As far as Bumblebee was concerned, Knock Out disappeared the moment he joined the Decepticons. Bumblebee didn't know if he was taken away for training or assigned guard duty on another project, and he had no way of finding out. Knock Out was simply and completely gone, and the more time that passed, the more certain Bumblebee was that he'd never hear about him again.
Eventually, it seemed that Skyquake grew tired of putting up with Bumblebee's constant fumbling, but couldn't quite find his way clear to executing Bumblebee. Skyquake seemed to have some sort of moral coding that didn't permit him to execute his slaves simply out of spite. Their execution had to either be justified as being a message to others, or some failing on their part beyond their best simply not being good enough. His lackeys didn't have that coding, and not infrequently executed slaves who collapsed on the job when Skyquake's back was turned, but they never got lucky with Bumblebee, as it seemed that Skyquake always had one eye on him.
Bumblebee couldn't tell if that was kindness or cruelty on Skyquake's part at first. On the one hand, Bumblebee didn't want to die. On the other, he was hopeless, unable to do anything except fail, and then to be punished repeatedly for it in a never ending cycle that was enough to drive a bot mad.
After enough time passed, Bumblebee decided that it was indeed a kind of cruelty, that he was some kind of example that could be pointed to if anyone ever felt sorry for themselves. Because they didn't have it as bad as he did, they must actually be doing pretty good and had no reason to complain about their treatment or labor under the lashings of the Decepticons.
Still, the time came when Bumblebee was reassigned. There was no formality to it, no forewarning, he was simply told that he would be working with the construction crews and that he was to go and report in to them. Bumblebee had hardly been out of the Pit since he arrived, and had no idea where he was supposed to find construction crews, especially not since he'd be wandering blind through Kaon.
This was not Skyquake's problem, and he wasn't interested in hearing about it. In fact, Bumblebee's brief attempt to ask how he was meant to accomplish this task considering his impediment resulted only in two Decepticons picking him up and throwing him out of the Pit.
He landed heavily on the uneven ground, and lay there on his face for a bit, contemplating what his existence had become. How did one fall so far that even the Pits of Kaon wouldn't have them?
Pushing himself up, Bumblebee stood a moment trying to get oriented. Some bots had internal GPS systems, but Bumblebee was not one of them, and could only find his way using the basic senses left to him and what little he remembered of Kaon from both his arrival and when he was taken away to Shockwave's laboratory. Had he ever seen construction crews? Where had they been in relation to where he thought he was now? Which side of the Pit had he even been cast out of anyway?
Strangely, almost more than his sight, Bumblebee missed being able to blink. He could shift and rotate and spin the little sections of his optics, but he couldn't close them. It was a reflexive, normal, taken for granted action that Bumblebee had never been aware of doing until now, when he simply couldn't.
Bumblebee's inertia finally attracted the attention of a patrolling Decepticon.
"You there! Slave! What are you doing?" the Decepticon demanded in harshly grating tones.
"I'm… uh... looking for the construction crews. I've been reassigned."
"That way," The Decepticon said, and Bumblebee could only assume he was pointing.
"Um… thanks," Bumblebee said.
Now he was really nervous, as he'd be expected to head the way he'd been told to go, but he didn't know which way that was. But, if he said that, he would undoubtedly incur a beating for talking back or complaining. Bumblebee had learned his lessons of Pit survival well, and most of them involved saying as little as possible. But if he went the wrong way, that would be disobedience, or get him in trouble as a suspected escapee or spy or something. Executable offenses, those.
"I'll take it from here, Skywarp," Bumblebee recognized that voice and felt immense relief.
The other Decepticon shrugged and Bumblebee listened to him clunk his way to whatever destination he'd had in mind before Bumblebee attracted his notice.
"You ought to be careful with that one," Knock Out told Bumblebee. "If he doesn't have an excuse for a fight, he'll make one. Now… what are you doing up here?"
Bumblebee explained matters to Knock Out, who at least listened, but Bumblebee didn't get the impression he was greatly interested. But, without being able to see his fellow Cybertronian, Bumblebee couldn't be sure. Perhaps Knock Out was merely tired or distracted. Bumblebee had no idea what sort of shape he was in, or what sort of tasks he'd had to accomplish to prove his loyalty sufficiently to be initiated into the Decepticon ranks.
"Come on then," Knock Out said. "Let's get you to Breakdown before you get into more trouble."
"Breakdown?" Bumblebee inquired.
"Yes, he's been promoted recently. Gets to use his name and everything. Anyway, he's been put in charge of this repair job. Unicron knows what good Skyquake thinks you'll do as part of that crew. If you thought not being able to see was a hindrance before..." Bumblebee sensed Knock Out shrug. "Not that it's my business. I have a meeting with Shockwave later today. Hopefully he'll make me a full intern."
"So you haven't forgotten about me," Bumblebee said, following Knock Out.
"What?" Knock Out sounded surprised, then seemed to recall something. "No, of course not. It just takes time to win trust and impress superiors. That's all."
Bumblebee didn't know why, but somehow he didn't think that was the truth. Not the whole truth, anyway. But what else could he do except trust Knock Out, survive as best he could, and hope Knock Out would come through for him?
The Wreckers had blown through Kaon like a corrosive storm, disfiguring and destroying everything they came across. Breakdown's 'promotion' was something like happenstance. The Decepticon garrison was short on numbers and long on projects, so one of the vehicons with a longer record was selected for the honor of heading up the reconstruction effort. Breakdown happened to fit the need, both in terms of seniority and capability, so he not only had a name beyond 'hey, vehicon,' he also got a new color scheme, albeit one barely distinguishable from his vehicon one.
He'd replaced the dark purple with a blue of similar shade, and the pure black for deep gray. At Knock Out's suggestion, he had gone for a different color on his face plate, a sort of reddish orange.
Bumblebee couldn't see any of this, of course. And, if he could have seen it, he would not have appreciated it. He assumed that one master was much the same as another, and what they looked like didn't matter a great deal. He was about to learn that he was wrong.
First, however, he would learn why a bot his size was being put on a construction crew.
No sooner had Bumblebee reported in to Breakdown, or more specifically one of his underling vehicons, than he was surrounded by massive titans whose size and weight he assessed from the shaking of the ground underfoot when they walked, and how far above his head their voices sounded. They were slow, their language skills coarse, and Bumblebee was immediately uneasy about being in their midst as he got the impression they could easily step on and crush him by accident, if nothing else.
"He'll do," one of the construction bots assured the practically indifferent vehicon, which Bumblebee heard wander off to attend to other matters that interested him more than supervising what proved to be the strategy meeting for clearing debris from the construction site prior to beginning rebuilding.
None of the construction bots told him what had been destroyed or what they were going to build, in fact he only knew this was a reconstruction effort because Knock Out had told him as much.
"We should attach a line to him," suggested one of the construction bots.
Another responded by jabbing Bumblebee in the shoulder so roughly that he fell down, asking, "What for? He's got more than enough armor for his size."
Bumblebee sprang back to his feet fighting mad at the casual abuse, but quickly reined in his temper and stilled his vocal processor. Armor or not, these behemoths could obliterate him with little effort.
"That pile out there is unstable," said the first bot. "If he loses his footing or the ground collapses under him, we might not find him again without a safety line."
"And if we waste time rigging him and teaching him to use it, we'll all get in trouble for being inefficient," the second bot argued. "There's plenty of little bots. Maybe the next one'll have optics."
"Safety is not inefficient," the first one persisted. "If he gets damaged or goes offline, how much time gets wasted finding a replacement?"
"I think you just want to cool our servos and slow this project down as long as Breakdown is distracted," the second accused. "Besides, what's he to you?"
"I-" the first construction bot started to say something, but then broke off, seeming to make himself say, "Well, nothing, I guess. But I still say that it's better safe than-"
Bristling, Bumblebee spat, "I've been working in the mine pits for cycles and never had a safety line. Point me where I need to go and tell me what I need to do and I'll get it done."
"That's the spirit!" said the second construction bot, giving Bumblebee a slap on the shoulder that sent him reeling, but at least this time he stayed upright.
And so, Bumblebee was directed to the disaster area. The Wreckers had bombed a factory, and the remains were still smoking in places. Bumblebee, as it turned out, had been assigned to this task force because he was small and nimble enough to traverse the debris pile with minimal risk of collapsing it. His heavier than typical armor was protection in case a secondary explosion of flammable materials went off, or the debris shifted or the building next door collapsed onto him while he was in the field.
His job, or his first job anyway, was to locate and put out the fires, as well as any flammable or explosive material, the latter of which he was supposed to remove if possible, and mark the location of if not so that the construction bots would avoid these areas when they began excavating the trash heap.
It wasn't long before Bumblebee had to admit to himself that a demolished structure was a lot different from an unstable mine-shaft. For one thing, the creaking and groaning of the mine-shaft. had always served as warning for an impending collapse, whereas Bumblebee had no means of determining in advance whether or not his next step would send him plummeting perhaps dozens of feet into the wreckage of the once towering structure. The floor of a mine-shaft. rather collapsed, whereas every part of the disaster zone felt as if it might.
Bumblebee's inability to see where he was going was more an impediment now than before. In a mine-shaft., he was nearly always in close confines. He could find the side of a tunnel and follow it. Even once out in the relative open, the dimensions of the mine's Pit were limiting. He could only blunder so far in the wrong direction before fetching up against the steep side of the Pit or, more usually against mine equipment or an excavated dirt mound.
Not so the demolition site. The footprint of the structure had been absolutely huge, and there were no walls or regular placements of familiar objects for him to follow. And the construction bots had absolutely no interest in him when he was out on the wreckage. They apparently had work of their own to do seeing to the clearing equipment and organization of rebuilding materials.
Once Bumblebee had been over a given section of the wreckage, the construction bots would take over, moving in to remove tons of detritus until they felt the stability of the area was compromised, at which point they would have Bumblebee come back and inspect it for them. This second task often involved sliding into small pockets or holes in the debris pile in order to install shoring. At least that part of the job was familiar, though the nature of building debris was fairly different from an excavation site. Nonetheless, the general principles were similar and reassuringly familiar.
Despite the ongoing nervous objections of the one construction bot, who went by the name of Bulkhead, Bumblebee never did put on a safety line during the entire project.