autobots, otherwise he would have taken the opportunity to slather on a thick layer of anti-Autobot rhetoric, as well as playing up his grief at the loss of a beloved comrade.
To begin with, however, Knock Out wasn't well-versed in implication and listening for what wasn't said. This was an art he would learn from Starscream and the historical records of the war.
Starscream might have preferred air combat, but he swiftly proved that his appointment had not been for nothing. In addition to arrogance and callousness, the vehicon recruits began to build on the basics that Piston had taught them. It was not enough just to transform, they had to learn when and where.
One of the first obstacle courses Starscream forced them to run seemed simple enough at a glance, just a big two mile loop through a rough part of Kaon. The hunks of rubble, grenade holes and wrecked bridges ensured that nearly the entire course had to be taken on foot, because wheels couldn't negotiate it. Knock Out wasn't a fan of that, but he was pleased by the strict time limit Starscream imposed, and the rewards of rest and additional luxury resources offered to those who completed the course most quickly. But all was not as it seemed. The recruits were no sooner underway than Starscream took to the air and bombarded them from above.
The only way to avoid these deadly strikes of the air commander was to drop into vehicle mode. Only a vehicle was fast enough. But most of the terrain was impossible on wheels. Several recruits learned this the hard way, trying to get over the rubble and becoming hopelessly stuck as their tires fell into crevices and caught, or jutting strips of jagged metal rebar impaled their undercarriages. Once jolted, jerked or jabbed, they had a difficult time transforming to robot mode to get unstuck, and were soon caught in Starscream's line of fire (fortunately reduced to nonlethal levels, though visits to the repair shop were frequent and unpleasant; not to say terrifying).
It was soon obvious to Knock Out what the intent behind this dreadful course was. To avoid Starscream's fire, a vehicon had to drop to v-mode and accelerate at a moment's notice. But, without ever coming to a halt or slowing too extensively, he had to revert to bot mode in order to cross much of the course. He also had to know when to stop in cover as Starscream passed, then make up for lost time by revving his engine. Anyone who failed had to restart and run the course again with only a brief respite. Nobody passed the first time. Nor the second. Nor the third.
The course might only have been two miles long, but it was absolutely brutal, and the recruits soon learned to fear it as much or more than any other test Starscream put them to.
Once the majority of them passed the course (or were destroyed in the process), Starscream moved them onto an even tougher set, with even more stringent rules. They had to go farther now, in less time, and there were imposed strict limits on how long they could remain in any one form, meaning they had to keep track of how long they'd been in bot or vehicle mode, and switch between them in timely fashion. This while Starscream continued to attack them from overhead, often adding another flier to the course whenever a flighted vehicon was available.
Knock Out realized this was exceptional multitasking. The fliers were being trained as well, and their own scores, punishments and rewards, would be determined by how well they made their shots at the targets on the ground count, just as those on the ground would gain these same positives and negatives based on their ability to evade and complete the course within the time limit according to the rules.
It wasn't all about running away, either. Once Starscream felt the ground units had gained sufficient respect for the fliers, he put them on the wings of his flighted Armada, on which they would learn to ride at speed while the jets performed aerial maneuvers, and from there to hit designated targets or launch themselves at enemies. At first, this seemed like nonsense. Where a wheeled vehicle could rarely or never fire, many of the flighted jets could, so their need for an additional gun seemed questionable. Also, at first, the vehicon recruits were taught to ride jets flying very low to the ground.
But then Starscream began to pit them against each other. A sniper on a rooftop might be practically inaccessible to a ground unit, but if he hitched a ride on a jet, he could be carried up and jump onto the roof. Similarly, a ground vehicle finding himself surrounded could grab onto the landing gear of a low-passing jet and be lifted quickly to safety. The jets also benefited. The aforementioned sniper could take down a jet as it flew by, but if he were in a heavily armored shelter, the jet might have difficulty retaliating with the limited number of shots it could loose as it made a pass, whereas a unit dropped onto the rooftop would bear no such limitation.
And too, Knock Out learned not only how to assume a formation, but how to stay in that formation while advancing or retreating, this for the safety of all friendly units. He learned to stay alert to his surroundings, to always have one optic on the sky and the other ahead, while his audio receptors kept tabs on whatever might be behind him. He learned never to sit still to avoid making a target of himself when in the open, and to hold a position however awkward for as long as proved necessary to let a superior fighting force pass by without noticing him. He learned to do the same sort of self-launching in vehicle mode maneuver that Bumblebee had taken such pleasure in, and he learned to do it far better. He learned to skate on two wheels to get through narrow passages or to avoid hitting mines. He learned how to control a spin out on ice, as well as how to drive if his tires were shredded by spike strips.
And he learned still more.
Starscream was arrogant and self-aggrandizing and insufferable, but he was also something of a tactical genius when it came to maneuvering multiple units and using them to their best advantage. He also quickly surmised that Knock Out would never be a particularly powerful fighter.
When Knock Out had passed the course to make it from training recruit to soldier, Starscream advised that he should find a sturdy Decepticon to pair up with who could bring sheer physical power to a fight that needed it while Knock Out brought speed and agility which would complement that brute force.
Breakdown and Knock Out quickly formed a team of their own and, whenever they had time, practiced maneuvers together so that they could know each other's limits and habits.
Not that there was much extra time, between the training regime of Starscream and assisting Shockwave. Shockwave preferred to work alone, but he kept assistants always running, fetching, building, acquiring, researching. Knock Out never could figure out what any of it was for in relation to Shockwave's actual experiments, and suspected it was mere busywork.
Knock Out quickly proved himself superior in intelligence and ability to all the other assistants, and thereby inadvertently ensured that he would be given the most work to do, but this also meant he got assigned the most tools and data access to do that work.
There were a lot of benefits as well, once he'd gotten through the initial hurdles and started to gain the trust and grudging respect of his fellow Decepticons. Plenty of energon, oil, joint lubricant, paint, polish, wax, buffers anything he could want or put name to. He could finally maintain himself to the standard he'd always aspired to, though it seemed that, besides himself, only Breakdown had any appreciation for a fine finish, which was moderately disappointing.
Less disappointing was the fact that there were a lot of Decepticons who loved a good race, and who made up audiences for racing, especially this deep into Decepticon-held territory. Knock Out could never turn down a challenge to a race, and he rapidly proved to be one of the best racers the Decepticons had. He wasn't always the fastest vehicle, but he was ever the most strategic, and no one had a better grasp of his limitations and capabilities than Knock Out.
Most Decepticons had lived lives of hardship prior to the war, and many had carved out meager existences based on their ability to fight, to pull heavy objects, or to race. Blood sport had been the most popular in Kaon, but other sports were popular elsewhere, and Decepticons were as a rule highly and brutally competitive about everything they did. Knock Out swiftly proved he was no exception.
All seemed to be going according to plan, with Knock Out gaining greater skill and experience in every department with each passing day. He had dreamed of achievements, but now they seemed in his reach, and he also realized that he might even be able to reach farther than he'd ever dreamed.
But then the Wreckers hit Kaon, and everything changed.