Original AN: Here's chapter one. Hopefully it lives up to the prologue, which more people appeared to like than I originally thought they would. I guess it's a good thing my sister convinced me to post it instead of scrapping it like I had originally planned :) Thanks to everyone who reviewed/alerted/favorited.

Since this is their first official appearance, I'll go ahead and say now that the Transformers' appearances in this story are either based off their G1 or Movie appearance, with only one exception being neither (it should be easy to pick out which is which). Personality wise, I use a mish-mash of what I have read on the wiki or in other fanfictions; what I have watched from the movies, TF: Prime, and TF: Animated; or how they are just depicted in general.

Last part before getting on with the show, this story is inspired by *The-Starhose's comics, which can be found on deviantART under that name. I highly recommend them to anyone who has nothing to do and wants a laugh. Her comics are cute and have made me laugh on several occasions.

Pint Sized

Chapter One

The Present

Day 1

Victoria shuddered as she climbed out of the car, slamming the door shut behind her. "Who would ever want to live here? It's freezing!"

Guilt washed over her as she looked up at the serene cabin. It was a simple two-story cabin: similar to any mountain cabin she had seen on television. The bright blue door stood out against the russet brown wood of the cabin. A green, two-person swing hung from the ceiling of the quaint front porch, and the swing gently swung in the breeze that caught Victoria's hair. Below the porch were trimmed bushes that had somehow found a way to survive the beginnings of winter, but Victoria had a feeling they wouldn't last long after the first snow fell. She didn't plan on staying here long enough to find out though.

"What do you think?"

Her grey eyes left the building to land on the man who walked up behind her after climbing out of his truck. With his casual t-shirt and faded jeans, he didn't look like a lawyer, and Victoria wouldn't have thought him to be one if she hadn't seen him dressed up in his office two days ago. According to his first stumbling speech, he had only finished law school a few months ago and came back home to take over his dad's practice. She wouldn't be surprised to find out that her brother had been his first official client.

"It's…nice," Victoria said after a moment. He didn't seem to notice her hesitance as he walked up the porch steps. He pulled out a key to unlock the door and held it open for her to enter. Victoria hesitantly stepped inside and glanced around the foyer.

The inside had the same welcoming vibe as the outside did. It was very bright, which didn't surprise her since her brother lived…had lived here. He always preferred bright, blinding colors as opposed to dull, neutral colors. Even knowing that, Victoria wished her brother could have picked another color to paint the living room instead of the bright orange he had chosen.

"Wow," the lawyer said in awe. Like Victoria, his eyes had immediately been drawn to the living room on their right. "I knew he liked bright colors, but that's…"

"That's Eric," Victoria finished for him. It was the only appropriate way to describe her brother—the one who always dreamed of becoming a cartoonist for children's shows. How he had ended up alone in a cabin in the woods was a mystery that Victoria would rather not investigate.

"Well," the man started after an uncomfortable silence. Victoria could tell that the young man wasn't exactly used to this part of his job description. "Maybe we should…check the rest of the house out?"

Victoria shrugged and walked down the bright green hallway with the man trailing behind her. She poked her head in the doorways they passed and discovered a nice kitchen with a breakfast nook overlooking the patch of trees that surrounded the house, a downstairs bedroom that appeared to have never been slept in, a bathroom right across the hall, and—although she didn't walk past the staircase— a laundry room at the end of the hallway equipped with a washer and dryer.

The brunette headed up the stairs and tried to ignore the sound of the man's heavy boots trailing behind her. Once upstairs, Victoria found three more rooms. The first was a bedroom that she didn't spend much time looking into. It had obviously been her brother's. From what she had seen before she turned away there was an unmade bed, clothes strewn across the room, and sketches of his little cartoon characters hanging from the wall. It looked like he was just out of the house for a while and would return later.

The next room was similar to the first in messiness. This room was painted a sky blue color and was cluttered with artist's tools: sketchbooks that filled almost all of the shelves in a bookcase; pens, pencils, markers, and erasers littered the desk and floor underneath it along with papers full of half-finished images; and sketchy storyboards were lined across the wall.

"So," the lawyer started, dragging out the word. He had been silent during the tour of the house but now began to shuffle from one foot to another. "This is where the magic happens. I always wondered what your brother's little workshop looked like. Always made it out to be this grand thing."

Victoria turned to glare at him as she slammed the door shut. "I think I can check the rest of the house out myself."

The man backed up with his hands up in the air. "Sorry, didn't mean for that to slip out."

He backed up to the stairs and took two down at a time. Victoria followed at a slower, more graceful pace, pausing once to stare at the framed landscape painting that hung halfway down the staircase. When they reached the bottom of the staircase, the lawyer turned to face her again. "As you read in the will yesterday, everything, including the house, now belongs to you. His assets have already been divided how he wished them to be and will be in their proper places within the next week and the letters sent out. Oh, except for this one."

The man pulled a crumpled white envelope from his back pocket and handed it to her. "Figured it would be simpler to give it to you in person. If you have any questions, feel free to call or visit my office."

Victoria took the envelope, and he gave her a final wave as she followed him out the door. She barely waited to hear the engine of his truck start before shutting and locking the door. She turned to face the inside of the cabin, gripping the envelope between her hands to the point that it nearly ripped. "What am I supposed to do with a house?"

[~]

"Of all the colors he could choose from, why pink?" Victoria asked herself while throwing her suitcase on the guest bed. Whatever had possessed her brother to paint all of the walls of the house different colors had led him to paint the guest room a headache-inducing neon pink. Painting the walls into a neutral color went to the top of her mental to-do list because she highly doubted that anyone in their right mind would buy a multi-colored house.

There was no way Victoria could keep or wanted to keep the cabin. One, it was too far away from work, as in two states too far away. Two, why would she even need a house? She had a cozy little apartment back in the city with a cute neighbor that liked to poke in every once in a while…when he wasn't bringing a new woman home.

Three, it was her brother's. She didn't want anything of his. It might have sounded petty since he had just died, but that's how she felt.

A month was all she had—a month of saved vacation time to sort through her brother's stuff and then sell anything that wasn't trash. She had already spoken to one of the local realtors about the house, so that part of the process should be easy to figure out. Now she had to go through the vast majority of her brother's junk, which she hoped to get started on as soon as she brought all of her stuff in.

Victoria only had two more bags, a small bag of personal hygiene products and her laptop bag, both of which she brought in at the same time with her last visit to the car. She wasn't in much of a mood to unpack, so she began to make her way through the rooms of the house. First she started with the living room, only glancing around to get an idea of what could be salvaged. Either her brother had been making a good amount of money or he splurged a lot. There was a 59" widescreen plasma TV, a Blu-ray player, a PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, an entire case full of Blu-ray discs and video games, all of which looked like sci-fi, fantasy, or animated stuff, and another case of…

"You've got to be kidding me," Victoria said when she realized what the case held. Beside the movies was a glass case of figurines that any hardcore fan would be envious of. Limited edition Star Wars, characters from video games, and robots, one of which she was immediately able to label as Optimus Prime. The others were unknown to her, but didn't look like any of the Transformers she vaguely remembered. "Well, now I know he was definitely a bachelor."

Victoria opened the case and picked up the red and blue robot. Upon closer inspection she realized that it was the same toy that Eric used to play with all the time when they were kids. The scuffmarks, scratches, and sections of missing paint gave it away. "I can't believe he held on to you."

Victoria carefully replaced the toy and left the living room. She continued through the house, peeking into rooms and making a quick mental list of what she saw at a glance before moving on. She completely avoided Eric's bedroom and what she assumed had been his personal office, and soon she found herself staring at the ceiling where the entrance to the attic was located.

"Do I even want to look?" the young woman asked, moving a strand of black hair away from her grey eyes. She looked back down the hallway to the only two rooms left for inspection. With a shrug, she jumped up and caught the string dangling from the ceiling. The door dropped a lot easier than she had anticipated, and she squealed when the ladder to the attic almost landed on her head.

"Jesus Christ!" Victoria exclaimed. She placed a hand over her accelerated heart. "What did he do, oil the hinges to knock out whatever burglar decided to go into his attic?"

She paused, her eyes darting up and down the ordinary ladder. "That sounds just like Eric. Booby traps everywhere."

With this new state of mind, Victoria entered the attic more cautiously than before. The room was a lot smaller than she had anticipated. Instead of spanning the length of the top floor, like she thought it would, it was only the size of an average room. Miscellaneous junk, like a weight machine and treadmill that she had no idea of how he got up there to begin with, was scattered across the room along with a good number of boxes of all sizes. She grabbed the closest two to her and shoved them down the ladder without even thinking. They landed on the floor below with a loud thud.

"I hope there wasn't any glass in there," Victoria said. She trekked back down the ladder and pulled the tape off of the first box. A sense of déjà vu washed over her when she pulled out a black and white figure. She twisted the arms and legs around, poked at the faded red chevron on its forehead, and messed with the other various parts of the toy in an attempt to transform it into a car. She soon gave up with a sigh. "I see now why I rarely saw any of you as cars."

She rummaged through the other toys in the box, pulling out a yellow one and a white one with red medical crosses on its shoulders; both were vaguely familiar to her, but she was unable to name them. Her digging finally yielded a toy that was neither a robot nor a car, and a name clicked before she even had the toy fully out of the box.

"Swoop!" She frowned as she realized her excitement was over a toy she hadn't played with in years. She sighed and gently placed the toy back in the box. "You were my favorite."

She closed the lid once she established that none of the Transformers toys had been broken in the fall. Shoving the box to the side, she reached for the second one to inspect its contents. After seeing her brother's house and the box of robots, she wasn't even surprised to find that the second box contained all the bad guys from Eric's childhood collection.

"You had a funny voice." Victoria pulled out a red, blue, and white robot with wings. The dull red plastic of its eyes caught the light as she twisted its head back and forth. "Eric would always make his voice high-pitched and scratchy when he played with you."

Victoria frowned as unwanted memories surfaced and dropped the toy back into the box. She shoved both boxes into a corner at the end of the hallway. "I'm pretty sure I can sell you guys on eBay and make some nerd happy. There's been a good market for old toys lately."

Without a second glance, Victoria climbed back up the ladder to discover what else was in the attic.

[~]

After five hours of hunting through boxes with only the occasional pause to figure out what something was, Victoria finally called it a night when she had to turn on the flashlight on her phone to see. The only thing on her mind as she trudged down the ladder was the queen-sized bed in the guest room. She wasn't even concerned with the fact that she had skipped dinner or that she hadn't made so much as a dent in the attic.

Victoria had just collapsed face first into a pillow when a clatter of pots and pans came from the kitchen down the hall. She groaned into the pillow and debated on whether or not to investigate. On one hand she could barely move and sleep was just a blink away. On the other hand, there was the chance that a serial killer had broken into the cabin and would stab her to death as soon as she fell asleep. But on the other, other hand, it could just be a cat that her brother had and no one had informed her about. On the fourth hand, her laptop was sitting on the kitchen table, and knowing her luck, any burglar would go straight for that instead of going for the massive TV in the living room.

The safety of her laptop was ultimately the deciding factor. Victoria had way too much crap saved onto the compact computer and no way to replace that data. That data was how she made a living. So, much to her dislike, she pulled herself away from the comfy bed and entered the hallway. She stopped at a closet halfway between the bedroom and kitchen and grabbed a bat she had seen in there earlier.

Armed with her metal baseball bat, Victoria cautiously peeked around the corner to see…nothing. There was no one in the kitchen, and she would have thought that she had imagined the whole thing if she didn't look down and see the pots that had made the noise and the open cabinet they had tumbled from. With the bat swinging freely in her right hand, Victoria walked around the kitchen, checking to be sure the windows were closed, before she crouched down to pick up the pots.

Just as Victoria crouched down in front of the open cabinet, something shot out of it and hit her directly in the forehead.

"What the hell!" she exclaimed. Pain like a bee sting emanated from the spot on her forehead, and she grabbed her forehead without thinking. She lost her balance and fell back onto her rear.

Something else, this time a lot bigger, shot out from the cabinet. "You'll never take me alive!"

Victoria's eyes widened and the pain was forgotten as she watched a miniature purple and black jet fly around her head. A silent yellow blur flew from the top of the counter landed on top of the jet and clung to it. It emitted a shriek and twisted and dived in an attempt to fling off its new passenger. "Get off me, Auto-scum!"

"Not a chance Decepti-creep!" the yellow blur yelled back. The jet managed to flip over and dislodge the hitchhiker before suddenly winking out of existence. The yellow thing tumbled through the air with a grunt, and Victoria reached out and caught it without a second thought.

Victoria stared at the little being that shuffled around in her cupped hands. It was almost too big for her to comfortably hold, and sharp, little plastic edges poked into her hands as it moved, causing her to shift her hands to keep it from falling. It didn't even seem to notice her as it growled. "I almost had him! My legs just felt a little stiff…"

It trailed off when a loud laugh came from the top of the counter it had leaped from. The thing in her hand stopped its monologue and looked up at the sound of the laughter. "What are you laughing about? All you did was stand by and let the 'Con get away!"

"That was just," the voice gasped between laughter. "That was just too funny! You were flying everywhere!"

The laughter continued as the tiny creature growled and moved towards its companion. Without thinking, Victoria closed her fingers around it to keep it from walking off the end of her hand. That was when it seemed to realize that it was being held and turned to glare up at her with dark indigo eyes. "Great. Not only did Wheeljack blast us to Primus knows where, but he also shrunk us!"

Looking down at the disgruntled face, Victoria's eyes widened as she finally realized what was in her hand. She choked in shock and opened her hands. The yellow toy managed to grab onto her fingers at the last second, letting its legs swing freely in the air. All the while, it continued to glare at her. "Hey, watch it!"

"I'm losing my mind," Victoria said to herself. Despite the toy's growls, she stood up to see another black and red toy doubled over in laughter on top of the counter. "I haven't even been here for a day, and I already have cabin fever. Yeah, that sounds…possible."

The tiny robot swung from her wobbling hand and gracefully landed next its companion. It shoved the black and red toy to the side, snorting as the other toy continued to chuckle even as it wobbled to the side. "The native's broken."

"Slag," the laughing one said. It calmed down enough to stare up at her with the same indigo colored eyes. "Prowl's gonna be all over us. Why'd you go and break it?"

"We can blame it on the jet."

"Good plan. Now who's gonna tell him?"

While the two plotted their way out of trouble, Victoria stood in front of them trying her hardest to figure out what was going on. She clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking and closed her eyes in concentration. "Okay, okay, there has to be a logical explanation for all of this. I'm overworked. It's the mountain air. I watched one too many cartoons as a child."

She paused and opened her eyes again. The two robots were playing a game of what appeared to be Rock, Paper, Scissors, only with different hand gestures. From the perpetual growl that came from the yellow one, the red one's gesture had won. "Oh, who the hell am I kidding? They're talking toys, there's nothing logical about this at all! How does a box of toys…oh no!"

Victoria twisted around on her heel and dashed out of the room. A shout came form behind her, but she didn't pause to figure out which toy it had come from. "Where's it going?"

"I don't know, but it looked to be in a big hurry."

"Whatever. You lost so you get to tell Prowl."

"You cheated!"

Victoria could still hear them bicker as she ran past the living room. Something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she came to an abrupt stop. Against her better judgment, she slowly backtracked until she stood staring into the living room. Her eyes widened, and she slowly walked towards the glass case she had examined earlier, now open and possessing a noticeable gap between collectibles. "Where's Optimus?"

"That's a very good question."

Victoria shrieked at the sudden voice and spun around to find its owner. After not finding anyone of her height, she finally thought to look down and found the disgruntled speaker standing on the coffee table, his white and red arms crossed over the plastic paneling of his chest. Two others stood beside him, a robot with half of its face hidden beneath a grey mask and two translucent panels on either side of his head while the other was the black and white painted robot with the red crest on his forehead.

"It's so big," the one with head fins said in awe. Victoria stared at the dull flickers that came from the panels on its head, her mouth slightly falling open as they got brighter the longer he spoke. "Like Metrotitan big. And it's organic. No one's ever reported a race of organics being this big anywhere near Cybertron, not even during the time of the Primes!"

The black and white one let out a sigh, but it was the first speaker that turned its glare to the one with the flashing face. "Now is not the time to ogle."

"But—"

"Wheeljack!"

"Fine," the second one conceded, the tone of his voice suggesting that if Victoria could see his face, he would be pouting. He waggled a finger. "But I call dibs on being the first to classify this species. It'll make Perceptor so jealous!"

Victoria fell to her knees in front of them, quickly diverting the three's attention back to her. The one scolding Wheeljack looked at her with a frown. "Are you all right?"

"I don't think so," Victoria answered. Black dots began to play across her vision while she tried to focus on the three. "I'm losing my mind. All of my brother's old toys are coming to life."

"Toys?" The black and white robot, which had been silent up until this point, stepped forward. The small pieces on plastic on its back shuddered. "We are not toys. We are autonomous robotic organisms from the planet Cybertron."

"Autobots!" Wheeljack piped in helpfully.

Victoria blinked as her erratically beating heart began to slow and the edge of her vision slowly began to fade. "Excuse me for a minute. I think I'm about to faint."

Without another sound, her vision went black, and Victoria fell over onto her side.

Original AN: I don't know about anyone else, but this is honestly the response I would have to toys that came to life. It would not be cool to think I had lost my mind and was seeing talking dolls…I mean action figures. Day 1 continues in the next chapter, which will be posted next Monday, my 'official' day of updating. Until then, leave a review of your opinion on how the chapter was.

EDIT: 1/2/14 (Grammar, some sentence structure, and attempted to fix the repetition of "she")

EDIT 2: 5/22/2016

Final Revision: 1/2/2019