Just once, I’d like to have a normal morning. You know, you wake up all by yourself, with no background screams or ominous feelings of doom, you get up, go make a nice breakfast using an oven and microwave that aren’t still blackened from a recent explosion, and then sit down for a leisurely breakfast. And by leisurely breakfast, I mean not having to hurry because there was a training session in 5 minutes, or having to defend your breakfast against whoever tries to steal it from you because they were too lazy to make their own or too lousy at cooking to risk making their own (I find having a couple of extra forks and knives around my plate usually make a good defense. If they don’t take the hint when I stab them, then I haul out a F.H.G.).

Well, it would be nice to have a normal morning, but it was probably never going to happen. At least, not while I was in the Beast Wars Universe.

Case in Point: this morning.

I woke up WAY too early to the sensation of suddenly being very cold. Somehow, I found as I felt around without opening my eyes, all of my bedcovers had disappeared. And my bed, for that matter. My hand touched cold metal instead of my bed, which might explain why I was so cold.

I slowly opened my eyes, my body objecting to doing even that this early. I hadn’t been getting much sleep lately due to being sick and injured, and I had been woken up in the middle of the first good sleep in 3 nights. It figured...

Hmm, big metal room. No, change that. COLD, big metal room. And here I was in my mid-thigh tee-shirt with ‘Don’t Annoy The Crazy Person’ printed on it (It was a gift from the Beast Warriors...), and a bandage for my toes. Brrrr, I was cold.

Hey, why did this room seem so familiar? I could have sworn I’d seen something like this before. Something...like in the Beast Wars? Weird...

I got up, and heard something hit the floor behind me with a disgruntled meow. Oh, no.

"Georgia?" I turned around, and almost hit the floor again with relief. It wasn’t my little old white cat Georgia. I didn’t think my poor fragile kitty would survive being in here. The indignant fat black cat with white stockings who was on the floor in front of me, on the other hand... "Hiya, Cat."

Cat, being the feline he was, ignored me. Instead, he lived up to his nickname (His Majesty Thunderbutt) and almost shook the floor as he plopped his royal bulk down for a wash.

"I’m sorry," I told him. "I forgot you were sleeping on me last night."

Cat regally began to lick his rear end in my direction.

"I’ll get you some treats later," I wheedled.

His Majesty considered that for a moment and apparently decided to give me a royal pardon, because he got up and demanded to be picked up.

So, being the well-trained pet ‘owner’ that I am, I obeyed the royal command and picked him up. He purred as I petted him, and settled into my arms more comfortably (for him...). Okay, that was taken care of.

Now, back to figuring out where I was. I hobbled around the metallic room with my sore foot, looking for any clues to how I had gotten here. And I was trying to warm up. Yeesh, you could have hung meat in this room...like that thought was any comfort...and whoever made this room needed to get a better decorator...

I gave up after my sixth time around the room. I wasn’t getting any warmer, and my foot was REALLY starting to ache. Tilting my head back, I screamed, "HELLO!?!"

Nothing happened. I kept calling, but the room still stayed cold, and no one appeared. I eventually stopped yelling, and sat down against the wall, cuddling my cat close for warmth. Whatever or whoever brought me here had better have a slaggin’ good reason for doing it!

I was NOT having a good day...

Who knows how long I sat in there, but it must have been more than 4 or 5 hours. I kept getting colder and colder, and I was NOT getting any happier. Frozen butt muscles are the worst...

The lighting dimmed suddenly, creating a dramatic effect for when a hidden door slid open. The light from the area outside outlined a figure. A humanoid figure. It started to slowly walk into the room.

"Hey, is it any warmer out there?" I asked hopefully.

The figure stopped in its tracks. I guess that wasn’t the response it had been expecting, but I didn’t care. I was too cold to care. After a moment, the figure turned, and beckoned for me to follow it.

I made my shivering way out the door, scooping up Cat, and blinked in the sudden light, unable to see. Cat stood up in my arms and hissed, and then he jumped out of my arms. Smart cat.

"Cat!" I yelled. Like almost all cats, he ignored me calling his name. When my eyes cleared, I could see the figure standing in front of me.

I shrieked.

"Okay, I understand that you chose a form I would be able to deal with," I wearily said to the Vok in front of me after I had recovered from the shock and the explanations, "but did you have to choose Bill Clinton?"

The Vok representative shook his head in an affirmative way. That is to say, Bill Clinton, the President of the USA, nodded. This was really weird...

I decided to ignore that for the moment. "Where’s my cat?" I asked next.

"Unknown."

Ah, yes. The deep, echoing, all-knowing Voice from yesterday’s ‘telemarketer’. Turns out that it had been the representative of the Vok calling to tell me that he wanted to talk to me, and was going to offer to pick me up (abduct) at a prearranged time. When I had hung up (I had been busy), the alien had just gone ahead and abducted me anyway. Straight out of my bed at 3:00 AM.

Thrillsville.

So, here I was. Time to say something diplomatic. "Can you turn up the heat? It’s freezing in here!" Okay, so I wasn’t the most diplomatic person there ever was...

Bill Clint--I mean, the Vok representative, frowned at me. "Very well."

Great, I had managed to offend him yet again. I had been informed already that hanging up the phone on him, showing up to a meeting wearing nothing but a tee-shirt, and bringing my cat along had offended him. Well, excuuuuse me. It’s not like I had a choice with those last two!

I wondered absently how the Beast Warriors were taking my disappearance. If Tim was still online, the supercomputer could have informed them about my HASBRO-made duties involving negotiations with the Vok, but Tim was still offline. Tarantulas and Rhinox were doing their best with it, but they hadn’t had any progress yet.

So, either there was mass celebration over my mysterious disappearance, or mass panic. Oh, goodie...

The Vok pulled me away from my thoughts. "Your feline has been found."

About time. Where could a cat go in the middle of a space ship? I opened my mouth to say ‘Thank you’...

"Drones are bringing it to the laboratories. The feline will be frozen for later analysis."

...and shut it with a snap, almost biting my tongue. Frozen?! Cat?!

Clinton/Vok observed my obvious shock with an expressionless, but somehow smug, face. "The Vok will take the unknown species of feline in payment for your offenses."

My brain was still in shock, but my mouth had recovered. "Unknown?! Duh! He’s a housecat! Of course he’s unknown! He’s from the future!"

The Vok started to look offended again, but I ran over whatever he was going to say.

"As for offenses, I’m sorry for the phone thing, but YOU are the guy who abducted ME from my bed!" My brain had emerged from the shock enough to cheer on my mouth. I was seriously ticked off about this situation..."If you take me out of a sound sleep to go to a meeting, you have to expect that I’m going to show up wearing whatever I was wearing in bed! And if my cat showed up with me, that’s your own fault!" I put my hands on my hips and glared at the Clinton-look-a-like. "Or didn’t your vast knowledge or whatever think of that?"

The Vok sputtered for a second, then tried to resume his calm, I-know-more-than-you Voice. It sounded a little strained. I don’t think many people argue with the Vok. "HASBRO informed-"

"Well, obviously HASBRO was wrong." Ooh, I was angry. This arrogant know-it-all alien had abducted me from my bed, put me in freezing room for hours, threatened my cat, and now my foot and my head were REALLY starting to hurt again. The Tylenol must have worn off.

And to top it all off, the Lucky Charms leprechaun appeared behind the Vok. Well, I really didn’t mind him being there.

"I want my cat back," I said calmly.

The Vok’s eyes narrowed at me. "No."

Ooo, I had gotten the big scary alien mad. I was sooooo scared. "Look, I have NOT been having a very good week, so why don’t you just let me have my cat, and I’ll come back later." Not having a good week? Boy, that was an understatement...

"Unacceptable," the Vok sneered.

Yeah, well, letting my cat become some sort of lab experiment was unacceptable, too. "Give. Me. My. Cat." I gritted out. My teeth were bared in what could have been charitably called a polite smile. If you were blind.

The Vok looked at me strangely, and pushed a button on some sort of table in the otherwise plain room.

The floor dropped out from under me.

I was not having a good day.

I snarled at the walls in the metal room. The Vok had opened some sort of trapdoor beneath me, shooting me back into this room. At least it was warmer. The Vok really needed to get an interior decorator, though. Generic gray, everywhere...

But Cat was still out there, getting who knew what done to him. I couldn’t let that happen. NO ONE messes with my pets. Not the Beast Warriors, not my brothers, not the Vok.

I stared at the wall where the door had appeared before. There wasn't an opening mechanism anywhere on the wall, so how was I going to get out?

I slapped a hand to my forehead. That was a mistake since my head still hurt, but I needed to hit myself at the moment. It was so obvious. I was such an idiot...

I reached into my subspace pocket and pulled out a F.H.G. Why hadn't I thought of this before? The cold must have frozen my brain. I aimed the large gun at the wall and let loose.

The leprechaun-turned-demon waved to me when I emerged into the corridor, stepping carefully over the rubble. I could hear alarms blaring throughout the ship, and that worried me. I didn't think there were that many Vok on board since this was supposed to have been a diplomatic meeting, but the Bill Clinton/Vok I had met had mentioned drones.

Choosing to go right just because I wanted to, the demon and I headed down the corridor. I wanted to go faster, but my foot gave me a limp.

The corridor we were in intersected a much larger hall. Hmm, which way? I chose right again, and we continued on. Geez, the Vok needed to decorate more. Bland gray as far as the eye can see...boooring.

I stopped suddenly as I heard a steady clanking noise getting closer and closer. It sounded almost like...footsteps...

A machine that looked remarkable like C3PO came around a corner ahead, and spotted me. Not a good thing! I turned and hobbled away, but some sort of netting dragged me to the floor. This robot was apparently more effective than C3PO had ever been.

"Hey, that's cheating!" I protested to the drone. "You're supposed to chase me!"

The drone didn't seem to hear me. Great, a Metallic Moron. The demon even kicked it and it didn't notice! Then again, no one else seems to notice him, either...

The machine wrapped me securely in the netting and dragged me through the corridors. With nothing else to do but curse at the Metallic Moron, I memorized the signs on the intersections of halls we passed through. We seemed to be headed towards something marked with a knife blade, because that's what the corridor we were in was marked. I would have to remember that.

The door opened, and the first thing I saw was Cat. In a cage. Looking VERY angry.

The second thing I saw was Bill Clinton, who was poking at His Majesty Thunderbutt, which explained why Cat was looking so angry.

"Not you again," I moaned. "Isn't there another Vok I could talk to?" Maybe someone who was interested in TALKING, not in protocol. This guy had a large book of Proper Behavior shoved so far up his...um, nevermind.

Clinton/Vok looked at me coldly. "There are no other Vok on board." He motioned for the drone to bring me over to a lab table. The little demon, who had been following the drone as it dragged me, morphed into his Lucky Charms leprechaun mode, and started making faces at me from behind the Vok's head. I ignored him in favor of what the Vok had just said.

Well, at least I had gotten that bit of information out of him. If I disabled this guy, I might have a chance at getting away..."What are you doing?!"

He was pointing some weird looking machine my way. I didn't think that was a very good thing. "Do not worry. I am merely correcting your current condition."

"Current condition?" Now, why was I worried? Obviously, the Vok had my best interests in mind, right?

He pushed some buttons on the side of the thingie. "You are ill and injured." Well, at least he didn’t say I was insane...

The leprechaun sadly waved goodbye to me as a beam of light came from the machine. I laughed, I cried, I blacked out.

I woke up in another metal room, feeling the best I had all week. No broken toes, no bump on my head, and my general bad health were all gone. So was the leprechaun. I wasted a moment with a fond goodbye for my semi-constant companion of four days, and then I moved on.

I discovered that my elbow had a bandage covering a needle hole on it. He had given me drugs? No, I felt fine. Had he taken a blood sample? Just great. I hate it when I don’t know what’s going on...which explains my attitude towards life...

I looked around the room and found a door with a window in it. The door was locked, but the window showed that the room I was in was just off of the lab. I could see some of it, including glimpses of the Vok doing something, but I couldn't tell what he was doing. Whatever it was, I didn’t think I’d like it.

I leaned against the wall next to the door and considered what to do next. I could feel that my subspace compartment was empty, so the Vok must have searched through it. But had he..?

My attention snapped back to the lab as the Vok exited the room. When I was sure he was gone, I knelt down and began unwrapping the bandage around my foot that Tarantulas had put on, but the Vok hadn't bothered to take off. One by one I unwound my toes, taking out the small cylinders concealed under the bandages. Ah, yes. Yet another idea of Tarantulas's...Note To Self: give Tarantulas a break next time he does something stupid.

I stood back up and checked for the Vok. He was still gone. I pressed the 5 cylinders evenly around the door so they stuck, and gave them each a half-twist when I was done positioning them. Their miniature loads of acid emptied themselves onto the wall. Gotta love HASBRO for supplying this stuff...well, no. I didn’t, actually. They were the ones who had gotten me into this in the first place!

After a couple minutes I kicked the door down and walked into the lab.

And staggered to a halt, gaping at the wall that had been out of sight in my room. It had two upright tubes with figures in them. Humanoid figures. Very familiar figures.

I knew now that the Vok had taken a blood sample from me. I even knew what he had done with it.

That jerk had CLONED me.

Something hit me from behind, and as I fell into blackness I twisted around to see a Metallic Moron. Yeah, it had to be one of them, just to complete my bad day.

My thoughts returned to the two humans I had seen in the tubes as the real world faded away.

Was the world ready for THREE of me?!

I guess I was going to find out...

Back to Lady D. Fanfiction Index