Perils of the Season
The Ark was a dangerous place around Christmas time, and not just because of the mistletoe.
With the sudden influx of packages and decorative trappings being strung up along almost any suitable surface Red Alert was almost beside himself with paranoia, half convinced that a Decepticon spy was hidden in every cluster of festive bunting. For the most part his fears were quite groundless except for Laserbeak having once been flushed out of a bundle of pine branches that were going to be put up in the Common Room.
But never the less there were always a few worried that somehow the Security Director would somehow put together a rational enough argument to have the traditional Christmas party banned for security reasons. Thankfully, he was always too flustered to put his thoughts into working order, though some suspected a few exotic additives to his rations had a hand in that.
Ratchet and the science team were another reason for the increased December health hazards.
As any dedicated hooligan knows, a holiday of any significance means a party. And a party means booze. Therefore to ensure a steady supply of drinkables, a number of closet brewers would start cooking up concoctions of intoxicating liquids as soon as November was over. And because brewing would often required a number of very specific tools, all sorts of equipment started vanishing out of the science lab and the store rooms. Nobody was stupid enough to touch the repair equipment, but the CMO's set of tempered glassware was fair game.
To counteract the 'borrowing', Ratchet and Wheeljack spearheaded an Ark-wide equipmentrecovery program, armed with the Dinobots as incentive for quick return of items. The rest of the science team implemented an ingenious security system that relied heavily on permanent dye packs and ink bombs to protect what remained.
But there was an upside to the party aspect for the command team. It was well known that Prowl was in charge of writing the duty roster, and equally well known that he had the habit of giving the worst duties to whomever had given him the worst headache over the past week. Thus to avoid being saddled with monitor duty or worse right when the party was in full swing, behavior was surprisingly good.
The only real cramp in the season was that Megatron seemed to favour it for demoralizing attacks against the local populace. So to ensure that the entire fighting force was not completely bottled when a call-out was sounded, the traditional party was held in shifts and there was a limit to the amount and potency of the intoxicants allowed. Nevertheless, a good time was generally had by all.
Except of course, for those who found themselves in the company of some mistletoe.