((Timeframe? What timeframe? We don't need no stinkin' timeframe! This is CRACK!))

The Fabulous Misadventures of Pinkimus and Lavendertron Amongst the Humans
-With Snide Comments by Starscream

Part One: Atrocities in Pastel Paint

"Hey, you were the one who said you were bored," said Prime, pointing the paintbrush at Megatron and holding out a bucket of lavender enamel. "Besides, you have no idea of the fun you'd be missing."

"Oh yes I do," returned Megatron with a shudder, "And I want no part in it. You can't make me!" he shouted, sounding more desperate than he'd intended.

"Oh, I have no intention of making you do anything," Prime replied, in that infuriatingly reasonable tone which Megatron particularly detested. "I'm confident that you'll eventually come to agree with me."

Starscream:

They've been going around and around like this for breems. It's enough to make me want to materialize right between them and clonk their heads together hard enough to make 'em see Primus.

Slag, that'd be fun...

Why am I watching these two twits? You may well ask. I don't rightly know myself. It's part curiosity, part self-flagellation, and part some glitchy sense of responsibility, I guess. But you can't deny that they are entertaining... When they're not being such aggravating bolt-brains. Which isn't often. Ah well... such is life. Or, in my case, death...

[Earlier...] Prime:

It's the middle of another uneventful day, in the middle of another round of routine duties, when Megatron suddenly throws down his datapad. It skitters across his desk and falls to the floor. Cracks star out from one corner of the screen. Poor, mistreated datapads- We really ought to treat them better...

Megatron stretches his body straight out and lolls his head back, rebelling against his chair. "I'm BORED," he complains. "Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored! I haven't done anything really crazy in vorns."

I can't help but agree with him. It has been quiet for a long, long time. And he and I, we're not used to quiet. We don't react well to it. We don't do quiet.

I ponder for a while. "Well," I respond, a devilish grin spreading across my face. "We could always..."

He hears the mischievous tone in my voice. Leaning perilously far back on his chair, he tilts his head upside-down over the top of it to look at me. He sees the grin, and flails frantically around until he's sitting bolt upright.

"No."

My grin becomes downright immoral.

"NO!"

"You don't know what you're missing..." I tempt.

"You slagging aft! There is nothing, absolutely nothing you can say that would make me do something as lunatic as that!"

He shudders, and I laugh as I watch the memory flash across his face. "Aw, come on," I goad, "When was the last time you got to truly terrify anyone?"

"Painting myself some unholy color and acting like a processor-glitched idiot does NOT count as terrifying. Besides-" I can see that he's clutching at shreds of reason, "You were the one who said it was important for us to be examples... to be on our best behavior at all times..." His voice fades. I know how much he despises that 'best behavior' thing. I've got a foot in the door.

I lay out my next arguing point. "I wasn't thinking of Cybertron. I had an entirely different planet in mind."

He snorts. "What, Earth? What satisfaction could I get out of melting the meaty processors of a few puny fleshlings? You may like them for some unfathomable reason, Prime; but they are still beneath my notice." He's starting to sound sanctimonious. Good.

"What? You're telling me that, after all this time spent being high-minded and forgiving, you've finally lost your taste for revenge?"

His optics blaze red fire, and I know I have him.

"Just think, Megatron... You came down on their planet like a..."

I'm about to say 'like a wolf on the fold,' even though it's just some trite human phrase; but he finishes on his own. "Like a herald of Unicron himself." He smiles in self-satisfied approval.

"Exactly," I agree. "You tore their world apart. They had no idea how lucky they were that you held back so much. You were a destroyer among worms." The evil glint in his eye is growing brighter. Flattery gets me everywhere, and I'm not too proud to use it.

"And yet..." I rudely interrupt the reverie he appears to be enjoying so much. "What have they made you into, in the stories they tell?"

An angry snarl is my only answer. It's all I expected; and it's all I need.

"At best, you're portrayed as a mere foil for me, doomed to fail in whatever lunatic scheme you attempt. And at worst..." Do you remember the day we accessed their fanfiction websites because we were..." I pause for effect. "Bored?"

His shudder is audible; it clatters down the length of his entire frame. He pounds a fist down on the desk in front of him. "I will NOT be redeemed by some plucky pre-pubescent fleshling with a heart of gold!" he snarls, before he can stop himself.

"And as for-" he looks askance at me across the room, and I actually see him flinch. "Guh-uhhh!" he adds articulately. I must admit, that as the invisible images from some of those stories hang between us in the air, I can't help but shudder, myself.

"What is it with some of those Earth creatures?" he explodes. "There must be some kind of contaminant in the atmosphere, to give them ideas like that!"

I'm eager to get back to promoting my original plan. "So," I say, leaning forward intently. "Let's have our revenge! Let's give them some memories to torment them in their dreams. Let's knock the foundations out from under the stories they tell about us. Let's, for once, do something that even they have never imagined!"

Megatron looks at the schedule for the rest of the day. It's the same as the one for yesterday, and I'd bet my best high-grade it's the same as tomorrow's, too. He looks back at me.

"I'll... think about it..." he says.

I rub my hands together, and come as close as I ever do to cackling with evil delight.

Starscream:

I... I have no words to describe it. Pink. Lots and lots of pink. It's just... wrong. And flames. You know those tasteless decorations that humans sometimes put on their pathetic fossil-fuel-driven vehicles to make them look more... Ridiculous? Yeah. Flames like those. That punk Drift would probably love them. Anyway, Prime has painted some on his pink chassis. There is no possible way that I can describe to you just how unholy this whole getup of his is. He's even done something to the blue parts of his armor. Where they used to be a proper, respectable blue, he's now covered them with this... this sort of light weak-water blue that no self-respecting mech would ever wear...

I've got it. This is what he looks like. Are you ready? Imagine what would happen if you threw Elita-One and that other femme, that Moonraker or whatever-the-slag her name is, into the Smelter. And they melted together. And caught fire. There. Do you see it? That's what that fragger Optimus looks like. I have no idea where he gets the cast-iron bearings to call himself the Prime in that getup. I really don't.

I'm going to have to defrag my processor for about three days, once these two slaggers are finished with their shenanigans; I can tell that already.

And yet I'm still watching...

Did I mention that Prime looks like an idiot?

Megatron:

I'm not exactly sure how the bucket of lavender paint ended up in my hands, but there it is. I stare balefully at it. It refuses to catch fire, or wither away, as it ought to do under the power of my glare. "You're sure this'll wash of, right?" I hear myself asking. My vocalizer actually squeaks a little. I sound just like that ridiculous fragger Starscream always did. (I sincerely hope he's not able to witness any of this. Glitching little twerp. But I must admit, he was never as much trouble as Optimus is.) Thinking about Starscream, I remember that the Mighty Megatron must never sound as if he's afraid of something as trivial as a little paint. I grab the brush out of Prime's hand. "Give me that!" I use my most menacing growl.

Prime looks absolutely ridiculous, by the way. When we get back, and I have retrieved some of my battered dignity, (Not that any of this is going to get out... right?) the first thing I am going to do is make it unlawful for any mech to look as ludicrous as Prime does right now. Scrap like this should be punishable by a vorn's hard labor, at least. It's an insult to our entire race, having a monstrosity like him walking around. If I ever find out that some lunatic mech gave him this idea, I am telling you right now that that mech is going to have a painfully intimate discussion with the end of my fusion cannon.

Great Cybertron, this paint is cold! And sticky. And sort of slimy... Ugh, this is so disgusting. When we get back I'm going to have to stand in the washracks for at least an orn and a half before I feel clean again.

I've never bothered to paint most of my plating. After a few megacycles of tearing around in the fight pits, paint started to seem like a waste of time. While other mechs (and here I am of course referring again to Starscream) would fret about the slightest scratch, I just stopped worrying about it. It was pathetic, the way some of those fraggers carried on. Listening to them, you would have thought appearance was more important than structural integrity! I have no idea how some of them lasted so long.

The only painting I ever did was to splash a few swipes of red across my face for an extra bit of fear factor. It actually worked on some of the fools I faced. When they saw those well-placed smears, and the scarring I'd allow to build up (OK, sometimes I'd augment it just a little with a particularly artistic scrape or two), I swear, some of those mechs would take one look at me, and burn rubber out of there. It sent a clear message, you know? It showed them that I didn't care how much they tore me up, I was going to see their sorry hulks straight into the Pit.

This color, on the other hand... This "lavender"- It's an insult to the depth and power of purple. I wouldn't put it past Prime to have chosen it on purpose. I love purple. It's regal. It commands respect. But this pathetic, washed-out, wimpy excuse for the color should be banned. I can see why there were (so Prime says) two whole buckets of it lying unused in the back of the workroom closet. No self-respecting Decepticon would ever wear this.

Um... Apart from me, it seems. Slag...

We're going to go back now to talking about mechs who care too much about their finish. Because I certainly don't. Obviously. Yes. Besides, it's not only the Decepticons who whine about it. Some of Prime's Autobots are, if possible, even worse! For instance, just the other day, I was passing that pretty-boy Lamborghini and that know-it-all aristocrat Tracks (or maybe it's Trucks?), and may Unicron take me if they didn't get into a full-blown argument about the relative merits of different types of polishing wax! Polishing wax? Who has time to buff himself when there's a war going on?

Was a war going on...

Frag, I'm bored!

This had better be as much fun as Prime seems to think it is.

I don't even bother to glare at him as I hand the paintbrush to the slag-sucking know-it-all glitch so he can do my back and help with some of the little fiddly bits. Lavendertron? There is no possible way that anything good can come of such an appalling pseudonym.