I received a funny e-mail a couple days ago with these Rules as the content. I wholeheartedly agree with them, and looking back to last summer, I think they fit. A couple instances (okay, okay, the whole summer) popped into mind...

I looked between the Predacons and Maximals as they got ready for the training drill. HASBRO had sent a training schedule along with me to the Beast Wars Universe to tell me in general what type of practice they wanted me to drill the guys in, but they hadn’t told me how I was supposed to drill them.

So I used my imagination.

"Listen up everybody!" I yelled. "We’re gonna do something new today!" There was a nervous movement among the ranks. I grinned nastily. "The name of the game is...Calvinball!" Yeah, yeah. It’s a blatant rip-off of ‘Calvin & Hobbes’, but I thought it was appropriate. After all, the Beast Warriors were an awful lot like strange little boys and sentient stuffed animals...

Megatron blinked and turned to look at Optimus. "Do you have any idea what ‘Calvinball’ is?" Optimus silently shook his head ‘no’.

Hmph. Megatron was learning. He apparently knew better than to ask me for an explanation by now. A pity. It was always fun to mess with his mind...

"Get on opposite sides of the field," I ordered, still grinning. The Predacons and Maximals all sighed and grudgingly moved off. It was a large field. A plain, really, so it took them a while to reach the opposite ends. I waited until they were set up facing each other, and then dragged out a pair of flags. "Oh, by the way, you need these," I said sweetly into my version of a comm (it looked like a telephone headset and was tied into both factions radios).

Megatron audibly gritted his teeth and stalked over to grab one of the flags while Optimus came from the other side. Gee, that must have been inconvenient for them. I probably should have given the flags away while they were closer. Silly me...

When everybody was finally assembled on the opposite ends of the plain I spoke into my comm again. "So, everybody ready?"

There were a few anonymous grumbles, but then Optimus’s voice cut through them. "What do we do with the flags?" Figures he had to be the voice of reason. Heeheehee...Optimus wouldn’t be doing very well in this game if he expected something involving reason...

"Obviously, you keep it away from the other team," I said in a bored tone of voice. There were a few chuckles in the background, but I didn’t know whether someone was laughing at Optimus or if Tarantulas was just randomly laughing again.

Megatron growled. "What exactly is this ‘game’ about?"

Anything I want. "You’ll see." The wonderful thing about Calvinball is that there are no rules...except that you can’t use the same rule twice. And since I was the only one who knew that, I was totally in control...heeheeheemwahahaHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

"GO!" My shout was barely out of my lips and onto the radio when the two factions charged. Admittedly, there was a lot of ground to cover between them before they clashed, but they were about to encounter more trouble than the opposite group...

"Predacons! You’ve just entered the ‘Blind Area’! Close your eyes! You can’t see anything!" The Predacons’ forward motion stumbled to a confused halt as they reluctantly obeyed my order. They still tried to move forward, but they ended up straying off in different directions. Well, they looked like the proverbial headless chickens...

I could hear the Maximals’ stunned laughter, but they didn’t have much time for amusement before I turned towards them. "Maximals! You’ve just entered an area where you have to continuously turn in circles!"

A chorus of groans answered me, but Silverbolt immediately started chasing his tail--in mid-air. That threw off his maneuvering so that he collided with Depth Charge (who was doing loop-de-loops in his flight mode), and they both crashed-landed into Rhinox. Rattrap screamed as a dizzy Dinobot ‘accidentally’ (I don’t know whether that was an accident or not!) slashed his side with his sword.

I was starting to giggle, but I looked back at Predacons. "Okay, Preds! You’ve just exited the ‘Blind’ zone," a unified sigh of relief echoed over the comm, but I continued, "and entered the ‘Hopping on One Foot’ zone!"

Again, they were pretty unified. "WHAT?!"

I ignored that and gasped, "Maximals, you’ve just entered the ‘Sack Race’ zone. If you can’t find a sack, just hop around." I collapsed into incoherent laughter at the various curses coming in over my commlink.

Ah, sweet power...whoever said, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely," never met me. I was like this before I came into power...

There was a click on my comm that signaled a private link, and then Blackarachnia’s voice came over it. "There aren’t any rules for this ‘Calvinball’ game, are there." It was more of a statement than a question.

I watched the Predacons and Maximals slowly hop closer to each other. "Only one," I said with a smile. Rampage in particular looked like an idiot hopping on one foot...

There was a pause. Then, "Lady Dementia, you are an evil person. But you knew that already, didn’t you." Again, it was more of a statement of a fact. But I could also hear suppressed laughter in her voice. She had probably just seen Tarantulas lose his balance and fall over into Rampage, who fell into Megatron, who fell into...you get the point. The scene reminded me of dominos...

"Yup." I glanced over at the Maximals. Hmm, they looked pretty stupid, too. Perfect. "Think anyone else has noticed?"

"About the game’s rules or you being evil?"

I smirked. "Oh, I think they’ve all noticed that I’m evil," I said casually. "I was wondering them knowing about the rules, or are you going to tell them?"

Blackarachnia considered for a moment. "Nah."

Ooo, crazy idea alert!

"Heads up, guys!" I shouted over my comm. "You’ve all just entered a Mystery zone!"

The Predacons and Maximals all stopped hopping and exchanged confused looks. They had no idea what to do...which was the point.

"So, um, do we attack?" Tarantulas asked cautiously.

I cackled madly. "Weeeell," I drew out, "define ‘Attack’."

"Huh?" Even Blackarachnia didn’t get this one, apparently.

Optimus looked thoughtful (they had reached the spot almost in front of me, so I could see they’re faces now). "Hmm, firing weapons?"

"EEEEEERR! Wrong!"

Rampage tried next. "Mangling the enemy?"

"Ooh, you’re getting closer!"

Depth Charge glared at Rampage. "Killing the enemy?"

"HASBRO doesn’t allow that," I said firmly. That was one rule I wasn’t about to break...despite how tempting it was at times...

"Eh, how ‘bout blowin’ up da enemy?" Do I have to say that was Rattrap?

"You are so wrong, dude." I did my impression of ‘Beavis And Butthead’. "Hehehahehaheha..."

"Stop that!!" Megatron and Dinobot and about half the others yelled. They hate my impressions...which makes them all the more fun!

Terrorsaur shrugged. "How about just beating up the enemy?" he suggested.

"You are sooooooo close," I giggled. I decided to give them a hint. "How are you going to beat them up?"

The Beast Warriors wordlessly held up their weapons.

I did my Marvin the Martian impression. "Back to the drawing board." Yeah, I stink at doing impressions, but who cared?

"Cut that out!"

Apparently they did.

"Geez, have a hissy-fit," I complained. "Nobody likes me..."

"Duh."

"WHO SAID THAT?!" I stalked out in between the two groups, glancing at the suddenly nervous transformers. I paced back in front of them, staring at each of them in passing. "Who. Said. That," I hissed. "Was it...you?!" I pointed a finger randomly at Rattrap.

Rattrap avoided my eyes. "Um..."

Oo, lucky guess. I stood in front of him and tapped my foot impatiently.

"C’mon, it was just a joke!" he burst out finally.

"Uh-huh." I narrowed my eyes at him and smiled (everyone cringed...). "Want to see MY version of a joke?" I asked innocently.

"No!" Rattrap gasped.

I pretended to consider while watching him squirm. I’d probably just let him off with a warning, but it was fun...

Tim suddenly spoke quietly in my headset. "Lady Dementia, you might want to hear this." He linked my radio into what was apparently supposed to be a private link between the Predacons.

"...so if we move back about ten feet, we’ll be back in that other zone," Tarantulas was saying.

"Then we can use our weapons!" Terrorsaur exclaimed.

There was a slight laugh from Megatron. "Yesss...Predacons, walk back out of this...Mystery Zone. Try not to attract Lady Dementia’s attention."

Aha! So the Predacons thought that they knew the rules, did they? Well I’d just have to stop that...

I realized I had be glaring at Rattrap for too long. He looked about ready to shrivel up and die. The other Maximals were anxiously watching us. I let my smile die, and I waved a hand absently. They all relaxed. Behind me I could faintly hear the grass crunch under the Predacon’s feet. They were almost out of the zone...almost...

I whipped around. "Predacons! You’ve just entered the Elvis-Impersonator Zone!" I ran out of the way of the battle as I kept yelling. "Maximals, you’re now in the Disco Zone!"

"What?!"

"Oh, slag."

"Do we have to?"

"Blue suede shoes..."

"Don’t we need music to dance to?

"Silverbolt’s nothing but a hound dog..."

"Hey!"

"Uh-huh."

I almost collapsed of laughter as I turned around to see Tarantulas doing Elvis’s famous hip swivel. Rampage and Terrorsaur were making up mockeries of the King’s songs, and the rest of the Predacons were doing similar things. Quickstrike did a pretty good Elvis impression. That’s kinda weird...

Personally I hate Elvis, but my parents had a pretty good sized collection of Elvis music in their bedroom. For some reason, the Beast Warriors didn’t think that Elvis was that bad of a singer, so they occasional haul out my parent’s record player to listen to his stuff. Now I bet they were regretting it...

The Maximals...well, Silverbolt did a pretty mean disco. Blackarachnia was dancing with him, and Cheetor was staring at her with this strangely glazed look in his optics. Dinobot and Rattrap were doing a version of disco that somehow involved them poking each other whenever they had to point their fingers. Except for that, though, I could almost imagine them with big hair and bell bottoms.

It would have been scary, except that it was so FUNNY!

Megatron had enough. "Lady Dementia!" he shouted. "This area used to be something else, and you changed it! That shouldn’t happen!" The rest of the Predacons agreed vigorously and stopped doing Elvis impressions (except Rampage and Terrorsaur--they were having too much fun mocking the songs) to glare at me.

The Maximals stopped dancing with similar angry accusations. Well, Blackarachnia stopped, but she didn’t try to accuse me of making up the rules. She just stood there and smirked...

"What are you saying, Megs?" I asked mildly.

The Predacon tyrant stormed up to me. "I think you’re not abiding by the rules of this game," he snarled.

"Oh, really."

"Actually, I agree," Optimus said. He walked up beside Megatron and looked at me. "You’re just making up rules randomly."

Megatron nodded and gave me crafty look. "I’ll bet the REAL game of Calvinball isn’t played like this."

I laughed. "Are you saying that I’m wrong about how Calvinball is played?" At Megatron and Optimus’ nods, I grinned. "How about we make a bet, then?" I asked innocently. "We bring out my Calvin and Hobbes books and check for the rules, and the losers have to grant one request of the winner."

"Losers?" Optimus blinked in surprise.

"Don’t you mean LOSER?" Megatron sneered.

I grinned at them. "Nope. I meant loserS." I pointed at them and pretended to think hard. "I’m counting...one...TWO..."

Megatron growled. "I accept your bet." He glanced at Optimus, but the Maximal only shrugged.

"I’m not taking the risk," Optimus said wryly. (He probably remembered the bet I made with him that oatmeal sticks better to walls than baloney sandwiches. He spent the rest of the day cleaning up the mess I made proving I was right...)

The Predacon glared at him, but turned back to me. "Bring out your books."

When I had found the books in my closet (buried under everything else in there, of course), I brought them out and sat on the plain in between the Maximals and Predacons. It took a while, but I found what I was looking for (YOU try looking through about 7 different books for one comic strip!).

"See?" I pointed at the words on the page. "The only rule in Calvinball is that you can’t use the same rule twice. I win!" I got up and did a little dance just to rub it in. It’s not often that I win a bet against Megatron. I couldn’t resist...

Megatron scowled and snatched the book away. Tarantulas came up behind him and read it, too. They held a whispered conversation, and then Megatron looked at me again. He had this triumphant look on his face...

"Don’t you have to actually be playing to make up the rules in the game, though?" he asked smugly.

"Huh?" Where had he gotten THAT from?

Tarantulas chuckled. "You’ll notice in the comic strip that the only ones making up the rules ARE THE PLAYERS." His laughter took on a more insane edge than usual. "I believe we can interpret that as another rule, and so, Megatron wins your bet!"

I stared at the laughing spider and sighed. "Tarantulas, you act too much like a lawyer, sometimes. That’s gonna get you in trouble someday..." I shook my head resignedly and turned away from the cackling Predacon. "As for winning the bet because of some rule you guys are just assuming is there," I said pointedly, "well, think these two things over. One, Calvin explicitly states that the ONLY rule of Calvinball is you can never use the same rule twice."

You think it’s pretty bad that we were debating a comic strip? You should watch me debate late at night when I’ve had too much caffeine for my own good...

"What’s the second thing?" Tarantulas asked once he stopped laughing.

I shrugged. "Hey, this is a training exercise for YOU guys. I’M supposed to be directing, not fighting. HASBRO wouldn’t be happy with me if I took sides."

Tarantulas blinked. "Um, Megatron, she’s got you there. We did sort of assume that rule was there..."

"I win!" I giggled. Megatron fumed, but nodded reluctantly.

I looked at my watch and all my happiness over winning a bet with Megatron evaporated. "Crud! This stupid argument of yours has taken up most of the training time!" I shouted. "Now we won’t have time for target practice!"

There was an ugly sound from the Maximal and Predacon ranks. The guys actually LIKED target practice because they got so fiercely competitive. Currently, the Predacons were ahead in the scoring because Quickstrike had pulled off a bull-eye at the last minute. Silverbolt had been furious and vowed to out-shoot him next time. Rampage and Depth Charge were still steamed over the notorious ‘Clay Pigeon Incident’ and were looking forward to trying again, this time making sure nobody had tampered with the targets beforehand.

(Personally, I thought the results of the Incident were hilarious, and so did everybody but the aquatic transformers, but they were REALLY angry. Whoever it was who had tampered with the clay pigeons got a standing ovation from the rest of us, but those two vowed to hunt the ‘bot down...it was hard to take them seriously when they were covered with ink, though...)

Megatron looked noticeably nervous as everybody realized that the reason we didn’t have time for target practice was because of him. The glares directed towards him should have fried him on the spot...

"I want an apology," I said loudly.

"What?" The tyrant gave me a puzzled look.

Smirking, I elaborated, "You said that if I won you’d grant me one request, and I want an apology for taking up most of the training time!" The Maximals started cheering, with some of the Predacons not far behind.

Megatron sighed. "Alright, alright. I apolo--"

A thought struck me. "A WRITTEN apology!"

"--huh?"

"I wanna hang it on my wall," I said calmly.

"Um..." Megatron looked like he wanted to glare at me, but he apparently decided it would be futile (well, it would). He sighed again. "Okay," he said tiredly, "I’ll go write the stupid thing now." With that, he turned and walked towards the house.

I grinned at the others. "While he’s off doing that, let’s forget the training exercise and spend the time doing target practice!"

The more competitive Maximals (Dinobot, Rattrap, and Cheetor, mostly) and Predacons (that’d be everybody but Waspinator, I think. He helps me with the targets) whooped and ran around the house to the backyard, where Tim has all the targets. I laughed and walked more sedately with the rest of the guys.

I noticed Megatron about half-way around the house. The Predacon tyrant hadn’t gone inside. Instead, he was walking after us towards the target practicing area.

"Hey, what do YOU think you’re doing?!" I put my hands on my hips as I turned around to confront him. "I thought you were going to write me an apology!"

He shrugged casually. "I’ll do it later," he said just as casually.

"Oh, I don’t think so," I growled. If I let Megatron write it later, he’d never get it done. He’d always find something else to do. So, I’d just have to make sure he did it...

I stomped over to him and grabbed his arm. Hauling him along by his limb, I made my way to the front door and shoved him inside. He attempted to jerk his arm loose, but having Tim around DID have its perks. My enhanced strength made me stronger than the Predacon, and I managed to drag the tyrant all the way to the kitchen table. I plunked him down in a seat and got a pen and pencil from the counter.

"You. Write. Now." With that, I ran through the house and out the back door, leaving Megatron at the table. I gave Tim some instructions to keep him there on my way out of the house.

"Depth Charge!" I screamed. "If you ‘accidentally’ shoot Rampage ONE MORE TIME, I’m going to come over there and introduce you to one of MY accidents!"

The ray-bot hid his gun behind his back meekly. "I didn’t mean to..."

"Oh, suuuure you didn’t." I rolled my eyes. "That’s what you said the first six times, too!"

"Obviously Fish Sticks has the worst aim ever," Rampage grumbled, rubbing the burn spot where Depth Charge’s latest ‘accident’ had caught him.

"You shut up!" I yelled at him. "Your aim happens to be the one in question, so shut up and get a move on!" I stomped back to where Waspinator was holding the remote for the clay pigeon launcher.

"Why are you getting mad at me?!" the crab asked in surprise.

"Because I CAN!"

Rampage growled something uncomplimentary and shifted his stance until he was comfortable while everybody looked on and Depth Charge crossed his fingers. His turn was over, and now Rampage was working on out-scoring him. He raised his missile launcher. Concentrating (he really wanted to beat Depth Charge today), he nodded.

"Pull!"

Waspinator hit the button on the remote that activated the clay pigeon launcher, and it was flung into the air. Rampage tracked it...

Maybe I should explain this next bit. You see, Rampage likes to take his time in aiming during practice (not during actual combat, but it’s a start...), so he tracks the clay pigeons until they start to descend, and THEN he fires. Usually his system works pretty well; he had hit 8 out of 9 flying targets today. Now he was working on the tenth target, and he meant to hit it no matter WHAT Depth Charge tried. All he needed to hit was ONE more clay pigeon, and he’d get a higher score than the ray-bot (Depth Charge got 8 out of 10 and was somehow convinced that the bird that flew in front of his last shot was somehow Rampage’s fault).

The problem was, when Depth Charge yelled at him not to fire, he wasn’t (just) trying to prevent Rampage from winning. He was honestly trying to prevent what happened next...

*Ka-BLAM!!*

The blast hit my Tim-made shields and was deflected, which meant I was safe. Unfortunately, the blast was deflected to the side, which meant Waspinator was scrap.

Crud.

The good news was that Tim’s shields had also prevented the blast from deafening me, which meant that I could still hear the conversation going on.

"What the--?" Rampage coughed, and a puff of smoke came out of his mouth.

"Please observe the ‘No Smoking’ signs," I said cheerfully. Nothing like a good explosion to make me happy...

"What was THAT?!" Tarantulas asked as he picked himself up off the ground. The force of the blast had knocked a lot of the Maximals and Predacons off their feet. Optimus, of course, was still on his feet. He’s too big to move THAT easily.

Depth Charge looked down at his front, which was blackened. He had been facing the explosion. "That’s what happens when one of my pizza-grenades meets one of Rampage’s missiles," he said ruefully.

"Why would--?" I looked at him curiously. "Is that why you were yelling?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I--"

"You messed up my shot AGAIN!" Rampage bellowed.

"Oh, calm down, Rampage," I said irritably.

"BUT!!"

"Shaddup."

"He--!"

"I SAID, shaddup!" I shook my finger at the angry crab. "If you don’t calm down, we’ll never get to the bottom of this!" He started to say something again, but I gestured towards the house. "I bet I could find that one Disney movie with the song ‘Have Patience’ on it..."

He raised his hands in a warding gesture. "Okay, okay! I’ll calm down!" He stalked off muttering evilly.

I sighed and turned back to Depth Charge. "Anyway, you were saying..?"

The ray-bot nodded. "I noticed that the clay pigeon really wasn’t a clay pigeon when it was launched, but I couldn’t tell what it really was until it started descending." He paused and added defensively, "I DID yell for him not to shoot."

"Uh-huh. So how did YOUR ammo get into the clay pigeons?"

"Um..." He searched for an alibi and looked relieved when he found one. "You had Tim inspect all the weaponry and ammo last week, remember? I left some of my ammo in your house overnight, so someone could have stolen some. Primus, RAMPAGE could have done it himself to cast blame on me!"

I looked at him oddly. "You just HAD to add that, didn’t you?" He shrugged. "I guess your off the hook...for now." He looked nervous at my qualification, but I didn’t seriously think Depth Charge would do something like this. No, he’s more subtle than that (let’s not get into the rubbing alcohol incident, okay? We STILL haven’t figured all of that out, and he won’t admit a thing...).

Now this was a puzzle. Only Waspinator and I had been the ones to load up the launcher, so how had the grenade gotten into it? We hadn’t seen anything suspicious, because we only had to connect the clay pigeon boxes to the launcher, and it did the rest itself. But the boxes we connected to the launcher weren’t the ones the clay pigeons came into. Every week I assigned some of the Beast Warriors to transfer them from one box to another.

So that would have been a logical time to load a grenade into them, and if the prankster had counted the clay pigeons by tens, he (or she) would have had a pretty good chance of getting the grenade into Rampage’s turn.

"Who had pigeon duty this week?" I asked the group of Beast Warriors in general. All the Predacons raised their hands (except Megatron, who was still in the house).

Well, there was no lack of suspects, at least. Now, how was I--hey, wait a minute, why was I doing this?!

"Tim!" I jogged back towards the house. The Maximals and Predacons trailed in after me as I flung open the porch door and walked into the sewing/office room. "Tim, do you have recordings of when the Preds did pigeon duty?"

The giant silver HASBRO supercomputer displayed a video on the screen. It showed the Predacons sitting around the kitchen, which was filled with boxes.

"Um, fast forward, fast forward," I muttered while leaning over the screen. Megatron pitching a fit at Rampage, Rampage swearing to kill Megatron for the millionth time, Waspinator accidentally dropping a box of clay pigeons on Quickstrike and getting beat up, Quickstrike getting in an argument with Inferno, Megatron separating them both, and--

"Hello, what’s this?" I mumbled. "Tim, can you zoom in right here?" I tapped the screen, and Tim obligingly blew up the size. "Well, well, well," I said thoughtfully, still looking closely at the screen. "I suppose that DOES make sense for him..."

"What?!"

I turned around to see Rampage standing behind me. "Will you stop freaking out?" I asked mildly. "It’s giving me a headache."

"Who. Did. It," he gritted out.

I crossed my arms and looked around the room. Everyone but Megatron was there. "Anyone want to admit anything?" Nobody said a word, and Rampage fumed silently. "Anybody?"

"Who did it?!" Rampage roared finally as I delayed, looking around expectantly.

"STOP SHOUTING!!" I screamed. "If you don’t calm down, I’ll let whoever did it get away with it!"

The crab stared at me incredulously, and then closed his eyes. He visibly made himself relax, and then he opened his eyes again. "Happy?"

I studied him and sniffed audibly. "Good enough." He grumbled something but obviously made himself stay calm. "As for who did it..." I turned to the side. "Got anything to say, Terrorsaur?"

The red-and-silver transformer gulped. "Um, eek?" With that, he turned and ran out the door.

"Why would HE pull that on RAMPAGE?" Depth Charge asked puzzledly.

I shrugged. "Easy. If Megs hadn’t screwed up in training, it would have been his turn after you. Terrorsaur counted pigeons correctly, but it was just his luck that Rampage ended up with it. Speaking of which..." I looked up at Rampage, who was staring after Terrorsaur. "Why exactly aren’t you off trying to hurt Terrorsaur? For once, you have my permission as long as you don’t kill him."

The crab stared at me. "But you just said I had to calm down..."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine, then, be calm."

He blinked. "So I can go after Terrorsaur?"

I rolled my eyes again. Some people... "No, I just said you had to stay calm."

Now he looked confused. "I don’t understand...CAN I or CAN’T I go after him?"

I threw up my hands. "Make up your mind!" With that, I left the room, leaving him looking after me, unable to figure out what I wanted him to do. Depth Charge laughed outright, but the rest of the Beast Warriors smothered their chuckles in the interest of staying undamaged.

"Oh, and someone go get Waspinator, will you? I’m gonna go read Megatron’s apology out loud." I giggled as most of the Beast Warriors ran after me, eager to hear this.

I guess Waspinator would have to wait...

Oh, you have NO idea...

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