By the time I woke up the next morning, the base was basically empty of bodies. Wheeljack was probably in his lab cooking up something dangerous, Cliffjumper was scheduled for patrol outside. According to a message on my TV, Bumblebee and Sam were on their way, so I wouldn't be as alone as I thought.

Luckily for them, they were at Sam's parent's when the Decepticons had attacked. They managed to miss all of the action.

It was easy to complete the tasks Ratchet set out for me when I had no distractions. Wheeljack showed me how to play music from the medbay console, so I was blasting some of my favorite pop songs as I worked. Ratchet would simply offline if he knew the music I was playing. He wasn't a pop guy.

I decided to work through a lunch break to give myself more free time once all my work was done. I was done by mid-afternoon. Cliffjumper was back from his patrol by then.

"Find anything interesting?"

"Only if you're a game hunter, which I doubt you are," he told me, shaking his head. "Lot of moose. Meece? Many mooses. However you say it."

I laughed. "I eat meat, but the kind you buy at the grocery store, not the kind you have to kill yourself. I understand the sentiment of it, but I don't understand hunting for sport."

"It does seem to be a wasteful practice, trophy hunting," Cliffjumper mused. "Moose are bigger than I thought."

"They're huge," I agreed. "It's a wonder why we didn't domesticate them instead of horses. Horses are probably a lot easier to tame than moose, though."

Small talk like this came fairly easily with Cliffjumper. It was a pleasant surprise- I couldn't expect everyone at base to generally enjoy my company, that would just feel weird, but they for the most part did enjoy my company in one way or another. Thanks, Past Me, for making good impressions.

"Are there any Cybertronian animals or creatures that resemble Earth creatures?"

That really got him going. As I had suspected, there were different species and types of creautres on Cybertron that were similar to the organic ones on Earth, but there were fewer of them than here on Earth.

I could feel my body cringe when Cliffjumper explained how he used to be a sort of trophy hunter before the Great War. Of course he was, after I basically talked shit about it here on Earth.

"It's a lot easier done with an electromagnetic-pulse generator than with a gun, and a lot less messy. And less death. Phasers are set to stun, y'know. Still had to aim just right, or it wouldn't have any effect and they'd get away."

"You guys had all that shit figured out, huh? No need for killing just because-" I stopped myself when I could hear what I was saying. "I mean-" I stammered.

"I know what you mean, I'm not as sensitive about it as I used to be. Those days will come again. I still have hope."

Cliffjumper wasn't so bad. I was at least grateful the twins weren't the two that stayed- that would have been a living nightmare. Sunstreaker still hadn't spoken to me since his outburst. Sideswipe had made some small talk, but there was less of it since the incident.

Hopefully they were getting whatever it was out of their systems.

I was pondering the meaning of life that evening in the Dungeon when I got word from Wheeljack. Sam and Bee had arrived. Population three had turned into population five. I decided that the meaning of life could wait for at least one more night.

"Sammy!" I exclaimed. "Finally, another human-human!"

"Human-human?" Sam laughed. He had almost fallen to the floor when I jumped him. "You mean- Oh, holoforms, right."

"Bumblebee," Cliffjumper greeted the fellow minibot. "How was it on the way here?"

"Rough, but manageable."

"When did you get your voice box fixed?" The last I knew, Ratchet was too busy with other things than to finally fix Bumblebee's damaged voice box. He could speak in his holoform, but not so much through his real form.

Until now, I guess.

"Ratchet fixed me up before Sam and I left, like right before," Bumblebee told me. His real voice was ever so slightly lower than his holoform's. "I must've forgotten to tell you. My bad."

"Hey, don't worry about it," I said, shaking my head. "I'm just happy for you!"

In reality, I hadn't had much time with Sam and Bumblebee, not much time that I remembered. Sam was still in college, so he was away from the Autobot base most of the year. Bumblebee was his guardian, and followed where he went unless he was needed by the team. That was why they were here now- Bumblebee would be backup, along with Cliffjumper and Wheeljack, as a last resort if things went south.

That was how I'd know they were in trouble. As long as the three of them were on base still, they were in the clear. I could breathe.

"What's on the activities list, cruise director?" Sam asked me.

I was never so excited to cook for another person. I even made dessert and appetizers. For the most part, I found myself making big meals and just having a lot of leftovers instead of cooking for myself every day. Cooking for one person was almost worse than cooking for multiple. You can only divide a recipe so many times.

"So how's it going with you and Jazz?"

"That's one way to have a dinner conversation," I stated, squinting at him from across the table. "No 'Wow, Abby, this looks delicious'?"

Sam cleared his throat. "My bad. Wow, Abby, this looks delicious! How is it going though, seriously?"

I stabbed my fork into my mashed potatoes. "Thanks, Sam. We're doing good, I think. It's kind of weird to know so little about him, and to have him know so much about me. As much as we try to ignore Past Me, it always seems to come up." I sighed. "At this point, living so far away from civilization is doing more damage than the memory loss. There's not a whole lot for me to do here besides sit around."

"No parties?"

"Maybe I'll plan a welcome back party," I hummed. "Have to do it all by myself, though, since Blue's gone. He helped me with the last one."

"Oh, man, I remember this one party you guys threw-"

I listened intently to Sam's story. It was about a party I had thrown in the first year of knowing the Autobots. It might have been the first one, but Sam didn't remember. It had been such a long time since the bots had partied like that, many of them apparently forgot that their high grade tolerance would be low. They rarely used it.

So most of them got really overcharged. That was what Sam called it. It sounded like a term I had looked up in Ratchet's database, basically meaning their version of drunk.

"We might not have all the supplies to throw something like that," I said thoughtfully. "I'm kind of Ratchet's assistant now, and First Aid's as well. Even while they're gone, Ratchet has me doing chores every day around the medbay."

"Do you like it?" Sam asked.

I shrugged. "Gives me something to do, and I at least feel like I'm helping. Throwing parties can only be so beneficial in a war."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Optimus will carry on and on about how this war isn't our burden to bear. You believed it for the longest time."

He said that in the past tense. Did I not believe it now?

They had all said something to that effect. Jazz and Prowl were insistent that I had no blame in recent events. Were they trying to convince me, too?

"What do you believe, Sam?" I asked him.

Sam cleared his throat. "Well, it changes a lot, but I basically believe that while this is not our war, we can help if we want to. Knowing that if we help, it makes us targets for the Decepticons and whatever other enemies are out there."

"You think they have other enemies out there besides the Decepticons?"

"God, I hope not, but it's possible," he replied.

The thought of more alien civilizations sent a chill through my spine. I wasn't so ignorant as to think we were the only ones out there, obviously not. But one known alien race is one thing. There were probably many planets out there sustaining life of some kind. The Cybertronians were so technologically advanced, they figured out space travel and portal technology. There were likely more civilizations out there that just didn't have the technology or means to travel outside of their planet.

It was unsettling to think about.

"So, Bumblebee mentioned to me something about a dungeon here?"

I was smiling when I showed Sam the treehouse they had built me. He pointed out that it didn't make sense, being called a dungeon- it was above ground and even a few feet in the air, built against a few large-trunked trees. Even when I explained that it was symbolic, he claimed to not understand my logic.

"It just doesn't make sense."

"Maybe you aren't meant to make sense of everything," I hummed. "Isn't it cool?"

Sam nodded, tracing his fingertips against the grain of the wood couch. He stopped when he touched the blanket tossed over the back. "It is neat- I wonder what made them think to build you a treehouse. Kind of random."

"Sweet, but random," I agreed, looking around the room. It wasn't small by any means, probably bigger than your average adult treehouse. "I think they all pitched in to help. That's how they talk about it."

"They do a lot together."

"Yeah."