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Knock Out admired himself in the mirror, turning around. All angles were perfectly sleek, glossy, and begging to be grabbed. He smirked slightly, letting his delicate digits run down the supple satin texture of his chassis; his smile widened with every detail he saw.
He over-corrected when he turned too fast. Knock Out was used to having more weight on his back.
The thought came up too quickly to stifle, but he pushed it back down with the rest of the garbage his processor tried to throw in front of him when he wasn’t paying attention.
“Do you like it?” Breakdown asked tentatively.
“I look so expensive,” Knock Out purred, running his hands down his side to his hips. “Everything about me is luxurious!"
Breakdown relaxed slightly, exhaling a vent he had been holding. “I was worried you were going to regret it.”
“No,” Knock Out cooed. “That’s far too strong a word for how gorgeous I look. I could never regret this.”
Well, he could. But it just hadn’t hit yet.
“It’s not permanent, you know,” Breakdown reminded him. “I mean, it probably will be for a long time. There are energon shortages and these days—”
“Why are you so nervous? I love my new frame! Why would I change it?”
Breakdown swallowed, his face turning into a grimace. “Knock. You won’t be able to fly.”
Knock Out rolled his optics, waving a hand dismissively. “There are many types of flying. Barreling down the road, racing with the wind gliding over my hood, my wheels spinning faster than my spark, the weightless feeling as I go over a hill too fast—"
“I know it’s not the same,” Breakdown said. “I’m not a seeker but I know it’s not the same.”
Knock Out traced his bottom lip with his glossa, weighing his next words carefully to try to get Breakdown to let it drop. “It’s not the same, but it’s still fun. Because… I’ll be able to do it with you.”
Breakdown’s head tilted to the side, his optics going all dim and gooey in that way that made Knock Out’s spark flutter. “I just hope that I wasn’t the only reason.”
“It was tactical, too,” he said, turning his gaze back to the mirror over his shoulder and his stunning aft. “As a seeker, I was much more likely to get put on dangerous missions. Even just run-of-the-mill fliers keep turning up dead. I may be beautiful, but I’m not stupid. Wings get you killed.”
He turned again to hide his expression from Breakdown. He pretended to examine his digits, noting how finely elongated and tapered they were. They were perfect for a medic and anyone who enjoyed disassembling things. Unfortunately, they were shaking slightly.
He flexed his hands again, slower this time, until the tremor passed.
“See?” Knock Out said lightly. “Perfectly adapted.”
Breakdown didn’t look convinced, but he never pressed when Knock Out used that tone—the smooth, lacquered one that meant discussion closed. Instead, he just gave a grunt and stepped aside as Knock Out swept past him, already rolling his shoulders like a racer loosening up before a run.
Velocitron was loud. Knock Out adored that about it.
The planet hummed under his wheels the moment he dropped into alt-mode, engines purring low and hungry. Neon-lit roadways curved like sculpture, impossible banks and sheer drops daring him to make mistakes. The air rushed over his chassis, tugged at him, tried—almost convincingly—to lift him.
Almost. It never quite took him all the way.
He gunned it anyway, chasing it like it was just out of reach.
Other Decepticons scattered when they saw the flash of red and chrome coming up behind them. Knock Out weaved through traffic with surgical precision, brushing bumpers close enough to feel the vibration, laughing aloud over the comms as someone swore and spun out behind him.
“Careful, darling,” he purred, sling-shotting past a heavier grounder on the inside of a turn. “You don’t want to scuff the finish.”
He took hills too fast on purpose.
The moment of weightlessness at the crest—those half-seconds where the suspension screamed, and the world fell away beneath him—were everything. His processor lit up with old instincts, screaming trajectories and corrections that no longer applied. He leaned into them anyway, correcting harder than necessary, drifting wide just to feel the danger snap at his heels.
This was flying, he told himself.
Close enough.
“Knock Out,” Breakdown’s voice crackled in his comm, tight with static and something worse. “You’re pushing it.”
Knock Out took a curve sideways, sparks kissing the guardrail as he laughed. “I’m enjoying myself. Try it sometime!”
“That’s not enjoying yourself,” Breakdown said. “That’s—that’s you trying to break something.”
Knock Out didn’t answer right away. He hit the accelerator instead, engines screaming as the road dropped sharply away into a long, spiraling descent. The city lights blurred into streaks of color, and for one beautiful, treacherous instant, his sensors lied to him.
For one instant, it felt right.
Then gravity asserted itself, heavy and absolute, and the lie collapsed.
He landed hard at the bottom, his suspension groaning in protest.
“…Knock,” Breakdown said quietly.
Knock Out slowed at last, coasting to a stop beneath an overpass, shadows swallowing his shine. He transformed back into root mode with a theatrical flourish that rang a little hollow in the empty space.
“I’m fine,” he said, too quickly, brushing imaginary dust from his shoulder. “You worry far too much. It’s unattractive.”
Breakdown transformed nearby, bulk settling beside him like a wall. He didn’t crowd—just stood there, solid, present. “You don’t have to do this,” he said. “You don’t have to pretend.”
Knock Out scoffed, turning away so Breakdown couldn’t see his face. “Pretend? Please. I chose this. Wheels are faster on the ground. Safer. Sensible.” He flicked a hand dismissively. “I’m thriving.”
Behind him, the sky pressed down on his shoulders, vast and unreachable.
Breakdown didn’t argue. He just reached out, one massive hand resting briefly, carefully, between Knock Out’s shoulder blades—right where the weight used to be.
“I know,” he said. “Just… don’t wreck yourself trying to prove it.”
Knock Out swallowed, then straightened, chin lifting, smile snapping back into place like armor. “Honestly, Breakdown. You’d think I’d lost something important.”
He laughed, sharp and bright, and stepped back into the light.
Above them, the open air stretched on—empty, patient, and waiting.
The comm chirped.
Knock Out barely glanced at the display before answering it, one hip braced against Breakdown’s alt-mode frame.
“What,” he drawled, already annoyed.
Starscream’s voice slid through the channel, sharp and smug and unmistakably aerial in a way that made something old and ugly twist behind Knock Out’s spark.
“Watch your tone, medic!”
“Ah, apologies, Commander Starscream. I thought you were just an adoring fan calling to race.”
Starscream paused at the other end of the line, clearing confused. Regaining his composure, he said, “Megatron requires repairs. Immediately.”
Knock Out’s smile sharpened. “Things must be serious if you are calling me.”
There was a brief pause. He could practically hear Starscream’s wings rustle on the other end, that faint, habitual shift of balance that came from leaning forward to accomdate the protrusions.
“You will come to the Nemesis,” Starscream continued, clipped. “The space bridge is scheduled to open in a few hours. Don’t be late.”
The channel cut.
Knock Out stared at the dead comm for a second too long.
“…Well,” he said brightly, clapping his hands together. “Duty calls.”
“We were so close to finding energon,” Breakdown said, irritated. “Do you think he’ll be mad if you go on without me, and I come a little later?”
Knock Out blanched, his optics going wide before he quickly shrugged, putting on a smile again. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Breakdown transformed into his root mode. His optics flicked from Knock Out to the skyway stretching out ahead of them, then back again. “You don’t sound thrilled.”
“Please,” Knock Out scoffed, already transforming back into vehicle mode. “Why would I be thrilled to see Starscream? He’s insufferable on his best cycles.”
Breakdown hummed, unconvinced. “You wanna try to take the bridge now?”
Knock Out’s engines revved in answer.
“No.”
He peeled out before Breakdown could say anything else, tires screaming as he shot back onto the roadway. Neon lights streaked past him in a familiar blur, the city unfolding beneath his wheels like a dare.
Breakdown transformed and followed, slower, heavier—but close.
“You heard him,” Breakdown said over the comms. “We’ve got time, but not that much.”
“Oh, relax,” Knock Out replied. “I’m simply… warming up.”
He took the next curve far too fast.
For a moment, centrifugal force pinned him sideways, the world tilting, the road dropping away at an angle that made his internal gyros scream warnings he ignored. His suspension lifted just enough to make his spark leap into his throat.
For one treacherous heartbeat, instinct roared—
flare wings, correct pitch, climb—
—and then the road caught him again, jarring and unforgiving.
He laughed it off, a brittle sound that echoed too loudly in the comm.
Breakdown slowed beside him at the next straightaway. “You don’t have to prove anything.”
Knock Out downshifted, engines growling. “I’m not.”
Breakdown gave him a look through the windshield that Knock Out pretended not to see. “You sure this isn’t about seeing Starscream after… you know.”
“After what?” Knock Out snapped a little too fast.
Breakdown hesitated. “…After you grounded yourself.”
Knock Out swerved into another lane, narrowly missing a transport. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Starscream’s opinion has never mattered to me.”
Which was strictly speaking a lie.
Starscream had been an Air Commander. A seeker in every way that mattered. He carried himself like the sky belonged to him—like it always would.
Knock Out punched the accelerator harder.
“I look phenomenal,” he continued, voice tight with forced cheer. “I’m faster on the ground than half the fools on that ship, and if Starscream has a problem with my alternate mode, he’s welcome to say it to my face.”
Breakdown was quiet for a long moment.
“…You don’t hate him for that,” he intoned. “You hate him because he still flies.”
Knock Out said nothing.
The road rose ahead of them in a long, elegant arc. Knock Out took it at full speed, cresting the top just as the space bridge beacon flared in the distance.
That familiar, sickening lightness hit him again.
He landed hard, struts creaking on impact, and finally eased off the accelerator.
“…He was always insufferable,” Knock Out muttered at last, much quieter. “But he became more so… afterward.”
Breakdown pulled up alongside him, matching pace. “Did his trine dying have anything to do with you wanting to reframe?”
The space bridge roared to life ahead of them, light tearing a hole in reality.
Knock Out straightened his posture even in alt-mode, polish gleaming, and his focus fixed ahead.
“Of course not,” he said smoothly. “Now make sure you come along soon, dear. I don’t want to be apart too long.”
And if his spark ached at the thought of standing in front of Starscream—winged, airborne, untouched by gravity—
Well.
That was just another thing he’d learned to hide.
The Nemesis was never welcoming, but today it felt particularly cramped.
Knock Out rolled through the hangar and transformed with practiced flair, letting the motion linger just long enough to draw the eye. His finish still gleamed from Velocitron’s tender care, a flawless red curve here, a sharp chrome edge there—proof that ground-based did not mean graceless. If Starscream was watching, Knock Out intended him to choke on it.
And of course, he was.
Starscream stood near the center of the bay, wings flexed just enough to remind everyone they were there. Effortless. Casual. Like gravity was an optional inconvenience. Knock Out felt the old, instinctive urge to track the movement—cut it off at the source with a neat little prod—before he smothered it beneath a lacquered smile.
He sauntered closer, heels clicking softly against the deck plating, and opened his mouth before Starscream could start.
“It was a long drive, Starscream. I’m still picking bugs out of my grill.”
Starscream’s optics flicked over him, slow and clinical, lingering on the wheels folded neatly into Knock Out’s calves. There it was—the pause. The judgment.
“Right,” Starscream said coolly. “Yes, you’re one of those.”
Knock Out’s smile didn’t falter, but something tight and sharp curled behind his spark.
“Come again?”
Starscream tilted his helm, wings giving a faint, disdainful twitch.
“I never understood why any self-respecting Decepticon would choose an automobile as his vehicle mode when he could have flight.”
There it was. Clean. Precise. Right between the chest plating struts.
Knock Out grinned, even as his processor briefly, traitorously, supplied a dozen better answers—none of which he could afford to say.
“I like the way I look in steel-belted radials.” He let his gaze slide pointedly down his own frame, admiring. Defiant. “I take it Lord Megatron might require a laboratory assist?”
Starscream’s attention snapped away at last, his expression sharpening into something far less smug.
“You might say that.”
Knock Out followed his line of sight.
Megatron lay on the medical berth beyond the bay, massive and unmoving, armor scorched and torn, and a massive hole where his spark should lay. The sheer scale of the damage made even Knock Out pause.
The thrill—the interest—cut cleanly through the ache in his chassis.
“Whoa.”
Whatever Starscream still had that Knock Out didn’t, it hardly mattered right now.
There was work to be done.
Later, when there was a lull in analyzing Megatron’s frame, Knock Out took a break.
Megatron was stable—stable enough, anyway—and that meant Knock Out could justify stepping away before his processor started chewing on itself. He peeled his gloves off, wiped his hands with unnecessary precision in the sink, and drifted toward the edge of the medbay where a narrow observation window looked out into space.
He told himself he just needed a change of scenery.
The planet below was… depressing. All grays and sickly browns, its atmosphere thin and uneven, scarred by old conflict. Knock Out rested his hip against the bulkhead and sighed, optics unfocusing as he let himself stare.
He wished he hadn’t.
Starscream shot past the window in a silver blur.
Knock Out froze.
For a split second his sensors flared, old routines screaming to life—track, calculate, anticipate. His processor mapped the arc of Starscream’s flight automatically, extrapolating speed and altitude, the clean efficiency of it all making his spark ache.
Starscream banked hard, wings slicing through the thin atmosphere like they’d been designed for it. Which, infuriatingly, they had. He rolled, corrected, climbed—every movement precise and effortless, as natural as breathing.
Knock Out’s fingers curled against the window frame.
The air out there looked alive. It moved, parted, yielded. It wasn’t the dead, oppressive weight he felt pressing against his chassis on the deckplates. It was space that wanted to be occupied.
His internal regulators ticked upward, phantom sensations rippling along a back that had been too light for far too long. For one humiliating moment, his frame leaned forward, as if proximity alone might do something—anything—to close the distance.
“Don’t,” he muttered to himself, quietly enough that even the ship wouldn’t hear.
Starscream climbed higher, shrinking against the curve of the planet, a sharp, elegant line cutting through the sky.
Knock Out swallowed.
It wasn’t jealousy. He told himself that firmly. Jealousy implied pettiness, resentment. This was something else—something deeper and far more inconvenient. A low, constant pull that had nothing to do with Starscream at all and everything to do with the air he was carving through.
Knock Out pressed his palm flat against the glass.
For a heartbeat, he could almost feel it—the rush, the lift, the absence of weight. His systems buzzed with half-remembered commands, useless and insistent, like a language he still understood but could no longer speak.
Starscream vanished from view, disappearing around the curve of the planet.
The silence that followed was unbearable.
Knock Out drew his hand back sharply, flexing his fingers as if he’d touched something too hot. He straightened, smoothing his plating, reclaiming every inch of poise he’d momentarily lost.
“Ridiculous,” he scoffed, turning away from the window. “Absolutely ridiculous.”
But his vents hitched once, traitorous and uneven, and the echo of wings cutting through open air followed him back into the medbay like a ghost he couldn’t outrun.
The war ended the way all ugly things do: not cleanly, not kindly, but over.
Knock Out survived it. That felt worth noting.
The Autobots called him an ally now, with the careful emphasis of bots who expected the word to shatter if they pressed it too hard. He had his lab, pared-down and provisional. He had silence where Breakdown used to be—no heavy footsteps, no gruff commentary, no solid presence at his back.
Starscream was gone, in every way that mattered. Betrayed, abandoned, outmaneuvered at last. Knock Out didn’t regret that. If anything, it was one of the few choices he could look at without flinching.
Still, the quiet stretched.
Cybertron was rebuilding slowly, painfully. Roads reopened. Cities breathed again. And Knock Out found himself driving more than he needed to—long stretches of highway with no destination, just momentum and the hum of his engines to keep his thoughts from circling too tightly around the past.
He was parked at the edge of one such stretch when it happened.
“Hey—you’re Knock Out, right?”
Knock Out turned, optics narrowing instinctively.
The bot standing there was… loud. Not vocally—though that too—but visually. A young frame, lean and confident, paint job blazing in layered reds and golds like someone had dipped him in fire and decided it still wasn’t quite enough. Flames licked up his sides in sharp, intentional lines. Every panel looked like it wanted to move.
And Primus, he was grinning.
It wasn’t the smug curl Knock Out had perfected over millennia, but a wide, unguarded grin that spoke of recklessness and delight in equal measure.
“Yes,” Knock Out said coolly. “And you are blocking a perfectly good road.”
The young bot laughed. “Sorry! I just—wow. I can’t believe you’re talking to me. I thought you’d ignore me.”
Knock Out raised a brow. “I do have standards.”
“Yeah, well, I think I’ll exceed them,” the bot shot back, putting his hands on his hips with quirky confidence. “Name’s Rodimus.”
The name landed oddly—bright, crackling with energy. Knock Out felt something in his spark tilt, just a degree.
“Rodimus,” he repeated, tasting it. “And what, exactly, does Rodimus want?”
Rodimus rocked back on his heels, suddenly sheepish, but losing none of that shine. “I was wondering if you’d… race me.”
Knock Out laughed before he could stop himself. It came out surprised, genuine, and a little rusty. “Oh, darling. You have no idea who you’re talking to.”
“I have some idea,” Rodimus said, grin widening. “I’ve heard the stories. Fastest and most beautiful thing on four wheels. Figured if I was ever gonna ask, it should be now.”
He gestured to the open highway—long, clean, sunlit. It stretched out ahead of them like an invitation.
“I wanna go flying down that road,” Rodimus added, quieter now. “With you.”
Knock Out looked at the highway.
He looked at Rodimus—at the confidence, the admiration, the joy of motion written into every line of his frame.
Flying, the boy had said.
Knock Out’s spark gave a careful, testing thrum.
“…You’re unbearably earnest,” he said, transforming smoothly into alt-mode. “Do try to keep up.”
Rodimus whooped as he transformed too, engines flaring bright and eager. “Yes!”
They lined up side by side.
For a moment—just one—Knock Out thought of wings, of open air, of everything he had lost.
Knock Out hit the accelerator.
The road rushed up to meet him, wind tearing past his frame, the world blurring into color and speed and sensation. Rodimus was right there with him, laughing over the comms, pushing harder, daring him to do better.
And Knock Out did.
For the first time in a long while, the ache eased—not gone, not healed, but… quieter. It was manageable. All wrapped in motion and heat and the thrill of being seen not as what he’d lost, but as what he was.
They didn’t fly, but as the highway fell away beneath their wheels, Knock Out smiled anyway. He was flying in all the ways that mattered.