Ep1.5 – The Furbie Incident – Closed

[Deleted]

Cleaver had been gone exactly ten seconds before Sideswipe merrily abandoned all pretenses of thoughtfulness or self-reflection in favor of maniacal glee because Catherine was still in bed and there was no one to fucking stop him. Cleaver had pissed him off. Therefore, the sanctity of her base and its continued orderliness meant precisely nothing to the slightly off-balance spark-twin whose primary goal, in that moment, had become his own goddamn entertainment because as far as he was concerned the universe owed him a motherfucking laugh and he was going to get it at the expense of Cleaver’s (and possibly Cat’s) sanity.

This, if anyone had been in a combat unit with Sides for longer than two minutes, was standard operating procedure. And the Neutrals were about to find that out.

Sideswipe spun on his heel and dove into vehicle mode, V-10 engine roaring joyeously down the long curve of the main corridor to one of the sectioned off atriums the back. There was no lighting. Standing up into robot-mode, the headlights in his chest came on, throwing pale yellow light onto several very large crates. The contents of these very large crates had been purchased at bulk from a Chinese manufacturer for a sum of about two-thousand dollars and been groundbridged from a warehouse in Beijing to Africa for the express purpose of the ridiculously immature thing he was about to do in the name of ‘Screw you, Cleaver, I do what I want.’

That wasn’t it entirely, but it was a good enough reason right now.

Sideswipe painstakingly unpacked and activated, one by one, two-thousand small furry things and set them outside of Cat’s shuttle. Then, parked down the corridor, in lambo form, he waited.

[Deleted]

It was a little in the early afternoon by the time she actually checked the time on her alarm clock because A) she'd finished her work, B) Cleaver was out and hadn't assigned anything else, and C) Sideswipe hadn't gotten her up yet. Not abnormal… but good Lord it was almost 2 pm. 2 pm, and if no one walked in this room she was tempted to go back to sleep until 5.

Breakfast. She needed breakfast and coffee.

In one big sweep the covers were thrown off and after a moment of rubbing her face she tossed her hair up in a loose bun, grabbed the nearest hoodie (she didn't bother with pants, ain't got time for pants when breakfast was to be had), and set off for the human-sized door installation, stretching as she went.

…And thought she'd walked straight back into a dream. 'Is that carpet?' "What the…" But that was all the time she had, before suddenly down the corridor something heavy and powerful roared, beams of light in the sound's wake, igniting like a blast line two-fucking-thousand demons made in China.

"MOTHERFUCKER!" She practically fell back into the door, leg shooting out to kick one of them instinctively. "You gotta be fucking kidding me, SIDESWIPE."

[Deleted]

“I SEE YOU! I SEE YOU! I SEE YOU! FURBY HUNGRY! HUNGRY! HUNGREEEEEEE!”

The acoustics of the cave walls bounced the excited-motion and sound activated voices of the furby horde through the entire central corridor. Four-thousand LED eyes bounced open, four-thousand fuzzy plastic and synthetic fur bat-ears wiggling, beaks snapping excitedly at the appearance of a human – the legion roared its horrible joyous greeting, and not all of them in English. A great many of them screamed at the unfortunate human in various dialects of Mandarin, though the ones immediately to Cat’s right had been reprogrammed to yell in obnoxious Italian, “GOOD MORNING CAT! GOOD MORNING CAT! WAKEY WAKEY EGGS AND BAKEY!” which was just as horrible as it sounded.

Sideswipe for his part, had transformed into robot-mode, far on the other side of the wiggly furry sea, and stood up only to immediately double over in fits of self-congratulatory laughter. The red warrior howled, slapped his knee guard like this was the funniest damn thing he'd ever done and openly pointed because Cat’s faaaaaace. The human was apoplectic, her whole complexion capillary-gonna-blow-red, standing there barefoot in her hoodie with no pants on looking like she was going to take Louiseville slugger to his windshield while an ocean of bouncing animatronic toys - The one's she'd told him she hated - shrieked at her. Sideswipe laughed so hard he fell backward into a sitting position, legs crossed, gasping, vocoder fritzing, sounding somewhat like a dying sea lion.

This was totally going to attract Twisters and he didn’t care because her faaaaaace.

"Morning, Cat!"

[Deleted]

Catherine the Human was many things. A frozen dairy products addict and a youthful spirit among them, always as quick to hug and laugh as she was to shout and swear. But in the top five was definitely Catherine's unlikely best-xeno-bud relationship with 'ex-gladiator super BAMF' Sideswipe; a relationship that had nurtured already mischievous tendencies to new levels. Doubtless, after coffee and food, this would have been as much fun for her as it was, obviously, for Sideswipe.

But one thing Catherine was most certainly NOT, was a pleasant 'morning' person.

For a long time she stood still, glaring through eyes not yet fully awake, fingers itching. and she couldn't tell whether or not she was actually seeing red or if it was just that Sideswipe took up all her focus and field of vision. Would that she had a Louiseville slugger…

Then, it started.

First in a hissed stream of Italian muttering, growing steadily louder and more obscene with volume until all at once she dove for the fur-coated demons and flung them at Sideswipe's figure. That did little to appease the still quickly growing fury brought on by the shrill little voices screeching through the cave (in fact, activity only made it worse, feeding each other in a vicious cycle of not shutting the fuck up).

All at once in a shouted Italian curse she disappeared back into her room. Fine. She'd fucking play on an empty stomach and no pants. With a twisted grin she dove into a box of merchandise, all courtesy of Sideswipe from past late-night ebay raids until she found exactly what she wanted… this would do much more for her temper than throwing furbies.

She burst through the doors again, back and hips loaded down with what anyone not her or Sideswipe might call overkill. Ignoring the two jets now gleefully poking at the horde of hell-spawns, she took aim with her rifle, tank loaded down with obnoxious shades of pink and neon green… If she had her way, his red ass would be a highlighter rainbow within the hour. "Mornin' jackass!"

Game time.

[Deleted]

“Aw, hell.”

Pap! Pap! Pap! Three bursts of neon-green and yellow splattered obnoxious bright up Sideswipe’s chest and blocking forearm, the second volley coloring his outstretched palm bright primary blue. Cat wasn’t exactly the best shot, but she really didn’t have to be when her target was several stories tall, primary red, and laughing too hard to get out of the way. The Twisters, for their part, didn’t give a single shit that Sideswipe was getting painted the hell up – they had found a new thing to obsess over and appeared to be in the process of dismantling a couple of the furbies. Cat, meanwhile, looked like she was going to drop kick every furby in the base, in her underwear, no morning coffee, if it meant getting Sideswipe with even one more round of high-velocity paint bullets.

PAP! PAP! PAP! PAP!

Either she’d switched to semi-automatic or she was just that mad. The Lamborghini-bot just cackled and twisted, shoulders and mid-section whirling apart and collapsing back together as a slightly multi-colored Murcielago, several more bursts of paint splattering up his spoiler before that V-10 roared and sent him howling down the tunnel. Barring aid from other Cybertronians, she wasn’t gonna catch him.

[Deleted]

"Sunnuva bitch." She spat, chasing his quickly shrinking form as far as she could until finally, when he rounded the corner, he sped himself out of range. This wouldn't do. This wouldn't do at all, and the minute his tail lights whipped down another corridor she began plotting how best to catch up with him. Her own Apache was her very first thought, because it was parked just in her shuttle and could go relatively fast. …But not fast enough for a V-10 Lamborghini who wanted to get away.

Huffing just a bit harder now she turned in the sea of furbies, shooting them aside with highlighter yellow and kicking them from here to there as she tried to come up with a plan B. It was about that time she noticed a very distinct yellow hue being cast down in her direction. "Hey… C'mere." When Catherine looked up the firebrick jet was leaning down on hands and knees, the blue one behind hir still pawing at the hoard of rage enducing furry fuckers.

She didn't need to ask what was going on inside that processor; the grin on hir face was more than enough. Smirking, Catherine canted her head to the side, figuring she'd get along with these two new jets just fine. "…You know I think I heard him mention that he wanted to spend more time with you two." He ranted about them more like, but hell, it was all up for interpretation, right? "I think we should oblige."

Not a minute later, two equally powerful engines roared down the corridors hot on the trail of a certain red muscle car. "GOT YA." She shouted, waiting until they were close enough before opening fire over the protective shield Shearwind's hands formed around her against the rush of wind from their movement. By now, she was grinning, initial fury forgotten and instead replaced by 'good-fun' fueled by the idea of whatever pay-back she could get. Giving Sides a new paint job seemed to be enough.

[Deleted]

The howl of the Lamborghini tearing through the circuitous honey-comb tunnels of the old energon mine was, by no means, quiet. Point of fact the red sports car was clearly taking a kind of giddy delight in being as loud and as obnoxious as he could be, screaming around corners so hard, he locked his breaks drifting around corners into another straight away. Downshifting, energon flooding his engine, pulsing speed and heat through every circuit in his body, Sideswipe tore through the main atrium, which was precisely where Shearwind – apparently allied now with Cat – caught up with him.

“Aw, scrap.”

Paint pellets burst orange across his hood before he braked, fishtailed, spun a 180 and raced back down an adjacent corridor, hooking around a sharp corner, back wheels skating and catching against the ground as he rocketed down the tunnel. The rumble of jet thrusters seemed to echo forever down the long halls, caught and tangled up in the pure V-10 scream of the faux sports car engine. He was going entirely too fast. Shear was gamely keeping up with him though, even in hir root-mode, keeping close enough that Cat could at least attempt to put paintballs into his bumper. Though, how she could aim at all when at near high-way speeds, Sides was not sure.

And that was when Stormbreaker dive-bombed his windshield.

Sides reacted, you know, like most ground-alts reacted when set upon by an aerial-mechanoid – namely he swore a lot and spun out with a jet clinging to his hood. The momenteum of his swing dislodged the jet, but killed his speed. Half a dozen more paint pellets splattered the lambo’s back quarterpanel and rearview window. Then he gunned it again and was off, his trunk popping open briefly to spit out more Furbies in his wake.

[Deleted]

She wasn't entirely aware of the effect Sideswipe's furbie bombs would have until Shearwind dodged up and over the crying, screaming beasts. And she wasn't aware how much of an effect it would actually have on their entire game (she guessed) until one of their pieces had disappeared off the board. So it was in that brief second when everything happened in slow motion that she had to wonder if Sideswipe had deployed the furbies as a real tactic, rather than just as a thorn in her side. Had to wonder, because the second he did that, Stormbreaker went down. Down on hands and knees to poke at and observe Haven's new talking carpet.

They lost their dive bomber. Lost her to the shortest fucking attention span.

"Damn it!" And it was in that brief moment (maybe not so brief..) of rage that she dug into her neon arsenal and started pulling pins.. and throwing. Three of her five paint grenades, tossed over the safety of Shearwind's fingers. …It was only after she tried to throw them that she realized she was trying to throw them foreword, at high way speeds.

Pop, Pop, Pop! they blew behind her, but it was too late to see just how much paint was splattered over Haven's walls. "…Welp, should've seen that happening." In fact, it was at that moment she had to wonder just how many missed shots had ended up over the corridors of Haven. And there'd be no hiding that from Cleaver. For a very small moment, she wondered if she should stop… but then there was Sideswipe… Might as well.

[Deleted]

“Ah ha! I knew this day would come!”

Sideswipe was standing in the middle of the main atrium, waiting, by the time Shearwind managed to loop around through the narrow corridors Sides his fishtailed through like he was on acombat racer circuit. He’d transformed back to his root mode and, though Cat might not had been able to detect it, stood radiating smug and (if one could say it was an actual EM wave) evil in a way that should have been exclusive to Megatron himself. He seemed to be yelling in Italian exclusively for Cat’s benefit because he doubted that Shearwind would have taken the time to download and construct anything but a rough translation program for any language beyond the Big Three: Mandarin, Spanish, and English.

He was holding something in his hand but about 25 meters in front of him there was a black girl in a ball cap and a sweatshirt, a pair of raggedy cut offs on, a dark braid down her back. Sideswipe’s ‘voice’ was coming from her. The holoavatar pointed dramatically at Cat

“You!” said the avatar in a weird half male/half female collaboration of Sideswipe’s normal voice and some higher octave. “Stand down and accept defeat or I will resort to weapons of mass paint distribution!” Sideswipe held out what looked like a large rubber ball, one the size of a Smart Car, one hand on his hip, a smirk on his face. This posture was mimicked by the avatar whose eyes glitched and glowed. “Don’t make me use this.”

[Deleted]

"You 'n me both, Sideswipe." She called. Shearwind had apparently taken the sudden theatric air that had settled over the atrium (produce from the two lead actors like light from a star) as a hint to lower hir hands, and the colorful Italian Rambo-ess in them, to the ground.

The original anger of being woken so early at 2 PM had long since burnt itself out. Now she was just playing along because, well… One could only play so many video games in a row before live action was craved. She narrowed her eyes, fingers twitching dramatically over the paint canisters of her weapons. The fact that the boy in a red baseball cap wasn't standing before her certainly sparked interest, if that single raised brow was anything to go by. But there was paint at hand. And this ol' western needed some dialogue before the big finish.

"This atrium ain't big enough for the two of us and a hundred gallons of paint." Her fingers hovered over the triggers. "And I never accept defeat. Only… NEON VICTORY!"

What a wonderful afternoon to be covered in paint. This was turning out to be a fine 'morning' for having no coffee.

[Deleted]

“Let’s be honest,” said Sideswipe’s avatar, baring her teeth in a way that was decidedly predatory and entirely smug. “I was gonna use this an’ wasn’t no ‘make me’ ‘bout it.” Sideswipe himself, standing all two stories tall and looking precisely like a mech intent on destroying the peace, just grinned and tossed the giant ball skyward. His avatar flickered, reappeared directly in front of Cat, almost nose to nose. “Boom,” she said.

BOOM!

The sound of the paint bomb going off was just shy of deafening (on a human scale) and understandably wet sounding. If Cat’s weapons also went off – the sound was lost in the boom. Sheets of paint hit the walls at superspeeds – neon arcs and bursts, ribbons of blue and green slapped dripping from ceiling to floor, a fine mist of atomized bio-luminous yellow floating through the air in the aftermath. A now yellow, purple, and teal on red Lamborghini was parked, idling, near the epicenter of the blast zone. Unless you were, perhaps, a car yourself it would have been difficult to say how a car could seem self-satisfied, but Sideswipe managed it just fine before the seams of his alt-mode split and he stood back to his feets, isolated sections of his armor stained and streaked.

Cat and Stormbreaker looked exactly like one might expect after a paint bomb went off.

“Fam,” he said, a laugh in his words, “you lookin’ rough.”

[Deleted]

'Oh shit.'

Paint was in her shirt. Paint was in her sweat shirt. Paint was in her hair. She was coated in paint like a thick chocolate shell. She didn't move from where she'd been blown flat on her back. Only laid there a moment before she tossed off her glasses, and slowly unhooked her own arsenal. Cleared the paint from at least her mouth… and some of her nose.

And then she sat up. …It was everywhere. Not just splattered here and there, but everywhere, in coats so thick it wasn't even obvious that it was dripping.

Her jaw dropped, but her eyes were shining in the way that often foreshadowed a grin and a laugh as she finished looking over the panorama of neon. Stormbreaker was over there crouching in a corner drawing with her talons in the paint; Shearwind drawing on her with the paint. If that or Sideswipe's own self covered in paint (granted less than the rest of them) didn't do it, then his laugh did. It started silent but strong and bent over, before laughter finally burst out. Belly laughing herself flat back into the paint again. If there wasn't paint all over herself, she would have laughed herself to visible tears. And after all that, all she could shriek out was, "Holy shit! That was awesome!"

Not, the little voice in the back of her head reminded her, gonna be that awesome when Cleaver gets home.

[Deleted]

Sideswipe inspected the sections of his new paintjob to the soundtrack of Cat losing her shit on the floor. If nothing else could be said for the resident human, it could always be said that she took things in stride – giant alien robots, carpets of furbies, twin jet-morphs that hid in corners and emerged only for fingerpainting and story-time, paint bombs, holograms, the universe being bigger than big and fuller than first thought. The lambo-bot wandered over toward said jet-morphs, supposing that pinning them down for a good hosing was going to be more difficult than whatever clean up duty Cleaver would try to pin on him when she got back from leaving the base in his capable hands.

Meanwhile his holo-matter avatar flickered back on, grinning crooked in a mannerism that was Sideswipe distilled into a single curve of the mouth, unmistakable even in the shape of a human girl in dirty cut offs and converse.

“Mental,” she announced. “Straight. That stuff even gonna come out your hair, cuz? Looks well in there.”

[Deleted]

Oh God it was in her mouth, and the slow dying giggles didn't help that situation much. She blew out her lips a few times before attempting to wipe away the worst of it from her face. …It helped even less than she thought. So she tried shaking out her hands, which… also didn't really do anything at all.

"Ugh, I dunno." She lifted up the usually curly dark locks, now weighed down and straightened with neon color sheets. "…Maybe. With about a gallon of shampoo and a 48 hour olive oil treatment. Mmm…" She held up the left side of her hair for inspection, considering. "I'm kinda likin' the blue, though… Pretty nifty. What d'you think?" She shifted the handful of blue tinted hair for him to see, raising her brows for his opinion. Only to knit them a moment later. "S'up with the new avatar, anyway? Get bored with the dude?"

Behind her, Stormbreaker and Shearwind continued with their masterpieces, looking up only when Sideswipe got close enough to show and tell. Shearwind had an intricate design shifting and morphing in its detail from wing tip to wing tip, different colors mixing and running parallel to create a giant abstract piece. Stormbreaker, on the other hand, was carving in the puddles of paint on the ground a narrative that looked like it had to do with a pod of whales. Shearwind bounced excitedly as zie painted. Stormbreaker only blinked, and went back to quietly tracing.

[Deleted]

Sideswipe glared at the two jetmorphs and barked at them in Neocybex, the chattering chord-crash digi-speak of the Cybertronian dialect filling the background rapidly with the sound of the lambo-bot lecturing the two of them on their finger painting skills. His holo-avatar seemed utterly unaffected by this multitasking, her eyes still glowing a lazy Cybertronian blue. The avatar scratched her cheek a little and moved to crouch on the floor, looking up at Cat from beneath the brim of her ball cap.

“I dunno. This one suited a better today.” The avatar grinned, baring white teeth before flickering. “What?” she said, and over by the Twisters, Sideswipe shot a look her way. “You like my old holo better, cuz? I can most def swap out if ya liked th’ other view.” The femme avatar flickered, replaced immediately by the boy in the hoodie, also grinning up at her, before flicking back like a quick channel change. The girl avatar winked. “What ya don’t think this one suits? Too tall or summat?”