One day (April 24, 1999, to be exact), Megatron got an idea.

“I’ve got an idea!” he announced to Soundwave, who didn’t even bother to look up from his video game. After all, this was the sixth idea the Supreme Commander of the Decepticons had come up with this week, and Rumble and Frenzy were STILL trying to patch up the worst of the damage in the lower levels of the underwater base. The Constructicons were grumbling about forming a union, and Astrotrain refused to come down from orbit until Megatron promised to exclude him from his next Plan To Conquer Earth (take 3,586! *cue clapstick snap in front of the camera*).

The rest of the Decepticons were just as excited as Soundwave had been. The general feeling seemed to be: Megatron had an idea. Whoop-dee-do. What doomsday weapon was he going to build THIS week, and how beat-up were they going to end up when the Autobots showed up and handed their afterburners to them?

Megatron was understandably a little miffed at this casual attitude toward his idea (“I’M GOING TO RIP YOUR FUEL PUMPS OUT AND MAKE YOU EAT THEM!!!!”), but a few near-misses by fusion blasts (“You shot my arm off!”) persuaded everyone to listen to him. The Constructicons (after repairing Bonecrusher’s arm) mumbled ominous-sounding threats involving neon pink paint if they didn’t get a break soon and looked over Megatron’s newest plan.

“Hey,” Scrapper said, “this might just work.” The other Constructicons gave him incredulous looks and crowded around to look at the blueprints Scrapper was staring at. It was a good thing that they were so close to each other, because Mixmaster and Longhaul promptly went into shock at the sight of a plan from Megatron that--*gasp*--seemed half-decent.

France immediately surrendered.

“Right, let’s get to it.”

The camera shifted away right then, letting the Constructicons work their miracles away from the critical eyes of the audience (this is the same trick employed whenever the Constructicons have to build something for Megatron during commercial breaks). Scrapper raised his hands, declaring, “Let there be Addictobots!”

And there were Addictobots. And Megatron looked at the Addictobots, and they were good.

“Hahahahahaha!” Megatron laughed (he does that a lot) as he looked over the five newest additions to his army. “This time Prime will be powerless to stop me!”

“Because you built an incredibly powerful gestalt team?” Starscream asked a bit skeptically. The new guys didn’t look so hot to him. They were actually rather short, and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what they transformed into. Besides, one of them was sitting on the floor and appeared to be asleep.

Megatron waved a hand vaguely. “Oh, something like that.”

“They don’t seem very powerful,” Skywarp ventured, wary of the silver Decepticon’s sudden mood swings. He didn’t want to end up shot, but it was kind of obvious that the five new Decepticons hadn’t been built for heavy combat. “I mean, they’re kind of wimpy…”

“By your standard, perhaps!” one of the new ‘bots said, raising a fist defiantly. “But the humans--!” All five members of the gestault team grinned wildly. “The humans will bow before us, and through them, we can control the Autobots!”

Something clicked behind Thundercracker’s optics. “Oh, I get it. The Addictobots. You’re what the humans are addicted to.”

“Not quite,” another one of the Addictobots said. “We just kind of, uh, represent things that they rely on.” He shrugged, then grinned evilly. “And control them.”

Blank looks all around. Well, except for Megatron, who was laughing again and wasn’t really paying attention to the conversation.

The Addictobots looked at each other, and then the first one who’d spoken raised his fist again. “Addictobots! Announce yourselves to our fellow Decepticons!” He assumed an aggressive stance. “I am Access!” He transformed with the sound of a dial-up modem into…a laptop computer. “Fear me, for I can cut you off from the Internet!”

The next ‘bot stepped forward. “I am Reheat, the king of fast food convenience!” He transformed into a microwave as Access reverted back into his robotic mode.

The next ‘bot was bulkier than the others, and he transformed proudly into a mini refrigerator. “I’m Cool!”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“Shut up, Channel,” Cool snapped, and he transformed again to give the ‘bot standing next to him a sulky look. “Just because I control something important like temperature and you’re stuck with entertainment…”

“Hey! Entertainment’s important!” Channel protested. “I’d like to see humanity try to live without me!”

Access sighed. “Just transform and shut up.” Channel obeyed sullenly and transformed into a television.

“So what’s he represent?” Skywarp asked, pointing at the Addictobot asleep on the floor.

Reheat prodded the sleeping ‘bot roughly. “Caffeine addiction.”

“That doesn’t seem right…”

The Addictobot gave up on trying to wake the last member of his team up. “That’s because SOMEBODY,” he glared pointedly at Mixmaster, “put decaf in his filter when he was activated.”

The Constructicon chemist hid behind Bonecrusher. “I-I didn’t want him to be hy-hy-hyper!”

Access gave the sleeping ‘bot a kick. “Get up!”

“Zzzzz…uh?”

The four other Addictobots gathered around him as he sat up slowly with a yawn. “What’s your name, anyway?” Access asked curiously. “You fell asleep before you could tell us.”

The ‘bot looked up at all the Decepticons standing around him and fidgeted. “Mr. Coffee.”

There was an appalled silence.

Then… “No,” Megatron decided firmly. “I will NOT have a Decepticon under MY command named Mr. Coffee.”

“But it’s my NAME—“ Mr. Coffee suddenly found himself looking down the wrong end of a fusion cannon. “—and I can certainly change it, mighty Megatron,” he finished hastily.

“I thought you’d see it my way,” Megatron said.

“No, if he’d see it Megatron’s way, the fusion cannon would have been pointed away from him,” Skywarp whispered to Thundercracker. The other jet gave him a funny look, and he shrugged. “It’s just a matter of perspective.”

“But I don’t WANT to be named Percolator!” the Decepticon formerly known as Mr. Coffee whined in the background as Megatron turned to the de-facto leader of the Addictobots, Access.

“Now for you to attack your first target!” The silver ‘bot pointed at the location when Soundwave paused his game long enough to bring it up on the big screen. “I want you to subdue it as quickly as possible, and then advance from there. You’ll control the world before the Autobots even know you exist!”

The Addictobots gave Brownson College a doubtful look. “Couldn’t you have picked something else for our first target? Something, I don’t know…harder?” Access asked.

Megatron scowled. “What do you mean?”

Channel snorted and crossed his arms over his chest. “I can do it myself.”

“Really?”

“Trust me.”

And on April 24, a college full of television-addicted young men and women surrendered without a shot fired. The rest of the college campuses around the world quickly followed suit as Access and Channel teamed up. After that, it was only a matter of time before households succumbed to the Decepticons’ evil plans (specifically, to Cool and Reheat’s evil plans, but Megatron got all the glory. Doesn’t he always?).

And Megatron said it was good.

Yet he saw that the business of the world still resisted him, and it was not good. But Percolator/Mr. Coffee said: “Don’t worry about it, Megs. I got it covered.” He was promptly punched through a wall for calling Megatron ‘Megs,’ but Megatron grudgingly gave him the go-ahead.

And Percolator leapt to the top of the tallest tower and gave a rousing speech to his fellow coffeemakers, who promptly went on strike (well, not really, but it sounds better than ‘he snapped his fingers and caused every coffeemaker in existence to malfunction’). Men and women in trendy business suits walked around like zombies because they couldn’t get their caffeine fix.

The business world surrendered

Megatron laughed as the Autobots looked around cluelessly at their human allies. Slave to their addictions, the humans turned against the Autobots. Optimus Prime, however, being the brilliant ‘bot he was (Wheeljack told him) figured out what Megatron had done, and he set out to destroy the Addictobots. The humans were slave to their addictions, but surely they’d be glad to destroy their slavers?

This would have been true if Megatron hadn’t had one more trick up his nonexistent sleeve. “Addictobots! Transform and merge!”

Access whooped. “Well, it’s about time! C’mon, guys!”

The five ‘bots went through the all the flash and dazzle that every gestalt team get during its first transformation sequence, except that none of the Autobots were very impressed by it. This was mostly due to the fact that the Addictobots were so small that their gestalt mode was only about as big as Astrotrain. For that matter, every Decepticon except the Constructicons was giving Megatron their patented ‘Oh great, his plan’s a dud again’ look.

The Constructicons and Megatron, on the other hand, were grinning like loons.

The new gestalt stood up straight. “I am…PikaMorphinRangermon.”

Humanity immediately screamed with excitement and flocked to the Addictobots’ defense. The Autobots were easily defeated.

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