It was a quiet, peaceful day. I was reading a book. Somewhere in the back of my crazed little mind, I knew that ‘quiet’ and ‘peaceful’ were only the calm before the storm around here, but one thing this summer had taught me was to relax when I had the chance. And so, I was stretched out on my bed reading a book.

It was a good book. I liked it. For the life of me, I can’t remember what the title of it was. I’m sure my lapse can be pardoned, however, since the reason I can’t remember the title was because a missile came through the portal in my closet and blew it out of my hands. Ka-BLAMMO! No more book.

Fortunately for me, I was on MY dimension’s side of the dimensional gateway. Therefore, it may have been a missile that destroyed my book, but the thing shrank to the size of my hand when it came out of the portal. My book was a burning mass of paper on the far wall, but my reflexes had developed to the point that just seeing movement in my closet had sent me diving for the floor. I got a nasty scorch mark (another T-shirt lost. *sigh*), but otherwise I was fine. Also, I was in an excellent position to grab my iced tea and throw it at the burning book. That stopped most of the fire, but there was still a healthy enough blaze going that I reluctantly ripped off the remains of my shirt and beat it out. What the slag—it’s not like the thing was really useful for WEARING anymore with a hole that large in the back!

So there I was, crouching behind my bed in shorts and a sport’s bra, when a pint-sized Quickstrike pushed open my bedroom door and walked in. I whipped around to stare at him wildly, ducking down so the bed was between me and the portal in my closet. "Fire in the hole!" I yelled.

Quickstrike blinked at me, turned on his heel, and walked back out of the room. I sighed. So much for reinforcements, I guess.

Which left me to face the anonymous missile launcher on the other side of the gateway alone. I flexed my knees carefully, eyeing the dimensional portal in my closet. Today it was blue. Yesterday morning it had been yellow, and Rhinox had ended up in the middle of a swamp instead of my house. Who knows where it led NOW.

One thing about having an evil supercomputer around the house: it certainly kept life interesting. Come to think of it, wasn’t that some kind of Chinese curse?

Anyway, between my book being torched and my shirt being destroyed, I was definitely in the mood for a fight. If it turned out that TIM was the mystery attacker, all the better; I still needed to get him back for the swamp incident. Getting a rhinoceros out of the swamp is NOT easy!

"For the CHEEEEEEEEEESE!!!" I screamed, throwing myself over my bed and into the portal. Why cheese? Because Inferno would get confused if I used ‘The Royalty.’ Besides, I’ve found that it usually shocks people to my advantage if I randomly dedicate my actions to dairy products.

Shields snapped up around me, subspace compartments appeared, and I grinned like a fiend on a sugar-high as I landed in the Beast Wars dimension looking for a target. Freakin’ Huge Guns in hand, I took cover by my bed as my expected foe…didn’t appear. Well, slag. And here I was, all ready to kill someone.

I was miffed. "Hmmph. TIM!"

A speaker popped out of the wall and was promptly obliterated when I yelped and shot it. The slagging thing startled me, alright?! A moment later which I spent trying to get my heart to come back down from my throat (at least, that’s where it FELT like had relocated), another speaker came out of the wall much more slowly. I eyed it skittishly but didn’t shoot this time.

"Are you quite done overreacting?" TIM asked from it.

"Depends," I answered as I tightened my hold on the FHG. "Are you the one who tried to kill me? It’s not like my shields can protect me over there, you know!"

TIM gave a mournful sigh. Since computers don’t breathe, I knew it had only been for effect. Since this particular computer was TIM, I knew the effect wasn’t sympathetic. "I wish I had thought of it," he said, and I rolled my eyes, "but, no, it wasn’t me."

"Well, if it wasn’t you, than who would—" Something clicked behind my eyes. Yeah, so I’m a little slow… "Rampage." The only Beast Warrior with actual missiles (I hadn’t seen a trail of smoke, so that ruled out Tarantulas).

"Yes," TIM said smugly.

I sat down on the bed and put my head in my hands. You can take a Predacon off the battlefield, but that doesn’t make him any less a Predacon. "Once a psycho, always a psycho," I mumbled.

"Figures that YOU would know that."

"Shaddup, TIM." I lifted my head and glared at the speaker. "Why the SLAG didn’t you stop him?! It’s kind of obvious there’s a problem when someone’s standing here pointing a missile launcher through the portal!"

His only answer was a cackle. That moronic hunk of scrap metal—

--and speaking of scrap metal… "Okay. So where did that murdering crab disappear to?" I growled. I was still ready for a fight. That, and respect for my authority had obviously been slipping. Megatron had told me the Predacons were ‘unavailable’ yesterday when Rhinox had been stranded. I later found out that they were unavailable because they were attacking the Ark while I was being eaten alive by those hand-sized, mutated carnivores known as swamp mosquitoes. Fortunately (er…kinda), TIM had been riffling through the Maximals’ computer files at the time, and he managed to discourage them. They ended up in the middle of a blizzard up at the North Pole, and I had taken a certain vengeful delight in informing them via radio that due to the fact that Santa Clause had temporarily exiled me from his domain, they could slagging well trudge back through servo-freezing weather without my help. That whole incident plus today’s attempt to murder me showed that I needed to remind the Predacons and Maximals that although I may just be a human, I have enough HASBRO-backed attitude to make their lives about as much fun as living in the Pit. They needed a reminder, a lesson to them all…which made Rampage a convenient target.

"Depth Charge stopped him in the kitchen," TIM reported. "They seem to be fighting."

"In MY house?!" Another symptom of disrespect; had I NOT made my house a neutral zone? If they wanted to shoot at each other, they could go do it somewhere else (preferably where my pets won’t be in danger)! "Someone shall pay," I said in a low voice as I checked the targeting scope on my FHG. I thought for a moment before retrieving another one from subspace. Two combatants; two guns. I’m all for equality, after all. "Break out the Little Mermaid tape, TIM," I said as I nudged my bedroom door open and peered down the hall. "I used it on Cheetor, so I should let a Predacon watch it for the sake of evening things up…"

So, to sum things up so far today: Peace and quiet?…out the window. My book?…burnt scraps. Attitude problem?…developing quite nicely, thank you. Beast Wars going on in my kitchen?…check.

"You didn’t mention anything about ALL of them fighting," I grumbled as Megatron demolished the dishwasher because Rattrap was using it for cover. Or maybe because there were things living in there that were trying to join the fight. Great Insanity, when was the last time anyone RAN that thing?!

"Oops."

"Remind me to sabotage your printer paper or something, hmm?" I poked my head out and took another quick look down the hall. Now, where was Rampage…? Oh. There he was. He wasn’t in the kitchen anymore. In fact, he was in process of playing the piano with Depth Charge’s face. Depth Charge retaliated by tripping him and slamming the piano cover down on top of him…with the piano still attached to it. The impact made a lovely sound in B minor.

I decided that, no, I was not going to laugh no matter how funny the sight of Cheetor and Silverbolt Frisbee-attacking Terrorsaur with dinner plates was. HEY! Were those my good china plates?! Slaggitall, those were the only ones in this dimension TIM had been able to repair without chips still missing…not anymore, I guess.

What was happening here was mutiny, I realized. A conscious decision to disobey my HASBRO-given authority. Well, okay, I can understand that. Rules had been broken before, sometimes even beyond this incident, but I’d admit that I had been kind of lax with enforcing them lately. It seemed like the Beast Warriors just didn’t believe I would punish anyone for violations anymore…

I almost felt sorry for them.

Almost.

I stepped into the hallway fully and lifted my Guns. "How many chairs do you think you can fit into the TV Room, TIM?" I asked loudly. Honestly, with that much firepower in that contained of a space (Inferno had already set the kitchen ceiling on fire, but so far it looked like only the windows had been blown out. One of the walls looked about ready to collapse, though…), I wouldn’t have thought anyone could hear me.

A moment later the ringing in my ears was the only proof that there had been noise. Maximals and Predacons alike had frozen in surprise, staring at me with expression of utter horror plastered on their faces. An ‘eep!’ of fear came from behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to find that Quickstrike HAD gone to get reinforcements. Now he looked like he regretted it. Rhinox and Blackarachnia seemed to share the feeling, and they were edging almost imperceptibly back towards the dimensional gateway they had just stepped out of. I smiled at them automatically (they hadn’t been FORCED to come help me, after all), then remembered a fraction of a second too late that…yep. All three of my would-be rescuers stopped in their tracks, then flinched in unison.

Yeesh. There is NOTHING wrong with my smile!

I let that pass and turned my attention back to the rest of the Maximals and Predacons. They were still paralyzed with dread. Some of the positions they had frozen in were kind of funny (you wouldn’t believe where Waspinator’s hand was…or rather, where on WHO it was…and Dinobot and Megatron were lucky the refrigerator’s door was where it was, or they’d have never heard the end of it), but it would seriously ruin my image if I laughed in the middle of what was supposed to be an attempt to restore my authority. Hey, wait a second! Wasn’t that PART of my authority? I could slagging well laugh at whatever I wanted, right? Besides…WHAT image? As far as I knew, if they just humored the crazy person, we got along fine.

So I let the FHGs drop down to point at the floor while I dissolved into helpless giggles. Look, I just can’t see Cheetor and Silverbolt pelting Terrorsaur with canned vegetables without losing it a little, alright? Apparently they had run out of plates in the time it had taken for me to realize what was going on. Eventually I ran out of breath, but the way they were all staring at me still set me off again. I tilted my head to the side quizzically, fighting to get words past my snickering. "Tarantulas? You wanna explain your weaponry?"

A few brave sparks took a risk and looked away long enough to follow my gaze to where Tarantulas had been beating on Optimus. Once they looked, they couldn’t help but chuckle, too. That made me laugh again, which led other ‘bots to glance over, and once THEY started laughing we all just joined in.

The spider looked at the spatula in his hand, then glared at everyone defensively. "What? I was making pancakes!"

And you know what the funniest thing about it was? It looked like Tarantulas had actually been WINNING…

"Oh, I needed that," I sighed after a long enough time of laughing that my sides ached. A couple of chuckles answered me, and the Maximals and Predacons down the hall began untangling themselves. Apparently I wasn’t going to blast them into orbit (for now), so they might as well make themselves more comfortable. They kept a nervous optic on me the whole time, but I had bigger fish to fry.

Literally. "Where do you think YOU’RE going?" I demanded mildly of the resident murderous crab. He was in the process of edging out onto the porch from the piano room, and he paused to glance between the ground and me. Then he turned his back to me and ran for it without a word in reply. How rude. "GET BACK HERE!!" I shrieked, and Beast Warriors dove for cover.

Depth Charge tried to use the remains of the piano as a shield as I sprinted across the room towards him…then stared after me when I ignored him entirely and jumped off the porch.

I hit the ground in a roll and came up running. Up ahead, Rampage was driving off in his tank mode, and I really had no chance of catching up to him. I mean, TIM can enhance my speed all he wants; when it comes down to a race between a human and a tank, the tank is going to win!

So I cheated. I didn’t even bother trying to race him. I just aimed a FHG, shot at his treads, and WALKED to catch up with him. By the time he had recovered enough from the blast to realize he was laying upside-down and that’s why he wasn’t going anywhere, I was already close enough to wave down at him cheerfully. He transformed and stayed flat on his back, looking up at me with a dazed look in his optics still. I grabbed a couple of his crab legs and started back towards the house, humming to myself. I had gotten to the chef’s speaking part in the song I was humming by the time I dragged Rampage up the porch steps and through the back door.

"—I have missed one! What is this? How on Earth could I miss such a sweet little succulent crab?" I let go of Rampage and waltzed a few steps as I sang in a corny French accent. Maximals and Predacons alike stopped whatever they were doing (mostly repairs on the stuff they had just damaged a few minutes ago) to gape at me. Rattrap screamed and hid underneath the sink. What? I think the Little Mermaid is an appropriate video for a robot with an aquatic beast mode!

I got the feeling Rampage didn’t appreciate my choice of music, either. He kicked my legs out from underneath me and scrambled to his feet while I was still sprawled on the floor. Rattrap yelped again, this time in surprise as the crab vaulted the sink and almost landed on him. I made a sound like a cross between growling and snarling as I pushed myself up on my arms and saw the last of Rampage disappear over the counter. That triggered a message to play in the minds of the assembled Beast Warriors watching me:

At the sound of The Demented Angel gnashing her teeth, please scatter and, "Get OUT of my WAY!!" I ordered.

POOF! Just like that, they were gone. Megatron and Dinobot had somehow managed to fit INSIDE the cupboard (still holding the refrigerator door, I might add), and Depth Charge was now sharing the piano with my group of unnecessary reinforcements. And it wasn’t REALLY just ‘Poof!’ There was a lot of panicking involved, I’m sure. After all, at the time I was storming through the kitchen waving two Freakin’ Huge Guns over my head. It’s just easier to say ‘Poof!’ than ‘scream, yell, run in circles, cram into impossibly small spaces,’ that’s all.

However, I was only noticing these things in passing. Most of my attention was on Rampage, who had taken advantage of the suddenly empty kitchen to drop into his tank mode and trundle off down the hall. Smart move. Now I couldn’t shoot at him without hitting the ‘bots hiding behind the shattered piano.

Heeheehee…well, ain’t that a shame?

Blackarachnia realized what was going to happen almost too late, but she turned and (yes, I mean this literally) PUNTED Depth Charge and Rhinox out of the line of fire before throwing herself after them. Considering the way they had all been bunched together, it wasn’t too surprising that they ended up taking Quickstrike and the piano with them for the two-story plunge off the back porch. And that wouldn’t have been too bad for anyone since it’s really not that high of a fall for a robot…except that for some improbable reason, the delicate black widow spider ended up on the BOTTOM of the resulting pile.

*Crunch*

"Beloved!" I heard Silverbolt cry in an anguished voice. It was a distant sound through the enraged roaring in my ears, but I could still hear most of the Predacons laughing, too…all of which I ignored in my quest to destroy the house. At least, that’s what it seemed like I was doing. The original HASBRO computer (I can’t believe I’m missing a computer…even if it was a helpful saint compared to the sadistic thing I had now) had enhanced my aim, and one or two shots should have ended Rampage’s escape attempt…but I had forgotten about blowing apart his tank treads earlier. It’s incredibly hard to hit a target that’s lurching in all directions at random. However, the hallway had good ventilation, now. No walls, but a nice breeze could get in…

I got him eventually, of course. It’s hard to be random forever, and I finally nailed him using pure saturation. Basically I poured firepower down the hall until I hit him. Hey, whatever works, right?

By then I was rather angry with him. I mean, compared to what I had been feeling before towards the person who had attempted to kill me, I was angry. "You HAD to try and run, didn’t you," I mumbled as I stalked down the hall to retrieve the unconscious ‘bot. He had transformed when the first barrage hit him but gone down before he could try anything. That made him easier to drag, if nothing else. "You could have just surrendered peacefully and gotten it over with, but you just had to make a scene," I added under my breath, blissfully forgetting that I had WANTED to make a scene for the rest of the watching Beast Warriors.

Those that had been brave enough to venture out of cupboards and whatever holes they had crawled into dove back in as I dragged Rampage through the kitchen. This time I headed straight for the TV Room’s door. Apparently TIM was willing to help me this time (probably because he liked to torment people) because there was a chair already set up in front of the TV, and the Little Mermaid tape was laid out conveniently. Still muttering to myself and twitching occasionally, I threw the crab into the chair and snapped the restraints shut.

His optics began blinking on again at the same time I was hitting ‘Play’ on the remote control. "So, tell me," I asked with a bit of unholy glee as the opening credits started to play and an expression of horror spread across Rampage’s face, "have you ever considered dating Ursula?" The look of horrified disgust transferred from the TV screen to me, and I waggled the TV remotes at him tauntingly. "Seriously, I mean. You two should consider getting together sometime."

And then I walked out of the room, happily leaving him to his torment.

"You’re evil."

I raised an eyebrow. "Thank you." Megatron glared at me for a moment more. I pointed at the floor politely, and he sullenly returned his attention to it. Another muffled scream from the TV Room prompted him to scrub more briskly, and I leaned back in my chair to give the entire kitchen a beaming grin. My footrest started to move, and I promptly hit him with a broken plate. "I told you to stay still, slaggit!"

Terrorsaur nodded, almost as resentful as Megatron. Then again, Megatron was on his knees scrubbing the kitchen tiles clean, and Terrorsaur was acting as my footrest. I really couldn’t decide who had the worst job. That was kind of the point, though, so I didn’t worry about it. The rest of the kitchen crew looked about as happy as the two Predacons, but Rampage’s ongoing torture was enough to convince them that cleaning up after their little fight was the smart thing to do. Ticking me off further would definitely NOT be.

That was why Silverbolt was helping Optimus replace the shattered light fixtures, Rattrap was repairing the microwave, Depth Charge and Inferno were attempting to rebuild the piano (emphasis on ‘attempting’—that thing was SMASHED), and Cheetor, Dinobot, and Waspinator were piecing the dishwasher back together. Oh, and Tarantulas was cooking me a pancake. Why? Because I had decided that if he bent the slagging spatula beating on Optimus with it, then he could try and cook with it. Besides, I had skipped lunch to read, and I was hungry!

Of course, TIM could have repaired everything in the house much faster and more professionally, but it made my point: the rules were still in affect. If they annoyed me enough, I’d harass them back. And when it came to irritating people, I could top anyone…well, maybe not TIM. We were still competing for the honor, I guess. Little did I know how far out of my league I was on this match. Not that it would have stopped me, mind you, but if I HAD known I could have prepared a little. I’m not quite sure how, but I would have tried.

As it was, that evil son of a toaster’s newest move took me completely by surprise. It started with Rhinox and Quickstrike bursting out of the office/sewing room and throwing themselves OVER the three ‘bots working on the dishwasher. This was surprising for two reasons: 1) Since Rhinox and Quickstrike had actually tried to help me out by coming to my rescue, they weren’t being punished like the rest of the Beast Warriors (except for Blackarachnia. She was still in the CR Chamber). I couldn’t think of any reason that those two would be panicking like that. And my second reason was that I had never seen Rhinox attempt to fly inside the house before. It’s an interesting sight.

On the other hand, stuff like this was kind of normal. I mean, feed me a steady diet of weirdness all summer on top of my natural tolerance for it (built up over a lifetime of living with four VERY strange brothers), and I’ll get used to it, too. I barely blinked, and even that was mostly because rhinoceroses really shouldn’t try to fly. They land quite heavily, and in Rhinox’s case he cracked the tile. Er…more. It had been pretty shattered to begin with, what with a full scale Beast Wars happening on top of it barely an hour ago. Quickstrike’s landing was softer, but that was only until Megatron got enough leverage to kick him off.

"Um," I said intelligently. For the moment, words had escaped me.

Much like Rhinox’s composure. "Lady Dementia!" he yelped. Yes, YELPED. That was odd enough that he drew the attention of those who had become insulated enough against weirdness to have ignored the fuzor and rhino’s sudden appearance in the kitchen. "TIM! He’s—we can’t—what can we—"

See Rhinox. See Rhinox hyperventilate. Hyperventilate, Rhinox, hyperventilate…

But just mentioning TIM shed light on the issue. Words returned to me, and I shook my head mournfully. "Alright. What’s he done THIS time?" There was a subtle shift in the air in the kitchen as I said it. Maximals and Predacons alike started testing nearby blunt objects in preparation for battle, probably without knowing they were doing it. I myself noticed that I was hefting the salt and pepper shakers thoughtfully, and I made myself put them down again.

Quickstrike pried himself out of the wall Megatron had just finished impressing with the fuzor’s face (note to self: try not to land on Megatron), and he staggered over to me. I blinked at the sheaf of papers he was waving in my face. It looked like some kind of list, but he wouldn’t stop moving it long enough for me to read it. "He says we gotta round up alla this stuff by t’night or else—or else--"

I frowned when the fuzor began going the way of Rhinox (and I hadn’t even known robots could hyperventilate. Learn something new every day, I guess…). "Let me see that," I ordered, and Quickstrike calmed down enough to hand me the papers. As I had guessed, it was a list. A rather long list, in fact. And it was actually TWO lists in one, with a section labeled ‘Maximal Base’ and another called ‘Predacon Base.’ The objects in each list varied from mundane to obscure, and I couldn’t think of why it was so important that we find them. I looked up from the list and frowned again. Since the only ones out here who knew what was going on were both on the edge of hysterics, I would have to go directly to the source.

Thrillsville.

"I’ll be back," I announced as I got up and headed for the sewing/office room to confront TIM.

"Is that a threat or a promise?" some smart-aleck robot mumbled, and I gave the kitchen in general a glare before stepping through the door and pointedly closing it behind me. Then I turned the glare on the big silver computer in the room with me.

"Ah, Lady Dementia, how pleasant to see you again! You so rarely come and see me," The Invention of Microsoft said, and the only word I can use to describe how he said it is ‘tipsy’. That merry kind of cheerfulness jovial drunks get sometimes, when everyone suddenly seems like a friend. Coming from a computer who’s commonly described as evil, I found this tone of voice disturbing to say the least. A little happy face appeared on his screen and beamed at me as it bounced around. It was unbearably cute.

That’s about when I realized I was in trouble. "What are you talking about? I always yell at you in person whenever you come up with another plot against life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," I said cautiously as I sat down in the broken chair in front of TIM. It immediately fixed itself and grew a headrest. Again, this disturbed me. TIM was trying to make me comfortable. Something was wrong with this picture…I examined the headrest carefully for poison needles or anything along that line. Nothing. I leaned back gingerly, still expecting something nasty to happen, but it genuinely was just a headrest.

Now I had gone beyond disturbed; I was scared!

Think about it: a supercomputer who a little over an hour ago had been laughing at my close call with a missile was being nice. Not only that, but this behavior, while frightening when coming from TIM, wasn’t enough to send Rhinox and Quickstrike fleeing from the room. There was obviously something exceptionally corrupt going on. Paranoid I may be, but not when it comes to dealing with TIM. Then I’m just being practical.

"Whatever makes you think I’m plotting against life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" the computer in question asked, his happy face’s eyes widening innocently

"Because you’ve done nothing else since I’ve known you?" I suggested, and if his expression had been innocent, mine was angelic.

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," TIM stated, and I laughed in disbelief. The happy face became a sad frowny face. It was still unbearably cute. "You doubt?"

"You? Always." I sighed and held up the sheaf of papers in my hand. "Seriously, what are you trying to pull this time?"

That happy face looked at me with Bambi eyes, and I almost gagged. "I thought that you might appreciate a new training game…" I glanced between the list and his screen skeptically. What kind of game was this?! "Don’t you like scavenger hunts, Lady Dementia?" My eyes widened. "And of course it would have to have a time limit to encourage everyone’s best efforts, and I came up with the perfect punishment if the Beast Warriors failed to gather everything on that list by midnight."

"Do I want to know?" I asked faintly, looking at the list in dawning horror. It was pages and PAGES long…

"Music," TIM stated, and not even faked innocence could cover up his smugness. My uncomprehending stare prompted him to elaborate, "Played over every Maximal and Predacon’s internal radios for 24 hours."

I still couldn’t see why that would freak Rhinox and Quickstrike out. "What type of music?" I mean, yeah, it’d probably get annoying, but I couldn’t imagine music that I couldn’t tolerate for 24 hours.

That’s because even my imagination didn’t have the depth of evilness that TIM’s does. "I love you, you love me—"

"OH MY INSANITY!!" I screamed at the top of my lungs out of self-defense, and even then I could hear the Barney theme song over my own voice.

I think I hit light speed at the same time I hit the door, and I somehow managed to kick it closed again as I reached warp speed on the other side. Unfortunately, I was at the wrong angle to dive over the counter like Rhinox and Quickstrike had; fortunately, I was at the right angle to rebound off the TV Room’s wall and do a flip sideways so I’d skid along the kitchen floor, which accomplished the same thing—getting as much space between me and TIM as possible. I slammed into Megatron’s knees, taking him along for the ride with pure momentum, and eventually we ended up in a tangle of limbs underneath the table.

I resisted the urge to cower there, ignored hands in inappropriate places, and sent the table crashing to the side as I leapt back to my feet. Speakers throughout the house began cackling maniacally with TIM’s new, tipsy voice. I shrieked wildly and frantically tried to locate Rhinox and Quickstrike. They were sitting in the only two chairs me and Megatron hadn’t knocked over when we’d blitzed the table. Thankfully, they were apparently still speechless, and my panicked appearance hadn’t helped them any. I grabbed them both by the necks and brought them within a couple inches of my face.

"Don’t. Mention. ANYTHING," I whispered urgently. If the rest of the Beast Warriors learned what we had learned, they might go catatonic with horror, and I needed to mobilize a search NOW. "Got it?"

It seemed like the same thoughts had gone through their heads. They nodded, and I released them while the rest of the Beast Warriors (minus only Rampage, now) gathered around babbling questions.

"What has gotten into you?!" Megatron roared from the floor.

I raised an eyebrow, a spark of amusement breaking through my terror as I glanced down and saw him painfully untangling himself from one of the chairs we’d knocked over. The moment didn’t last, though. "Shut up and listen," I snapped over the questions, and everyone went quiet out of surprise. "We only have until midnight to find this entire list." I held up the sheaf of papers I was holding with a death grip. I began prying my fingers off of them as I said, "It’s TIM’s idea of a training game, and it’s kind of like a scavenger hunt. Optimus, I’m going to give you the Maximal list because it’s a little shorter than the Predacon one; I want you guys to get back to your base right this minute and start looking."

Optimus accepted the papers I thrust at him with a puzzled expression. "If it’s TIM’s game, why are we even playing along? And why do we only have until midnight?"

Rhinox, Quickstrike, and I exchanged a look, and we all shuddered. "You don’t want to know. Just do it." I returned to prying at my fingers, then noticed the Maximals were still standing there looking at me. "WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?!?!" I screeched, and…Poof! They were gone!

"Demented Lady being mean," Waspinator whined.

I got my last finger loose and hissed viciously at the wasp. "Mean? MEAN?! You don’t know the meaning of the word!" TIM would learn as soon as I figured out some way to get him back for this. At the moment, however, I needed to regain control of myself. The Predacons were backing away and openly considering fleeing. I took a deep breath. "Insanity help us all, but we’re going to have the quickest way back to your base, guys—"

"I don’t think so, nooo," Megatron said from behind me. "There is no reason to—"

I was suddenly seeing everything through a red haze, and something in my expression must have given away my intentions. The ‘bots who could see my face flinched en masse. Maybe I was smiling. Whatever I my face was doing, though, my voice came out so steady and reasonable that I wasn't sure it was mine, "I am TRYING to save you guys from a fate worse than anything I’ve thought up so far this summer, Megatron."

It must not have occurred to him to wonder why I sounded so calm. Perhaps it was because he couldn’t see my face, or it might be because he was too mad to care. "Do you really think, yesss, that I would fall for such a transparent attempt to play some prank on us?"

"Uh, Boss-bot," Quickstrike started a moment too late, "she ain’t pullin’ a prank…"

I whirled around and clamped my hands onto the Predacon tyrant’s forearms. "Prank?" I asked in that same strange voice as I used my enhanced strength to pitch him across the kitchen to slam into the TV Room’s door. "This is NOT a prank." I didn’t want to get that near TIM again, but I stalked after Megatron anyway and kicked open the TV Room door so the dazed tyrant would fall inside.

He shook his head like he was trying to clear it as he climbed to his feet again…and saw Rampage’s glazed optics and the movie playing on the TV. "NO!"

I caught him by the back of the neck when he turned to run from the Room, and I used my grip to shove him into the nearest wall. "Now, Megatron," I said calmly, reasonably, as he fell to the floor, stunned, "you have two choices: you can join Rampage, or you can cooperate." I picked him up by the shoulders and smiled in his face. His eyes got wide, and I could feel him shaking. "Understand?" He nodded desperately, but I knew the other Predacons were watching us from the open door. I needed to establish my authority if we were going to finish TIM’s game on time. "Say, ‘Yes, Lady Dementia,’ Megatron," I said.

He swallowed hard, eyes locked with mine. He knew exactly what I was doing, but he also knew that I would go through with my threat. "Yes, Lady Dementia."

"Then let’s get going. That is," I dropped him and turned to leave, "IF you’ve decided to cooperate…"

He beat me out the door. I paused thoughtfully on the threshold, but then I left Rampage to his movie. After about an hour of watching those type of videos, they get to the point where they’re more in the way than helpful. Rampage hadn’t even noticed that we had come in, so I knew he wouldn’t be any help in our search.

Besides, I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t have been able to fit him into my van without taking the time to remove most of the seats, and we didn’t have that much time. The flyers were fine since they could keep up, but driving The Beast really was the quickest way to get to the Predacon base. Right now it was 5:32 in the afternoon, and we only had a little over 6 hours to find everything on the list!

So that’s how Quickstrike ended up riding shotgun and Tarantulas was in the back. I couldn’t blame Tarantulas for attempting to find out how many seat belts he could wrap around himself or Quickstrike for sinking his cobra fangs into the dashboard like that. They had seen me drive before, and they knew this was going to be WORSE. You see, there weren’t any roads back on prehistoric Earth, so I had been forced to map my own route for the few times I had needed to go out to the Predacon base and there hadn’t been anyone available to take me. That route was conveniently taped to the drink-holder, and a mere glimpse of it had been enough to inspire the poor ‘bots to new heights of passenger safety. After all, THEY didn’t have shields…

All that, and I didn’t even have my license yet.

I put The Beast into first gear. "Hold on," I said grimly, and Quickstrike whimpered.

*vrt-vrrRRRT—VAVAVARRROOOOOOM!!!*

There are words that could describe that trip. I won’t say them except to give a brief summary. I have my license now, and as far as I can tell I’m the only safe driver in Michigan (no offense to any drivers in Michigan who feel that they drive safely. I’ve never met you, apparently). This may be because I drove like a blind-folded psycho all the way to the Predacon base, and I could only go uphill from that experience. Careening off of rocks and trees, driving along a cliff above an 80-foot vertical drop at 150 miles per hour while going over nature’s equivalent of speed bumps (talk about bone-jarring…ouch…), becoming airborne frequently—none of that was good for anyone. I got the feeling that The Beast enjoyed the challenge, though.

The seat Tarantulas had been clinging to actually unhooked and started to slide around, and he had so many seatbelts tying him down that he couldn’t get loose. He got thrown around a lot. Quickstrike wedged himself into the passenger side seat well after his head got introduced to the ceiling a few too many times. Every time he bounced up and knocked a new dent into the ceiling, The Beast’s engine snarled. Ever since then, Quickstrike and my van just haven’t gotten along very well…that is to say, The Beast seems to have an even bigger grief against the fuzor’s continued existence than anyone else’s.

That wasn’t even the worst part. Fortunately for Tarantulas and Quickstrike (I would have survived because of my shields…I think.), the Predacon flyers had been keeping a close watch on us. Terrorsaur and Inferno managed to catch The Beast by the back bumper when we took a nose-dive into a canyon I could have sworn hadn’t been there before. Megatron and Waspinator got underneath the van and lifted us back onto solid ground. They seemed surprised that Tarantulas was hanging over the windshield between me and Quickstrike; only the fact that his seat couldn’t fit between the driver and passenger side seats was keeping him from falling. Of course, we were all screaming in panic at the time, so maybe that’s why they were looking at us strangely. Or maybe because The Beast was making noises like a rabid wolverine was underneath the hood. It didn’t like being saved from crashing by a bunch of potential victims.

Anyway, we eventually arrived at the Predacon base. Then our real problems began…

The list was six pages long in size 6 single-spaced font. (If you want to know roughly how many items that is, use any word processor program and try to find enough things lying around the house to fill six pages in size 6 single-spaced font. About halfway through the third page, you’ll realize you’re running out of stuff to list…) Stuck in between each page was a page of stickers that we were supposed to put on each item as we found it. Since we only had a little over 5 hours left now, I paired everyone up and gave them each two pages of stuff to find, and then I went with the Terrorsaur/Waspinator pair. They seemed the most likely to get distracted from the task.

Somewhere between driving like a madwoman and giving them orders to ‘find everything on the list, at any and all cost,’ it had finally gotten through the Predacons’ heads that I was seriously worried about this. Or maybe they just didn’t want to end up driving back to the house with me. Anyway, they set off with a will to find their items. Quickstrike wisely kept his mouth shut when Megatron wanted to know what could possibly be so horrible that I wouldn’t tell him what would happen if we failed. We both shivered. Barney music for 24 hours? I felt completely justified in acting like a worse tyrant than Megatron if it kept the Beast Warriors from suffering. They’d thank me when this was over!

"So what’s on our list?" I asked Terrorsaur when the other pairs had left to go hunt.

"Um." He squinted at it and frowned. "Well…I know where there’s a dissembled particle generator. And don’t you still have that broken computer monitor, Waspy?"

And so we set forth on our journey of discovery. What can I say? Someday I might be able to forget the things I saw during those fateful hours. Say, a couple dozen years from now? Give or take a few decades…I’ll try to give the highlights as I remember them:

In Terrorsaur’s quarters we found the hydrogen tank, a cookie jar, and the pencil sharpener. I put the latter in my pocket to take back home with me, but I let him keep the cookie jar. I didn’t have any use for it in its current condition. We had the hardest time getting a sticker on the Thing Inside The Cookie Jar, though. It kept peeling it off and trying to put it on Waspinator…

We passed Tarantulas and Quickstrike in the lower corridors and compared notes. They had found the original G1 Transformers Megatron’s cannon, a rubber ducky, three energon crystals of different sizes, and a spare spark-box in Megatron’s quarters. Tarantulas told us that he thought we might find trihydi…trihode…some chemical with a name only he could pronounce correctly in his quarters. The transwarp cell and used dynamite fuse could both be found in the…well, Waspinator said that he could show us where once Tarantulas reminded him about it and started laughing.

So we went on our way, and that’s how we ended up waking the monster. It lived in Tarantulas’ room, apparently, and we woke it up when we started trashing the place looking for the stuff on our list. At that point, I had already been feeling rather faint just from the smell. Tarantulas never throws away anything remotely edible, and since he spends most of his time in his secret lair or lab…let’s just say his snacks have plenty of time to become mobile, not to mention sentient. Since his quarters were located right above the lava, it’s always pleasantly warm and dry, so in that respect it’s not like The Brother Zone. However, it’s a good thing that most of the food scraps are more interested in hunting each other for dinner than attacking us, because we were outnumbered badly.

But, like I said, then we woke the monster.

"Do you hear that?" I asked when Waspinator and me were trying to pin down an antelope leg so we could put a sticker on it. The thing kicked, which was a sight to see since it wasn’t attached to an antelope anymore.

Waspinator tilted his head and shrugged. "Wazzpinator hear Dactyl-bot curzzing at zzevered head," he replied. Over in the corner, Terrorsaur screeched angrily and shot at something I couldn’t see around the buffalo carcass.

"Is that on our list?" I used a knee to keep the antelope limb down while I looked through our two pages of the list. "I don’t see—oh. Yep. One severed head." I looked up and saw Terrorsaur limping out of the corner grumbling to himself. "Did you sticker it?"

He made an obscene gesture back at the corner. Something in the shadows might have returned it, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know about it. "Yes."

"Great." I checked the list again, absently lifting my knee to release the antelope leg when Waspinator put a sticker on it. "Okay, so now we need to catch one of the fruit flies and…hey, did you guys hear that?" I looked up and glanced around. I could have sworn I heard something growling, but Terrorsaur and Waspinator both shrugged and shook their heads.

Then Terrorsaur put his foot in my face.

"What the slag?!" I fell over onto my back in surprise even though he hadn’t touched me. That put my back in contact with something that squirmed, and I jumped to my feet again, completely revolted. You see, I was still only wearing a sports bra and shorts… "Oh, YUCK." …which meant I had been in SKIN CONTACT with whatever that had been. "Ew, ew, EW!"

I shuddered, then turned on Terrorsaur. "What was that for?!" I yelled loud enough to make the walls ring.

He seemed puzzled, but he gamely lifted his foot again. "Fruit fly," he explained as he pointed to the bottom of it. Now that I thought beyond the fact that his foot had been rushing at my face at the time, there WAS a small black blotch that might have been a fruit fly before he stomped on it. "Is there any reason it has to be alive?"

I blinked at him for a long moment, sighed, and gave up on my anger to grin instead. "Nobody said anything to me about it!" I passed him a sticker as he scraped it off on the floor, and that was one more item on our list. But…there it was again…

Terrorsaur whirled around. "Okay, that time I heard it." Waspinator and I put our backs to each other instinctively, and the pterodactyl backed towards us so we formed a triangle with our backs in the center. The growling kept going, a bass rumble that shook the walls just as much as my yell had. "Lady Dementia, what IS it?" Terrorsaur whispered.

"That’s what I was about to ask YOU," I whispered back. "It sounds big, but I don’t—"

Waspinator screamed. Terrorsaur and I whipped around to face in the same direction as him, already aiming our weapons at the wall—

--which MOVED—

--and I grabbed Waspinator by the wings just as the wasp’s knees gave out, and Terrorsaur got me by the arm at the same time he activated his jets. What might have been a giant yellow eye opened and focused on us, but by that time we were already out the door and down the hall. It still almost tripped us with one of its tentacles, and by then we were all screaming, and we went berserk. When the tip of the scale-covered thing wrapped around Terrorsaur’s ankle, we just piled on top of it. I’m pretty sure Terrorsaur curled like a cat and BIT the slagging thing, but I know that I was clawing at it and Waspinator was stinging it, and then we eventually realized that if we kept on pounding on the thing, it might come out of the room after us…

So we fought our way free and ran away shrieking like banshees having a bad hair day. If we had known the monster was coming out anyway, we would have just kept running. As it was, things got a little interesting. Despite the scare, something in the back of my mind kept prodding me onward. Probably because I was more terrified of a 24 hour Barney song festival than a monster that lives in Tarantulas’ quarters. Thankfully, at this point my memory only supplied brief scenes of the continuing scavenger hunt. I’ve compared my memories with the other Predacons, though, and I’m almost completely confident that most of this actually happened. I wasn’t hallucinating!

(Well, maybe a couple times. At least, I don’t THINK there was really a mystical flying goat dancing an Irish jig on top of Megatron’s throne…wait, this was a Tuesday. That incident happened on a Friday night. Nevermind!)

But, anyway, things went crazy. Um, crazier. I started to feel at home…

I remember sprinting down the hall with my group to find a place on the wall Terrorsaur said had a Predacon insignia painted on it upside-down—

--taking a dive into the lava to put a sticker on the very bottom edge of the ship—

--freezing in horror as we looked down a corridor in time to see Tarantulas and Quickstrike run across it down an intersecting corridor with the monster chasing them. Both of them were screaming like mad, and it wasn’t quite certain at the time if Quickstrike would stay out of its reach—

--breaking into Rampage’s quarters and getting knocked down by the death-trap he had rigged up inside. If I hadn’t been shielded, it would have ripped me apart—

--helping Waspinator find his antenna when another trap sheared them off. It was pure luck that it hadn’t gotten his entire upper body instead—

--putting a sticker on Transmutate’s head—

--falling down laughing when we found and stickered my missing African violet; I didn’t even mind that Rampage had obviously stolen the plant from me—

--looking out of one of the holes in a corridor wall and spotting Megatron and Inferno running around outside with butterfly nets as they tried to catch the Beast Wars butterfly—

--realizing we’d found everything on our two pages—

--distracting the monster so Tarantulas and Quickstrike could hunt down their last items—

--fleeing like a monster was after us…which it WAS—

--blinking—

--discovering that somehow I was now RIDING the monster, and we were still chasing Terrorsaur and Waspinator—

--encouraging it to find Megatron and Inferno because I had the vague notion that I should check and see how much of their list they had found—

--Megatron and Inferno reporting from 50 feet straight up in the air that they only had two more things to find, and would I please stop trying to persuade them to land or come any closer when the monster was drooling like that—

--feeling relieved when the Predacons had found everything—

--feeling stubborn when they told me to get off the monster—

--trying to convince them that I really did need another pet around the house—

--Megatron pointing out that it was almost midnight, and we didn’t know if the Maximals had found everything on their list—

--Tarantulas saying that it’d probably eat my cats--

--clinging to the monster and bidding it a tearful goodbye—

--and then I was back in The Beast and driving back to the house at about the same speed as before…but this time in the dark. Quickstrike had been knocked offline by a particularly large bump that might have been a tree for all I know, and Tarantulas was mumbling something about probability of survival. If his figures were correct, we were screwed.

I shifted into fourth gear and floored it.

*vvvrrrrrRRRRRROOOOOOOM!*

"You’re late," I said as Cheetor and Rattrap burst in through the office/sewing room door. The Predacons and I, of course, had just arrived through the porch door, but there was no need to tell the Maximals that…

"Eh, it’s 11:58 PM. We still got two minutes." Rattrap took in the battered condition of the Preds with a glance and looked at me inquiringly. I wasn’t in much better shape. My shorts were stained and torn, and my sports bra had been stretched when Terrorsaur had caught me by the back of it to stop me from falling at some point during the last frantic hours.

"Did you get it all?" I demanded to know as the rest of the Maximals crowded into the room.

The rat gave me an insolent grin. "Yep."

I took a deep breath and relaxed for the first time in hours. Quickstrike spared a moment from nursing his aching head to mumble something that sounded like ‘Thank ya, Primus,’ and Rhinox gave me a weak thumb-up sign. "Great Insanity, I didn’t think we could do it…" I turned in my chair, leaned back against the headrest, and grinned at the little happy face on TIM’s screen. "…but we did, all the same. Do I get to laugh at you, now?" The happy face flushed red and scowled, and the chair I was sitting in went back to being broken, dumping me onto the floor. Just to let you know, evil supercomputers are sore losers. He refused to say a word even when I started laughing. The Predacons and Maximals (minus Quickstrike and Rhinox) all looked at me strangely, probably still wondering why this scavenger hunt had been so important, but just winning a game over TIM was enough to get them laughing along with me.

Of course, that’s when I realized that the loudest laughter was coming from the TV Room, and it had nothing to do with what was going on. I had left Rampage sitting in there for quite a long time, and he had snapped. Lost it. Gone bonkers. He was talking to an imaginary mermaid, okay? I just didn’t have the heart to torture him further, so I gave him a lecture about not trying to kill me anymore and let him go back to the Predacon base. I’m not sure if he understood anything I was saying, what with the way he was hugging my legs and thanking me over and over for letting him go, but I think he got the idea.

And, yes, Quickstrike and Rhinox did tell everyone about what TIM had been threatening. They reacted how I should have predicted they would. Absolute horror…and then the next morning they showed up and demanded revenge.

Which was fine with me.

"Are you sure this will work?" Blackarachnia asked nervously as we all tramped down the hallway in my dimension. We had decided that TIM was less likely to be able to fry us if we did this in this dimension.

I read over the poem in my hands one last time. "It looks like it." I opened the door to the sewing/office room and looked at the seemingly normal computer inside. "And HIYA to you!"

For once, I may have taken him by surprise. "Good…morning, Lady Dementia," he said slowly. It was. Morning, I mean. I was hoping it would turn out good. "You are aware that it’s only 9 AM?" TIM asked in a slightly disbelieving tone of voice.

"I felt like getting up early." Originally, no, I hadn’t felt like it at all. Optimus had done some VERY fast talking to convince me that staying awake and not relocating his head was a great idea. I usually sleep until noonish, otherwise. "Open up Microsoft Word, you misbegotten spawn of Microsoft."

"Isn’t that, hehahehe, redundant?" Tarantulas put in.

TIM’s happy face scowled as the writing program replaced it. "Silence, spider. Lady Dementia, what are you doing?"

I flashed Tarantulas a grin before sitting down in the broken chair and setting the poem I had found on the keyboard so I could type. "Oh, nothing much, TIM." This is the poem I typed, and I swear upon Insanity, old popcorn, and those petrified French fries you find under car seats that it really does work:

Human Brain
Not Yet Obsolete

Eye halve a spelling cheekier,
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marquees four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word,
And weight four it two say
Whether eye am wrong oar write;
It shows be strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid,
It nose bee fore two long,
And eye can put the error rite;
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it.

(Author Unknown)

"Is that, or is that not correctly spelled?" I asked TIM.

The computer actually sputtered. "It’s--I—you can’t seriously think—"

"Correct or not, TIM?" I asked around the huge grin on my face while the Beast Warriors grinned with me. TIM replied by suggesting we do something anatomically impossible. At least for humans, anyway. "TIM…"

"Yes," he snapped, "it’s correctly spelled. But it’s not—"

Too late. We had already collapsed laughing, having successfully humiliated the evil computer by forcing him to admit that much. I mean, anybody could tell that the poem was utter grammatical nonsense, but it hit TIM right in his pride that he had to admit his spell checker let that bunch of slag pass by. No one (and I mean NO ONE) hates double meanings more than a computer.

Eye gig gild sew hard eye all most hurt my self …

(The original title of this fic was just plain Summer Scavenging, but after I found that poem...well, I couldn’t resist. ;)

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