It's fascinating, how similar their kinds are in the most unexpected ways. It's a thought Knock Out's had a number of times before. Even an overload — called something different, he's fairly certain, though the word escapes him just now — and the reset period that follows. How does a species with no intranodal network, with no control over their autonomous systems, whose bodies barely generate a fraction of the passive charge as a Cybertronian (so small a scale that they have to measure it in watts)...

And yet with Rogue snugly cradled in hand, warm and pliable and impossibly breakable, Knock Out can't help but feel that this is intimately familiar.

While she recovers, he runs a capacitance subroutine on himself, calculates, and runs it again. Beneath his armor, his terminals warm and discharge harmlessly into the open air with a sound like faint radio static, dumping excess charge. His cooling fans cycle back then spin down completely, leaving his incalescence to be handled by normal ventilation. His engine downshifts to idle once again; his optics return to their typical levels. He steadies his biolight pattern (Primus, had he been telegraphing? that was embarrassing) and by the time Rogue seems aware again of herself and her surroundings, his systems are quiet and equalized.

"Better?" he asked, confident what the answer was and not resisting the knowing smile that went with it.