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"You've changed."
That was all Airachnid said as she slunk around him, keeping herself to the shadows. Knock Out could hear the tap tap tap of her far too many feet as she wove her way down and around the buildings.
"Oh?" was all he said in return. He kept his energon prod in his hand, though he was not the least in a fight-ready stance.
It was not a statement Airachnid needed to clarify, especially not when Knock Out was technically supposed to be capturing her right now, but she nonetheless sidled a bit closer to him, finally emerging from the darkness enough for him to make out the curves of her armor in the moonlight.
"I had to upgrade the alt mode," he said finally. "The older model was a getting bit too conspicuous, even for me."
"No," she said. "They've changed you. Your let yourself get old." Her optics seemed to bore into him, though he couldn't make out the expression on her face in the low light. Was that contempt? Admiration? Acceptance? She had always been difficult to read.
Why did he care what she thought, anyway? She had never been antagonistic to Knock Out directly, but with the way she treated everyone around him--Autobots, Decepticons, humans, Breakdown...Primus, what she had done to Breakdown...
And she had just called him old to his face. His claws tightened around his energon prod. In another life, he would have gone after her right then and there, jammed his weapon into the joints of her neck until he pried her little head off. Or fled, so she wouldn't do the same to him. But now that he had changed, as she had put it, he simply stood there.
He saw her smirk. She knew how he had been changed. She had lived through the same war, after all. They had just taken different paths to get out of it.
Airachnid's path was the same one as always, and the reason Knock Out and his human team had been sent on her trail to begin with. Bounty hunting, collecting, whatever she wished to call it...
He could see the sharp blade-like claws on her many feet as she suddenly came at him again, those same claws that had claimed the heads of countless others. Perhaps he should have taken the earlier chance to react after all. She had her optics on his head now. He couldn't blame her. Who wouldn't want his beautiful face on their wall?
But still... "Don't you even think about it." He surprised himself with that one. Nobody talked to Airachnid like that and expected her to listen. Least of all Knock Out, sometimes-medic and deserter extraordinaire, too low in the pecking order for others to care about, and too small to force them to care. He raised his energon prod, preparing to defend himself.
To his utter amazement, she stopped. Then she laughed. "Primus, you do sound like a dog-tired elder now."
He rankled at that, the armor plates on his shoulders making a soft hissing noise as they shifted against one another. "I am not an elder by any stretch of the imagination."
Airachnid turned away slightly, withdrawing her blade-tipped feet, as if she had experienced second thoughts about adding such an old head to her collection. "It's not just an age thing, herr doktor. Or your alt mode." She looked back at him, and he briefly saw the flash of tiredness in her optics, the weariness of fighting a battle you've long ago lost. "You've changed."
Danger apparently passed, Knock Out shrugged slightly. "It happens." As it had clearly happened to Airachnid as well, else they would be on the ground fighting right now, rather than conversing.
She was moving to say something else, but fell silent, looking past him. He heard it too: the humans were nearing their position, their boots thudding softly on the pavement, various belts and buckles and packs clinking as they moved. Most Cybertronians would never have heard such small noises; it was no surprise Airachnid, master tracker that she was, had picked up on them. It had taken Knock Out a long time to learn how to tell when a human was trying to be sneaky. Once he had figured it out, though, he couldn't stop hearing it. Like glitch-mice in the walls. Perhaps these glitch-mice would have been more cautious had they known a particularly cunning turbofox lay in wait.
They were lucky this time. Airachnid disappeared into the shadows once more, choosing to abandon her prey tonight. You've changed, she had said. Knock Out was beginning to suspected that by 'you', she had meant 'we'. Either way, she wasn't wrong. And he was okay with that.
"Do not let me find you again," he said softly in Cybertronian.
"Same to you," she called from the darkness.
And then she was gone, replaced by the humans asking if Knock Out had found anything.
"Nothing," he said. He retracted his energon prod and snapped it into the hold under his backplates as he turned and stepped past the humans. "Nothing at all."