Day 3
"Wakey, wakey, Deady," Dead End barely heard as he felt Wildrider shaking him.
"What?" He mumbled, onlining his optic to see his grinning face.
"It's 6:30. I want to beat everyone else to the cafeteria today," Wildrider told him. Dead End had to give him credit; he took being trapped in a school by a psychotic bear in stride.
"May I ask what's the point of that? It's not even open yet," he asked.
"Yeah, but it will be in thirty minutes. If we get there before them, we can rub it in their faces that we beat them."
"You're sounding like Dragstrip."
"Yeah, well, I kinda missed his 'always beat everyone' attitude. Come on, we're Stunticons. The least we can do is act like the rest of them are here," he tried to convince him.
"So, you want us to beat everyone, like Dragstrip, be paranoid of everyone, like Breakdown, and be angry at everyone, like Motormaster," Dead End said.
"Exactly! Well, except Motormaster. Dude's a grade-A Slagger," Wildrider told him. Dead End gave a groaned before standing up.
"Might as well go today. You already woke me from my slumber and the psychotic bear will make the morning announcement soon," Dead End conceded, standing up and heading to the shower. "Let me make sure I'm clean first."
Fifteen minutes later, Dead End and Wildrider were right in front of the cafeteria, waiting for the doors to be unlocked. The doors were locked and no one could get in, leaving the two Stunticons to think of a way to entertain themselves. "So," Dead End began, "who do you think is going to break first?"
"Eh, I don't know, but I'm sure a lot of people are betting their shanix on me," Wildrider answered.
"Yes, being labeled the Ultimate Manic is sure to get a lot of people to think you will be the first to kill," Dead End conceded.
"Yeah, problem with that. I'm already cracked," Wildrider whispered the last part to Dead End. "I'm already crazy, which makes me one of the saner person in here."
"I don't understand that logic."
"Think about it. This game is design to get sane, logical people to become insane and kill each other. I'm already crazy, so the inverse should happen. I get saner as the game goes along," Wildrider told him. Dead End couldn't understand the logic in any of that.
"Are you - oh, what's that human term – trolling me," Dead End asked.
"Uh, no. Duh," Wildrider chastised, waving his finger like a disappointed parent. "You think I would tell blatant lies like that?"
"Yes."
"Oh, well, anyway, another thing that should get you to trust me is that I absolutely suck at murdering people quietly. I don't do things with subtly," Wildrider told him. "I would be, without a doubt, one of the worst at murdering people without anyone figure it out."
"Now that is true," Dead End agreed. "So, how do I rank in your little list of potential killers?" Dead End asked.
"Eh, somewhere down at the bottom. I don't think you have enough motivation to kill anyone. Way to fatalistic to actually murder someone to get out of a life and death situation," Wildrider told him.
"Hmm, that's sounds reasonable, although whether that holds up or not, will wait and see," Dead End trailed off ominously.
"Oh, come on, Deady. You're not seriously planning to kill anyone… right?" he asked.
"Hmm, no, but I have a very good idea of who's going to commit the first murder if there is one," Dead End said.
"Wait, you do? Who?"
"You think I'm just going to tell you?" Dead End chastised.
"No, but, can I make a guess?" Wildrider asked. Dead End thought it over for a second before replying.
"One."
"Shockwave?"
"No."
"Dammit!" Wildrider cursed, kicking the cafeteria doors. "I thought for sure that would be correct. He's first on mine."
"I admit, he does make a reasonable choice for first murderer, but I'm positive it won't be him," Dead End replied. Wildrider glared at him.
"How do you know the guy who's going to commit the first murder?" Wildrider asked.
"Oh, nothing. Just heard a few things. You won't believe what people will say, thinking no one's around," Dead End said.
"What do you-"
"You two are up early," someone mentioned off from the side. The two turned to see Ratchet coming down the steps. "Looks like I wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep well," Ratchet noticed.
"I slept well," Dead End told him. "Wildrider over here, for some reason, insisted on getting up early and waking me up as well."
"Oh, yeah. You two sleep in the same room, right?" Ratchet asked.
"You would be correct. Now, what were you losing sleep over?" Dead End asked.
"Actually, it involved you. You think we can talk together right now," he said, glaring at Wildrider, "alone."
"Why? So you can kill him?" Wildrider asked.
"No, of course not!" Ratchet yelled, trying to explain to them. "I only what to talk to him. Swindle said something about him and Dead End having a conversation that interests me," he explained.
"And what was it about?" Dead End asked.
"About what's going on outside," Ratchet asked.
"Ah, well then. You can talk to both me and Wildrider about it. We spent some time talking about it," he comforted him.
"Are you sure?" he asked uncertainly.
"Hey, I got a CPU too, bub," Wildrider snarled.
"Alright, alright. Anyway," Ratchet said, trying to start off the conversation, "I've been trying to figure out what's going on outside. Swindle said you two having been talking a bit about it so I thought I came for any answers you would provide," Ratchet told them.
"Is that so?" Dead End mused, putting a finger to his chest. "Well, me and Wildrider have been talking quite a lot about the state of the outside world, mainly because this a is very familiar felling to us," Dead End confided.
"It is. You see, sometime during the war, after Cybertron died for the first time, the Stunticons were sent to look for any supplies from the ruins of cities," Dead End told him.
"Yeah, it was all spooky and stuff, you know?" Wildrider butted in.
"Anyway," Dead End continued, "everyday, it was the five of us, staying in large buildings with no one around us. Not a single sound from the outside world except us, and we didn't get along very well. Luckily, this didn't required very much contact with each other, so we just headed off by ourselves. I took a room farther away from everyone else and just wrote some stuff using whatever I could fine. Decepticons didn't really favored writing utensils."
"Or anything, really."
"Every night, I just sit and listened to the nothingness from the outside world. The cold, stark feeling came to all of us. The fact that the world we know was dead, because of our own actions. Waging war until the planet couldn't sustain us anymore. It left Cybertron… hollowed."
"Also, really not good for your olfactory systems," Wildrider chimed in.
"That same feeling that was in us when we were alone on Cybertron is the same feeling I'm getting right now. I can't help but think that the world we knew died again overnight and none of us noticed," Dead End finished. "So, was our explanation acceptable?" Dead End asked.
"That's… that's… that makes no sense. We were knock out for a day. The world doesn't just die overnight."
"Well, maybe I'm exaggerating, but, at the very least, I say that Optimus and his ilk evacuated Iacon for some reason. It's the only reason to explain the silence from outside."
"But, why?" Ratchet asked.
"Maybe we'll figured that out when more of the building become unlocked to us."
"This is an announcement. It is now 7 am. Have a wonderful day," the announcement chimed in.
"Now then," Dead End said, opening the door to the cafeteria, "shall we refuel?"
Breakfast went by without a hitch. Everyone turned up without any mishaps and the conversation was kept on the lighter side of things, with them talking about the more crazier and wackier side of the war, the most talked about one being when Wildrider set himself on fire for some reason. He claimed it looked like a good idea at the time, to the confusion of everyone else. Once breakfast with over, everyone left, leaving Jazz and Counterpunch to guard the energon.
Afterwards, Dead End and Wildrider headed to the 3rd floor and entered a barren room filled with no one. "Alright Deady, why did you dragged us up here?" Wildrider asked.
"What does anyone go to the art section for?" Dead End asked, getting a pad and starting to type in it.
"Ugh, seriously?" Wildrider asked.
"If you want, you can take one of the small rooms, covered it with white paper and just throw paint everywhere," Dead End suggested. Wildrider's blue optics brighten, literally.
"Oh. That's a great idea! Why didn't think I of that?" Wildrider mused, before grabbing a large roll of paper and several buckets of paint and making off with it. Dead End enjoyed the quiet for all of ten seconds before Hound came in and ruined it.
"Uh, why was Wildrider laughing manically and holding of that stuff?" he asked, a bit afraid.
"He is going to throw colors all around a room," Dead End answered.
"Oh, well, if you don't mine, I'll hang with you and do some drawing," he said, grabbing one of the digital sketchpad.
"Of what, may I asked?" Dead End asked.
"I don't know, maybe a flower from Earth," Hound said as he turned the sketchpad on and took a seat.
"Using a digital tool to draw something that naturally occurs. Isn't that oxymoronic?" Dead End asked.
"Uh, I don't know. Maybe," Hound said as he started drawing. "I don't know any fancy art terms."
"It's mostly used as a figure of speech, but I figure it could count in this case," Dead End mentioned as he continued writing.
"Ah, nice to know," Hound said, and the two stayed quiet for a little while before Hound started talking again. "Hey, is this alright?" he asked again, showing Dead End his drawing of a flower. It was drawn alright, but that was nothing considering the sketchpad automatically straighten lines for you if you want and the auto-fill feature makes it easy to color. The flower had a yellow stem while the pedals had an aqua and azure pattern, which, Dead End admitted, was very appealing. The background was a simple black one with yellow sparks of light. "It's not a real flower, at least I don't think so. Never seen one like it before, but it looks appealing to me."
"While the actually skill involved is minimal, I do admit you have a redeeming sense of style," Dead End told him. "It would be impressive if you could replicate that on a regular sketchpad."
"Yeah, well, that isn't happening," Hound admitted. "How's your poem going?" he asked.
"Hmm, that is hard to tell. The situation we're in is hindering my writing ability, it seems. I'm having trouble figuring out what words to evoke the right emotions," Dead End confided.
"Don't you just write words and make people cry?" Hound asked.
"Didn't you just listen to the last sentence? I need to find the right words to inflict the right emotions. The words I'm using seem to be too… vague for it to be effective."
"Oh, well, can't vague be effective?"
"If I want to change the context of the poem, yes," Dead End said, thinking it through. "Perhaps I can do that." Before Dead End could think the rest of it through, Wildrider came in with paint of different colors.
"Deady! Look what I made," he yelled, before glancing over at Hound. "I have no idea who you are, but come look at it as well!"
"Uh, what?" Hound stumbled before Wildrider ran over and hauled him over his shoulder out of the room and ran out. Dead End stared dumbly at what just happen before heading out of the room towards where Wildrider took Hound. It wasn't hard tracking him down; he just had to follow the paint stains that he left towards a room. He opened it to quite a sight.
The walls were painted a multitude a colors, looking like one big, big swirling mess that you had to be high to understand. Wildrider was on top of Hound, talking in a calm tone about what each wall meant, indirectly transferring paint onto Hound's body. "This represents the inner feelings of my soul, looking for another explosion to cause," Wildrider said, pointing his finger to the wall on the right that was painted in primarily warm colors.
"Wildrider, are you done manhandling him?" Dead End asked.
"Deady! How's my work of art?" Wildrider asked him, waving his hand around the room in a magnificent gesture.
"It's uh… special," Dead End told him. "So, can you let him go?" Dead End asked. Wildrider glanced between him and Hound for a second before relenting, getting off him.
"Eh, I guess. I gave him a detail looked at my, how do you pronounce it… a mural," Wildrider said, getting off Hound. Hound immediately got up and ran out of the room, yelling a quick word of thanks to Dead End before disappearing from view. Dead End glared darkly at Wildrider before speaking.
"Was that really necessary?" Dead End asked.
"Uh, yeah. I thought so," Wildrider told him. Dead End gave a groan before speaking again.
"It's almost time for lunch. Clean up a bit and we'll repaint you after lunch," he told him.
"You got it."
After 30 minutes of attempting to make Wildrider look at least presentable and giving a quick once-over with Wildrider body that still left several discoloration marks visible and accidentally getting some on Dead End, they appeared in the lunch room last. Everyone was already sitting at the table, drinking and talking. They had glanced at the two late arrivals before continuing with their conversation unperturbed. The two Stunticons took a seat at the table and inserted themselves in the conversations whenever asked.
Once lunch was over an hour later, everyone went off to do their own thing, with Dead End dragging Wildrider roughly by the arm to the art room to reapply paint onto their armor and Hound and Vortex to look over the energon. An hour-and-a-half later, they looked sparkling new, Dead End remarking that they actually looked "presentable" again. With that done, the duo headed up to the floor above them and went into the lounge.
Inside, they could see Mirage and Jazz watching over the low-grade while Vortex, Brawl, and Hoist just lounging around. The two took a seat next to the two Combaticons in the room, who were in the middle of a conversation.
"I'm telling you, Megatron would destroy him!" Brawl yelled, slamming his fist on the table.
"And I'm telling you, Overlord would rip him apart!" Vortex replied back.
"Do I even want to know?" Dead End asked as he and Wildrider took a seat.
"We're debating over whether Overlord or Megatron would win in a one-on-one fight. No weapons or anything like that; just grisly hand-to-hand combat," Brawl answered for them.
"And I'm telling you, Overlord would rock the scrap out of Megatron. Without that laser cannon that's practically imbedded to his arm, he's would fall quickly to Overlord indestructibleness," Vortex told him.
"But Megatron has far superior wits than Overload and would think of a way to take him down," Brawl shot back.
"What's your opinion?" Vortex asked. Dead End thought it over.
"I guess it would have to do with the environment. If there was stuff that Megatron could take advantage of, then he would when. If not, than Overlord would win," Dead End answered. "So, it would be a tie."
"Ugh, what an anticlimax that would be," Wildrider bemoaned.
"This is an announcement," they heard the voice pronounce over the intercom which bewildered some of the people involved, considering it was nowhere near nighttime, "we have a special event scheduled for the A/V room. Attendance is mandatory. If you do not come, you will be punished," Monobear said, before getting off.
"What do you think that was about?" Hoist asked the room.
"I've no idea," Dead End said, "but we better make out way there," he said, and the seven of them left the lounge and head to the A/V room. Inside they found a few people already there. Minutes later, everybody filed in, leaving the room kind of cramp.
"Okay, so why did the stupid bear asked us to come up here?" Counterpunch asked the room.
"To give you a gift!" the stupid bear reply, coming out of thin air again and holding a stack of discs. "Everyone, take the one with your name on it and watch it," the bear ordered. Everyone glanced at each other before they took one at a time and took a seat by a screen. Dead End was one of the last and put his disc in the computer and placed the headphones nearby over his head to listen.
Inside, he saw something most peculiar: footage of himself leaving the Ibex poet club. It was a place that had been rebuild after the war had ended. "Here you see Dead End leaving his favorite place in all of Cybertron, a poetry club that he had a hand in rebuilding." It made Dead End kind of happy to see something like this, which instantly caused him to worry. Something bad was about to happen and it was proven true when the footage turned to static and cleared up again, the place was a broken down wreck. Walls were cracked and holes were made, and Dead End could see that a part of the landscape was burning now. "Oh no, whatever happen to his place. If Dead End wants to find out, he will have to get out of here and there is only one way to do that," the bear left off ominously and the video ended, leaving Dead End last sight of his broken down place embedded in his databanks.
He turned to see everybody in varyingly looks of shock. Some, like Shockwave, Soundwave, Jazz, Onslaught, Ratchet, and Hoist, looked calm and were in the mist of calming everyone else down. Others, like Scavenger, Hound, Blurr, and Swindle, were freaking out and needed to be calmed down by the others. At the end, when everybody had calmed down to a reasonable amount, had been speaking of what exactly what they saw.
"What was that?" Scavenger had started out, holding his head in worriment.
"I don't know," Jazz murmured. "Could that have been faked?"
"It had to be!" Hound yelled out, obviously affected by the video. "Something like that happening is… impossible."
"How did they even get that footage of us?" Mirage asked. "That… should be impossible."
"It looked like they have been keeping a eye on us for far longer than we imagine," Ratchet told them.
The conversation went on like that for a short while longer before Jazz noticed that Monobear was still there, shining his smile in a toothy grin."You!" Jazz yelled at the chromatic bear. "What was the meaning of those videos?" Jazz asked.
"Oh, well, it's been three days and I've grown bored, so I've decide to hand you your first motive!" the bear told them, his smile leaving his face.
"Motive?" Rewind asked.
"Yes, a motive. Something to help move the process along faster. Oh, I bet one of you is planning something right now," the bear chanted excitedly. "Now then, since you've got what you required, I'll be off. Happy killings," the bear taunted before disappearing again. The others were looking at each other, wondering whether or not what they were shown was true. Something they had all loved… destroyed over a couple of day? That was impossible, but the video seemed so real…
"Alright everybody," Jazz began, "it's almost dinnertime. Let's head on down there and just forget about what we saw. They had to be fake." The others looked at each other, but silently agreed and headed downstairs to the cafeteria.
Half an hour later, they had all calmed down and were discussing what to do. They had all agreed to keep even better watch of the energon and low-grade than before and everyone agreed to be with at least three people in any situation or alone in their rooms. Another half-hour later, dinner was over and they had left. Dead End headed straight up the stairs to the second floor and towards his room, Wildrider right behind him. He opened it and both of them stepped in.
"Man, that ruined my whole prediction on who is going to killed first. Now any of them could be the first to kill," Wildrider complained.
"Hmm, maybe, my number one guess is still a viable killer," Dead End replied.
"Deady, come on. If you know who's going to kill, tell everybody about it. You could potentially stop a murder," Wildrider told him.
"Really, now. Are you extolling the virtues of cooperation?" Dead End asked.
"Uh, maybe, I don't know," Wildrider agreed.
"Wildrider, listened. It's kill or be killed right now. A murder is going to happen. Not telling anybody insures the one I suspects to do it, does it, and I can make sure he doesn't get away from it. If we stop it now, we're going to go in the actual first murder blind," Dead End told him.
"Dead End." He was using full name now. Very serious. "You're not talking sense."
"What I'm saying is I know who is going to die in two days' time and who the killer is. If we prevent it, than we will have significantly less chances of solving the real first murder."
"What is that supposed to mean and how do you know?" Wildrider asked.
"Look I know everything except the how. If we can figure it out tomorrow, than we can convince everybody about the person's guilt when the time comes," Dead End pleaded with him.
"But who is going to murder tomorrow?" Wildrider asked
Dead End stared blankly before, thinking it through before laying back down in his bed. "Go to sleep, Wildrider. While I'm sure I know someone's going to murder in two days, I don't know if a murder is going to happen tomorrow. This motive video complicates things. If nothing happens tomorrow, I'll tell you. If a murder does happen, I won't. Good night," Dead End said as he went to sleep. Wildrider looked at him uncertainly before heading out the door, trying to think of what Dead End told him meant.