"Where do you think Swindle was?" Dead End asked Wildrider as they drank at the bar.

"I don't know. Don't care," Wildrider bluntly told him, gripping his glass in anger.

"Are you really letting Monobear get to you?" Dead End questioned, turning to him curiously.

"No way. You know me. I don't care about other people's opinion of me," he told him before downing his glass in one gulp.

"Yes… of course you're not," he said in doubt.

"Hey, I know that tone. You don't believe me," he growled, glaring at him.

"You've been a bit angrier since Monobear mentioned you changed, which I find odd," Dead End muttered. "You're a psycho, but a relatively easy-going one. You don't get angry."

"I know… but what does he mean by me changing!? I don't get it!" Wildrider wondered to himself. Dead End let him stew it over as he thought it through. He was angry about him changing. Does that mean that Wildrider is afraid of change? No, things changed all the time. That wasn't it. What about himself changing? Maybe, but he's shown no evidence of it. What was it? "I don't like it, Deady. I really don't like this change." 'This change?' Why this change in particular? If the past happen, there would've been peace, hope, stability… Wait a minute.

"That's it," Dead End muttered. "That's a truly odd fear."

"Huh, what?" Wildrider mumbled, turning to him.

"You are a remarkably fearless person, but you do have one thing that you fear," Dead End continued.

"What? You're kidding, right? Me, have a fear? What would that be?" he chuckled, amused.

"Stability," Dead End answered and Wildrider looked scared.

"Hey, don't you tell anyone about this, okay? I have a reputation and no one can know about this, got that?" he asked Dead End, sticking a finger in his face, making Dead End actually chuckled.

"An unstable person afraid of stability. It makes for perfect irony," he said.

"It's not funny, you aft," Wildrider chided, offended.

"Oh, Wildrider, no need to act like that. You the one who laughs at everyone else's suffering. Allow me this moment of rarely experienced mirth," he told him, still laughing at him.

"Quit it. Laughing at people's weakness is my job!" he yelled at him.

"Now, now, Wildrider. Don't tell me you can't take it like you can deal it," Dead End continued in making fun of him. Wildrider continued to glare at him, his mouth in a scowl. As Dead End was laughing to himself, he didn't see Wildrider clocking his arm back.

*CLANK!*

"Guah!" Dead End gasped as he collapsed to the floor, a throbbing pain on his head as he heard footsteps walking away from him.

"Jerk," he heard Wildrider said, sounding betrayed, as he walked away, leaving Dead End on the floor. He looked up at the ceiling, wondering what happened in a dazed. He laughed at Wildrider's misery. He laughed at his fear. Wildrider laughed at other people's misfortune often, but he usually avoided him and the other people in the gestalt. Dead End mocked and derided him. Why did he do that? Why did he make his only friend in here punch him in the face? Why… was he losing his mind?

"Are you okay, sir?" a voice said and he tilted his head slightly to look in the face of the bartender kneeling over him. Dead End merely glanced at him before he locked his face into a wry grin?

"You know what? Get some high grade, I think I need to drink up," he told him, eliciting a strange look from the bartender.

"You're a strange one… but hey. Nothing wrong with drinking up," he nodded.

"Damn straight."

"So, what was your item up for incineration?" Skywarp asked Ratchet from behind the bar on the fourth floor lounge. Ratchet glanced up at him with a raised eyebrow as he poured a glass of low-grade for the two of them. They had currently down three glasses apiece and were on to the fourth. They were starting to get a lot more open with each other and Skywarp was taking advantage of that. Laserbeak was in-between them, drinking a glass of regular energon. Aside from them, Jazz was there with Beachcomber, trying to teach him how to play the bass.

"Well… it's nothing really. Just a scalpel. My first one. A doctor named Downstep gave it to me from his personal stash of medical devices. I held a deep respect for him," Ratchet told him as Skywarp gave him a glass and took a sip from it before he continued. "He died before the war. While in an operation, a patient brought a rare infectious disease into the room. The cybonic plague."

"Cybonic plague? Wait, hold on. That wasn't invented until the war start. That stuff was created by Shockwave," Skywarp told him.

"No, he didn't create it. He recreated it," he told him.

"Recreate it?" Skywarp asked, surprised.

"Yes. More virulent and more deadly. However, this one was also deadly as well. It spread around the hospital quickly. They quarantined it. Most of the people died," Ratchet told him.

"Most of the people? Any survivors?" Skywarp asked.

"Just one," he told him.

"And who was that?"

"You're looking at him," he answered and Skywarp felt a shiver down his spinal column.

"Damn… how did you survive?" he asked as Ratchet finished down the rest of the glass. He paused slightly to swallow the energon before answering.

"Downstep somehow managed to create a cure. Thing is, he only had enough for just one person." Skywarp nodded morosely as he finished off his glass. "When he created it, it was down to me, him, a nurse, and a patient that was about to croak. I was the youngest by a solid half a million with the rest of my life ahead of me. The doctor was hold and had come down with a zero point the year before and was dying slowly. He decided quickly and injected me with it. After that, the patient died minutes later. The nurse and him tried to create another cure, but instead, they died in each other's arms. Lucky, for conjunx enduras. Got to die together," he finished his story as he leaned against the bar with a frown. Skywarp had a serious look on his face as he poured another glass for the two of them.

"Damn. I don't know how you can handle that. Being the only person to survive that," he muttered and Laserbeak agreed, flying to his shoulders and nesting its head against his shoulders.

"Had therapy for many years. The scalpel is the only thing I have of the incident. I couldn't simply just throw it away… but I will for everyone's safety," Ratchet told him.

"Humph, at least we're on the same page," Skywarp said in relief as he handed Ratchet his glass, which he took gently as he looked at Skywarp.

"Same page? Got a tragic story behind your object?" he asked him. Skywarp stayed quiet before taking a drink of his glass and answering.

"Yeah. Also pre-war. Since you told your story, might as well tell mine," he told him.

"Which is your object?" Ratchet asked him.

"The gold necklace with the oval amethyst jewel," Skywarp told him.

"That? Why is a piece of jewelry your object? Looks too fancy for you," he questioned him.

"You would be correct. I was a lower class in Vos. Not exactly prestigious," he told him with a chuckle. "But, it had good people. It was one of the few places on Cybertron in which the lower class could actually be friends with the middle and upper class. I… I had a friend. A flyer, by the name of Skywatch. He was a helicopter."

"Jet and copter. Interesting combo," Ratchet muttered.

"Yeah, an odd couple," he acknowledge. "We talked and talked, got to know each other a bit more while offering my little… enhancements to the fun."

"Pranks," Ratchet muttered.

"Bingo. Scrap, I had some fun with him. Too bad that came back to bite me in the aft," he muttered.

"Why is that?"

"Okay, first off, background info about the guy. He had serious self-esteemed issues as well as constantly being stressed out with his duties at work. It was going to be the tenth year since we met, so I decided to you know, do something special. I had this prank planned out as well as the necklace that I actually got legally. He knew stolen property when he saw it," Skywarp told him.

"Let me guess. The look on your face gave it away each and every time," Ratchet said as he gave one final gulp as did Skywarp before he began pouring more for them.

"Great work. For the prank, I decided to use tar that I stole from the local construction crew and got silicone feathers. When Skywatch came home, bang, got myself a silicone hawk," he told him with a dead-eye stare, giving him his glass.

"Something… happen, didn't it," Ratchet guessed as he began drinking with Skywarp doing the same.

"He ran. He ran out into the streets. Pretty soon, the local news caught wind of it and made a news story of it. The day after, he was made the laughingstock of the town," he told him.

"Wow… so, you two stopped being friends," Ratchet guessed.

"I had hopes. I went back to his apartment that night with the necklace in hand, hoping to make it up to him this time. The door was lock so I warped in. I searched the room and found him… dead," Skywarp told him.

"Dead?" Ratchet asked, surprised.

"I found him in the bathroom in the bathtub. He filled the bathtub up, ripped a power cable that was powering the hotel and brought it in the tub with him. Hotel said they had a brief power outage mid-day. Coroner ruled that as the time of death via suicide," he told him.

"Woah… okay," Ratchet muttered as he slammed a glass on the table. Laserbeak gave a few sad beeps before flying over to his shoulders and nesting his head against his neck.

"Yeah… I… I... I loved him. I was hoping we could've been something more. I was hoping we could…" he trailed off, unable to speak it.

"You don't have to say it," Ratchet told him as he laid a hand on his shoulders.

"How could I caused the death of the one person I cared about the most!? How?!" Skywarp yelled, slamming his fist against the table. Ratchet looked around to see Jazz and Beachcomber staring at them with startled expressions, wondering if they should stay there.

"Skywarp, let's head to my room. No one needs to see you like this," Ratchet told him, leading him out of the bar.

"Sure… let's go," he agreed, stumbling around the bar and into Ratchet's arms as they assisted each other out of the room.

"Open up, Swindle!" Onslaught yelled as he slammed into the door with the full weight of his body for what felt like the hundredth time to Blast Off, who was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. Onslaught was nothing if not determined, but it was getting annoying to Blast Off. Yeah, Swindle being missing was something that was worthy of investigation, but for Primus sake, one should learn when enough is enough. He glanced around to see Skywarp and Ratchet walking past them to Ratchet's room next door. He wanted to strike a conversation with them, but judging by the fact they were struggling to walk, they were probably too inebriated to strike a conversation with. How unfortunate, but you can't get lucky all the time.

"Onslaught, this is an exercise in futility," Blast Off reprimanded him.

"Shut up and help me bust this door down! The sooner we get in, the better!" Onslaught yelled at his subordinate as he rammed into the door for what felt like the one-hundred-and-first time.

"Someone save me from this repetition," Blast Off muttered to himself.

"Everything okay?" he heard someone say and turn to Bumblebee next to him.

"You wanna help? Help me bust this door down!" Onslaught shouted at him as he tried breaking the door down for what felt like the one-hundred-and-second time.

"Onslaught insists that brute force will open the door," Blast Off said, annoyed.

"Uh, didn't Hoist find some way to bust them down?" Bumblebee asked.

"Hoist… Blast Off, watch this door! I'm going to find him and see if he will help me bust this door down," Onslaught ordered him as he ran off in search of Hoist.

"Huh… thanks for that," Blast Off gave his thanks.

"Uh, you're welcome. I think," Bumblebee said, confused.

"Yeah, Onslaught is going a bit crazy with Swindle not appearing and is hoping to find a way to break into his room to talk to him," Blast Off told him.

"You think he's in danger?" Bumblebee asked.

"I doubt it. More likely than not, he's just ignoring us is my guess. Yet, Onslaught continued to be obscenely annoying about breaking into his room. He can't figure out that some people want to be left alone," he said, annoyed.

"You're not worried about him?" Bumblebee asked.

"Of the five of us, Swindle was the one to spend the most time away from us, usually with other people trying to make a shanix or two, but every now and then, he would just lock himself up in his room for the day. Granted, he's even more withdrawn now then he was then, but I'm sure he's fine," he told him. Bumblebee looked at him closely. One of his fingers was tapping against his arm lightly while the other hand was grasping his hand tightly as well as, strangely enough, one of his optics being dimmer than the other. If he had to guess, Blast Off was lying and was worried about him, although he made sure his stony face didn't shift to betray his thoughts. Only his body language and weirdly off optics were giving it away.

"Hey, you want to go somewhere else instead of waiting for Onslaught?" Bumblebee asked him.

"Huh?" he wondered, staring at him.

"I'm just saying, you look uncomfortable. Maybe we can relax somewhere for a little while," he recommended.

"That would be nice… but I shouldn't make him worry about me either," Blast Off muttered.

"Hey, come on. Since what happen at the second trial, you haven't spent your time with people not a member of your gestalt. So let's head to the lounge together. I heard Jazz is trying to teach Beachcomber how to play the bass," Bumblebee told him. Blast Off gave a sigh before answering.

"Sure. Why not. I'm sure Onslaught can break in by himself with Hoist," he said.

"Great. Come on, let's head up."

"I swear, if Monobear burns that plant, I'll toss him in the incinerator," Hound muttered at the tables at the mall. Rewind was by his side, thinking of things as well, while Hoist and Smokescreen took their place across from them, keeping quiet. Well, Hoist was.

"What's so special about a damn flower, especially one that weird to look at?" Smokescreen asked.

"It's a ghost orchid, you bastard. It's one of the rarest flowers on Earth. Botanist on Earth thought this thing was extinct twenty years ago. If that one burns… it might bring it one step closer to extinction," Hound told him.

"So? That thing is ugly. Ugly shit deserves to go extinct," Smokescreen brushed off.

"Take that back, you asshole!" he said, getting up and leaning over the table, shocking Rewind.

"Okay, look, your flower? Atrocious. You should be glad Monobear is ready to throw it in the incinera-toooor!" he gasped out as hound grabbed him by neck and pulled him toward him, starting to crush his neck cables.

"Woah, Hound! Stop!" Rewind said, trying to push him back.

"Smokescreen!" Hoist said as he tried to get Hound's hand off his neck. He quickly got on the table and pushed him off with Rewind providing help by pulling on him. After a few seconds, hey finally managed to take his hand off Smokescreen's neck cables, leaving him to fall off the table and to the ground, grasping his neck in pain.

"Ha! Can't back up your talk, huh?" Hound mocked as Hoist and Rewind kept him from continuing to choke him out.

"Hound, calm down. Now!" Rewind yelled at him. Hound paused, calming down, taking his words in, before he stopped struggling.

"Right. Sorry," he muttered before taking a seat. Hoist watched him to make sure he wasn't going to attack before he walked over to Smokescreen and help him on to his fist.

"Guah, you have some surprisingly strong hands, Hound," Smokescreen told him as Hoist guided him back to the table and they took a seat, Hoist making sure nothing was wrong with his neck cables.

"I've done some construction work," Hound explained. "Built some houses in the wild on Cybertron and some cabins on Earth."

"How rustic," Smokescreen muttered.

"Yeah, well, I always enjoyed the countryside," he said simply.

"Huh, could be easier than the city," he muttered.

"What city did you live in?" Rewind asked him.

"Good old Iacon. Before the war and after the war. Nothing better," he told them with a grin.

"In your hometown, huh?" Hound muttered.

"Yep. Created here. Lived here until the war started. Probably going to die here if we don't defeat Monobear," he told them.

"Yes… him," Hound muttered. "How are we going to beat him?"

"Well, we'll have to be clever, especially since he recording pretty much everything, including this conversation probably," Hoist told them.

"Yeah… that makes things really difficult," Hound muttered.

"Indeed, so does anybody have any- hey!" he shouted as Onslaught appeared out of nowhere and grabbed a hold of him, placed him over his shoulder, and started running back.

"Sorry! I'll return him later!" Onslaught told them as he left, stunning the three other people at the table before they could properly responded and was out of view. When the shock settled, the three of them looked back at each other before Smokescreen said something.

"What the fuck?"

"My blade! He has it and he's going to destroy it!" Bludgeon ranted on the first floor, outside of the trash room.

"Mine too! The bastard!" Drift yelled, pacing back forth in anger. Nautilator watched the two of them in exasperation. He knew with how sword-crazy the two of them was, the afternoon was going to be fill with him watching the two of them ranting to each other about their swords being in danger. How wonderful.

"I will disembowel him and stuff his wiring down his intake pipes!" Bludgeon continued to rant.

"Not before I slice his limbs off, one by one!" Drift added to his threats. Naturally, Nautilator sighed in annoyance. These two were going to be at it for a while. He should probably go somewhere else for a little while. Let them blow off some steam. Question is, where should he go? Maybe he should-

"Gah!" he yelled as someone ran over him, sending him to the ground and stepping on his back.

"Apologies!" he heard Onslaught say and look up to see Onslaught carrying Hoist over his shoulders, who wasn't liking it. , turning

"Let me go, you brute!" Hoist shouted as he carried him around the corner and out of sight.

"What the frag was that?" he asked out loud, turning to the two swordsman only to frown. Somehow, the two managed to completely ignore the Combaticon running over him with Hoist in his arms and were still ranting and raving to each other about Monobear threatening to destroy their swords. "Right, since you busy being annoying yellers, I'll head somewhere else. Hopefully someplace quieter," he said, getting back up and stomping away from the two.

"What the frag, Onslaught!?" Hoist yelled at him as he let in down in front of Swindle's door.

"I need you to help us break into Swindle's room," Onslaught told him.

"Us?" Hoist wondered, looking around. "There's nobody else around."

"What?" he said, looking around in confusion, his hand on his head and his face contorted to a grimace. "I told Blast Off to stay here."

"Look… why do you want to break into this door?" he asked.

"Swindle… I want to make sure he's safe," Onslaught told him.

"You realize if I do this and Swindle's in there, it leaves him open to night intruders," Hoist asked him.

"Huh?" Onslaught wondered, confused.

"Look, these doors aren't automatic. They have hinges that one has to use to get in. The way I opened Shockwave's door at the party made sure the hinges would break to allow entrance. It's why people can still enter his room. If we do this, Swindle's door would break, allowing people to attack him in the night," Hoist explained to him in detail and Onslaught's face turned to surprise before he contemplated it.

"Well… I guess that's a good point," he admitted, slumping his shoulders. "Doing this could put Swindle in danger at night."

"Exactly. Onslaught, I know you care a lot about your men, but think about your actions first before you get me. Your decisions could make things worse for other people, you men in particular," Hoist chastised him. Onslaught gave a remorseful sigh before speaking again.

"You're right. I'm overreacting. I'm a tactician. I should know that doing this would give Swindle a weakness for people to exploit," he muttered, thinking things through.

"Exactly. I'm going to head back to the mall and-"

"No, wait. I got an idea," he told him, excited again.

"What? You can't get in Swindle's room without breaking his door down," Hoist told him.

"No, it has nothing to do with Swindle at all. It's about the mole," Onslaught told him.

"Huh?" Hoist muttered, surprised. "What do you mean?"

"I'm saying, what if we use your techniques and break into the dead mole suspects room for any proof that they were the mole," Onslaught explained with a smile.

"That… might be a good idea. The mole could write some notes to himself. We could totally do that and prove that no one alive is the mole, thus making people a lot less suspicious of each other," Hoist agreed.

"I know, it's perfect. We might make it through the motive this time if we do that," Onslaught cheered.

"Right, I'm sure Hound and Rewind can watch over Smokescreen as we do it. First, I need an object to deliver precise force to the door like a chair leg," Hoist told him.

"Let me get one of my chair's leg. Four chairs is a bit much for me," Onslaught agreed, heading to his room real quick before the sound of metal being broken came out of the room. Onslaught emerged from the room quickly, chair leg in hand. "Right, Mirage is closet, so let's break into that first."

"Uh, can we do him last?" he asked him.

"Huh? Oh, uh, forget about your two's relationship," Onslaught nodded. "Alright, he's last."

"Good. Now let's break into Nightbeat's room."