Author's Note: I am considering continuing this story.
HOWEVER, one should note that this story was designed to be at least somewhat self-contained, in the case that I do not. Any other chapters that I write are also going to be like this (i.e episodic, as opposed to being part of a larger, serialized narrative).
Synopsis: When their sales are jeopardized by a competitor's toyline, the Maximals get desperate and launch a potential first salvo in a corporate war.
The scene: An unremarkable Wal-Mart somewhere in Portland, during the year of 1997. A group of voracious boys (in the important 8-12 demographic) have converged on the store, escorted by parents and siblings with ulterior motives.
"Hey Johnny. Want to come along with Daddy as he shops for power tools?"
"We're going grocery shopping and that's final!"
"Yeah, one of my friends works here and I want to taunt him into a berserk rage and see if he gets fired. You're the bait. Got it?"
Like their motives really matter at this point. No sooner have they reached one of three entrances when the strategically placed banners catch the eyes of the kids. Seconds later, they start to beg, and some succeed.
"But I'm picking up my tools first. If you tantrum or otherwise aggravate me, we're not buying it." Johnny begins to look up to 20% antsier now. Other chaperones have less willpower, and are literally dragged over to the toy aisles, where a special display has been set up by nondescript employees. Those who forgot to watch or VHS the latest episode of Beast Wars were now getting their first glimpse of Transmetal Optimus Primal. Nobody bothered to tell the kids that this was just a toy, because that would've hurt sales.
"He's shiny!"
"He's magnificent!"
"He's awesome!"
Clearly the target audience was enthralled with this latest model, and would use it to act out elaborate fanfiction with all their favorite characters. Similar scenes would be acted out by children all over the country in the near future, but it was a reality of manufacturing that anything manufactured in China would hit the West Coast first. In the hands of any normal company, this success would be cause enough for celebration.
For Maximals LLC, however, it would never be enough. Several of their other properties were ailing. Airrazor's sales were always questionable. Ever since the first Transmetal toys came out, Rattrap and Cheetor's sales were slowly declining. Worst of all, Waspinator was barely seeing any volume. Therefore, it was with great anxiety that the director of marketing entered the president's office one day.
"You wanted to see me, sir?" he stuttered.
"Sit down, Rhinox," said the president, pointing to an uncomfortable looking stool. When Rhinox gingerly sat in it, the office went from imposing to terrifying within seconds. The president's desk played the greatest role in it - it was too tall, so anyone who sat in the president's chair would seemingly gain several inches of height. "Several of our lines are increasingly unlikely to meet the expected sales projections." At this point, the president pulled up a chart on his computer, depicting the heroic struggle of several lines to reach certain heights, and failing.
"What am I supposed to do? The target market dislikes Airrazor because she's a girl. I can't make boys of that age lust after women... legally. Seriously, what am I supposed to do?" Rhinox braced himself for impact as best he could.
"Rhinox, what is our primary directive?" he was asked.
"... to sell toys. Our primary directive is to sell toys."
"Indeed. If we don't outsell Megatron per capita, he'll destroy us, and then the humans! Clearly the fate of your world depends on how much merchandise you can move."
"Yes, sir. I'll keep that in mind."
"Good. If you don't meet the required quotas, I'll find someone else to replace you. This meeting is over." The president swiveled away from Rhinox to face his window.
On the way out, Rhinox wracked his mind for possible solutions.
*Why the hell does it matter what kind of toys we sell, just so long as we sell enough of them? There's something Optimus Primal isn't telling me,* he thought to himself, while heading back to his own office.
"Tell Waspinator to talk to me about his toy-line at his earliest convenience," he said to his secretary, as he passed the threshold between his office and his waiting room.
It was several hours later, and an anthropomorphic wasp was passing the same threshold.
"Waspinator want to see Rhinox just as much as Rhinox want to see Waspinator!", it screeched.
"Interesting. What do you want? Make sure it's profitable." Rhinox added the last mantra out of habit.
"May I please drop the syntax impediment? We're all literate here, so why should I always make myself out to be a degenerate-"
"I've told you before. Just because I'm your immediate superior doesn't mean I can authorize these things. Go see Optimus Primal."
"... Waspinator understand."
"Right. I called you in here because your toyline's suffering, and Optimus wants us to improve your sales. Any thoughts?"
"Perhaps television show writers could stop maiming Waspinator's character in horrible ways?"
"Yes, but then my toyline would sell less, amongst other things. Even if we had a net gain of money, I don't think Optimus would accept it. "
"But Primal seek highest profit margins! Surely there something he is not telling the rhinoceros?"
"Yeah, that's what I think too. I should see if the other directors know anything." And Rhinox looked pensive for a moment. Then, the continued presence of his underling brought him back to attention.
"We still need good ideas for increasing your sales." They deliberated. It was inconclusive. Waspinator was following all of Optimus Primal's sales directives; Rhinox couldn't even claim that. Most likely, he'd upped his compliance standards when he first became aware of the problem.
"Waspinator is desperate and therefore the rhinoceros gets to hear greatest secret," uttered the wasp after a while.
"...This is something that could wreck your career, isn't it? I'm just guessing."
"Well... yes and no." Suddenly, Waspinator heard various rumblings and buzzing, and noted the room no longer had any exits.
"I've engaged the secrecy measures, but they'll make Primal suspicious. Make it quick."
"Waspinator has contact with rival salesman at the Predacon Company named Tarantulas. He improves sales recently by ensuring rigorous quality inspection of toys."
"... We all have contacts with Predacons. It's not the worst thing that could happen. Primal just thinks that associating with them is unspeakably evil."
"Then you are saying the wasp should follow his lead?" No response from Rhinox. Merely fingers pressed to lip facsimiles, followed by the room reverting to its state before all the secrecy measures were engaged. Then, the sound of footsteps, and the door opened.
"I saw you engage your security measures, Rhinox. What happened?" Optimus Primal inquired.
"I perceived that there might have been a Predacon spy in the midst, and wanted to ensure that me and Waspinator could communicate without our ideas being stolen." The bit about the Predacon spy was a half-truth, since Waspinator was technically a 'reformed' Predacon. Specifically, he'd be transferred way back in the early 1990s, when the two companies were on good terms. And it was always possible that the Predacons were actively spying on them, but that was a moot point.
"Good thinking. I'll be going now." And he left.
"That was awkward. But yes, I can check with focus groups to see if your toys are being manufactured properly, and possibly do some quality assurance work with the manufacturers if need be," said Rhinox to Waspinator, who also left.
And this was how most incidents would be handled.
So Waspinator's line was inspected. Some of the manufacturing was found to be of unacceptable quality. This was fixed, and Waspinator's sales reached the requisite quantities. That was good, and Optimus didn't have to fire anyone important.
Then, March 1998 struck Maximals LLC with a vengeance. Some time back, the Predacon company had won the bid to construct a toy based off one of their new employees, a fellow named Rampage thought to be slightly deranged... or worse. They hadn't thought much of it at the time, but then "Bad Spark", his formal entry into the accompanying television show, had aired. Kids loved Rampage. They thought his transformations were cool, his backstory was 'edgy', and overall, they savored his evil nature.
Kids were dicks.
Anyways, the sheer success of Rampage was cannibalizing every other Beast Wars toy on the market. For the Predacons, this wasn't really a problem - Megatron had simply raised the price of the toy by a few cents - margins increased, overall profit increased, volume decreased, but it kept all the other Predacon toys viable. On the other hand, this hit the Maximals like an unstable Energon shard through their spark.
Relentlessly profit-driven as he was, Optimus Primal was not stupid. Instead of individually haranguing his executives, he merely called them in for an emergency meeting. Everyone important made it - Rhinox, Cheetor, Rattrap, Waspinator, and even a few irrelevant people not worth mentioning.
"We have to stop Rampage from selling. It doesn't matter how. Perhaps we could sabotage the manufacturers. Perhaps we could introduce a competing toy of our own. But we need ideas, or we get driven out of the business." He looked around the table at which he had gathered his executives. They seemed rather worn; it was probably the massive overtime they were putting in, desperately trying to make their own lines profitable. No ideas were immediately forthcoming, so Optimus continued his briefing.
"The absolute worst case is that we have to wait until the new 'Optimal Optimus' toy comes out. That will be a few months. If we're still alive then, we'll certainly see massive sales increases that could take us through Christmas. In addition, we've won the contract for Depth Charge, and that promises to be a profitable line."
"Perhaps we could make large, complex, limited edition collectible version of the toys to sell to upscale markets-" Cheetor began to say, then he stopped when the silence surrounding him began to suck the noise out of the assembly lines below them. Only now did he realize he'd stepped over the line.
"THAT would be thinking like a Predacon. Do you know what that leads to, Cheetor?" Cheetor gulped. Optimus waited until it looked like he was about to speak, and then preempted it.
"An endless cycle of ambition and backstabbing would consume us all! We'd have to overhaul our entire production line! The design process would bog down as people squabble over minutiae! Eventually, someone would kill someone else, and things would go mad," he shouted at the group.
"And that is something we do not risk," he said, with his voice suddenly dropping to a whisper.
Optimus thought back to a company he'd worked at long before coming to Earth, long before being occupied with toys. On Cybertron, he was a middling executive in a company that manufactured electronic support chips for Maximals. The CEO decided to go specifically for the luxury department, and had taught his workers a deadly mantra - "Fifty-Five or Die", referring to the profit margin percentile they'd aimed for. They sold hugely luxurious items at exorbitant prices, with even greater markup. Few had sold. Then, their competitors started selling cheap imitations with most of the functionality. They'd sold less after that. Primal had left for Earth by then, so he didn't know what had happened next... but he assumed it was bad.
"Waspinator votes for sabotage! It would definitely suit the insector's talents, and mission possibly could be performed in under half hour!" The silence was broken.
"If Waspinator votes we sabotage those Predacons, I'm joining him... for similar reasons," Rattrap seconded him.
"I could hack into their computer systems," thirded Rhinox. A murmur of general approval was building.
"... I don't really have any underhanded talents," Cheetor said after a few seconds. If he were human, he would've blushed. "Besides, isn't sabotage more of a Predacon thing?"
"Predacons sabotage their allies," intoned Optimus. "Maximals need only reserve their occasional underhanded gestures for the enemy."
"Right. But my utility to such a mission would still be very limited."
"Not quite," Rattrap said to Cheetor. "If you create a diversion in their corporate headquarters, it'll pull off enough of their security forces to make our job quite trivial. And you'll be helpful, too."
It was Cheetor's turn to instigate icy silence.
"...That is the most insane plan I've ever heard of. I swear by the Allspark that there is no way you are going to convince me that it will-"
"Work?" Cheetor stared at his surroundings, which had drastically altered for some reason. He was in a back alley with Waspinator, Rhinox, and Rattrap, behind the Predacons' main manufacturing plant (I.E, somewhere in Taiwan). It felt as if a few days had passed, so he scanned his memory banks - he remembered accepting the role, planning for the heist, flying out from the Salem headquarters, so he wasn't sure why time had skipped like that. Could be doctored memories. Now wasn't the time to investigate.
"For the last time, Cheetor. We're sure this is going to work," Rhinox informed him. Dissociating like that was probably symptomatic of a virus. Not investigating was difficult, too.
"Now, go run in their front door and act like you're crazy." Cheetor had no real choice in the matter, having come so far. So he ran into the the main office of the plant, and started doing what was best described as a "happy dance".
Exactly how aware humans were of the bona fide Transformers, and not merely their toy equivalents, was up for question. Maximals LLC and The Predacon Company were technically small subdivisions of other, larger companies, who liked to take credit for the existence of the toyline. After Cheetor's display, their claims would be limited, at best, to inspiration. Most of the employees had never seen the real thing, so Cheetor's clanking and off-tune singing (caterwauling?) not only cut productivity for a brief moment, but also disturbed the poor saps on a deep psychological level.
Waspinator and Rattrap had shifted into their beast modes, and made their way into the ventilation system. Eventually, they found the grounds on which Rampage was manufactured. It was quite the sight - huge machines melting raw plastic and extruding it into various molds - an upper arm here, a foot there, a face elsewhere. Other machines sprayed quick-drying paint onto parts where a solid color wasn't complex enough. Then, the 'finished' parts were passed to underpaid workers, who would halfheartedly attach the pieces, and (if they were paying attention) make sure no defective units went off the line. There was more to it, but this alone created massive noise and the occasional toxic vapor. There was the understated idea that this was needlessly shortening the workers' lives, but frankly, it was probably better than working in a garment factory, or a heavy manufacturing concern.
"Okay, they're pulling off half a dozen security guards to handle Cheetor," Rattrap spoke into his communicator, relaying the words to Rhinox. "How's the hacking going?"
"Surprisingly well. Once I give the word, you drop into the facility and break some machines, and maybe some of the figures. Make sure to hit one of the plastic extruders. Then, you get out of there, and I reroute some faulty gold plastic into the broken one."
Out of the corner of his eye, Cheetor saw some rather stern human security guards walking towards him. Outside his notice, half a dozen security cameras throughout the facility started glitching.
"Sir, you're disturbing our employees. If you don't leave, we'll be forced to call in the Taiwanese army to dispose of you," one shouted. He was supposed to give himself up at this point and leave peacefully, but-
"What the hell's he doing?" Rhinox shouted from his alleyway 'office'. Instead of quietly surrendering and leaving, Cheetor had gone into his beastmode and mauled one of the guards. The rest scattered, the employees screamed, and it looked like someone was about to call in reinforcements.
"There's been some complications," he informed Rattrap and Waspinator. "You're going to have to make things very quick. Move in."
On the production floor, Rattrap and Waspinator burst out of the vents, transformed into their 'normal' modes, and started taking potshots at machinery. This had much the same effect as Cheetor's attack on the outer lobby.
Waspinator had saved some special ammunition for the plastic extruders - it wouldn't actually damage them, but it would heat up the contents, not only making a nasty mess, but rendering them vulnerable to contamination. He fired one shot at a vat containing bronze plastic; a few seconds later he saw noxious fumes rising from the top, and heard strange, gloopy sounds - that was the gold plastic flowing into the bronze.
"Yeah, we'd better get going," Rattrap said, pointing to what his partner had done. They jumped for the vents, scrabbled in, beasted up, and some time later, burst out into the alley.
"Cheetor's gone berserk for some reason. There's no saving him," Rhinox explained. He packed his gear implausibly fast, and they ran. Eventually, they reached the designated safe area - an empty garage.
"Stay still, and try to look like a car," Rhinox whispered, somehow out of the corner of his mouth. It had the intended effect of increasing their stealthiness.
"At least mission succeeded. Shame about feline Maximal," snarled Waspinator... quietly.
"Indeed. On the other hand, Primal never really liked him. I guess he saw future competition or something, and the unfortunate event may hold him back," muttered Rattrap.
"He'll probably get at least a year in prison," said Rhinox, this time in a slightly louder voice. He'd perceived a large vehicle moving towards the building - this was their getaway truck.
"Beast modes, everyone," he told them, and they transformed. Some poor sap thought he was delivering a rhino to the local airport for further shipping to Portland. If he'd known about the rat and wasp 'stowing away', he probably wouldn't have given a damn.
"Damn, damn, maybe a tinge of fuck, but mostly damn!"
At the Predacon headquarters, Megatron was testing out a variety of curse words, but 'damn' fit the bill most accurately. Then, his legs gave out from under him. As if this weren't bad enough, he heard a loud snapping sound, and they came away at the waist.
"Oh good, it's happening again."
Megatron suffered from what was best described as 'Gold Plastic Syndrome'. He'd had much of his body repainted from bright gold to a more subdued brown in an attempt to hide this, but that was incredibly shortsighted. Anyways, it would make life very unpleasant until he got back to Cybertron, and that could take ages with this toy business.
"You know what really sucks about this, Tarantulas?" he said to his marketing director.
"You mean shattering at your limbs isn't bad enough?" responded the director.
"Hand me one of those contaminated Rampage toys." He received one. Mercifully, his right hand did NOT shatter when he grasped the toy, and applied steadily greater pressure until, with a light grip, the entire thing shattered into a pitiful pile of shards.
"Oh, sure, they could've managed all sorts of mayhem when they broke in. They could've destroyed our stocks. They could've broken machinery. They could've injured or killed factory workers. But this sort of gold plastic? I could never be that evil, and I was a criminal mastermind on Cybertron!"
Tarantulas was visibly distressed by his employer's disposition at the time.
"You wanted to hear about the one called Cheetor, did you not?" he merely asked.
"Yes, indeed. The virus you created and infected him with has caused me no end of entertainment. Consider it a preemptive revenge." And now, Megatron managed to look regal without being able to stand, for want of the necessary appendages.
"He was convicted earlier today," infodumped Tarantulas.
"It'll cause our good friend Optimus no end of cognitive dissonance. He can either be nice to the fellow, and keep his services at the cost of sanity, or he can disown and fire him, in which case he may be willing to join the Predacon Company. Aren't I resourceful?"
"Why ask, when you already know the answer is yes?"
"What you never understood was how good it feels to ask a rhetorical question." For a guy with no legs, Megatron was actually feeling quite upbeat at the moment. He thought of Cheetor's plight.
Cheetor found himself in a fairly insecure jail cell; the sort in which bars could easily be twisted. As usual, he had records of himself attacking humans, being arrested, caused to stand trial. And as usual, he hadn't experienced it. There were no guards around, so he briefly considered breaking out and making a run for it.
*Not a good idea. Even if I could resist the entire military of Earth, which I can't, a Transformer would dispose of me. Anyways, they'll probably send me back to Cybertron for an actual trial,* he thought. Further options filled his head, and he began to whistle a mournful tune.
Rampage toys were in short supply (albeit high demand) for the next few months. A few with contaminated gold plastic showed up on the market, but were quickly discarded for being horrifyingly fragile. Since the average child couldn't pick up a new one before the intact ones sold out, or afford an old one, his Transformers related-expenses shifted. The Maximals' sales recovered somewhat.
On the other hand, there still was no such thing as adequate profits.