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There were really only two things that had dictated the course of much of Knock Out's life, leading to the improbable position he now found himself in: him being the only Decepticon medic on an alien planet that was supposed to become the new Cybertron, hiding from the native life forms as he tried to keep Lord Megatron and every single other Decepticon who made it here in one piece.
The first thing, and perhaps the biggest one, was that he made quick decisions, and did not pause to second-guess himself. A trait that meant for his entire life, he had constantly been mistaken for a Velocitronian. Just because his mind worked quickly, reaching conclusions before other mechs might, and therefore gave him the appearance of making decisions based on whims, and because he had a bipedal running speed to match his racing mind, did not mean he was from that sector. And 'impulsive hyperspeed-processor' was a rude stereotype to be making of Velocitronians anyway, now wasn't it?
The second thing was that even from a young age, he held an utter fascination he held with how Cybertronian bodies worked. Looking at them in all their components, learning what each piece did, puzzling out how they went back together, pulling them apart again in his mind. It had only been natural that he stepped into the study of medicine so he could see everything first-hand, touch the parts for himself, marvel at them, put them back together, take them apart again, over and over, like a youngling's puzzle box.
His instructors had found it rather difficult to teach him the importance of putting the parts back together for the purpose of them staying together, but it was a concept Knock Out had grudgingly accepted in the end.
It was him making a snap decision that had him asking to be assigned to the Cybertronian army to complete his training as a medic, a request his instructors had been all too eager to approve, just to get him out of their manifolds.
And so he had finished his training there, where he saw all sorts of wonderful and new ways Cybertronian bodies could be injured, mangled, torn up, melted, disassembled...and despite himself, he became quite adept at fixing them back up again, all so they could return another day to show him more new forms of destruction.
It was another impulsive thought that lead him to follow the soldiers when they were training, so he could watch them, see how their injuries happened, what weapons caused what trauma. He could do that, he thought to himself. So he demanded to train with them. The soldiers had at first mocked him--the thought of a Velocitronian like him (even if he wasn't!), with no natural frame or programming for weaponry and war, was laughable at best. They shut up quickly when their superior officer, a retired Seeker, had pointed out that if Knock Out could defend himself in battle, they'd have themselves a field medic.
Well, that hadn't exactly been Knock Out's plan, but at least he got to cause injury now. He never could remember where he had picked up the energon prod, but once he had figured out how to hold the thing without zapping himself unconscious by mistake, he became most obnoxious to all the soldiers he trained with. With some practice, and his exacting knowledge of anatomy, he knew exactly where to hit them with the charged prod that would make even the largest of them drop instantaneously, and exactly where to strike with his saw or drill or claws to quickly, efficiently deconstruct them.
Of course he patched them up later, and absolutely not only because his Seeker commander threatened to disassemble him for ruining all those perfectly good soldiers during training exercises.
When the Prime stole the Allspark and sent all of Cybertron into civil war, nobody made snide comments about his impulsive Velocitronian-speed decisions when he allowed the sharp-faced Decepticon sigil to be etched into his sleek armor. The Cybertronian army was under the Lord High Protector's command, not the Prime's, and Knock Out was an army medic, after all.
The chaos of the first several joors of the civil war had allowed him to disappear into the ranks of Megatron's soldiers, where he could finally fully indulge himself in drawing energon from his enemies. It was amazing the things he was capable of when he no longer had to worry about patching other mechs back together.
He liked it.
But his lifelong tendency to think quickly, act quickly always came back to bite him in the aft.
He was there when Iacon fell, when Megatron's forces finally chased the Autobots out of the grand city for good, and 'chasing' was an apt description for what Knock Out found himself doing. Did it hurt him, deep within his spark, to see the glorious capital half pummeled back into the planet? Of course it did, but without it, the Prime and his Autobots were crippled. Cut off from information, supplies, population, and forced into older wilderness areas...the disadvantages would be devastating for them.
Served the Prime right. The Allspark belonged to the entire planet, not only the Primes.
The Autobots he chased were close enough for him to get a few shots off at them--he had gotten the light guns implanted in his arms as soon as he could, not an entirely painless process but it made him more likely to be taken seriously as a Decepticon--though all the debris from collapsed roadways and buildings meant the enemy had plenty of places to dodge and hide and none of his shots hit their marks. He retracted the guns so he could vault himself up a pile of said debris, sliding down the far side, hitting the ground at a run, intent on using his speed to catch up to his prey. He had to leap over the body of a fallen Decepticon that was inconveniently laying across his path, but did not lose pace.
In the corner of his vision he saw another Decepticon down, though sitting up against a piece of the fractured road so that he would be protected from any stray Autobot fire. His leg was stuck out at an odd angle.
'Knee's jammed.'
The thought came unbidden into his mind, and even with that most cursory glimpse, Knock Out knew exactly which gear had been impacted.
He slowed. Stopped. And, before he could second-guess himself, he turned back around.
Cursing to himself the whole way, he covered the short distance back to the injured soldier, dropping to a crouch beside him. The mech jerked away, startled, his yellow optics wide, but thankfully was too stunned by Knock Out's sudden appearance to react further. Which was a good thing--he wasn't overly tall, but hefty, and with the energon prod still retracted and in its hold along his back, Knock Out would not have been able to defend himself if the mech had responded violently.
The soldier was sitting rather still, giving Knock Out a chance to run a brief scan on him. Indeed, it was his knee, in the exact gear he had predicted. A surprisingly small shard of shrapnel was imbedded within it, locking the joint in place.
"Hold still," he had said, not waiting for a reply as he popped the armor away from the mech's knee. He reached in with his long claws, took hold of the shrapnel, twisted, pulled it free with one strong yank. It was so easy. Too easy. The most basic kind of injury. Knock Out had it closed over with a few emergency welds in moments. He snapped the armor closed again, gave it a couple taps with his fist, snidely told the mech to take it easy on that knee for a bit, then ran off after the Autobots once more, leaving behind a rather bewildered Decepticon.
He didn't bother to figure out who the mech was once he returned to the underground Decepticon base, or if he had even survived. It didn't matter. Knock Out himself had gotten out of Iacon with only a few scratches in his armor, which were buffed out easily enough. That was all her cared about.
The next battle he was in did not go so well for him.
The Autobots may have been fewer in number and their ranks comprised more of non-combatants than actual soldiers, but that did not mean they didn't have grenades. Knock Out remembered one exploding in front of him, far too close, throwing him backwards...
...and then he woke up stretched out on a medbay table, in a significant amount of pain.
He did not like being the one on the table, but he hurt too much to do anything about it right then. As he turned his medical scans on himself, he was surprised to find that he had survived the grenade blast more or less in one piece. The realization that another medic had already done most of the necessary repairs on him was infuriating--how dare someone else do that to his body--but, he admitted to himself, whoever it was did an admirable job. A nice job.
Okay, a really slagging near-perfect job. Minus of course a few cosmetic details that Knock Out could take care of himself later.
He found out who this mysterious talented medic was not too long later, when said mech came through the medbay to check on his patients, hopping up onto the table next to Knock Out.
The medic was a tiny white cassette--or did they prefer Deployer these days?--who introduced himself as Glit, and proceeded to interrogate Knock Out on his condition, as if they were in a civilian hospital, not a war-time outpost.
Knock Out had never thought a cassette could do anything other than intel work or infiltration, and immediately felt a strange sense of respect for this mech who was so skilled despite his disadvantages.
That respect turned into rage when Glit asked him where he had received his medical training.
"Why the slag do you think I have medical training?" Knock Out had snapped.
Glit had given him a look with that single optic of his that was most unimpressed. "You have a surgical saw mounted on your frame." He gently tapped a paw on Knock Out's forearm.
Of course he would have seen that, if he had done the repairs. Knock Out silently cursed the little cassette medic. "Your point?"
Glit gave a small shrug. "No point. You're not the only one to use a saw as a weapon." His expression was hard to read, but Knock Out thought he heard a bit of disgust in those words, as if the mere thought of using an instrument of medicine as an instrument of war disturbed him. "Though having another medic here would certainly be helpful," the little medic had commented.
Oh no. No, no, no. He was not about to be dragged back into a medbay and let other Decepticons have all the fun. With a snarl, Knock Out sat up, ignoring the pain that sparked across his vision, and snatched up the cassette, as if to crush him in his hand. "I am a soldier, not a medic!"
Glit had fallen limp in his grasp, his face blank, as if he was used to such treatment. "That's not what Breakdown told me."
"Who the frag is Breakdown?"
"I am." The new voice belonged to the large mech who had just walked into the medbay.
It was the Decepticon soldier he had treated in Iacon. And he was much more intimidating upright and in good repair than he had been when he was hiding from the Autobot attack.
He had stalked across the medbay directly to the table, his yellow optics narrowed in a threat as he grabbed Knock Out's wrist in one hand, and with the other pried the clawed fingers open until he was able to retrieve Glit and set him carefully on the table. "You ever try that again," he said, his voice low and dangerous, "I will kill you."
Knock Out made it his business to avoid Breakdown after that. In fact, he made it his business to avoid the medbay at all costs, despite Glit's continued pings for him to get in there, he was a medic, get to work.
When Glit tired of that game, he sent Breakdown to fetch him. The end result of that little fiasco was the door to Knock Out's quarters getting pulverized by the giant hammer Breakdown wielded, and Breakdown grabbing him by his collar armor--the utter indignity of it--and literally dragging him back to the medbay.
Once there, he still couldn't avoid Breakdown, who apparently apparently served as the cassette's host, and thus had to attend to Glit's own care. Which included constantly reminding Knock Out to stop threatening the cassette. Glit was the senior medic, after all.
Playing junior to a cassette. Primus.
Knock Out decided it would be best for his continued survival if he resigned himself to his lot in life, though he privately nursed his hatred of Breakdown and Glit.
That changed one night, when both Breakdown and Knock Out had been downing high-grade in an attempt to forget their woes, and had been stupid enough to do it in the same room as one another. They were far too overcharged for their punches to hit their marks, but Breakdown did not need accuracy to pick up the smaller mech and throw him across the crowded room. Right into the backplates of another Decepticon. A very large Decepticon. A very large Decepticon with a bad temper, and who held the esteem of even Megatron himself.
It had been some matter of luck that they had gotten out of that one alive. One moment, Blackout had whirled around, searching for the offending attacker and setting his sights on Breakdown. The next, Knock Out had jammed his active energon prod under Blackout's armor, dropping the monstrous mech so suddenly that he himself would have been crushed beneath his bulk had Breakdown not jumped forward to put himself between him and Blackout's massive body.
They had blinked at one another in drunken surprise.
Then they had fled the scene.
Blackout's pride would not allow him to admit he had been too drunk to know who had felled him, or that he had been brought down at all, and nobody, least of all Knock Out and Breakdown, felt the need to enlighten him.
If Glit noticed the quiet, wary respect the two of them suddenly had for one another, he never questioned it.
By the time the Allspark was rediscovered, on that previously unknown distant planet inhabited by organic life, and Megatron with it, and Commander Starscream called for any Decepticons to make the journey on there, Knock Out impulsively volunteered himself, offering his services as a medic. And to nobody's surprise, his protector Breakdown came along as well, with his bound cassette Glit in tow.