"L-let me go! I'm the Chief M-Medical Off - Officer h-here!" Knockout wrestled against his chains, the very same...the predacon had been placed under just a cycle before.
In front of him was a nightmare every mech aboard the ship had been openly afraid of.
Shockwave stood.
A bit too stiffly.
A bit too closely.
With excessive chains coiled around his arm cannon.
For a particular use.
"You need - me - slaggit!" Knockout choked on his wet blubbering words - from a deep sucking, ballooning wound of air.
"I'm a medic!"
His internal fans whirled.
Sputtered.
He struggled to conjure the energy...to scream... to ... anything ...
"What are...YOU DOING!? YOU NEED ME!" Around Knockout's delicate person, chains writhed like abrasive worms - jostling harshly against his beautiful red-glimmer chest.
His bindings, remained.
Harsh and cold.
Sparkeater-yellow bathed him in a cruel orange glow.
Knockout's once-pristine scarlet gloss fluttered around him like withered rose petals.
A twisted joke.
Knockout's eyes widened in abject horror.
He froze.
Looking down at the uncovered, bare shoulders and unsightly sides of his frame.
Scratched and grey.
Destroyed.
Hideous, he was.
His paintjob - it looked like someone had taken a belt sander to his trembling, naked arms.
His color, gone.
Going...peeling more and more...with every itching minuscule clicking movement.
It was a sobering defeat.
His kicking, his struggling, finally stopped.
"What's going on here!?" Knockout shouted, as loud as he could, feeling his vocal-cords buckle further under a wispy, sparky cough.
But he knew, despite the screaming - any noises he made would ultimately not matter. The Nemesis's Medbay was one of the few rooms aboard the ship with reinforced soundproofed walls - supposedly there, to assure patient confidentially, or some silly such...for the worst of surgery days...
Shockwave walked around Knockout, locking unseen hooks into sinewy knots; altogether, everything became an ugly display of uncomfortable, uneven chains. From his arm cannon, Shockwave uncoiled the last of the spooled clattering mess - leaving Knockout to dangle haplessly in midair like a fishing lure - his tantalizingly bright-body - now caged within a suspended cocoon - like a piece of meat left out to bait a beast closer.
The only thing left uncovered was Knockout's head; he could look left and right, but not much else.
Apparently, Knockout wasn't meant to get anyway.
For some reason or another.
"S-shockwave? W-what's the meaning of this?!"
Still, Shockwave stood.
Much too quiet.
Bang.
There was a loud bang at the Medbay's entrance. Both Shockwave and Knockout looked over to see what it was.
It was Soundwave, tied up in chains like an animal - his limbs hogtied together. His metal was covered in row after row after row of biting talon-claw dents left across his plating - a typical feature in any sparkeater's hunting procedure.
Numerous bleeding holes had punctured through his sleek bioluminescent armor, sundering his flesh with ease, as thin as it was...
Soundwave's protoform seized - almost jiggling, like a grilling slab of well-seasoned, tenderized meat.
Jetfire was there with a chain in hand, keeping Soundwave pinned to the ground with a relentless flurry of kicking talons - each grooved serrated claw - biting deeper with every cruel hit. Jetfire's talons twitched like grasping starved hands, as they pulled away chunky, meaty bits of Soundwave's protoform.
It was unhinged, needless violence.
'That is feral illogical behavior for a medic. I expected better Jetfire.' Shockwave thought, looking over Jetfire's adult-frame. 'He's growing into his "late-stage" frame too quickly. I must take note of the frequency of Jetfire's aggressive episodes.'
"That's enough." He said simply. "That's enough." He repeated, pointing his arm cannon at Jetfire.
Jetfire's piercing eyes narrowed, as he reluctantly acknowledged the threatening display, and slowly the malicious light within dimmed.
He came back to himself.
Jetfire peeled back the medical-grade googles Shockwave had gifted him a cycle earlier, blinking rapidly, as if to clear his eyes from some unseen aliment.
"R-right, all that was for kidnapping me by the way, Soundwave..." Jetfire murmured, before slumping back into an uncanny normality. An ingenuine smile, crooked with just the right amount of unnerving little teeth, graced Jetfire's features. He dragged Soundwave forward like a dog - by a heavy chain, locked around his neck and legs.
Soundwave was a bleeding shaking mess, and he leaned into his specified hanging-chain-cocoon as if it were a luxurious hammock; he craned his neck sideways, obviously exhausted.
Since Soundwave had more potential to be unpredictable; his bindings were logically more elaborate, spectacular and confining than Knockout's would ever be.
A combined-double metal pillory for Soundwave's arms and legs had been prepared, last minute, by Jetfire's expert blacksmithing skills.
To hogtie a mech upside down, chained to the ceiling, was a common capture-procedure utilized by sparkeaters, and the more intelligent variety of insecticon types.
Not only was it a humiliating form of capture, to be tethered up high, but it also offered a convenient method of slaughter.
It made the organs within a mech's frame much easier to harvest, draining all the nasty, undesirable fluids into a mech's upper torso.
And hanging upside down would eventually leave a mech confused, disorientated, when all the energon ultimately flowed and swirled at once, into their processor and skull.
Jetfire gave a raspy tired laugh, as he hefted Soundwave up high using a chain pulley, tethering his legs to a freshly polished butcher's hook welded to the ceiling - then Soundwave was left to dangle there, looking for all the world like a wrapped up turret-key bird.
Soundwave's servos had clasped neatly into the wrist-cuff cutouts of the pillory's slab-board. His talons had been smashed into a second-set of pillory holes, which was connected to the first, leaving him with little ability to move.
'I suppose I should evaluate Jetfire's work.' Shockwave thought, before suddenly jumping up against a wall.
Knockout screamed, just a little, at Shockwave's terrible transformation.
His arm cannon sprung open into several splintered fangs, which pierced the walls with ease as he climbed - climbed with an uncanny flexibility for a mech his size, and he used his servo as a digging grappling hook for leverage.
Shockwave clung onto the walls around Soundwave, and for a closer look his neck plates extended eerily past his shoulders, dipping his head long and low...his optic narrowed with an elusive emotion...
He looked like a scavenging buzzard, politely waiting for its next meal to die.
"Too much?" Jetfire asked the unspoken question about the excessive amount of chains now hanging from the rafters - but, Shockwave shook his head, not even looking down.
He continued looking at Soundwave with what might've constituted as fascination.
"No." Shockwave paused, gathering his thoughts. "No. Sunstorm was much too specific with what he requested we do. "
Jetfire frowned, having not a clue how Winglord Sunstorm, a mech he rarely saw or heard of, mattered.
At all.
"Sunstorm? We? W-what? What does he have to do with anything? Isn't he supposed to be lightyears away, ruling Vos?"
Shockwave sighed, the noise obviously forced. "Yes, about that...I've neglected in giving you vital details." He coughed, as if sucking down something deep within an eldritch vocalization-system. "My apologizes." And finally, like a scuttling beetle, he climbed back down from the wall.
Than he said to Jetfire, "He's approaching the planet topside as we speak."
"What!" Jetfire shrieked, low-key terrified. "What!?" He quickly lost all semblance of his cobbled together, professional demeanor.
Eventually...he calmed down enough to ask,"Why?" Shockwave was about to speak, but than both became distracted - when the predacon suddenly entered the room. A cassette was gingerly clasped between its jaws, its mandible-whiskers twitched in delight.
"Finally! You've found her!" Jetfire practically ran up to the beast, holding out an expectant servo. "I thought she got crushed to death in the crash...I guess she avoid that...cus she is so so ssssmall."
'And cute.' But Jetfire kept that thought to himself.
The beast spat out his prize, mewing out a pleased gesture when Shockwave approached with a handful of energon goodies.
"You know, you're right Shockwave. The predacon is a lot more gentle than I expected." Admitted Jetfire. He looked at the happy chewing predacon nervously, before slowly patting it across its head. The beast accepted the touch, leaning into it with a rumbling purr.
"The predacon used to be an Autobot." Shockwave stated simply. "His spark is soft."
Jetfire nodded. "Right. I've never met Cliffjumper before, have I?" Jetfire shook his head, as he reminisced. "Not properly."
"I never even talked to Cliffjumper after I kidnapped him with Jetstorm - before we joined the Autobots." There was a hint of regret in his tone. "I'm surprised the Autobots still have no idea about that incident - Starscream took the blame for literally everything."
"I'm still mad about that, you know!"
Trypticon's PA system blared into the room, Starscream's scratchy voice interrupted, uninvited.
"Well, if it isn't Sir-Captain-Ship-Crasher. Why did Megatron make you "Air Commander" again?"
"Don't you DARE try to change the subject you scoundrel! I'll have you know that I had a spark-attack TRYING to PILOT this DISASTER OF A CORPSE, Mister-Doctor-Whelp-You!"
Jetfire hissed, trying to suck down a surprised throaty bout of laugher. The insults Starscream made towards his person never held any sting - he'd long grown immune to such noises. "You're still mad about that whole 'blaming Cliffjumper's death on you' thing?" He coolly rolled his shoulders, as if he'd not a care in the world. "Ssssure, Arcee beat you up a few times, but she didn't kill you, did she?"
"Ick...Jetfire! She almost did KILL ME! You didn't even thank me for taking the blame!" Starscream was angry no doubt, but there was truth in his words. Shockwave looked at Jetfire expectantly, seconds away from crossing him arms and glowering at Jetfire, as if he were a sparkling again.
Jetfire sighed,"Fine. Fine. You're right. I'm...sorry."
"Hrmm..." Starscream huffed, before the walls of the room trembled, as if a ghost had left the vicinity.
'Does that mean Starscream is done yelling?' He thought, with some relief. 'Maybe I can get back to work, then.'
Jetfire held up his earlier prize - the cassette up to the light, much to the alarm of Soundwave - the mech's vision and speech had been left unrestricted, just like Knockout's had been.
"Unhand Laserbeak, now!" Soundwave shouted, in his real voice.
Knockout looked over with surprise, either from Soundwave's use of his actual voice or Laserbeak herself - it was hard to tell.
And Jetfire's expression was sickly sweet, an evil smile as he looked over the cassette, flipping her between his servos like a toy, before placing the hapless Laserbeak atop the clinic's examination berth.
Her T-Cog was broken, and there would be no escape for that bird.
"As if. Laserbeak needs her checkup." And Shockwave's pending explanation about Sunstorm had been swiftly forgotten by Jetfire, as he got to work preparing Laserbeak's scans and specifications within the medbay's computer.
And the predacon had curled around itself, paws clasped against its delicate ears - having been afraid of Starscream's screeching earlier.
Shockwave simply stood, much too stiff and quiet.
"Jetfire, now is not the time for a checkup." Shockwave said. "You are needed outside, as a medic. " He spat the title like a poison, causing Jetfire to wheel around on his medic's stool, his expression tight, dangerous, and rebellious.
"Outside. Now." Shockwave shouted, the noise clipped and impossibly dark. "I shall attend to Laserbeak, while you attend to the dying Decepticons outside."
Jetfire said not a word, before swiping Laserbeak off the examination berth and clicking the cassette into his subspace. "As if I'd trust a patient of mine anywhere NEAR YOU!" He spat, a fire festered between his teeth. Jetfire stalked out of the room, and the predacon looked between Shockwave and Jetfire's departure uneasily, before Shockwave kindly pointed a finger towards the exit, causing the beast to chase after Jetfire; whether the situation would resolved peacefully or not, didn't matter to Shockwave.
Then Shockwave stood, silently.
Displeased.
Knockout and Soundwave could only watch.