"Ugh, no more high-grade for a while, at least until Mixmaster makes the tonic," Jazz muttered as he washed away the purged contents he spewed onto the sink. He cupped some water and swallow some to get rid of any gunk that might be stuck in his mouth's wires and denta and spit it out. He exited the bathroom into the main room, leaning against the wall for support. He probably should've went easy on the high-grade, but everyone their wanted to forget about the brutal murders of Nightbeat and Mirage and he had to indulge as well. He didn't realize they were drinking far more high-grade than usual… and Monobear personally instituted a new rule to allow people to sleep at the bar, which did more to encourage everybody to drink more.

*Knock Knock*

"Urg…," Jazz muttered as he head on over to the door to open it. He didn't want to talk to anyone, but he was sure whomever it was would keep doing it until he actually answered. He lumbered on over to the door and opened it to see Dead End, Hoist, Smokescreen, and Skywarp waiting at the door. "Yeah?"

"Hey, we need your help involving redacted files," Skywarp told him which earned a confused look from Jazz.

"Did he just say-"

"Yeah, he did," Dead End cut him off. "He, Hoist, and Smokescreen found some files with redacted content in it. We were hoping you could get the contents back." He held up a file and handed it out to him, who grabbed it and looked at it.

"Uh, Dead End, did you-"

"I. Don't. Know. That's why we need you to recover the files," he said, glaring at him.

"Well, I admit to blocking out and censoring some content, but recovering it is a different story, especially since people have started customizing them," he told them.

"So you can't break it?" Smokescreen asked, disappointed.

"I never said that. I might be able to, but it'll be difficult to do so," he told them.

"Do you need anything to help you break it open?" Hoist asked.

"I'll need some encryption breaking devices. If we can't find any here, I'll need you to make some," he told Hoist.

"It'll take a while and I specialized in repairing objects, but I might be able to make one," he answered, rubbing his head uncertainly.

"You don't sound certain," Jazz murmured.

"Repairer, not an inventor, but I can make it work, I think," he answered.

"Very well… I guess that'll work if we don't find some. We could probably find datapads on it in the stores to make some."

"Alright, we got a good idea of what to do. So what shall we do first?" Smokescreen asked.

"I don't know about you, but I'm sleeping for a little bit longer. Bye," Jazz said as he closed the door. He gave a yawn before walking over to the bed and get on it, ready to sleep the morning away.

"Drift, open the damn door!" Ratchet yelled as he knocked on his door. The group who were talking to Jazz looked over at him before walking off in the opposite direction and three spots to his right, Onslaught and Blast Off were trying to get in Swindle's room. Ratchet waited impatiently, crossing his arm and tapping his feet against the ground. After a few annoying seconds, the door opened, revealing a groggy Drift holding his head.

"You knocked," Drift murmured in pain.

"Did you learn about the values of responsible drinking while purging your systems out," Ratchet muttered as he moved on in without his position.

"Hey, I haven't given you permission to… enter," Drift murmured as Ratchet made his way inside and walked over to the center of the room.

"Were you going to say no?" Ratchet questioned him.

"…No," he admitted and closed the door behind him. "What do you want?"

"Wanted to make sure you were still good. One night of binge drinking could be bad for your systems, particularly your balance coordinators," he told him.

"Whatever…," Drift murmured, shuffling his feet over to his bed and laying on it.

"Also could affect the fuel pump's cycle, making you drowsier, as you are demonstrating fantastically," he informed him.

"Great… now go away," the swordsman said, curling up in bed.

"Come on, Drift, let's not form any bad habits," Ratchet chastised him.

"If you were in my position, you wouldn't be saying that," Drift muttered.

"Yeah, but unlike you, I make smart decisions. Not unhealthy ones," he rebuked.

"Quit lecturing me."

"No."

"Why."

"Well, let's start with the fact that we're in a death place where anyone could kill you and it's bad to start developing bad habits," Ratchet answered.

"Can you let me drink away my misery in peace?" he asked, annoyed. "I'm already getting nightmare about the dead and I don't need you berating me."

"You deserve it for putting yourself in danger," he chastised. "Listen, I'll indulge your new found attraction for alcoholic beverages once we're out of here, but we need to escape first and having you sober is the best wat to prevent that."

"I know… but this place sucks," Drift complained.

"Ugh," the medic groaned before walking over to the table, grabbing a chair, and bringing it over to Drift's bedside before taking a seat on it. "Alright then, I guess I'll play shrink to you while I'm here."

"No… please let me sleep in peace," the hungover bot moaned in pain.

"Yeah… no. You made your choice and you have to live with it," Ratchet told him, relaxing in the chair. "So, these nightmares. Let's talk about them."

"This is so… nice," Hound said as him and Rewind were walking through the cyberforest. The spinmetal leaves were sprouting out of the ground beautifully and the metal rubber psi-leaves on the solid steel trees were hanging nicely. It really was a wondrous thing.

"It's alright," Rewind interrupted his tranquility, walking behind him and looking around uninterested. He might've been more interested if Chromedome was around, but walking around without Chromedome around and no one talking to him meant that he got to thinking about Chromedome again. Then he got to thinking about Chromedome's death, being impaled by those sharp knives….

"Hey, come look at this flower!" Hound shouted, waving at him to come over. Rewind shook those depressive thoughts off and ran on over to him to examine the flower. It was emerging out of the ground in a gleaning red metal and ending in tulip-shaped petals in purple metal.

"Wow, that's pretty," Rewind said, looking at it with a small smile.

"It's a rare type of copper flower with palladium petals. It would be nice in a vase," he told him, softly rubbing the stem of it.

"Cool…," the archivist said, bringing his hand in and rubbing it as well, watching the flower softly sway against his touch. "How much do you know about plants?"

"Quite a bit. Not as much as actually horticulturists and botanists, but a bit," Hound told him, removing his hand and standing back up with Rewind following him. It's a complicated field, much like's Earth's plants. Yeah, they can both be boil down to the basics. Earth's plants need a healthy amount of water daily and Cybertron's plant required an influx of energon from the ground into the plants, but the details are very complicated."

"So, is it easy for anyone to get into it?"

"Yeah. Just need to make sure to watch over them and develop a schedule to do so. If you can master that, you should be just fine," Hound told him. "If you want, I can give you some pointers. Could be valuable to use once we get out of here."

"That would be nice… if we get out of here," Rewind muttered, looking around.

"Come on, Rewind. Don't be like that," Hound comforted, wrapping his arms around him instinctively." Things look bad, especially with Mirage and Nightbeat's death, but we'll carry on. We'll survive."

"But… what can we do to win? Every time we try to find a way out of this, it always ends up as a dead end and more people just end up dying. How can we succeed when there's no way out?" Rewind asked him.

"I… I don't know," Hound answered honestly, "but we can't just give up as that what the mastermind wants. Do you really want to give the person responsible for Chromedome's death a pass?" Hound asked. Appealing to anger wasn't something Hound liked to do, but with Rewind, it was practically the only thing that could give him a good kick in the aft to actually move on.

"No! Of course not! I want him dead!" Case proven. "It's just… so hard to get out hands around that slippery bastard."

"We'll find a way, somehow," Hound continued to encourage him. "He'll pay for this, but until then," he reached his free hand out and plucked the flower from the ground and handed it to Rewind, who clasped on it and gazed downed at it, a look of surprising elation filling his face, "put this in a vase and stay alive and energetic."

"*Knock knock knock*

"We've been here for thirty minutes. He's not opening," Blast Off told Onslaught as he leaned against the wall, bored. Onslaught turned to glare at him before knocking again, causing Blast Off to sigh painfully at Onslaught's futility. "I see you've adapted Brawl's blind determination. A character trait I would've avoided."

"Better than your constant apathy," he sniped back. "Maybe you can learn how to care."

"I cared fifteen minutes ago. I don't care now," he told him. "Maybe you can translate what the silence is telling you and stop knocking on the damn door."

"We said we would talk with him, so we keep trying until he answers," Onslaught said, determined, and knocked on the door again even harder.

"Ugh," Blast Off scoffed, shaking his head and looking around to see Bumblebee walking out of his room, clutching his head tightly. "Oh, look, here comes a heavy drinker," Blast Off said, turning to Onslaught, who apparently didn't hear him and was still knocking on the door. He scoffed at him and walked on over to the hungover bot, looking for someone to talk down to. "And how are you this morning?"he asked him.

"I feel like I got weights tied to me, bringing me down. I really shouldn't have drunk all of that high-grade," he bemoaned, looking up at the tall figure. "You?"

"Onslaught is trying and absolutely failing at getting Swindle out of his room," the sniper informed him, looking back at Onslaught still knocking on Swindle's door.

"So that's what that noise is," Bumblebee moaned, looking past Blast Off to the commander.

"Open up!" he yelled.

"He's not going to stop, isn't he?"

"Not until Swindle opens that door… which will be never more than likely," Blast Off told him.

"These doors are soundproof, right?" Bumblebee asked.

"Yes, but vibrations still travel through the door and are audible on the other side. The yelling is unnecessary, though. It's doing nothing except get on my nerves," he told him, holding his head in pain. "Silence is a wondrous thing. It's a shame he doesn't realize that."

"Can't you stop him? I'm too tired to do it," Bumblebee told him.

"He's too headstrong to stop, so no," he told him.

"So it all relies on Swindle."

"That or we could just walk somewhere else," Blast Off added.

"That actually sounds like a good idea," the scout agreed. "Let's head on out."

"Let's… wait," he said as he noticed the door finally opening and Swindle popping his head out.

"Swindle. We need to- Gah!" Onslaught yelled as he held his hand onto his pelvic region as he got on his knees.

"No," Swindle simply said as he closed the door and Onslaught collapsed forward, resting against the door.

"Oh…guess I'll have to drag him away from Swindle to somewhere where he is less likely to get his gearbox crushed," Blast Off muttered as he walked on over to him

"Yeah… might be a good idea."

"Oh, Shockwave's room. Are we here to ransack his personal effects?" Wildrider asked Perceptor as they entered.

"No, we're here for information. AI, are you there?" Perceptor asked.

"Hey. Good to see you make it past the trial. I honestly thought you wouldn't make it for a second there. It was a pretty difficult one and I thought you were going to fail," the AI greeted them, "especially when you specifically kept going after the wrong people."

"Thanks for reminding me," Perceptor grumbled. "Look, you're paying attention, so how about you explain to us the report Hoist and the others found."

"Sure. I can tell you… nothing," the voice said.

"You're kidding, right?" Perceptor complained, clenching his fists.

"I was made after that particular event. Sorry. I only know despair," he told them with what Perceptor was sure was a shrug of unknowing.

"Well… does the mastermind ever talk about it?" Wildrider asked for Perceptor.

"I don't know… but I think might have a name for it you can use for more information," he told them.

"You do? Well, what is it?" Perceptor asked.

"I think it's called… yes, The Tragedy," he told them.

"Well, that's a bland, but succinct name for it," the scientist muttered.

"Why is it called the Tragedy? I mean, a mass suicide is really, really bad, even I must admit, but not enough to give it that name. I could think of several other things worse than that," Wildrider asked him.

"It's probably because all of that was a prequel for the war or during the war. This mass suicide happened during Reconstruction, a moment when we were supposed to bring Cybertron to its former glory," Perceptor guessed.

"Eh, I don't know. Wasn't around," the AI told them. "Kind of wish I was. To see everyone's hope for the future shattered would've been amazing."

"Man, you're a weirdo," Wildrider muttered, earning a strange look from Perceptor, not believing that Wildrider just said that.

"Yes… he is, but he's on our side… I think," Perceptor muttered.

"Eh, I'm neutral. You could all die or become my new master. Just don't tell the mastermind about me being an AI or I'll make sure you'll feel nothing but despair," the AI threaten them.

"Was that a death threat? I think that was a death threat," Wildrider muttered.

"Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't," the AI said nonchalantly. "You got what you want. Have a despairing day." The two bots looked at each other before they exited out of the room.

"Wow… those two are going really fast," Nautilator muttered as him sand Bludgeon sit at the stands watching Blurr and Knock Out driving around the racetrack.

"The two of them were obviously built for speed," Bludgeon acknowledged, looking over the racetrack. "I could never reach that top speed."

"Yeah… you're a tank, right?" he asked, turning to him.

"I thought that would be obvious, but yes I am," he agreed.

"So… you could just run them over, right?" he asked.

"Hmm, probably. They would probably not be very pretty and sleek after I'm done with them," Bludgeon smiled at that.

"Oh… you got that look in your optics," he muttered worryingly.

"The one everyone in my group has when they're about to attack something or are planning on it," Nautilator told them.

"Humph, unlikely, since I have self-restraint," Bludgeon scoffed. "I admit that I'm a bit headstrong, but I've had a lot of training in patience and I meditate often. I can keep cool under pressure."

"Right… if you say so," the Seacon muttered.

"And what about you? You're not a fighter, but you have some dark thoughts if the first thing you pointed out about my tank alt. mode is that I can crush people, not the fact that I'm heavily protected. You think of violence first and protection second. Quite revealing," Bludgeon reasoned.

"I'm just… really paranoid. Being around the other Seacons, who practically live on violence, and you start thinking more about the potential risk of something instead of other things. I'm sure some of their tendencies have rubbed off of me, although I am really not combat-efficient enough to use it. I can fire a gun semi-accurately and have basic hand-to-hand and bladed weapons skills. I'm not exactly a hardcore, scary aft-kicker like them… or you," Nautilator told him.

"Humph… sound argument," Bludgeon nodded.

"Huh, thanks for the compliment," Nautilator said, looking back at the racetrack.

"How many compliments did you get from your gestalt?"

"Not much."

"Hey, what are you doing?" Beachcomber asked with a smile as he stumbled upon Mixmaster and Scavenger in the Science Lab.

"Trying to make a tonic for the people hungover. Scavenger's watching," Mixmaster answered for the both of them.

"Hi," Scavenger waved nervously.

"Hi to you, too. So, how's the tonic going?" Beachcomber asked as he took a seat on one of the stools.

"Well, since I'm not affected by hangovers like many of the others, not well. You and I are both very good with dealing with it, as well as Scavenger and the other science and medical personal," he told him.

"Yeah… we're good at it," Beachcomber acknowledge.

"So… how are you feeling?" Scavenger asked, leaning.

"Uh, fine. Why do you ask?" Beachcomber asked.

"You know… cutting up the wrist is kind of… troubling," he replied very nervous and Beachcomber's smile felled.

"Oh, that," he muttered, scratching the back of his neck. "I'm… okay-ish"

"Never add -ish to an end of a word. It's stupid," Mixmaster told him as he combined some liquids together.

"Sorry!" Beachcomber said, holding his hands up.

"Relax. I won't throw acid in your face for using stupid suffixes. Monobear would execute me…," he muttered as he finished combining the chemicals. "Now, are you keeping away from sharp blades?"

"Uh, yeah. Of course. It's been less than 24 hours, but I've been doing alright," Beachcomber said.

"Great. Remember to talk to people. That'll help you cope with depression," Mixmaster told him.

"We can talk together. I don't get to talk to many people," Scavenger said while twiddling his fingers.

"Yeah, that'll be fine. I know I haven't been very open when people and that tends to make things work. I really need to talk to people," Beachcomber acknowledged.

"Good to hear. It would be a shame to lose a bright mind to suicide, especially one in Geology, which isn't a very appreciated field," Mixmaster agreed.

"Thanks for that. Not many people respect my field just because it isn't flashy like Chemistry or Physics," Beachcomber thanked him.

"I tried to get in Geology, but I could never fully understand it. Good on you for doing so," Mixmaster said with a nod.

"Rocks are complicated. I like the Cybertronian body. Less complex to me," Scavenger agreed.

"…Thanks. I really those," Beachcomber smiled at them.