Megatron was considering ripping Starscream's wings off and tossing him off the ship. The silvery warlord clutched his head painfully as another shriek echoed through the Nemesis, an oddly wavering frequency in the tone. Despite what you might be thinking, it wasn't the skinny seeker making this screaming sound! In fact, he was trying to prevent it, as he found the sound as unbearable as Megatron and the rest of the crew did.

Megatron stood outside the medical bay awkwardly as Knock Out continued his shrieking hissy-fit, throwing random objects around the room in his outrage. The warlord growled, he'd told Starscream not to inform Knock Out about the current situation (i.e. Breakdown being captured by M.E.C.H. And Megatron refusing to send a rescue team), but the treacherous seeker had gone ahead and blurted it out to the medic anyway!

As a result; the pretty red mech had flipped out and started a shrieking and screaming fit that put Starscream's tantrums to shame!

"Knock Out, calm down! You're only making the situation worse!" Megatron heard Starscream from inside the med-bay. The seeker was currently trying to half comfort the traumatised medic and half scold him for acting like a protoform. Another screech was heard and a piece of medical equipment flew through the broken down door. "Stop acting like such a brat! Honestly, I've never seen such behaviour in all my-" Starscream went silent. There was a soft clunk and Megatron was so sorely tempted to peek into the room and see what was happening.

"Oh no... come now, don't... don't do that!" Starscream gulped. A series of swish-clangs was heard which the warlord recognised as Starscream's hurried foot steps. Here, Megatron mustered up the courage to step around the door and take a look at what was happening. And what he saw surprised him.

Starscream was crouched beside something on the other side of the medical bed, and as Megatron moved forward a bit, the something appeared as a keeled over Knock Out. His slick body was heaving and shuddering, his hands clutching his face desperately. Then he sobbed.

The grey and white seeker suddenly whipped his head up to look at Megatron. For the first time since Starscream was very young and fresh to his ranks, he looked at his leader with a pleading expression. Megatron sighed and shook his head.

"Knock Out, your temper tantrum has gone far enough! You are a soldier, not a child!" He snarled, taking a step around the edge of the medical bed. To his surprise, Knock Out ignored him.

The medic kept his face covered and kept on sobbing and even wailing from time to time. Megatron winced; did Breakdown really mean this much to Knock Out?

"Come now Knock Out, there's no reason to cry about this! We all know Breakdown is quite capable of taking care of himself." Starscream offered weakly, placing a hopefully comforting servo on the medic's back. The red helm snapped up, revealing that pretty face to be covered in energon and oily tears.

"If he could escape he would've done it by now!" He keened, then slammed his hands on the floor and hung his head in more depressing sobs. "They're hurting him! I can feel it!" Knock Out cried in desperation. Megatron sighed again and rubbed his forehead.

"And what do you want us to do? Wherever those humans took him is heavily enforced so we cannot pick up his energy signature! We don't even know where he is..." He groaned, stepping closer. He'd had to deal with Starscream's fits when his trine member Thundercracker went offline during the war. Sometimes Megatron wondered if his refusal to help Starscream's brother was one if not the only reason the seeker wanted him out of the picture. Carefully, he reached forward and plucked Knock Out off the floor, lifting him onto the medical bed. The medic put up no resistance but continued howling and crying. Starscream stood up shakily, not designed to be in a crouching position for any amount of time.

"I know it's hard to accept, but war does take it's toll." The grey and white jet sighed, cast a slightly venomous glare at Megatron, which went ignored.

"Stop crying Knock Out, you're starting to act like a slagging Autobot!" This may not have helped the situation any, but Megatron was getting extremely agitated at the medic's sodding wailing! "What's the name of that femme? Arcee? You're beginning to act like her, wingeing about that Cliffjumper!" Again, not helping, and this was underlined by Starscream's annoyed and annoying nudge to the warlord's stomach.

"Well, why wouldn't I be? I need Breakdown as much as she needs her stupid boyfriend!" Knock Out sniffed, his fists and arms clutched against his front in an attempt to comfort himself, though Megatron suspected it was usually Breakdown's arms doing this when the medic freaked out. "I need my Breakdown..."

With another exasperated sigh, Megatron clutched Starscream's arm and pulled him to the side, then whispered in his audio receptor: "Tell Soundwave to dispatch Laserbeak. Tell him to search the whole slagging planet if you have to! Just find Breakdown and quick!"

Starscream's optics widened but he nodded swiftly, then scurried out of the room to find that creeper Soundwave. That just left Megatron and Knock Out.

With a slight visible wince of self-sacrifice, Megatron leaned forward and gave Knock Out a backwards hug/squeeze of comfort, then trotted out of the room after the seeker. Knock Out paused for a minute, surprised the warlord had made something remotely close to a tender gesture, then shook it off and continued sniffling to himself.

AN: When Starscream turned up to get Breakdown at the end of episode 16, it made me wonder why Megatron would have let him at a group of Vehicons leave the ship in the first place! That, along with the thought of WHAT THE HELL WAS KNOCK OUT DOING IN THIS EPISODE! So I concluded he was having a nervous break down over Breakdown... and had managed to make Megatron relent and send off Starscream, who took credit for Breakdown's rescue in order to gain favour of the larger 'Con!

… Um, I think too deeply into these things... huh...