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It was safe to say that Knock Out had always been more on the open-minded side. Or, perhaps, it was more accurate to say that he has always had an affinity for the open: open roads, open surgeries, open to new experiences… Where the other Decepticons had deigned to descend to Earth, Knock Out had—well, not delighted, but the good doctor took pride in sourcing his own entertainment. That’s one thing that hadn’t changed with the war.
It’s a beautiful autumn night. The moon hangs low, cloudless sky, and the tall grass of the hillside shimmers with dew. The trick to driving up a slope, of course, is to take it steady: lower gear for that extra torque, and let your tires really grip the earth beneath your treads. The evening breeze is cool and easy on his finish. It’s the perfect conditions for a drive, but Knock Out’s agenda is more of the drive-in variety.
He typically enjoys sneaking the best seats of the theatre, but tonight Knock Out finds himself in the balcony. As he nears the crown of the hill, the boughs of a tree blot out the star-spattered sky, and the jagged silhouette sitting beneath them reveals itself to be Starscream, all angles and wings akimbo, looking like the better part of a blender. The silver of his wings catches the blue-light of the projector far down in the distance, but turning to face Knock Out, the scarlet glow of his narrowed optics pierces through the shade.
“You’re late,” the former Decepticon commander says in a tone that broaches no argument.
“Or, you ground-bridged too early,” Knock Out argues anyway, slowing to a stop beside the other mech. On Starscream’s right, fortunately—Knock Out’s left was his good side. “I did tell you to take your time.”
“Pah.”
Touchy, touchy… Still, for all Starscream showboated his displeasure, he’s here, isn’t he? He knows and Knock Out knows, and Knock Out knows that Starscream knows, that it counts for something.
“Perhaps,” Starscream says, “I simply expected that, as the one who planned this excursion, you would be timely.”
Be still his thrumming spark—flattery will get you everywhere, though Knock Out isn’t sure what gave Screamer that impression. After all, this wasn’t the Nemesis, where punctuality of presence was forced by close quarters, and Knock Out has always been open about his love of leisure. He laughs, an oddly immobile, disembodied noise in his alt-mode, without the shoulders-shaking to go with it. “I like the scenic route,” he says, preening at the seeker’s obvious annoyance. “Now, if you’ll kindly move over, Starscream, I think the movie’s about to begin.”
He’s seen today’s feature already—some dated film about an off-planet entity that could assume the form of any Earth organism it touches, like some mad experiment from one of Shockwave’s wildest fantasies. Of all of the human horror movies he’s seen, it’s not the flashiest, but there’s a grounding gravitas to the gore that Knock Out appreciates. Will Starscream like it though? He finds he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know much about the ex-commander in the ways of media or hobbies.
Gingerly, Starscream leans back against the trunk of the tree, flattening the horizontal stabilizers at his shoulders to do so, and Knock Out finds it strange to stay in alt-mode while the seeker stays fully limbed. He isn’t sure they’ve ever been in this particular configuration before, at least more than the few tics it takes to transform upon arrival. He pulls up a touch further so that he can overlook the open parking lot below, and from this vantage, the already little humans look even littler, like they would slip right through the arch of his wheel gap if he trod them underpede.
It’s for those sorry fleshlings that Knock Out’s stuck playing decoy today—far better for a bored human to look up and see a beautiful car than a beautiful alien mech and company. Though really, no one looks backwards, and even fewer look up, at the cinema. They’re far enough from the crowd that it shouldn’t be an issue anyway, and even the sprawling outdoor screen looks more like an everyday monitor. Knock Out can hardly make out the finer details of the film.
Starscream, with a seeker’s optics, has no such problem, which means that, by all means, he should have no problem immersing in the surprisingly diverting world of human cinema. The surly sack of scrap, however, shows no signs of paying attention. “I can’t believe this is what the great doctor of the Decepticons was doing in his spare time,” he mutters, and really, Knock Out resents the sarcasm. “Perhaps if you had spent less time watching human drivel and more time contributing to the cause, this war might have ended differently.”
Well, what crawled in and died in his fuel tank? For all his usual peevishness (the mech rarely made for pleasant company), Starscream’s dig comes as a surprise. It wasn’t Knock Out’s first time encountering this particular mood from the ex-commander, however, and tonight, what would usually have been an exercise in frustration is unexpected enough to be stimulating.
“Please, I thought we were happy with how things turned out,” Knock Out says, though that was both overstating their feelings and leaving too much unsaid at once. It wasn’t the kind of thing they talked about—more so mutually insinuated through wordless moments that stretched too long and too thin to carry the weight of the last orbitals. “Are you going to watch the movie or not?”
Starscream’s wings perk in agitation as his mood dives in offense, and Knock Out finds himself rewarded with a few seconds of blissful, dour silence. He settles in, putting some slack on his suspension and, for a moment, enjoys the anticipation of what comes next—this was one of the more gruesome of Earth’s cinematic offerings, if he remembered correctly. Surely Screamer would find something to enjoy in it.
“One glaring oversight in your plan, Knock Out,” Starscream cuts in. “We can’t hear anything from this far away.”
Ah, right.
“Impatient, are we? And here I thought you didn’t want to be here,” Knock Out drawls, dutifully ignoring Starscream’s retort in turn. He lowers his windows and adjusts his radio, honing in on the appropriate primitive human frequency, and muffled static blooms into the low pulse of ominous music. “Ah, there we are.” Right on time, as the opening credits finish their slog. “Happy now?”
“Passably,” Starscream replies, not even trying to be convincing. Don’t quit your day job, Screamer, Knock Out doesn’t say, because he imagines he’d have to explain the joke. Still, despite his clear skepticism of the endeavor, Starscream does give the movie his attention. What Knock Out hadn’t counted on, mutual enjoyment-wise, was the scrutiny.
“Is that disk meant to represent a spacecraft?” Starscream scoffs, sneering in a tone that betrays his intent to find fault in every little thing he can. Unable to roll his optics at the moment, Knock Out resists the urge to flash his hazards in irritation—the last thing he needed was the light drawing unwanted eyes.
“Why yes, Screamer, I do believe that’s the premise of the movie.”
“As though such a design could ever achieve aeronautic stability.”
“Perhaps that’s why it crashes.”
Starscream shoots him a glare, and Knock Out has no hands with which to gesture. “What? I’m hardly spoiling anything—it’s happening right now.”
Starscream does roll his optics, a rather unfair use of his visible faceplate. Just who does he think Knock Out’s stuck in alt-mode for? The least the seeker could do is appreciate it! Even so, it’s always like this with Starscream: for every cluster of banter, always a beat. For a good chron, Knock Out thinks they’ll make it to the end of the film after all—or that they’ll at least make it to the talking bits before the chatter starts up again.
On screen, a human rotorcraft chases after a canid with a gun, and Starscream scoffs at this as well—quietly, not to be heard. That’s the thing about Screamer: His best efforts to hide things only ever serve to spotlight the fact he wants to hide them in the first place. Since the reconstruction of Cybertron began, there’s a phrase Knock Out’s heard those Autobot-aligned humans use—‘like an open book.’ Like an unencrypted datapad.
Knock Out’s always had an affinity for the open, which is to say, he finds Starscream so transparent that he can’t resist.
“Thinking you could catch up, are you?” he says, poking fun as the human on screen fires at the light-footed animal.
“I would never chase an Earth beast to begin with,” Starscream retorts with a careful cross of his arms, so gracefully the metal doesn’t even creak.
“But if you did, you would catch it.”
“I wouldn’t miss.”
And just like that, the tension shifts, finally cutting along the grain of the metal rather than against, patter flowing like coolant from a rough incision: in starts (“To think human technology was once even more primitive than it is now…” “And the maintenance! Not exactly easy on the eyes…”) and stops (“Haven’t you been to Antarctica, Starscream?” “…”), but flowing reliably. As the monster of the movie reveals itself, Knock Out gives up on watching the distant screen entirely, surreptitiously angling a side mirror to spy on his companion instead.
Oh the shifts were subtle, sure, but that was one thing others didn’t get about Starscream—his subtleties are loud once you notice them, like how the incessant whining of an auditory glitch becomes impossible to ignore. As the human actors prattle on over Knock Out’s speakers, Starscream shifts, leaning forward just so, perching a delicate elbow on one propped knee. Obviously, it has nothing at all to do with how the alien mongrel rips itself and others apart.
Shame. If they were closer to the screen, Knock Out imagines he could have seen the glow of the film reflecting off Starscream’s finish. The flamethrower would have made it quite the visual, add a little drama to that keen-eyed smirk he sees playing on the seeker’s face. It occurs to Knock Out that he’s not sure he’s ever seen Starscream in this lighting before, not the stark white of clinics or the electric blue of energon, but softer and broader.
At one point, Starscream shudders, snarling with disgust, “Organics are so… wet. How they live with such tender components, I’ll never know.”
“Frankly, I wonder how accurate it is,” Knock Out remarks, though the screaming filtered over his speakers sounds authentic enough. “It’s a shame that Lord Megatron never had much interest in humans. I couldn’t convince you to look the other way for a day or two, could I?”
He feels it more than sees it, but he can tell that Starscream shoots him a look that could peel paint. He tilts his mirrors in a facsimile of a shrug.
“Can’t blame a mech for trying.”
“Yes, by all means, upend this uneasy alliance with the Autobots by vivisecting their human pets,” Starscream says, and Knock Out can practically hear him winding himself up.
“Calm yourself, Screamer. It wouldn’t be one of those humans,” Knock Out says, and though he’s not sure if Starscream realizes, he wields his breeziness like a precision tool, slicing through the tension before it can congeal. It works, too. He sees how Starscream’s wings go slack. “No one the Autobots know.”
“Hmph. Well then,” Starscream says, lifting his chin. He turns back to the movie. “In that case, I suppose there would be no true harm in your endeavor. Though, what exactly it is you wish to learn about Earth’s predominant species eludes me.”
“Aside from their horror movies and surprisingly advanced vehicular cosmetics?” Knock Out asks with lilting levity. “Why, Starscream, it’s what’s inside that counts.”
Starscream’s shoulders jolt first, and then he lets out a chuffing, rasping noise—a laugh so reluctant it sounds kicked out his chest, and he seems immediately sour for having made it. He coughs, clearing his ventilator, before noting, “Yes, that certainly was the case with Cylas, wasn’t it.”
“Ah, but by the time he reached my dissection table, there wasn’t much of him to work with. It was mostly what was left of Breakdown,” Knock Out says, reminiscing on that invigorating decacycle. Cylas’s screams hadn’t sounded all too different from the ones spilling messily out his speakers right now. Perhaps a touch more anguished.
Upon termination, Cylas had been disposed of. Breakdown’s remains, on the other hand, had found a new home on Cybertron alongside the rest of them.
“Before Cylas, I would never have thought the integration of humans and Cybertronians possible,” Starscream says, voice slowing in contemplation. “Perhaps that alone does warrant closer study of human biology, as you say…”
Knock Out notes that they’re both missing the movie, but he gives Starscream time to turn this new idea over. Truth be told, between the two of them, Starscream was the one with a true scientific interest in the subject. Knock Out’s experiments were, first and foremost—though he would never admit this—more of the exhilarating variety: ends reached only to justify the means, and all with a scientific method that would send Shockwave to an early grave.
There was a brief period of time, post-Cylas and pre-Predacon mutiny, that he really could have convinced Starscream of a foray into human anatomical lessons. Now that the war was over and they were all attempting to be amicable with the Autobots, however, Knock Out knows it’s too late. He’s noticed, even if the ex-Decepticon commander hasn’t: Starscream no longer views humans as interchangeable. Which, well, is more than Knock Out can say, but if asked if he judged the seeker for the change, the answer would be no.
“Well?” Knock Out prompts, though his tone steps light. “I’m sure we could pick up a straggler or two on our way out.”
Starscream’s gaze flickers down to the crowd below, believing himself to be genuinely considering, unaware that the answer’s already been set… and in the end, as Knock Out expects, he says, “As amusing and enlightening as that may be, no. The Autobots would turn on both of us if they found out, and they have an uncanny ability to find out.” Then, he adds with a grimace, “Like Soundwave.”
Ah, now there’s a name Knock Out hasn’t heard in a while either. All kinds of nostalgia tonight, it seems. “Where is Soundwave anyway?” Knock Out wonders aloud, as the humans in the film explore the frozen wreckage of the—yes, aeronautically unstable—spaceship. “If he had been scrapped, his body would have turned up by now, and I would have thought he would only ever leave his post if Lo—if Megatron were terminated!”
At the mention of Soundwave, his disappearance, or their former leader—which one exactly, Knock Out’s not sure—Starscream shudders, a motion that reverberates even up to the seeker’s helm, giving the impression of the slightest shake of the head. “Who knows? It’s strange. As though he’s simply vanished…”
The second one, then. And, really, Knock Out understands where Starscream was coming from. The oppressive shadow of Soundwave’s sensors had always been omnipresent, such that its absence—though welcome—was unsettling. Where such a busybody of a bot could have disappeared to, he doesn’t know, but Knock Out also doesn’t care.
“Well, wherever he is, better there than here,” Knock Out suggests, and finds himself rewarded by a rare moment of enthusiastic agreement.
“That goes without saying,” Starscream scoffs, and after a pause, a small smile plays across his face. “Good riddance, I say.”
“Couldn’t agree more myself.”
The movie, however, presses on, oblivious to its distracted audience, and they swiftly come upon the next essential bit of dialogue. Knock Out turns up the sound on the radio. “Look. They’re explaining the creature.”
Starscream’s attention hones in on the film once more, the slant of his body revealing his interest as one of the human characters explains how the movie’s titular creature preys upon other organisms as an invader in Earth’s ecosystem. Knock Out recognizes the scheming look on Starscream’s face from bygone, less peaceful times.
“Ha! If it can only assimilate carbon-based life-forms, we could have defeated this ‘thing’ easily,” Starscream says with a tactician’s measure. There’s a newfound glint to his optics, a triumphant note to his voice muted in hypotheticals. “Maybe even control it. Imagine what an asset it could have been in the war.”
He says it so naturally that Knock Out almost misses it, the word almost lost in the easy flow of his musing, but that’s twice now in one evening that Starscream’s mentioned the war, when he hasn’t once in the past quartex. Is it the movie, Knock Out wonders, watching a stranded ensemble scrabble to survive? Or is it the venue? Knock Out remembers the first time he confessed his drive-in patronage, on that disastrous night aboard the Nemesis.
“An asset like a certain energon-sucking terrorcon, perhaps?” he says with a teasing pitch. He’s taking a gamble and he’s not entirely sure why, like probing an old wound unsure whether he’ll find a welded scar or an open circuit. He turns his tires left then right, just to get the restlessness out, not minding how the grasses pull out at the root.
Starscream glowers at him, but it can’t be that serious, since rather than giving a menacing curl of his talons, he knocks a knee into one of Knock Out’s rims. “Since you wouldn’t be involved, I’d expect a more positive outcome.”
Knock Out’s bark of laughter cuts over crucial exposition. Once, it would have been incredulous, but that particular blame game had ended far too poorly for Screamer for Knock Out to be anything other than amused. “How is it my fault that you had an—and it’s okay to admit this, Starscream—obsession with using dark energon?”
“We both served Lord Megatron, and you can still come out of it saying I was obsessed?” Starscream sneers, but if his audials don’t deceive him, Knock Out thinks he hears an undercurrent of humor.
“Megatron was obsessive, yes, but who was the one who insisted—“
“This is not up for re-litigation, Knock Out.”
“Agree to disagree,” Knock Out says sagely, and earns another tap to the rim, this time loud enough to pluck at a particularly sensitive cord in his processor. “Hey, watch it,” he warns, and though Starscream doesn’t acknowledge it in words, his next languid stretch takes his leg far away from Knock Out’s chassis.
“Cease your incessant chatter. We're missing half the film you wanted to watch,” Starscream chides.
“Why Screamer, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were enjoying yourself,” Knock Out says with a teasing bend, and readies himself for a retort that doesn’t quite come. He expects insult or indignation, and he almost gets it in Starscream’s haughty harrumph.
But what follows is, “And if I am, it’s nothing short of a miracle, given that I cannot hear,” which isn’t either, and it catches Knock Out so off guard that he can only laugh. He quiets quickly though, cognizant of Starscream’s delicate admission, and so Knock Out doesn’t poke or press or jab, letting the comfortable silence set over them like a paint job sets to dry.
On screen, the humans search the frigid research center for the mongrel mimic. One of their rank gets dragged away by the creature and has his ballooning flesh ripped apart from the inside out. Knock Out finds the impact greatly diminished on such a distant screen, and as Starscream’s focus sharpens, he feels his own attention start to rust.
Knock Out grows distracted, preoccupied by the growing urge to stretch his suspension and warm up his wheels, and he busies himself by instead scanning the audience down below. Rather than the humans, he observes the vehicles, noting the various modes and manufactures. There’s a sporty one with a flashy finish, and Knock Out takes a moment to take pride in the knowledge that his is better.
Really though, how much of a fuss could there really have been if a fixed-wing aircraft pulled into the back of the parking lot? If Screamer were quiet enough, would it even have been a problem? From Knock Out's perspective, perhaps the better view would have been worth the risk of a diplomatic incident.
As though sensing his disregard for interplanetary accord, Starscream suddenly cuts in—“Just when do the rest of these humans perish?” he asks with such an edge that Knock Out flounders to figure out where in the movie they even are, and finds, to his misfortune, that it’s a moment without dialogue.
“Oh they do,” Knock Out reassures in a suave, sweeping tone, and tries to perceive the screen. He can make out the pixelated dark of an archaic human monitor, but he can’t remember the scene well enough to guess at the text. “What does that say?”
In the corner of his mirror, Starscream turns to him with surprise. “Can you not—” and Knock Out can practically hear the seeker’s optics adjust their depth of field, and more importantly, the whir of the processor running in Starscream’s helm as he puts it together. “Hm, yes. I had forgotten your nearsightedness.”
Which, really, Knock Out thinks is unreasonable, given that it’s never been his job to patch Starscream up from a klik away. Not everyone needed a seeker’s far-reaching kinetic vision, especially when their profession most often involved small and sensitive wires. “What can I say? Up close and personal is more my style.”
From this close, Starscream’s optics are bright in the dim of the night, but Knock Out imagines the light pollution from the film drowns out their glow in the broad scheme of things. They flicker from Knock Out then back to the movie, then once to and fro again. “One of the humans is running a rudimentary simulation,” Starscream says. “Their appliance claims their world will be destroyed in 27,000 hours.”
He remembers that bit from the film now. The numbers hadn’t meant much to him the first time around, and by the time he returned to the Nemesis, there was some other fire to put out, as there always had been during those tumultuous times. “What is that, 20 lunar cycles?” he asks, guessing—per standard—by localized metrics.
“Approximately three stellar sequences.”
“What!” Knock Out exclaims. Of course, that was nothing compared to a Cybertronian lifespan, but in that time, the Autobots had defeated Unicron twice. “And here I thought their world was in imminent danger! They’re certainly making enough of a fuss about it.”
“Ah, Doctor, you forget how pathetically fragile humans are,” Starscream says, eager as ever to be in the more knowledgeable position. His voice takes on that glittering, lecturer’s tone he so enjoyed. “Of course we would have eliminated such a threat within the night, but with such crude technology at their disposal, even three sequences wouldn’t be enough for the humans of their time.” He pauses. “I imagine even humans of this time.”
“Really?” Knock Out says, thinking it over. “Humans certainly gave Lord Megatron a run for his money.” And Starscream, and Knock Out, on multiple occasions, but that Knock Out doesn’t say. He doesn’t have to. He knows and Starscream knows, and so on and so forth.
“Just consider, Doctor, how much damage we could have done if our enemies never knew we existed.”
Ah, yes. That would have made things significantly easier. Again, he wonders how much Starscream is thinking of not just the war but his own contributions to it. There had been a time, after all, that the früher kommandant had been in charge of Earth’s operations, and evaded Autobot detection for that whole stretch of time. That had been three stellar sequences too.
Knock Out wonders how Starscream feels about the war this very moment. Same as before? Or has it cycled past that again? Being conflicted about the war seems dreadfully complicated. He doesn’t know how he would cope if his feelings oscillated every breem; perhaps that’s why Starscream simply chose not to talk about it. That’s fine though. Even if Starscream doesn’t open himself up, it’s a medic’s job to take a peek anyway—but everything has its time and place.
The movie continues on. As it turns out, they don’t have to wait long for the humans to start dropping like flies—and to no one’s surprise, this fails to satisfy Starscream any more than the other option.
“They’re simply looking at it!” the seeker hisses, throwing up both servos in his bafflement. “This ‘thing’ as well! It could have infected every human in its vicinity, but it’s just standing there.”
“Tsk tsk, and that’s why it ends up—ah, there it is. Firewood.”
When the humans start turning guns upon each other, Starscream comments, disgusted, “The insubordination,” and Knock Out plays along.
“An execution-worthy offense in the Decepticon playbook,” he replies, aghast with feeling.
“Their willingness to let rogue actions stand will be the death of them. You’ll see.”
“I’ll remind you I’ve already seen, but you’re right.”
Knock Out thinks he has his chance—to pry, that is—at a later lull in the action. “Here’s a question, Screamer,” he says, and the wind rustles the trees so loudly he has to recalibrate his speakers. “If a shapeshifting entity went around pretending to be me, do you think you could tell?”
Starscream doesn’t even take a beat. “Obviously,” he says with such certainty it’s almost touching, but of course Screamer would never end things on a positive note. “If it doesn’t bemoan the integrity of its finish, it couldn’t possibly be you.”
Knock Out sputters, resisting the petty urge to turn down the movie entirely. “What—so the first thing you’d do if we were stuck in a life-or-death situation is assault me—?”
And if his voice clips short at the end, Knock Out doesn’t notice it, just like how he doesn’t remember, at the same time Starscream does, a certain immobilizer swung into a certain pointy face. For no reason at all other than the beautiful vista he makes against the hill, Knock Out appreciates being in alt-mode, unburdened by expression.
“… And,” Starscream adds, after too long a silence to warrant the conjunction, “I expect you’ll be able to tell as well, should I ever be replaced with an imitation,” and Knock Out is quick to rally, joining the seeker in their three-legged race away from such pesky notes in their past.
“Of course, Screamer,” he says. “And if I can’t tell by looks, as your physician, it’s nothing a buzzsaw to the chest-plate couldn’t fix.”
It’s only in the last dregs of the film that it occurs to Knock Out: this isn’t what he imagined it would be, watching a human horror film with Screamer. That is, in no small part, because Knock Out hadn’t imagined anything at all. The invitation had been a whim, albeit a persistent, recurring one, and one that he had enacted on impulse. Would this have been what it’s like, he wonders, watching a movie together back on Cybertron in its heyday? Would it have taken Starscream just as long to be convinced?
The credits begin their steady flash of names, and Starscream ventilates deeply, fanning out his wings to stretch out the joints before relaxing. “The companion was the creature,” he declares. “It’s obvious. The human protagonist’s breath fogged and the second one’s didn’t. Clearly that one already perished, and the ‘thing’ assumed the same temperature as its surroundings.”
“You think?” Knock Out remarks, more amused by Starscream’s vehement interest than the theory being proposed. “If that’s the case, it could have given us one more kill for the road.”
“Consider it, Knock Out,” the seeker says, offering his analysis with the same undertow of fervor he once did his schemes. “It didn’t have to! It was already in the winning position. Expending effort to slaughter the human would have been pointless compared to what it could learn.”
“Oh I understand that, Starscream. I meant for our fun,” Knock Out says. On the edge of his senses, he notices the parking lot empty itself into the street, and as soon as the last human vehicle pulls away, he transforms, stray witnesses be damned. The soft soil of the hilltop flattens underpede, but Knock Out hardly cares as he lifts his arms to stretch out those cables and brush the dirt off his shoulder-mount wheels.
As though similarly freed from the shackles of prying eyes, Starscream cackles, and this time doesn’t cut it short. “Yes, that would have been…” He searches for a word, gesturing as though he could conjure it out of the air—and he does. “Gratifying,” he settles on, and considering everything, Knock Out relishes the victory.
“So?” he asks with a gratified smile, looking down at Starscream with hands on hips. “Not as torturous as you thought it would be?”
As the drive-in theatre cuts its projector, the artificial light flooding their surroundings cuts out with it, blanketing both of them in Earth’s natural darkness. Starscream’s optics shine too starkly now, scarlet and shimmering, as he lingers at his seat under the tree, performatively pensive. Then, he slowly rises to his feet, careful to duck his head under the lowest branches of the tree.
“I will admit that it at least exceeds my very low expectations,” he says with a smile. “At least in the scenes where the humans perished.”
And though Knock Out had no real expectations himself, this exceeds his too. Delighted, and reveling in his newfound freedom, he sidles up beside Starscream, clapping one servo to the seeker’s shoulder. “Well, it’s your lucky day, mon frère,” he says. “I heard there’s a double feature coming up in the next quartex.”
Starscream rolls his too-bright optics and brushes Knock Out’s hand off like it’s a particularly persistent piece of debris—which really, Knock Out appreciates. Leaving it there would have just been awkward for both of them.
So, when Starscream walks past him and takes the lead in their descent down the grassy knoll, Knock Out allows the ex-Decepticon commander his theatrics. “Since this has been… surprisingly diverting,” the seeker says, then pauses for effect. “… Fine. But, only after I have vetted the films in advance.”
From where Knock Out’s standing, it looks a lot like an open invitation. “You wound me, Screamer—you say that as though I’ve steered you wrong!” he calls down as a joke, but as Starscream continues onwards, Knock Out dallies a moment at the top of the hill, observing how the seeker’s taller height diminishes as he descends the slope.
“It isn’t as though we’re short on time,” Starscream is saying, “now that we’re done with the war.”
And so they are, Knock Out thinks to himself, picking another blade of grass from his shoulder and falling into step. And so they are.
“Well… What do we do?”
“Why don’t we just wait here for a little while? See what happens.”