Bumblebee struggled throughout the work day.
He couldn't see what he was doing, but he was also sluggish in his movements, awkward with his new shape and disoriented by the sudden change to what had become his routine. Knock Out helped him where possible, but under the conditions of the Pit that was rarely. They were assigned the duties they were assigned and not allowed to deviate. Anyone leaving a task had to have an excellent reason, such as seeing a fire starting and rushing to put it out. And, even then, a cranky Decepticon guard might give them a good slap just for existing nearby while said Decepticon was annoyed.
Skyquake was a hard taskmaster, and did not cut Bumblebee any slack for his condition.
In fact, he not only came down on Bumblebee or stood by as his lackeys did so, it seemed there was tacit permission for punishment for anything Bumblebee did wrong to extend to anyone in his vicinity who might've been trying to help him. Fairly soon, the other bots started avoiding him in case he dropped something or ran into a wall or simply carried tasks out too slowly and they caught flak for it just for being around. Knock Out caught quite a few electric lashes across the shoulders before he finally decided that it really wasn't worth it.
Yet, somehow, Bumblebee managed to struggle through the day without incurring sufficient wrath to be destroyed or given more extensive punishment, and he went with the rest of them to their cell for the night. It wasn't a ration day, so they simply sat or lay about in the cell, utterly drained and wondering if they'd have the wherewithal to get up tomorrow or if tonight might instead be their last. Nobody knew what happened to bots who failed to rise in the morning, but they certainly suspected.
Knock Out's curiosity was above his exhaustion, however, and he made himself get up and take a close look at the alterations that had been made to Bumblebee. They were more extensive than he'd even guessed, and he wasn't sure about the purpose behind many of them. He also realized that Bumblebee probably no longer had a vehicle mode he could use. He had been so changed physically that he'd need to scan a new form, but without functional optics, he couldn't do that.
How sad and frustrating that must be. Knock Out couldn't imagine living without his sleek vehicle mode. Even though he could not use it to its best advantage in the current circumstances, it was still one of his favorite things about himself, and he wouldn't like to be denied access to it.
But he also took particular interest in Bumblebee's new optics. They looked as if the discs were supposed to adjust to see in a multitude of light spectrums beyond normal optics, and possibly have extended binocular or microscopic capabilities. It was a lot of abilities for two little discs, and Knock Out suspected that therein lay the problem. In trying to make an optic that could do everything, Shockwave and inadvertently produced optics that actually did nothing.
"I think I could fix this with a bit of time, research and the right tools," Knock Out mused.
"Yeah," Bumblebee remarked sarcastically. "Shockwave couldn't make it work, but you, with no training or experience with Cybertronian biology, you can fix this." He sighed, shaking his head. "You haven't seen the kind of lab he has, the tech he uses, the data resources and records."
"Precisely my point," Knock Out said. "To him, you're just another experiment. It's more efficient to get a new subject and do a fresh experiment than try to find where he went wrong with the old one. But to me, fixing what he broke would be the end goal. Given all the resources and time that he has, I think I could do it."
"You can't really be thinking of joining the Decepticons," Bumblebee objected, reading fully the implications behind Knock Out's words. "Even if you did, you'd just be a nameless vehicon."
"Not for long," Knock Out assured him. "Breakdown says there's a lack of medical knowledge among the Decepticon ranks. If I can prove I have the mind for that kind of thing, they won't have me standing around on guard duty for long. It wouldn't be… efficient."
"I don't like it. You have no idea what they're like or what you might be getting yourself into."
"Do you?" Knock Out countered.
"I've been in Shockwave's lab. I've seen enough."
Knock Out mused on this for a moment. "Perhaps you're right. But I haven't seen it, and you're not the one thinking of joining them, are you?"
"Just don't pretend you're doing it for me," Bumblebee said. "I don't think I could stand it."
"Of course not. Fixing your optics would be a side benefit from everything I could learn. Just think of all the improvements to science and medicine I could make with the right tools."
"I'm thinking of all the unethical experiments you could run," Bumblebee grumbled.
"Oh please, like I could do any worse than Shockwave. For that matter, I might even replace him. That would certainly improve things around here, wouldn't it?"
"Only if you didn't become him in the process."
"I've seen his vehicle mode. I would never dream of being so unfashionable."
"Knock Out..."
"I'm joking," Knock Out assured him. "But you get my point."
"I do. And it's not like I can stop you. I'm just… I don't want you to become someone I can't recognize. We may never have been friends, but you're the closest thing I've got to one."
Knock Out wanted to say it back, but conversing with Breakdown the last few weeks had been a lot more interesting and enjoyable than talking to Bumblebee had ever been. He understood the way Breakdown thought, and liked having that perspective available. And Breakdown was certainly a valuable ally to cultivate a relationship with. Breakdown had skills and talents he had yet to show the Decepticons. He was going up the ranks, which would open up a whole new realm of opportunity, only some of which he had talked about to Knock Out. Knock Out wanted those opportunities as well, wanted to explore the possibilities of what he could do or become. He did not want to be a slave, and had recently come to the understanding that he did not particularly want to be a scavenger either.
As Breakdown had said, joining the Decepticons was his only real option. Either way, he would serve them, for a short time as an overworked slave until he broke apart, or as a soldier. His particular set of interests and abilities didn't lend themselves to combat, so he would probably see relatively little fighting. That had a certain appeal to it. Being safely ensconced in a lab, puttering, researching, experimenting, using his free time for racing… it was the ideal scenario.
One that Bumblebee with his simple view of matters, now stained with negative experience, could never possibly appreciate, no matter how Knock Out tried to explain it to him.
The first thing that happened when Knock Out announced his new conversion was that he was left in the cell while the others were taken out to work for the day. For quite some time, he sat in the cell alone, idling and moderately annoyed. When he and the others had first arrived at Kaon, all a bot had to do was raise his hand and he'd be separated from the other prisoners to presumably get on with his new appointment as a vehicon. But things were different now.
Rather than immediately get on with the induction of new recruits, a system had been implemented, whereby a Decepticon visited the cells and work areas as part of a route to collect the converts. Kaon was a big place, and there were a lot of prison blocks and work sites, and it took a long, long time for one Decepticon to make the trip. But, finally, he showed up.
Evidently seeing an expression on Knock Out that he didn't like, the Decepticon forewarned him, "You'd better keep any smart remarks to yourself, or I'll just leave you here."
"I wasn't going to say anything," Knock Out assured him.
His new keeper stared at him long and hard, before finally grunting and opening the cell. Knock Out had learned not to approach an open cell door without explicit permission. A slave who bolted for the door was soundly beaten or even executed. So he stood there foolishly while the big gray Decepticon lurched away, until they grunted, "Well? Transport's this way. Get on with it."
Taking that as permission, Knock Out scampered out of the cell, just barely squeaking through the door as it automatically rumbled shut. He glanced back at the empty cell, not sure what he was expecting to see or feel by doing so, but sure nonetheless he was not seeing or feeling it.
Leading Knock Out from the prison block, the Decepticon directed him to load into a transport where several other former slaves were waiting. None introduced themselves, knowing that vehicons didn't have the right to names until they achieved high enough status.
Most of the rest of the day was spent in the transport shuttle, which went from place to place, collecting up all the day's converts and then shuttling them back to the recruitment center for processing.
The recruitment center was dark and imposing on the outside, lined on the inside with blinding white lights. It was soon evident that the lights were meant to ensure everything of the rebranding job was done, beginning with the removal of whatever scraps remained of their former paint jobs.
In a single file queue, the recruits took turns entering a glassed-off room where they were required to transform into vehicle mode and sit still while automated sanders attached to long mechanical arms scrubbed at them until all traces of color had been removed from their surfaces. They were then directed to drive through a passage containing a massive vacuum blower that pulled off every trace of dust from the sanding process, and from there into a third room where an automated mechanical arm system much like the sanders sprayed them with their new identifying paint of black and purple.
Knock Out had withheld his mewling whimper as the last of his once beautiful finish was taken, but could not keep himself but groaning in disgust when he drove out of the spray paint room and caught sight of his reflection on a wall mounted mirror. This color scheme absolutely did not suit.
But he would have to endure it until such time as he'd made a favorable impression on his superiors. He had to prove himself a Decepticon worthy of a personal identity, something he hoped to do very quickly. The sooner he could ditch this dark look, the better.
Once the paint had been heat dried and checked, Knock Out was required to return to robot mode in order for his slave marking to be replaced with the sharp insignia and energy signature of a Decepticon.
From there, his training began.
Life for Bumblebee was now much harder and more isolated than he had ever realized it could be. Nobody wanted anything to do with him, because he was a constant source of annoyance to Skyquake and his underlings, who took their wrath at Shockwave for sending them such a decrepit bot out on Bumblebee at every opportunity.
And, for a blind bot unused to the condition as well as his own body and the work he was required to do, work that traditionally involved sight, there were a lot of opportunities. Bumblebee spent more of every day on the ground being punished in one way or another than he did doing any actual work.
Rations were more limited than Bumblebee remembered from before he'd been sent to Shockwave, and his cell mates were also much rougher. The hours of work were long and hard, the price of failure to work was high, and the cost in energy due to lack of proper maintenance and repair was immense. Meanwhile, the rations of energy and occasional luxury pan of oil or rust inhibitor were barely enough to live on. Desperation brought out a viciousness in the prisoners that hadn't been there before, and they fought over every single scrap they were provided.
Initially, Bumblebee couldn't even find anything, whether he was working the mines or in the cell. Memory didn't help, because the nature of the mines changed every day, as new tunnels opened and old ones collapsed, and fresh piles of material dug out of the mines were left strewn throughout the Pit and occasionally carted off. Equipment was similarly left lying around.
Even so, Bumblebee learned how to test the ground in front of him, and to feel tunnel walls, to recognize physical patterns of movement and sound. His navigation of the mines was slow, clumsy and accident-prone, but he could get through the day.
But the rations were something else again. At first, Bumblebee couldn't find them when they were provided until well after everyone had taken all there was. Once he learned to recognize the sound of the rations being provided and join the rush of bodies, he was still no better off at first. Bots grabbed at each other and threw elbows and well-aimed kicks at each other as each clawed for his share, and Bumblebee was easily tossed aside because he couldn't see it coming and, once he was out of the thick of things, it would take so long for him to find his way back that there wouldn't be anything left.
Yet he was not completely without advantage. The first time a big bot grabbed him and tossed him into a wall, Bumblebee was stunned to discover that the heavy, awkward shape he'd been fitted with was thick armor. Despite the tremendous crash when he hit the wall, Bumblebee barely felt it except as vibration through his enhanced plating, which he was shortly to learn also allowed him to deliver significant blows without hurting himself as well as take them.
The next step after finding out that these untrained, unarmed prisoners were no longer able to inflict significant damage on him was learning to fight back and he got pretty good at that too… inasmuch as any of the prisoners were. He learned to be quick, to strike hard, to be daring and, most important, to be relentless. If a bot gave him trouble, he had to close with them so they could never use his blindness to their advantage, and he had to tangle with them until he was sure they were down and would stay.
Never again would some Decepticon be able to break him just by landing real hard on his hood.