The name Kaon meant nothing to Bumblebee or Knock Out.
But it did mean something to Heatwave. He knew it was the Decepticon Capitol, and that there had once been gladiatorial pits there. He didn't know the more extensive history that Megatron had with the place, though he did know Megatron was the leader of the Decepticons and that he had many former gladiators in his service. Heatwave's history did not go back far enough to explain why or how the gladiators had come to be, or why Kaon had fallen so easily under Megatron's sway.
Kaon was deep inside Decepticon territory, so deep that the initial fighting had spread outward from it, and there had since been opportunity to rebuild it to some degree. What fresh destruction remained had been done by guerrilla forces such as Wreckers, who got in, blew their targets and got out as efficiently as possible. This resulted in felled buildings sandwiched between standing structures and intact roads, rather than area-wide devastation. Kaon was less a city now than a massive fortress, and in fact much of it did lie in ruins, but to the young Cybertronians it was awe-inspiring. Bumblebee and Knock Out had never seen intact buildings before, nor roads that were not pitted and cratered by endless battle.
"I didn't know Cybertron could look like this," Knock Out remarked as they were marched into the city through the outer guard walls.
"It all used to look like this, and better," Heatwave informed them.
While Knock Out was taken with the relatively smooth roads and spiraling towers, Bumblebee felt rather creeped out by it. It felt closed in and cold, and every intact structure was decorated or defended (Bumblebee couldn't tell) with spiked protrusions that gave it a sinister aspect. It was dark and much of it was devoid of color, even more so than the charred ruins Bumblebee was accustomed to.
More than anything though, it was the feel of oppression about the place, which seemed to weigh down everything, including the air itself. Had Bumblebee had any say in the matter, he'd've never set on wheel down on the pavement of this abhorrent place. But he didn't have a choice.
Instead, they were driven into a pyramid shaped structure, in which they were confronted by myriad twisting hallways lined with row after row of prison cells. Some of the cells were empty, and the occupied ones seemed to house up to fifty Cybertronians crowded together.
At this point, the Decepticons made them form a queue. There was a checkpoint where they had to go one by one through a body scan device, after which they were sorted. Identifying marks were burned onto the shoulder plate of their armor, and they were told which cell they were to go to.
Bumblebee and Knock Out were given the same cell number, but Heatwave was of a different type and was shunted off down a completely different hallway from them. Decepticons within the pyramid itself saw to it that bots went into the cells they were marked as belonging to, and shut the door behind them once the entire lot was sorted, which took several hours.
Knock Out was obliged to drag Bumblebee along once separated from Heatwave, but the cell they were sent to started off empty and only had about a dozen bots in it by the time the process was complete, which meant that, for the first time, there was room, light, and time enough for Knock Out to have a good look at Bumblebee. It was a hideous piece of work the Decepticon had done to the young Cybertronian, but Knock Out still admired the precision and efficiency of the thing.
It must've hurt, Knock Out didn't doubt that, but the fact was that the hurt had been mere side effect of the purpose of the strike, which had been to kill Bee's engine and inhibit transformation, rendering him harmless and unable to escape all in one move. It was a fine, if horrific, job.
When he'd been caught, Knock Out had been searched for weapons, but what few bits and scraps and tools he had for maintenance and repair had been left to him. He couldn't combine them to make anything more harmful or startling than simply picking up a pebble and throwing it would be and if there was a way to use them to pop locks or break out of containers, he didn't know what it was. Anyway, even if such a way existed, Knock Out would then have only been faced with being in the middle of a Decepticon stronghold, with nowhere to go. The Decepticons had no need or reason to fear a small container of coolant or a leak sealant patch.
As for untwisting Bumblebee's hood, that was simply going to be a matter of applying some lubricant and then old fashioned strength to try to pull things back into shape. Knock Out had no tools for that, and knew he wasn't likely to get any. Not even knowing what anesthetic was, he could hardly bemoan the fact he didn't have any. Bumblebee didn't know what it was either, and so also didn't miss it.
But that didn't mean that having his hood and then other parts of his frame and plating yanked about didn't hurt. It in fact hurt quite a lot, and it was a good thing Bumblebee was incapable of moving, otherwise he certainly should have done so reflexively. His engine did indeed try to turn over as part of the project, but couldn't. He also screamed a good deal, but their cell mates didn't complain. If anything, they seemed to feel sorry for him. For reasons he couldn't quite place, their looks of pity upset Bumblebee a good deal more than the pain itself.
All things considered, he felt he would have preferred scorn to pity.
Eventually, Knock Out stepped back. "Try it now."
It was a struggle, and metal shrieked unconscionably against metal, but Bumblebee did at last manage to transform. He gasped as immense relief from strains that he had almost forgotten had not always been part of him flooded his system.
He still didn't feel right. His chest ached, and his joints were stiff. One of his shoulders wouldn't flex the way it ought to. He creaked when he tried to move, and his lack of balance made him stagger and nearly fall. But he was still a lot better off than he'd been for awhile. He could finally move.
"Not a bad repair job, if I do say so myself," Knock Out mused. "I'll get on the rest of it in a minute. But first-" He transformed into a vehicle, and fired up his engine.
There was no room to drive in here, but it was clear from Knock Out's own sigh underneath the roar of his engine that he too was relieved to finally be able to transform, and stretch some cramped systems.
Only then did the other prisoners get in on the act, transforming and roaring their engines for a few minutes until they felt better. In the meantime, Bumblebee tried working some movement back into his shoulder, with minimal results. Something in there was still bent or twisted and he just couldn't move it. He'd have to wait for Knock Out to assess matters.
In the morning, each cell was opened in turn, its occupants led through winding passages to a central room, which was a huge, echoing chamber occupied by little save support pillars and a raised dais from which a Decepticon by the name of Starscream addressed the prisoners in a grating yet oddly high-pitched voice while parading himself back and forth grandly.
Bumblebee found him neither compelling to hear nor found what he had to say interesting, but Starscream explained that the prisoners had a chance to leave their cells for good if they agreed to join the Decepticon cause, which he described with flowery vagary that did not paint a clear picture in Bumblebee's mind as to what joining the Decepticons would actually entail or what their goals were.
This was in part because Starscream spoke of magnificent cities Bumblebee had never seen, pontificated about breaking the shackles of oppressive regimes that no longer existed, and expostulated upon a shining future he could not imagine. Starscream lamented over Cybertron's wretched and divided state, blaming this entirely upon the Autobot resistance who opposed the Decepticons. He said they did this out of fear of the future, desperation to cling onto a hopeless and virtueless past, and hatred of a shining destiny which they did not understand. Even Bumblebee could tell this speech had been written and rehearsed many times, to the extent that the words had lost all meaning for the speaker, whose only real motivation seemed to be strutting about and trying to make everyone in view think he was very impressive.
In truth, he rather was. Tall and lean, moving smoothly and effortlessly without noise, his paint gleaming in the lights shining down from the ceiling, his armor unblemished such that even his sharper edges showed no more than a chip here and there. Bumblebee had never seen a bot in such good condition. Not even Knock Out, for all his vanity, kept himself so well.
Knock Out also noticed this, and knew what it meant. The Decepticons were indeed well-resourced. He had already known this, of course, but it was one thing to pick up tools and supplies in a scrappy Decepticon camp far in the field, and another thing to see a symbol of status and wealth paraded before him. This Decepticon had time, energy and resources to spare on maintaining his condition, which suggested that those who joined the Decepticons might one day enjoy similar privileges.
Starscream seemed unaware that this was more important than his grandiose speech, which went on and on and on for what felt like forever, but boiled down to two essential points.
One: Decepticons good, Autobots bad.
Two: Join the Decepticon ranks, or become their slaves.
Bumblebee couldn't quite pin down why these two points were at odds with each other, in part because he didn't know what lay in store for those who did not volunteer to join the Decepticons. Neither he did know what lay in store for those who did. In the absence of solid information, he could only be swayed by Starscream's speech, which was not all that persuasive as far as he was concerned, in part because he was unconvinced that Starscream really believed most of it.
There were a few who did, when asked, raise their hands to join the Decepticons. Bumblebee and Knock Out were not among them, for the very simple reason that neither of them had any true interest in fighting a war, particularly one they did not at all understand the purpose of.
Starscream told those who had raised their hands to separate themselves from the rest of the group and stand to one side. When his job was done here, he said that he would take them to begin their training as vehicons, and that they had best forget whatever names they had because they would not be using names any longer until they had earned that right.
As for the rest, they were banished from Starscream's sight, but told to think on his words for the rest of whatever short lives they would have working under the supervision of Skyquake, and that they were always free to change their minds and become Decepticons.
There was an undeniably sinister edge to this last admonishment, which Bumblebee and Knock Out failed to recognize as their final warning before they were sent to work in the new pit of Kaon.
At one time, the Pits of Kaon had meant the illegal but tolerated gladiator pits which had been the city's primary source of entertainment, though of course no one admitted that. But this had not been true for many cycles. The gladiators had long-since either died or joined a side, primarily the Decepticons.
Since then, the city had come under Megatron's rule, and he had repeatedly sought to rebuild it to match his ideals, to create in it the proof of value of his purpose. But for all that the city retained its original sinister underbelly, and now far worse, as the resource mines and construction was done almost entirely by captured Cybertronians such as Bumblebee and Knock Out, who were worked until they either joined the Decepticons or died.
Bumblebee and Knock Out were sent to the mines which had once been energon-rich but were now virtually drained. The instability of the tunnels meant that smaller, more agile bots had the greatest chance of surviving collapses, which were not a matter of if, but when. The mining itself was almost pointless in terms of getting energon, which was the stated purpose, but it was fairly efficient at making converts which was because it was also efficient at taking lives.
The materials pulled out of the mine were carted by prisoners to new locations to be used to build walls and repair buildings and anything else the materials happened to be good for. But these were not quality or essential materials, they were simply convenient, as Skyquake was quick to impress upon his mine workers.
With some dark glee, Skyquake explained where equal or even superior building materials might be procured, insuring that the mine workers knew that they were not contributing anything of real value if they were not finding energon. And if they were not doing anything of value, they could not expect to receive benefits. Energon was the most valuable resource. It was the life blood of Cybertronians, and powered most of the Decepticon war machines. To share it with mere slaves such as these was a privilege those slaves must earn. According to Skyquake, it was their own fault if they didn't produce anything worthy of his very limited resources and, if they wanted to complain that there should be enough for everyone, they should take it up with the Autobots who raided Kaon.
It didn't take more than a day for a few more hands to go up, as young Cybertronians decided that anything had to be better than working in these pits, even joining the Decepticon army, fighting for a cause they didn't understand or believe in.