XP Ah! Another story! What am I thinking? I'm thinking it's only a week long that's what I'm thinking. My goal is to post a chapter a day until Valentine's Day next Tuesday and I've got each chapter thought out already, but still, we'll see how it goes. Cross your fingers and make a wish!

For those that don't know what's going on, this is connected with my longer story I Lost A World! probably somewhere around chapter 18 where there's all those time gaps. This runs in the vein of my New Year's fic, Bang, Flash, Boom! with it's human influences turning into the antics of a group of rambunctious younglings. Only this time the madness spreads! Whee! Expect fluff n' fun for the next seven days. I luv you guys and feel free to leave me some reviews!

And now I must go and finish a project that's due in about an hour. AHHH! Why do I do this to myself? *wallows in self inflicted misery for two seconds* I now leave Mrs. Mittens in charge until then. Bye!

^..^

Attack of the Valentines!

~ aka: Valentine's Sweetness ~

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Little Red Hearts of Doom

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If there was one thing young human Aria missed about her home planet, it was the holidays. She sighed as she thought of the festive, merry atmosphere of Christmas, the excitement of New Year's, and the deviousness she always looked forward to Halloween with.

From her place lying on the countertop in what passed for the nursery, Aria gave another sigh and listlessly continued doodling little hearts along the inside cover of her diary. She was lying on her stomach, stretched out on the flat surface, chin propped up by one hand and her feet idly kicking in the air. It was coming on Valentine's Day now and she missed that too.

Well, it wasn't really almost Valentine's Day, at least, not that she knew of. Aria found that it was impossible to coincide the Cybertronian calendar with her own Earthly one, but she felt like it should be Valentine's Day soon, and that was good enough for her, especially since there were no other humans around to argue with her.

"I don't know why I even bother missing this one." Aria murmured to herself as she went over the lines of another heart with her pen. "It's not like I ever had a boyfriend." She rethought her statement. "Well, at least not a serious one. And I never had one on Valentine's Day anyway. It's still just another Tuesday…or whatever day it's on this year anyway." She mumbled sullenly to herself just like any other young person that was single on February 14.

Aria was so caught up in her dejected mumbling that she didn't notice when a large pair of bright, baby blue eyes carefully rose over the edge of the counter to peer at her. They were obviously not human eyes, seeing as each one was about the size of Aria's hand, fingers outstretched and everything. They glowed like blue headlights, throwing Aria's shadow out from her small body. They were also set into a mechanized face that was youthful despite its size. Large fingers appeared on the countertop to help the being watching Aria keep his balance.

The glowing eyes watched Aria a long moment, but when she didn't notice them, they blinked.

"What are you doing Jie Mei?"

Aria looked over at the voice, slightly startled, but she relaxed when she saw the robot peering at her over the countertop.

"Oh, hey 'Bee. Nothing much. What are you doing? I though you guys were paying hide-and-seek." She said, rolling over slightly to check on the scene beyond and below her perch. Six other little bots were gathered in the middle of their playroom. She frowned when she saw that four of them – Val, Fastlane, Skids, and Mudflap – were arguing over something. The other two, Arcee and Cloudraker, were standing off to the side, watching crossly.

Next to her, Bumblebee just shrugged, and then nearly fell out of sight as his balance wobbled. "Skids and Mudflap cheated." He told her calmly as he went up on his tip-toes again so he could see her. "What are you doing?" He asked, seeing the open journal on the counter in front of her. His adoptive older sister usually wrote when she was watching them but not playing with them, but she hadn't been writing those strange little symbols organics made to remember stuff.

Aria looked back down at her pocket sized notebook. "Huh? Oh," she spotted the hearts that spread across the inner cover like bubbles drifting through water, "they're hearts. You like 'em?" She asked, smiling slightly as she held up the book so Bumblebee could see them better.

The little (compared to the adults anyway) yellow bot squinted at the hearts. He had heard Jie Mei say that word before. "Organic pumps look funny." He said eventually, his optics disappearing below the countertop as he gave his feet a break.

Aria shuffled over to the edge and, still on her stomach, folded her arms under her chin so she could look down at her di di.

"Well, organic pumps don't really look like this. They're about this big," she cupped a hand in front of her where Bumblebee could see, "and more round and squishy and, eh, gross," she said with a somewhat disgusted look at her hand as she pictured a real heart sitting there. She wrinkled her nose and rubbed her palm quickly on her pant leg. "These hearts are more like the ones you find on cards, since they're prettier and not…wet." Aria's nose wrinkled slightly again at the thought.

Bumblebee blinked again, trying to absorb Aria's explanation. "Cards," he said slowly, "you mean like that thing you gave me when I got sick?" He asked, his little optics lighting up more than before.

"Organics send each other cards with pumps on them?" Arcee asked as she came over, bored with the fight that was going nowhere. "Ew, gross!"

Aria laughed. "No, not like that. These hearts are cute. There's even a holiday where you give them to people you like, to show affection." Aria told them.

Arcee thought about this. "You mean like how Chromia likes Mister Ironhide, or Skids and Mudflap like each other?" She asked innocently enough.

But her words were enough to break up the fight that was brewing on the other side of the room. "What?" Skids demanded loudly, ignoring Val and Fastlane in front of him. "I don't like him!" He shoved his brother.

Mudflap shoved back, but he was glaring over at Arcee. "Yeah, that's gross. He's weird."

Skids glared at Mudflap. "I am not! And besides you're stupid!"

"I am not! You are!"

"Nuh-uh!"

Arcee rolled her optics at the pair. "They're both stupid." She grumbled under her breath.
"Arcee," Aria admonished her with a slight frown at the only femme out of the seven younglings.

The pink femme glanced guiltily down at the floor. "Well they are." She said, her voice even lower then before.

Bumblebee agreed with her, even if he liked the twins well enough. If they would think things through every once in a while maybe they wouldn't have this kind of reputation, but oh well.

"What about the cards Jie Mei. Who do you give them too?" The yellow mech jumped in quickly to take Jie Mei's frown off of Arcee.

For a cycle it didn't look like it worked, but then with a look that clearly said they would talk about this later, Aria looked over at Bumblebee. "Well, yeah, couples like Ironhide and Chromia would give each other Valentine's Day cards. Sometimes friends and family do it too though."

"Can we try?" Bumblebee asked, leaning upward again. "I want to color a card."

"Yeah, I want to color too!" Arcee said excitedly, trying to pull herself up high enough to get her chin on the counter.

"Color?" Cloudraker's head snapped up, blue optics zeroing in on Aria from across the room. He darted over and put his little hands on the counter too. "I want to color!" He said eagerly.

It was like a magic word. As soon as Cloudraker spoke, Fastlane and Val perked up at the word and joined the rest of the group by the counter, abandoning the twins to carry on the fight alone.

"Can we color too Jie Mei?" Val asked, not needing to even try to look over the heads of the others to see what Aria was doing.

"Yeah, what are we coloring?" Fastlane asked as Cloudraker began to jump up and down excitedly.

Aria put her hands up to stem the wave of excitement. "No matter where you go, kids will have markers and the desire to use them." She thought as she smiled at the younglings.

"Alright, alright," she said as they continued to ask her questions, "you can make some cards, just let me go get the markers-Hey!" She yelled suddenly, making the younglings jump. But she wasn't glaring at them. "Skids! What did I tell you about biting? Now both of you knock it off!" She demanded as she hopped down the makeshift stairs Ariel had set up for her earlier and strode purposely towards the bickering twins.

Bumblebee and Arcee shared a look.

"She's going to be forever." Val said, turning to mildly glare at the twins as Aria got between them, trusting them not to step on her or anything.

"I'm going to get the markers." Arcee said, feeling impatient.

"Then I'll get the paper." 'Bee said. It would take Jie Mei a while to get the twins calmed down anyway.

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"Mine's going to be the bestest!" Fastlane, always competitive, crowed as he scribbled on his overly large piece of paper. Five minutes and one broken up fight later, all of the younglings were lying in a circle on the floor, each with a sheet of paper in front of them. The alien equivalent of markers were all piled in the very middle so they wouldn't argue about who got to use which one.

Aria had moved to the youngling sized table so she could watch them better while they were (temporarily) preoccupied. It had surprised her at first when she found out that the bots still used paper when they had all these electronic gizmos that were almost as advanced as they were, but then Jazz had told her that the only thing they used it for was when they needed to put up detour signs, and the surprised feeling went away.

She also no longer felt bad when she stole paper from the storage room for the younglings to draw all over.

"It's better than the walls at any rate." She thought as she leaned over the edge of the table to see how the younglings were doing.

"So who're you going to give yours too 'Bee?" Aria asked as she watched him draw a yellow and green cloud above what looked like a zebra with brown and purple polka dots on the inside of the folded paper.

The yellow youngling looked up at her and blinked his bright blue optics at her curiously. "You mean I have to give it to somebody else?" He asked, sounding surprised.

Aria looked over at him. "Well, I guess you don't have to, but that's generally what you do with cards. You give them to people to make them feel better or to tell them something special."

"Oh…" Bumblebee said somewhat disappointed he had to give his away.

"Something special…" Arcee mumbled thoughtfully next to him.

"I'm going to make one for Cloudcover then!" Cloudraker exclaimed grabbing the blue marker, presumably so he could draw his guardian flying in the sky.

"Yeah? Well I'm making one for Sideswipe." His brother Fastlane said almost defiantly.

Val looked over at him. "Why? You don't even talk to him a lot."

"So?" Fastlane said, keeping his eyes on the silver blob that Aria now saw was holding a gun that looked suspiciously like Sideswipe's. "He's cool. He does all these awesome tricks and never gets caught."

Bumblebee looked up at the other youngling. "He's in the brig right now for messing up Wheeljack's tools on purpose."

Val giggled deviously. "I heard that Wheeljack's lab still only has two and a half walls."

Cloudraker slanted the bigger boy a look. "And this is new…how?"

Val shrugged as he picked up the green marker.

"I'm going to do one for Wheeljack." Mudflap decided a cycle later as he grabbed a new sheet of paper. "Dear…Wheeljack…" he started to write in his clumsy, grade school way.

"Well if you're giving one to Sideswipe then I'm giving mine to Ultra Magnus." Val said proudly.

"…thank you...for…not…blooowiiiiing…" Mudflap sounded out the troublesome word.

Fastlane laughed at Val. "Yeah, right, like he'd read it anyway."

"He would too!" Val yelled back.

"…us up…intooo…" Mudflap finally paused and looked up at Aria, "Hey Jie Mei, how do you spell 'smithereens'?"

"Hey Mudflap," Bumblebee spoke up from his spot across the circle from one of the smallest younglings, "if you're giving one to Wheeljack are you giving one to Ratchet too?"

"Or what about Mister Prowl?" Cloudraker asked, always trying to be fair.

The others looked at them like they were nuts. Even Fastlane and Val stopped their bickering to stare.

"Nah…" Mudflap and Skids finally said at once. Then the four boys laughed at the other two.

Feeling a bit embarrassed now, Bumblebee ducked his head and halfheartedly colored in one of his poor imitations of the bumpy things he had seen Aria drawing in her notebook. Cloudraker just smacked his brother and went back to his card, glaring as he unsteadily drew the outline of his guardian on the card with a gray marker.

Soon enough Bumblebee couldn't stand staying quiet any longer. "I'm going to give mine to Miss Ariel 'cuz she read me that story yesterday when I didn't feel so good." He said quietly, just incase no one was really listening. Then he turned to the femme lying next to him. "Who are you giving yours to Arcee?" He asked her.

For a moment it looked like she was going to stay quiet and continue determinedly ignoring the rest of them. All of the other little mechs turned to stare at the only femmeling too, waiting for an answer.

"Hmm…" the little femme eventually hummed thoughtfully, tapping the end of her pink marker against her chin. Then her optics lit up as she hit an idea. "I got it!" She cried excitedly, but she didn't say anything else as she stuck her head down next to her drawing, hiding it from view with her hands.

Mudflap leaned over slowly to try and sneak a glance past Arcee's hand, but she looked up and glared at him, making him retreat or risk getting bit again. With an indignant huff, the little femme stood up, making sure to keep her card where none of the boys could see it.

"I'm not telling. So there." She told them smartly, and then she turned and left the room.

There was a brief moment of silence as the boys blinked at the door as it swiftly slid shut behind her.

"What's her problem?" Val finally asked as he turned back to his drawing. The rest of them either shook their heads or grumbled, "Beats me."

Aria bit her lip to keep from grinning. "They're so cute when they don't know anything." She cooed in her mind.

"I think I'm going to give mine to Jazz. He's cool." Cloudraker said a moment later.

"But I thought you were giving it to Cloudcover?" Bumblebee pointed out.

Cloudraker looked up. "Oh yeah." He looked up at Aria with a somewhat worried look. "Hey Jie Mei? Can we make more then one of these things?" He asked, holding his up over his head as best he could so she could see it.

Aria grinned at him lovingly. "Yeah, of course. You can make as many as you want. Or at least until the markers run out." She added the last sentence more to herself then Cloudraker.

The youngling just grinned and shouted. "Cool! Then I'm going to make lots!"

"Me too!" Fastlane yelled as they all got doubly busy.

Aria just grinned nervously down at the seven younglings. "Oh boy, I think I just started a trend."

n_n Hope you loved it! Tomorrow's fun includes...Sunny's Sorta Secret Admirer! XD Much love til then!