#stillbite

“That glitch is dead to me.” Her smiled flipped into a scowl. “He ate the last of my candy without telling me.”

“And Cypher and Stillbite?”

“Helped him find my stash, for a fee of several rust sticks each.” 

“Ouch.” He agreed, moving to keep at least one of the club’s tables between them. “Sooooo..... does being your favorite get me out of defense practice for the day?”

“No.” She smiled, pulling out a knife.

Sideswipe grinned back, fake as hell, before bolting out of the room with nervous laughter. Cackling, Lights tore after him. 

.

“But imagine! It would be so smooth, gliding around the tables and going back and forth between the bar and-”

“You’re not wearing skates while you’re serving.” Stillbite stated, one optic ridge raised as he cleaned the glasses. An amused smile crept across his face though.

“But it would be cool!” Sideswipe pouted, dramatically sprawling across the counter. Arson trotted over and started sniffing at his helm. He lifted it up enough to see her and start scratching behind her audios.

“Very. But do you know what’s not cool?”

He thought about it. “Falling on my face?”

“And destroyed dishes, damaged furniture, lawsuits from injured customers, and Bass coming over here to complain that we’re copying the Bassjackers thing.” At Sideswipe’s blank look, he sighed. “Most of the Bassjackers use skate mods to get around quickly, remember? It’s their thing. In several of their bars, their servers wear them too, but they also have a floor space designed for people to skate around. The tables here are too close together and to the dance floor. Even if you know how to skate and were a master at it, someone is going to bump into you.”

“Booooooooooooo.” Sideswipe moaned, reaching over to cradle Arson as he gave her a belly rub. “You think it’d be cool, right? I am very cool. Even if I can’t skate on the job.” The cat only meowed at him.

.

“Do you think Cypher can read minds?” 

Without even looking up from his datapad, Sunstreaker answered, “No.”

“But he just knows things!” 

“Hm.” 

Sideswipe scowled, leaning over to see what was so interesting. It looked like that booklet on colors Sunstreaker had gotten from work and a datapad with a bunch of frame designs. Which was interesting. But not as interesting as Cypher potentially being psychic. Narrowing his optics, he continued. “Maybe he has cameras hidden all over the club.”

No response.

“It probably isn’t just the club, I bet he has them all over the Darklight. Maybe in our apartment. Or, he can actually read minds.”

Still no response except for some scrolling.

“And he’s collecting enough blackmail information to build an army of people who have to do what he says so he can take over all of Polyhelix-”

“Who’s taking over Polyhelix?” Orion asked, closing the apartment door behind him.

“Orion!” Hopping up, Sideswipe ran over to give him a hug.

“I’m taking over Polyhelix?” The mech replied, mouth twitching into a slag-eating grin. Sideswipe scoffed, whacking him in the arm as his brother finally looked up to greet their amica. 

“How was work?”

“Alright. Nothing interesting today.”

“Can you take that one out for a walk? Glimmer wants me to read through these and he’s incredibly distracting.” Sunstreaker ignored his brother’s exclamation of ‘Hey!’. 

“Sure.” Orion agreed before turning to Sideswipe “Feel like bugging Fracture for stories?”

The red mech paused his excitement as he realized Sunstreaker suddenly looked interested and was giving his datapads a long look as if trying to decide if he could put his work off. Grinning, Sideswipe wiggled in place. “Absolutely. I bet he’ll have even better stories than last time-”

“I’m coming too!” Sunstreaker rolled off their couch and stalked over. “Honestly. I just wanted to get my work done....”