Author's Notes: I don't really know what to say about this story, originally it was supposed to be a collection of random one-shots of Sideswipe pranking Prowl and overall peeving him off. And then it developed a mind of it's own and now it actually contains something of a plot! So the first several chapters may feel a little disjointed, but it'll begin to come together by about the fourth chapter. However, this story is just supposed to be a purely silly thing to make people laugh, and I hope I achieve that all the way to the end (if this thing ever does end...). So I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it! Please don't feel any pressure to review since this is a purely silly thing, but I do enjoy hearing any thoughts, suggestions, predictions, or critiques you may have. Oh and just a warning, I'm a pathetically slow writer and suffer from writers block and distractions, so it tends to take me a while to write even these short chapters. So don't worry about long lags between updates... and please don't get mad at me. Nova helps me write these, and in fact you can thank her for many of the prank ideas coming up! This story really wouldn't be what it is if it weren't for all of her input. So thank you Nova!
Apparently I do know what to say about this story...
And P.S., if you're reading this chapter for a second time, yes I did add this note on late. I just never felt the need to say anything about this story before it actually became a real story. And before it took over my brain.
Disclaimer: I do not own the transformers or any characters in this story... just this thing that pretends to be a plotline.
And with that, onto the silliness!
Prowl walked into the rec room, data pad tucked under one arm. He rarely showed just how tired he could be sometimes, but in his processor he was still rolling out of his berth a few clicks ago. He headed straight for the energon dispensers for his morning's hot energon, spotting his 'World's Best Tactician' mug, given to him by Bluestreak. Prowl remembered, fondly but with exasperation, the day the younger Datsun had given it to him:
"Hey Prowl Bumblebee was telling me about a mug Spike was giving Sparkplug with the phrase 'World's Best Dad' on it and it reminded me of you not that I'm saying you're my dad that would be weird, even though we're both from Praxus, plus Cybertronians don't have family systems like the humans, which is weird when you think about it, because we have brothers like the twins and Sparkmates, but we don't have mothers or fathers, just creators. Anyway I wanted to make a mug for you that said 'World's Best Tactician' because youarethe best tactician, because I mean only Shockwave can face against you, and that's pretty good, only I wanted it to say 'Universe's Best Tactician' because we don't live solely on this planet . . ."
"Blue."
". . .but that phrase was too long and syllablely; is that a word syllablely? It's like wordy but with syllables; and nobody wants to read a phrase on a mug that's too syllablely, so I put 'World's Best Tactician' . . .
"Bluestreak!"
Bluestreak halted his long winded speech and looked up at Prowl with an apprehensive, puppy-eyed face.
"Thank You," Prowl said, accepting the gift graciously. The smile that lit up the young gunner's face had been more than enough to make up for the time Prowl had had to spend listening to his rambling.
Prowl grabbed his mug and began to take the final steps to the energon dispenser when a pair of yellow hands grabbed the mug out of his own.
"Don't worry, Prowler, you were up late last night with your work. We got this," Sideswipe chimed at him cheerfully as he followed his golden brother to the energon dispenser. Prowl stood his ground for a click while his battle computer processed the twins' unusually helpful and cheery morning behavior. Eventually he decided it was to his advantage to figure out later what the twins were up to, so he moved over to the table where Jazz sat.
The only reason why Jazz was up before Prowl was because he had never gone into recharge the night before due to an unusually heavy, yet not unheard of, work schedule that had been assigned to him for the week. He sipped from his very own Bluestreak made 'Worlds #1 Head of Special Ops,' which Blue had made for him because:
"You and Prowl are always meeting in the morning because you're best friends, which is cool because you're Second and Third in command and if you weren't friends then you wouldn't get along and that would be bad for all of us and I thought it looked weird that only Prowl had a mug, so I made you one, but I didn't want them to be exactly the same so I put '#1' on it instead of 'best' but they're really the same thing . . ."
Prowl sat down at the table and promptly took out his data pad to review the new day's schedule, upcoming meetings, Ark statistics, and so on.
"How's it going, Prowler man," Jazz asked cheerily.
Prowl finished reviewing the page he was on before setting down his data pad. "Well, enough, Jazz," he responded.
Sunstreaker chose that moment to deliver Prowls mug of energon with a "Here you go, Prowl. Breakfast of champions!" before zipping off to join his brother at a nearby table.
"Odd behavior," Jazz commented.
Prowl decided he was too tired to care and concluded that maybe the twins were doing something nice just-because for a change. He later concluded that he must have been suffering from lack of recharge and an under-functioning processor. He spat out what had entered his mouth as he sipped from the mug.
"What on Cybertron?" he muttered as he poured the contents of the mug onto the table. The substance turned out to be hundreds of human sized red canisters with black plastic lids. Jazz leaned in to inspect.
"Why is my mug filled with human containers . . ." Prowl said, poking one of the cans and accidentally causing it to burst open to reveal its contents of a brown powdery substance. Prowl scanned and categorized the stuff, ". . . which are filled with finely ground coffea arabica beans?"
"Well, y'know Prowl, the best part of wakin' up, is Folgers in your cup!" Jazz responded wittily.
"Hey!" Sunstreaker proclaimed from across the room, "You stole our line!"
"Sorry man, but you're gonna have to get up pretty early to best the 'World's #1 Head of Special Ops!'" Jazz said, lifting his mug in a mocking salute and taking a sip.
"It's okay Sunny, we'll get him tomorrow," Sideswipe implored and the two raced out of the rec room fiendishly.
"I don't understand Jazz, 'the best part of waking up is Folgers in my cup?'"
"Prowl, go watch some TV," Jazz responded. "And most humans just call it ground coffee, man"
"Hmm," was all Prowl intoned as he stared calculatingly at the pile of coffee canisters in front of him.
"What the slag is this!" came a voice from behind them. The two looked to see Brawn dumping out an energon cube full of human coffee canisters, each tin canister exploding on the floor like mini bullets of coffee. "What happened to our energon?"
Prowl sighed and stood up, "I'll go get Wheeljack."
Later that morning found Prowl sweeping up the byproduct of the earlier prank. Prowl was going to make the twins clean up the mess as punishment, but they were nowhere to be found and mechs were beginning to complain about the loose human canisters exploding underfoot.
So that mid morning found Prowl sweeping up coffee canisters by the hundreds. He thought it would have been easy to do and he would have been done in a few minutes, but the canisters were impossible to clean without them bursting open and spewing ground coffee all over the place. How the twins had gotten ahold of so many cans of coffee in the first place, short of hijacking a Folgers delivery truck, Prowl could only guess. So Prowl was forced to sweep and mop and scrub to get the table and floor satisfactorily clean.
Nobody was in the rec room by now; not even Jazz who had to return to his work. Not that this bothered the doorwinger, who often thought of himself as a soloist. Hound, however, soon strolled in after a morning scout to catch a rerun of his favorite nature show. He saw the tactician at his work and noted the substance the black-and-white was striving to clean up.
"Don't you have any doughnuts to go with that coffee, sarge'?" he perked as he walked by. Prowl sighed, letting his doorwings droop in resignation. Too many others had made that joke earlier to the point where Prowl had given up responding.
Hound plunked himself onto the couch, chuckling as he turned on the television. The TV flashed onto a commercial of happy people drinking out of mugs. A jingle followed, chiming into the silent room: The best part of wakin' up is Folgers in your cup!
"Ohhhh," Prowl intoned from his part of the room. Hound turned and saw the tactician staring at the TV and fading commercial with a look of revelation in his optics.
"You need to get our more, Prowl," Hound said, flipping channels until he reached the documentary he wanted.
Prowl didn't respond, but got back to his work with a new bit of information to mull over in his processor